10 Steps to Make Money Online

10 Steps to make money online is about taking you through the overall process of building a niche site and creating something that can help you generate money online. There are more details involved in each step, Im not going to get complicated and too detailed, what I want to do is draw you the big picture so you can create an action plan, and decide if this type of business is for you.

Your steps include;

1. Choose a niche
2. Join a platform to host your site
3. Learn how to build out a theme for your site
4. Purchase a domain
5. Make a content plan, including keyword research
6. Find and join affiliate programs for your niche
7. Create google alerts for your niche
8. Write and post daily using your affiliate links and Keyword rich content
9. Decide what social media platforms you will want to use to help you with traffic
10. Stay consistent with your content creation

As I mentioned before, we could easily get in deep with any one of these steps. However I just want to take you through a brief overview of each step to help you have a better understanding of what using a blog site to make money online is all about.

1. Choose a niche

To be totally honest, if you haven’t chosen a niche, then continuing through the steps doesn’t make sense. So before you start buying domains, and signing up for affiliate links, and thinking you got it all figured out. Take a step back and do it one step at a time.

Making money online is not a quick fix to your financial concerns, success will not come over night. That being said, if you are patient and you take the time to build a solid foundation for your site, success with definitely come your way.

So to choose your niche. Think about a topic you are interested in, don’t choose a niche because you think it will have more products to sell, or you think more people will be interested in. Choose a niche for your site that you are interested in… Why? … First, you will be spending lot of time researching and writing about the niche. Second, in order for people to believe you, and for you to gain credibility in your product reviews and content, visitors need to feel that you are passionate about what your writing about and not just trying to sell them something. And third, If you are writing content to help people because you genuinely have an interest in what your writing about, it will come out in the words and how you write and your readers will trust you and be interested in the products your exploring and reviewing. All of this will eventually equate to $$$

2. Join a platform to host your site 

There are many different platforms to choose form when it come to hosting your site. I chose to join Wealthy Affiliate for my hosting platform. I chose this platform because I knew nothing about creating an online business or website and this platform offers tons of training and support as part of their monthly membership fee. One of my favourite parts is that I get to interact with like minded people daily. The interaction for me was a major factor in my growth and success, it can be hard to work from home, and to do something new that other people may not understand. Also when your learning to build a business it is so great to be able to reach out to other people doing the same thing as you to ask for help.

Key point here, when you figure it out, offer help to others, pay it forward….

Choose a platform that suits your needs, like I said there are many out there, so check them out and compare what each one offers. I also encourage you to do a little research and see what other peoples experiences where on the platform as well.

3. Learn how to build out a theme for your site

I say learn because some of you may know how to code and others do not. I am someone that does not know how to build a website using code. I understand it a bit more now, and I am able to add tags when I need to, but I wouldn’t even know where to start if I had to learn code…

Great news for those who don’t code, is that there are website builders like WordPress that are designed to let you create and build out your site without having to ever use coding. Before you purchase a domain I would suggest taking advantage of the free website building tool that site rubix offers. This will help give you a feel for what you are getting into when you are developing a site.

Don’t spend a whole lot of time on a free domain. Use it to get a feel for website building. And if you think it is something for you, I really recommend that you purchase a domain. A lot of affiliate companies and platforms wont deal with domains that aren’t owned.

As mentioned the ‘Build a free website here” tool will let you play around with a theme, and see how you feel about editing it and setting things up the way you like them.

If you have absolutely no clue on what to do and how to start building a site at all, check out Wealthy Affiliate, there is tons of training on how to get you started. I also have a post here on this site for creating a site in 30 sec, the video comes from the training on the Wealthy Affiliate platform, if you want to check that out as well just click on the link, or the image below.

4. Purchase a domain

Once you have played around with a free site rubix site, I encourage you to purchase a domain. You can stick with the free site if you would like. That is not a problem. The reason I suggest to buy one is because most affiliate companies want to know that the domain you are using to earn your commission on is in fact yours. Some of the affiliate programs wont approve your site unless it is a website that you have purchased and own.

Google rankings is also a major part of your success, the higher you rank the more traffic potential you have for your site, the more traffic potential the more money making opportunity you will have. Google and other search engines rank domains you own a lot higher and fast then ones that you don’t.

Again the choose is your.. Do what feels good for you….

5. Make a content plan, including keyword research

Making a content plan is a major step. It is important for a few reasons, it gives you a list to work off in case you have writers block one day. It allows you to create a plan for your site to help keep your content organized so it will be easy for visitors to click through. And your creating a keyword list to help your pages and posts rank higher and faster.

Keywords are the words and phrases people would type into google when they are looking for something. You want your content on your site to have keywords in the tiles, in the first few sentences of your posts and within the rest of the content (if it flows naturally). Key words can be a powerful tool. Researching for keywords can also help you come up with content ideas for your site as well.

There are a couple ways to look up key words; you can start to type something into google and see all the options that drop down, or you can use a key word tool. There is one that is called Jaaxy that I like to use, you can access a free trial with it through the Wealthy Affiliate site. Type in a word below and see what comes up for you…

6. Find and join affiliate programs for your niche.

Throughout your site you will be using something called affiliate links in order to make commission off the products and services people purchase by visiting your site and following the links you provide within your content. To get those links you will have to join affiliate programs that relate to your niche.

To find these programs you can simply type in your niche +affiliate program in the search bar and a list of results will come up. This list is a list of all the different companies available to you for related affiliate programs to you niche. The amount of commissions will vary by company, and you can also sign up for as many of them as you would like.

Many people new to affiliate marketing will start with an amazon affiliate program, and then work their way out form there.

Another option available to you is to join an affiliate platform like Click Junction. The image above os what the dashboard for this platform looks like. There are many of them out there. The basic idea is that it is one platform with multiple companies on it. Each company offering different commissions and payment programs. The advantage to using a platform like this is that you have access to multiple companies in one place,and you can manage your income from one place much easier.

7. Create google alerts for your niche

As you build out your site with tons of great content and product reviews you will also want to keep your information current. Creating google alert is a great way to support that. You can set up alerts for any topic you want, and anytime something gets posted online relating to the topic and key words you asked google to notify you about, you will get an email with the link to the page.

8. Write and post daily using your affiliate links and Keyword rich content 

This is why I stressed choosing a niche you enjoyed, suggested to create a content plan and to research key words… At first you are going to want to create content daily for your site. This tells search engines that your site is active and up to date, it will help with rankings. It builds out a great foundation so that when you do start to rank higher on search engines and you do start to see traffic on your sites, there is lots of great pages and posts for your visitors to check out, and that could also lead to more commissions if they choose to buy more products or join services that you recommended.

As the site matures you wont need to post daily, but you will want to post regularly, about 2-3 times a week is recommended.

9. Decide what social media platforms you will want to use to help you with traffic

Lets take a look at what we have accomplished so far… You have chosen a niche, done some research for content and keywords, purchased a domain and customized it to suit your niche perfectly. You have joined affiliate programs and have some great product reviews that you have created and posted on your site, you are now wondering how you get engagement on your site and start to build traffic….

You have to get your content out there. In the world of social media and interaction, this is a key step to helping you drive traffic to your site.

Choose the social media platforms you want to use to post your pages, talk about your site, and help people find you. Google plus is a great resources, Facebook, twitter, instagram, pintrist, and more. The social engagement you can create using these platforms will also help with your google rankings. Encourage people to leave comments on your posts and pages, and always respond promptly so that you are creating a dialogue.

Give yourself a time limit on social media each day, this way you don’t waste time interacting in other ways when your intention was to help grow your online business.

My best practice; every time I create content I copy the link and share it on google plus. Then I head back over to my site and continue whatever else I was doing.

10. Stay consistent with your content creation

This step is a challenge for many people. When you first start your website your on it all the time, it is new and exciting and your loving the experience. Then after some times passes, you may start to get tired and wonder when you will start to make money. At this point most people start to create less and do less with their sites and before you know it its been days or week since you created anything new…

Don’t let this happen!!!

Keeping a consistent pace will lead to success, it will help with rankings and you will start to see income growth. It takes time, there is no magic number, and no specific amount of hours, days or weeks before you start to see income. It is different for everyone. Know your hard work will not go to waste. And keep pushing on!

Good luck with your site development and realizing your dreams of creating your own online business. If you have anything to share please leave a comment below. Success story? questions? what ever it may be…