For many people trying to find a way to make some money online, it’s difficult to figure out where to begin.  Everywhere you turn you seem to see another income opportunity being thrown at you.  Multi Level Marketing, Adsense, creating your own products, taking surveys, and getting paid to read emails are just a few of the many offers you’ll come across, each one claiming to be the one the will let you retire to a palm tree adorned Pacific island in seven months.

With so many offers, it’s hard to know what’s going to work and what’s going to just be another money sucking scam.  When I got started trying to find a way to make money online, I was really confused, and if you’re in the same situation now, chances are that you are too.

The path that I took was affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing is when you get paid a commission for selling other people’s products.  There are tons of sites online that have affiliate programs, like Amazon, Target, and other smaller online stores as well.  I find that this is a great way to get started because it’s easy to implement.  You can write up reviews of products that you use or are interested, and you don’t actually have to sell anything.  In fact, it’s best if you don’t.  You can just leave the selling up to the merchant and simply explain the pros and cons of the product and why you think it would be a good deal.

I learned about affiliate marketing at an Internet membership program called Wealthy Affiliate.  When I looked into the program I came across one Wealthy Affiliate review after another that spoke about how easy and clear the program was.  It was great for a beginner like me, who knew nothing about websites or the technical side of internet marketing at all.  I’m really glad that I kept reading all those Wealthy Affiliate reviews, because they helped me decide to join the program, and I’m really glad that I did.

You can make a lot of use of the traffic that is coming to your site thanks to SEO and PPC efforts through affiliate marketing; and make a lot of money at the same time. If you are using Google Adsense, what this means is that any time someone clicks on any of the ads that Google has put on your site, you are earning a commission. Depending on the click that is going to Google, this can be anywhere from pennies to dollars that you are earning at any one time; either way, it isn’t going to be a whole lot. On the other hand, if they are paying you more in commission for the click than you paid to get it, you are going to be making money.

Remember, you want to pay less for the click than Google Adsense is going to be paying you for it. You have to find ways to get traffic on your site that will be willing to use long-tail search terms that you have paid very little for. For example, let’s say that your site is promoting DUI Attorney, or some click that is equally high-dollar. Since that runs about $30 for each click on Google, your commission from AdSense is going to be much higher than if you were advertising for something which only cost $5 a click.

So lets say you find some inexpensive long-tail keyword search terms like DUI Attorney Pasadena, CA. And since you’ll bid for a lower position (say at .25 per click), you hope to get the lower-cost clicks to get people to your site.

You also need to make sure that your site offers things relating to this click, like articles on DUI or traffic laws in Pasadena or anything of this nature, which will not only make people come to your site but be willing to click on the Adsense ad you are running, from which you are making $1 per click. You have to agree that this doesn’t sound like that bad of a deal; however, if nobody is clicking on your ads, then you are going to be losing the money you have invested — this really is a risky business. Not everyone has what it takes to make money through buying low cost clicks and then running them on their own websites. You are going to have to be willing to invest not only money, but the time and effort necessary to figure out exactly what is going to work the best to make a profit.

If you are going to put that much time into this effort, why not focus it on SEO for those same long-tail keywords? If you optimize your page right, you can still do the same work for less competitive words, and come up organically. Then it doesn’t matter as much what your CTR is, and will cost you a lot less $$. The only thing you are spending is your time. Once that initial time investment is over, then it cannot cost you any money out of your pocket – Whether it works or not!

Anthony M. Flores is an expert in Adwords Management Professional and is an expert consultant on SEO Los Angeles for www.HighconvertingMedia.com. Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding your internet marketing!