Legitimate Making Money Online
How I Built This Site

Nowadays, it is getting tougher and tougher to find legitimate making money online business opportunities. There are many ‘gurus’ on the web who promise quick money when you invest in their programs or learn their latest methods. Many unfortunate souls who have listened to them have often come away disappointed and a few thousand dollars poorer.

Following the increasing trend of more people wanting to start web businesses and more ‘gurus’ coming up in the horizon, I thought it would be great if I could share with you about how I actually built this site Leadership With You to where it is today.

It all started with a great desire to start building a legitimate making money online business so that I could work from home in the future. This was about a year ago in September 2008.

I have classified the Site Building into 4 main steps. You can click on any of the links here if you so wish to jump ahead to the topic.

» Choosing the Idea » Building the Content » Traffic Building » Monetization

STEP 1: CHOOSING THE IDEA

Before I started a legitimate making money online web business, I had to choose an area or an industry that I wanted to enter into. It could range from the industry of spirituality, or the more business-oriented area of marketing, or something that I would do in my own recreational time, like in the gaming industry.

This was the main problem: there were so many possibilities!

I asked myself what I could possibly do to narrow down my options. A smaller range of options would help me to choose my industry.

If you are also contemplating to start a legitimate making money online business, I have provided a whole range of possible areas that you can venture into here.

After thinking for a few days, I wrote down 3 criteria that would help me choose the area which I would go into:

These were the 3 Ps: Passion, Profitability and Prior Knowledge.

1. Passion
If I wanted to get into business, I had to be sure that I would be passionate about it. I asked myself this question honestly: if I had to do this for life, would I stick to it all the way? If it was yes, then I knew that it was the area that I should go into.

If I liked the area but I wasn’t sure if I would be in for the long haul, I would put it aside and think over it for a few days.

I know that a real legitimate making money online business would never be an easy road to take. As such, I knew that passion was an extremely important element that would keep me going in the tough times and the times that I felt like giving up.

2. Profitability
The next thing I asked myself was: is the legitimate making money online business going to be profitable? This was a practical question because all business had to be profitable, no matter how passionate I was about it. I would do research on these topics to find out their profit potential.

There were some areas that I had interest in, but yet would yield low returns in the long run. I put these areas aside.

3. Prior Knowledge
One more important thing was whether I had prior knowledge in the area I wanted to venture in. While passion can overcome the lack of knowledge eventually, I thought that it was better that I had some competence in that area before I started on it.

After all, to build a legitimate making money online business that was profitable, I had to establish myself as an authority on that subject and gain credibility through my outstanding products or services.

With those considerations, I chose my current website idea, Leadership With You. With that, I purchase the website program Site Build It! at US$299. It would help me with the site development as I didn’t know HTML.

» Choosing the Idea » Building the Content » Traffic Building » Monetization

STEP 2: BUILDING THE CONTENT

I understood from the Site Build It! program that people generally search for information online. As such, a legitimate making money online business had to have a lot of valuable and free information that customers would love and continue returning to.

With that knowledge, I started building page after page of content for Leadership With You. While I had some prior knowledge of leadership, I needed proper research to supplement it.

These are some of the main sources I would look to for research:

1. Books on Leadership
I would scour the library shelves for textbooks and books related to the topic of leadership. I would pick them up and spend some time reading up on these leadership concepts. Occasionally, I would find a few wonderful ideas or concepts.

2. Wikipedia and other websites
To find more information about certain concepts or stories of leaders, I would check on Wikipedia for a full description of these ideas, stories and more. Wikipedia has great reference as well. It allows me to read up further on a particular topic if I so choose to.

3. My own experience
I would think about certain events that have happened in while I was leading in my organization, University-YMCA. Some of these experiences would be used as examples when I write a leadership article.

To know what most Net users are searching for in regards to leadership, I had to have a keyword research too. The keyword research tool would help me see what topics and keywords were popular and which ones where not.

The program I used, Site Build It!, has an extraordinary keyword research tool which helped me find the most profitable keywords build a content page on; Brainstorm It!. There are other free site research tools on the web, but they are inferior to the accuracy and usefulness that Brainstorm It! offers.

Once I determined the most profitable keywords to write, I would plan out the Site Structure. The Site Structure helps me to visualize how the site will pan out when fully completed. This helped me to understand my own Site Concept better.

Of course, there is the part about submitting your site to Google and the other major search engines. The meta tags would also have to be taken care of, and the keywords had to be sufficient within the body of the text to ensure that Google will pick it up. However, Site Build It! took care of this issue for me and I just had to type in the necessary keywords into their program. The process would then be automated for me.

Content building would take up most of my time and my daily task for the website would be to build new content based on the keywords I have found on the keyword research tool.

If you want to learn how to write good content, I suggest you download Site Build It!’s Netwriting Master’s Course. The owner has generously written the course specifically for people like you and me who want to learn how to write well and sell on the net.

If you’re building a legitimate making money online business as well, remember that your main task should be building as much quality content as possible. Don’t be distracted by trying to find the nicest templates, or how to build traffic to your website.

Remember that people will bookmark a quality site. If they find a site that they can find information they need, they will bookmark it and return to it constantly.

After building about 50 pages, I would then start focusing on the next item on the agenda, Traffic building. If you’re doing this part time, 50 pages of good content should take you about 2-4 months.

» Choosing the Idea » Building the Content » Traffic Building » Monetization

STEP 3: TRAFFIC BUILDING

The next step for this website would be traffic building. No matter how good your content is, you need to consciously take effort to drive traffic to your website.

While there are many methods by which you can build traffic, they are all generally link-building techniques. The more quality backlinks you have to your website, the more highly ranked you will be in the search engines.

Google trusts sites that have other quality websites pointing in to yours.

As such, you have to constantly make effort to build those links through a variety of methods. I have identified three such techniques you can use to build inbound links to your website.

1. Article Marketing
By writing articles in well-known article directories, you can gain creditability and also create backlinks into your own website. Most article directories allow you to write an article and then put your own website link at the bottom of your article. This gives a chance for traffic to come into your website, as well as builds a backlink from the directory itself.

2. Link exchanges
You can also get quality link exchanges by finding complementary, non-competitive sites. Email them requesting for a link exchange. Find a relevant page that you can place a link into their site, and recommend a page on their site which they can place your link.

If you have a legitimate making money online business that has quality content, they will most likely agree to the link exchange. Remember not to link to bad sites. Google takes note of it, and you will be penalized for doing so.

Site Build It! provides such a Link exchange platform for its users. With that service from Site Build It!, I can type out keywords that are relevant to my website, and a list of other websites who have subscribed to the same program will show up. I will then be able to email them requesting for an exchange.

It’s extremely helpful because I don’t have to scour the whole internet for complementary, non-competitive sites.

3. Answering questions in forums
You can identify forums that talk about your area of interest and help answer questions there to establish yourself as an expert in that area. After that, ‘recommend’ a page on your site that has the relevant information and place the link there.

There’s a huge difference between trying to advertise for your own site, and providing a valuable link that has the relevant information for them.

For more details on these techniques and for more web building ideas, I have written a page specifically for traffic building techniques.

» Choosing the Idea » Building the Content » Traffic Building » Monetization

STEP 4: MONETIZATION

Once you have good traffic coming into your legitimate making money online business, you can start considering your monetization model. Your monetization model is basically the method in which you wish to make money from.

There can be over 10 types of monetization models, ranging from selling hard goods, e-goods, affiliate sales, adsense, membership and more. How you wish to monetize really depends on the industry or topic you’re focusing on.

For Leadership With You, people come into my site looking for information. As such, the simplest monetization model would be to start with Google Adsense. With Adsense, I don’t have to produce any product or service. I will simply be advertising on Google’s behalf; and I’ll take a cut of profits from every click of the ad.

Eventually when I venture into full time leadership development, I use Leadership With You as a platform to market my services.

The thing is, the possibilities are endless, and you should never stop brainstorming and thinking of creative ways to profit from the traffic coming through your website.

» Choosing the Idea » Building the Content » Traffic Building » Monetization

A CONCLUSION

Right now, my website is still in its infancy, but it has gotten over 100 visitors a day into the site. It isn’t a big deal, but for someone who has never built another website in his life, I think it’s quite a feat.

The thing is, if you truly want to build a legitimate making money online business, you have to commit time and effort to building a solid product. Most people think that the Net is a place for quick riches, and they buy into those ‘gurus’ telling them about the latest tricks to make thousands in a few days.

They always leave disappointed, and a few thousands dollars poorer.

Make no mistake. There is a whole industry out there waiting to cheat people like you and me who want to make a quick buck.

An legitimate making money online business is like any other brick and mortar business: it takes a lot of dogged persistence and effort to make it work.

If you’re seriously considering giving time to building a legitimate making money online business, I would recommend Site Build It! to you. I personally have benefited from Site Build It!’s services and build a solid website through it in the past year.

In fact, here are other testimonials from people who have used the website program successfully.

This is the testimonial of a man who has used Site Build It! to help him finally work full time from home.

This is the testimonial of a mom who has used Site Build It! to her work from home as well. Do check them their wonderful stories.

But I must qualify again; do it only if you’re serious. Don’t think that you can get away from hard work from the Net. Hard work is needed no matter where you are if you want to be a successful.

If you want to eventually quit your job and work from home, then committing to building a income generating website should not be too big a sacrifice for you.

Imagine the rewards of being able to spend time with your family. Or take a vacation whenever you want to. Or never ever having to answer to any unreasonable boss in the workplace.

If this is the kind of life you want, then I do recommend Site Build It! for you. You can click on the link below to find out more about Site Build It!

Remember to do your due diligence before you take the plunge!

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