How to make money online WITHOUT a website!

Coolest & easiest ways to make cash online (Without having to resort to surveys and get rich quick schemes!)

Yes. You can have a massive online portfolio without even owning a domain name! How? I hear you ask. There are many sites that allow you to submit content and make money from ads around the content.

I recently heard a great story from a fellow Internet Marketer who had a website that usually made him a few dollars every day from Google Adsense revenue. You can imagine his surprise when one day he logged in and found he had made over $1,000 in one day!

Why? Well, even he didn't know at first. Did Google make a mistake?

After a bit of research, he found out that one of his articles had the word "Star Wars" in it, and Yahoo had indexed his website at number one for the natural term "Star Wars". The new Star Wars movie was released and everyone flocked to his site in search of Star Wars merchandise and left via a Google Ad offering what the visitors came for!

I should point out, this guy is quite successful and has many online sources of income. You could have that too!

The best way I would recommend for you to start making money is not to look for how other people make their money online. Also, never look to make fast money. Ask yourself, "What interests me?". Everyone has a hobby or passion that separates them from the rest. If you can provide good information topics you are passionate about, then you will get visitors.

Blogging for Bucks
Blogging can be one of the best ways to make money online without a website. Why? people want to hear what real people have to say on things. For example, you have a blog post on two different televisions, pointing out all the pros and cons of both models. At the bottom of your blog post maybe you have a Google Ad or an Amazon widget advertising both models of televisions and how much someone could save by buying them online.

Does this sound easy enough? Well here are two of the best free online blogging sites around.

Blogger or Blogspot is owned by Google (No suprises there!) and is one of the most simple platforms for expressing your opinion online. It has a monetize tab up the top allowing you to set the position of the Google Adsense Ads on your page or you can add widgets to create extra sources of income such as Kontera Ads or an Amazon widget! The Amazon widget is great for bloggers as you can make commissions from products you don't own, selling anything from books to bicycles! Check out Blogspot.

Wordpress is the entrepreneurs choice for blogging. You can set up a free blog through wordpress.com or if you want to jump straight into the deep end you can buy a domain name, a hosting plan and download Wordpress at wordpress.org. If you are new to all this I would start with a free one. Wordpress has many great plugins and themes to add your own personal touches to your blog. Check out Wordpress.

Ok, so you have the blog started. It is time to up the ante!

Become a publisher
If the heading didn't scare you off, you are ready to be published. I'm not talking about writing a whole book, just a small article about something that interest you. Maybe its Scrap booking or deep sea diving! Whatever drives you, I can tell you there are other people right now looking to learn more about it! The more diverse the subject, the better chance you have of ranking highly in the search engines.

Don't despair if their are thousands of pages on your favorite topic, you can always niche it.
E.g. A Google search on photography - 259,000,000 for photography
But by adding landscape I get much less results - 16,700,000 for landscape photography

Still a scary number, but a much greater chance of making some impact in the search engines. Each post could add a different niche to your topic so you can get more visitors looking for unique content to read.

You could submit a great short article then at the bottom of the article you tell them they can find more information at your blog and give them the link!

There are two fantastic article sites that I use that also allow you to make cash from the ads around your content:

Hubpages is my personal favorite from a marketing point of view (as my previous posts suggest). It is very easy to use, has some great ways to monetize your article and Google loves it! Think carefully about your title and you could have a page one hit in Google in no time at all. Check out Hubpages.

Squidoo, like Hubpages has a huuuuge following. Plenty of ways to make money and is also very user friendly. Not as user friendly as hubpages, but is possibly more popular. Check out Squidoo.

Some key features of both of these cool sites are Amazon, Google Adsense and Ebay integration. The Ebay option is great if you say sell items on Ebay such as beads. You then put up an article about how to make a nice handmade necklace and when the reader gets to the bottom of the article they see all the items they need to make the item - directly from your Ebay listings!

For greater success, use both sites and re-spin the article to make them unique. Google may index them both highly so you can have your own spin off article your own competition.

Coolest and easiest way to get good Google rankings

Getting on search engines can take a lot of time. In the past it could take years to get indexed on Google. Google's theory was that, in the waiting time it would give the site owner the chance to increase the quality and quantity of information on the site! Waiting is now a thing of the past with the introduction of Sitemaps.

Get your site or blog high rankings in Google

What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a file (XML) that lists all of your website pages including the priority of the page. If your site is changed you can update your sitemap then let the major search engines know that it has been changed, rather than waiting for the next Googlebot to check which could take months.

You would be interested to know that this technology is quite easy to implement yourself!

Step One: Create your Sitemap

There are many free sites (providing you have less than 500 pages to be indexed) that will generate a sitemap for you. The one we will use today is at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ once there follow the four simple steps to generate your new sitemap! After it has been generated simply save it to your computer, upload the file to your web server and move on to step two.

Step Two: Create a Webmaster account with Google, MSN and Yahoo

The major search engines have tools for webmasters to allow them to add sitemaps and notify the search engine if any changes have been made. Below is links to sign up to these search engines as a webmaster.

Google: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Google, being by far the most popular search engine has some of the coolest tools for webmasters, allowing you to submit your sitemap and explore possible issues with site pages. It also has a nifty feature to show you what keywords rank high in Google for your site.

Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster

Bing (formally MSN) may not be as feature rich as Google in the way of features, but it is still a very popular search engine. We can all use more traffic, right?

Yahoo: https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

Yahoo is very similar to Bing's webmaster tools. However in terms of checking what backlinks you have pointing to your site, Yahoo's Site Explorer dominates, picking up many that Google just doesn't display!

Once the account has been activated, simply navigate to the feed or sitemap area and point to where your sitemap is located. E.g. www.mysite.com.au/sitemap.xml

Step Three: Watch your traffic Increase

With more pages indexed, you should notice more visitors coming your way. If not, maybe you need to add a bit more content.

If your site sells a product, try to use selling keywords in your content. E.g. if you are selling laptops, people looking to buy one may not type into Google, "information about laptops" but they may type "laptop prices". By putting yourself in the place of your visitors you will get a much better conversion of visitors to customers and improve your bounce rate. I will explain a bit more on Search engine optimization in a future post.

Step Four: Repeat

If your site changes dramatically, repeat the steps. If your site has a few typo's, fix them then repeat. There is nothing worse than submitting your site with typo's and finding out visitors can't find your site due to misspelled keywords.

Sometimes commonly misspelled words can work in your favor, getting traffic that you would not have normally got. This strategy could be used if you have heavy competition for certain keywords, but otherwise should not be used.

Creating Quality backlinks

It has been almost a month since my last post. In the last day or so Google has completely flicked me from the top of the list for the natural search term "Coolest Guy on Google".

So, who is the coolest guy on Google?

Still me! Two of my back links set up to get greater rankings have taken first and second place. One is a hubpage article explaining my bizarre journey to become the "Coolest Guy on Google" and the other one is a Facebook fan club I set up for the "Coolest Guy on Google".

The only reason I set them up was to get quality back links leading to my site. Now, the number one listing I had was the http://jezhug.blogspot.com/ address not the http://coolestguyongoogle.com/ domain name, which currently is just forwarding though Godaddy to the blogspot blog.

I have no doubt that when I finally finish my free content and get my new site up I will be straight to the top of the list with the large quality of backlinks I have set up.

So how do you find good quality back links? I have a secret that I want to let you in on.

Hubpages is an excellent source for awesome back links regardless of your sites content. Allow me to demonstrate...
I do a Google search and put in my keywords, e.g. "coolest guy on google" followed by "site:hubpages.com". This brings up the best Google ranked hubpages on your keywords.

I am a hubpage member, but for this exercise you don't need to be, in fact make sure you are logged out if you are a member.

Scroll down to the bottom and put in the link you wish to promote, then some flattering comment, as below.
After posting you should be able to refresh the page and see your comment. Your name will be hyper linked with the back link to your site. Some Hubbers set their comments to be moderated for approval first, so I find nice comments are your best option rather than slagging off their article! The end result ...
There you go. It has two major benefits, it makes someone feel great about the article they have worked hard to create and has given you one very high quality back link. Google loves Hubpages! How else would it have it taken my number one position (temporarily!).

I usually repeat this for the first couple of Google result pages to get the maximum amount of free quality back links. And I did it all without having to request for them or have one of those ugly link exchange banners at the bottom of my site.

Oh, I know it says under the part where you submit your comment not to use it to promote sites, but I promise not to tell if you don't. ;)

Yeah! I am the Coolest Guy on Google!

Wow. Today I hit the number one spot for the the search term "Coolest Guy on Google".

Now that I am here, where to next? Will Google still think I am the coolest guy tomorrow, once this post is updated? Do I continue to be cool? Or just fade away from obscurity?

Well I am starting to like the more sociable me. I have tons of new twitter and facebook friends and I didn't even have to leave the house! ;)

No, its time to up the anti. I am now targeting the words "Coolest Guy" and am looking to position myself on the top.

I have the domain name "http://coolestguyongoogle.com" currently pointing to this blog. But in the next few days I hope to build another site linking to the blog.

Why? Blogspot, while easy to use, has its limitations. And now that I am making some progress, why not set up another site and achieve number one and number two rankings for "coolest guy on Google"? More results in the search engines, more visitors, right?

Overlooking the obvious

All my work on building profiles and I forget the most obvious profile of all!

Google.

It wouldn't be fair of me to be the Coolest Guy on Google and not have a Google profile now, would it?

http://www.google.com/profiles/jezhug

With Google profiles, you can add as many of your websites as you want!

What does this mean? Back links! Beautiful, beautiful, back links, leading back to your website.

Now, because it is a Google profile, I feel it will be included in Google's search engine in no time at all.

Time will tell though. Will keep you posted.

Coolest new wave websites you need to know about!

Now that I am making some progress on my social media websites, I plan to move in on the new wave of social/educational web 2.0 sites. I have three sites for you to try. About a month ago I never knew these sites existed! But now I am hooked. You can re-spin some content from your existing blog or website and link it back to your site for more information on the subject.

Why use these sites? Three good reasons:

1. You can pass on your valuable knowledge and get your name noticed by a huge number of readers.
2. You can link the information back to your website and turn the reader into a potential customer or subscriber.
3. You can gain revenue from ads on these articles!

Revenue? I hear you say! Yes. You can put your own Google Adsense code in and sell items from Amazon related to your subject!

These are the sites:

http://hubpages.com/profile/Jezhug
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/Jezhug
http://www.redgage.com/Jezhug

Redgage is a nice one for getting visitors to your Hubpage Hubs or Squidoo Lenses!

Well, that's enough for me today. I will be far too busy filling these sites with my content. Hope to see you there!

Coolest Guy on Google update

Now that I have a semi-cool picture I have started to work on my social network profiles.

I have done a quick Google today and have hit the number 3 spot for "coolest guy on google", minus the quotes.

Also, my feedage site feed came in at number 5!

This is not bad considering that I am not a full-time internet marketer. I have a full time job and plenty of hobbies, plus my extremely busy social life!.....OK, so the social life is a small stretch of the truth, but I am proof that you don't need a fancy marketing degree or have years of search engine optimization training to hit it with Google. All you need is a couple of hours here and there and follow a few simple rules and you will get there every time.

Today, I have been playing around with MySpace, which now has a new interface which seems pretty cool! I have ignored MySpace in the past, but not anymore. I have my new pic up and will be slowly adding new content to saturate the search engines with.

The more links to your site you can get online, the more you can build your brand. I liken this to a dog marking his territory!

This cute dog here will demonstrate my point ;)
He is off on his daily 40 minute walk stopping at about 28 trees to leave his scent on! Now, as soon as he gets home and is curled up asleep in front of an open fire, another dog, say a German Shepperd walks along the same track. The German Shepperd (your competitor), smells the scent then tries to conceal it with it's own.

This does not phase the little dog. Why? Because he is consistent!

The little dog will do the same walk he looks forward to every day and claim what is rightfully his tomorrow!

Moral of the story: You don't need to spend all day pissing on trees.....

.....No, wrong moral. Consistency is the key! If you consistently build your online profile, brand or website, you will reap the rewards.