Making Money - Incite Wealth

How Much Money Do I Need To Start A Business?

Have you ever asked yourself, “How much money do I need to start a business?” Well, let’s dive into that topic right now.

A lot of people out there believe that you must have substantial savings, take out a huge personal or business loan, or be gifted some large sum of money in order to create a successful business.

Let’s face it, most of us don’t start with the six figure income you need today to save a substantial amount of money. Maybe you don’t want to put yourself in outrageous debt. Maybe you just don’t have the qualifications to be given a “small loan of just one million dollars”. Maybe you don’t have a rich family or generational wealth that allows you to gamble all your money away on startup costs. Do any of these sound like you?

Yeah, it used to sound like me too.

So are there options for people like us in this world? Are we still able to chase our dreams, become entrepreneurs, retire early, and be our own boss?

You bet! It can be done, and we are going to talk about some options that you have and how much money you really need to start your own business.

Spoiler alert: It’s not near as much as you think.

Types of businesses:

Let’s first outline the types of businesses. We can start with the most expensive and as we move down the list we will talk about some of the less expensive options and why these might be the best options to pursue in this day and age.

Brick and Mortar Retail:

Brick and Mortar retail businesses may be the oldest small business idea out there. Many people believe that they can start up their own apparel brand, find their niche in some sports gear, hiking gear, or some other category and start up a store for people to come visit and shop.

However, this type of business can be extremely expensive to launch. First you have to invest in a space. This can’t just be any space. You have to think about foot traffic, location popularity, mall space or freestanding business. Maybe you aren’t in the best city for retail. Better yet, maybe you live in an extremely expensive retail area.

Do you really want to uproot yourself and move to somewhere that leasing retail space is cheap? If you do don’t you think your sales might decline? After all, that retail space is expensive for a reason.

On top of what could be a minimum $2,000 monthly lease you have to source your own products. Although sourcing on Alibaba or online spaces can be pretty cheap, you usually need a high order minimum to source at wholesale rates. Your minimum investment could be as little as a few hundred dollars for only one type of product.

The issue is that you likely will want to source multiple types of products. Now you are suddenly at a few thousand dollars in product sourcing, racks, shelving, and displays.

Lastly, if you are not in the most prime location, you will need a significant amount of startup advertising. For a brick and mortar business you will still need to establish an online presence for this. You can do this via social media, your own website, or even utilize affiliate marketing.

In addition you will need banners and window advertisement. It would be a wise decision to advertise within other business and use radio or billboards.

If this doesn’t yet seem like it would cost a great deal to start up, let’s look at some other options and understand why they may be much cheaper and possible much better options.

Lastly, don’t forget about your actual time before you make your first sale. This means all of these costs are sunk start up costs that you may never make back if you don’t have all the right pieces of the puzzle in place just how they need to be.

Brick and Mortar Service Firm:

The primary difference between brick and mortar retail and a brick and mortar service firm is that your startup costs are not as dependent upon product sourcing as they are initial employee salary. Yes, employee salaries can be cushioned utilizing a commission structure but base salaries may still be necessary.

To start this type of business you also need a significant amount of education and expertise in a particular field to consult or provide a service in that field. For example, if you were to start an engineering firm from scratch you would need to have a degree in engineer, years of experience, and perhaps even a professional engineering license.

Engineers are also pretty expensive in terms of salary. Many are not willing to work for free or on commission for startups, so the sunk cost of employees may be significant as well.

Overall this may be a cheaper option than brick and mortar retail, but it still comes with its own logistical expenses that can be a little out of control when you aren’t well off to start.

There’s no sense in blowing your entire savings on a brick and mortar business in today’s day and age when you have some options in the online space. Just what are these options? Glad you asked!

Online Retail/E-Commerce

I’m going to include Amazon FBA, Retail Arbitrage, and Drop Shipping in these categories as well but they may be slightly lower cost than a self sourced e-commerce site.

First, let’s once again talk about startup costs for an online retail or e-commerce store. The initial costs can include a domain, hosting, potentially web design, and likely a seller platform membership (Amazon Seller Central runs $40 a month at the time of writing no matter your level or volume of sales).

These can all be expensive startup costs. With e-commerce it is not ideal to have a domain anything other than a .com or at least something unique. Domains are relatively cheap and easy to setup. Most run about $15 when you first purchase a domain and the renewal fees likely run about the same every year or two.

This is still much cheaper than a brick and mortar retail store because you don’t have to worry about location and leasing fees.

So why would you choose the online route over brick and mortar? That’s easy. A large majority of shopping is now done online. Big Box stores maintain their business because of long-standing brand reputation but even large stores like Walmart and Target and struggling to keep up with Amazon’s prowess online. Even huge corporations like Toys-R-Us have fallen victim to the increase in online sales and low prices online.

There simply is no marketplace anymore for small business. Not only that, with modern fulfillment services like Amazon FBA you can’t beat them when something purchased online will arrive at a customer’s doorstep in just two short days for no added cost. With Amazon PrimeNow it may even be sooner if you have a fulfillment center nearby. (San Francisco and Los Angeles are prime examples of this in California… no pun intended)

While online e-commerce can be much cheaper than its brick and mortar retail counterpart, you still need to invest in product sourcing which can be very expensive.

The best combatant to product sourcing is drop shipping. Drop shipping allows you to avoid sourcing items, and you essentially only pay for what you sell. Is this the best option? It very well could be if you are dead set on selling what you deem as your own product. Don’t forget about the hosting costs for many drop shipping sites though. There may still be a better option out there for most folks without any capital at all.

What type of business can you build with zero start up costs other than a little bit of time and effort? That’s also easy.

Niche Affiliate Website

An affiliate site may just be the cheapest way to start your own business today. In fact, this is my primary source of income and has potential to earn far greater amounts as popularity of my sites only grows.

The reason that building your own niche affiliate website is becoming such a popular option for modern day entrepreneurs is because you don’t need to lease any brick and mortar space. Also, there is no need for excessive hard advertisement, or product sourcing.

In fact, there is a large abundance of opportunity for affiliate marketers today. Finding products to market is getting easier and easier with all the different options that I’ve talked about in many of my previous articles. The commissions can range anywhere from 5-50%. There are even a few affiliate offers out there offering 75-80% commission.

This business model is most lucrative because of all the free educational resources on the internet. In fact, many people are part of online communities like Wealthy Affiliate that teach you everything you need to know about affiliate marketing. In addition, these communities are very helpful when you have questions that might not yet be answered on the internet. Many of these folks are extremely experienced in the online space.

Not only can you learn everything you need to know about how to setup this type of online business, you can actually grab free domains, free web hosting, and more. In fact, if you sign up for a free Wealthy Affiliate membership you can easily get all three of these things in one place. Read more about that here.

Conclusion and Final Startup Cost

So what really is the startup cost required to start your own business? If done correctly you can start with absolutely nothing. Sign Up for a free membership at Wealthy Affiliate, learn how to affiliate market, and get started today.

You can even start your own website in as little as thirty seconds as has been proven time and time again. Check out some of my other articles on how I’ve built my own successful business online. Learn how I’ve created a completely passive income online that supplements my day job and allows me to earn over 6 figures a year.

Who knows, maybe then you’ll want to start your own brick and mortar business with the profits you’ve earned online.

If you have any questions about starting your own business, brick and mortar, online, or affiliate business, drop a line in the comments and I’d be happy to share more resources with you.

What Is The Easiest Way To Build A Website? (Video Included)

Building a website can seem like such a daunting task. Most people don’t know HTML, Javascript, CSS, or any other coding language to design a nice user interface. Also, most people don’t generally have a hosting platform lined up to take care of the back end of their site.

I would know, I started the same way… with limited knowledge of websites overall. However, that’s no reason to NOT take advantage of all the great resources out there for building sites. It might seem hard right now, and I know you may be wondering… “what is the easiest way to build a website?”

Well, there’s always an easier way. That’s what I’m going to explain in this very article. So prepare yourself because by the end of this post you’ll be able to have your very own website.

What’s the simplest platform to use?

Many people struggle with finding a convenient platform to host their site and edit the overall look and feel of the site all in one. Thankfully, there are platforms like that available. My favorite is Wealthy Affiliate.

Now, you don’t have to use Wealthy Affiliate. It’s just my personal preferred platform. There are other options out there like GoDaddy and WordPress alone.

Many bloggers and web builders have patched together their own web hosting platforms with some front end design that they do independently or contract out. The tough part about this method is that if you pay someone to work up a front end design for you you’ll then be attached to that designer or someone else will have to build out the code when you would like to add, remove, or edit the formatting of your site.

In addition, there have been countless reports of WordPress being tough to use when you are required to login independently. WordPress also lacks Site Support. When you have limited Site Support and install an update you risk the potential for a total loss of your site if you forget to back everything up prior to updating.

This is where Wealthy Affiliate becomes my preferred hosting platform. In addition to their amazing Affiliate Education Program they offer great web hosting and utilize a WordPress Express platform. However, Wealthy Affiliate’s version of WordPress comes with SSL capabilities allowing your site to be secured with an SSL certificate that helps your rank in Google. In addition, Wealthy Affiliate has unparalleled Site Support and SEO plugins.

This ensures that your site will be supported and backed up within Wealthy Affiliate. If anything happens that you lose data, Site Support has a cached version of your site that they can restore. You may lose limited data but your whole site will not have to be reconstructed.

The SEO plugins help with Google, Yahoo, and Bing search engines allowing your content to rank. Also the built-in XML maps that come with WordPress allow Google to affectively crawl your site and find every post and page you’ve created thus far.

All of these additional features make it so easy to create a website without thinking about all the overwhelming details. Wealthy Affiliate and WordPress Express can also walk you through building the site step by step. This platform contains everything you need to know about building out a site and making sure it becomes a successful authority site. All you have to do is follow the basic training steps that they offer.

I know all of these things can still sound overwhelming. You may be wondering at this point how long it is going to take you to build a site with Wealthy Affiliate.

Imagine if it only took you 30 seconds to build it. Would you be interested? If so keep reading.

How long will it take to build a WordPress site on Wealthy Affiliate?

Wealthy Affiliate allows you to grab a domain, build a site, and start editing content all in one place. If you are thinking that this is going to take years to create a site, you’re wrong actually.

It’s super simple to create a site. Here’s a video showing you just how easy it is to create a WordPress site in just 30 seconds:

Now that you’ve watched that video and you understand how easy it is to create a website from absolutely nothing, check out all the great things that Wealthy Affiliate has done for me.

If you don’t want to generate your own custom domains or pay for domains just yet remember that you can easily create a .siterubix domain for free. Give it a shot for yourself. Create a domain right now using this SiteRubix tool:

After you’ve created this domain, learn all about key words and ranking in Google by utilizing my favorite keyword tool Jaaxy below:

So that’s it! You should have your own website developed and ready to start populating with endless quantities of content that can easily lead you to making all sorts of money online. Whether it be through Affiliate Marketing, Retail Arbitrage, or whatever else you decide to do, you’ve now taken the first steps on your path to online success.

If you haven’t yet built a site, cruise over to WA, knock out the site and then come back and share it with me here. I’ll offer you free comments on your site and help you with new articles and ideas.

Good luck to you!

-Dalton

I Tried Retail Arbitrage On Amazon

Probably one of the hottest side hustles going around right now is retail arbitrage. You’re probably wondering if retail arbitrage can be successful and how to go about it if so. Well, I tried retail arbitrage on Amazon and here is the true story about what I discovered.

The Idea of Retail Arbitrage

Retail arbitrage is becoming a common side hustle due to huge slashing of prices at big box stores. Many popular stores have clearance racks or every day sale prices that are much lower than what an item sells for on Amazon or Ebay.

For the purpose of this article we will focus on Amazon, as that is generally regarded as the most profitable marketplace for retail arbitrage.

The idea is that you can go to a big box store, purchase an item on clearance or on sale for very cheap, and resell it online for a profit.

Yes, of course there are many items that are not profitable whatsoever. However, there are strategies you can use that many side hustlers have found to be helpful when determining what will sell and how much you will make.

In fact, Amazon allows you to put in projected purchase prices and estimates fees required to sell the item prior to you even purchasing said item.

Now that you understand the idea of retail arbitrage let’s talk about how to fire up this side hustle and whether or not you can truly make money doing it.

Researching The Process

Make sure to do plenty of research on retail arbitrage to come up with your own unique formula of ideas. When I first tried retail arbitrage I wanted to make sure I had as much information as possible going in so I didn’t lose any money after marking up my products.

I know that you already are in the research phase because that is probably what has led you here to this article.

I found multiple great sites that were extremely helpful when learning retail arbitrage. In addition, there are a few educational resources out there like this that teach you exactly what you need to look for when first tackling this endeavor.

However, if you don’t want to spend the time searching through hundreds of websites and learning exactly what each person did, you can just continue reading here and I will outline how to go about making this happen as best as possible.

Preparing my Amazon Store and FBA Account

The first thing you will want to do is prepare an Amazon Seller account. Many folks that have written about retail arbitrage are not up to date and have said that an Amazon Seller account is free. However, this has changed over the years and as third party sellers become more popular on Amazon (around 51% of total sales at the time of writing), Amazon has chosen to raise the price of even the base membership to $40 per month and there is no way around it.

Preparing this account is simple…

First, head over to Seller Central at Amazon and create an account.

You will then be asked for the membership option you prefer, your store name, and some additional information about how many items you expect to list, preliminary information on what types of items you might sell, and some miscellaneous tax reporting information so that you pay the government based on what you make.

Note: Keep receipts when you purchase items so that you can deduct the cost of your inventory items when it comes tax time.

After you get the store all setup and pay your $40 start up fee, you will need to verify your account with a form of State Issued ID.

This whole setup process only takes approximately 10 minutes or so regardless of how long winded I’ve made it sound.

Next, you’ll want to download the Amazon Seller app on your phone since we are about to go mobile. It’s easy enough to find in the AppStore, just search Amazon Seller and it should pop up as shown:

Now that you have your account setup and the app downloaded, we are ready to start sourcing items.

Sourcing My Items

You’ll want to make sure to pay close attention to this section as this is when stuff can get a bit confusing if you don’t know what you are looking at.

Make sure you don’t just run into the nearest Walmart and start grabbing every item you see on the Clearance rack as this process does not work like that.

Instead, make sure to do the proper research as outlined in this section. There are a few different stores that seem to be popular for retail arbitrage, for the sake of this article, however, I tested Walmart and Target.

If you are interested in trying this with different types of items not necessarily sold at Walmart or Target you can always try these big box stores:

Costco
Home Depot
Lowe’s
Sam’s Club

So now that you have a few ideas of stores to tackle, let’s talk about how to go about confirming an item is a good inventory item to sell on Amazon.

First, you will want to have a fully charged phone because the Amazon Seller app can be quite harsh on the battery. Once you get inside a store you want to be able to hit all the sales/clearance racks without having to leave and return at a later time because you never know that the items currently in the store will still be there.

Once you have located a clearance rack, you’ll want to pull out your phone and Amazon Seller app. At first I was concerned that Walmart employees were going to start staring or get paranoid of my antics, but they could care less what I was doing so don’t worry.

With the Amazon Seller app open you will want to click on the photo icon at the top right corner of the app. This will open up a photo pane and allow you to scan barcodes and products to identify them on Amazon and make comparisons regarding price, how many competitors exist, selling popularity, and fees.

First you will want to check popularity of an item as shown in the photo below. I’d suggest when starting out you will want to stick to selling items in the top 200,000 or so in their respective department. If an item is slow moving or ranked very low, you may never sell the item and your return on investment may come 2 years down the road after you’ve long forgotten about retail arbitrage.

Next, look into the price of the item. If you see that the selling price on Amazon is remotely close, or even lower than the clearance price of the item, ditch it immediately and ignore that item.

At first, I would suggest scanning everything on the rack, but as you get better at retail arbitrage you will start to ignore things that you know aren’t going to be profitable. This is a skill that is developed over time, not immediate, so make certain to follow the steps closely.

After you have looked at the price, and polarity, click on the item to confirm that it’s not restricted as shown below. If the item is restricted, you may not be able to sell it on Amazon therefore there is no reason to look at the item any longer.

Okay, so now you’ve found an item that is low enough priced on clearance, is relatively popular, and not restricted. Great! You may have found your first item.

Now click through the item and look at the multiple options for fulfillment of the item. You should see the screen showing Fulfilled by Seller and Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA).

When you fulfill a product by Amazon, this can qualify it for Prime two day shipping, Amazon will handle all the customer service and returns, and it really makes the entire process much easier. That’s why I chose the FBA route for my experience.

So continuing with the item you have selected, click through the item to the Fulfilled by Amazon tab.. now you should see a screen outlining the details of the Buy Box (the main sellers item box) and other competitive low prices.

You are then able to adjust the sale price to somewhere mid range. If you adjust to low you may end up driving the other prices down from other sellers which is the last thing you want since these wars can end very badly for everyone and lead to potential losses. I’d try and stay competitive or at the high end so you have room to lower the price later if necessary.

This tab also outlines the FBA fees associated with that item and shipping cost. I usually estimate about 50-75 cents per pound and generally just make a rough guess on the high end for the weight of the item.

After you determine all the fees, make sure to enter the clearance price that you will be purchasing the item for.

Now after all the fields are updated appropriately you will be able to see the estimated total profit. I usually try and aim for no less than the 3-5 dollar profit range so that, if need be, I can drop the price a little bit and still break even or make a buck or two.

So say the item comes out perfectly and you can make $8. Awesome, select that item, throw it in your cart and continue looking. Once you have done this with all your items (I spent about $300 my first time around for a trial period) head to checkout and then jet home for the next step.

Packing and Preparing For Shipment

This is where things get a bit more time consuming and frustrating and is actually the reason I am transitioning away from retail arbitrage completely and moving towards strictly affiliate marketing. However, we will discuss that later. Let’s talk about shipping.

When you fulfill by Amazon you will have to ship all your items to Amazon in what may be separate shipments. I suggest running by Home Depot and buying some 89 cent boxes to ship things in. Remember though, this cuts into your profit margin so unless you are able to find small, light weight items that can be packed and shipped together, you may want to avoid buying boxes, tape, and the like.

I managed to package all my stuff in Home Depot boxes, but here was the problem. When you ship to Amazon FBA they can designate the warehouse they want you to ship to. When I first tried retail arbitrage I didn’t realize this.

So here’s how it went… I purchased boxes from Home Depot based on the dimensions of packing all my items together (separated by item). Got everything home and then moved forward with the preparing for shipment portion of the process.

Once you have scanned your items in and hit “list”, you will then be able to prepare a shipment.

Amazon will not make your listing active until you have shipped all your items to their warehouses and they are checked in. Only at that point will your listings become live and able to be sold.

Now go to prepare a new shipment under the inventory page of Amazon’s Seller Central. You should see a screen that looks something like this:

You will need to type in the quantity of items you have, and Amazon will then ask you to ship the items in a particular manner.

After you are done with this step, hit work on this shipment. Here’s where this gets tough. Amazon will tell you specifically which items it wants in the box, and you must print the shipping labels accordingly. I would recommend not sealing anything up until you associate the correct items with their shipping labels.

What I realized here is that my Home Depot boxes would not actually fit the items properly without packing peanuts, bubble wrap, or other expensive packing items.

I then headed to the UPS store to pick up dimension specific boxes. When I got to UPS I asked for the boxes in the dimensions needed and to my surprise, it was going to be $27. I said fine because I had spent so much time running around town trying to get everything ready to ship and I had no shipping supplies to begin with. Like I said, I was performing this experiment from scratch.

I realized that this would cut into my prophet margin significantly but I just wanted to get all of this Walmart Clearance junk out of my house (Walmart is pretty gross sometimes, just a heads up).

I packaged everything up and completed the shipment. I attached the associated shipping labels and dropped everything off at the UPS store.

Once shipments are completed Amazon will allow you to track your inventory shipments.

Remember, I selected items based on the criteria that retail arbitragers everywhere have been successful with so they should have no problem selling.

Success So Far

I’m not going to say I’ve had no success and completely bash retail arbitrage. However, there are much more lucrative ways to make money without all the ridiculous effort required.

All of my items sold within a month and I made my money back, but I made sure to track all the hours I spent chasing down items, sourcing, preparing for shipment, and the cost I spent on actual shipping.

It turns out that I made about $6.00 per hour. This could be considered success because I was net positive at all. I don’t see it as a great success. Most Uber drivers claim to make more than this amount, and through affiliate marketing I make closer to $5000/month. There is a huge gap here and I personally don’t see anyone getting rich from retail arbitrage.

My Overall Experience

Retail arbitrage is not meant to make you rich. There simply aren’t enough items on the clearance racks to continually make consistent income. The amount of time it takes to really get through this process, even if you streamline it, is far too much.

What retail arbitrage did do for me is teach me how to use Amazon’s Seller Central. This is fantastic, because for just $340 I now had a full working knowledge of Seller Central and how to sell my own items on Amazon.

Nowadays there are so many resources out there discussing how to sell on Amazon, but you will never truly learn the process until you do it yourself. Since I plan to start my own line of clothing in the near future, understand Amazon is a great skill. However, for the time being, I will stick to the best affiliate platform out there and continue to rake in commissions when folks click on my links.

Also, I still think that becoming an affiliate of Amazon offers more upside and less background work in the long run.

Hopefully this article explained how to get started in retail arbitrage and fully outlined my experience with this side hustle. If you think it might be for you or have any questions, feel free to comment below. If you want to know more about my favorite affiliate site and how I generate a passive online income every month, click the banner.

Investing in Personal Education 2018

There may be no better opportunity for investment than investing in yourself in 2018. This doesn’t mean buying material goods for yourself to feel good, this means making a legitimate investment in yourself that will eventually better your overall life and ideally generate a significant amount of revenue for you in the future.

What is this investment you ask? Personal education.

You may be wondering what sort of personal education could offer this sort of return on investment or ROI.

No, it’s not another $40,000 college degree from an overrated institution.

It’s also not paying some “guru” to teach you about his hot new Multi-Level Marketing Scam.

This type of personal education provides a foundation needed to found a successful online business that can actually provide real results and real income over time.

This is not a get rich quick scheme so if you are planning to make $500,000 overnight you aren’t planning to invest in yourself, you are looking for the next best gambling opportunity.

Many people that run websites just like this one, and write articles just like this one are making money every time you click on one of the links within the article. This is called Affiliate Marketing and is what drives the online economy.

Many websites would not be able to stay afloat and many people would not be willing to put in the time and effort needed to educate people online if they were not compensated to do so.

This may seem like a complicated thing to do.

You may not know anything about web development, authoring quality content, finding a niche, converting ads, making sales, finding leads and opportunities, or anything about online business and affiliate marketing.

That’s why I’ve written this article. I want to share with you the wonderful platform that allowed me to build this site, market online, and generate a passive revenue.

The Wealthy Affiliate platform is a personal education platform that I have reviewed in detail multiple times as my experience with the platform progresses.

When I first began with Wealthy Affiliate I had limited experience with HTML, I didn’t know how to develop a website, I didn’t understand how people made money when you clicked their links, and I also didn’t realize that almost everyone pushing any product online is actually making money doing so.

When I used to purchase items online and read countless reviews prior to doing so, I didn’t realize that the folks reviewing the products were actually making commissions up to 60% of the sales price of the item or digital content.

I don’t know about you, but I quickly realized that 60% of a $250 product sold one time is a decent amount of money. I also quickly realized that if I were to convert a sale for this product 5-10 times a day I could easily make over $1,000 a day.

However, I didn’t know how to become an affiliate marketer. Furthermore, I didn’t understand how to become a successful affiliate marketer.

So what did I do? I invested in my own personal education.

You might think that I invested some substantial amount of money or that my startup costs were out of control. That’s not true at all. I actually started for free to learn and understand the basics. You can do the same thing.

Through Wealthy Affiliate’s many different video courses, step by step Affiliate Bootcamp and Certification Courses, I have been able to successfully develop multiple online business generating consistent monthly revenue. Can you imagine making $100 extra dollars a month for a side hustle? What about $10,000?

Anything is possible if you follow this education course, do your due diligence, and commit your extra time in a week to really developing your online marketing skills. Wealthy Affiliate covers everything you need to know from buying a domain, to PPC advertisements and converting sales.

The best part about the entire self education program is that you can easily choose how quickly you want to move through the coursework. If you are a dedicated, motivated individual and you are willing to put in the work to educated yourself there is absolutely no reason you cannot be posting your own testimonials just like this one in under a year.

So how much do you need to invest in this personal education?

Absolutely nothing to start. You can learn all you need to found a website, register a free domain, and start writing content right now.

Once you get rolling, you can then branch into the premium area of Wealthy Affiliate where you will get additional access that allows you to learn and understand fully the affiliate side of things. Check out the membership options below:

Kyle and Carson, the founders of WA, are extremely helpful, constantly offering trainings and updates to their older trainings to stay consistent with the current affiliate market.

People within the community offer free advice as fast as you can ask for it.

The founders at WA have a proven track record and have managed to build their affiliate platform to over 800,000 users. Even if you don’t believe what I’ve outlined here, check out what they’ve done over at WA for yourself.

How long will it take to pay you back?

This is 100% dependent upon your level of dedication and work ethic. Many people can go 6 months to 1 year without really writing content and building an authority site. These are the people that will not generate revenue over that period of time.

Then there are people who will author quality, creative content over their first 6 months to 1 year and they will see results. Results may differ drastically, but if you follow the trainings and continue to educate yourself you will easily be able to earn a steady income from affiliate marketing. All from the comfort of your home on your laptop.

I invested in the yearly premium membership for $359 after just two months of paying $49. This saved me 39% over the course of the year.

My initial total investment was $457 and I have been paid back thirty times over in just over a year and a half ($13,710). You can easily make the same happen with the right amount of time and effort.

So you’re not convinced about the WA platform because maybe you don’t really understand what it is you will learn. Well let’s outline that:

What will you learn?

You’ll learn how to setup a domain and start a website
You’ll learn how to choose a niche market
You’ll learn how to find sources for affiliate marketing
You’ll learn what products sell, and what products don’t
You’ll learn how to market these products, and your website on social media
You’ll learn how to become an authority site on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and any other search engines that may exist
You’ll learn how PPC advertisement works, Google AdWords, Analytics
You’ll learn how to find high commission opportunities
You’ll learn how to market Wealthy Affiliate
You’ll learn what the most dominant affiliate marketers on the internet are doing to be successful

Just how much can affiliate marketers make?

Well, don’t just take it from me and the income I have generated thus far. Check out what some other affiliate marketers have been able to make happen with Wealthy Affiliate:

ericcantu
Joph
dougbeney
Hari S Nair
And a more unconventional JoyNelson selling her own product.

If you’re still not convinced, I highly suggest signing up for free, giving it a shot, and learning more about the community on your own. If then you aren’t interested, come back here and let me know why. But I am confident you will love WA just as much as I do.

Have your own experience with Wealthy Affiliate? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below! Any additional questions? Feel free to leave those in the comments as well and I will personally respond.

One last note… you should never be required to pay for a product you market!

Investing in CryptoCurrency 2018

Many people are looking for alternative forms of investment in 2018. With the stock market at all time highs and with the idea that a recession may be on the horizon many people are scared of losing their hard earned 401k or private investment accounts.

The sentiment surrounding the current market is admirable. However, bubbles always burst.

Many have claimed that the CryptoCurrency boom is also a giant bubble waiting to pop.

Are these the people that have dedicated a considerable quantity of time to learning about CryptoCurrency and the technology behind it?

Do those that are discounting blockchain technology and CryptoCurrency fully understand that there are options other than Bitcoin to be invested in?

Did you know that many large corporations have adopted Bitcoin and alternative CryptoCurrencies, commonly referred to as AltCoins, as a valid payment method?

There are many reasons that CryptoCurrency is one of the best investment opportunities of 2018 and there is a reason that CryptoCurrency has changed my life for the better.

It can change yours too. Just hear me out.

Are you tired of the big banks stealing from you?

You may not realize that banks are stealing from you every day that you have money in an account. It can be checking, savings, even CD’s and Money Market accounts.

Let’s talk numbers. Inflation in the US last year was 2.7% due to all sorts of environmental factors including the printing of more money.

The average savings account earns approximately 0.001% on the overall balance month to month.

Even the best CD’s for the short term (3-6 months) will allow you to only earn around 1.2% on your money.

So let’s say you invest all of your money in the highest yield account you can at 1.2% for 6 months. You would see a return of about 2.4% over the course of the year if you kept your cash invested over all of 2018.

Since 2.4% is less than 2.7% you are losing 0.3% on your money every single year in simple terms.

Still not convinced the banks are stealing your money? Keep reading.

In 2008 when Congress approved the $700 billion bailout for the banks after they issued countless subprime home loans and suddenly realized that borrowers were unable to pay them back, the banks stole from you even more blatantly than they do every single day.

Why is it that your government decided to bail these banks out, but not absolve your mortgage debt?

If you had a home loan in 2008 and didn’t foreclose or short sale, you may still be paying on a mortgage and actually be upside down in your home.

When the banks got bailed out, did they bail out those folks who couldn’t pay their mortgages? No… unfortunately they did not.

Now, let’s take the population of the United States in 2008. That number, according to the government census was 304.1 million people.

About 63% of that population were between the ages of 18 and 65. So likely they were not under their parents roof/working, or they were retired and eligible to draw Social Security.

If you were to issue a check to every United States citizen included in that 63%… about 191.5 million people would have gotten a check for $3,653.00.

That may not seem like a lot, but nobody can seem to recall the banks paying it forward and returning to you any interest or helping you with any payment programs.

They took people’s houses that couldn’t afford to keep paying, which sounds a lot like stealing to me.

So what if I told you that you no longer needed to deal with the Federal Reserve?

What if I told you that there was a finite limit of the amount of currency you could “print”?

What if Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, US Bank, and all the others no longer had control over your life?

Would you be interested in giving that a shot?

If so, keep reading. If not, that’s understandable. Many prefer to stick to what they know and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

What is Bitcoin?

The Bitcoin blockchain was first created in 2009 by an unknown inventor who went under the alias of Satoshi Nakamoto. The true inventor has yet to come forward, or at least those who follow Bitcoin are unsure whether or not to believe if the real Satoshi has exposed their self.

There is a total of 21 million Bitcoin to be mined and the estimated date that all Bitcoin will be mined is due in the year 2140. It is impossible to predict the exact date and time due to the ever changing mining environment.

Essentially, Bitcoin is a form of digital currency that allows peer-to-peer or over the network transactions without the support of a middle-man or centralized bank. This is where the term decentralization is derived.

You may have seen Bitcoin denoted as $BTC many times on the internet or social media sites.

Modern encryption technology allows those using Bitcoin to perform transactions anonymously. There must be a network in place of “miners” that generate the tokens based on proof of work and approve transactions.

Without this network a transaction cannot be confirmed or completed. In addition, if this network does not recognize the transaction as a true or real transaction, it rejects the transfer completely preventing any sort of fraudulent activity.

Now that you get the idea behind Bitcoin, let’s talk about the technology behind it.

This is by far the most important part, because even if you don’t trust the idea of Bitcoin, you may trust the idea of blockchain technology.

What is Blockchain Technology?

For simplicity, imagine you are keeping the books at a company. Any company.

Okay, now every time a transaction is made, you write it down with a very unique identifier or confirmation number. This book is continually populated and there is never a missed transaction.

Now imagine that the book is now controlled by a large number of individuals all writing continuously tracking every transaction. No central book exists, so someone from engineering cannot come in and alter this book without making it different from the other books.

Think about the fact that in order for a transaction to occur, it has to be validated across all of these books and confirmed. If someone were to alter one particular book, and now all the books did not match, the transaction being placed on the altered book would be deemed as fraudulent or untrue.

This seems a bit complicated, but really it is quite simple. If every computer that is supporting the blockchain network does not agree that this is the true chain, then the transaction will not be completed.

The benefit of blockchain is that there cannot be any single lapse in the chain. It would have to fail across the entire network.

Since this is a decentralized network and anonymously controlled by millions of processing units around the world, no one hacker can access the entire network and break the real blockchain.

If this sounds unbelievable, then why is it that almost 30 years after blockchain technology was created, has it yet to have been broken?

There is no more error, no more government printing more or extending a chain. Once the blockchain is set, it is run until it’s complete.

After that, the network supporting the blockchain exists simply to confirm transactions. Hopefully you now understand blockchain. So let’s move on beyond Bitcoin and the basics of blockchain technology and talk about it’s other applications.

Are there CryptoCurrencies other than those that CNBC and Yahoo Finance shove down everyone’s throats?

If you have any sort of financial knowledge you have probably seen articles from CNBC, Yahoo Finance, and other entities discussing what I am discussing here… CryptoCurrency.

Maybe you watch Bloomberg on the television and it has been a hot topic there as well. Do you think that these so-called industry experts and analysts really understand what it is they are talking about?

If you didn’t know already, there are other CryptoCurrencies aside from Bitcoin.

Here are just a few of the top market cap coins to date:

The folks on Wall St. and those pumping stocks on TV have figured this out.

Now they have their skin in the game and want to make their own money.

What do they do?

They promote a particular currency and discuss its purpose hoping to convince you to buy this currency, increase its value, and then they will sell making a huge profit.

Take for example Ripple, or $XRP. This is a relatively centralized bank based coin that CNBC has been on a hot streak of promoting lately. The value rose considerably as shown in the chart below once it became a “mainstream” coin.

However, what many don’t know is that there are far more coins out there than what the mainstream media is promoting. These AltCoins actually have much better technology behind them and the white papers are publicly available for review.

The point here is that just because a so-called expert pretends to know CryptoCurrency, they may not understand that the purpose behind CryptoCurrency and blockchain technology is not so that we can remain centralized within the banks using Ripple.

The purpose is all the wonderful day-to-day applications that different CryptoCurrencies support.

Currently, you can use CryptoCurrency debit cards to purchase items just like you would with a regular debit card anywhere that accepts Visa, MasterCard, etc.

Support for CryptoCurrency is only increasing with the ability to book hotels on Expedia, purchase goods on Overstock, buy Xbox Games, perform Real Estate sales or transactions, and even buy a McLaren from my good friends at McLaren Newport Beach.

I am Koenigsegg fan myself but I digress.

What coins should you invest in? Personally, I am invested across the board in the best technologies I can find. I have read countless white papers and have a few favorites in almost every category.

Some think they may have missed the CryptoCurrency boom, but that’s not true.

The current market cap of all coins is approximately $502.20 billion whereas the total current market cap of the stock market is $18.5 Trillion. If even 10% of that wealth shifts to CryptoCurrency you will see unfathomable gains.

I suggest you start your own research, read some white papers, and purchase some AltCoins based on what you feel is right. If you’re wondering where to do so? I have the answer for you.

Where can I purchase these AltCoins?

You have probably heard of the main Crypto platforms and exchanges like CoinBase or the background exchange owned by CoinBase called GDAX (sign in with your CoinBase account).

These platforms automatically generate you a wallet to store your cryptocurrency in and this will allow you to transfer currency to or from that platform.

For fiat ($USD, etc) purchases of Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Litecoin this would be an okay place to start investing.

If you are looking to invest in AltCoins which is a much more lucrative investment for 2018 profit then I would recommend the exchange Binance. Binance has access to countless coins and these currencies have much smaller market caps or values.

Many of these coins have seen gains in the upwards of 1,000-2,000% in under a year. I’m not saying that you should go into investing all of your fiat currency into a coin called $DOGE or $DRGN… but there are many coins such as $ICX that would be a great place to start.

If you are interesting in investing in AltCoins sign up for Binance today by clicking here.

Binance is an asian run website, but it has always been secure for me and can be trusted. I have enabled multiple authentication methods that serve as added security for the site and prevent hackers from stealing funds.

Remember to follow the security protocol of every exchange and PROTECT YOUR ASSETS.

How CryptoCurrency changed my life and why CryptoCurrency is a top investment of 2018…

If you still need convincing that CryptoCurrency will be one of the top investments in 2018 then here’s where I tell my personal experience with CryptoCurrency.

I bought Bitcoin in 2016 when a friend explained to me Blockchain technology.

I wasn’t interested in the “digital gold”, I was interested in the technology behind it and what it could do for the global marketplace.

The idea that I can send currency to my friends in Germany, Russia, Spain, the UK, or anywhere else on the planet was exciting. Whether it be for a birthday present, some awesome imported German Beer, or just to pay them for helping me out with a homework problem this seemed like a great idea.

When I first started reading white papers on AltCoins (papers outlining the technologies behind the currency and the intended purpose) I realized that Bitcoin transaction fees and the speed of the transactions could be enhanced.

I immediately starting diversifying my investments into coins like $RDD, $XRP, $STRAT, etc.

This is when CryptoCurrency changed my life. Within three months I had doubled my initial investment. I then dedicated my next two paychecks to CryptoCurrency as the technology began to catch steam.

Not only was I gaining in quantity of $BTC (Bitcoin) because of the increase in value of my investments, I was making $USD like mad.

I stopped caring about $USD almost completely and made it my mission to gain as much $BTC as possible.

To date I have made 5,000% on my initial portfolio investment and I own 14 different types of CryptoCurrency assets. Many people have haggled me to cash out for fiat, but I believe in the future and I believe in Crypto.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not an idiot. I paid off my student loans, I paid off my home, and I paid off all my consumer credit debt and my vehicle. Now, I’m waiting for the day that CryptoCurrency is the only currency.

Humor me, think about how often you use cash for a second.

If you find yourself using a card for every day to day transaction, you are already using digital currency. However, the technology is weak, outdated, and easy to hack.

If you don’t believe that this will be the norm one day. That’s perfectly fine. If you don’t believe the current value of $BTC is what it should be, that’s also fine.

If you want to know more or talk further about CryptoCurrency in general. Drop me a comment below and I’d be happy to talk it over and respond personally to your questions and comments.

Share with your friends on Social Media and leave a comment below with your new $RDD wallet address and I will send you 1 $RDD as a thank you.

Disclaimer: The above references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Investing in ETFs 2018

Exchange Traded Funds:

The second most important investment of 2018 behind Real Estate, Exchange Traded Funds can provide great upside and potential growth for your money.

Many people aren’t even sure what exchange traded funds (ETFs) are in the first place. Well allow me to put it in the simplest form that I can think up:

ETFs are essentially funds, much like stocks, that can be traded on the major exchanges. This includes the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

There are other exchanges such as the OTCBB for smaller companies that have issued initial public offerings (IPOs) of shares but we will stay away from those for now as they are generally deemed Penny Stocks and not meant for year long investment.

An ETF holds different assets. These assets can be in the form of commodities like gold or silver, or maybe a variety of stocks and bonds, or both.

ETFs allow you the ability to invest in many different types of assets at once and generally track the market based on the value of the assets that they hold.

So you may be asking why ETFs would make the list of the best investments of 2018. Well, that’s easy.

ETFs increase and decrease in value when the overall market indices do the same. When we are in a bull market, or a market that is generally rising in simpler terms, it is easy to generate passive revenue from ETFs.

If the overall market, or more specifically the market surrounding an ETFs holdings is increasing, then your investment also increases accordingly.

So why wouldn’t you just invest in individual stocks and hope for the big gains?

ETFs are easier than picking individual stocks because they automatically diversify your portfolio and allow you to start investing for less up front cost.

When you pick individual stocks you may have to invest $150 a share or more.

For example, take Tesla…a company growing in popularity over recent years that swings pretty heavily in stock price and has seen solid gains overall.

If you were to invest in Tesla at the time this article was written you would have to come up with around $340/share.

This is a lot of money when you first begin to allocate portions of your wealth to the market. In addition, you are limited to purchasing whole shares of Tesla’s stock which means if you have less than $680 you are unable to buy 2 shares of Tesla stock.

ETFs allow discounted prices for investors, but still allow you to hold some sort of stake in popular stocks.

Say an ETF has holdings in Tesla and Tesla does well overall. You see gains in your portfolio proportionate to the exposure that ETF has to that particular stock.

Quite often, you can purchase stake in an ETF for a much less up front investment than buying particular stocks directly.

Many ETFs trade below $100 so you can accumulate a much larger quantity of holdings in that ETF. In addition, the money you make on your investment can grow at a more rapid rate than it would if you were only able to buy a singular share of individual stock.

This is especially the case if that stock underperforms its associated sector and the ETF you have invested in tracks the overall sector.

Most people believe that they can beat the overall market through day trading, but generally speaking, that is not true. Up to 93% of those who call themselves “day-traders” fail to exceed the gains of the S&P 500 year over year.

Simply put, if you were to invest in just the S&P 500 you would have seen around a 10% gain year over year over the past 2o years. Financial advisors, traders, and investment bankers actually only see up to around 5-6% gains per year on average.

Get started investing in ETFs and generating returns on your investments today. Sign up for RobinHood today and invest with zero trading fees!

If you still have questions about ETFs ask them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer!

Disclaimer: The above references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

Investing In Real Estate 2018

Real Estate:

It is a widely known fact that humans need food, water, and shelter to survive.

As a firm believer in supply and demand, and as the population of the world increases, real estate will become increasingly harder to come by in the future. This means that the overall price of real estate will increase across the board.

If you position yourself to own real estate before an area becomes too dense, desirable, and expensive to purchase property, you will be among those profiting from their real estate holdings.

Investing in real estate doesn’t have to be a complicated process. With the right research you will be able to find an affordable property that meets your needs.

So, what are some critical things to think about to ensure you choose the RIGHT real estate?

Location:

When choosing the location of an investment property it is always important to remember that areas that seem to be over-extended or extremely sought after are not necessarily your best options.

For example, if you look at the city of San Francisco, California, you would probably think that since this is a desirable place to live and is increasing in population year over year that it will be a profitable area to invest.

If you look at rent prices year over year, however, you may realize that they are actually taking a turn downwards.

This may signal that the real estate market in this particular area is in a bubble and that these high property valuations may not hold up for much longer.

When choosing a location to purchase property always remember to look at:

The Surrounding Neighborhood: Would you raise a family here? Are there local parks? Nicer homes? Nicer vehicles in the driveways?

If you are able to answer “Yes” to all of the above questions… This neighborhood will likely remain desirable in the future.

After all, the general rule to purchasing a new property is to “purchase the worst home in the nicest neighborhood”.

This leads me to the next key element of purchasing real estate.

Renovation Potential:

Does this home have a desirable floor plan but is outdated on the interior or exterior? You may be in luck.

Desirable floor plans offer great renovation potential. As trends change, they still seem to favor some very particular floor plans. One very common floor plan that investors focus on is a very open and airy home.

Generally speaking, people interested in purchasing the home after you, or renting from you while you own the property will seek out open floor plans as a key element on their list of wants.

If this is the case, an open floor plan with a bright airy kitchen and living area may be the ticket to selling for a profit in the future or renting at an escalated rate.

Some quick renovations that can add a considerable amount of equity and desirability to your investment property can be the kitchen appliances, cabinets, sink, and faucets.

If you start with these items, you may be attacking the single most important piece of your home that will create a legitimate return on investment.

Kitchens have been a focal point of homes for years, and the trend of having an upgraded kitchen is not going anywhere soon.

The next most important upgrade would likely be flooring. If you manage to strip your investment property of outdated flooring and install hardwood, tile, or laminate, you may be able to quickly increase your properties value without breaking the bank.

Sometimes flooring can run as low as $1.00 per sq. ft even at big box stores. However, if you find a local flooring liquidator you may be able to swing a free install along with your purchase.

The last critical component of your real estate search should be the growth potential.

Growth Potential:

Is this area increasing in population at a rapid rate? Many investors purchase property in America’s fastest growing cities in order to ensure that demand will be met.

However, it is important to understand the demographic you would like to rent or sell to in the future.

Is this property near a college or university? Would you rent to students? What is the growth rate of this university?

Many of the California State Universities, as an example, have experienced a large influx of applications in recent years.

With new pressure on younger generations to obtain a degree, students are seeking schools that may be cheaper, yet still prestigious enough to land them a job.

If the real estate you invest in is near a rapidly growing university, you may be able to increase your rental prices as the prices of on campus living increase.

In addition, many college students seek out roommates, so paying the rent should be less of a concern.

Lastly, there will be no shortage of renters in this area as campus housing cannot support the rapid increase in the student body population.

You may be concerned about the cost of investing in real estate, and that is understandable. Down payments for investment properties aren’t always easy to obtain.

So what if you don’t have enough savings to put the down payment on an investment property?

Are there other options?

The answer is… YES!

With modern advancements and the widespread implementation of crowdfunding for new investment opportunities, real estate crowdfunding is emerging as a premier opportunity for those who are currently unable to purchase property on their own.

In addition, crowdfunding platforms like RealtyShares allow you to purchase equity in different real estate ventures including basic single family rental properties and even multi-family complexes.

You can actually start investing in Real Estate with as little as $5,000.

Why is this so important? Utilizing crowdfunding platforms like RealtyShares allows ordinary people without large amounts of free capital to invest in cities all across the nation.

This means you aren’t even required to live in the city you are investing in.

Say you do have a large amount of free cash flow to invest, yet you don’t want to take all of the risk yourself. Real estate crowdfunding platforms allow you, the primary investor, to reach out to others across the globe in order to raise the funds necessary to invest fully.

Want more details? Check out RealtyShares for more information on how the platform works and sign up today.

Disclaimer: The above references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

The Best Investment Opportunities For 2018

As the New Year is now in full swing, you may be reconsidering your current financial situation and may be interested in pursuing new investment opportunities.

Here is my unique take on the 4 best investment opportunities for 2018 and why you should be focusing on these key items over the course of the year.

Short List of Opportunities:

Let’s break each of these down and talk about the potential benefits of sinking additional funds, including that 2018 tax return, into one of these categories.

Simply click one of the items in the short list and read all about why that option is a great investment opportunity for 2018.

Disclaimer: The above references an opinion and is for information purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.

3 Of The Best Ways To Monetize A Website

There are so many ways out there to monetize a website these days. How can you ever figure out what the best route to take is? That’s what we need to talk about. I want to explain to you 3 of the best ways to monetize a website.

You may already have a website in place, which is awesome if that’s the case, and if not then you may want to read my article on how to properly build a successful website for free before we dive too deep here. It’s super simple to get started and once you do you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.

Let’s start with the basics.

Build Some Authority First

When I first broke into the internet marketing game I was under the impression that I was going to sit down at my computer, crank out some words on the page and everyone would read it, buy stuff, and I’d make a ton of money.

That, unfortunately, is not the case. I have always said, “If getting rich was easy, everyone would do it.” Since everyone is definitely not rich, I’m telling you it’s not easy.

So, when you first start your website you will not make money. That’s almost a guarantee. Well… let me rephrase. You will not make any substantial money when you first start. My first couple months I really only saw a few bucks trickle in from various sources, but not anywhere close to enough to sustain my day to day lifestyle.

With that being said, understand the importance of building your site out and creating a significant amount of content before you expect to see results. Building a website works like anything else, if you want to make money you have to put in time and effort.

If you put in the appropriate amount of time and effort you will be rewarded tenfold.

Building a website is also not a get rich quick scheme. There are many scams out there like the business model I wrote about here that will tell you the only way to make real money is by buying a product and then scamming others into buying that same product.

Doesn’t this seem a bit silly? Eventually you just go round and round and run out of people on the planet to buy your product.

Now that you understand that this will take time, I will explain the 3 major ways authority sites are making money on the internet. You probably can guess them for yourself, but if you are new to the internet marketing world then maybe you don’t know this just yet.

1. Advertisement

You see ads everywhere and you might not even know it. However, most are pretty blatant I will admit. If you clicked on a photo recently, it was probably an advertisement. If you clicked on any sponsored link, that is most definitely an advertisement. If it was the top Google search result, it was likely an ad from that site. If you have watched any videos online lately, the chances are there was an ad included in the video.

The fact of the matter is, ads are becoming more popular every day. You can’t even stream music these days without ads popping up unless you pay monthly fees. It is quite frustrating, but these sites are making money from it.

Let’s talk about how it works and a couple different avenues to get ad revenue from your website.

Google Adsense: Google Adsense is probably the most common outlet for ads on the internet. Any site you click on probably has Adsense embedded somewhere in their site. This can be in the form of banners within content or integrated in a sidebar, header, or footer.

Google Adsense may be one of the most popular ad generators due to the fact that they have the ability to collect cookies from a vast majority of users.

When Google understands what users are interested in it sets them up to better advertise and conjure conversions. Google’s algorithms understand what you want to purchase based on your searches, site visits, etc.

They say that you will research something 7 times on average before deciding to purchase. If you just so happen to see an Adsense ad on a site and this is your 7th time seeing the product, maybe a click happens.

This is how you can generate income from Adsense. Users frequent your site, and let’s face it, you know you’ve clicked on a few ads and even purchased things after clicking. This is important because every single time you click on an ad, a website is making money.

You leverage the same principles that the other authority sites do and advertisement becomes your bread and butter.

Targeted Advertising:

Not all advertising is based on cookies that are collected from a user. Sometimes you will want to create ads that revolve around what you are writing about on your website.

If you head over to incitefitness.org and check out my blog, you will see that I have some ads that are very specifically tailored to those that would be reading that blog.

This is effective because people that tend to be looking at a particular post related to a niche are more likely to purchase items or be interested in ads pertaining to that niche.

A downfall of Adsense is the fact that many people will see something they searched out of random like the Starbuck’s Unicorn Frappuccino. They may hate that drink but searched it because they wanted to justify their hatred for the product.

Immediately you will see ads through Adsense that have saved this search record. They begin to advertise fruity, sugary, coffee drinks to you and it’s somewhat annoying. Especially when you are visiting a site founded around building an online income.

If you use targeted advertising like they offer at Rakuten Network or other affiliate advertising sites you can see much more profitable results. Since I also run a health and fitness website it is important for me to advertise items and brands that my readers can believe in.

I target my advertising based on quality products or services that align with the values that I instill through the content I build on my sites. This converts more frequently than your average Adsense ad, and you tend to earn more through commissions.

This brings me to the second huge monetization technique when it comes to websites:

2. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is similar to advertisement but also very different. That seems counterintuitive I understand but it’s really the only way to accurately describe what is happening with affiliate marketing.

With affiliate marketing you essentially advertise a product, if someone purchases that product or you refer someone to a particular website you receive commissions from whatever they purchase. Refer to my article on how to make money affiliate marketing for more specific information.

Many sites incorporate affiliate marketing because it is slightly more profitable than advertisement (unless you are driving a very expensive, tailored advertisement campaign). Affiliate marketing actually allows you to become a salesman rather than just relying on others to sell product.

You can sell other peoples products and operate based on the commission you receive. There is a number of quality affiliate programs out there which I discuss in great detail here and here.

Perhaps one of the most lucrative setups is Amazon’s affiliate program. Although the commissions are limited, you receive commission off of anything purchased even if it is not the item you’ve linked to.

For example, my websites have seen revenue when people purchase RV Toilet Paper of all things when I am actually advertising workout gear. Since someone clicked my link I receive the commission because I funneled them into the Amazon site in the first place.

This is a very lucrative business model and a large majority of sites at least have Amazon Affiliate ID’s so that when they talk about products they can link to them and receive commission.

Even on products I truly love, I may as well include my affiliate link rather than making nothing from the sale.

The selling of products you create is the final of the three key ways to monetize your site.

3. Sell Your Own Products

There are many types of products to be sold in modern times. You can chase after the classic build your own product and sell that to those who read through your website and believe in you…or you can sell your own digital product which is what many on the internet are doing right now.

Trends are interesting, and this one is huge. You have self proclaimed millionaires and gurus that decide that they want to help everyone “get rich today for a one time investment of $3,000” and they actually convince people to fall for that. I’ve been a victim of these scam artists myself so trust me. (Haven’t blown money on them but have definitely clicked through their links and spent time listening to them).

Marketing your own skills and abilities is probably one of the least taken advantage of opportunities. If you have a skill or an understanding of something and can teach that to other people, it’s very likely that you can monetize your website through instruction.

Educating others with digital content is probably the most profitable of the three ways to monetize your site. This is because of the low overhead cost, minimal updating requirement, and the fact that once you build it you don’t have to produce more than one really.

Digital content doesn’t have the price tag that 5 million Toys R Us toys have to produce. You can create quality digital content on a very limited budget and sell it to your readers at a reasonable price.

People tend to pay large quantities to learn new skills that will help drive them towards success. If you have a unique outlook it is imperative that you share this via digital content with your readers because then you will have the opportunity to generate sales in the future with digital content.

If you are not a digital content creator yourself you can start your own clothing brand or create a physical product that you can then distribute. If you have a large traffic base initially then conversions to sales will be easy and monetization of your site will come with little to no effort just as it has with advertising and affiliate marketing.

While selling a product that you have personally created can have some heavy up front costs associated with it, you can definitely see a much more rewarding result from monetizing your own products via your websites.

If you have any questions about my monetization methods, how I generate revenue via this website and the aforementioned site incitefitness.org please drop me a comment below and let’s chat!

As always, thanks for reading.

How To Build Your Own Website For Free

Many people would like to get involved in the grand landscape of the internet. Some of you may not be happy just commenting on social media or sharing other people’s articles. Maybe you would like to share your own opinions with the world or create studies of your own to benefit the online world.

Maybe you are looking to build a website to generate a passive income. This is a very common avenue for creating wealth these days and you are probably wondering how to build your own website for free.

Well, I will explain to you just what you need in order to create your very own website from scratch. What you will read here is a general overview on website creation. At the end of the article I will offer you some free coaching sessions if you are truly interested in building a site!

First, let’s start by talking about what you need to do in order to make this dream a reality.

Understand The Key Elements Of A Website

When you are building a website there are some key elements of a site that you must understand.

A Domain- A domain is the first thing that anyone needs to start a website. You cannot create a site without first having a name for it. The domain for this website would be “incitewealth.org”. In order for people to find your site it must be registered under a domain.

Usually unique domains can cost anywhere from $10-$20 (some that are already taken can be purchased for thousands. However, this is an article on how to do it for free. There are free domains available from SiteRubix. Go ahead, get started and create your own free domain with this tool:

Now that you’ve created your own unique domain, let’s move on to the next key element of a site.

Hosting- Hosting is needed for your website so that it has somewhere to live. Essentially this is the only way to describe everything that is happening behind the scenes within your site. To build a successful back-end you usually will need an extensive knowledge of code.

The back-end of your site, simply put, is the hosting and functionality portion of your site. Essentially this is what makes links clickable, videos playable, images linkable, etc. Without a solid hosting platform your website will have no hosting power and will just be pretty much a blank page.

Luckily for you there is now a wide variety of hosting platforms out there. My personal favorite is the Wealthy Affiliate hosting platform as is has lightning fast speeds, access to hundreds of WordPress Themes and plug-ins, and even offers you round the clock SiteSupport.

Plug-Ins- Plug-ins are extremely important because they, through your hosting platform, can help users to navigate your site, and they also help you build your site in a manner that becomes user friendly. Plug-in examples are shown below.

Plug-ins also effectively help you rank in search engines through SEO optimization add-ons and offer your site security with SSL (a secure sockets layer).

If you are interested in allowing users to share your content on social media you can allow them to do so using social plug-ins that will generate this option, just like the buttons you see at the top and bottom of this post. Plug-ins are generally free when you have a good hosting platform or go through WordPress to design your site.

Pages- Pages are another key element of your site. These are fixed pages that will always be accessible by users unless you choose to hide them behind the scenes. Pages are important because they can give users an overall idea of what your site is about.

Ideally you will have an About Me or Getting Started page so that users are able to understand more about you. After all, transparency is the key to website design and people want to know who it is that they are listening to on the web. It creates a personal experience rather than just reading some text on a screen.

Pages can also be used as your categories which is another key element of your website after posts.

Posts- Posts will be your content. They will be what your reader shows up to see and usually the reason that someone comes to your website. I am focusing around a niche site here assuming that you are passionate about a particular topic and would like to share this passion. Posts are just like the one you are reading here, and are usually contained within a particular group.

Posts are usually displayed on your home page unless you are strictly marketing one product and want to push people to there. Then you would ideally create a splash page but that is another subject entirely and not really related to building a free website.

The recurring run of posts on your home page or under your different sections is called your blog roll. This is what will update every time you write a new post.

You generally want your posts to be pretty lengthy (1500-2000 words) so that you are taken seriously when founding your site. This will be a tough battle so make sure that you are only writing quality content starting out. If you plan to build a successful site you must continue writing steadily and make sure that your content stays consistently valuable to you readers.

Now on to the grouping mechanism for these posts.

Categories- Categories are important because this will allow you to group the next element under particular topics. Eventually you will probably want to make the categories your primary menu element like the one at the top of this page.

If you click on any of the links in the top menu you will be taken to a particular category where you will find multiple posts.

That brings me to another key element:

Menus- Menus are important because they are the navigation panes of your site. They allow people to get around your website seamlessly and find what they are looking for. Shown below is an example of a menu you could create if you were building a site very similar to this one.

Obviously you will have very different menus based on your niche, but the concept still remains the same.

Since you are trying to keep readers on your site for as long as possible and provide them with as much quality information as you can, having effective and seamless menus is important.

That pretty much covers the overall basics of the elements of a site. Now let’s talk about making it look good.

Building Out The Face Of Your Site

When building a free website you will realize that you already have so many theme options after selecting a quality hosting platform. This takes all the HTML and CSS coding out of the equation so that you don’t have to spend hours of your own time making things look nice.

If you do want to learn some of this there is a great set of books on HTML and CSS that can help with the basics and making small custom adjustments to your site later. These are available on Amazon for around $30 and have helped me a great deal.

After you get the framework of your site created you will want to build how it looks. This is done by installing a theme on your site that will format all of the key components listed above to look and function a particular way.

The theme selection interface looks something like this and can be found via the “themes” link on your WordPress toolbar.

The aesthetic of your site is important because people like simple. These days with hundred of ads on individual pages it is extremely hard to read anything quality without making it worse with a bad layout or design.

Since you already have hosting because you signed up for a free Wealthy Affiliate account you now can login to your site and work on the aesthetic. Keep it crisp, and simple.

Make Your Site Topical

Usually this is called finding a niche. The easiest way to do this is by choosing your interests and searching them in the Google Search Bar to see what’s popular. Below is an example of possible niches revolving around making tacos.

Ideally you want to create something that is dedicated to one specific subject that you are interested in. Now that you have your own domain, your topic should fit cohesively with that domain.

This is important because you don’t want your domain to be named “lasereyesurgery” and begin writing about the most competitive NFL games of the week. The focus here should be creating a topic that makes sense, and something that you can keep writing about for years to come.

Try not to be too broad when creating a topic for your site. If you create something that is just fitness, that can be anything. You need to narrow it down to maybe weightlifting form, or nutritional guides, or something along those lines.

If you want to check out my main niche site which just so happens to be dedicated to “fighting fitness fads with facts” then cruise over to incitefitness.org for an example of what I’ve built there.

Without a topic for your site you will essentially be scrambling for content and readers will not stick around when no posts are related to each other. If you showed up here expecting to learn about building a website and the next page you clicked on was based around cute cats you would probably leave the site (or not if you love cute cats).

Deciding on a topic is free, so you still have spent zero dollars and are well on your way to creating a website. Isn’t it easy?

You Don’t Have To Build a Niche Website

There are other ways to become an authority site. You can take up the e-commerce approach and sell physical items. You actually don’t even have to sell your own items. While I don’t personally run any e-commerce sites, you can get some excellent background information on e-commerce by clicking here.

You can also run gallery sites or just promote your own VLogs. More and more YouTube video creators are using their own domains and website in order to expand upon their YouTube VLogging and create an authority site strictly dedicated to their YouTube channel. If you are interested in the video side of things you can do this as well with the right hosting platform.

Hopefully this gets you started with your site. If you would like to learn more and gain access to a completely free platform that will teach you everything that you could possibly need to know, contact me directly inside Wealthy Affiliate where you can get personal coaching from me if you sign up for the premium option.

I did say you can do this for free, but there are benefits to putting out a little bit of up front investment. We can talk about those when you contact me for help here.

If you have any immediate questions about this post or just want to offer some insight to readers feel free to comment below, I always respond.