A way to make money online is to offer a service. Now, this method of making money is heavily dependent on the service you are offering. To open up your venture to the widest possible audience, it is recommended that you do something that is not dependent on your location or the location of your client. Some examples:
[hidepost=1]
- Website design and development
- Professional writing, blogging, proofreading
- Virtual Assistant (see below)
- Marketing Services
If your client is able to contact you via a website and hire you despite location, then this is a good business to do online.
Virtual Assistants
The Internet has given rise to a new trade called virtual assistants. A virtual assistant, or VA, is basically just like an assistant or secretary you may have in an office environment except for the fact that this person is hired as an independent contractor and can be anywhere in the world. Virtual assistants are very popular among small businesses and independent entrepreneurs who need help but who do not want to take on the responsibility of an actual employee.
Virtual assistants can perform any number of tasks for their clients, including:
- Writing, proofreading
- Handling email and fielding phone calls
- Data entry
- Accounting
- Online Research
- Desktop publishing, document creation
The services offered by a VA are dependent only on that person’s skillset.
A VA can work from anywhere. VOIP (internet-based phone systems) make it easy to forward phone calls anywhere. Email can be checked from anywhere. Remote desktop solutions like GotoMyPC and LogMeIn.com can even allow a VA to remotely log into an office computer and work from anywhere.
You can find more information about virtual assistants at the following links:
A VA would need to have a website to promote their services. You could then use various VA networking sites to promote as well as advertise on sites like Elance.com.
How To Promote
When offering a service online, you obviously need to get people to your website in order to hire you. You obviously have the traditional, offline ways to drive traffic to your website, including:
- A listing in the yellow pages
- Your business cards
- Signs
- Classified Ads
There are also Internet-specific ways to drive traffic to your service-oriented website:
- Pay-Per-Click advertising on a major search engine. Google Adwords is the most popular option here. You select certain keywords related to your business and you can run an ad on Google and on any web publisher running Google ads. By selecting the right keywords and bidding the right amount of money per click, you can get good exposure and only pay for actual click-throughs to your website.
- Running an ad on Craigslist. In most cities, this is still free.
- Elance or RentaCoder
- Posting on related blogs
- Participating in social networks like Myspace, Facebook and LinkedIn. LinkedIn especially is good for business purposes. On the other two, you’ve got a lot of people on those networks but they will react negatively if you come off as commercial. So, participate but do not blatantly promote your business or it will have the reverse effect.
Regardless of how you promote, the key is to network, network, network. Put your tentacles out into as many different avenues as you can and the net effect will be people coming to your website. From there, it is about having a professional site that meets their demands and encourages them to buy from you.
A Word About Services
I mention the offering of services online because it IS a way to make money on the Internet. That said, I wouldn’t necessarily agree that it is the BEST way to do so. The reason is that services are, by nature, dependent on personell and time. There are only 24 hours in a day so, right there, you have a built in limtiation to your revenue unless you bring on staff. With some of the other ways we will go over on making money online, it is more about eyeballs and ingenuity than your personal time. This means one person can make much more money.
The service business can be very time consuming. The Internet’s real power is in audience size coupled with automation. Traditional service-based businesses have a difficult time getting past that limitation of “only so much time in the day”.
[/hidepost]
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
