Money Q & A

Thank you to everybody who decided to submit a question for this week’s Q & A about how to make money online – we had a good selection and those not answered will be addressed next week.

Does my website need a good page rank to make money? It’s 0.

Alex

Actually Alex, no, you don’t need a good PR to have a profitable website at all. In fact, two of my most successful websites had, and to the best of my knowledge still have, a page rank of zero. My main business has a PR of 2, which may not be great, but it is still a highly successful site that makes money. PR is good, but it isn’t the defining factor when it comes to making money.

How can I get traffic to my site? I get only one or two visitors a day.

Anon.

Traffic comes from promotion, one or two hits a day makes me think you haven’t read my article on how to get free traffic; I suggest you take a look at that and use some of the tips, such as making the most of social bookmarking websites and getting some free advertising from AdWords and Facebook.

What do you think the best affiliate program is?

Zei

Without a doubt the best affiliate program in terms of letting you make money online is Clickbank – the payouts are higher then most other affiliate programs. They pay by check for the first three months, but after that you can opt for bank deposit. They are the only affiliate site that I still use today, and I’ve tried them all.

If you have a question to submit, do so in comments, and I will answer it next week – if you don’t want the comment to be published simply say so in your text.

Until next time!

That said, I have had several successes with Ebay; I made $70 on my last sale, which was a TV sent via a drop shipping company and before that I made $40 on a small sale – it was for some virtual items. I got the idea using the Games To Money guide, which you can find under my “blog buddies” section to the right of the page.

So, Ebay – let’s get down to the Pros and Cons so you can decide if it interests you or not.

Pros:

ebay

- Easy to find a buyer

- Ability to dispute for non payment

- A feedback system to give you a better idea of who you’re dealing with.

- Return customers can find you easily.

Cons:

- Fees

- Difficult to cancel a listing

- Arranging postage OR finding a reliable drop shipper

If you want to use Ebay you need to either find a reliable drop shipper; in your own country is best because if you are buying direct from China you need to specify somewhere in your listing, “Item is shipped from China.” (Shipping costs from overseas will also eat into your profits significantly.)

Otherwise you can buy wholesale bulk lots of items locally, online or in a store, and then sell them on individually.

If you plan on doing this you should start out small, like DVDs or piercing jewellery, then once you’ve got a feel for it you can safely move up to phones or computer parts.

You should allow yourself a budget of $50 to $100 to start out with and see what you can turn that into – try to build it up gradually – you should be able to start earning a profit of $400 a week by the end of month 2, and a profit of around $800 per week as of month 6.

If this is something you are seriously considering, visit my blog buddy Games To Money and click through to their Ebay guide, (it has a banner at the bottom of the main page,) I bought it for $5 and it gave me a lot of useful advice; without it I probably wouldn’t have known how to pick a TV to sell with so many competitors in the electronics market – although if you are already experienced with Ebay you may not need it – it’s designed for people just starting out making a business of it.