Webupon

There are several ways to “Earn Money on the Internet”. In this article we look at 3 main options:

(1) SELLING ONLINE

If you enjoy marketing over the Internet and interacting with customers through e-mails, selling a product online may be the business model for you to earn money on the internet. A huge variety of things have been sold online – from books and pet food to groceries – but not with the same degree of success.

Selling things online involves activities that are similar to selling offline, such as sourcing for products. Since Internet retailers typically require low quantities to start, the bargaining power is markedly less compared to the huge retail stores.

The key is to sell a specialty product. A niche market may sound small, but an online business doesn’t just cover Malaysia – a niche market in an international market can be very big. That’s the way to earn money on the internet.

Preparation is key. You must be an expert on what you are going to sell. Don’t just jump on the bandwagon without getting prepared.

Note that selling doesn’t just cover physical goods. You can sell a service, or you call sell digital information like e-books, digital reports and memberships, such as those online dating sites.

Auctions

The most famous of auction portals, eBay, has a local presence at eBay.com.my, while Lelong.com.my is a local auction website established in 1998.

Almost anyone can earn money on the internet auctions. “Small-timers” usually post up what’s around the house – the unwanted Christmas gift, the lucky draw winning and used items.

Online auction sites aren’t just a place to unload unwanted stuff; the New York Times reported last year that an estimated 500,000 people make full – or part time living by auctioning.

The benefits of selling via an auction site are the mass audience and fuss-free set-up.

Setting up a website is the easiest part of selling online. The toughest part is creating trust and getting people to come to the site.

Just posting an item on an auction site isn’t a sure-fire way to sell it. Selling online or offline still boils down to the right product and price, a trusted name and great marketing.

With online auctions, the trust factor depends on one’s profile – online auction sites create a profile – online auction sites create a profile of a buyer or seller based on feedback that their counterparts leave once their transactions are completed.

Another advantage of selling on auction sites is the comparatively low start-up cost. A simple posting on Lelong.com.my is free but the extras, such as prominence on the website’s front page, costs money. But with the thousands of wares being hawked online, the extras are sometimes a must if you really want to strand out.

If you want to sell something online, try and sell it here first and learn, through trial and error, what and how to sell. You can do it without losing an arm and a leg.

To reach more global consumers, a posting on US-based ebay.com costs US$0.02 while a basic store costs US$15.95 a month. If the sales get closed, sellers need to fork out a value fee, which, for items less than US$25, is 8% of the closing price. Members who sell overseas may have to look into getting a third-party payment provider like PayPal. This the way to earn money on the internet.

Drop shipping

If you don’t have anything to sell and aren’t into dreaming up your own product, drop shipping might be the solution. With drop shipping, you collect the order and forward it to the supplier, who ships directly to the customer – you don’t have to run your home into a store. This avoids the huge investment of having a warehouse full of stock that does not move.

Let’s say you sell a product at US$100 but you actually get this product from a manufacturer at US$70. The manufacturer will do all the shipping. But you bill the customer US$100, so you net US$30.

It’s sound like an ideal arrangement, but watch out for the scams and the fine print. Iron out details like what to do in case of product defects and payment terms. Be wary of any extra fees they may charge and through the agreement carefully.

(2) REFERRALS

The business of becoming an affiliate is booming on the Internet. Since there is little cost involved in running a business online but marketing is often an uphill battle, businesses are willing to fork out a chunk for sales agents.

It goes like this: Someone visits your website and sees the advertisement or read an e-mail from you touting a product and follows the link. If the person makes a purchase, as the affiliate partner, you get a percentage of the sale.

Being an affiliate is not mutually exclusive; it is often complementary to your own product. The product should be compatible to your own. Say, if you are selling golf clubs, you may want to be an affiliate with someone who sells golf shoes.

It’s natural that, once you have sold something to someone, to convert them into sales for other merchants. Of every 100 people that visit your site, two may buy your product. But every 100 who buy from you, if you refer them to another website, 15 may buy because they already trust you and like what you sold to them. That’s the way to earn money on the internet.

(3) WEB ADVERTISING

The web advertising business model is not unlike that of traditional media. The website provides the content, which may be original or just aggregated, and draws traffic. Then, advertisers pay a fee to display their wares on the website.

Online advertising facilities “pay per performance” models. “Pay per impression” programmes pay for every “view” that an advertisement on your site receives, usually on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis.

“Pay per click”, as its name suggests, pays for actual click-through to the site. “Pay per lead” programmes pay for each visitor you send to the merchant’s site that performs an action, such as signing up for their newsletter or filling up a survey.

Advertising online has been around for some time, but has recently received a boost with Google’s Adsense programme, which allows publishers to display relevant advertising on their website easily. Adsense allow websites, small or big, to monetize the incoming traffic.

You don’t look for advertising yourself; you partner with an advertising magnet like Google Adsense. Google looks for ads and gives you a code, you paste it on your website and it will draw relevant ads to your website.

Google charges the company for the ad and shares an undisclosed percentage of revenue with your website. If the ad costs US$2 a click, 20% of that is US$0.40. Ten of those clicks are US$4, while a hundred is US$40.

Is it the ways to earn money on the internet….

But before you rush out to start a website rambling about what your dog did today, it’s not as easy as it sounds. “First”, you need to get traffic to the site. Then, you must make people want to click on it.

However, I do recommend that serious bloggers who want to earn revenue to get their own web hosting account and domain name. This will cost about US$100 per year.

For “pay per click” models, if you are thinking of just sitting at your computer clicking on the links a day and night, think again. In order to make an “adequate” amount, you need lots of hits to your website with unique IP addresses and considerably a lot of clicks on the ads as well. You can’t cheat, as Google has a really good engine built behind the Adsense program.

If you are serious about making money, never click on your own ads. Many publishers get banned because they try to cheat.

This is all about to earn money on the internet.