One of the questions that I get most often on MasonWorld.com, through support tickets and blog comments ( and directly in email) is from people who are looking to just simply make a little extra money online. Usually they’re trying to cover a car payment or a shortage in their house payment and they want to know how they can make an extra 300 dollars online.
My answer is always the same. It’s very simple to understand how to make that amount of money online. I’ll admit to you that it’s not always simple to actually make the money, that usually takes work, persistence, and understanding of some internet marketing ideas. But, fundamentally it’s really easy to understand how to do it.
Now I actually wrote this post a long time ago — it's been sitting in my draft posts. Then I got a video from Andrew Hansen about Plug and Play Niche Cash, and I knew I needed to get this out there.
I was really pleased to see that Andrew Hansen teaches exactly the same thing (a fact I already knew). Here is his take on this issue. In his example, Andrew is talking about $1000/month, but the concepts are the same. Andrew has given me a direct link to his video, and you can watch it here (highly recommended).
My Take On Making Extra Money Online
Let me break it down for you the same way that I always explain this answer to everyone who asks the question. If you need to make 300 dollars a month online, really what you’re saying is you need to make 10 dollars a day online.
When you look at that already it doesn’t sound so bad. After all, the other day I went to Starbucks and bought a cup of coffee and it was almost 10 dollars, so 10 dollars a day sounds like something we can get at.
In order to make 10 dollars a day we need to do something that generates that 10 dollars. One of the easiest things you can do online is sell affiliate products that generate a commission. So, let’s say you’re going to sell something online and for the purpose of this example let’s say you’re going to sell Elvis bobble heads, after all I’m really good friends with the Queen of Elvis bobble heads, Lynn Terry and I know she’ll appreciate this example.
If you hook yourself up with a merchant who offers Elvis bobble heads, you might find (just for the purpose of this example) that a 30 dollar Elvis bobble head can pay you a 5 dollar commission. Let’s just say that’s the case. This means that in order to make 10 dollars a day, you need to sell two bobble heads each and every day of the week for each and every week of the year to average 300 dollars a month in extra income in your house.
Now, of course the big question is how in the world do we get two people to buy an Elvis bobble head every day? The answer is very, very simple, but you need to know some math, so let’s do some very simple math. It turns out that you can know the rate at which people buy Elvis bobble heads.
Every Site Is Different; Concepts Are The Same
Now, it’s going to be different for every site depending on the kind of website that you have and how you are presenting the Elvis bobble heads, and what kind of sales copy you’re writing about the bobble heads, but you can know, for example, that for every 100 visitors to your Elvis bobble head sales page one your website that a certain percentage of them will actually buy.
Let’s say for the purpose of this example that for every 100 people that visit your website on Elvis bobble heads you have a fantastic killer website and five of those people are buying an Elvis bobble head. 100 people find your site, five people buy a bobble head, that’s a 5% conversion rate, that would be an outstanding conversion rate for Elvis bobble heads. Your mileage may vary, but for the purpose of this example what it means is that you need 20 visitors to sell a single Elvis bobble head.
Since you need to sell two bobble heads every day it means that you need to get 40 visitors to your page every day in order to sell two Elvis bobble heads. If you can sell two Elvis bobble heads you’ll make 10 dollars every day, that will get you your 300 dollars a month.
Well, now the question is where are we going to get our 40 visitors? There are lots of places you can get traffic, but since we need to make 10 dollars a day I’m not going to talk about spending money to get traffic, I’ll just talk about free traffic, search engine traffic.
It turns out that if someone searches for something in Google they’ll get about 10 listings back when they type in a search term. So, if someone searches for buy Elvis bobble heads they’ll get back a page with 10 Elvis bobble head listings on it with web pages that hopefully contain information about Elvis bobble heads.
Research suggests that approximately 40% of those searchers will click on the very first link. So, let’s say that you are ranking number one for the term buy Elvis bobble heads. What that means is that 40% of the people who type buy Elvis bobble heads on Google will see your link first and click it.
That means, of course, if 100 people search for buy Elvis bobble heads, 40 people will click through to your site. We already know that if 40 people arrive at your site you’re going to sell two Elvis bobble heads.
Take Action On Simple Math
So, what do you need to do? You need to create a web page that’s targeted to an Elvis bobble head keyword that gets at least 100 searches per day so that you can get at least 40 people per day to your web page, so that at least two people per day will buy an Elvis bobble head, so that you can make your 5 dollars per bobble head, 10 dollars per day, which will translate to 300 dollars per month.
It really is simple math. Now, of course your mileage may vary. You may be a poor copywriter and at first you may only convert one out of 100 visitors. In that case, you need to two things. In the short term you need to get more traffic, and in the long term you need to work to improve your copywriting skills.
Maybe the market for Elvis bobble heads is not great right now and the commission is only 2.50. In that case, you need to two things. One, you need to find a better offer with a higher commission and two, you need to get more traffic to that page so you can sell four Elvis bobble heads a day to make your 10 dollars.
In every case these complicated problems of “how can I get an extra 300 dollars to pay my house note” can be broken down into very simple steps that allow you to reach your goals online.
If you want to know more about niche affiliate marketing and how you can make money online doing that I encourage you to visit my new website NicheProfitUniversity.com. Over there you’ll find a few free videos that will explain what I consider to be the five most important pillars of niche affiliate marketing.
Be sure to check out Andrew's Video — it is a great one and says the same thing that I am saying here (only with a funny accent).
My name is Mark Mason, here at MasonWorld.com where we teach people how to build internet businesses one night at a time.
Thanks Mark – good stuff. The key shortcoming for us all in this area is focus. Courtney Tuttle gives a very specific method for getting to roughly $800 a month using hubpages and adsense – and he then shows his specific example of how he did just that it (found at the keyword academy). If you follow the thread, however, most people aren’t impressed by his earnings vs. the work involved – it seemed really “hard to do” and “a ton of work for $800/month”.
Court then gives a great example of someone deciding to circle the block in their car, but, then they quit after half the trip, put the car in park and complain it was too much work to drive around the block.
$300/month based on 30 hours of work really kind of stinks – why not just get a part time job somewhere making more money than that? Lack of focus and seeing a project through to the enjoyment of some recurring income – gets us every time.
I don’t know Court very well, but I have read some of his stuff and he seems sensible. Glad to hear you are getting some value out of Keyword Academy. I always thought that looked like a good deal.
Unfortunately when people make up these little plans or sell WSOs, they always use BCS math.
That’s Best Case Scenario Math. 5% conversion rates are a dream, .5% are the norm, sometimes worse. That slight change makes the amount of work increase by a factor of 10.
I think if you want to be realistic about the whole thing you should actually do the method, and keep a detailed record of your findings so that your numbers will be real, not just speculation. In Kent’s example of the person who quits early, the reason is because they’ve been lied to sooo many times that they stopped believing in the method before the end of the trial.
Hey Rick;
You are right. While I don’t consider this BCS, 5% is pretty high. Of course it depends on the traffic and the copy, but your point is very well taken. Thanks for pointing this out.
Thanks,
Mark
Really great post, I know a lot of people (college, go figure) that want to start into this marketing business but have no idea where to start or how the heck they are supposed to make any money in this business. I’ll definitely refer them to this post and that video as a starting reference.
Yes I also agree, in Internet Marketing we should have some knowledge, patience and hard work to achieve the target.
and we can also say that Internet marketing, also referred to as i-marketing, web-marketing, online-marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or e-Marketing.
Hey Mark!
I’ve always looked up to you and Josh for great tips on making income online. And I have quite a few little victories using your tips.
One thing that’s bothering me right now is Google’s Adword Keyword Tool. Where before I could use Adword Keyword Tool freely, nowadays Adword seems to have changed the rules and require users to log in and provide billing information.
I’ve always used Adword Keyword Tool for keyword research, do I now need to actually pay Adwords for these information? What’s up with Adwords?
Can you help me out please?
Jaime
As far as I know the tool is still free.
Hey Mark how’s it going?
Really great post. Thanks for giving some really easy to understand examples. Glad you posted this as it contains a lot of good stuff.
Thanks!
Peace,
Darren L Carter
I know that some people do really well with niche sites, but my experience has been that the amount of money I can make compared to the amount of time it takes to make money is not a great payoff per hour. However, I keep my eyes open looking to find the keyword that get lots of traffic with no competition.
Good post but it’s not good to exaggerate things. The standard conversion rate is closer to 0.5-1%. 5% is outstanding and is more an exception than the rule. You at least admit that much. And you are right, the concept is the same but it’s better to be on the conservative side, especially in this example dealing with inexperienced marketers. We all read those hyped up sales letters and how many products actually lived up to their own hype?
Your point is well taken. Of course the conversion rate will depend on the source of the traffic, the copy, and the traffic. But you are right — 5% would be really high.
Alice (and Rick above) – remember that the video here was made by Andrew, not Mark. I agree with Mark in that the video does a good job of simply breaking down the math. I do agree that the numbers are extremely high and could likely not be duplicated in short order by someone with no experience no matter how hard they try.
What most people don’t realize is – it takes a ton of hard work, and the numbers don’t work like basic percentages. Probably 95% of people quit too early, which is in line with numbers in other sales/marketing professions such as real estate, insurance, mlm, etc.
Kent F.
Kent — exactly correct.
Also, Andrew will tell you that if you target “buying keywords” that you can see dramatically improved conversion rates. He is basing his claims on his actual experience as well.
However, no matter what we decide about conversion rates, the point is not to focus on specific numbers. The point is to teach people how to think about the problem.
As you point out, the key ingredient is hard work.
Thanks!
Thank you….simple and very well said… so easy to understand…
Hansens course is just another example of trying to sell shovels and picks to would be gold miners. Hey newbies have you not figured it out yet! thats all these Gurus are doing, selling you the tools to go waste your time, they aint selling you a map they are selling you a dream. Hansen is just another would be Levi selling shuckster, with a touch of sincerity. 5% conversion! go dig a hole and lay in it!
Chinese maths to fool the fresh meat, 1% would be phenomenal and .001 would be normal.
Please dont try and justify this with saying its dependent on the keywords and the sales copy, it is, but 5% is just plain misleading, show us the figures in real time Mr Hansen,show us the figures, but you wont will you? You will however just show us the tried tested and dam hard work way of submitting Articles, Vids and Press Releases to get backlinks, good luck with that because all the best keywords are already being battled for and you will have to keep up the fight so that you dont fall victim to the Google shuffle.
The question I would like to ask to all these Gurus is “How come if your methods are so money churning good, then why are you spending lots of your valuable time putting together courses to flog to us”
Oh is your philanthropic nature isn’t it, you just want to give back LOL – do us a favor.
Hey Jack — sorry you feel that way. People are definately making money with affiliate marketing. Certainly you are not suggesting that people are not making money on line? Amazon reported over 1.3 million sellers sold products through Amazon’s World Wide Web sites in 2007. It is estimated that over 1/3 of their revenue comes from affiliates.
So, the money is out there. Your other question is a pretty good one. Why doesn’t Andrew just make money instead of teaching how to make money. You’ll have to ask Andrew about that one.
For me, I actually like “helping people profitably”. Just like selling bananas or pork bellies, when you and I interact, you put a value on that interaction. If you value it highly, you may choose to pay me to help you. It’s that simple for me.
The same thing that motivates me to publish your comment rather than hide out and delete it motivates me to help people. I want to make money, but that is not the only consideration (or even the most important one).
Hope that helps!
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark, Not suggesting that their isn’t “gold in them there hills” I know there is. Further I am certainly not casting any aspersions in your direction. I check out your blog most weeks as I consider your opinions and advice to be some of the best and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.
What I do have objection too Mark is the amount of rubbish that is aimed directly at those new pools of marketing newbies who appear and then disappear on the windscreen of the internet like drops of condensation, being mopped up with misinformation and Chinese mathematics.
to answer my own question Mark, “How come if your methods are so money churning good, then why are you spending lots of your valuable time putting together courses to flog to us”
Maybe they spend so much time and effort creating these products because actually doing what they teach is far more time consuming and difficult and far less profitable than selling Pans and Picks.
BTW you and I know that the people who are really making a killing in IM are not using the methods that are going to be told to newbies.
I wish you and all your readers all the very best: Jack