How to Make Money Over the Internet

Around the world, nearly 5 billion internet users spend 7 hours a day online! (source) Those are impressive numbers and they’re growing. So, there must be money-making opportunities online – right? Yes!

But there’s a right way and a wrong way, so let’s see how online entrepreneurs monetize their blogs and thrive financially on the internet. This could be you…so read on for How to Make Money over the Internet…

What You’ll Learn

[hide]

1. What is Affiliate Marketing?

If you’ve never heard of Affiliate Marketing, this popular online marketing model is a low-cost start-up with a range of benefits.

It works by starting a blog, a YouTube Channel or a Social Media account. You create content, help people by solving their problems, and promote other companies’ products and services.

You’re then paid a commission when your audience clicks on your unique affiliate link and buys from the company.

Why is it Recommended for the Entrepreneur?

It’s a great chance to use your experience and knowledge to earn a living helping others

Geographically you’re free to work from home, the office, an Italian Village, or a tropical island!

You don’t need a lot of money to start your business

You don’t have to deal with products taking up every corner of your home

You don’t have to deal with admin, customer service, or returns

I was hooked on the flexibility of running an online business with a laptop on a tropical island!

So let’s look at a very well-known company…

Affiliate Marketing Example: Amazon

Amazon is a great example of affiliate marketing. They run their own affiliate program and lots of content creators promote and link to Amazon products.

Check out a food blog and you’re sure to see ingredient lists with products linked to Amazon.

The price of products on Amazon can range from 97c dental floss to a Tiny House worth $54,000! So your affiliate commission could vary depending on what people buy.

The good news is that if a reader clicks your affiliate link for say a book, you earn a commission for any sales that take place in the next 24 hours (hope they buy that Tiny House!)

Amazon Affiliate Program — Amazon Associates – Affiliate Program

2. How do I Start?

Affiliate Marketing isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme and in fact, it’s a reasonably slow process. But you’ll create a successful business over time.

Don’t miss checking out the promotion tips below. It’s all about stickability, trusting in the process, and never giving up.

Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.
Bill Bradley

Steps for ‘How to Make Money Over the Internet’

1. Set up a website/blog with WordPress, or create a YouTube Channel, or create a Social Media account (you could also do all 3 and cross promote between them).

2. Choose a niche topic you enjoy, e.g. pets, health, finance, personal development

3. Decide who you want to target. Who’s your audience? This is very important.

4. Make sure there are Affiliate Programs that tie in with this topic and join them

5. Create helpful content, posts, videos, reels etc with keywords on this topic, e.g. ‘How to…’, ‘Top 10…’, ‘Best…’, ‘Ways to…’

6. Add affiliate links to products and services

7. Capture e-mails with free offers, for example, a free ebook

8. Promote your efforts and get traffic (lots of free and paid options)

9. Make sales

Let’s look at the details now…

Find your Niche: How do I Start Affiliate Marketing at the Age of 50+?

3. What’s your Niche?

What are your interests? What are you passionate about? To choose a niche find a subject you’re willing to research and write about for the months ahead. It has to be something you won’t get tired of.

Also, work out who you’re writing for – do they urgently need help? Who is your target audience? Over 50’s? Retirees? Mums? People interested in green energy? Women interested in yoga? People interested in surfing, People who have poodles…and on it goes…

So you become an expert in the niche and the particular people you’re targeting.

You give the best information on the topic, and answer the questions of who, what, where, why, and when. Then your audience are more likely to buy a product you recommend (through your affiliate link) because you’ve solved their problems…and they trust you.

Hot Niche Topics

Renewable and Green Energy: Solar and Electric Cars
Yoga
Entertainment
Crypto Currency
Health and Fitness
Personal Development
Make money online

MORE NICHE HELP

Also, check Google Trends to see what’s trending and check if your chosen niche has much interest. You can also check where this niche is trending, related queries, and related topics for writing ideas.

Here’s a search on Google Trends for Yoga

As you help people with your niche content, e.g. ‘Yoga for women ‘ you’ll then naturally link through to products that tie in with the content.

Yoga on Google Trends – the interest is high, consistent and sustainable

Here are ideas for posts. For example, ‘Beyond Yoga Convertible Gym Bag Review’ or ‘What is Somatic Yoga’.

4. Help! I Can’t Write or Make Videos

You don’t have to be the world’s best writer, write conversationally as though you’re e-mailing a friend with the latest news. Your unique worldview is what makes your content…unique!

For video-making why not harness the power of AI! Invideo makes video creation super easy – just enter your ideas or script, and the AI turns it into a professional-looking video with visuals, music, and text. Perfect for social media, YouTube, or marketing content.

An excellent free promotional tool is to turn your blog posts into videos, reels, and shorts and share these on social media and YouTube.

But keep in mind that building your online business successfully is a process. Follow the process and you’ll succeed; research, stay motivated, set goals, create content, promote…So what’s next…

5. Join Affiliate Programs and Monetize

Affiliate marketing is a fantastic way to generate income online by promoting other companies’ products.

You can sign up for programs directly with individual retailers. Or you can join affiliate networks that run affiliate programs for the retailers.

Essential Tips for Choosing Affiliate Programs

Commissions: This is the amount you earn for each sale you refer. Look for competitive commissions for the products you want to promote.

Retailer Rank/Popularity: Look for established and reputable retailers (merchants) with a good track record. Partner with popular brands and increase your chances of making sales.

Cookies: Choose longer cookie times, for example, 30 days. Cookies are tiny data files that track clicks on affiliate links to ensure you get credit for referred sales.

Think of these factors to help you choose high-quality affiliate programs that maximize your online earnings.

Affiliate Networks

CJ – Vista Print and Weight Watchers are high up in the Network Earnings.

Clickbank – good for digital products (higher commissions) but some can be spammy.

Flexoffers – one of the top 10 for revenue and performance.

Travelpayouts – Booking.com, Agoda, Expedia, rental cars, flights, insurance, travel companies.

AWIN – lots of popular companies – Skyscanner, Myprotein, HomeBase, HP, and Lidl.

Affiliate Marketing in Action

So Affiliate Marketing is a business model where you choose a niche topic, start a blog, Youtube Channel, or Social Media Account, and enjoy writing useful content.

It’s not salesy content “Buy these shoes now!” but rather you’ll tell a story or give the benefits of the product and show how they solve a problem.

How to make money over the internet - example of affiliate link — Even the image of the shoe can be an affiliate link

For example “The hiking trail was very steep in places so I was glad I wore my Salomon X Ultra 3 GTX Hiking Shoes. They’re light but with plenty of cushioning and stability for vertical trails.” In this case, the name of the shoes will be a link to Amazon or an outdoor retailer with an affiliate program.

6. Keywords and SEO

Keywords are the foundation of content creation. These are the words, phrases, or questions that you’ll focus on. For example, ‘How to Brush Poodle Hair’.

These are the words that your audience is searching for. But you also need to narrow your research to keywords with low competition. By choosing these keywords your content ends up on page one of Google (Bing, YouTube) searches.

Keyword tools can give you keywords ideas, competition levels, search volume, popularity, difficulty scores, and long-tail keywords (3 or more words) to name a few of the factors.

Keyword search has changed a lot with AI and now it looks at the intent of the searcher not just the exact keywords. If you do a search for your keywords, you can ask AI what the top results are missing and how you can add more value to your content.

Free Places to Find Keywords

Get MozBar: The Free SEO Extension and Toolbar. This Chrome extension gives you the domain authority and page authority in search results. See here…

The Hoth Keyword Tool (affiliate link)
Soovle (see results from YouTube, Wikipedia, Bing, etc)
AlsoAske d (get 100 results with competition) (affiliate link)
See what Google’s ‘People also Ask’ gives you – I use this technique a lot!
Search for keywords and trends on Pinterest and YouTube

Keyword Research – An Example

You search for keywords on Google all the time (without realizing it!) So as an example let’s say you want to start a food blog with easy recipes for people who are tired after a long day at work and want easy, low-cost recipes.

So let’s search for “5 ingredient recipes”.

See we’ve found the problems (tired, no time, hungry or hangry!) and the solution – 5 ingredient recipes (quick, easy, low cost)

When I pop in 5 ingredient recipes in my browser window already I can see a list pop up with:

5 ingredient recipes Jamie Oliver
5 ingredient recipes dessert
5 ingredient recipes healthy
5 ingredient recipes vegetarian
5 ingredient recipes easy
5 ingredient recipes for dinner
5 ingredient recipes low carb

When I click through to Google I can see lots of websites and blogs targeting the initial keywords ‘5 ingredient recipes.’

Then at the end of page one, I can see other searches:

How to make money over the internet — Keyword Research on Google

So, there’s lots of keywords I can research if I want to start a foodie online business. According to Authorityhacker – Health and Fitness is a top niche you’re likely to make a lot of money in!

So how about 5 ingredient recipes that focus on health?

7. Using Jaaxy to do Keyword Research

Once you have a list of keywords (potential posts) now you discover if they have low or high competition and the amount of traffic.

I use Jaaxy to search for keywords, which is part of the Wealthy Affiliate platform (affiliate links). This is where I studied Affiliate Marketing and Niche Blogging.

Jaaxy offers keyword searches, the alphabet soup technique, search analysis, site rank, affiliate programs to match your keywords, and lots more.

MozBar

Times have changed and Jaaxy no longer shows QSR (competition). So, this is where you also use the free MozBar Toolbar.

For example, when you do a Google search the MozBar will show you domain authority and page authority for that keyword search result. If the authority is too high then that’s a hard article to beat for page 1!

See: The Jaaxy Keyword Tool for High-Performance Keywords

Keyword Search on Jaaxy

Here is the top results for ‘5 Ingredient Healthy Recipes’ with enough Traffic, Low Competition, and great SEO results.

A Rundown of These Results

avg: the average number of searches that the keyword receives per month
Traffic: visits to your website if you achieve first-page rankings in the search engines
KQI keyword quality indicator: Green is great, Yellow is OK, Red is poor
SEO: score based on traffic and competition, the higher the score, the more likely you will rank for this keyword on the first page (scale of 1-100, higher = better)
Domains: availability of domains that are related to the keyword

Aim for these Keyword Results

the keyword/s have to make sense grammatically
there has to be some traffic (the more the merrier!) but low traffic is fine
Close to 100 for SEO and Green for KQI
Low domain and page authority in the MozBar results

Here’s what Top blogger Neil Patel says about Traffic

The key that you have to remember is you will get a lot more bang for your buck by targeting a large number of lower-traffic terms than by targeting a small number of higher-traffic terms.
Neil Patel

So have a Go at Keyword Research!

8. Create Content that Converts

Since you’re a freelancer you can create content where and when you want! Make sure it answers everything your audience needs to know.

For Blog Posts, put your keywords in your Blog Post Title, in the first paragraph, in the conclusion and naturally through the post.

Tips for Blog Posts

1000 – 2,500 words long – answer questions, give tips, guides, and reviews
3000+ posts, for example, Epic Guide to… Ultimate Guide to
Create scannable content
Headings, H1, H2, H3
Small paragraphs
Add images and videos
Lists
Add keywords in the meta-description and alt-images

For YouTube place your keywords in the video title, description, and tags, and say them naturally in your video to help with YouTube’s voice recognition.

This boosts your chances of ranking in search and reaching the right audience.

9. Turn Your Content into Videos

Turning your blog posts and social media content into videos is a smart way to reach more people! Especially visual learners and mobile users.

Videos grab attention quickly and are more likely to be shared, boosting your visibility. Plus, repurposing content saves time while giving your message a fresh, engaging format…and it doubles your chance of success!

For a great script, and video direction here’s an AI prompt for a chess video, from EricCantu at Wealthy Affiliate:

How to make money with website affiliate marketing

10. Adding Affiliate Links

As you build out your content you can then add affiliate links from the affiliate programs and networks you’ve joined.

Your affiliate links contain a unique code that identifies you as the referring affiliate. When your audience clicks on the link they are taken to the merchant’s (company’s) website to purchase the product or service.

You then receive a commission from this purchase – Yippee!

I use the WordPress Plugin Pretty Links to track my affiliate links where I can cloak and track my links. So I can see identify top performing links and ones that are failing.

See: Pretty Links Review for Affiliate Marketing Success.

11. Promote like Crazy

This is the part you don’t want to miss out on. Promoting your blog brings oodles more traffic to your site, which means more clicks, which potentially means more money. Choose your channels and promote promote promote…

a. Quora

You’ll find thousands of questions you can answer on Quora. Like the content on your blog, be authentic, and be super helpful.

The first time I answered a question on Quora I described a personal experience about my blogging beginnings. The next day my answer was shared with a Search Engine Optimization group! I was super chuffed!

Make sure your credential ties in with the answer, e.g. if I’m answering questions about blogging my credential is: Guide to Blogging Success. webworkfromanywhere.com

Some of your answers can have hyperlinks back to your blog (that’s a highlighted word within the answer that’s a link to your blog).

I searched Quora for 5 Ingredient Healthy Recipes and look what came up. Not only a good question to answer on Quora but a great idea for a blog post:

What’s the most delicious and healthy green smoothie recipe requiring only 5 ingredients or less?

b. Pinterest

Pinterest is more than social media – it’s a search engine – so harness the power of Pinterest by creating pins for your Boards. Aim for around 6-12 pins per day but don’t link to the same URL on your website more than once every 7 days.

Pinterest is good for food, interior design, crafting, travel, beauty, gardening, art, entertainment, and fashion.

Other free promotion platforms include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit.

Facebook paid ads are also a good low-cost way to direct very targeted traffic to a landing page and your newsletter sign-up.

Here’s the Affiliate Marketing Process in a Nutshell

Your content answer people’s questions, e.g. reviews of products, recommended lists, ‘how to’…articles.
Create and publish content regularly.
Search Engines, Social Media and YouTube love consistency so publish at least 3 times a week.
Promote your content on free and paid platforms.

Wrapping Up – How to Make Money Over the Internet

In the long run, find a niche that resonates with you. Work out your audience’s pain points in this niche, and what they need help with.

Work out your strategy, and find the online spaces where you can successfully promote your blog, and where your readers spend their time.

Stay motivated, set your goals and you’re on your way to financial freedom!

Next Steps: See the Affiliate Marketing Series here.

P.S. Hi Friends – I hope this post ‘How to Make Money Over the Internet’ has benefited you and you’ve gained some insights.

Feel free to share your own ideas and if you have any questions, pop them in the comments below. I will get back to you ASAP.

Check out my latest value-packed posts about niche research and affiliate marketing to help your business progress. Please share if you think this will help your friends and networks.

Determined to help you succeed, Alisa

1. What is Affiliate Marketing?