For a long time I wanted to learn how to earn money with a laptop and internet connection. It took me a long time to eventually make it a reality. Before I found the business model I now use, I tried all sorts of other strategies including Forex marketing, blogging, buying and selling (using eBay) and affiliate marketing. Nothing seemed to work for me and I was always struggling.
In 2014 I found an online business community and got help and support building an affiliate business. It was still tough but I learned a few things which massively helped me with my online journey. Before this happened I was a struggling affiliate and I had already made a few online sales as an affiliate. But the sales were sporadic and nothing to write home about. I made a little pocket change and nothing more; despite my best efforts.
But I was making some massive errors in what I was doing which with the benefit of hindsight are now really obvious. I was working really hard and getting nowhere fast.
How To Earn Money With A Laptop And Internet
What was I doing wrong? Well a few things spring to mind. I had no money to invest so everything I was doing online was free. I paid for a few online courses which gave me some idea of what I should do, but not much more. Then I just threw myself into building websites and blogging, but without much guidance other than the videos I had watched.
I thought I could throw a few spammy websites up and they would instantly gain traction. I was able to join a couple of affiliate programs using Clickbank, and promote them on the sites. The strategy I learned first was to build websites around certain keywords. Then, I would rank at the top of Google and get free traffic which would be diverted towards the Clickbank products! At least that was the plan.
Despite building many sites and doing this, none of them really worked. One site called TedsShed.net did actually rank on Google and started getting traffic. I think I sold one product from the organic (free) traffic that I managed to get! But $40 was hardly going to set me free from the day jobs!
Another course I took taught a different strategy and I was making some fast progress with paid marketing when my Adwords account got shut down. Back then (this was early 2000’s) this was pretty fatal and it was years before I got another account, despite trying to reinstate it. So I abandoned the paid marketing tactics and focused on organic marketing again, building websites and blogging!
How To Earn Money With A Laptop And Internet Connection
This went on for a while and I lost hope a number of times while juggling employment of many types. But I was determined to master the art of making money from selling other people’s products online – affiliate marketing. In 2014 I saw another “guru” in a video and decided I like what he was saying. I had struggled and struggled but I knew that if I didn’t persevere that I would be right where I was – juggling crap jobs and broke!
I joined the community and paid another fee, although with some reservation since I’d already shelled out for many other courses by this point! But I had actually found an online community and got help and support. This was something I’d never found before and I actually met people in person. Since all the previous “guru’s” had been in the US, I was pleased to find coaches and other affiliates in my country (in the UK).
I also learned that the products I was previously promoting weren’t the best! I had joined Amazon’s and eBay’s affiliate programs but these only pay tiny commissions. So when I made a sporadic sale, (mine were only sporadic back then), I only made a tiny amount! But by using high ticket affiliate marketing products, I was able to make my first high ticket commission of $1000!
When you’re used to making $40 a sale, this was really quite something! I was finally getting somewhere!
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
If you’re still not sure about what affiliate marketing really is, let me explain. Affiliate marketing is the business model where third parties can promote other people’s products online. When someone makes a purchase through your affiliate link, you earn a commission based on the sale.
Affiliates do all kinds of things to promote their affiliate links such as blogging, niche website building, paid marketing and email marketing. Some affiliates find customers through using social media platforms, others build large lists of subscribers and promote products to their lists.
Because there’s many ways to do affiliate marketing, you can pick a strategy which suits both your available time and budget. I started out as a blogger because I had a lot of free time in between work obligations. But I didn’t have a lot of money, so blogging fitted the bill! If you have less time, you can use paid marketing and automation so that your business is building up even when you can’t physically be at the laptop!
Subscription Products and Affiliate Marketing
Things really changed for me when I started using subscription products as an affiliate. Most products will only pay you once. So when you sell something you make a flat commission. But subscription products are much, much better. They pay you a recurring income month after month. This is really how to make money on the internet. To think I was wasting my time building websites which never got any traffic, hoping to make it selling $10 books on Amazon – for which I would earn almost nothing even when I made a sale!
No, subscription affiliate programs is where it’s at if you want to make money from the laptop. You still need to learn the skill of selling online, but it’s far better to use that knowledge to sell recurring income items and high ticket items because you’ll earn much more from the same amount of work!
Who pays for subscription items? Lots of people do. Particularly good are business tools for which a subscription fee is paid. Business tools such as email autoresponders are good because businesses need them to operate. I pay for an autoresponder myself to run the online business and many other people do too. You can access a free autoresponder for affiliate marketing here.
Summary
Of course there’s several ways to earn money with a laptop and internet connection. It’s just that for me, affiliate marketing showed the most promise right from the start. Affiliate marketing is a pretty cheap option too if you’re looking for ways to earn online. There’s many alternatives to affiliate marketing from which you can earn online through:
- Forex marketing – requires training and investment
- Blogging & Adsense – using ads to monetise content instead of affiliate marketing
- Freelancing – sell your skills using upwork.com or fiverr.com
- Buying and selling – see my article on an eBay strategy I used to use
- Import export business – use a wholesalers such as Alibaba.com
- Drop shipping – Drop shipping is similar to affiliate marketing see drop shipping vs affiliate marketing.
I tried a couple of other methods before finding affiliate marketing including Forex marketing. But it requires a lot of training and investment, and I wasn’t in the position to carry on what with having not much money. I also used Adsense and tried to monetise some free blog platforms with it such as Hubpages.com. But you need tonnes of website traffic to make a tiny amount using this strategy. Affiliate marketing gave me much larger commissions when I made a sale than the tiny amounts from advertising clicks which Adsense paid.
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing, you can access a free video series here and join an online business community which will give you all the tools and strategies to get going.