Free Make Money Online Resources

First published 20^th March 2010 / (last updates in red)

When you start out with making money online, you’ll need some tools and resources. The good message is that you can start to make money on the internet without first spending any. In case you haven’t already done so, please read through my “Make Money Online” series. Then come back and refer to this page to find the resources and tools you need. I have organized them by task, so that you quickly find what you are looking for and for every task I have added at least one free option. Free is the best price The paid alternatives / short cuts mentioned are tools that save you time and that I use myself. I don’t recommend what I have never used, promised Oh, and do yourself a favor and bookmark this list, as I will update it regularly. You can also leave a comment with questions and suggestions regarding Free Make Money Online Tools at the end of this page.

Little Disclaimer: Some of the links are referral links, means I get something in return from the web site owner (not you!) when you use them, just that you know

Browser

• FireFox (free)

There are many reasons to use FireFox as your main browser, because when it comes to doing tasks like SEO, web site design and internet marketing there is simply no better browser around then FireFox. Reason being the wealth of free addons that make a lot of those everyday tasks faster and easier. So, go and get it now, you will not regret it!

Getting paid

• Paypal (free)

Some programs like Google Adsense do pay directly into your bank account, others, like Amazon, use cheques, but most of the others prefer to send the money you have earned via Paypal. Signing up for Paypal is free. Receiving and sending money may cost a small fee depending on the amount and the type of account you have. Paypal is secure and is owned by the same people that run Ebay. You will also need Paypal when you decide to re-invest some of the money you have earned back into lets say web hosting and / or software, as it is very easy and safe to pay via Paypal for Goodies you buy online.

Keyword and Niche Market Researching

Before you can start making money online, you need to research the possible markets to check where the money actually is! The following tools will help you with that:

• Google’s External Keyword Tool (free)

Originally meant for Adwords advertisers, it is also used by internet marketers to find new (micro) niches and evaluate their potential. Refer to the first part of my series mentioned above to learn more about how to use it: Make Money Online 1

Seo Addons for Firefox (free)

Addons are little plugins that expand the functionality of your browser depending on what you do. Here a few of my favorite ones that I use almost daily:

• Seo for FireFox (free)

Lets you see with one glance additional information about websites listed in the Google search results. Great for evaluating the possible competition in your chosen niche.

• Search Status (free)

That must be the one FireFox Addon I use the most. It allows you to see a lot of additional information of the website you are visiting, such as Pagerank, which links are do/nofollow, info about backlinks, keyword density, pages indexed etc etc etc.

Recommended Keyword and SEO Tools

• Market Samurai (free and paid versions)

Market Samurai is not only combining all the keyword research and seo information that the free tools above provide in one application, it also allows you to save the data you found in “projects”. A huge time saver as you don’t have to start over again with your research the next day or week Market Samurai offers a free trial (no credit card required) and even after the trial period is over, the keyword research module stays active, only the SEO and Promotion tools are deactivated in the free version. Go, get it, you will not regret it

• Keyword Academy(nearly free / paid versions)

Keyword Academy is not a tool, but it includes some. It is best described as a membership site plus support group for budding internet marketers. The most important thing you will learn at the academy is how to find profitable keywords and how to make money with them. They offer a 30 days trial for $1 and following that, two subscription variants for either $29 or $33 / month. $1 for trying them out for 30 days is pretty close to free And if you like it you can stay or you can cancel your subscription directly via your Paypal account.

Where to host your content

Publishing your content on the following free sites allows you to make money with it and to keep control over your content the whole time. You don’t give up your copyright and you can delete your content whenever you want, but why would you? It is the content that makes you the money!

• Google Blogs (free)

Google is ingenious, not only they provide you with a free platform where you can publish your content on your own blog, it also allows you to control the layout of said blog and to make money from it with advertisement and affiliate links. There are a few mistakes to avoid when using Google Blogspot / Blogger blogs:

Don’t be too broad, concentrate on one niche and don’t overload your blog with widgets, gadgets and ads. Keep it nice, clean and uncluttered. If people see too many things they can’t decide on what to click As for making money with Google blogs, the unrivaled master of this is Griz from “Make Money for Beginners” Have a look at his site and you see what I mean.

• Infobarrel (free)

Infobarrel is best for nice, long and detailed articles. They review your articles first manually, until you have proven that you don’t try to abuse the system and that you can provide quality content. All content you provide to Infobarrel must be unique, that means you can’t publish it anywhere else. You make money by inserting your amazon, adsense and / or chitika codes in your account information and you get a share (starting at 75%) of the earnings, directly into your account on those sites. Infobarrel is very easy to use, with a nice, uncluttered interface. Oh, and you can use them also to write your own back links, just stay inside their rules

• Posterous (free)

I use it mainly to write little articles about sites I want to promote, but there is no reason not to use it as a free blogging platform very much like Blogspot. You can add your own affiliate links into the articles you write. So if you write, lets say, reviews of books, you can add an Amazon affiliate link to it and if somebody buys the book via your link, you get paid a share into your Amazon account. Posterous has also the possibility to add several contributors to one blog. I use that setup here: Shuzzle together with some online friends to promote our products that we sell on Zazzle. Posterous can be a powerful SEO tool and an ideal place to start your own blog for free. You can post via the web or by email, just keep it clean please

• Hubpages (free)

Similar to Infobarrel, you get a share paid directly into your accounts at Adsense, Amazon, Ebay and / or Kontera. Hubpages works very nicely for product reviews and information-style articles. 60% of the time ads with your affiliate code will be shown on your hubs and if somebody clicks your ads and / or buys a product via these ads you will earn money directly into your account of the respective site.

• Squidoo (free)

Squidoo is the original “everybody is an expert” site and community. Squidoo works best for product and other review-style articles plus for articles that have a certain fun and / or entertainment value. Squidoo pays direct and via Paypal, the payout threshold can be set as low as 1$ and will be paid out monthly. Money earned via Adsense and other ads shown gets calculated like this “Ad revenue (Google and other ads). This money goes into a pool, so as to avoid clickfraud. Half of the pool distributes out to lensmasters, on a PayRank scale that is based on each lens’s average LensRank and traffic, and the number and quality of lenses in the lensmaster’s account.” (Quote from Squidoo web site) 50% of the money earned via Amazon affiliate links get paid directly into your Squidoo account.

Paid Alternatives

Sometimes you just want to have full control over your content and its earnings potential. The best way to achieve this is to publish it on your very own website. You will need to register a domain name and to purchase web hosting. I use GoDaddy for the registering and Hostgator to host my websites. Never had any problem with them and I can highly recommend their services! As for prices, registering your own domain will set you back between less then 1$ (.info) and less then 10$ for .com domain names / year. Hosting an unlimited amount of websites on Hostgator starts at $7.95. Having your own websites, doesn’t have to be expensive

Affiliate and Advertisement Programs (free)

There are a multitude of programs out there that can, potentially, make you money on the internet.

I recommend that you start with the first three mentioned here (not necessarily on the same site) and build on that. Remember your websites should always contain more content then ads So, please don’t fall into the typical mistakes a lot of “make money online beginners” make and plaster ads all over your site. Start with one program and, as your traffic increases, add others. That goes especially for Google Blogger Blogs, the temptation of adding every imaginable ad and wi/gadget to them is simply too strong for some people.

• Adsense (free)

Known also as “contextual Advertising”, it works in a very simple way. You offer adspace on your blog, Google selects ads that match your blogs content and displays them. When somebody clicks an ad (Never, ever click them yourself!) Google gives you a certain amount of money for this. It takes a bit of practice in getting the “hang of” it, but once you understand the underlying principles it works a charm. Adsense works best on sites / blogs that concentrate on one niche and where the ads complement the content. Lets say you have a travel site about a specific travel destination. You write an article about “Hotels on xyz-island”. You write everything you know about this in your article and the ads will reflect this. Now somebody comes to your site, searching for “cheap hotels on xyz-island” and there is every likelihood s/he clicks on of the ads, because that is what s/he was searching for! Some niches work better with Adsense, some less. Just try to think like a reader and you will learn it quickly. A lot of the publishing platforms mentioned above share also their Adsense revenue with you, so having a Google Adsense account is essential. Getting approved for Adsense might be a bit tricky, the easiest way is by having a nice, clean Google Blogspot blog. Oh, and before I forget it, Google pays you via cheque or directly into your bank account and the payment threshold is $100.

• Chitika (free)

I run Chitika ads on this blog, but you only see them if you are from the USA / Canada and arrive here on this site via a search in Google or another search engine. What makes them a great addition to other ads as they target only these visitors but don’t distract my “normal” blog readers. They pay via Paypal and the threshold to get paid is very low, only $10. Highly recommended!

• Amazon (free)

If you write about something that has products related to your niche, then Amazon might be your friend. I say might, because Amazon uses a cookie with only 24 hours lifespan to connect a buyer with the account that referred this buyer. Payment is made directly in your bank account (not available for all countries), cheque or Amazon gift card. If you are in a niche were you review quite regularly products, you might make a nice amount of money with Amazon.

Getting Content

Written content, at least in the beginning, you will have to provide yourself, but not everybody is a photographer, illustrator or videographer. That means you will need to know about a few sources where to get free and legal to use images and videos from.

Great Sites for free images

• Flickr (free)

Pretty much everything can be found on Flickr. Just make sure to use “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content” and “Find content to use commercially” in advanced search and to follow the instructions regarding image attribution and you should be fine

• Youtube (free)

Great place to get free videos from to embed in your site or to illustrate an article.

Miscellaneous

Recommended stuff that doesn’t fit anywhere else:

• Affiliator

With this FireFox addon, you can generate Amazon affiliate links with one right-click from any page on Amazon.com. A huge time saver if you need quick links to Amazon products that contain your affiliate links.

So, anything missing? Any task not covered? Drop me a comment and I’ll do my best to find a free or at least low cost solution for you. The first line of this blog page contains the date it was last updated and the newest additions are marked in red, just to make your life easier!