When it comes to making money online, you have to solve 2 problems. Only 2 problems every time, every single f'ing time!!
- Traffic - Without traffic, you are not going to be able to make anything. It doesn't have to be organic traffic to your website, perhaps your method will generate traffic on its own. See examples of traffic:
- Organic traffic = likely to be slow to build, free forever, expect this route to be HARD WORK but very satisfying at the end when it's bringing you the dollar.
- Second-hand traffic = You may build a facebook group, Instagram following, youtube presence and then from that audience you can make some money. Usually faster to build than Organic and requires effort too.
- Paid traffic = The fastest method of getting "eyeballs" on your money making page, also the fastest method of emptying your wallet! However, when paid is tested, measured, optimised (all at a cost) you may find yourself in a position where you are making more than you spend. This feels good! To sum up paid, its fast, expensive and lots of effort to bring ROI but it can work.
- Spam traffic = Blasting links around, tweets, facebook, reddit. Good for short term traffic increases, rarely targetted so difficult to monetise. Expect to burn your domain quickly. The effort required not much.
- There are tons of traffic sources, above is a very limited list. The one thing they all have in common is that the cost! They might cost you in effort or money but they cost usually both sides of the coin equal the same when added together.
- Organic = 99% effort and 1% money
- Second-hand traffic = 95% effort and 5% money (to boost your progress)
- Paid = 50% effort and 50% money
- Spam = 20% effort and 80% money
- The money maker - Once you have some traffic, you need it to generate the dollars. There are stacks of ways to do this all over the forum my favourites:
- You have very closely matched users in your traffic = Send to a CPA deal
- If traffic is not very targeted = Then display ads or AdSense are my favourites
- Perhaps I have traffic related to a product = There is an Amazon feed for that
- This is not an exhaustive list but I stick in and around these areas 99% of the time
You can go about choosing either the traffic source that you want to generate or go at it from the monetisation point of view and work backwards, it does not really matter. I mentor a few friends and these are the 4 statements we live by:
- Without traffic, you cannot make money, it really is that simple!
- When you build a traffic source, use it to earn from multiple revenue streams. If you are building, build something you are proud of!
- If you pay for a traffic source, always measure it to the most granular detail possible. Never, just try a tenner!
- The monetisation method is never perfect, there is always a better CPA offer, Product or Ad optimisation to be done. Go after the 1% increase every month!
That's it, I wish you luck.
