Make Money From Home

Living outside the box and making money online is easier than it ever has been before. Back when I first investigated writing for the internet in 1997, before we began the adventure of designing AND building our own California Country home, it cost quite a bit of money to get a website up and going. Nowadays you can do it for nothing if you use all the free Web 2.0 interactive websites like Hubpages, Weebly, or Squidoo.

These free websites are a great place to test out your infant affiliate-marketing program. Or maybe you have a product you want to sell. Create a web page on any of those free sites and you can do just that. Read up on article marketing right here on this website. There are more than enough articles to fill a book on the topic. Using articles you’ve written with targeted keywords doesn’t cost you anything either.

Don’t Be A Shyster
Working online is not about being a shyster; it’s not about ripping people off. Quite frankly, it’s the opposite. It’s about giving more value than people pay for. Sure, there are scummy internet marketers out there, but unless you’re living in the shadows anyway, why would you want to create that kind of karma for yourself?

Besides, with the recent FCC regulations with respect to the internet, you have to be completely up front and honest with folks about your affiliate marketing anyway: it’s now law. The FCC will be cracking down on those Black Hat Marketers sooner or later, and I don’t want to be affiliated with those kinds of marketing tactics anyway.

How Frank Kern Deals with the FTC
I especially enjoy Internet Marketing Genius Frank Kern’s tactics with respect to the new FTC ruling about being a “transparent” affiliate marketer. In his emails, he makes sure that you know up front that “If you buy something as a result of watching this (a video), I’ll get paid money and I will almost certainly squander it on shiny things (or candy, or something equally stupid).”

I for one, feel that there’s nothing wrong with making money from a recommendation, especially if you are sure of the product. The product doesn’t cost the person buying it any more just because you’re getting a commission from it and most money made from the internet just gets squandered on mortgages and more internet products and shiny things anyway. Besides, its the boon the economy so desperately needs. People with money buying things.

Give Valuable Content
Be sure that you provide folks with valuable content. Don’t just pitch them. That won’t work anyway. People are looking for real information, not fluff. And they’re going to go to the person they can trust. They’re going to go where they have established a relationship. If you provide free content that has substance and value, you’ll win over a customer, one that will not only sign up for your newsletter but follow your recommendations as well.

Be Yourself, Be Authentic
It’s important that you be transparent, that you be authentically “you.” Find your own voice, talk to people in your writing as if they were standing in front of you. Help people find what they want, give more value than what they pay for and you will always come out on top.