Still Trying to Figure Out How to Make Money Online?
With the holiday shopping season over, there are tons of ways to kick off the new year making bank. This time of year, practically everyone has some sort of New Years Resolution plan so do your research and start profiting from those great resolutions that people are going to be searching the internet for.

So now that you have Wordpress all setup on your site, the next step is to find a decent looking theme. The default themes that come with the installation are ok. Don’t get me wrong, they are not spectacular but one great way to entice users to engage your site is by having a unique and easy to use layout.

What makes these themes so great is that they all are ready to monetize with ad space. Simply pop in some Adsense or throw in an Affiliate banner and you are ready to make money.

To install these themes, simply upload them into your wp-content/themes folder on your server and login to your Wordpress admin area and activate your theme.

WP Premium [ Demo ]

Structure Wordpress Theme

Rebel Magazine Theme [Demo]

Zeke 1.0 [ Demo ]

StudioWordpress Theme

Wordpress is by far the most popular used blogging platform but if you are a noob or rookie, setting up a database and installing an application on your server may seem a bit confusing so here is my guide to setting up a Blog for those of you who use Bluehost.

Getting Started:

First and foremost, you need a hosting account with Bluehost. Although many hosting companies offer similar one click applications, I recommend these guys 10 times out of 10. Once you have your account with your domain, log in to your Bluehost cPanel.

Step 1:
Scroll down to the section titled Software / Services and click on the Simple Scripts icon.

Step 2:
Once you have entered the Simple Scripts section, you can instantly create a blog, forum, shopping cart, and many more simply by clicking on each program. For our site, we will click on Wordpress.

Click to Enlarge

Step 3:
Choose the most recent stable version of wordpress and pick your website domain.
If you want to have your blog in a separate folder, you can enter that in the field after your domain name. (If you have a site already with content, you can put wordpress in its own folder such as “blog” so your site would look like http://www.mywebsite.com/blog. If you want a blog by itself, leave this filed blank!)
Next, enter the title of your website and check the terms and press the complete button.

Click to Enlarge

Installation Completed:
Congratulations, your site is now live. Make sure to save your password, once you login to your site, you can change the admin password to whatever you like. You are now ready to begin posting articles and pages to your site. Wordpress also has many themes your can download to get different looks for your site.

Make sure to check out my post on 5 Free Money Making Wordpress Themes and see some of the best Wordress themes for making money online.

In the grand scheme of things, it does not take much to get a site going. For the general noob, it might seem overwhelming to get your feet wet but if you look at the big picture, it is actually quite easy. This is a quick guide to finding a Fast, Popular, Quick Niche and How to Monetize it. Note that these types of sites are not intended to be long term money makers. These are based off of hot internet trends and can last from a few weeks to a few months but will not be the type of site that will earn residual income for a long period of time. However, with that said, these are great ways to test specific ideas and affiliate offers so that you can retrieve data for future, large scale websites.

Finding Trends in Search Engines
One great feature about sites like Yahoo and Google is that they tell you what is hot as far as web searches go. Just look at the bottom of Yahoo to see the Top Searches for the Day.

From the information Yahoo has, possible quick niche sites could be a Guitar Hero Game Site that has tips, news, and videos of the game that is monetized with Gamefly affiliate offers. Or maybe create a seasonal website for Christmas Stocking ideas with links to affiliate products to monetize.

Yahoo also has a section titled Yahoo! Buzz that is full of top searches as well as up an coming stories.

Google also has a cool tool called Google Trends that shows top search trends and it is very up to date for getting possible niche ideas.

Finding Trends in Shopping
Maybe you want to try and find what products are popular sellers and start a site based on that product. There are many ways to find out what is hot in the world of shopping.

Amazon Best Sellers is a great place to see what is hot in the world of books, music, DVDs, toys, and electronics. It seems like today, the book Twilight is huge. You could easily start a Twilight fan site and put photos, movie clips, and articles about the book and fill the site with Amazon Affiliate Offers to make money.

eBay Pulse is a sweet tool to use to see what is popular amongst eBay shoppers. I have used this tool several times when Creating Mini eBay sites because it shows you what is hot and is a good indicator of a profitable niche.

How Amazon Associates Works
This was one of the first affiliate programs I ever signed up for and still use it today. Basically, Amazon will provide you with tools to promote their products such as Links, Banners, Widgets, and even Virtual Stores. Once you place these tools on your website, if a visitor clicks on one of the banners or clicks on one of the widgets and then makes a purchase on Amazon.com, you receive a percentage of that sale.

How Much of a Percentage Do I Get?
Percentages vary based on specific items and how many orders you refer but range from 4% to 15%.
For a Detailed Breakdown Click Here

What Type of Tools Does Amazon Provide?
Amazon offers a wide array of tools to help you promote their site ranging from tiny banners to full size virtual webstores. Many of these tools allow you to take advantage of all of Amazon’s products. Remember, Amazon does not just sell books anymore and sell everything from flat screen tvs to jewelry.

Banners
Banners are very easy to put on your website and can be a great a generating sales. For Example, if you have a Harry Potter fan site, placing a Harry Potter Banner would be a great way to get a targeted sale.

Product Links
Product links can be great I your site is about a specific topic that has a book related to it. For example, if you have a site about digital photography placing a Product Link for a digital camera would be a great way to get a sale.

Widgets
Want something flashier than a plain banner or product link? Amazon offers several widget you can put on your site to help promote their products such as slide shows of products, Amazon Search Boxes, Recommended Products, and Movie / TV Video Previews. One example to use would be for a fan site for the TV show The Office.

Virtual Store
One of the best features that Amazon offers is letting Affiliates create virtual stores or aStores. You can pretty much fill a store with any products that you can purchase off of Amazon.com. For this example, I will use my own site. Here is a store filled with products that will help you make money online!

Click Here to Visit My Store

Signing up for the Amazon Associate Program is free and easy to join.
Click Here to Sign Up

So why bother sharing this with you if I don’t recommend you trying it? Like with most of my case studies, I emphasize you guys to not copy them verbatim but rather use them as a platform to build out your own ideas. One of the best ways to gain success in making money online is being original.

FriendFinder.com
This was by far the best promoting offer that I had in the series of campaigns I had running. Although I did have success with their Adult Friend Finder program, I had more success with the less sleazy approach. If you are interested in signing up for their Affiliate Program, Click Here.

The entire Friend Finder dating platform has dozens of sites they allow you to promote from all of their sites such as Indian Friend Finder, Jewish Friends Finder, and even some erotic sites like Bondage dot com and Adult Friend Finder. The best part about their programs is they have different payout options such as getting $1.00 for every guy who signs up for a free account or get paid $30 for every paid membership.

Getting Targeted Leads
So once I signed up for the Affiliate Program, I needed to get some quality traffic to not only click on my Affiliate Link, but also sign up as well. I did multiple testing on all of their payout options but for the method I am about to show you, I had the most conversions with the $1.00 per free account option.

So in my search for a unique way to market the Friend Finder offer, I tried to put myself in the mindset of a young guy trying to find true love. After a while of brainstorming, I realized I couldn’t come up with anything because I had had the same girlfriend since I was 15 and didn’t really know anything about dating. So I began trolling around some affiliate forums and found a guy who was claiming to be making loads of money in the Dating vertical. I PM’d him for some tips and although he did not divulge too much, he did hint that he was getting most of his leads via online classified sites.

Hello Craigslist
Have you ever checked out the dating section of craigslist? These days, its full of fake listings and scams but in its infancy, it was a prime money maker. I began testing different posts both male and female looking for the opposite sex and guess which one had more success? I would get about 3-4 times more responses from guys replying to postings of a hot girl.

Now my first reaction was to just put in some sort of message like “meet me at friend finder.com to chat more” but I felt this approach to be too blatant and I was sure that it would get flagged sooner or later by Craigslist. So basically I began to create multiple email accounts on hotmail and yahoo mail like Jennybelly@hotmail.com and began posting my Looking for Love posts on Craigslist in all the major cities. After a few hours, I was getting flooded with emails and began spending hours trying to write them all back so I needed a way to automate this.

So I came up with a solution to help make things easier. Once I posted the ad on Craigslist and it was approved, I set up an Auto-responder in hotmail or yahoo mail. Most times these are used if you are on vacation and when someone emails you, it automatically responds with “Hey, Im in Barbados right now and will be back next week.” I was able to take this concept and change it up a bit to say “Thanks for responding to my ad! Due to getting so many great responses, I just decided to set up a profile at <insert affiliate link here> so I can weed out the good and bad guys I plan to go out with. I look forward to checking out your profile soon and hopefully hooking up;)”

It was crazy to see so many guys signing up and the money started coming in.

Why This Method Will Not Work Today
After a few months, I started to notice that my conversions we dropping dramatically. I couldn’t understand why until I posted an ad on Craigslist and checked back on it a few minutes after being approved. Guess what? The ad was not showing. I got so caught up in my automated process that I didn’t even realize that my ads were not even being approved.

I began checking out other peoples ads and got the feeling that other Affiliates were doing the same process I had, maybe not exactly but many of the ads looked really fake. Just like most good things, my sweet money maker came to an end. Craigslist since has taken a lot of precautions to prevent spamming such as regulating IP address in regards to multiple postings. I even read recently that Craigslist may start charging people to post ads in the dating and erotic sections. Just like any other system, when you find a way to exploit it, it is only a matter of time before it get fixed.

So I hope you learn from this post and see that there are simple dumb down ways to make money online. It may have not been the most honest way to make a buck but who knows, maybe someone did find true love with my help and that is rewarding right? Deep down I highly doubt it though.

Interest in Promoting Dating Offers?
Check out my free Dating Site Template Here!

Well Daniel, first off, congrats for being my first official FAQ submission. It feels great that people are taking an interest in my little blog. To answer your question, the main reason I don’t support these types of hosted blog platforms is because they show a lack of authority. Now I am sure there are some bloggers who have a free hosted blog and will argue with me that they make loads of money each month but what it boils down to is that these platforms are very limited when it comes to layout, design, and customization.

If you are creating a niche site, it always looks more professional to have a site that is truly unique especially if one of your goals is to attract new readership. If your blog has the exact same template as hundreds of other blogs, you will have a harder time standing out even if you have some great content. What really gets me are the blogs that claim to teach you how to make money online and they have the domain www.mymoneysite.blogger.com. Seriously, if you know so much about making money online, couldn’t you fork over the dough to get a unique designed site and host it on your own domain? One reason may be that a particular blog may have just started out blogging and did not have a real idea of how to start a blog. They wrote hundreds of pages of content on their blogger account and started to get serious traffic. Problem is now their site is indexed in google and changing their domain will result in the loss of some great SERPS as well as losing backlinks.

So f you are going to take the steps to be a serious internet marketer, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND setting up your blog the right way with your own hosted domain as you will be more successful in the long run.

Now I realize many newbie will be turned off to the idea of shelling out $700 or more for the latest of version of Photoshop but there is an alternative.

Bring Out The Gimp
www.gimp.org
Sorry, couldn’t pass up the Pulp fiction quote. Gimp is an Open Source Source image manipulating software that is FREE to download. It has many features that are comparable to Photoshop such as image resizing, color palettes, paint brushes, channel mixer, alpha channels, and layer support. Easily create your own animated banners for your sites rather than use stock ones. Gimp.org also offers tutorials on their site to help you get started down the road to being a graphic designer.

Although most people tend to outsource their graphic design needs, I highly recommend newbies take the time to learn some basic graphic design as you can save yourself some money and it can actually be fun to do as well.
Visit Gimp.org to download the Latest Version of GIMP

It can be very frustrating spending hours and days getting a site ready and to only have it fail. Trust me I made this mistake a lot but the great thing is that I learned from my mistakes.

Be Unique When Making Money Online
One of the first sites I ever made was a weight loss site and it was pretty much doomed from the start. Why did it fail? Just go and Google “weight loss” and you will see how over saturated the market is. My problem was that my site was too broad and I had no experience in weight loss. I have always been the skinny kid and barely top the scales at 125 lbs. I really had no point of view and tried my best to B.S. some short abtilces on how to lose weight quickly with no real frame of reference.

In retrospect, I should have done a weight gain site and tried to promote some sort of protein supplement and documented my trials and tribulations from a unique point of view. This way I could try and establish a real connection with the visitors and not just try to get them to buy something that I was not sure would work or not.

Know Your Niche
I’m not saying that it is impossible to make money on a broad niche but I have found it easier to get a smaller niche site popular faster than a broad site. Here are some examples:

• Broad Website : Niche Website
• Dog Training : Pitbull Training
• Weight Loss : Vegetarian Weight Loss
• Free Ringtones : Free Latin / Punk / Country Ringtones
• Auto Enthusiast Website : Audi / Acura / BMW Enthusiast Website

If you have first hand experience in a niche, it will always give you an edge and really help back up your websites credibility. And keep in mind, even if you think your niche is very small, there are bound to be people out there that are also interested, even if it is underwater basket weaving.

The first step is to sit down and write down the things that interest you and that you are familiar with to the point that you can write about it with some confidence.

Once you have your niche picked out, you need to find a good domain name.
How to Pick a Good Domain Name

Choosing a Domain Name
So now that you have your niche picked out, here comes the most important part, picking your domain name. You want to be able to really give a good idea about what your site is about with a good domain name. If you know what search terms you want your website to show up in Google and Yahoo, put them in your domain name. For example, if you would love to be in the top position on Google for the term “Mountain Biking” then put that term in your website. There is a good chance that mountainbiking.com is already taken so get creative with different combinations. Here are some that I would try using:

• extrememountainbiking.com
• mountainbikingonline.com
• seriousmountainbiking.com
• cheapmountainbiking.com
• my-mountainbiking.com

Once you begin searching for available domains, you will see that 9 out of 10 domains you think of will be taken but don’t sweat it. If that is the case, try putting a dash in the domain or a number in it to change it up. The main thing you want is to get some good keywords in the domain.

What is the Best, .com, .info, .biz, .net, .org?
Essentially I would say .com first and foremost. Average internet users tend to feel that a .com site has more authority than a .biz or .info. Some people will say that it doesn’t matter but that is my own take on it. I have found that most times in a search query, people will choose a .com over anything else.

As a second option, I would go with a .net and as a last resort, go with a .org or .info. I’m sure there are some people out there who will argue that their .biz site is making them some serous money so when it comes down to it, test them out for yourself.

Searching for a Domain Name
I have always preferred using Godaddy.com to search for available domains. One of the great things about them is if the domain you are looking for is taken, they will show you similar names that are available such as a .net or .biz as well as other key words.

Recommended Domain Registrars
Now that you have found an available domain name, the next step is to register it. I recommend that you register your domain with the same company that you plan on hosting with. Especially if you are a newbie, transferring domains, forwarding domains, and changing the DNS may be confusing. Plus many hosting companies include a free domain when you set up your hosting package with them. For more info on hosting check out the post on Setting Up Hosting

Here is a list of some Domain Registrars that I use:

Company	Pricing	Rating	Website
	Currently have a special for $7.49 a year for new customers on .com domains.	5 out of 5	www.godaddy.com
	$8.99 for .com, .net, .biz, .us, .info domains. Offers free private registration as well.	5 out of 5	www.1and1.com