Everyone has a passion, or a hobby they really enjoy. The trick is to turn that hobby into something that can make you money online, rather than constantly empty your pockets.
Whether it’s building bird-baths, baking cakes, mountain climbing, fishing for marlin in Mexico, or racing cars; there are thousands of people online who all enjoy that same mutual interest – That’s a guarantee.
Thousands might even be an understatement! Depending on your hobby you might have a potential market of millions, tens of millions, or more!
If 70% of everyone who has access to the internet uses it daily, that’s 1.68 billion people.
If 56% of them use the internet on a daily basis for shopping, that’s still 940 million people…
This all boils down to you being able to make money online by basically talking about something you really enjoy.
All you need to do is capture the attention of all of these people and appeal to them, in one way or another.
I know that I’m probably making it seem easy, which it isn’t, but it’s definitely a fulfilling process.
Something I strongly recommend checking out is Wealthy Affiliate; they provide someone like yourself with all of the tools needed to start your own online business and turn it into a thriving source of income. Why not take a look at my full review of Wealthy Affiliate?
If not, then lets take a look at the 4 basic steps to making money online.
Step 1. What is your passion?
The first thing you have to do is figure out what your biggest passion is, because this is what you will be most inspired to work with.
You might have 5 or 6 hobbies you really enjoy, but for starters, narrow it down to the one you enjoy the most, without a doubt. This will make everything past this point a lot easier.
Once you’ve “found your passion,” you have to narrow it down even further to a specific corner of that market, or a “niche.”
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- Rods
- Reels
- Line
- Bait/lure
- Hooks
- Knives
- Belly boats
- Flies
- etc.
There are plenty of fishing niches which I didn’t list, but I’m sure you get the point, your “niche” has to be quite targeted for you to be successful.
With all of that in mind, some niches are just impossible to make any money with.
Usually you want to stick with the more expensive choices.
Using fishing as an example again, more expensive choices might be things like: rods, reels, or belly boats.
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Step 2. Learn how to build a website
Next, we need a place to consolidate all of the knowledge we either have, or will have.
The best way to do this is on your own blog, or website; another task which sounds a lot harder than it actually is.
Building a website used to be pretty complicated, taking weeks of coding, testing, headaches and dont forget the gallons of coffee.
Now you can have a website up and running in literally 30 seconds.
The best place to do this is at Wealthy Affiliate because they offer extensive training on everything and offer more than enough to get you started for free.
Wealthy Affiliate’s free account gives you the ability to create 2 free WordPress websites, access to their 24/7 live-support for 7 days and will ultimately be your best resource while you turn your passion into a thriving online business.
There is also a “premium” option on top of the free membership, and it gives you access to an unlimited amount of websites, a keyword tool, a content writing tool, 24/7 support, super-fast hosting, a plethora of extra training and a bunch of other awesome stuff, but you can read more about that here.
Remember, this guide is meant to cost you absolutely nothing, so premium would defeat the purpose! You should always weigh your options anyways, and when someone offers a free account, you should use the free account to it’s extent before deciding to move on.
Step 3. Learn About SEO and Write Content
Before we get ahead of ourselves, I’m going to quickly explain what SEO is..
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and will be the driving force behind the traffic that visits your website. Without optimal SEO, your website has a very low chance of producing results.
The term SEO generalizes a whole bunch of tasks, which I talk about in my “What is SEO?” post.
Here’s a small list of some concepts of SEO:
- Use of keywords (and LSI keywords)
- Meta information (descriptions, alt tags, ect)
- Content / site structure
- Understanding how search engines are currently thinking
- Proper linking strategies
- and a whole bunch of other fun stuff!
Once your website is up and running, your first task is to start creating that search engine optimized content!
Your content is a brief summary of what you will be writing in your posts and pages; and what will be the driving force behind your revenue.
The most common saying in Internet Marketing is “Content is King” and it’s true for numerous reasons.
Here are some tips for writing content:
Your readers want value
Your written content must provide your audience with some sort of value, whether it is a high-quality and concise review of a product, or a guide on how to tie the best fly, it has to offer something to the reader.
They don’t want spam
Your readers don’t want to read an article of any kind with ad’s placed throughout, breaking up the content. They also don’t like the feeling of being “forced” into something, but that’s not to say that its not okay to give a little “nudge.”
Always write for your audience
Once you start learning SEO, and how to use keywords, you might feel the urge to try and slam dozens of keywords throughout each post in an effort to impress the search engines and get ranked…
Unfortunately, that won’t work, it will actually harm your website more than anything. The most effective strategy is to write content for your audience, you want it to be clear, concise and valuable; limit your use of keywords to just a few times per post.
Step 4. Time To Monetize
Now that you’ve started the process of learning how to effectively write content and implement SEO, you’re going to have to look for ways to monetize your site. This is where your income is going to be coming from, and don’t be fooled, you can make a fairly reasonable amount, if done correctly.
You have a couple options available for finding niche related products to market.
One option is going to one of the major affiliate networks like Commission Junction, or LinkShare and search through their databases of companies & affiliate programs. There are tonnes of big name brands with Affiliate programs.
If you don’t like the idea of affiliate networks, another option is searching for a relevant program through Google. To do this you would search “<your niche> + affiliate program.’ As an example you could search for “Apple affiliate program” and be shown the landing page for their Affiliate program on their own domain.
You could also generate revenue from Google AdSense or another banner ad network, which is basically advertising for other people and collecting a small commission. These ad’s are classified as “PPC” or “pay per click”, so every time one is clicked, you make a small commission, but it adds up over time, or if you have a high traffic flow.
If you really want to turn your passion into a profit and start making money online, you should strongly consider signing up for Wealthy Affiliate to take advantage of their incredible training!
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