“How to make money online.”

– Horrible search idea

The biggest pitfall that most aspiring entrepreneurs make is searching “How to make money online” while on Google. Like “How to build muscle” and “How to lose weight” you’ll end up getting spammed with unhelpful lists and overpriced eBooks. As of this writing, the top result for “How to make money online” was a generic list that started with a suggestion about filling out surveys.

Unless this is your first day on the internet you should be able to realize that filling out surveys is a horrible way to make money. This is roughly the same quality of “advice” as suggesting that people quit their jobs and survive solely off the proceeds they get from participating in various medical studies.

 

If you want to actually learn about making money online, especially affiliate marketing, you’ll want to experiment. By getting some hands on knowledge you’ll learn more than all the list articles and $500 eBooks combined. Additionally, it’s way less expensive than buying shady products from web gurus.

How to build an affiliate site for free.

While I’d normally suggest making a full site and using a cool theme, I think that people just dipping their toes in online marketing would be better off going the free route at first. When you are new to something it’s guaranteed that you’re going to suck. Most people get frustrated and quit after three months anyway. Go to WordPress, it’s way better than blogger, and make a free account.

After setting up your site register for Amazon Affiliates. Then find a subject that you love and write a post a day about it for one month. Add an affiliate link wherever you can. Try and promote every single article you author in as many ways as possible. Make a twitter account, spam Reddit, post to the ghost town that is Google Plus.

After your month is up you’ll still have zero traffic and zero revenue. However, you’ll have learned way more than you would have from an overpriced eBook or silly list post.

“Are Democrats giving you cancer? Buy my new book and find out.”

– Shrewd fearmonger

Since starting this site I’ve been able to meet all kinds of cool people, discover all sorts of new business opportunities, and learn stuff from guys who are infinity smarter than me. It’s been pretty awesome. With that said, I also have a fraction of the readership that a lot of “big name sites do.”

While this could be because of the fact that I suck, which is a possibility, I actually think that it’s because of the fact that I’ve never made any viral content. I write about my real life and things that I actually do. There are no posts about “500 secret tips that all rich people do,” or “100 ways you can start making money now.” In fact, my little affiliate project has so far only generated about $10 this month. Although I could easily fudge the numbers and say something like “I made $75,000 by only working an hour a day for one month,” I’d rather be honest. My whole project was based around people clicking through and buying more expensive items, I don’t even earn a commission when they actually do buy the penny products.

Secondly, I suspect that writing about practical and applicable information draws in a far smaller audience than screeching about the end of the world does. The world is filled with losers who’d rather mentally masturbate over the latest thesis on why fat girls are causing global warming than pick up a dumbbell or start a business.

While those scheming leftoids and shambling feminazis are confiscating our commemorative Ronald Reagan dishware and ruining the whole country, they are good for business. Thanks to shameless click-baiting, Real Alpha Males™ are setting down their Tucker Max books and joining the fight. By whining in various comment sections and forums they’ve shown their Marxist oppressors who’s boss. Like the ancient Spartans, today’s men won’t go down without a fight. The only different between them and the warriors of old is technological. While old time men had to fight with spears, storm the beaches of Normandy, and risk their lives; the manly men of today must write 1,000 word lists on how hypergamy is ruining America.

Who does click-bait appeal to?

While working on this article, I decided to investigate what types of audiences click-bait material tends to draw in. To conduct my research I decided to discredit certain authors like Tim Ferriss and James Altucher. While both men are masters of creating intriguing headlines, they usually have quality high quality articles. Even when they craft numbered lists or short posts they tend to have great content. While posts like 12 Rules for Learning Foreign Languages in Record Time might be cheesy, they still have some good advice. As such, I decided to focus only on the negative and really lazy click-bait.

Lazy people

As I’ve mentioned before, most modern writing is written to avoid any intellectual stimulation. Some of the most challenging books that I have ever read took me weeks to finish. Ecce Homo, a 90 page book, took me over a month to read. It was dense and challenging. People don’t want to have to spend six weeks struggling with a book that makes them feel stupid. They want to read 600 articles in an afternoon that allow them to show off how “smart” they are.

Fat people

I would venture a guess that most of the men writing, and reading, “How liberals and feminism have ruined your future wife” are fat. It’s like a gender flipped version of all those Jezebel articles about how men are all dopy frat boys. Every blowhard who I’ve met in real life, and every public figure like Tom Leykis and Rush Limbaugh, that has had some theory on why women are evil has been either out of shape or had some weird personality flaw. I really doubt that a guy like Hugh Hefner has any incentive to sulk around a WordPress blog and post rants about how modern women have ruined his life.

Miserable people

Misery can be monetized. I’d venture a guess and say that at least half the population is severely unhappy. It’s easier to find things that outrage you and fuel your misery than it is to overcome it. The average person is too lazy to build up their willpower and would rather find scapegoats than work on themselves.

Conclusion

Initially I was kind of upset that I’ve never gotten the type of traffic that viral content masters seem to continually churn out. Now I don’t really care. I’d rather have one or two articles that get picked up because of their quality than a dozen posts that draw attention because I was able to pander to a bunch of slugs.

Additionally, Matt Forney had a post similar to mine today. Apparently quality over emotional appeal is on everyone’s mind. I actually started writing this post last week, and just added the final touches earlier this morning.

 

“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.”

– Ovid

Once upon a time…

I saved $4,000 by being stupid. At the time I was 19 and had no idea how business worked. I’d had a full time summer job and worked while in school. This allowed me to save up over four grand.

One day I was watching Fight Club and got to the part where Ed Norton’s character talks about how much money he and Tyler Durden make from selling soap. At that moment I knew that I was destined to go into the soap industry. Robert Koch, soap mogul had a nice ring to it.

I ended up setting out to learn everything I could about how soap was made. I bought books, read forums, and studied recipes until the wee hours of the morning. At the same time I started learning about how business worked. I cold called stores asking if they’d like to buy my soap, I read books like Good to Great, and I pestered every successful person that I could find.

While I was enthusiastically telling someone about my lofty soap making plans, they interrupted and pointed out a slew of issues that I had overlooked. I’d need to store my soap, find a reliable place to buy inexpensive ingredients, transport the product, and find a way to market myself against the 10 million other artisan soap makers that live in Iowa. It was then suggested that I save my money, at the time I hadn’t actually bought or made any of the soap yet, and try making a business that had less moving parts.

Since then I’ve started several small businesses. None of them have ever cost me more than $100 and some time. While not every one of them has been awesome, most of them have done pretty well. I attribute a lot of that success to the fact that all my ideas are as simple as possible.

How to come up with a business idea in 15 minutes.

• Make something with no input.

I’d suggest making your first few businesses both simple and affordable. Building a theme park or opening a restaurant are going to be way too expensive and time consuming for most people. You’ll want to create something that you can run without having to take out loans. Internet businesses are great from this standpoint, because they don’t require you to rent an office building or do hire a staff.

• Have a unique gimmick.

I made more money off of Fiverr than I did at my actual job. My entire business took me three minutes to create. I simply looked at what types of gigs where selling, and added my own twist. At the time review writing services were booming. While most sellers were offering one 300 word review for $5, I decided to offer two 125 word reviews. I actually did less work, and brought in more customers. In two months I even became the number one review writer on the entire site.

• Look for something that interests you.

I came up with the idea for my latest site after reading a Cracked article about funny penny items on Amazon. I liked the article enough that I though making a site about various one cent wares would be a good idea. While the project hasn’t made me rich, it has paid for itself already. If you’re going to create something, make sure that it interests you. This way it’s fun to work on even when you aren’t making money.

• Create a business that can be summed up in an elevator pitch.

The biggest problem with my soap company was the fact that it was too complex. If you had asked me to describe it, I would have wasted a good 15 minutes trying to sum it up. If you can’t summarize what you will be doing, it might be a little too complex for you. While there are some obvious exceptions, I’d try and avoid starting out with a sprawling and undefinable business. “I will write your company a high quality SEO article within the next 24 hours,” is a much better business idea than “I will build a house on a remote mountaintop and hire a staff of artists and writers to freely express themselves in this environment, I will then compile an analogy of their work and try to sell it to various museums.” The second one might be “cooler,” but your going to need a lot of money just to get it off the ground.

Bonus round:

While not a requirement, I’d also recommend that aspiring entrepreneurs go out and pick up a few business books. While there are plenty of great blogs and videos about making money, they pale in comparison to actual memoirs and biographies. How to Get Rich and The $100 Startup are both available on Amazon for less than $10 a piece. Both books are worth the investment.

 Conclusion:

Try to keep your business ideas simple. Just because something is complicated does not mean that it is profitable. You’d be better off making a bare bones company and expanding it, than you would from starting huge and trying to manage all kinds of different aspects. Even something as laughably simple as writing articles or making a blog that reviews gummy worms, is better than a grandiose plan that requires loans and employees to function.

“The first rule about the low hanging fruit principle is to always watch out for low hanging branches, they’re the ones to take it away from you.”

–  Stephen Richards

In the past I’ve complained about how many people pay writers next to nothing. While I still think that this is a massive problem, there are a few gems buried in the world of low paying jobs. With a keen eye you can easily swoop these gigs up and turn them into extra spending money. Without further ado, here are a couple of low hanging fruit that are ripe for the harvest:

• Reviews

While Amazon has gotten a lot better at flagging reviews, there is still money to be made from them. While I have to be a lot more careful now, and can’t move nearly enough orders to make a full time living, I have recently gotten back into the review game. This time I have been using sites like Craigslist and oDesk to find clients. Although I’ve only done a handful of posts, each one has paid me more than I used to get off of Fiverr.

• Articles in the $10-$15 range.

In the past I used to overlook every article that paid less than $40. It turns out that I was missing a lot of easy money. While a lot of employers will try and get writers to produce articles for as low as a dollar, I’ve even seen generous offers of $0.99 for 500 words, there are some companies that want better quality. These places are typically small businesses within the United States and they are willing to pay more for higher quality work. Additionally, these clients are usually great to work with and incredibly friendly.

• Blog comments.

A lot of people actually pay to have comments on their articles. While each comment usually doesn’t pay much, they add up quickly. What makes commenting nice is the fact that you never have to write a lot. Making five 50 word comments about the latest Miley Cyrus scandal is a cakewalk.

• Random one shots.

Lastly, there are a lot of odd jobs floating around the web. I’ve written about pages for random websites, made product summaries, and added hyperlinks to an article. While most people, including myself, fixate on things like passive income, there are a million other ways to turn a profit. Even things like holding a sign and taking a picture of yourself, or writing something on your arm can be monetized.

While eBooks and affiliate sites are great, it’s important to remember that there are other ways to make money too. A lot of the less conventional sources of revenue are even easier and less time consuming to do than making a website or creating a product.

“When I grow up, I still want to be a director.”

– Steven Spielberg

I should have shot commercials last year when I was launching this site. Making videos and advertisements has been something that I have thought about for a long time, but I’d always make excuses and postpone doing it. I thought it would be too expensive, time consuming, and technically exhausting. I was wrong.

A week or two ago, I finally commissioned a video to help promote Amazon For A Penny. I figured that it would be a fun way to boost traffic and liven up the site. At the worst it would provide me with a nice backlink from YouTube. Here are a few things that I learned from making my first commercial:

• Commercials are cheap to produce.

For a long time I had thought that commercials were expensive to shoot. I imagined that it would cost me several hundred dollars to make a short clip. While I’m not going to tell you what my ad cost me, it was significantly less than I would have thought. In fact, I did the whole video for less than ten dollars.

Like writers, actors and actresses can be bought for very little. Even if you’re super cheap you can browse Fiverr and find some decent talent. For five bucks it’s entirely possible to make a full length commercial for whatever you want.

• Hire professionals.

Initially I was planning on filming myself and using it to promote my site. I was planning on wearing a smoking jacket and sitting behind a large expensive painting. I was then going to get up, walk around the room, and point out all my expensive art. Afterwards I was going to explain that I had been able to afford all my nice things because I shopped with Amazon For A Penny and used the site to buy Christmas gifts for all my relatives.

While my commercial was funny, it was also very difficult to make and expensive to produce. I needed to decorate my office to look more upscale and I needed to memorize and deliver a rather complicated script. Instead of spending a lot of time on something that I was unsure about anyway, I eventually decided to hire two girls to film a very basic ad. Although they won’t be winning any awards, I think they did a better job delivering their lines than I would have been able to. They also saved me a lot of time and embarrassment since I get nervous in front of cameras.

• Commercials are easy to write.

I own a book titled How to Write a Movie in 21 Days. I was planning on using it for my commercial’s script. Instead I just wrote down the dialogue and who spoke it. The whole thing was written within about five minutes. If you can blog, you can definitely write a simple script.

• Even an idiot can upload content to YouTube.

This advertisement was the first thing that I ever uploaded to YouTube. Initially I was expecting the process to be complicated. In reality I just needed to press a few buttons. Adding videos was a lot simpler than I had anticipated.

I had a lot of fun shooting my commercial. It was easy to make and highly affordable to produce. If you have a website or sell a product, I would recommend making at least one video. It makes the site more dynamic and sets your content apart from everyone else.