The Truth about Making Money Online - by Joaquin de la Sierra

You have probably seen hundreds of websites offering you ways to make a living from the internet. As you probably know by now, most of them don't work. Nevertheless, among all that trash must be a couple of jewels, or they wouldn't be promoted at all, would they?

I present you to reality. Making money online is a reality that is making many individuals thousands of dollars per day. Unfortunately, they don't share their secrets, or there would be too much competition for them!

It is the scope of this article to give you a quick glance at the truth about making money, ready? Here we go:

Creativity - This is undoubtedly the most important step which will decide your faith. Always before making a website, brainstorm for a couple of hours and see if you can come up with a new idea for your specific website plan. If you do, the big bucks are around the corner.

Website - The first thing that you really need if you want to be successful online is a good website. Even though thousands of programs offer you a way to make money "without a website", that is more often than not an avoidable lie. Choose your subject carefully and when you do, develop it. You might want to get into something making money such as a health-related website, video games, etc. If you wish to make a living from the internet, never make a website offering free information or a blog about your life - the big bucks are not there.

Traffic - After you finished making a good website, it's time to pour traffic into it. Do whatever you can to get traffic: Write articles, post your link in your signature, and submit your link to directories... you get the idea now. Do whatever you can to get as many incoming links as possible. Nevertheless, never use black hat techniques that may get you penalized. Stand firmly on the ground and within a couple of months you will be getting more traffic than you ever wanted. Remember to write a page of quality content regularly (preferably once per day).

Affiliate Programs - They are very popular and are your ultimate way to success. Don't stick to Adsense only and always try to be with as many different affiliate programs as possible. I personally recommend Click Bank and Clixgalore

E-Commerce - Many new money-makers usually make a very big mistake: They rely purely on affiliate programs and Adsense. E-commerce, believe it or not, is growing at an outstanding pace and with any website you have, you may take advantage of it. Today, e-books are very popular - so never hesitate to write one about your niche to sell it in your own website. Remember that you keep %100 of the profits! Even though e-books are very easy to sell and convenient, today mostly everything can be sold so don't be afraid to try to sell new things.

As you have hopefully realized by now, making money from the internet is a reality. You may begin today with the strategies I showed you above - and remember, never depend on anyone. Depending on a big company can never be good, so do what you can to make your own money. And more importantly, never give up - ranking good on the search engines takes almost a year! So I tell you what I have told myself for five years: Choose an objective, aim, and work towards it!

About the Author
Joaquin is an internet writer who shares his money-making experiences in his personal blog located at Make Online Money.

Online Affiliate Scams Revealed - by Kevin Nobleman

When selling affiliate products in your online store, avoid these common online affiliate scams. I lost a ton of money promoting useless non-paying affiliate programs until I found these guys. It's time to learn the truth about affiliate products and sales from someone who KNOWS the business!

If you want to sell products as an affiliate, where do you look? There are all kinds of affiliate programs to join on several major affiliate networks. There's likely to be lots of decent sales generating affiliate companies right?

Not true, according to Adam Fisher, the Affiliate Product Sourcing Editor for Net Worth Radio:

When you see all these "Incredible" affiliate companies and programs and products of affiliate networks on the internet, promising phenomenal sales and offering commissions ranging anywhere from 5% to 50% or more, what you're seeing is 99% junk.

There are thousands of scammers, snake oil salesmen and con artists on the Internet who are just lying around waiting to AMBUSH you when you begin looking for REAL affiliate programs to do business with. Believe it or not, there is a whole niche industry built up on the Net around this kind of scamming! The folks who run these scams have all the moral fiber of a box of hair, and the only reason they even recognize the word 'Scruples' is from the TV ad for the party game.

You may have even fallen prey to one of these con artists, selling you on their "exclusive" affiliate programs as if they are the greatest money-makers since the internet bubble burst. Me too. I've joined so many programs that I can't even recollect how many. I don't know why, but I tend to find the "good" in people, and I was "sold" by these marketing schemes time and time again, even after being scammed by the latest one. Finally, after so much disappointment and frustration, I had HAD ENOUGH. I decided to get to the bottom of this appeal we all have with online affiliate companies, and find out if there really were any PROFITABLE ones for selling "hot" affiliate goods at premium prices.

I literally contacted the administrator of every affiliate website I could find. Posing as an investor, I managed to persuade the owners that I was seriously interested in purchasing their entire website and business. That way, once the cartoonish bags of money flashed in their heads, they would grant me free access to their member's areas to examine what I would be "selling". Well, I was appalled with 99% of what I found. Many of the owners actually bragged about how many people joined their useless non-paying affiliate programs. I repeatedly found:

*outdated links
*non-working links
*links leading to other sites that wanted you to sell crap
*no help section
*no real email support
*few if any sales

I quickly realized that these so-called affiliate networks were totally pointless. And the owners knew it, yet they were laughing all the way to the ATM machine! Needless to say, I didn't respond when they asked if I was still interested in purchasing their websites. Surprisingly, while sitting through all of the scam artist's websites, I was able to locate a group of individuals that actually ran profitable and legitimate programs.

The owners were common folk like you and me that found a way to earn extra money working from home on their computers. Their membership areas were impressive, with a great deal of quality information on how to make $100-$200 per day on your computer doing very little work. I even chatted with a few of their affiliates in several online forums, and they confirmed that they were earning extra money using the information, support and products that the affiliate websites had provided them. It was like I found a few diamonds in the rough. But don't take my word for it, you can drop by the over one dozen sites I found. See what you think.

They DO NOT charge a minimal fee for access to their program, which is to be expected for any legitimate program that actually has people on staff who are dedicated to helping you get earning online. What a warm group of people! Anyway, if you do decide you are interested in any of the dozen companies, I advise you to join post-haste, as the owners have informed me that they are getting so many new affiliate members by word of mouth referrals, that they will be blocking off membership completely by month's end. (By the way, you didn't receive this news from me!) They don't have a large enough staff to welcome many more people, and they are driven to providing excellent service to each person. Well, my quest to find legitimate online affiliate programs has come to an end. I have to mention I was profoundly disappointed with most of what I found, and I strongly urge you not to take any chances doing business with any companies other than the twelve I will share with you.

Whatever you do, I hope you and your loves ones have a healthy, prosperous year.

Take care and I wish you all the best.

About the Author:

Kevin Nobleman has researched and uncovered numerous scams in the corrupt online affiliate industry. He has written special articles to help people avoid affiliate scams. However, Kevin has also discovered over a dozen legitimate affiliate programs, networks and buyer/seller communities he would encourage you to do business with. He provides this report in a valuable information package on his website, http://www.restaurantandbar.org/scams.html