Make extra money from home - Part 1

Ross Fraser - lovemoney.com

 

We’ve all read the articles online and seen the annoying adverts telling us that you can make thousands of pounds of additional income sitting in your pyjamas at home.

But is it all a load of rubbish or is it really possible to make money from the comfort of your home?

Well, the short answer is yes it is possible, but you do need to be prepared to work for it. If you are dedicated, keen to learn and can 'think outside the box', then it is possible to make a second income – or even a main one. And this article is going to show you how you can go about achieving this goal.

Getting started

For the past eight years, I’ve been making money online. It started off really small - I set myself a goal to make an additional £10 a week, I then learnt about different money making and marketing techniques, and over the years, I’ve tried virtually everything until I found techniques that worked and created an additional income for myself.

The great thing about the internet is that it has given me the opportunity to make money without having to work for someone else. However, don't be under the illusion that you can give up your day job immediately, because chances are you won't.

Therefore I have split the following sections down into beginners, intermediate and advanced. Beginners and intermediate will be in my first blog post, and the advanced section will follow in my second blog post.

Bear in mind that these are just pointers to get you started. You will still need to go away and you do your own research into each of the topics.

Beginners - Make a few additional pounds a month

If you’re looking to make a few additional pounds a month, start with a site such as Ciao where you can review products and get paid a small commission for your time. There are a number of other survey sites such as Lightspeed and Toluna that allow you to complete surveys for a small reward/payment.

These sites are never going to make you rich, but they are easy to join and you will gain something for your time spent on them.

Intermediate - Run a blog 

If you can write creatively or have something interesting to say, then why not think about writing your own blog? Blog portals such as blogger.com are completely free to use. This is a great place to 'test' whether you are truly cutout for making money online.

If you have the perseverance and time to write and keep a blog updated with new and fresh content, then you know you’re ready to move onto the advanced stage. If not, then at the very least you’ve tried it and not invested anything other than your time.

If you do have a blog that is starting to generate some traffic and interest then you can start thinking about monetising it. There are so many ways to make money from a blog that I could be writing about it for days. But the two simplest ways are adsense and affiliate marketing.

Adsense is Google's advertising network and you can apply to add Adsense adverts to your blog. Adsense is idiot proof - once you have the advertising code on your blog it does all of the hard work.

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Adsense works by reading the content of your blog and automatically matching up adverts that best target your blog visitors and match the topics of your blog postings. Therefore if you have a blog with a high volume of traffic, interesting content and highly targeted adverts, it is likely that people will click on your Adsense adverts at some point. When they do, you get a share of the click.

It is extremely easy to apply to the programme and install it onto your blog so you can be up and running in minutes. However the golden rule is never click on your own links or your will be banned!

You can learn more about Adsense at the main Adsense Google blog.

Affiliate Marketing has been very generous to me and makes up the bulk of my additional income stream. Affiliate marketing works differently to Adsense. Instead of being paid per click you are paid per sale. Therefore if you have a blog about fashion, for example, and have an affiliate link to Topshop, if someone clicks the link and goes onto buy a product from Topshop you are paid a commission for that sale.

There are a range of different affiliate companies in the UK, each of which manage different UK shopping brands. My personal favourite affiliate companies are Affiliate Window, Buy.com and Tradedoubler. However, there are many more.

Affiliate marketing is more complicated that Adsense because you need to match up your blog posts to products you think people would be interested in. You also need to add your own links to each posting. However, if you do match up your articles to products people would be interested in you can make some serious money from it.

Affiliate marketing is time consuming but also very rewarding if you get it right - a good place to learn more about it is Affiliates4u.com

So there are my tips for beginners and intermediates! Watch out for the advanced section in my next blog post!

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