Earn without selling anything

Whatever your site is about, as long as you can attract visitors (traffic), you can make money. Attracting visitors is the challenging part and you should focus on that in the beginning. First and foremost by creating great content. On the other hand, some of the methods below add real value to your site from your visitor’s perspective, so why not? I got a real kick out of my first few cents earned online.

Advertising on autopilot

Contextual advertising is an amazing concept. It allows little publishers like you and me to get paid for their work without having to deal with advertisers directly. You paste a little code on your site and the ads network puts the most relevant ads on your site. If visitors click on the ads on your site while they read your stuff, you get paid - that’s why it’s called pay-per-click or PPC. Want to know more? Read these two articles and then apply for an AdSense account. Another good reason to try out AdSense is that it will help you to better understand AdWords - the other side of the contextual advertising coin.

Affiliate programs

If you link to a website which sells insurance policies online and a visitor from your site clicks on that link and ends up buying an insurance policy online (usually within 60 days), the insurance company will pay you a commission. Typically around US 100. If you link to a poker site and your visitor signs up, you will earn more than that. How do they know whom to pay and how to pay you? Excellent question. We need a middle man. The easiest to use at this stage is Commission Junction. Check out their site. And don’t worry. It is not all about insurance policies and gambling. There is affiliate programs for just about anything and the trick is to chose those, who you think are interesting to your visitors, because remember, you only earn when they click AND purchase something. It sounds complicated, but you would not believe the amounts of money some people are making with affiliate links on their website. Good luck and good bye.