Online Shopping
Online shopping has become one of the internet's biggest uses. Practically any one with internet access can scout out every product possible, using customer reviews and their guide to stay main stream to decide whether the item they are looking at is fit for their use or someone that will end up in the attic. The shopping marketplace has grown astronomically as retailers have realised that potential customers prefer to turn to google for products than turn up on the highstreet - online shopping is big business.
Entrepreneurs quickly learned that with little computer knowledge, they can cash in on this main stream a get a little slice of the money pie by using affiliate systems on websites. It works by creating a website, writing something interesting about any product, visitors will then find the site by searching for it on search engines such as google, they view what you've written and then when they click the magical buy button, it sends them onto an online retailer and they do the rest i.e. take payment and arrange shipment. For your efforts, as long as you have an affiliate account with that retailer, they'll give you a percentage of the sale. Bam, you've earned a few quid for very little work. The more visitors to your site, the more buy clicks, the more cash ends up in your back pocket.
This easy process caught on quick and you'll find there's literally millions of internet entrepreneurs now that they a giant network of affiliated sites that individually target a micro niche product that's high value - electronics for example. However, there's no point having a website if there's no visitors. No visitors means no clicks, no clicks means no cash. That's where search engine optimisation, or SEO abbreviated, techniques come into play - how to do you get visitors to your site? Without question in the current day everyone uses Google search. When someone searches for example 'woolly jumpers', if that's what your site is about, you want your site to be at least on the first page and have an attractive site description so the person searching for that specific term clicks onto your web site. How do you get to the first page of Google? Well, if there's a lot of competition, it's tough work. There's dedicated SEO companies who can help, again cashing in on the online shopping phenomena, but if you are not earning any thing yet, it's a gamble paying someone out of your own pocket before the pounds have started to roll in. We'll come back to SEO later.
The top affiliate dogs at the moment are probably Clickbank and Amazon. This pair seem to attract most people looking to start affiliates either because of decent commission rates or simplicity on how you can get product links or even generate your own store. They can pay you pretty easy by direct debit or gift vouchers, whichever you find easiest.
If you aren't into products you can use another way to make money - that's through banners or sponsored adverts. If you do your homework on Google Adsense this will make more sense (no pun intended). They'll give you the code that you can throw on your own website that links other sites / businesses that 'may' interest your website visitor. For example, if you've written the bible about 'woolly jumpers' on your site, you can throw some banners in that may link to clothes sites or give suggestions about other sites they may be interested in. If they click the banner or other site suggestions, you'll earn money for this 'click'. This is most commonly known as pay per click, or PPC. More clicks, more cash, happy website owner.
It's easy peasy to make money online, all you need is an idea, a computer, and some drive.