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If someone were to ask you how to make fast money online for beginners, how would you advise this person? Given the vast amount of information and hundreds of online money making options available, does determining the best way to make money online depend on what you are good at or is it simply a matter of selecting the most effective method to follow for positive results.

I’m taking part in an online survey to find out what’s the best way to make money online, meaning the method that is practical, cost-effective and do-able, with the greatest amount of potential income – the method that I “personally think, feel or know” is the best method to make money online.

What Is The Best Way To Make Money Online For Me

I use both skills and non-skills based methods to explore online money making opportunities. Skills would include blogging, internet marketing and anything that requires a personal know-how. Non-skills would be everything else including making money using AdSense and other “get paid to” programmes.

However, I would have to say the best way for me is to make money online selling images – photos and illustrations – in microstock agencies. Since my background is graphic design, this method works for me as it uses my existing skillset to allow me to make my own “products” for sale with a recurring income which is an added plus point.

Why Making Money Online Selling Images Is Best

1. Need to create image just once for repeat sales.
2. Ready buying market at microstock agencies.
3. Many sales points without incurring extra cost by selling at multiple microstock agencies.
3. Indefinite recurring income.

Downside To Selling Images

1. Creating an image takes time.
2. Not all images submitted sell.
3. Initial cost of acquiring equipment and software comparatively high.

How To Make Money Online Selling Images

You do need some artistic inclination to be able to either create illustrations or shoot photos that have commercial potential. However it is not the most important aspect. This method is not for aspiring artists to try and sell their art pieces. Having work experience in the design industry definitely helps me have a good idea of what sells commercially. A simple example is the upcoming Christmas season. This period probably sees one of the highest sales seasons of the year, so it makes sense to create images that are Christmas themed.

You can either sell photos exclusively if you can’t see yourself creating images or vice versa. It’s a bonus if you can do both but if you are an outstanding and hardworking photographer, you can make even more money than someone who sells both photos and illustrations. There are prolific photographers who make several thousand dollars every month selling only photos. I guess that most will prefer to sell photos since creating illustrations has a steeper learning curve which involves learning to use a drawing software.

What You Need To Start Selling Images

There are some basics you need to get started.
1. Photo editing software eg. Photoshop.
2. Minimum 4MP digital camera.
3. To create illustrations, you need a drawing software eg. Illustrator, Freehand.

These are just the very basics needed to get started selling images at microstock agencies. There are lots more to know about creating images that sell. Perhaps I will do a more detailed post covering various aspects of image creation and microstock agencies. Ultimately, each individual will have their preferred method to make money online. This method is most likely related on their own skills and interest although it is not inconceivable to learn the required skills if a particular method has the potential to become a main source of online income.

Sign up with the main microstock agencies and browse through popular images to get an idea of what sells and create images with similar themes. You will also find lots of information regarding the technical and aesthetic requirements of submissions. Main microstock agencies include Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto and StockXpert.

UPDATE: Sadly, one of my favorite microstock agencies, StockXpert ceased operations on Feb 11, 2010. I have been with them since I started selling images online a few years ago and they have been a consistent performer so it is a real pity that they are no longer able to stay in business.

Besides the usual ways on how to make fast easy money online for beginners, bloggers have an added advantage of making money with affiliate marketing products by blogging about it. Writing an honest review to include not only the good points but also a product’s shortcomings gives readers greater confidence and trust in your opinion.

Yaro Starak has written a long – over 3,000 words – article on his experience with affiliate marketing where he explains the process taken to make a good income from affiliate sales. I’m going to condense it into salient points not only as a service to readers but also for myself since I tend to skim over long articles to get to the juicy bits or sometimes not even finish reading a long article.

Making Money Selling Affiliate Products

1. Find markets where people are not used to affiliate marketing.
2. Markets such as ringtones and dating are OVER saturated and thus difficult to make a sale.
3. Affiliate marketing that use the standard techniques of squeeze pages, email marketing, sales pages and testimonials tend to be less effective since these are so over exposed.
4. Higher reader numbers do not necessarily convert into higher sales.
5. Write a review that highlights a problem your reader may have and provide the solution – the product.
6. Promote many products many times in different posts to get sales.
7. Promote products that give you recurring income instead of a one-off commission.
8. Promote high priced products that have high commissions.
9. Build an email list to sell directly and for speedy response.
10. Use a combination of blogging, email marketing and reviews to get sales.

Common Mistakes In Affiliate Marketing

1. Using banners as sole marketing tool.
2. Copying and pasting promotional content as a blog post – sales copy doesn’t make good blog content.
3. Over-praising a product comes across as a thin disguise to make readers part with their money.
4. Promoting too many products which can turn off readers.

There you have it – these are the main points to note if you want to make money in affiliate marketing. These are of course, from a blogger’s viewpoint. It also helps if the person selling the product has a following.

Hardcore affiliate marketers would use quite different money making ideas from bloggers. They are all about hitting you in the face with squeeze pages that force you to enter your email address and some even force you to enter another 5 emails of friends before they let you download that free report.

Read on for more ways to make money on the internet.

If you are not making money with microstock photography, you’re missing out on something that can really be a good additional income stream. It could be your answer to how to make easy money for beginners. Granted unless you go into it full time and at full throttle, the amount earned will probably not be enough to get you that condo, selling photos and images at microstock agencies is one of the few ways of earning you passive income.

Whenever I’m asked what’s the best way to make money online, I always say writing and selling photos at microstock agencies. If you have the talent to write, you can make lots of money without even having a blog or website.

Just go into top making money online forums where there will be a offers thread and list your writing services there. You will get more work than you can handle especially if you are competitively priced. You don’t even have to be an excellent writer since many people need blog posts just to fill up their made for Adsense blogs. As long as you are able to write on a topic or specified niche, you will be swamped. Your earnings are limited only by your ability to churn out articles.

And here’s why I prefer selling microstock photography and images to writing. With writing, you earn with each article or post you write. The earning potential is restricted and limited to one price per unique article written.

With microstock photography, you just have to create the image once and you can put it up for sale – literally forever – without you having to do anything more. In fact, you can put the same image up for sale at multiple microstock agencies. If you are prolific and can produce many images, your income could be quite substantial.

True, the amount paid per image can seem very little. Shutterstock for example, pays $0.30 per sale while for others, it’s $0.50 per sale. But that’s just one image for one sale. You put many images into 5 different microstock agencies and you have a potentially credible source of income. For me, I probably fall into the average microstock earner with several hundred dollars earned a year.

Not terribly impressive but bear in mind that my portfolio is a relatively modest 80-130 images and I didn’t have to do anything more after creating the images, so when it’s several hundred dollars a year for doing nothing, I think that’s not too shabby – it’s one of the easy ways to make money for beginners. In fact, I have been trying to make time to create more images while juggling my other projects. I may have to give up the more time consuming ones like this blog that requires constant new content.

Another thing that’s good about microstock photography is that there’s no promotion to be done on your part since the site is used by targeted traffic. People go to microstock photo agencies because they are looking for images to buy. Your job is to create images that are commercially in demand. Beginners trying to make money selling images often make the mistake of creating images that are not in commercial demand which is the main reason why they have problems making money.

The trick here is to browse through the best selling images and see what subjects sell. You can mostly forget about photos of your pets. Remember, they must be commercial images that are used in articles, blogs, magazines and other commercial media. Put aside your artistic aspirations and concentrate on making images that perhaps a financial magazine might need for its article on the economic downturn or rising oil prices.

If you do decide to go into selling images at microstock agencies, stick with the main ones instead of signing up with each and every microstock agency. Less established microstock agencies have a risk of not being able to sustain its business as was the case with Lucky Oliver which has closed down.

The stable microstock photo agencies to join are Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto StockXpert and iStockphoto. There are a couple more that you can also try if you are feeling adventurous such as MostPhotos, 123RF and Canstock amongst others. It may be a good idea to try them out by uploading just a handful of images to see if the images sell over a period of time. Remember that a big part of getting sales from making money selling images at microstock agencies is creating images that are in demand.

UPDATE: Shutterstock has imposed a 30% tax withholding policy on US sales for non-US contributors from countries that do not have a tax treaty with the US. This means that if you make $300 from US buyers, you will lose $100. This is bad news indeed and takes a chunk out of already low payouts.

Here is the discussion on this at Shutterstock: Tax FAQ

UPDATE: StockXpert ceased operations on Feb 11, 2010.

Private label rights articles are not only a useful source to make money on the internet and raw content, they can also be used to make money if you stretch its advantages. Here are some ways on how to profit from PLR articles to earn money for you.

1. Post blog content regularly with articles that are optimized with relevant keywords to enhance search engine rankings. This keeps traffic coming which translates to customer potential.
2. Increase newsletter output with PLR modified articles to your mailing list. Offer special reports and free bonuses in the form of free PLR ebooks.
3. Create a list of good quality PLR articles as a free report to entice subscribers to opt in to your mailing list.
4. Submit articles to various content sites with your blog url and offer in the resource box at the end of each article to generate traffic and get sales leads.
5. Create a new product with PLR articles. If you don’t want to rewrite PLR articles, you can find an ebook with PLR rights that allow you to break up the ebook into separate articles. You can add your own audio or video components to enhance the content or turn the ebook into a series of articles that your readers will want to read.
6. Create an ebook from a series of PLR articles on the same topic and sell for 100% profit or use it as a giveaway for subscribers to your opt in list.

There could be some other ways which PLR articles can be further used for profit. Do you use PLR articles and how do you make money with them?

There are many places online to get your PLR articles with tons of free and paid PLR articles on many money making niches. All you have to do is spend a few minutes rewording the articles for your own blog.

Selling information is a very popular way for those who want to know how to make fast easy money online for beginners because using the proper resources, almost everyone can do it.

If you already own a business, you add another source of income by creating an information eproduct related to your business.

There are many plus points that making money by selling affiliate products can potentially bring.

How Selling Information eProducts Benefit You

1. You Establish Yourself As An Expert. By creating an information rich eproduct, you build credibility as an expert in your niche whose readers go to for advice because you have proven yourself.
2. You Make More Money. When you create your eproduct, chances are you will need complimentary products and services to market your eproduct. They could be auto responders, affiliate product sites like Clickbank or marketing graphics.

   If you sign up as an affiliate of these products, you can put your affiliate link in your eproduct which earns you commission when your readers sign up by clicking on your affiliate link.

3. Your eProduct Earns Passive Recurring Income. If you take the time and effort to create a superior eproduct that sells, you stand to earn recurring income from that one product without having to work on it again.
4. Your Affiliates Make Money For You. By recruiting affiliates to sell your eproduct for a high commission, you are basically collecting money without having to do anything. Your network of affiliates will do all the marketing and sales of your eproduct.
5. You Get More Traffic. Leverage by placing your main business website inside your eproduct. Readers can click on your link to find out more about your other products which means a source of traffic for your main site.

What eProduct To Sell?

Although almost any topic can be researched, it is a lot easier to pick a topic that you are knowlegeable or passionate about. You can then determine which areas in your topic do people need help most, or want to know about.

For example, if you run a flower shop and you’re an expert in flower arrangement, you can figure out many areas where you can share your expertise. They could be:

How to start a flower shop business

How to create stunning flower arrangements

Tips on extending the shelf life of flowers

You can either create an ebook that provides information on every aspect of flowers and flower arrangement or you could separate each topic into an ecourse where your subscribers will receive lessons on various topics on a weekly basis.

The advantage of breaking up your ebook into shorter weekly reports is that you can build a relationship with your readers. You also have more opportunity to include other related sales products with each report.

So is this a foolproof method to make money online for beginners? There are so many variables that no one can guarantee that you will make money – not even gurus who promise big money. Ever wonder why if they are so sure that you will make money using their methods why they don’t offer a money back guarantee if you don’t make money on the internet?

The only way is to follow the guidelines, do your research and try out as many niches as you can.

In the previous post, I covered the steps of researching for ideas to create your own niche online product.

Finding the right niche, selecting the right topics and planning your content structure are not the only steps to take to ensure a successful product. Testing the market is equally important in your quest on how to make fast east money online for beginners.

By researching and testing the market, you are better able to tell if your product has a high chance of failure or success.

Thanks to the internet, market research no longer involves huge sums of money to engage a research company. You can plan your market research to stick within your own budget.

1. Email Survey
   If you already have a customer list, you can email them a survey. The key is to keep the survey simple and a maximum of 10 questions. You could offer a small incentive such as a discount for completing the survey. If you have a website, offer this to your visitors.
2. Online Research
   Use an online keyword tracker tool like Google Keyword Tool to find out how many people are searching for information on your topic. If many people are looking for information on a topic then it could be worthwhile creating an online product for it.
3. Test With AdWords
   Set a fixed budget to buy pay-per-click AdWords to see how many clicks you get for different keywords to see which ones convert to sales. Unofficial estimates put 1 sale out of every 200 clicks.
4. Test With Freebies
   Create a short report on the topic you want to research and give it away as a download freebie. If it is very popular with lots of people are downloading it, chances are a full-fledge online product on that same topic will be successful as well.
5. Tracking
   Take note of which articles or pages are most popular with your visitors. Using a tracking software or even just using Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics will give you an idea of which topics interest your visitors.

Also, remember to first create an online product that is not too highly-priced. The trend now is for short reports that are 10 to 15 pages long selling for less than $10. Many are giving ebooks away free.

Creating a short report gives you the opportunity to test the waters without spending too much time and effort. If it is successful, you can go on to produce a more detailed report or ecourse and charge higher prices.

By creating a series of successful products to sell through your blog, you’ll find the best way to make money online and increase your sources of online income by leveraging on your blog traffic.

Read on for other ways to make money on the internet.

An important point on how to make fast money online for beginners is that every post you make should increase blog traffic and gain authority for your SERPs position. Writing a good post takes time and effort and you should make every post count.

Content doesn’t just provide good reading material so that readers keep coming back. Each post has multiple objectives to achieve including being a vessel for relevant keywords so that your blog gets ranked higher.

Keep these blogging tips in mind when making a post so that they become second nature to you when add a post.

1. Keep The Primary Goal Of Blogging In Mind
   The main reason you are writing a blog must be to provide useful information. No doubt you write posts with the goal to make money blogging, but remember to provide good content while fitting in your keywords.

   When you are focused on your primary goal to create useful information, the other benefits of promoting your blog come naturally – branding, lead optimization, increased blog traffic and ultimately, money.

2. Maximize Promotional Opportunities Of Blog Marketing
   Articles that are useful and entertaining attract readers and articles that are keyword optimized give better search engine results.

   Using keywords strategically without overdoing it is an effective way to promote your make money blog. Always use a variety of anchor text links in articles. This is an effective way to get higher ranking.

3. Don’t Rush Through A Post
   Often when writing articles, back links, keywords and how much traffic – and consequently how much money we can make – dominate our writing process. Instead of trying to push out as many posts as possible in the hope of getting more links and traffic, it is way more important to ensure quality blog content rather than quantity.
4. Never Stop Marketing Your Blog
   Take every opportunity you have to promote your blog. Use keywords instead of your name when commenting on other blogs. Use make money forums, free classified ads and free adsense sharing blog sites to create backlinks and drive traffic to your blog.

Readers and publishers are selective when choosing which blogs to read simply because there is such an overwhelming amount of information on the internet. Sometimes, all it takes is one well-researched and written article to get a popular blog with a hundred thousand readers to potentially bring on an explosion of traffic to your make money blog.