Making Money On The Web with Affilate Marketing, another update and motivator

I vowed to not let a month slip by without making a post about something. But, it's been almost two months now so this hopefully we be short and possibly useful to someone on the world wide web. You see, it's all about caring for each other. Too often we get wrapped up in ourselves, hardly thinking of others. You can work so hard for yourself and get a lot of frustration but then if you stop just for a moment and do something for someone else, you get instant gratification. This might sound sucky to you and you may not even be interested in what I'm saying at this point in your life or day. That's okay because one day you will have these same thoughts and you might remember that you read about on a blog somewhere. My latest thoughts for myself are to begin creating a new web site to sell products. I have talked about affiliate marketing in prior posts. I have this web site design in mind, now I just need to get moving on the first step, creating that first home page. I already have the domain name and it's been sitting there doing nothing. I've signed up with companies year after year of which products I have liked. Now I can't even remember all of them. I know I have a file folder somewhere on this computer that may have all the emails with the acceptance of my applications to be an affiliate. I just have to hunt them down one by one. Each will be set up on their own page as a sub page behind the main home page. From the home page there will be a list of categories of products or just an A to Z list to click on. I'm not sure how it will go yet. Okay, I've given away my secret to success but I am hoping that it might benefit you to get going too on making money on the web. I'd like to see others doing this along with myself. Who knows what may come of all of this. I envision myself sipping a cool drink on a resort island with fellow affiliate marketers one day in the future. We each get up and speak about our successes and our business trials and tribulations. My end goal is to set up a trust to manage all the extra income I could never spend and help the poor. A bold and ambitious goal you might say. But, it's done all the time so why not we too. Like I said, giving is instant gratification. Helping each other is another one of those great little and important things in life. So, what are you waiting for, get going already.

What is an affiliate and how do I make money online?

What you say? An affiliate is you being a part of a company. A lot of companies on the web now are wanting you as an affiliate to help them get more business. It is a simple method of business and would work for you if you put some time into it. My goal is to create a web page with multiple pages where most anyone like myself can go to, to be able to find cool links to sites that have what I am looking for most. I will have categories of stuff that when you click on one it will take you to that page with links and text with reviews. It will give you some of my personal experience that I write about as time goes on. One would hope to gain followers that would use your site to click from and shop from. Your text links and banner ads would take users to company web pages where people would shop and you get a referral bonus if they buy something. Amazon starts out at a four percent commission. Now that I am thinking about this I want to have a page that will show each of the companies that I come across that have affiliate opportunities and their starting commission or bonus level. It will take me a while to do. So, why go through all the trouble? Because you and I sit and think and we think, and we think day after day, week after week and year after year on how to make money, right? You and I have not come up with any late breaking invention or idea yet that will get us rich and fast have we? Of course now. I have always read where the turtle may be slow but he is sure to get there in the end. I have adopted that principle since I was taught that when I was a little kid by my mother. I have always been a slow learner and I have accepted that. I do know that I can learn anything though if I put my mind to it and take the time too. So, I have been studying this affiliate marketing thing for a while now. I have set up an Amazon Astore and have gotten a few sales but that is it. I learned to go and read the discussion forum at Amazon Associates Central. There you will glean the experience of old hands who will sometimes give you information on just what you need to do to be successful like a few of them are. Some of them are making in the thousands a month. I would be happy to be making in the hundreds right now. So, if you have followed me this far, stay tuned as I will be writing more on this. If you have taken the next step in getting yourself a hosting account and a domain name set up with a web page, then, you are ahead of me and that is my next step. I use GoDaddy for my domain stuff but there are others out there too. I like GoDaddy as their support answers the phone promptly and the techs know their stuff and can usually have you off and running within five minutes on any problem. More later....

Pay-Per-Click, again, and why aren't you making money?

I feel I'm wasting my time on this blog in trying to make money off the net. Not too many people really get how this works unless you have used Google to advertise with their Adsense service. It's really a good service but it does cost money and you have to have a budget for it. Popular keywords can cost more per click than not so popular ones. Okay, confused?
In your Google Adsense account you set up a small ad that comes up on web pages, most often on the right hand column when you do searches and stuff on the web. Most of us don't bother to read them as were used to seeing them now. You can tell they are Google pay per click ads as you'll see the Google log in small print or font just underneath the ad. Anyway, Google only allow so many words or characters in an ad. That's why you see them so small. I figure so they can cram as many as they can. Google is making lots of money off this way of advertising and most of us just search and never click on anything. Once in awhile I'll see an ad that will catch my eye and I'll click on it. It's costs the advertiser but it gives me a chance to maybe buy from them if I see something I like. You find these ads mostly on Google's search results when you're looking for something.
But, in my case, I'm known as an affiliate of Google. I've signed up with Google to allow them to serve up relevant ads on my blog here. I will get a small percentage of the cost of the click. So far I've made $7.39 and that was in one day. Nothing since. I don't know why, I can only speculate and keep trying things.
If you're in the mind to make some money on the net and you don't have a product to sell, you can become an affiliate and make commissions off of selling other people's stuff. In this case, Google's ads.
There's a few books for you to read. I am also an Amazon affilate. Buy a book from a click here and I make a small commission, very small. But, hey, you have to start somewhere, right?

News, News, News. Every day new news to read.

Do you keep up with the news these days? I'm not talking about just news you used to sit and watch on the tube either. These days we have smartphones that have apps which can gather news from all around the world. I've been enjoying my HTC Droid Incredible for a year now. It's the first thing I grab when I wake up to see what's new.
I have this earthquake app that signals me when there's an earthquake anywhere in the world. I have it set at anything above a 5.0 magnitude. I saw the Fukishima quake in Japan coming weeks before it happened. There was numerous little quakes several times a day, some one after the other and at various magnitudes. I knew something was going to happen rather large but just didn't know when. Then a few weeks later, whamo, it hit. That was exciting to say the least.

I have an app with my local t.v. news which I can pull up at any time and see late breaking news, or, should I say read about it.
Then there's Twitter. I had a Twitter account for a year and really didn't know what to make of it. I couldn't figure out what it was for much less how to use it. Then, I got this Android phone and there was an app for Twitter. I downloaded the free app and opened it and all of a sudden things started making sense. Don't ask me how but I follow a lot of different and interesting people now. I also follow a lot of news companies which give me late breaking news. I can say now that I never bother to watch t.v. news anymore and I don't miss it.

I've been working on my Amazon affiliate store also. I've figured out that if I can talk some people into opening their own store we could make some money between ourselves. This is how it works. I buy from Amazon off and on. If you had an affiliate store I would buy through it. You would get a commission of my purchases. Works the other way around also. Think about it. Amazon has been working on this affiliate store thing lately and it's now so easy to do. I think I should be offering classes on it just to get people going. We could form a large group and make money off each other. Just remember this one thing. You cannot buy through your own store. Get it now? Okay, what are you waiting for? Just go to Google and search for 'Amazon Affiliate'. Sign up and start adding categories to your store. Then get a blog here on Blogger and give people your store address. You can buy a domain name anywhere, ie. GoDaddy, and set it up to forward to your Amazon store when people type in the URL.
I'm doing it another way for now until I do the above though. I have links created here within my posts that will direct you to my store if you click on them to want to look at buying something. Then, there's a link back here also from my Amazon affiliate store.
All it takes is a little work each day or take several days. We all got time to spare once in awhile. When I think about it and am sitting around I go work on my blog or my store. What really got me excited was when I posted here about an AOL update that came out, a lot of people somehow found my blog and clicked on a lot of links. I made about $5.00 in that one day. It's not a lot but if you could get that every day that would add up quick. I'm still excited and I'm going to keep working on this until I can get to that point and beyond. The sky's the limit they say. So, get moving already. Let me know when you get started. I'll be here to help you if you need motivation or anything. We're all in this together now.