We’ve seen that you can sell plenty of different physical products in your own online store. In fact, most e-commerce websites specialize in selling products that can be shipped to the consumer. But what about digital products which can be downloaded instead? Obviously, e-books and online courses come to mind. The majority of such digital products are actually sold on a website that is dedicated to one specific product, however it is possible to build a web store around digital products as well, offering a wide range of products such as e-books for download.

But this can be just as hard, if not in many cases harder than selling physical products. However, here are some tips for you if you would like to sell digital items.

• Focus on a specific, well researched niche

Unless you have a very good marketing plan or already have a bunch of people that would be interested in buying your products (i.e. you have an email list or some past customers), choosing a niche that is too broad will simply lead to trouble. You will have a hard time attractive decent traffic that will convert well. For these reasons, you should avoid niches like “Make Money Online”. This is too broad. But you could, for example, do some products about “Making Money Online from Twitter”.

There are plenty of different niches when it comes to info products. These could be: learn to do magic tricks, how to maintain your car, teach your dog to do tricks, how to make money from real estate, etc. The more specific you are, the better.

• E-Books are not the only product you can sell

While they are definitely the most popular when it comes to digital products to sell, you should know that e-books are not your online available choice. For example, you can sell things such as web scripts, website templates, software, etc. Basically, anything that can be digitally delivered to your customer will do the trick here. There is a lot of money to be made in e-commerce when selling virtual products and you need to go beyond simply thinking about e-books.

• Combine physical products and digital ones

While some people may not recommend it, you should know that it is possible to successfully combine selling digital products together with physical ones. But your success will depend on just how you do it. Your digital products will need to be in the same niche than your physical ones. So if for example, your web store is in the business of selling pet products, then you can include guides about training your dog, or plans to build a recreational area for your dog in your back yard, etc. Basically, anything that is related to your original niche. You can sell these e-books, but they can also be used to add value to your merchandise. If a customer makes an order over a certain amount, for example, you can include a free digital product for them. This is a great way to make your site more competitive.

Unfortunately some of the best ways to place affiliate links involve black hat methods, we will cover one of these methods but are mostly interested in how to place you links using all white hat methods (the two in this article are enough to build a successful affiliate career that is completely white hat).

Linking in eBooks

It is no secret that people on the internet love ebooks, however most beginning internet marketers become suspicious after their first few “Sell this ebook on forums” ebooks that they purchase.  Avoid and reshape this mentality by creating (or buying the rights for) ebooks and giving them away for free, now this activity might seem counterintuitive “How can I make money by giving stuff away?” but it is truly ingenious. What you are looking to do is create an ebook about how to make money online using different products, explain the overwhelmingly positive benefits of each of these products and each time you mention the product place it as a hyperlink with your affiliate link as the target.  You can use this technique with all sorts of different niches and some say targeting niches that are not internet marketing are more profitable because people tend to not be expecting affiliate links (did you know the average person does not know that there is any such thing as an affiliate link?).

Article Marketing

This technique will again be focusing on giving people free content and sneaking in your affiliate links. While article marketing can be sort of a shot in the dark, it is a nice way to put some of you links out on the internet and never have to think about them again. Your goal in article marketing is the same as with writing an ebook, provide quality content and advice that causes the user to realize they really need the products in the book, then put your affiliate links and the targets for the product hyperlinks. Article marketing is a much faster way to get your affiliate links out to the world.

Craigslist

This one is definitely blackhat, so only read ahead if you have no problems scamming ordinary everyday people out of their money.  One of the best ways to work affiliate links into craigslist is in the jobs section, when searching for jobs people are nearly as desperate as ever and will go to great lengths to get a job. Another excellent way is in the for sale section, you can actually get away with posting straight affiliate links to Amazon and surprisingly people will purchase through your link! Again, these methods are blackhat and can get you flagged on craigslist.

That’s all there is to it, it takes a little bit of work and patience once you have the links placed, but the internet is a big place and over time you will start seeing sales rolling in via your affiliate links.

Image Source: Bill Board Mama

In the online marketing world, you’ve probably seen the name Clickbank mentioned quite a few times. In fact it has been the topic of many informational products and many of the “proofs of earnings” that you see posted online by successful marketers are screen shots of their Clickbank accounts. Obviously, since that network is so popular, it must have something good to offer to marketers and allow people to earn significant amounts of money.

Clickbank is basically an online marketplace for digital products. Affiliates make money from it by promoting products created by others through various means. Most of the products sold are informational products, such as guides on how to make money online, how to train your dog, how to lose weight, etc. Practically all the products being sold on Clickbank have one thing in common: they fill a need that people have, which is to find answers to their questions.

So how do you make money from it? Getting started is quite easy. You just sign up. Unlike certain other affiliate networks, everyone is approved and there is no need to speak to an affiliate manager before you are let in.

You will then need to select the product that you want to promote. As you can see, there are thousands of different products to choose from. When looking at a product in the list, you will see something called “gravity.” This is a number that is calculated by Clickbank and designed to reflect the overall popularity of a certain product, taking into account the number of sales and how recently they happened. A higher gravity means that a product is very popular, but it also indicates that you will face a lot of competition when promoting it. An ideal choice would be to select a product which has a gravity that is around 100. You will get a product that is getting many sales, but doesn’t have as many people promoting it as the top ones are.

Knowing how much competition you have will be important. No matter how good or popular the product that you are promoting is, the more affiliates you have that are pushing it, the more difficult it will be for you to make a profit, as they will be plenty of ads online for basically the same offer.

Another thing to look for when selecting a product to promote is the resources that the creators have given to the affiliates who will promote their creation. Simply go to their sales page and look at the bottom for a link called “affiliates.” In many cases, you will find various tools to help you out such as keyword lists, articles about the product, pre-made banners, various landing page templates, etc. All of these can save you a lot of work when you get started in your campaign to market their product.

One of the biggest questions on everyone’s minds these days is how to make money on the internet. Everyone has their own hobbies, and talents, and some of them can be turned into a source of income on the internet if you know how to do it. Depending on what your hobby of choice is, you might be able to make a fair amount of money on it online.

Photography

If you’re a photographer, you can bring in a good bit of money on the internet. There are two main ways to go about making money from your photography. You can sell stock photos, and prints. There are a few different ways to sell each on the internet, and picking the right ones for you is really going to depend on the type of work you do, and the audience is’t most likely to appeal to. For stock photos, two of the biggest sites you can sell your work on are iStockPhoto, and Getty Images. Getty Images is mainly used by journalists looking to get stock photos for articles, so if you have a lot of work covering people and places, you’ll do well there. If your work is diverse, iStockPhoto may be a better place to sell your stock photos. Their customers are looking for a wide variety of things. As for prints, your best bet is to set up an Etsy store. Etsy has a great community of both sellers, and customers. It’s easy to set up an Etsy store, and have it become profitable.

Writing

If you can write, you can bring in some money on the internet. A lot of different websites are looking for writers, and if you can’t find a site that’s hiring, you can always list your services on a site like oDesk, or Elance. Fiverr can also be a great place to find clients – just offer up one article for $5, and see if anyone takes you up on it. Once you get a client on Fiverr, there’s a good chance that they’ll keep coming to you for work over time.

Other talents can be turned into profits on the internet. Take the time to do some research about your hobby, and see if there’s any way you can do it professionally. If there’s a market for it, you can make money on the internet with your hobby.

A great way to make money with a website is to purchase an established website that you know you can add value to the website and flip it at a later date for a profit.

To give you an example of what i mean i will give you an example of how i once made money buying a website from flippa.com for $1800 and then 3 months later sold it for $15,000 making a tidy profit.  The website i bought was a 6 months old blog that was rarely updated by its owner.  It was in the internet marketing niche which i know alot about so i knew i could add value to the blog.

The blog at the time was receiving 3,000 unique views a month and was a PR2 and was making $500 a month from affiliate sales via clickbank.com and a little on google adsense.

When i took over the blog this is what i did to improve the value of the blog:

1.) Made sure i added at least 2 very informal posts everyday to keep my readers and attract new readers.

2.) I offered a fee ebook download with an optin emails form. (i managed to capture 5,000 email addresses) to which i later emailed offers to bringing in $2,000 in commission, mainly clickbank products.

3.) I changed the theme of the blog to a premium wordpress theme.

4.) I installed a forum which help build a community around the blog.

5.) I submitted alot of articles to article websites and built up some good backlinks

6.) I did alot of blog commenting on other similar blogs helping bringing in more backlinks

7.) I sponsored wordpress themes digital point marketplace also helped bring in more backlinks.

After the first month my traffic had reached 6,700 uniques a month and my revenue went upto $1600 a month from commission from various networks i was using.  Most of my income came from my email list because within the free ebook i was given away had links to affiliate products and was earning money from my readers clicking on links within the ebook and purchasing a product.

By the end of month 3 i was adding 3 new articles a day and my email list had reached 5,000 email readers and was making on average $3,000 a month from affiliate commission mainly from Clickbank.com, Cj.com and Google adsense.

Now i knew i could resell the blog as i had added some very good value to the blog and sold it back on flippa.com for $15,000

So the key to buying and selling websites for profit is to look for a website you know you can add value to it.  Pick a niche you know about and would enjoy working on.

CPA stands for Cost Per Action.  CPA networks are becoming very popular for internet marketers to make money online because companies are paying high commissions for leads.

To give you an example i use a number of CPA networks which ill talk about in a minute that have a number of companies that will pay you commission for every lead you send them.  For example if you send your email lists/website traffic to the advertisers landing page and your referrel puts in their email address to receive whatever they are selling you can earn upto $15 just from your referrel putting in their email address.

I did an experiment the other day and put a link on my facebook status for anyone who wants to make $10 to fill out a free survey.  5 of my facebook friends clicked on the affiliate link in my facebook status and i made $50 just from them completing a quick 2 minutes survey on the advertisers website.

Big named brands spend millions of dollars a year on advertising and the reason they pay so much for leads is because once they have your referrels contact details they can then create a relationship with them and send them offers via email or even sell on their contact details to third partie companies which is a massive business.

I recommend the following CPA networks as they pay the based commissions.

CX Digital Media – Click Here To Register

Neverblue – Click Here To Register

When you fill out your application make sure to fill out the following:

Your complete address, contact telephone and email address that is registered with one of your domain names, e.g john@yourdomain.com , also one of your main websites that you will use to promote their CPA offers.  Make sure your website is upto date and looks professional and related to the niche your hoping to promote.  As your will go through a verification process before you can get accepted onto the network.

You will get a phone call to verify your account, which is normal.  Activation takes about 48 hours

I’ve been following this guy for sometime called Yaro Starak who is from Australia and writes a blog called entrepreneurs-journey.com from which he writes about affiliate marketing and how to make money online, quite similar to what i write about.  He as been online for a long time and shares his experiences of how he makes money online.  His blog has become so popular he currently has at the time  of this writing – 78,778 RSS subscribers and currently gets 80,000+ unique visitors a month, 138,000+ page views a month.

Yaro has been working online since 1998 creating websites and has sold several successful online businesses.  He now teaches people online how to make money from running their own website business.  He now gets to travel around the world with his laptop living the ultimate .com lifestyle just from blogging.

Yaro first started out online like most of us by selling old items on ebays auction site selling items he had in his garage he no longer wanted.  He then moved onto creating a website selling and trading gaming and sports cards online and then later sold this website business for a large sum.

These days he makes money from his mastermind training program and affiliate marketing adverts he has spread accross his blogs and other websites he manages and makes on average $40,000 a month.

If you have a blog or a website and are looking for a way to make money from it then i recommend joining upto Googles partnership program called Google Adsense.  Google adsense is a partnership opportunity that you will allow Google to show their adverts on your website and whenever a customer of yours clicks on their adverts you earn a commission instantly

The commission you earn depends on your content, some adverts can earn you upto $5 and some 0.20c depending on how much the advertiser has paid Google.  Google then spilts the revenue with you for placing the add on your website.  From the advertisers point of view this is called PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising via the Google Adwords network.

The great thing about Google adsense adverts is that you can easily intregrate them into your website or blog either as text or banners.  You can change the look and colour of the text to match your content which makes your reader want to click on the adverts as they will think they are part of your website so you earn commission very easily.

There is a very good plugin for wordpress that you can upload and activate and allow Google adsense to show up in your articles on pages.  Just run a search on Google for the plugin.  Installation is very easy.

Youtube has recently stated that they now receive 1 billion views aday from people all around the world watching videos.  Since they are now owned by Google they are offering a partnership program called Google adsense that allows you to make money from advertising from viewers watching your videos.

If you have a youtube account that has 1000′s of viewers youtube will invite you to join their Google adsense partnership program that will allow you to place Google adverts on the right hand side of your videos and also text ads at the bottom of your videos.  If a viewer clicks on those adverts you instantly earn a commission.  You can earn anything upto $5 a click depending on what the adverts are.

To get started you will first need to setup a youtube account and start making and uploading videos regulary then once you have a certain amount of viewers watching your videos (around 100,000), Youtube will then invite you via email to join their partnership program.  They will ask you to join Google adsense and then adverts will automatically appear on your videos and on your youtube channel.

If you also have a website or a blog it is a very good idea to place your website url in the description as this is a great way to drive traffic to your website and also helps with SEO for your search engine rankings.

The best way to get loads of views and star ratings on your youtube videos is to get as much traffic to your channel as possible.  Some ways to do that are:

1.) Embed your youtube videos into blogs, forums, as many websites related to your video audience as possible

2.) Submit your videos to social networking sites – twitter, digg, facebook, myspace, bebo, etc..

3.) Email all your friends and family to view and rate your video

The race to christmas begins and customers will soon be thinking about buying presents for christmas and booking holidays which makes it an ideal time to run your own gifts website or holiday website
Join our network and you can take advantage of christmas and enjoy sales through your own website selling electronics, gifts, toys, holidays and much more

If you have a website and are looking for ways to generate some extra income try joining up as an affiliate to the following company affiliate future. Once a member you can add products and services to your website and earn commission everytime something is sold. The best part is you don’t have to buy any stock or look after any transactions. Simple as that.

Click here to join