Wondering how to earn from the internet? There’s a few ways to earn an income from your laptop using the internet. My journey started over 10 years ago with the auction site eBay. I used to sell stuff from my house initially and soon progressed to buying and selling for a profit. Several years of experience later and it brought me to a much better way to earn from the internet.
How To Earn From The Internet
If you don’t want the full story, you can get started here with the best method I have found. I’ll come back to the ‘why’ later on in this article. Anyway, back to eBay!
I started out buying things from charity shops and car boot sales back in the 90’s. Today, most people are far more aware that eBay exists and they frequently use it to price up their items. Back then, it was less well known. I could pick up items in old junk shops, car boot sales, antique shops and charity shops for much less than I could flog them for on eBay.
Then there’s a little “hack” I picked up which lets you find misspelled items on eBay and sell them back on the site for twice as much! Check out the full article on this strategy here.
You can also purchase items in bulk from websites like Alibaba.com or even buy wholesale from eBay and split up your stock to sell individually. However, there’s huge competition on eBay for price, especially if you buy from China. I used the miss-spell tool for ages and managed to make regular profits. However, it wasn’t what I wanted ultimately. I knew there had to be something better!
How To Earn From The Internet
After buying an electronic download in the form of an eBook, I realised this was a winning formula for the kind of success I was seeking! It was automated, the download was free, and the seller could sell an unlimited amount of his eBook again and again. I was happy with the purchase as it taught me the strategy I successfully used to make money on eBay.
I abandoned my eBay strategy and decided to seek out a similar strategy which could run on its own. My strategy was working, but I was putting in too many hours and was always tied to my computer. I knew there was something better so I started writing my own eBooks and trying to sell them on eBay too; learning how to build websites, I attempted to sell them on a website. I didn’t have any knowledge of online marketing so this led me to seek out online training courses which would teach me.
I soon abandoned my own eBooks and instead turned towards another business model known as affiliate marketing. At the time, I was learning two different strategies. One of them used Google Adsense. The Adsense program lets you put Google’s (paid for) adverts on your website. When someone clicks on them, you earn a commission.
How To Earn From The internet – Affiliate Marketing or Google Adsense?
Initially I was set on using Adsense. I got onto a course which taught all the strategies to do this. It was a long term strategy of building a website out by using keyword research to dominate a certain niche. See my
eBook niche blogging for profit. I worked hard on this strategy for several months but was disappointed with the results. Google’s Adsense is a great program and you can make a passive income from this strategy. However, there’s a lot of work to do first and it’s not guaranteed that your website will rank well on the search engines, which is what this strategy depends on.
There’s also the change of doing well initially and then hitting some kind of penalty. This is arguably worse and continues to affect people who can lose their income overnight after Google change their search results algorithm, which happens frequently.
Not to be too down on this strategy. It does work, but you need a lot of traffic (and free, organic traffic) for it to work.
Adverts Or Products?
So then there’s affiliate marketing. I soon decided that this was the way to go. I wanted to know how to earn from the internet, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of life working for nothing! Affiliate marketing gave me a much higher return in a smaller amount of time than with the Adsense strategy I was using.
You can of course use both strategies together although some argue this can be counter productive. Why waste all your time getting a potential buyer to your website only to let them leave by clicking an advert for someone who may even be your competitor. Plus, you only earn tiny amounts when someone clicks on your advert (depending on the subject of your website). Affiliate products, on the other hand can pay out much more, if you can sell them.
How To Earn From The Internet – Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular strategies of earning from the internet. In my experience it’s the one to work hard at because it showed me early on that it is the most profitable one. Affiliate marketing is the model which can allow anyone to earn from the internet. If you want to know how to earn from the internet, study affiliate marketing and become a good marketer.
One of my first affiliate sales was from a review article I wrote about a software called XsitePro. It was a website building software which I had used to build a few of my websites. I liked it so wrote a favourable review on it and linked back to the product with my affiliate link. I think it sold for about $100 and I earned $40 from the sale.
This is typical with digital type products which can be accessed over the internet. You can usually earn 40% commissions with these kinds of products. That’s why I’d always recommend digital products over physical products. Physical products are popular though, and Amazon, for example is a trusted site. Amazon has an affiliate program so anyone can link to their products and earn from sales made on their website. They just need to join the program and get their own unique affiliate links.
However, it’s worth noting the rates for products you can promote on Amazon too. As you can see in the picture below, rates of commission for affiliate marketers for their products is much less that 40%. Digital products can make a huge difference to how much you can earn from the internet.
How To Really Earn From The Internet – Types Of Products
As mentioned already, digital products pay out 40% commissions to their affiliates. How is this possible? That’s nearly half of the cost! That’s because with digital products there’s only a one time production cost, there’s no postage costs and no storage costs. The producer of the products or software can therefore afford to pay out more to the affiliate because they are doing the advertising for them, which accounts for their main costs.
Digital products are therefore a good option for affiliates. If an affiliate marketer can make continual sales, they can earn a full time living by referring customers to other people’s products on the internet. This means no need for a boss, a job or even a static place of work. They can work from anywhere from their laptop. All they need is an internet connection and a laptop.
But How Do Affiliates Get The Sales?
Affiliate marketers have all kinds of tactics. Some create content (like this article), some create videos and podcasts. Others use paid marketing strategies only, and then some use a combination of several different methods. If you’re going to use the paid strategies, you should ideally choose products which will offset your costs more easily and which will give you a good return on investment.
Paid marketing is the quickest way for affiliate marketers to build a sustainable business from the internet. But you need to choose the right products before you take the plunge.
What Are The Right Products? – How To Earn From The Internet
Everyone is different and needs to find a method of working which suits them and their own particular situation. However, there’s a few affiliate secrets which everyone should know, if they want to learn how to earn from the internet. I really wish I knew these concepts years ago when I started out. One of the main problems is that there’s all kinds of conflicted advice on the internet. You can easily be led down a ‘rabbit hole’ in the world of making money online, and never quite make it.
Having a few “aces” up your sleeve helps a great deal when you first start out and don’t know what you’re doing. Here’s the ‘aces’ which have made a dramatic effect on my journey online.
Affiliate Marketing – Digital Products
Use digital products instead of physical products. 40% commission compared to 3-10% commission is a big deal. You can work just as hard to sell both kinds of products so why would you waste your time?
High Ticket Products Not Low Value Items
For much the same reason, you should choose high value items to sell online. A $100 product can pay you $40. Or, for what is likely to be the same amount of work, you could sell a $1000 product and earn $400.
Subscription Products – Pay You Continually
Yes subscription products to things like software and training courses can continue to pay you over and over. This is how you get more leverage and start turning your “hobby” into a real, profitable business. Choosing subscription products is a huge game changer.
Up-sells – Continue To Benefit From Later Sales
Up-sells are the ‘add-on’ sales made later by the company who owns the products. Most affiliate companies benefit from these without paying their affiliates a single cent. Once you’ve referred the initial customer, the business owner gets a customer potentially for life. They may go on the spend a fortune with that company over the course of their life. Choose companies who pay you for this relationship, even if you only referred the initial sale.
A Built In Sales Team
You can also benefit from a product suite which offers a built in sales team. This means you don’t have to personally close and sales and can earn commissions for sales made later by this in-built system.
Access An All In One Business System
So you’ve seen there’s a huge benefit in choosing digital products which offer:
- High ticket items
- Built in sales team
- Up-sells
- Subscription products
You can also access a ready made sales funnel which offers these benefits and a training and education platform to teach you how to build your own online business from scratch.