I have been working as an internet marketer for over 5 years – and a lot has changed in that time in terms of how to make money online. In the old days it was simple to slap together a site and fire it to the front page of Google. What you might not realise is that competition online is always increasing. What I will do is reveal the crucial tools and knowledge which will place you in the top 1% of internet marketers?

Quickest Way To Make Money Online

There is little doubt in my mind when I say  that the easiest ways to make money online is through affiliate marketing and adsense. Many experts will say you have to be doing PPC to succeed – I dont agree. If you have the cash to burn sure it’s going to help you make more money thank you otherwise would – but if you are new to making money online, then I would steer clear at first – cause you can get burnt big time if you don’t know what you are doing.

Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is without doubt the easiest way to make money online. Affiliate marketing is promoting someone else’s product – which you get commission for if you sell it. The best affiliate network is Clickbank – and you will get paid every 2 weeks via direct deposit into your bank account. Affiliate marketing works like this – you create a blog or site promoting a product – you link to the product via your affiliate link – and if someone purchases you get a commission. You dont need to invest any of your own time into customer support – the product is responsible for this.

And Google Adsense?

Adsense is the term loosely applied to having advertising on a content based website, which you receive money for every time someone clicks on one of the ads. Without doubt the most popular network is Google Adsense – there are other networks such as Yahoo which have a similar offering.

The key to making money with adsense is to build a content rich website based on articles of approximately 500 words in length each. You can actually purchase what is called PLR articles which are pre-written articles you can tweak to make original. You could also hire a copywriter to create content for you if you have the money to spare. Its crucial to select the right niche to guarantee ongoing profits with adsense. You want a high traffic niche with minimal competition so that you can easily get good positions on the search engines.

Traffic – Free Traffic Of Paid Traffic?

Now traffic is something I am going to go into in my future articles, however for the purpose of this article I just wanted to highlight the differences between free and paid traffic (PPC). There are various ways you can drive traffic to your site – some of the best ways to day are:

Article marketing
Press Release Submissions
Blog Posting
Social Networking Posting – Twitter, Digg etc
Forums

The key to driving free traffic is the creation of original fresh content, which is written from the readers point of view and clearly states the reason they need your product – and should click through your content to do so. That about sums it up – there are no quick fixes – you need to put the time into quality content and the rewards will follow.
I did mention earlier that if you dont know what you are doing with PPC that you can get seriously burnt. There is a massive learning curve in PPC and if you dont take time to learn everything, you can burn through the cash with little results to show. The competition specifically on Google for affiliate marketing products is high and CPC (cost per click) prices are becoming inflated. You are best off focusing on free methods, and move on to PPC when you have the money to re-invest.

Conclusion

Things have definitely changed in terms of making money online. I am confident in saying that affiliate marketing and adsense are the fastest ways to achieve this. The crucial ingredient is continual submission of quality content with links back to your site. I advise against using PPC at first – many newbies give it a try – lose a bunch of cash – and give up altogether. With persistence and patience I am confident you will make money online.