Want to make some money online? Want to do it on the cheap?

You can make money using Internet Marketing skills that cost little to nothing. The main tool you will need is a bit of writing skill.

Here’s the process:

1. Decide on a topic
2. Find a keyword phrase.
3. Find a product to promote that is related to that keyword.
4. Decide what method you will use to link to that product – either a free service or buy a domain.
5. Write an article (or articles) about that keyword.
6. Include links to your product in the articles

Sounds simple, right? Well, it is simple, but some of us (yours truly included) make it so complicated that it takes awhile to work. That’s why I am posting this page… I want to be able to simplify this process so that you can cut to the chase much quicker than I did.

Now, each one of these steps should have its own web page, but this is meant to be just an overview.

Hint #1: Keep it simple – this is where I went totally awry. I jumped right into the digital camera market and thought I could make money there. I was wrong. First of all, it is much too broad of a market, and secondly, it is way too competitive for a brand new marketer. I knew nothing about simple keyword phrases. If you can limit your article writing to a simple keyword phrase, you will be able to start making money very quickly. I recommend One Week Marketing very highly because it is a step by step process that, if followed, will get you headed in the right direction. (and, yes, I do make a commission if you purchase One Week Marketing using my link)

Hint #2: AVOID all promises of quick money, at least until you know how the game is played. This includes every promotional video, no, especially the promotional videos. I don’t deny that these guys have made a ton of money, but do not get sucked into their smooth sounding promotional easy-to-do methods. You need to get a solid foundation of understanding before separating yourself from that hard-earned cash. If you are anything like me, you may have already discovered this sad truth. There are quite a few Internet Marketers giving away free information right now in hopes of creating a trusting relationship with you so that you will purchase their great products. My advice is to take the free information – it is usually very helpful, but don’t swallow that bait until you know enough about Internet Marketing to make some money WITHOUT their product.

Hint #3: SEE HINT #2 – That’s right, I repeat, Avoid all promises of get-rich-quick. The only ones getting rich are the guys selling the product (remember Amway – I did that too and helped to make someone else much richer).

OK, let’s get started…

Step 1 - Decide on a topic: If you are just starting out, you will probably do well to choose something you are interested in or have a passion for. It really works well if you are an expert in a field. My original topic was photography. Being passionate about photography was not much of an asset to me because I thought I could cover the WHOLE topic. I already alluded to the fact that this is much too broad of a topic. It would be better to focus on a much smaller piece of the “photography” puzzle, such as “nature photography”. This really has a lot to do with the idea of the articles and keywords. You want to keep your topic much more specific unless you are ready to build a huge website to handle all the facets of the topic you choose.

Keywords: In internet marketing, a keyword is a term you type into a search box. It can be a single word like “photography”, but usually it will be a phrase, such as “landscape photography tips” or “how to take good landscape pictures”.

Step 2 – Find a keyword phrase: While you may think you have this one down cold because you know about your topic, you still have to do some research. This is the one most important decision you will make that affects if you will be successful. You must chose keywords that you can promote successfully. By that I mean that you can get enough interested (emphasis on interested) people to your product link to make you some money.

There are a couple of things to consider about the keywords you select.

First: choose a keyword that you can get ranked for in search engines. “Get ranked” simply means that you can beat the competition and get on the first page of Google. If you are not on the first page, you chances of success are limited, at best. To determine whether you can get to the first page of Google or Yahoo does take some understanding which is beyond the scope of this post, but here is a basic guideline. Look for a keyword that has less than 5,000 related pages when you search for that keyword. Let’s use the example of “photography”. When I type photography into the search box at Google, I get about 216 million (that’s Million).

Search for Photography brings 216Million results

When the keyword phrase is modified to “tips for taking better landscape photos”, the search volume is 2,620… a big difference.

More specific keyword phrases get better targeted traffic

Did you notice the quotes ” “? This is a good idea when searching for keywords or you will get results for the words in your keyword pharse that do not relate to the concept at all. I did not need to put quotes around “photography” because it is only one word.

Let me just mention that there are tools available online that can help you to find good keywords. That will be covered in another article.

Step 3 - Find a product to promote. Many times you will have the product in mind and go looking for keywords that are related to that product. This is fine. In the case of my keyword phrase, “tips for taking better landscape photos”, I have decided to promote a digital e-book about photography.

Most beginning marketers start with digital products for a couple of reasons. First, the publisher of the e-book may have an advertising campaign already set up that gives you the tools to use for marketing that product. For instance, there may be articles and emails ready for you to modify and use for your own purposes. The second reason is that digital products are often easier for users to buy. Marketers set up the purchase process in a way that makes buying very user friendly, and the buyer gets instant access to the product which is quite gratifying most of the time.

You can also promote physical products such as cameras, contact lenses, doggie toys, or just about anything. People buy almost everything online these days, so finding a product is not difficult. The main thing is that you will want to be able to promote that product by writing great articles about it, so choose with that in mind.

Step 4 - Decide what method you will use to link to that product. This is where you can spend some money if you choose to do so. Marketers can promote products by creating their own website, which will cost a little money. You can purchase a one year contract for as little as $0.99 for a .info domain. If you buy a .com domain, it will generally cost you about $10 for the year. That is not much considering the possible return. And even if you eventually decide that you don’t want to continue with your internet marketing business, you are not out much.

The other way to promote a product is by using a free service. There are a couple such as Hub pages and Weebly, but the one recommended in One Week Marketing is Squidoo.com. I have used Squidoo successfully and I recommend it as a free beginner’s web presence. Probably the best feature about Squidoo (aside from the fact that it is free) is that it is very well ranked in the search engines. If you do your part by getting a good keyword phrase and write some great content about your subject, you will be able to get your Squidoo lens (that’s an article in “Squid talk”) recognized in the search engines.

A word of caution, however. You must not choose a subject that will not find favor with the Squidoo editors. For instance, if you want to promote a product for “quick weight loss”, you may have trouble getting Squidoo to let you write about that. There are several subjects that are taboo for the simple reason that there are sooo many folks trying to market those products, and Squidoo finally made the decision to not allow those products on their website. So, check before you get started. You can see the SPAM guidelines for Squidoo lenese HERE. Now, if you were to promote digital photography or basket weaving, you would have no trouble getting a spot on Squidoo. And.. your web page there will have a much better chance of ranking in the search engines than if you try to create your own domain.

Step 5 – Write an article. So, you have decided on your keyword phrase and your product, you have decided which method you will use to try to get people to purchase your product, and you set up your free web page at Squidoo or somewhere else with links to your product (I purposely left that out of this sequence because it deserves a page of its own), and now it’s time to tell people how to get to your page. This is done by writing content articles and posting them on article submission web sites. (You can also buy ads on the search engines, but that costs money.)

Writing articles comes quite easy to some and quite hard to others. One thing I can guarantee is that it does get easier the more you do it. The basis for your articles is your keyword phrase. Make sure you have the keyword phrase in the article title. You also want to have your keyword phrase in your article several times in a natural flow of words. The search engines will evaluate your articles and you web site, looking for keywords and ranking those articles and web sites on their search engines.

Choosing where you will post your articles is also an important step that you must pay attention to. There are literally tons of submission sites on the internet. But, Ezine Articles is without a doubt the most popular site for posting articles. So start by posting to Ezine.

Hint: Be very careful to read and follow the guidelines for article submission at Ezine.com. They are very picky with new authors. Some have even suggested writing some general articles of a biographical nature before trying your skill at article marketing. If you can get ten articles written without making the editors angry, you will attain platinum status. As a platinum writer, you can post your article with much less scrutiny than beginning writers. Take a tip from your truly. I had to write 150 articles before making that coveted platinum status. I kept making silly mistakes like over-promotion or too many keywords in my articles. So, go very gently at first.

Step 6 - Include links in your articles. This sounds easy, and it really is. However, it is again very important that you read the guidelines of whatever submission site you are working with to make sure you do this step correctly. Some sites allow you to put links in the body of the article and others require you to put the promotional links only in the author’s resource box. Sometime you will need to know how to insert the links using HTML code. This is fairly easy, but if you don’t know how, it can be frustrating.

That’s it. Follow these 6 steps and you will be on your way.

Article marketing can be very rewarding. It can make the difference between a comfortable retirement or an unpleasant hourly job.

As already mentioned, the learning system I recommend is One Week Marketing. You can get an introductory chapter to try it out for free. Or, you can keep puttering around looking for bits and pieces of the puzzle. I guarantee you will find all you need on the Internet if you look hard enough.

I wish you the very best.