Simplest Way to Make Money Online Almost Guaranteed

Looking for a way to make your first $1 online?

I’d like to share a money making strategy with you that I have found to almost always make some kind of money for me online.

I’m not talking big money here.  This is a beginner strategy I’ve used to make my first few dollars online, but the skills I’ve learned with this are the fundamentals I use to make bigger money with my sites.

First a disclaimer:  I do not guarantee that you will make any money with this strategy.  Nobody can really guarantee that.  All I’m sharing here is what’s worked for me and an example of an experiment I’m running for myself.  You’re welcome to try it yourself, but you are 100% responsible for your results.

With that out of the way, let’s get started.  Normally I do this a lot quicker, but I’m going to be doing it and Blogging/Screen Capturing as I go along so it may take a few hours longer than usual.

12:09 AM

I’m going to pick a random hobby I played with for a while at one point.  Something cool that I could write a few pages of content for without much trouble.

Looking around my room I see the “Real Flight RC Flight Simulator” box on my shelf.  It’s a radio controlled plane and helicopter simulator.

Going to go to Google to do some research.

12:11 AM

Logged into Google Adwords.  Clicked on the Keyword Tool.

Typed in “rc helicopter simulator”, clicked Get Keyword Ideas.

Google shows that about 8,100 people per month search for “rc helicopter simulator” and the bids per keyword are $0.55.  That looks good enough for me.  As long as I see monthly searches above 1,000 and bids above 0.25 I think it’s worth investigating further.

Next, I’m going to check on domain competition.

Going to Google Search directly now.

12:19 AM

Ok, Google shows 1,790,000 results for this keyword, and quite a bit of competition for that keyword for paid search.  These are both GOOD things.  If the keyword I picked didn’t have any competition and no paid search ads, I wouldn’t bother with it.

Next on to find a good domain name that has our keyword in it.

On to GoDaddy next.

12:24 AM

GoDaddy shows that “rchelicoptersimulator.com” is taken, so instead I try “rchelisimulator.com” since I know that RC enthusiasts use the word “helicopter” and “heli” interchangeably.  In fact I think a lot of them would refer to their helicopters as “heli’s” more often than “helicopters”.

Anyway, Google AdWords shows that “rc heli simulator” is searched for 1,900 times per month and bids are $0.44 which I still think is worth going forward with.

Cool, GoDaddy shows the domain as available.  Time to register it.

One thing I do before registering domains is I look on Google for GoDaddy promo codes.  You can use them to save a few bucks on a domain.

I found a promo code, and used it to get a discount on my domain.  The total domain price only cost me $8.05 Canadian in total.

Ok, so I’ve got myself a domain.  Now to setup hosting and install WordPress.

12:43 AM

I use Hostgator for my hosting and I highly recommend them.

They use the industry standard CPanel interface that makes it super quick to setup hosting and sites.  They also have Fantastico which makes it super easy to setup a WordPress Blog.

I login to my CPanel interface.

Hostgator allows you to add unlimited domains to your account without paying anything extra on your monthly hosting.  This is yet another reason why I love them.  My previous host was charging me $10 for each domain I added to my account per year!  What a ripoff.  Hostgator is way better as they don’t charge anything.

I click on Addon Domains and put in my info.

Ok, domain added to Hostgator.  Next, back to CPanel to install WordPress.

12:52 AM

Back in CPanel now.

I click on Fantastico.

Inside Fantastico I click on “WordPress”.

I click on “New Installation”.

Next I select the addon domain “RCHeliSimulator.com” from the pull down list.  Then I fill in the Administrator Username & Password (not shown above for obvious reasons), the Admin nickname and email address, and the name of the website which I’ll just make the domain for now (RCHeliSimulator.com) and the Description which I’ll use the original keyword I was going after “RC Helicopter Simulator”.  I click on Install WordPress when I’m done filling in all the fields.

On the next screen I click on “Finish Installation”.

Done, website should be loading up now.

Yup, basic WordPress install completed.  This is why I love working with GoDaddy, Hostgator, CPanel and Fantastico.

1:02 AM

Time to create my first page of content.

I’ll start by making a post that lists RC Helicopter Simulators.

1:33 AM

Ok, finished the post and published it.  Also deleted the “Hello World” post.  Also created “Heli Simulators” category.

Ok, now onto installing my favorite WordPress Plugins.

I have a directory on my computer where I keep my favorite WordPress Plugins.  That way when I setup a new site, I just use an FTP client to transfer that folder into my rchelisimulator.com/wp-content/plugins directory and all the plugins show up in WordPress.

Next I update any plugins that need updates and activate them all.

Here’s a listing of my plugins.  You can just search for them through the WordPress Plugin Installer.

Once I activate all my plugins, there are a few that need further configuration such as “Traffic Getting”.  That plugin helps you to “Tweak” WordPress for optimal SEO optimization.

I use it on my Blogs as a starting point for optimization.

This is what Traffic Getting showed as the optimization level of my Blog before applying the Blog Tweaks it recommends.  Here’s what it showed after:

Basically what Traffic Getting does is that it goes through and changes the default WordPress settings to be more search engine friendly.  It just speeds things up for me so that’s why I use it.

1:56 AM

Ok, time to add a Disclaimer and a Privacy Policy to the site so that we can add AdSense later.

I create a Page in WordPress called Disclaimer, and another one called Privacy Policy.  I’ve already gone through and created my own versions of these on my other sites so I’m just going to cut/paste what I’ve already got and just change a few things.  If you don’t have your own Disclaimer or Privacy Policy yet, just Google those terms and find one online that you can modify to your needs.  Make sure the one you pick actually makes sense to you.

2:03 AM

Ok, Disclaimer and Privacy Policy pages have been added.  Time to add AdSense to the site.  Going to login to my AdSense account.

Ok, once I login to my AdSense account, I click on “AdSense Setup”, and then on the link that says “AdSense for Content”.

I click on the “Single Page” link so that all the choices I have to choose from show up on one page instead of multiple pages.

Here are the only changes I select on this page:

I select the 300×250 Rectangle as my ad size.  I then click on “Add Channel” to add a channel to my account.  Channels allow you to track your AdSense income in more detail.  Then I click on Submit and Get Code.

(By the way, Joel Comm has a book called AdSense Secrets.  It teaches you everything about AdSense.  I believe he’s giving away this eBook for free right now.  I highly recommend you read it.)

Once you click on that button, AdSense will give you your code.  This is what it will look like:

I normally copy and paste the code into Notepad so that I can copy the AdSense ID and Channel # individually.  You’ll need these for the “All in One AdSense and YPN” WordPress Plugin.  Look at the code that Google gives you and you’ll see a number right after the “pub-” thing as indicated above.  That’s your AdSense ID.  Of course yours will not be “999999999999999″ I just replaced that to hide my #.  The channel is below that.  It will also not be “55555555555″. 

Once you have those two numbers, you paste them into the Adsense plugin. (Once it’s activated, the plugin appears under “Settings > AdSense” in WordPress Admin.

So those are the things you need to fill out – AdSense ID, AdSense Channel, and then select the “300×250″ Ad Format to Show.

2:27 AM

As you can see, the AdSense ads are now showing up on my newly created site.  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I changed my “Ad Positioning” setting to “Top Left” in the “All in One AdSense” plugin settings.  You can experiment with what works best for you.

2:32 AM – Installing a Sitemap

One last thing I’ll do tonight before calling it a night.  I need to tell Google where my Sitemap is.

I’m using the XML Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress which created a sitemap for me here: http://rchelisimulator.com/sitemap.xml

I need to add this to my Google Webmaster Tools Account. If you don’t have a webmaster tools account with Google yet, get one signed up – it’s free of course.

One I login, I click on “Add a Site”.  Of course I type in the URL of the site when the popup asks for it.

Once you type in your URL, Google asks you to copy and paste the “<meta name…” code into your WordPress Theme Header file in order to verify that you are in fact the owner of that domain.

I select the whole “<meta …” tag listed there and copy it.  Then I go back to WordPress Admin, and I go to “Appearance > Editor” which loads up your Theme editor.  Then I click on the “Header” file to modify the header, and I look for the section in the header where all the “<meta>” tags start.  I usually paste it as the first “<meta>” tag there.  See below:

Once you paste the “<meta …” code you copied from Google into your Header file for your WordPress Blog Theme, you need to click on the Update button at the bottom of the editor to save the changes to the header file.

Once you save the changes, go back to Webmaster Tools and click on “Verify” to verify that you are in fact the site owner.  The page should accept Verification and go to another page.

On this page you click on “Site Configuration” which brings up the drop down menu below.  There you select “Sitemap” and on the right hand side a page will load with a “Submit a Sitemap” button.

Type in the URL of your sitemap, which should just be your domain with “sitemap.xml” at the end.

As you can see, Google accepted my Sitemap file and is now aware of it.

The site is brand new so obviously it hasn’t yet indexed anything, but at least we’ve notified Google of its existance.

2:55 AM – Finished for Tonight

Summary and Next Steps

Obviously there is a lot more work I can do on this site to get it making more money, but technically speaking if someone comes across this site and clicks on some of these ads the site could start making money.  My only monetary investment was $8.05 CDN in purchasing the domain which I don’t think will be difficult to recoup.

Here are some of the next steps I may take to start building up the income from this site:

• Install a WordPress Theme for the site that looks better than the default WordPress Theme I have up there now
• Continue to write new content for the site on a regular basis
• Visit related forums and Blogs, leave useful comments and link back to the site
• Once I have a theme installed, optimize my AdSense ads to fit in with the site.  Joel Comm teaches you everything you need to know about that in AdSense Secrets.  It’s free right now too.
• Use some of the traffic generating tactics I learned from John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0 to start driving traffic to the site
• etc.

I wouldn’t use the strategy I outlined above to create a website in a niche area you have no interest in.  I just arbitrarily picked this niche to use as an example for this post.  You will want to pick a niche topic that you’ll be able to create more than just a few pages of content for.

If you follow the steps exactly as I outlined above, in a niche market you’re interested in so that you can write a bunch of quality content and start driving some traffic to the site, it’s almost impossible not to make some kind of money from AdSense.  As I said all along, we’re not talking about huge income here, but it really doesn’t matter.  I think creating your first site that makes ANY money is a big step to learning how to make money online.

If I ran a school for making money online, all my students would be required to do a sample project like this where they have to make their first profitable website.  All they have to earn is a dollar more than the $8.05 they spent on the domain and the site becomes profitable.  (Well, I guess $20 if you don’t have a hosting account yet.)

So many people I talk to seem to fall into this trap of trying to make tens of thousands of dollars online, but they haven’t even figured out how to make $1 yet!

Start with your first profitable buck!

You’ll be surprised how excited you get if you haven’t made any money online yet.