The Nine-Dollar Business

I have something special for you: An long excerpt from my ebook on writing for money online. This part is about a business you can try with a risk of only nine dollars. Afterwards I'll tell you a little more about the book.

Making Money Without A Website

Can you make money online without a website? Absolutely. And without any investment other than your time? Yes. You'll find some great ways right here.

Now, the nit-pickers out there will say that you have to at least have a computer and you have to pay for internet service. Not true. You can do most of the things here working from a computer in a public library for free. In any case, most of us - at least in the United States - already have internet access and a computer, so there is no additional cost for these things. You just have to be willing to do the work.

Article Based Affiliate Sales

This little money-making scheme is one I read about somewhere on the internet. It involves writing articles, so I had to try it out. I will warn you though, that this one does require an investment of $9, but that's a pretty low-risk business, don't you think?

Note to the argumentative among you: Though this one is not technically a "no cost" business, you could probably talk a friend into putting up the $9 for a 10% share of the revenue. That would make it free for you to try.

Okay, the model works like this: You register a domain name, forward it to a good affiliate offer, and write articles to promote the domain. I once read a post by a man who claimed he made $1700 with his first article using this plan. I suspect he exaggerated, but about two years ago I rewrote five of my articles and gave it a try. I'll tell you how it worked out, but first I have to cover a little background information, and get into more detail about how you can set this up.

You might know how easy it is now to sign up as an affiliate for various products. With services like ClickBank it has become even easier. There is no additional approval process for each product or company. Once you have your ClickBank "nickname" you can promote the products from any one of their thousands of vendors and get a commission on any sales, some as high as 75% of the sale's price.

For example, on UnusualWaysToMakeMoney.com, I have an page on buying and selling cars for profit. Browsing ClickBank products one day, I found an ebook for sale on how to make money selling cars. The publisher offers a 50% commission on each $47 sale, or about $22 after the fees.

A few minutes later, I had a link up on my page, going to his site. Every now and then someone clicks through to his sales page and buys the book, which earns me about $22. ClickBank tracks everything for you, by the way, and sends out checks every two weeks. It costs nothing to open an account.

This is basic affiliate marketing, and it is simple now, but some people want it to be even simpler. Building a website to promote those affiliate products is a bit of work, after all. What if you just wrote an article and in the resource box linked directly to the affiliate sales page, so you could earn commissions without the need of a website? This has worked for some, but most article directories where you would post the articles won't allow affiliate links in an article, and they do check. A better way follows.

How To Do It: Step-By-Step

1. Find a product you would like to promote as an affiliate.

It should be related to a topic you can easily write about. It should pay a commission of at least $20 (my opinion, but you can try lower-paying products). Sign up and get your affiliate URL. This is the address you send people to in order to get credited for the sale, so you get the commission.

2. Register a domain.

This will be your only expense, and should cost less than $10 per year. Register a name that has something to do with your topic or product. Most good names are taken, but you can use numbers in a name in order to find an available one with the keyword(s) you want - this is why I have a site called 999articles.com. Certainly "articles.com" and related names were long gone, or being sold for thousands of dollars.

3. Set the domain to redirect or forward to your affiliate URL.

All good registries have free forwarding for your domain. If the one you're considering doesn't, find another. You need the ability to forward the domain. We use MyDomain (and yes I get a commission if you use that link and register a name) for our domain registration, and forwarding is free and easy.

Once you set the forwarding up, any time someone clicks through to your domain from an article (or enters it in their browser) they will be forwarded to the affiliate URL, with a delay of a second or two at most. They will hopefully buy something then, generating a commission for you.

4. Write relevant articles, linking to your domain in the resource box.

When your article is read, and the reader wants to learn more, he will click through to your domain and be redirected to your affiliate URL. Be sure your article is relevant to what he finds there, or he isn't likely to buy anything. Remember, you will almost certainly do best offering information and products of real value to the reader.

5. Submit your article to twenty or more article directories.

Most article directories don't allow affiliate links, but they usually allow links to a domain as long as you own it - even if it redirects to an affiliate link. Read the agreement to be sure this is the case. In any case, just use the directories that do allow this. You can also submit your articles directly to newsletter publishers, or post them on your own free blog (more about blogs in moment).

Helpful Hints

Want to try this money making scheme? Here are some tips.

1. Look for high-priced, high-commission products. "Conversion rates" don't usually drop proportionately with higher prices. In other words, if 10 out of 1000 visitors buys a $17 product, that number may only drop to 7 for a similar product that costs $67. Making 50% on either, you would make an average of $85 for each 1000 readers ($8.50 x 10 buyers) who clicked on that link in the first case, or $234 in the second case ($33.50 x 7 buyers).

2. Don't try to "sell" anything in your article. Write good informational articles and let the affiliate sales page do the selling when your reader arrives there. However, do try to "sell" them on clicking that link in the resource box. Say something like, "To check out my current recommendation for (whatever you are promoting), visit (your site)."

Important Point

You can't take back those articles once they're out there, but you can redirect your domain to a different affiliate to experiment, or if the original one cancels its program. Just be sure that the affiliate product or service is relevant to the content in your articles. In fact, you may want to develop this plan around a set of possible products that all are meant for essentially the same market.

If you have three computer registry cleaners that you like, for example, you can promote all three and test to see which converts better. In each article you would have something like this in the resource box: "Visit now to get information on my favorite registry cleaner." If you are writing about dogs you can have three possible dog training ebooks to redirect to for a commission, and say something like, "For a great resource on how to train your dog, visit..."

Does It Work?

Others have claimed to do well with this plan. My own success was somewhat limited, but then I barely tried out the plan. I spent just an afternoon on my first and only attempt. I owned a domain which I hadn't developed into a website (tenmoney.com - now redirected to another site). I set it up to redirect to an affiliate product that I liked.

That took a few minutes. Then I spent a few hours to rewrite five of my articles about making money online, and I linked to my domain in each resource box. I submitted each to about a dozen article directories.

The results? Over the next two months, I made exactly $84 - just two $42 commissions. It has been many more months now without a sale. There are certainly ways to "tweak" this system, and to do better than the $17 per hour I made for my effort, but I have enough other things in the works.

That was my one and only attempt at this no-website money making scheme. No great success, but I thought you might like to know about it. It takes nothing but $9 and your time to give it a try.

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Note: The excerpt above is part of Chapter 21 from my ebook. The other five ways to make money without a website actually require no investment at all - not even nine dollars. The book is primarily about using articles to promote your online business or website, but there are a few fun chapters like this that get into other aspects of making money online. For more information about the book, or to sign up for a free short course on writing for money online, use this link: Free Online Writing Course.

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