If you want to learn how to earn extra money at home online, then there’s plenty of options available.
But if you’re really interested in making a consistent online income, you should consider setting up a home based online business.
To really make good money online, you need to create an online business based on reliable internet marketing principles.
Here’s what you’ll learn by reading this post…
- How to start a home-based online business.
- Steps to create a simple business based on something you enjoy.
- And the most economical and effective resources to help get you started.
Let’s begin.
How To Earn Extra Money At Home Online:
Now most people equate making money online to selling stuff online, am I right?
I personally have sold over thousands of consumer goods on eBay, Amazon, and Etsy.
And although I enjoyed the business and the money was fair, there are a few inherent problems with these types of businesses.
- It’s tough to consistently find new HOT products that sell fast.
- Import delays, storage fees, & poor quality products don’t create the best business model.
- If your products don’t sell, you lose money.
But the reality is that you can sell all the same products on Amazon and eBay, along with 1000’s of other suppliers, without ever dealing with these issues.
How to Make Extra Money Online Without Risk:
How do you do this you may be asking yourself. Let me introduce you to affiliate marketing.
You see, with affiliate marketing, I can sell every product that eBay or Amazon offers without ever owning the actual product.
I sign up for their affiliate program, then list their products on my own website.
Then when someone comes to my site and clicks on a product or affiliate link, they will be taken to eBay or Amazon where they can make the purchase.
I, as the affiliate, receive a commission, and never have to own the product nor deal with the inherit problems that can come with selling products yourself.
Selling new or used goods on places like eBay or Amazon is fine. But for me there’s too many headaches, and in general, it can be a waste of time and money.
Affiliate marketing is profitable and tailored for those who want to create an online businesses from home.
Need a bit more info? Let me explain with an example.
An Example of An Affiliate Marketing Website:
Let’s say you’re surfing your favorite blog or website and you see a banner ad like the one here that’s advertising anall-inclusive trip to Cabo San Lucus, Mexico for $299.
You’re tired of the snow and cold days back home and so you hit the link and make your purchase. This is an example of affiliate marketing.
The website you click from would be the Affiliate Marketer or Affiliate Website, and they would receive a commission for the sale.
So Affiliate Marketing is pretty simple, but let’s expand this concept a little further and see how it can apply to you as someone who wants to learn how to earn extra money at home.
Affiliate Websites are based on virtually anything. Any niche concept you can think of, that has products associated with it, can be turned into an affiliate website.
So if you have a specific skill, hobby or passion (aka a NICHE), you could make an Affiliate Website based on that Niche.
Affiliate Marketing Niche Idea:
I’m no longer a fly fisherman, but this just popped into my head… Say you like fly fishing. You could write content that’s based on fly fishing concepts, techniques, tips, equipment etc.
Then you build out a nice website that is helpful and useful to other fly fishing enthusiasts.
As your website develops, you could sell fishing poles, lures, boats, eBooks on fly fishing techniques, favorite fishing hole maps, tackle, clothing, etc.
Eventually you’ve got a site that earns you passive income commissions while you’re – that’s right, OUT FLY FISHING.
And that’s just one small niche. Imagine what you can come up with?
Now that we’ve got that covered, let’s break down what it takes to create a home based affiliate website.
4 Simple Steps To Start An Affiliate Website:
Step#1 – You Need To Have A Niche
Take time to think of something you are passionate about, something that you enjoy. Any special skill or trade will work as well.
The niche you choose will define the theme of your website and the affiliate products that you will eventually promote.
Step#2 – You Need To Have A Website
A website is where you will display your products, discuss your recommendations, and interact with your audience.
A website is built on layers of quality content that services your readers in a positive way. It’s also how we build traffic.
Step#3 – Build Traffic
If you don’t have traffic to your site, you’ll never make a sale.
You want a steady stream of traffic that comes from organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques, PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns, and social marketing.
When you combine quality traffic, natural search engine rankings, and paid advertising, you’ll get lots of traffic. And with traffic comes…MONEY!
Step#4 – Making Sales
Now this is the best thing about having an affiliate website. As you write quality content based on products you recommend, you will naturally start producing sales. And the best thing about affiliate marketing is you avoid…
- Inventory
- Customer Returns
- Customer Service
- Shipments
You only get the sales commissions, No Headaches!
How To Start Your Own Home Business Today:
The first thing you’ll need to realize is that you need a website, education, and training.
In order to learn how to get content to rank, build out your site, learn to use PPC campaigns, etc.
I encourage you to use a proven educational system called Wealthy Affiliate.
Wealthy Affiliate is a community based educational program that is run by experienced professional internet marketers.
The company alone is over 10 years old and they have helped thousands of people just like you who want to start their own successful online businesses.
Wealthy Affiliate offers an all-inclusive educational program to help you get started. I would encourage you to try out their Free Starter Membership.
The Free Starter Membership includes..
- 2 Free Websites
- Hosting to those 2 Free Websites
- 10 Free Training Classes to start your business on the right track
- Full Immersion into the WA Community
The Wealthy Affiliate education is solid, it’s risk free to try, and you can create a job, career, or cash cow out of your website.
They have the education, but it takes action on your part to make it happen. It’s just a matter of whether you want to make it happen or not.
What To Do Next:
Step #1: Sign up for a Free Starter Membership
Step #2: Fill out your profile with a photo and description – This will help get you connected to other online entrepreneurs. This will be very helpful as you continue the process of building your online business.
Step #3: Start with the Getting Started Course and begin your training. Looks like this below.
Final 2 Special Notes:
1.) Creating your own online business may seem like a daunting project but it’s not all that difficult with the right help.
2.) The last thing you want to get yourself into is some hyped up Get-Rich-Quick Scam. Believe me, there are tons of these programs going around online.
If you have any questions please leave me a comment below and I’ll get back to you right away.
And if you know anyone else who would benefit from learning how to earn extra money from home online, please share this article, you never know who you may help out.
Hey Todd! Yes, for the newbie without skills and knowledge, it is difficult to make money on the Internet. I would advise that to do so you need to find the money for hosting and a domain. A template store (templates need a clean, to buy, this is important), and some lessons on how to create an online internet marketing business. Good Luck and success!
Hi Kim,
Good points. Fortunately for those newbies out there, there’s Wealthy Affiliate (WA).
WA provides hosting for free to their Premium Members along with really nice and FREE theme’s (what you’re calling templates) that work for most newbies just getting started online.
Later you should buy a premium theme, but not all themes are created equally. WA also provides education and recommendations for this topic as well.
Now the best thing for newbies is the step by step lessons and courses that Wealthy Affiliate provides that really allows new students to get their online businesses off to a rocking start. Click here to read our review of Wealthy Affiliate and see all the great things this educational center provides.
Thanks,
Todd
I think it is safe to say many people could do with extra money when it comes to having a little comfort in life.
I think here you outline some great ideas and you have certainly got me thinking.
I did look in the past for opportunities on ebay and Amazon but to be honest I found it all rather troublesome.
Affiliate marketing and having your own website is a better way to earn extra money from home for me personally.
Thanks
Chris
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your feedback on our post. 1,000’s of people want to learn how to make extra money at home and selling on eBay and Amazon can make this happen, but it’s much more risky than what you’re doing.
I personally believe that the best method for anyone who wants to accomplish a work from home lifestyle is through building a niche based website and incorporate affiliate marketing, email marketing and adverting.
This has been the easiest and least risky method for me. Once I get a foundation to a site built and build out content, it’s only a matter of time before the income starts rolling in. It really is online limited to your imagination.
All you need is the support, guidance and education to make it happen.
Thanks,
Todd
I like what you said. For one to succeed online, the business has to be based on internet marketing principles. You are absolutely right. There are loads of getting rich- quickly scams out there. I once fell prey to a similar online money making program six years ago. It took me a long time to bounce back. I haven’t tried an affiliate program with eBay yet. I will give it a go. Thank you for sharing.
Hi Zegu,
You can run affiliate marketing for pretty much any product on the planet. eBay and Amazon make good affiliates because they’re well known and trusted.
The key to creating a successful online business for home is starting with a niche that you love. Then with the right education, you can easily put up a website and begin building your business for long term success.
All’s it takes is the right help and training,
Todd
Hi Todd,
I am really sad that I didn’t come across your site before I jumped into affiliate marketing. I am trying to do too many things on my site at once and it is a hot mess.
Alright, I’m going to stop complaining and make good use of the information you have offered; for one gets to fall several times before they learn to walk. That’s another secret for those looking to learn how to earn extra money at home.
Thanks for the info.
Hi Denise,
I can feel your frustration and I want to let you know that I have been there before as well. Just keep it simple and focus on writing helpful content for your niche audience.
As soon as you start getting some traffic, you will want to invest a little time to putting together an email marketing campaign.
Remember to keep it simple and just take it one day at a time.
Let me know if you ever need any help.
Todd
Hi Todd,
What do you think is better, to start an affiliate marketing business or an Amazon business. It seems both require a decent amount of work and start up capital, but what is really better in your opinion.
Thanks for your response and I enjoyed reading your post.
John
Hi John,
You can earn extra money at home from both Amazon, eBay, Etsy and affiliate marketing. But to create a long term business depends on what level of risk you want to take. Affiliate marketing is the least risky because it costs very little to start a website, create a niche, learn how to rank your posts and bring traffic to your site. Once you can do this, the affiliate commissions can start to roll in.
In comparison, making extra money at home via Amazon/eBay/Etsy can be much more expensive to initiate your business due to the start up capital, but can also be very lucrative. I have two recommendations for both and really the best way to get started is to start your own website.
For Amazon or eBay, I recommend Skip McGrath’s educational program and for affiliate marketing and website development, I recommend Wealthy Affiliate. Both are honest training programs that will help you learn how to really create a full time online/home business. Affiliate marketing is just the least risky of the two methods.
Hope this helps you out John and thanks for your feedback.
Todd
Hey there Todd, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make an online business happen forever. I’ve looked into so many programs that just turn out to be scams, MLM’s, or plain old BS. I investigate your recommended program Wealthy Affiliate and found nothing but good things about them. I signed up for their free training program and within a week of training, I joined their premium service because the training is incredible. I’ve already got my site going, a niche that I love, and I’m working away to make my online dreams come true. I just wanted to return here and say thanks for all your great posts, reviews, and the education that you provide here on learn to grow wealth online. You’ve made a really cool site with tons of helpful information.
Thanks
Arnold
Hi Arnold,
Thank you so much for your kind remarks, that really means a lot to me. I too was in the same position a year or so ago. I did pretty well selling online at Amazon, but wanted something with less risk and more rewards. Wealthy Affiliate taught me how to build affiliate websites, find niches, rank content quickly using low competition keywords, and make money online. Just stick to the training one day at a time and you’ll do great. That’s what I did and I’m so happy that I did it. It takes some time to make a real online business, but once you put in the time and work, the rewards are awesome.
Let me know if you need any help and take care,
Todd
I read this post, how to earn extra money at home a while back and decided to trust you Todd. You seem like a good guy so I went with your top recommendation Wealthy Affiliate to start learning how to make my own online business and I wanted to come back and say thanks.
I’m glad I trusted my gut about you, your site, and Wealthy Affiliate. Using the Wealthy Affiliate Training Program, I have already got my niche picked out, the start of my business website, and I’m loaded with tons of cool ideas about my passion, my niche.
I love your site and how honest you are about helping people who want to turn their dreams into an online business reality.
Cheers to you,
Will
You’re welcome Will and that’s very kind of you to come back to my site and comment on this post. It’s a challenge when you first started online. But work at it consistently each day and do something to improve your online business.
Wealthy Affiliate is a great source for newbies to advanced internet marketers to learn and grow their online business. I think of WA as an online university, there’s always something new to learn.
Thanks for your feedback.
Take care,
Todd
The easiest and cost-effective way to grow your online business is through social media.
Updates and content interaction will keep your target market growing. This company (Wealthy Affiliate) is also best in dealing with online internet marketing skills and strategies enabling sustained expansion and prosperity for newly online businesses, good for new and established businesses.
Thanks for the good post and I can vouch for the training provided by WA.
Clavin
Thanks Clavin for your feedback on how to earn extra money from home using the Wealthy Affiliate Training Center.
All the best to you,
Todd
Hello, I enjoy reading all of your posts and I wanted to write a little comment to just say thanks for the helpful information.
Cheers to you Todd,
Max
You bet Max, my pleasure. Have a great week, Todd
Todd, I was searching about a month ago on this topic and I found your article. Everything you write about is very open with a clear explanation of how working online actually works.
This has been a real benefit and relief for me because I have tried some other internet marketing programs that have only left me frustrated and with empty pockets. I tried your number one recommended program, the Wealthy Affiliate Business Center, and I couldn’t be happier. I already have my site rolling, my niche defined, and a good understanding on how to do keyword research and rank my content. I was so happy today when I woke up and received a notification of my first affiliate commission.
I just wanted to come back to you and let you know that this exact article and your site has changed my life and I wanted to thank you from the bottom of my heart. You’re doing great work here with Learn To Grow Wealth Online. Finally a real site that helps people learn how to make real money online.
God Bless You Sir,
Jan
Ah Jan,
You’re too kind and that makes me feel wonderful. I too was looking to make money online and when I signed up for the free training course at Wealthy Affiliate, I too had no idea of how complete and extensive the training program was going to be. I thought I could blow through one of the main courses in a month, 9 months latter, I finished the Bootcamp Course.
What I find amazing is how many youth and adults want to get ahead in life, go to college, learn how to make money online and travel, or just make money at home, yet they don’t know of the amazing program that Wealthy Affiliate offers. A college course on internet marketing or even website development costs easily over $1,500 for a 6 week course versus WA’s cost of $359/year. It a no-brainer in my opinion for those that want to learn how to make money online.
Thanks for coming back and leaving me your kind feedback and I look forward to checking out your site.
Cheers,
Todd
This is my first time I have visited your site and although I’ve researched how to make extra money at home online, this is easily the clearest post I’ve read that makes sense. I just signed up for the Wealthy Affiliate Training Program and I’m loving it.
Just wanted to say thanks to you and what a blessing that I stumbled upon your site. Keep up the good work.
Ron
Hey Ron, yeah I saw you signed up recently and that’s great that your getting started with your online business. Enjoy the process and don’t hesitate to reach out to the community when you need a hand. We’re here to help you make successful online businesses.
Thanks for your feedback and kind remarks as well, glad to help out.
Todd
Hi Todd,
After your great explanation, it’s clear that affiliate marketing is an easier way to earn money online, rather than selling your own physical products.
Your example of a niche site really makes it easy to understand how you can make a profitable business from a hobby or a passion.
Having started my own affiliate marketing site, I would say getting some good training is one thing that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Choosing a good training platform isn’t an easy task with all the ebooks, tutorials and different training platforms that are available.
A site that includes – organized step by step training, all the tools you need and support – well there aren’t many.
In fact, I’ve only found one and that’s Wealthy Affiliate. Todd, have you found a program that comes near to matching Wealthy Affiliate?
Thanks for the great post.
Peter
Hi Peter,
Always good to get your take on my posts. Learning how to earn extra money at home is a bit of a complicated process because of the plethora of poor training programs and online scams out there.
And Wealthy Affiliate is easily one of the best programs out there. I also like Bring The Fresh, but when comparing the two, I still would go with Wealthy Affiliate as the total package to learn how to make money at home.
And for those out there that want to start selling actual product on eBay or Amazon versus affiliate marketing other peoples products, I really like Skip McGrath’s training program.
But for me, I enjoy affiliate marketing for the benefits listed in this post and for the decreased risk. There are also other programs that teach people how to set up landing pages and then build email campaigns to sell to their email lists, but I think they don’t convert into sales as well as having a well established blog or website.
It seems that the trend of people landing on sales pages and actually buying the product is out. And that people buy products at a much higher rate once they trust a website that helps them out through content, training videos, etc.
Once the site is built and brings in targeted traffic, sales occur much easier. And that’s what is so cool about the Wealthy Affiliate training center, it teaches people all about these concept and is not a risky training program to get started in the online world.
Thanks as always for your awesome feedback based on your experience Peter, hope your summer is going well mate.
Cheers,
Todd
Hey Todd,
A really good review of how to make extra money at home and Wealthy Affiliate is an awesome training center to help those out that want to build real online businesses. I should know since I’ve been a student of their program for 2 years now and how several profitable and successful websites. 🙂
What I think is attractive is that you actually do not have any customer contact at all. If people buy a product from you, let’s say a computer, iPhone, whatever, you get the commission and non of the customer service hassles.
Nor do you deal with shipping or technical support. It’s actually very easy and it is basically also quite simple. To build a website and work on it continuously is actually not very difficult once you get started and have learned the basics of SEO, which WA teaches you step by step. I personally enjoy working with my website.
So my question is how do you get your readers to click on your affiliate links?
I myself have tried to work with paid advertisements without much success though.
How do you keep control of your budget?
Otherwise, I would say that it is a really good review of what affiliate marketing is all about.
Steen
Hi Steen,
Thanks for your feedback on my post. Learning how to earn extra money online is not too difficult as you have expressed when you have the right training and support. And that is what Wealthy Affiliate offers. You also need to learn how to do keyword research, and that is also taught at WA.
They do have advanced classes on PPC. But PPC (pay per click) campaigns are really designed to get someone on to your emailing list. The goal with any niche based website is to provide useful information to your niche audience. Affiliate commissions don’t cost the customer anything extra, so using affiliate links that actually take the customer where they want to go offers them an easy service. They like said product, are now informed and want to purchase the product, you provide the link.
Banners really are pretty ineffective anymore. With so much bombardment in advertising these days, our brains have learned to tune them out. I’m reading a great book called, Buyology by Martin Lindstrom who is a big guru in marketing world and he did an interesting study on what makes people click on some ads and ignore others. I’d highly recommend reading it.
As far as a budget, check out this post on low cost businesses. I run this business for less than $80/mo because I learned how to write content that ranks and how to get traffic naturally. The links are to posts on my site where you can read more about how these processes work.
Hope this helps,
Todd
You have done an excellent job on spelling out how to make money online with the affiliate marketing process using some good examples of how almost anyone can develop a niche based around something they already know about (or are passionate about).
You also point them in the right direction to getting an education on how to build a website, create content, understand SEO and making it work and where to get answers to all the questions that will arise.
I totally agree Wealthy Affiliate is an awesome place to get this education and anyone wanting to short cut the learning curve will find that this is the place to be.
By short cut I mean instead of wasting your time chasing programs that promise to make you a millionaire overnight with a few mouse clicks and yes people do get rich from such programs BUT that’s the ones who start these “get rich programs” – not the student or people who buy the programs!
Success comes from knowing what to do and then doing it and that’s what Wealthy Affiliate will teach you. Great Site, I will bookmark for future reference. 🙂
Hi Peter,
Thanks so much for your feedback. This really means a lot to me knowing that you are an accomplished writer, website developer, and affiliate marketer.
I couldn’t agree more with what you have written. There are so many programs out there that are either scams, incomplete programs, or simple eBooks that don’t really teach a person how to make money online.
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your insights, hope to see you here at Learn To Grow Wealth Online more often.
Cheers,
Todd
Fantastic post once again todd ! You really broke it down pretty simple.
Most people don’t know that you don’t need to physically own a product to sell it through your very own a website.
Heck people don’t know that you can have your own online business just by operating a website. To put it in perspective, compare your traditional business model against an online business. You will find out very quickly that the potential that an online business offers its unmatched.
For starters, you are going to be given the opportunity to reach a lot more people as there are billions of people on the internet and that number is just increasing.
I truly believe that people that got into affiliate marketing in the early stages are really going to reap the benefits. Awesome article again 🙂
Hi Yunier,
Thanks for your feedback on the post. Learning how to earn extra money at home is a big topic, and you’re absolutely right. Most people don’t realize the huge potential of creating a website as a long term business.
I actually did a little comparison article on this very subject, you can check it out, it’s called Low Cost Business Opportunities.
And once a person understands the difference in creating an affiliate website as a business and you compare it to a traditional brick and mortar businesses, you’ll never contemplate creating a traditional business again.
It just is so much more cost effective and less risk. I’d rather risk spending a $50 – $70 dollars per month to try an online business than $1,000’s of dollars on a traditional business. Both can succeed or fail, but an online business is much easier to recover from.
Plus, if you have a solid education on how to put together an online business, plus support and guidance, your chances of success are much higher. The only thing you have to bring to the table is a willingness to learn and take action on what you learn.
Good to hear from you Yunier and thanks again for your feedback as a fellow online entrepreneur.
Have a great day,
Todd
Hi Todd,
I had no clue that you could make money without selling actual physical products online, thanks for the info, great stuff.
Do you think I could earn extra money online part time?
Thanks,
Harry
Hey Harry,
You’re quite welcome. I too didn’t know how to earn extra money at home until I discovered Wealthy Affiliate. I actually sold imported products and drop-shipped on Amazon, which was a pretty cool gig. The only problem was customer service, products that were faulty, and the risk of buying in bulk for products that didn’t sell. So affiliate marketing worked out really well for me.
To answer your questions, absolutely, you can create your online business based on a niche that you like and it’s easy to write and rank content based on products within your niche on a part time basis. You just need the right training and support. And for that, I’d recommend you work with the training center called Wealthy Affiliate.
Have a look at my review of WA, sign up, and start creating your supplemental income, no time like the present.
Once you join their Free Starter Membership, you will get connected to 1,000’s of professionals that will help you along your journey, including me.
See you on the inside,
Todd
What a cool post. I hadn’t heard of making extra money online through affiliate marketing. I love your examples of how you can take an idea like fly fishing and turn it into a website for other fly fishing enthusiasts.
Great concept. I’ve done some selling on eBay, but this seems like a much better way to go about it.
I’m going to check out your recommendation.
Thanks,
Tara
Thanks Tara for your feedback. It’s pretty cool when you learn about affiliate marketing and how you can make it work for you.
If you want to learn more about affiliate marketing and building an affiliate marketing business, I would recommend you check out the following posts.
WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE MARKETING BUSINESS
WHAT IS AN AFFILIATE WEBSITE? A MONEY MAKING MACHINE
INTERNET MARKETING ONLINE AFFILIATE PROGRAM
Let me know if you have any questions or need any help,
Todd
I love this post, I never had any idea that you could make money online by selling brand name products through affiliate marketing. Well, I guess I never knew about affiliate marketing.
I’m going to sign up to your recommended course and I just wanted to say thanks for your guidance.
Thanks,
Rose
Your welcome Rose and happy to help out. Everyone want to learn how to make extra money online, it’s just so many don’t realize that you don’t have to sell actual products on your site.
Let me know if you need any help when you get started at Wealthy Affiliate. You’ll have all the training resources you need, but I’ll send you a private message to help you get started with the first course.
Take care,
Todd
Would you recommend hiring someone to do the SEO, or do
you recommend doing it yourself?
p.s Stay away from the Warrior Forums lol
Hi there,
Funny about the Warrior Forums, I hear nothing but negative things about them.
As to your question, it depends on what the goal of your site is. If it’s just to put up a website for a local business, that’s super easy to SEO just by using the name of the town and the services that your site represents. But it depends on the business and how or if you want to grow that business.
Assuming that you want your online business to really take off, I would opt to learn SEO from Wealthy Affiliate. You can take a couple hours of classes a day and learn how to do it easily. Within a month, you would have a clear understanding of SEO and how to rank your content. I will be putting out some posts in the future on SEO techniques on what you do after you publish your articles.
I knew nothing about SEO less than 8 months ago and now I can write a post and have it ranking in the first couple pages of Google sometimes in less than 24 hours. There is a series of things that you need to do, but it all starts with Keyword Research.
I use the Jaaxy Keyword Tool before I write any article. It’s super easy to use, very reliable, and has several other functions that I can use in my internet marketing business.
I find low competition phrases that people are searching for every month and then apply the SEO techniques I’ve learned with Wealthy Affiliate Online University and it works like a charm.
I would highly recommend reading my Jaaxy Review (linked here in this response) as well as Wealthy Affiliate Review (linked as well) to get the education you need to get your content naturally ranking. They also teach about PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns. When you combine these two methods, you will see success.
Thanks again for your question and please let me know if you have any others. You may also benefit from this article that discusses how to write content to rank.
Cheers,
Todd