Okay, so you desperately want to start making money online, but you don’t have any extra cash to spend. That means that you aren’t able to buy a domain, hosting, or any tools that will help you get your web empire started. What to do?

Fortunately, there are free ways to get things going – at least, temporarily. All it will require is your time. Is this the best way to build a business? Well, it is a good way to get the cash you need to buy the necessities you are going to need to build a real business and a steady, reliable income. These are short-term survival tactics.

If I were flat broke and I needed to start making money, I would use one of two methods:

Method#1

This one is fairly straightforward. I would take stock of any services I could offer other webmasters. There will always be a great demand for anyone that can offer a competent service. Here are a few examples:

Web design
Programming
Writing
Backlinking services
Forum posting

Of course, this is going to depend on your actual abilities. Take stock of what you have to offer, then head over to a freelancing site like Elance, or one of the popular webmaster forums and “hang your shingle out,” so to speak – you are in business!

I prefer to use the webmaster forums because it is easy to advertise (some require payment – others don’t) and you can usually put your services for hire in your signature. The more posting you do, the more exposure you get. Cool system.

The only service I have ever sold is writing. My advice for anyone that is offering a service is to make sure you communicate with your customers. If you are going to be late in delivering, let them know. Most people are understanding.

Oh, and don’t sell yourself short by offering rock-bottom prices. On the elance sites, you will notice the odd individual posting a job they need done and only willing to pay one tenth of what it is worth. Don’t even bother responding to these ads. Stick to your prices and you’ll eventually get a full-time clientele.

Method 2 – Article Marketing

This is a method that I still use, even though I have ventured into other areas of IM. In my opinion, there is no quicker way to get some income going if you have no money to spend. There is more to it than you would think, but I will give you the basics.

Here are the steps:

Pick a niche that interests you and one that has a healthy demand.
Make sure there is something you can sell. I always go for affiliate products.
Find out what words and phrases people are plugging into the search engines for that niche.
Optimize one article for one search term. Make sure the keyword is in the title and a few times in the body.
Create a landing page that is designed to warm up your prospect, then send them on to the vendor.
Create a good resource box on the article that will have the reader clicking through to your landing page.
Once live, start pointing some backlinks to your article to get it listed in the search engines. It may get a temporary boost (because it’s new) in Google, but it will drop like a stone in a matter of days for the most part, if you don’t backlink it.
Rinse and repeat.

The landing page can be a Blogger blog, Squidoo lens, Hubpage – pretty much anything that allows you to place affiliate links in your content. You can even optimize these web 2.0 sites for the same keyword, do some backlinking, and you may enjoy more than one listing in the Serps.

That is it. That is how to make money online without spending any money.

For anyone who is stuck thinking that they can’t get something going unless they have some capital, I just have to say that things have never been easier to create money from nothing. Don’t have a credit card, no problem. Don’t have a dollar in your pocket, no problem. Live in a poor country, no problem. This is the reality of making money online – anyone can do it.

In fact, all you really need is a computer, an internet connection, somewhere you can cash your affiliate checks for article marketing, and a Paypal account if you are offering services. If you are really poor, you can use the public library – just make sure you have your articles pre-written and ready to upload to the article sites.

However, keep this in mind: The sooner you are able to take some of that money and reinvest it in the business, the better off you are going to be. Free sites are great, but you are at the mercy of their rules. And they will always do what is necessary for them to make a profit, not you. Just ask anyone who has had a Squidoo lens locked, or a Blogger blog deleted. You would be crazy to base your business on that. Get your own sites on your own hosting as soon as possible.

I continue to make most of my income with free methods, although I’ve purchased a few tools to speed things up and make my life easier. Yep, article marketing still works wonders. Here is how I make a full-time living doing just that. More…

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Filed under: Article Marketing • Free Methods to Make Money

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