How to Make Money Online: The Simple, Cheap Way

People are always asking me how I make money online. I've been doing it for almost 4 years now and, fortunately, haven't had to get a "real" job yet (since graduating college). It's definitely not easy to do, but anyone with some intelligence, creativity, and/or the willingness to do large amounts of research can make a good living on the Web. However, it's important for newbies to start off small and cheaply. Despite what the marketing "gurus" try to tell you, you really don't need to spend a lot of money on ebooks and software to begin earning a nice income on the internet.

Anyway, here's an easy and cheap way to create an online revenue stream that I developed for my friends:

1. Choose a profitable topic/theme – There are several ways to do this but one of the easiest is to use Overture's free bid tool (Tip: It's always best to choose a topic you know something about…. or at least are very interested in.)

2. Setup a blog – You can use a free one such as Blogger.com or MSN Spaces. This will become your main "site" since it's really just a way to easily publish content.

3. Start writing high-quality, focused 400-700 word articles DAILY! – This is probably the most important thing you can do for long-term success. You can also use syndicated articles from article directories to "beef up" your site but don't rely on it. Make sure all articles are based around your site's central theme.

4. Post your theme-based content to your site/blog on a regular basis – Try to post at least one or two good articles per day.

5. Monetize your blog – Put related affiliate links and Google Adsense on your blog to start making some money.

6. Write and submit good articles to the online article directories – This will get you some free one-way links (great for search engine rankings), increase your site traffic, and help to establish your credibility.

7. Get a low-cost autoresponder and start collecting the email addresses of your site visitors – Offer a useful free report or email mini-course to entice people to sign up.

8. Send out a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly newsletter with useful information and a couple affiliate links – If you "nurture" your subscriber list well it can quickly turn into your biggest moneymaker!

9. Continue to drive traffic to your site – Submit your blog's RSS feed to feed directories, submit your main page and/or a few good internal pages to general web directories and theme directories (DMOZ.org is the most important), and trade links with good sites that have related themes.

Well, that's just the beginning! But it's a great way to get started making money online. In the future I may post an "extended" version of this list with much more detail but I hope this basic list helps you out!