Make Money From Home- The Quest In 2010

The question on everyone’s mind is: How to “Make money from home” and 2010 promises to be a record year for the home based business field. This may lead you to an answer that involves providing lead generation online. But before you go out and purchase all of the “get rich quick guides” and “Golden touch” roadmaps, you must establish if you are meant for this sort of venture. What I mean by that is that you need to decide if you have the ardor, aspiration, and self-control required to succeed. If you do, congratulations because you will be able to make a lot of cash in internet marketing. There are hundreds if not thousands of new business opportunities being advertised daily, so the next question is: which one do you want? Mark Yarnell (if you don’t know who he is then Google him, because the man is a genius) has a great filter to answer this question. He says that you have to ask yourself whether or not you would offer the same “business opportunity” to your mother. If you say no, choose a new company. The unconscious mind controls our actions more than we know. When we get involved with things that we are not totally convinced of, we can never hope to find the energy and drive needed to commit ourselves wholeheartedly to the project. If we become involved for strictly financial reasons, then the project becomes a chore instead of an enjoyable experience or a way for us to help others. Any project, business opportunity, home based business, or whatever you want to call it that does not have any intrinsic emotional value for us will never result in the high level of success and financial freedom we all want. Sorry folks, that’s just the way we are programmed.

So if you can truthfully say that you would get your mother involved and you have the required ardor, drive and self-control, the only thing left is to collect your checks. No problem right? I mean everybody can make money on the internet, right? Well yes, everyone can make money from home, but the reality is that not everyone will. The main reason for this is that most people begin to falter very early on. You may begin with lots of drive (or perhaps like me out of necessity), but at some point along the line you get distracted by the shiny signs and flashing lights of the next “wonder drug” gimmick. This is because truly making money on the net is a difficult process that requires a systematic, ritualized process that will continually. If you don’t have a system that you follow every day, constantly refining your methods you will not succeed. There are many plans out there but you need to find the one that is right for you. What I can say though, is that any system that makes big claims about autopilot or “making a million dollars a year without doing anything” out of the box is just hoping to get your money. Take the time to find a plan that offers back office training on the basics of internet marketing and lead generation. Find one that offers you a way to have a funded proposal so that you can monetize your leads as they make their way through the sales funnel. If you don’t know what I am referring to, look those terms up because those are necessary pieces if you want any kind of long term success. For those of you who need money today, I made a list of the three ways I have been able to generate a decent income all on my own.

The three methods I am about to recommend are all based on the idea of affiliate marketing. For those of you who don’t know, affiliate marketing is simply a sales strategy that makes use of salesmen who are “affiliated” with the parent company via their enrollment in a third party company or the main company’s affiliate program. These salesmen are not paid salaries; rather they receive commissions on the sales that they produce. This is a major force on the internet today. Companies such as Nike, as well as small business owners and product creators make use of affiliates every day. Most of the people looking for a way to make money from home do not have a website or a lot of capital to invest so I am going to descrube some FREE ways to make use of affiliate marketing to make some money today. The following methods assume that you have already enrolled in an affiliate program such as clickbank (free to enroll and they have tons of products).

My favorite method is article marketing. The simple fact that you are reading this article and are reading this sentence is proof that this technique works. Article marketing can be time consuming though. For one, you ARE NOT allowed to put your affiliate link in the body of the article. You can however make use of the “signature” boxes to promote your products. There are thousands of ingenious ways to do this, but the most effective way is to use anchor text to post your link. You are allowed two links in the signature box for most sites. The name of the game in article marketing is volume is king, but content duplication is a capital punishment. That simply means that you need to put your content out there for as many people to see as possible, post your articles to all of the article directories and I guarantee you will get some traffic if you provide insight with product reviews, personal testimonials, or other creative tactics. However, the thing to keep in mind is that copying your article from other people is not only illegal, but also eliminates the chances of Google seeing it as new and therefore relevant which lowers its chances of being seen. Without going into long explanations of page rank (in this article), suffice it to say that you need to be on the 1st page so make your content original. Remember, if you want to make money from home, you need to be creative and insightful or people will not pay attention.

After article marketing, blogging is a great way to get people to notice you and give them a reason to do what you want them to. Great blogs have thousands of readers. They provide valuable or entertaining information that builds their relationship with their readers. We can all agree that we are much more likely to buy something that our friend recommends to us, than what the salesmen tell us we should buy. That is the basic idea here, build trust and they will purchase whatever you want. WordPress blogs are free and are an excellent source of making money from the comfort of your home. The free blogs are not as ideal as self-hosted blogs, but are FREE to get started. Remember, it is not about how it looks so much as what it contains. Traffic is objective here, so why not link your articles to your blog in the signature box?

The easiest way for most people to begin to make money from home is using the various social networks like twitter and facebook to generate traffic to your affiliate products. Be warned, this method is quite advanced because you need to be very careful about the way you do it. Not only does facebook (and the rest) not appreciate blatant spamming, your potential clients will not appreciate it either. This technique should be approached as if it were a blog. Try making a group and filling it with interesting observations about general topics relating to the products you want to to sell. Befriend 30 people per day that you find in groups with similar interests. Build a personal relationship with them before you invite them into your group. Make them feel like they really know you. Once you have a group of 50 or so, you can begin sending them a few messages a week with soft sales tactics with your affiliate link. The idea with this tactic, as well as the other two, is to lead with value.

If you are really serious about making money from home and you have the dedication, desire, and discipline needed, you can make a large sum on the net. For those who are searching for the true path to financial freedom however, the lack of a systematic plan with a funded proposal and a solid grasp on the latest marketing techniques will greatly impair your ability to reach your goals. Good luck to everyone and remember that anyone can make money from home, the question is; will you?