The answer, in most cases, is they own a money-making website. You can too. And it’s easier than you might think.

Granted, you don’t need a website to make money online. But if you want complete control over your earnings and endless income opportunities, owning your own website is the way to go.

Benefits of Being an Online Entrepreneur

It can be a little slow going in the beginning as you set out to create a money-making website. After all, just because you build a website, doesn’t mean people will visit it. But with a little patience and a lot of hard work, you can launch a site from scratch and use it to earn a full-time income.

And the benefits of building your own site (and not working for someone else) are seemingly endless:

• Be your own boss
• Freedom to work wherever
• Unlimited earning potential
• Passive income possibilities (earn money while you sleep!)

And then there’s the whole feeling of self accomplishment — a pretty good thing to have. In fact, entrepreneurs are said to be some of the happiest people around. And who couldn’t use a little extra dose of happiness?

Who Would Make a Good Online Entrepreneur

It’s not easy to start a website on your own. It’s harder still to turn that website into an income generator. Because of these challenges, would-be online entrepreneurs need to have traits like:

• Motivation
• Passion
• Tenacity
• Self-Belief
• Creativity
• Versatility
• Flexibility

Of course, this is just a short list of traits of successful entrepreneurs. But if you have the drive to get something up and running and the follow through to make it happen, you can find success — no experience required.

What You Don’t Need to Be a Successful Online Entrepreneur

It’s easy to talk about traits of successful online entrepreneurs. But what about the things you don’t need?

For starters, you do not need years of experience or any experience at all. In fact, thanks to user-friendly WordPress, you can get a variety of money-making websites up without:

• Touching a line of code
• Knowledge of web design
• Previous domain ownership
• Graphic design know-how

Sounds too good to be true, right? It’s not. You really can take the DIY approach to creating a beautiful website thanks to WordPress.

A Quick Lesson in WordPress

If you’re new to the world of online entrepreneurship, it’s easy to get overwhelmed — hosting, plugins, and themes — oh my!

But, fear not! It’s easier than you think, and something you really can DIY. First things first, let’s understand what WordPress is and why it’s an easy-peasy platform to use for beginners (and experts) alike.

What is WordPress?

In a nutshell, WordPress is an easy-to-use website creation tool, also known as a content management system (CMS).

Many bloggers (myself included) use this powerful platform to create a money-making blog. But WordPress isn’t just for bloggers!

Some big-name brands that use WordPress include:

• MTV News
• The New Yorker
• BBC America
• Star Wars Official Blog
• Forbes
• Mashable
• NY Times Blog

Really, the list could go on and on.

So, why does everyone from one-woman bloggers to big-name brands love WordPress?

Here’s what some high-profile users had to say about WordPress:

“…We are able to get the same editing tools and easy-to-use interface into the hands of all our editors.” – BBC

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“…Everyone we spoke to said that WordPress was the better choice for ease of use, intuitiveness, and simpler workflow.” – Kaiser Family Foundation 

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“It enables non-technical personnel to contribute to our team’s blog, and they can actually figure it out in WordPress.” – NASA

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“We have developed a responsive theme that we can use to easily launch a new section of our website and quickly start creating content.” – TIME.com

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Still not convinced? Here’s some other benefits of using this popular platform to launch your own online business.

Benefits of Using WordPress

It’s Free

Did someone say free? Yep. That’s right. This powerful website builder is free. Forever. You’ll never, ever have to spend a dime to install WordPress on your site.

It’s Easy to Use

You don’t need a developer background to launch a site on WordPress. I started this blog without knowing a single thing and was able to get it up and running in a matter of minutes — yes, minutes. You can too. WordPress really is that easy to use.

It’s Scalable

When you use WordPress you can start small and grow organically — and the sky’s the limit! You’ll never outgrow WordPress — remember, everyone from bloggers to big-name businesses use WordPress because it suits the needs of both small operations and large-scale projects.

It’s Mobile Friendly

Most of us browse the internet on mobile devices. And when a website isn’t mobile friendly, visitors will leave it before it even loads. Thankfully, WordPress looks great on mobile devices (known as being ‘responsive.’)

It’s Quick

How long would it take you to open a brick-and-mortar business? Months? Years? Well, with WordPress, you can literally have your own money-making website up and running in a weekend. Seriously. It’s so easy to use and the install is super quick — you spend less time constructing your site so you can get straight to the money-making part.

It’s Versatile

Whether you want your own boutique, blog, or business WordPress has got you covered. The countless plugins and themes allow you to create a perfectly tailored site that fits your needs, no matter what they may be.

It’s Beautiful

Speaking of plugins and themes — you can create a truly beautiful site with WordPress. I can talk and talk about how pretty WordPress sites are, or I could show you what I’m talking about (I think the latter is way more effective).

Want to start your own subscription service? WordPress can do that. Take a look at Fair Ivy for inspiration:

Want to launch the brand of you? You can do that, too. Just ask Brandice Daniel who tells her unique story using WordPress:

Or if you want to start a blog, you know you can do that with WordPress. I’m a sucker for food blogs and love how WordPress makes recipes and images that much more appetizing. Check out Sugar & Cloth to see what I’m talking about:

What You Need to Launch

You’re convinced how powerful (and pretty) WordPress can be. Now you’re ready to DIY your own money-making website. Woohoo! So, what exactly do you need?

First things first, you’ve got to pick a host.

Hosting Your WordPress Website: .Com or .Org?

There are two kinds of WordPress out there: WordPress.org and WordPress.com

• WordPress.com sites are hosted for free
• WordPress.org sites cost money to host each month

Now, at this point you may be saying, “It’s a no-brainer — I’m choosing the freebie option.” And while this is totally okay if you want to blog for fun or hobby, it’s not the way to go if you want to make money blogging.

Why?

On WordPress.com, your web address will look something like this:

• YourTotallyAmazingandAwesomeSite.WordPress.com
• YourNameHere.WordPress.com

Not exactly the most professional look when you’re trying to monetize. And speaking of monetizing, when you go the freebie route, there are limitations on how you can make money with your site. From WordPress.com:

We understand monetization is important for many site owners, and we welcome and support many methods of monetizing the hard work you put into your blogs and sites.

There are a few restrictions, however, because we’re dedicated to keeping the WordPress.com community uncluttered by scams and unwanted commercial messages or “spam”.

This limits your earning potential in a big way since there are restrictions on ads, affiliate links, and sponsored content via WordPress.com — 3 major sources of potential revenue!

Self-Host WordPress.org

When you decide to self-host your site via WordPress.org, you get to choose whichever domain name you want without having to include WordPress. For example:

• YourSuperCoolandFantasticSite.com
• ThisBlogBelongstoMeandMeAlone.com
• YourUniqueNameHere.com
• ExtremelyCleverandCatchyName.com

You get the point. And there’s no restrictions on how you monetize. This means you can sign up for whichever ad networks and affiliate programs that make sense for your site. And when it comes to sponsored content, you have total control over what does and does not make its way to your blog.

If you want to make money with a website, self-hosting is the way to go. Period. Not only does it give off a professional vibe, it puts you completely in control of your site and your revenue streams.

What’s in a Host?

When you decide to self-host, you need to pay for hosting services each month. A host is the service that gives your site visibility. You can buy a domain name but without a host, your site won’t be seen online.

Think of it like this: In mobile home communities, residents own their individuals houses but they have to pay lot rent each month to park their homes on the property. Think of your hosting provider as your site’s landlord — you own your site, but you’re paying the host to ‘park’ your website online.

And finding a good host can make your life as a newbie online entrepreneur that much easier. I recommend BlueHost for:

• Affordability
• 24/7 support
• Free domain name ($14.99 value)
• One-click WordPress install

It really doesn’t get much easier than hosting your WordPress site with BlueHost. With their one-click install, you can literally have WordPress up and running in a matter of minutes.

And, to make it even easier, I’ve created a no-fail guide to help you set up hosting with BlueHost and how to install WordPress — quickly.

Money-Making Websites You Can DIY with WordPress

What kind of money-making website will you launch? With WordPress, the sky’s the limit. You can start a niche site for the purpose of making affiliate sales. You can create a boutique that sells handmade goods. You could even launch a local directory that shares events and places in your town. You could start a membership site or sell information products.

Really, there’s no right or wrong answer when it comes to online entrepreneurship — you do what you love or what appeals to you.

Need a little inspiration? I’ve launched three different money-making websites with WordPress (and show you how you can do it too):

• Job Board
• Blog
• Freelance Service Site

Keep in mind, I’ve started these sites without prior experience and was able to make them successful. But I also know that it’s one thing to dream about being an online entrepreneur and another thing to actually get started. If that sounds like you, you need to read The Four-Hour Work Week to learn how you too can escape the 9 to 5 and build your own online career that lets you work anywhere you want!

Questions? Have an online business idea but don’t know where to start? Leave it in the comments below. I’m here to help!

This post contains affiliate links. Please read my disclosure statement for more information.

The post How to Create Money-Making Websites You Can DIY with WordPress appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

Chances are, it’s not an everyday occurrence. Instead, you probably consume the majority of your news and entertainment digitally.

You’re not alone.

Americans love digital content. In fact, only about 2 out of every 10 adults gets their news from print papers. Even ebooks are more popular than their print counterparts. About 61% of all books sold each day are digital!

Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

So impressive, in fact, that you’d be doing yourself (and your wallet) a disservice by not selling digital content.

Benefits of Selling Digital Content

Almost anyone can sell content for download. It’s true.

If you have knowledge to share, you have knowledge to sell.

Technically, this is called information marketing or being an infopreneur. And the benefits of being an infopreneur are many:

• Passive income
• Low startup costs and overhead
• Easy-to-maintain business
• Limitless earning potential
• No physical products or inventory to keep on hand
• No shipping
• Easily scaleable

With digital content, you can create a product once and sell it over and over again — often, on autopilot. This means you spend less time on customer service, packaging and shipping and more time on marketing and making (which means more money for you!).

Who Can Sell Digital Content?

It’s a common misconception that you have to be the end-all-be-all expert in a field or niche to be a successful infopreneur.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

While you do need to offer valuable content, you don’t have to be the foremost scholar in your field.

Heck, you don’t even need to be a designer, prolific writer or seasoned teacher to sell digital content.

So then what do you need?

You need to be able to solve a common problem.

Find a Pain Point. Then Solve It.

To be a successful infopreneur, you need to identify a widespread problem or pain point. Once you do, you can use your existing knowledge to solve it. This is what will sell your digital product(s) for you!

For example, let’s say you’re a millennial who amassed $10,000 in savings in a year’s time so you could buy a house. That’s great! Chances are, there are other millennials out there who have next to nothing in their savings. And their light bank accounts are preventing them from buying a house any time soon.

While you’re no financial expert, you have the real world experience to back up your teaching. You could show other young millennials how to create a budget, track their spending, set aside money to save, and start a side hustle to boost their bank account — all things you did to reach your $10,000 goal in a year.

Your guide could be packaged into a workbook/ebook combo that you can sell and market to millennials. And because you just (successfully) did exactly what they’re trying to do, you automatically have tons of credibility to back up your content.

Of course, this is just a random example. Your digital content will need to be based on your own experience and existing knowledge.

But remember, if you want people to buy what you’re selling, find an audience’s pain point and offer them a solution.

Easy(ish)-to-Create Content

Have you got a pain point in mind? Are your wheels turning on how you can solve it? Great. That’s half the battle.

Now you’ll need to start selling. But before you can sell anything, you’ve got to get creating.

There are a lot of ways you can take your ideas and package them into products for sale. There is no right or wrong answer when creating digital content. Sure, everyone has an opinion on the subject. And as you get more experienced as an infopreneur, you’ll develop your own preferences too. But if you’re looking for an easy way to go, you can’t go wrong with these ideas.

Ebook

You can create an ebook in just 30 days. That’s right. In a month’s time you can end up with a perfectly polished ebook that sells really well.

It all starts with a solid outline. A well written outline takes care of about 40% of the work. Once you have the general layout, filling in the content is a breeze.

Even if you don’t think you’re a great writer, you can still get an ebook up for sale. How? Hire a ghostwriter. You can turn to a freelance platform site like Upwork or even Fiverr to outsource the writing.

But a word of advice: The end will result will only be as good as what you invest in it. Paying someone $10 to write 10,000 words will likely result in a not-so-stellar finished product. And the whole point of creating digital content is to sell it. Your ebook won’t sell if your content is lacking.

Workbooks

If your content would work better with a lot of user input, then a workbook may be the better way to go. A workbook is like an ebook but it offers a lot of blank space for the reader to fill in their own content. This helps them ‘work’ their way through a problem by writing things out.

Any kind of self-help subjects do great in the workbook format. And, like an ebook, you can always outsource the content creation if you have an idea of what you want but lack the words to put it all in writing.

Tutorials

If videos are more your thing, consider creating how-to tutorials. You can easily create a screencast to show viewers how to master techniques in Photoshop, create templates in Word, or code their own website. Really, you can create a screencast on just about anything that can be demonstrated on a computer.

With a decent microphone and free software, you can get a screencast complete and up for sale in a matter of days.

Printables

For the design-inclined, printables can lead to plenty of passive income success. Some of the most popular printables include:

• Invitations
• Sewing patterns
• Decorations
• Wall art

But those are just a few popular examples — you can create and sell whatever makes sense for you. Are you an avid organizer? Create a printable checklist to help combat clutter. Have a handle on gluten-free cooking? Sell recipe cards. Savvy shopper? Make a calendar of the best time of year to save.

Again, wherever your expertise or knowledge lies, use it to drive your creations.

How to Sell Digital Goods on Autopilot

Now that you’ve discovered a pain point, devised a solution, and packaged it into a sellable good, it’s time to get down to business. But how, exactly, do you sell your content without having to babysit your sales 24/7?

I have one word for you: Shopify.

Shopify is a super-easy, hands-off ecommerce solution. In just a few clicks, you can get a perfectly polished website up that hosts your digital content for instant download. The best part? With easy-to-integrate Shopfiy apps, it can all be done on autopilot.

With Shopify on your side, a customer lands on your site. Places your digital product in their cart. Checks out. And, boom, the content is instantly made available to them via download. How’s that for passive income?

Selling on Shopify

The easiest way to get up and running is to sign up for Shopify and download the free Digital Downloads App.

With this app installed in your shop, you can:

• Set download limits
• Give customers direct downloads upon purchase
• Automatically email download link after purchase
• Provide automatic updates if you change or edit content

With this app in place, you can automate the entire process as you make sales and fulfill orders 24/7.

And instead of logging in constantly to keep track of sales, the app allows you to see, at a glance, how many products you’ve sold and the number of downloads every single day.

Ready to start selling? You can get up and running in just a few steps:

•  Simply sign up for a free 14-day trial of Shopify
• Pick your favorite theme — there are premium and free options available
• Customize it to your liking — change colors, layouts, and add a logo (all without touching a single line of code).
• Upload your products and launch!

That’s it. You’re now ready to start earning passive income by selling digital downloads on Shopify!

This post contains affiliate links. I only recommend products, services and brands that I trust. Learn more by reading my disclosure statement. 

The post Passive Income: How to Sell Digital Downloads on Autopilot appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

But perhaps, I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?

About five months ago, I finally started focusing on affiliate marketing as a way to monetize Work from Home Happiness. Up until that point, I had almost exclusively been focused on building an audience, growing traffic, and developing longform content. And, while slow going, this plan was working — for traffic, anyway. In terms of monetization, not so much, or not as much as I would have liked.

So, feeling pretty good in my overall content marketing strategy, I knew it was time to jump into affiliate marketing. And, as a total beginner, this is what I learned and what I did to reach a point where I’m making $2,500/month (and growing!) in affiliate sales alone.

What is Affiliate Marketing, Exactly?

Good question. And, honestly, this was my exact thought. I knew there were various affiliate marketing networks and programs out there but how do they work? Well, turns out, they each work a bit differently but, generally speaking, they fall into one of three “pay per” categories:

Pay Per Click

Some advertisers will pay you for every “click” you send their way. That is, every time someone clicks on your affiliate link you receive payment, no matter what that person does next.

For example, I’m an affiliate with the BookScouter App. They pay $0.15 for every click I send their way. It doesn’t matter if the person downloads the app or simply exits takes a look around and then leaves the site — I still get $0.15.

As a pay per click affiliate, you’ll receive a flat rate (like the $0.15 I mentioned) for every click your referral link receives. So, the more traffic you have, the greater your chances are of getting people to click through using your link.

Pay Per Lead

With pay per lead programs, you’ll receive a set payout for each lead you send over to a company. This requires the ‘lead’ to click on your affiliate link and then perform some task, say fill out a form, request information or some other action as defined in your affiliate agreement.

For example, I’m an affiliate with Chloe+Isabel. It’s a company that helps women set up their own online jewelry business. Whenever someone clicks on my affiliate link and then applies to become a merchandiser with Chloe+Isabel, I receive $40. See the difference? If someone simply clicks on my affiliate link, checks out the site and moves on, I don’t receive anything. But if they apply to become a merchandiser after clicking my affiliate link, I receive a commission for that lead.

Pay Per Sale

Pay per sale affiliate programs give you a percentage of a purchase. So, this means someone needs to click your affiliate link, visit a website, and then make a purchase. You’ll receive a pre-determined percentage of each sale you refer. The amount you’ll receive varies — it could be 10% or 60% — it really just depends on the affiliate program’s terms.

For example, I’m an affiliate with an online transcription course called TranscribeAnywhere. I receive 20% commission each time someone signs up for the course using my affiliate link.

While most pay per sale affiliate programs pay you a percentage of each sale you refer, some will pay you a flat rate. For example, BlueHost pays their affiliates between $65-$75 for each new hosting customer they send over — regardless of what kind of hosting plan the referral signs up for.

Each of the “pay-per” models have their pros and cons. Really, it’s up to you decide whether or not you like the terms of an individual affiliate program. If you don’t, you don’t have to sign up for it

What Makes Affiliate Marketing So Great, Anyway?

Another great question! And, really, exactly what I was thinking five months back too. Up until that point, I had put very little effort into my affiliate marketing strategy. Sure, I had signed up as a publisher for a few products and placed some links throughout my site, but didn’t come up with an affiliate marketing plan like I had done when creating a content marketing strategy. And, as a result, my affiliate sales were lacking — next to nothing, in fact. That’s why I never understood why so many people were declaring affiliate marketing as the way to monetize a blog or website.

But then I decided it was time to get serious about monetizing Work from Home Happiness. I had worked hard to create traffic — it was time to build up my income too. Enter affiliate marketing. And I quickly fell in love with this way of earning for a few reasons.

Completely Location Independent

When you decide to monetize your blog or website with affiliate links, you can literally make money from anywhere with an Internet connection. As an affiliate marketer, you’re not tethered to a particular location or limited in how much you earn — you’ll get out of it what you put into it.

No Products Required

The great thing about promoting other people’s products is you’re not creating them yourself. Now, don’t get me wrong, creating your own information products is a great way to earn — but there’s also something to be said about forgoing creating in favor of promoting You don’t have any of the customer service to deal with — just sit back and watch your affiliate sales roll in.

Earn Money in Your Sleep

There’s few greater feelings than waking up in the morning only to find you made $100 while you slept. And this isn’t unusual as an affiliate marketer. In fact, a well-written blog post that took a few hours to write, could wind up being one of your biggest money makers each month. And the best part is, it’s all passive income!

Low Startup Costs and Low Overhead

Unlike a brick and mortar business, starting a blog or website costs next to nothing. And maintaining your site is equally cheap. So, when you add affiliate marketing into the mix, you have the potential to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each month for something that costs just a few bucks to maintain.

Perfectly Complements Your Existing Site

It doesn’t matter what your niche is, affiliate marketing can easily complement your existing content. I can attest to this — since I spent the majority of my first year as a blogger building my traffic and creating longform content, I was nervous how I could monetize hundreds of existing blog posts and dozens of pages. Turns out, it wasn’t a problem at all. In fact, it was super simple to go back and add affiliate links to blog posts a year old, turning work I had already done into recurring revenue streams. What’s not to love?

What’s Not So Great About Affiliate Marketing

As with anything, affiliate marketing isn’t just a long list of pros. There’s some cons you should be aware of too. And I think it’s important to discuss these. I’m not trying to rain on your affiliate marketing parade. Instead, I’d rather you be realistic about the possibilities of getting started and what to expect in the beginning.

Don’t Expect Overnight Success

If you spend time on Pinterest, you probably see various income reports from bloggers and website owners. These reports show some pretty impressive monthly affiliate earnings — some well into five figures. But, to get to that point takes time. You don’t just throw up an affiliate link and then start seeing sales roll in overnight. In fact, it might be several months before you actually make your first affiliate marketing dollar. And that’s okay — just remember to stick with it and never compare the start of your journey to someone who’s in the middle of theirs

Delayed Payments

Don’t expect same day payouts whenever you make a referral. In fact, once you make a referral, it can take anywhere from 30 to 60 days before you’re paid. Once you get going, you’ll receive payments in regular intervals — but in the beginning, it can feel like forever before you receive a payment.

Inconsistent Payments

You can’t really rely on affiliate marketing as a revenue stream. Sure, you may be able to project what you’ll make each month but this can be hit or miss. You could have one month that is super amazing only to be followed up by a fraction of that the next month.

How to Pick the Right Affiliate Marketing Programs

Now you know the pros and cons of affiliate marketing, and you still want to jump in. Great! But before you do, know this: Not all affiliate networks are created equal. Before signing up for a program there are some things to consider. And the more thought you put into it ahead of time, the more you’ll get out of it in the long run.

Less is More

Fact: I made the mistake of signing up for just about every affiliate marketing program and network under the sun. My reason? The more I promoted, the more I’d earn. Right? Right?!?! Wrong. Turns out, this was ineffective. For one, I forgot I was even a part of 90% of the programs I signed up for. And two, one link placed in one blog post does not an affiliate strategy make.

Instead, it’s best to focus on a few programs — and promote them over and over again on your blog and social media. Even though you’re promoting fewer things, you’ll earn more because you’re focusing your efforts on a handful of products that actually produce results.

Don’t Pay for Affiliate Programs

Seriously. Just don’t do it. In my foolish quest to sign up for almost every affiliate program, I came across several that promised everything but the moon — and, as luck would have it, these programs would always be on special — normally $99 but promo priced at $20. Granted, I just made up that scenario but you get the point. You don’t need to pay to be an affiliate. As a beginner, it may be tempting to pay for these programs that swear they will give you the keys to affiliate marketing success and quickly earn you six figures a month — but stick to your guns and move on.

Let Your Niche Lead the Way

You’d probably be pretty confused if I promoted clothing and accessories here on Work from Home Happiness — and for good reason. I blog about remote careers, online entrepreneurship, and freelancing. Fashion just doesn’t fit in.

And your readers will be equally confused if you step outside of your niche to promote unrelated products. Not only will this confusion lead them to not purchase what you’re selling, but it may turn them off from your blog altogether. Remember, an affiliate product should perfectly complement you, your blog and your content — not confuse people.

Where to Promote Your Affiliate Links

This may seem like an obvious answer but, the truth is, it really isn’t. Obviously, you want to monetize your website or blog with affiliate links but how you go about it and where you place them will make all the difference in your sales. Plus, if you have a strong social presence, there’s the option of placing affiliate links on social sites.

Old Blog Posts

I cringe when I read back over my first not-so-subtle attempts at affiliate marketing. Blog posts that I revamped to include affiliate links went from casual reads to gross sales pitches faster than you could hit the X on your browser. This is another place to remind you that less is more. Yes, it’s a good idea to go back through older posts and refresh them. And if you find one where it makes sense to include an affiliate link or two — go for it. But don’t overdo it. You look like you’re spamming your own blog posts and readers probably won’t buy what you’re selling anyway. Keep yourself to two or three affiliate links per post — one in the beginning, one in the middle, and one at the end. That’s it.

Your Sidebar

Your site’s sidebar can really do wonders for your affiliate sales. And, no, this doesn’t mean filling your sidebar with tons of skyscraper ads and 300×250 squares promoting anything and everything. Instead, pick one affiliate offer and create a custom ad for it, one that fits your overall look/design/feel/colors.

I like to use Canva for this, but you can use any program you like. Check out this one I made for ProofreadAnywhere — it converts better than any text links I use throughout various pages and posts!

Social Media

As I previously mentioned, many of your social profiles can be monetized with affiliate links.  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all allow affiliate links within your daily posts, pins, pictures, and tweets. This is an area I’m just now getting int0 — but I’ve already found that, when done right, a well placed affiliate link can be really effective on social media — especially Pinterest.

Again, I like to use Canva to create a custom pin for an affiliate offer. For example, I created this pin for Transcribe Anywhere’s free mini course — if someone clicks on this pin, takes the freebie course, and then later signs up for the paid course, I’ll get a commission — thanks to a well-placed pin.

But, again, this is a case of less is more — don’t only pin affiliate offers, send out tweets with affiliate links, or use Facebook non-stop to display affiliate programs. You’ll turn off your social followers and likely won’t receive any affiliate sales.

Email List

If you have subscribers, there’s another potential outlet to earn money — even if you don’t have your own digital products to sell yet. Again, promoting affiliate offers to your email list should be done only when appropriate and relevant to your niche. If someone trusts you enough to offer up their email to you, don’t lose their trust by constantly sending them affiliate offers — you’ll likely lose subscribers and come off as spammy.

How to Promote

When you plan on using affiliate links as a way to monetize your site, remember this: Content is key! A well written post that just happens to contain an affiliate link or two will convert much better than a post thrown up for the sake of trying to make a buck or two.

Remember, you always want to be providing value to your readers — even when promoting affiliate programs. And offering value usually starts with amazing content that people actually want to read and share.

Use Sparingly

Noticing a theme? Whether you promote to your email list, on social media, your blog’s sidebar, or posts, use your affiliate links sparingly! The more you use in one spot the more it will feel like a spam-filled zone. While the point of affiliate marketing is to make money, overdoing it can actually backfire.

Follow the Rules

You don’t want to be a rule breaker when it comes to affiliate marketing. At the very least, it can get you kicked out of an affiliate program. And the worst, it can land you in hot water with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

There are specific rules bloggers must follow when making endorsements — and this includes disclosing any advertiser-publisher relationships to your readers. That’s why most bloggers have a disclosure statement page and include reference to it in any blog posts with affiliate links. Make sure you read the FTC’s Endorsement Policy as well as understand the dos and don’ts of the individual affiliate programs you’re a part of!

Use Pretty Links

Affiliate links aren’t very pretty — but that’s for good reason. These long, complicated looking links are used to track publisher sales. Without them, you wouldn’t get credit every time you made a referral.

But people may hesitate to click on these super long affiliate links because they aren’t easily recognized. If you’re a WordPress user, this is an easy fix. You can use a simple and free plugin like Pretty Links Lite. This will take your links from long and scary looking to short and familiar.

The picture to the right there is a screenshot of some of my affiliate links that have been transformed thanks to Pretty Links Lite.

The target URLs are the original links you receive when you sign up for an affiliate program. As you can see, they aren’t the most attractive. But Pretty Links solves this by allowing you to create much shorter and branded affiliate links as seen in the grey  boxes.

People are more likely to click on your branded links than they are some unknown one. Note, it’s fine to use these shortened and beautified links on your own blog but some sites won’t let you use them. For example, while Pinterest allows affiliate links, they will not let you use so-called “link cloakers” to promote products. You’ve got to use the original link!

Terms You Need to Know

I am by no means an affiliate marketing expert. But I’m learning a lot — just like you. And I’m eager to share what I’ve learned so far. Part of the reason it took me a while to get a grasp on affiliate marketing was because I knew very little — and a lot of the information was intimidating and overwhelming!

To help, I’ve put together this short glossary of affiliate marketing terms you need to know from the start. Because when you truly understand something, it makes it that much easier to master it — imagine that

Advertiser

The advertiser is the person or company who has created a product or service for sale. You’ll be promoting the advertiser’s items for them. In affiliate marketing, the advertiser is often referred to as the merchant.

Affiliate

When you agree to promote an advertiser’s products or services and receive pay based on performance, you’re officially an affiliate. Remember, as an affiliate you can get paid per click, per lead, or per sale. Your affiliate agreement will determine the terms of your affiliate relationship with an advertiser.

Affiliate Link

Your affiliate link is unique to you. It’s used to direct potential customers to the advertiser’s website. When a person clicks on your affiliate link, performs an action, or makes a purchase, you’ll be given credit for it. Remember, you can use a plugin, like Pretty Links, to make your affiliate links more attractive.

Affiliate Network

An affiliate network brings together advertisers and publishers. It’s essentially a marketplace of advertisers who are looking for publishers to promote their products and services. When you sign up at an affiliate network, you’re often paid by the network and not directly from the advertiser.

Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is a single platform ran by the advertiser to keep track of publisher sales. It’s usually a place you can login to to see your affiliate statistics.

Click Through

A click through simply refers to someone who clicks on your affiliate link and is then redirected to the advertiser’s site.

Commission

The payout you receive for getting someone to click on your affiliate link, perform an action, or make a purchase is called a commission. A commission can be a flat rate or percentage of sale — it depends on the terms of the affiliate program.

Conversion Rate

A conversion rate is the number of affiliate link clicks that actually turn into a lead or sale for which you’re paid a commission. Let’s pretend 100 people click on your affiliate link and 90 of them leave the advertiser’s website without doing anything but the other 10 make a purchase — your conversion rate would be 10%.

Cookies

When someone clicks your affiliate link, a ‘cookie’ is assigned to that person to identify them as your referral. If they end up converting at a later date, you could potentially earn a commission. Let’s say an affiliate program you’re a part of has 60-day cookies. This means that you could receive a commission if a person makes a purchase within that 60-day window from when they first clicked on your affiliate link.

Publisher

You’re the publisher! As the person placing affiliate links on your blog or website, you’re considered the publisher since you’re “publishing” promotional links.

Affiliate Networks to Join

Ready to sign up for programs and start promoting and earning? I’ve got you covered! Sign up to the Free Resource Library below. There you’ll find tons of valuable freebies for out-of-the-cube thinkers, like you, including my list of 50 Affiliate Marketing Networks to join. There’s even helpful hints for finding the perfect niche programs and products that make sense for your unique blog and brand.

Questions? Hit me with them! I’m learning right alongside with you. If I don’t know, I’m happy to ask someone who will: ashlee@workfromhomehappiness.com or say hi on Twitter — I can be found under the handle AshleeWrites.

This post contains affiliate links. Please see the disclosure statement for more information.

The post Affiliate Marketing Beginner’s Guide: What I Learned to Go from $0 to $2,500/month as an Affiliate Marketer appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

But, what, exactly is information marketing and how do you become an infopreneur?

Good question!

Simply put, information marketing is creating and selling information products. When you do this for a living, you get to call yourself an infopreneur. Infopreneurs make money by packaging their knowledge into products they can sell.

Some of the most common infopreneur products include:

• Ebooks
• Workbooks
• Ecourses

What’s great about selling information products is you can do the work once and make sales over and over again, often on autopilot (hooray for passive income!). This lets you create more products which will help increase your income — because the more you have for sale the more opportunity you have to earn.

And, it’s really a great time to be an infopreneur.

Consider this, in the United States alone, ebook sales go well into the billions each year — by 2018, it’s expected to be a nearly 9 billion industry according to Statistia.

Even if you get a teeny, tiny sliver of that gigantic pie, you’d make a good living just writing and selling ebooks. And, thanks to self-publishing platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing and services that let you sell on your own site like Shopify, Woocommerce, or Gumroad, you can easily get your digital products up for sale and in front of a worldwide audience.

But, before we get into all of that, let’s talk more about becoming an infopreneur and why it’s a great way to make money online.

Information Marketing

The most successful infopreneurs often follow a simple formula: They analyze what they know and use that knowledge to solve a problem within a targeted niche.

What Do You Know?

I’m going to bet you have a good bit of knowledge about a lot of different things. And all of this information you possess has the potential to turn into an information product.

If at this point you’re starting to feel self-doubt creep in — that’s okay. In fact, it’s perfectly normal. Many would-be infopreneurs give up before they actually get going because they falsely believe they have to be an expert to be successful or hold some kind of credentials to be taken seriously.

Let me reassure you, this just isn’t the case.

Most infopreneurs have real world experience. That is, they’ve been there, done that and now they’re showing others how they can do it, too.

What really matters is how you will take what you know or have accomplished and use it to solve a problem within a niche.

Finding a Niche

Here at Work from Home Happiness, you’ll notice a recurring theme in many blog posts and articles — the power of picking a niche. Whether you want to become a writer, proofreader, virtual assistant or, in this case, an infopreneur, my number one piece of advice is this:

Pick. A. Niche.

Information Marketing: Pick a Specific Audience

The power of a niche is undeniable. For one, it gives you direction. When you know what it is you’re tackling, it’s that much easier to get started and follow through.

Second, a niche allows you to easily find out where your customers are. And when you know who your customers are and where they hang out, you can effectively market to them which translates to more sales. Cha-ching.

And, last but certainly not least, picking a niche will cement you as an expert in your particular field, even if you’re not one (yet). Before you know it, people organically gravitate to you when they need help solving a niche-related problem.

Which Niche Will You Pick?

Ideally, your niche is something you have experience in. This allows you to write naturally and knowledgeably about the subject and deliver solid, actionable advice that gives your audience a lot of value. Your audience will reward you with positive reviews and this will naturally generate buzz around your information products.

But, your niche should also be profitable. One way to easily determine if a niche is profitable is to make sure there’s a common problem or pain-point people within this niche experience. If so, you know you’ve got a solid idea because you can take your experience and use it to help people in your niche solve this problem.

Always remember, when it comes to information marketing, people will buy things if it will help them solve their problem. Period.

The best thing you can do as an infopreneur is identify a common problem and create an information product that solves it.

Identifying Problems that You Can Solve

Pretend you had poor credit that was preventing you from getting a mortgage. So, you did a whole bunch of research to learn how you could raise your credit score, remove errors from your credit report, and improve your rating so you could qualify for a home loan. And in a year’s time, were able to raise your score over 100 points to qualify for a home loan.

You think, hmm, since I have the real world experience, I’d like my niche to be personal finance. But, what problems are people experiencing in this niche?

• Do they want to know how to save money?
• Are they interested in credit-improving techniques?
• Is eliminating credit card debt important to them?

These are all valid questions and possible pain points. But, if you want to be a successful infopreneur, you need to know that your product will address a real problem before you start creating it. If it’s not a common problem or pain-point within your niche, nobody will buy what you’re selling. And, to put it frankly, it sucks to create something only to find nobody is interested in buying it (been there, done that).

So, now it’s time to research your projected niche to figure out what people are struggling with so you can use your knowledge to help them solve that problem!

Google

Where do most people head online when they need to solve a problem? Google, right? They navigate over to Google, type in their problem or question and browse through the search results.

So, it’s definitely a good idea to use Google to your advantage to see whether or not you’ve got the potential to earn money in your niche.

Now, remember, picking a niche is one thing, but picking a narrow niche is another. You couldn’t simply write an ebook, create a course or workbook about personal finance.

Why not?

Because it’s just too broad. It’d be impossible to cover every aspect of personal finance to please all audiences. And, if you tried, you’d probably abandon the project early on after you realized what a massive undertaking it really is.

So, while your general niche may be personal finance — we need to narrow it down more, a lot more. Google can help with that too.

Keyword Planner Tool

I love freebies, especially helpful freebies. And the Google Keyword Planner Tool is one of the most useful free resources when you’re looking for a profitable niche.

If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Google account to access the Keyword Planner. Navigate over to adwords.google.com to get started.

Your page should look something like this:

See the big button that says, “Create Your First Campaign?” Don’t click it. If you do, you’ll be stuck in a sequence that will eventually require you to put in your credit card information. Instead, head on over to the Tools link where you’ll be able to access the Keyword Planner tool.

To make it easier to understand, I’ve created a 12-minute quickstart tutorial on how you might want to use the Keyword Planner Tool to help you nail down a niche. (This is my first screencast ever, so please be nice Give it a watch if you’re not familiar with Keyword Planner. If you are, no problem, skip on over to the next section to learn about other places to help you check whether or not you’ve got a profitable niche on your hands.

Is This a Potentially Profitable Audience?

In the video above, we learned that people want to check their credit scores for free, learn how to fix bad credit, and understand their options to secure a home loan when they have bad credit.

So, is this a profitable niche? Should our pretend information product cover these topics?

Here’s three questions we need to ask first:

1. Did we discover a pain-point or a problem within our niche?
2. Are people looking for solutions to these problems?
3. Can we use our existing knowledge to offer a solution to this problem?

Yes. Yes. And yes. Of course, this is a made up example to illustrate how to go through the process of nailing down a niche — but these are the steps you should take to help you create a narrow and profitable audience, one that has a problem you can easily solve with your knowledge.

Further Validation

If you wanted to validate this idea even further, I suggest visiting places where people actively discuss problems related to your niche. Reading real user questions, comments and answers can give you another level of understanding than the Keyword Planner Tool can provide.

Some great places to check include:

• Reddit
• Quora
• Niche Forums
• Niche blogs
• Facebook Groups

All of these online sites have tons of user-generated content. Looking through this information can take time, but it’s well worth it. It will help you validate your profitable niche idea and likely give you topics to cover in your information product that you hadn’t yet considered.

Another place I like to check is Amazon. Let’s say you decided to write an ebook about repairing your credit. Head on over to Amazon and type credit repair in the search box. If you find plenty of titles listed and see that people are actually buying these books, that’s a good sign!

The fact that other people are having success selling info products in this niche means you can find success, too.

We can see that not only are people creating and successfully selling ebooks in the credit repair niche, but that it’s such a popular subject that it has its own dedicated category in the Kindle Store.

Don’t Neglect Your Research

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, taking the leap into information marketing requires a lot of work. But, when done right, the return on investment can be huge! After all, there aren’t a whole lot of chances to create something that only requires a time investment upfront but can lead to financial independence down the line. That’s why it’s important to do your research and know you’ve landed on a profitable niche before you put any time into creating a product.

The point of this post is to get you to put your information marketing hat on and start coming up with potentially profitable niches that you can turn into actual products. You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) create your first information product overnight, but you should start laying the groundwork — today! I know getting started is the hardest part, but picking and validating your niche should help you confidently go into the creation process knowing you’ve got a great idea.

And, remember, don’t get caught up in shiny object syndrome! Earning real money online requires real work. Commit to information marketing and you can make something out of it. We’ve all been guilty of starting something with great enthusiasm only to abandon it midway before moving on to the next project that will ultimately get abandoned, too.

picking a profitable niche can take a lot of work, but it’s worth it! When done right, you can set yourself up for success and end up with an information product that sells.

Remember:

• Pick something you’re knowledgeable about
• Identify a pain point or problem the audience faces
• Figure out how you can solve that problem
• Validate whether or not people are actually searching for it (Google, Quora, Reddit and forums are your friends!)

As always, if you need any help, I hope you ask. You can leave questions in the comments or reach me directly: ashlee@workfromhomehappiness.com

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The post Information Marketing: Nail Down a Niche and Start Creating Your Own Income as an Infopreneur appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

What if you could get even the smallest slice of the online-job-seeking pie? You could end up making a pretty good living! Many niche job boards charge $50 to $500 for each 30-day job listing posted. Even if you could get 10 new listings a month (to start!), that’s not too bad for a business that has little startup costs or monthly maintenance fees.

You won’t be able to compete with the large job boards like Indeed, CareerBuilder or Monster. That’s okay. You don’t have to.

You can carve out a nice little spot for yourself in the job board market by picking a targeted niche.

ProBlogger, AuntMinnie, and Dice are all good examples of how a job board can thrive by providing industry-specific jobs to a certain market.

So, what kind of niche job board will you have?

You can target your local community or focus on a specific industry. You could even establish a job board for certain professionals, say virtual assistants or graphic designers.

The kind of niche job board you set up is entirely up to you. It’s a good idea to play to your strengths and pick a profession you are experienced in or have worked in before. Why?

To bring in organic traffic to your job board, you’ll want to establish a blog on the site. Blogging is one of the best ways to bring in visitors from search engines like Google and Bing. It also happens to be a great way to get social shares.

The more traffic you can bring to your site, the more you can charge for your monthly job listings. Plus, when you provide job listings AND helpful industry-related news and advice, you become an expert source of information as well as a great place to find a job.

Without experience or at least an interest in the field, you’ll quickly burn out and lose your gusto before you even get started. That’s why you should aim at an industry you actually enjoy and can provide valuable insight into.

Still Stuck?

Picking a niche for your job board will probably be the hardest part of this process (and one of the most important!). Don’t rush and pick something just for the sake of getting started. Take your time and think of something that actually resonates with you — something you know you can sustain for some time and turn into a profitable business.

For a little inspiration, check out this list of 100+ Niche Job Boards. You’ll see that there are plenty of opportunities to launch a job board that is highly focused and targeted — and be quite successful!

Getting Established

Got your niche? Great! Now you need to get your niche job board up and running — don’t worry, no technical skills required.

First things first, you need a name. Ideally, your name will have something to do with your job board’s niche. This can be an industry term or directly reference the profession.

Look at AuntMinnie — it’s a job board for radiology professionals. What does Aunt Minnie have to do with radiology, you ask? It’s a term often used by professionals in the industry to refer to a very obvious radiological finding — something so apparent even your Aunt Minnie could see it!

While the term may be lost on most, radiology professionals get it. And so it works!

The ProBlogger job board is another very successful example. It’s a go-to spot for those looking for professional blogging and writing jobs — ProBlogger. The name directly references the types of jobs listed and is easy to remember.

The takeaway? Choose a name that professionals in the niche you’re targeting will understand OR directly reference the types of jobs being posted.

Niche and Name. Now What?

You’ll need to purchase your domain name and pick a hosting provider. If you’re new to the world of web properties, your domain name is the actual address visitors use to find your site. Here at Work from Home Happiness, the domain name is WorkFromHomeHappiness.com.

Your domain name should be your job board’s name — ideally with a dot com ending. Why? Most people will automatically put a dot com at the end of a web address, no matter what. Don’t miss out on valuable traffic because you opted for a .net, .org, .ninja, .family.

What’s a Host?

Every website needs to be hosted in order to be visible on the internet. Hosting is like your website’s monthly rent — a place for it to live. Like a good or bad landlord, your host makes all the difference in your experience as a website owner each month. That’s why you’ll want to choose a host with reasonable rates and a great reputation.

One of the best hosting companies out there is BlueHost. They have 24/7 customer support and make it easy to get your website up and running — all at an affordable monthly price. When you sign up, you get a free domain name to go along with your hosting plan. This eliminates the confusing step of buying a name somewhere else and then transferring it over to your host.

Getting Started

Ready to get started? Before you do, I suggest setting aside one day to devote to this process. That’s it. Just one day. How can you get your own niche job board set up in just one day? WordPress.

When you choose WordPress for your job board, not only can you get up and running quickly, but you also get a very professional and functional site. The best part? You can do it all yourself. You don’t need any special skills or coding knowledge. Using a WordPress theme and a combination of plugins, you really can quickly and easily get your job board set up by the day’s end.

Ready? Let’s go!

First up, head on over to BlueHost to get started. Through BlueHost you’ll be able to:

• Get your domain name for free
• Establish your hosting plan
• Install WordPress quickly and easily (also for free!)

When selecting a plan, the Starter Package will have everything you need (and more!) This package comes with your domain name, email accounts (YourName@YourWebsite.com), and even $50 worth of marketing offers.

Now that you’ve picked your plan, type in the name you carefully selected for your job board in this screen. As I mentioned, when you sign up for BlueHost, you’ll get a domain name completely free. In the event you already purchased a domain name elsewhere, no problem! You can transfer it over to BlueHost.

Make sure you provide up-to-date contact information. This is how BlueHost will relay important account information to you.

The next page will ask if you’d like to add any additional items to your monthly hosting package. In all honesty, you don’t need any of these things. They are all completely optional.

Note: Whenever I purchase a domain, I always opt for Whois Privacy. Why? Every domain that is purchased goes into a database. This database stores information about the domain, including contact information of the owner. Whois Privacy Protection keeps your personal information hidden from public view. You don’t need it but it is a nice option if you prefer to keep your information private.

When you’ve selected the options that make sense for you, it’s time to make yourself an official domain owner. All you need to do is put your payment information into the secure checkout form, read and agree to the Terms of Service, and click next.

Congrats! You’re now an official domain owner and super close to having your niche job board up and running. Now you’ll  need to install WordPress. Navigate to your cPanel and find the “Instal WordPress” button like the one in the screenshot above and click on it.

You’ll be given more information about how awesome WordPress is and also be able to start the installation process. When you’re ready, simply click the “Start” button as circled above.

Make sure your domain name is listed in the box and hit “Check Domain.” This ensures WordPress is being installed on the domain you just purchased.

Don’t forget to jot down your Admin Username and Admin Password. This is the information you’ll  need to access your site in order to make changes. Once you click “Install Now” this will initiate the process of actually installing the files needed to have WordPress on your site. Don’t worry — BlueHost takes care of all that for you. You just need to hit “Install Now.”

That’s it. You’ll see Status: Installing and then a success message — you’ve now got your own niche job board with WordPress installed. Now what?

Picking a WordPress Job Board Theme

There are thousands of WordPress themes out there. The theme is what gives a WordPress site it’s overall look. Themes can be easily installed in just a couple of clicks. But before we get to installation, you need to actually pick a theme.

Where do you start?

Head on over to ThemeForest.

Type Job Board WordPress into the search box. You’ll be presented with some really great themes that are specifically built to give you a beautiful and functional job board.

My personal favorite? Jobify.

Jobify is great because of the support that comes with the theme. When you purchase Jobify, you get SideKick Walkthroughs. These step-by-step instructionals can walk you through just about any task. When you purchase Jobify, you get an entire year of access to SideKick premium — for free!

On top of the 24/7 help and guidance, Jobify also integrates with all the great job board plugins you’ll need to monetize your site right out the gate.

Which Plugins Do I Need?

WordPress plugins complement your theme. They also provide specific functions to your site without having to write a single line of code.

The main plugin you’ll need is WP Job Manager. This is a free plugin that gives you a functional job board that allows employers to submit jobs and job seekers to easily search through your job board.

But if you want to monetize your job board, you’re going to need premium plugins. These cost money. At the very least, you’ll need Simple Paid Listings.

With Simple Paid Listings, you can charge a flat fee per job posted. Employees can pay through Stripe or PayPal before their job goes live.

 The cost of Simple Paid Listings is $19. Having this plugin allows you to easily accept payments from employers when placing a job on your site.

There are some other pretty amazing plugins you can purchase to help build different revenue streams — this includes Indeed Integration, WC Paid Listings, and Resume Manager.

You don’t need these plugins. But they do expand your job board and give you different ways to monetize. For example, with Resume Manager you could charge candidates to upload their resumes to the database or charge employers to browse through resumes in search of candidates.

And with WC Paid Listings, you can set up Job Packages which can be priced at different rates depending on what the package includes (featured jobs, 30-day listing, 60-day listing, etc.)

When just getting started, you may want to seriously consider the Indeed Integration plugin. Why? Your job board will look pretty empty at first. When you have the Indeed Integration plugin, your job board will be backfilled with listings from Indeed. This gives the illusion of an active job board even when you haven’t sold your first listing yet.

And the best part is, you can sign up to be an Indeed Affiliate through their Job Roll program. This lets you make money every time you refer a user to Indeed who then generates revenue for them. Pretty cool, huh?  It’s a great way to make passive income just for having Indeed jobs listed on your board.

The Indeed Integration Plugin is $39. If you think you may purchase two or more plugins to go with your job board, you may want to buy the Core Add-On bundle.

At $125, the Core Add-On bundle gives you all of the money-making plugins already mentioned and some other valuable ones as well but at a greatly discounted price if bought separately. I’ve got the Core Add-On bundle and use it here on Work from Home Happiness. You can see what it looks like by visiting my Job Board and the Upload a Resume page.

While this may seem like a huge, time consuming undertaking — a theme to pick out and plugins to install — it’s really not! In fact, Jobify and the recommended plugins can easily and quickly be installed. And, if you run into any trouble, remember, they all come with great support and documentation — it really is the no-fail way to get a job board set up quickly, easily, and frustration free.

While I suggest you do the work yourself, so you get a really good feel of how to navigate your site as an Admin, you can have someone do the installation and setup for you.

Fiverr has some amazingly talented freelancers who can get your site up for as little as five bucks. So, if you’re really not the DIY type, know you can outsource the work.

Create Your Own Niche Job Board Website

There you have it — the simplest way to launch your very own niche job board website thanks to BlueHost, WordPress, and Jobify (and Fiverr too, if you choose to outsource!)

There are plenty of opportunities to reach the millions of job seekers who head online each month to find and apply to jobs. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I’d be happy to help (or track down the right person who can!)

The post Start a Profitable Job Board Website in Just One Day appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.