In the current climate of increasing joblessness, rising inflation and depressed economies, people are desperately looking at ways to make extra money. They include cash-strapped housewives, students and even retired people wanting to supplement their small pensions. Here are 3 simple yet effective ways to start that extra income journey right from today.
1 – Posting Your Way to Dollars.
Many people are unaware that they can be paid for posting on forums. Some forum owners will happily pay people to start threads, post comments, and respond to other threads, in an effort to get some action and boost their forum topics. As the forum popularity in the public domain grows, the level of posting increases until paid posts aren’t necessary, but if you writing quality is good, an on-going retainer is quite possible.
Forum topics have a huge variety and there’s probably a forum for just about any conceivable subject. Usually a paid poster needs to have at least some knowledge of the subject to post relevant comments. Quite often a minimum word count for the posts are stipulated, with 100 to 200 words as a guideline.
One liner post like “I agree,” “Me too,” and “Thanks for the info,” are unfortunately far too short and don’t add any value to the discussion. Posting on forums doesn’t pay a lot, but by searching for jobs on Internet marketing related websites for instance, it is possible to be paid a reasonable amount.
2 – Writing Articles for Pay
There are many websites around that pay for content. Some of the sites require that you post your article first and wait for a buyer to come by to purchase your articles.
One such site is called Associated Content and their pay rates can vary from a minimal from $3 up to $50 per 500-word article. The articles can also be submitted on an exclusive basis, meaning they aren’t and won’t be posted anywhere else. Alternatively, they can be nonexclusive, which means you have used the article elsewhere on a previous occasion.
It usually takes a few days for these sites to review the article and make the offer. You are not explicitly required to accept the offer and can withdraw the article if you so wish. It then takes another few days for the article to be published and payment will be due to you soon thereafter.
3 – Affiliate Programs and Commissions
Here you simply sell someone else’s product through your marketing efforts, whether it’s a blog, website or physical pamphlet handout, and you receive a commission when the sale is completed. Most of these products are informational, either an E-course, software, or E-book of which everything is usually in a downloadable format.
Quite a few of the affiliate products pay more than a 50% commission, with some even as high as 80%. The smart product owners offer banners, buttons, sales copy, and articles that you can use to promote with their product or service.
ClickBank is one of the most established programs, but there are many other product vendors online who are looking for affiliates to market on their behalf. You can also become an affiliate of Amazon.com to sell books and consumer products such as jewellery, televisions and other electronic goods. The percentage commission is much lower, but often the retail price is high enough to compensate for it.
The fastest way to make money by selling affiliate products is to think about the discussion groups and online forums you already belong to. What are the typical questions being asked and are there any specific problems that people need a solution for? What are the hot and trending topics that can be matched to available products?
