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How To Make Money Online For Free Part One
By Jeffery Wood | November 21, 2009
You know that I preach against doing this for free, but with the American economy being so bad and so many people out of work or on the verge of being out of work, I’ve been thinking about this a lot.
It could happen to any of the people I love and/or like. It could even happen to some of the people I don’t like. Listen, just because I don’t like them doesn’t mean I want bad things to happen to them.
The Problem With Not Buying Anything
There’s a few big problems with going the free route.
If you go with free hosting or a free blogging platform, they own your content, not you. So if they suddenly shut down your account (which has happened to more than one person), you’ve lost everything unless you have made backups.
And if you don’t have your own domain name, then you lose whatever traffic you were getting when you finally do move to paid hosting.
Without an autoresponder there’s no way of creating a list and thus no way of even attempting to earn money through your list.
So here’s the fictional (but for some, sadly, this is non-fiction), situation:
The Situation
You lost your job, you’ve been kicked out by your significant other or parents or by whomever.
You don’t have any money, and by no money I DO NOT MEAN you still have a cell phone or cable, I mean you don’t have ANY money except for food and rent. The cell phone was canceled and your cable was turned off.
Heaven help you if you get injured or sick because you can’t go see a doctor much less buy medication.
Your only internet access is at the library for however long they let you use it in one sitting.
No credit card, no debit card, no way to pay for anything.
You are on hard times and that’s an understatement.
The Right Way
Before we get into what to do, let’s do a quick review on what is the best way.
It’s best to get a domain name, a hosting account, and an autoresponder.
The domain name can cost you less than $10.00 a year. The hosting account can cost you under $10.00 a month and still get you a reliable host. The autoresponder will cost around $20.00 a month.
So in the first month you can either spend $40.00 and be set up with $30.00 a month thereafter, or you could spend $20.00 and get your domain name and hosting and add the autoresponder after that. Or just about any combination you want.
The only thing you cannot put off is the domain name. You need that first.
A Couple of Variations on The Right Way
If you can’t afford all of that, then the next best way is to buy your domain name and and spend $20.00 a month on the autoresponder. You would redirect the domain name to whatever free hosting you ended up with.
The biggest thing about having your own domain name goes beyond just “establishing yourself”. After you’ve started generating traffic to your site, when you move to paid hosting your traffic never notices. You don’t have to change all your ads, you don’t have to remember to notify everyone, etc.
You remain wherever you were in the search engines without penalty.
Currently Namecheap allows you to load your account with money (sort of like a pre-pay idea) so the funds are there whenever you find that perfect domain. I do not know if you can send the money in by mail.
If they do take money by mail, then you would have to fund your account before finding a domain because if you find the domain first, it may be gone by the time the funds get there.
I don’t know if GoDaddy or Directnic allows you to fund your account ahead of time.
Why the autoresponder and not the hosting? Simple, you can insert the autoresponder code into the free hosting and start building your list. When you move your hosting or worse, have it taken away, you still have your list and can still email them.
Some hosting accounts do come with a built in autoresponder but you’re better off using something like Aweber or GetResponse. They are host-independent so you can change hosts without trying to figure out how to transfer your list.
To Be Continued:
In Part Two we will look at what to do and what decisions to make.
- Jeffery
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About Jeffery: Jeffery Wood, author of "Learn How To Set Up Your Own WordPress Blog And Forum" is a Part-Time Internet Marketer. |
Related posts:
- How To Make Money Online For Free Part Two
- Make Money Online ~ Narrow Your Focus
- Make Money Online ~ Micro Niche Your Focus
- How To Set Up A Blog And Forum – Where To Start
- 4 Ways To Explode Blog Traffic For Free!
Topics: Resources, affiliate marketing, blogging, business, how to | 10 Comments »
November 21st, 2009 at 16:36
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November 21st, 2009 at 17:14
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November 21st, 2009 at 18:52
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November 23rd, 2009 at 04:00
A helpful post Jeffery, especially in these financial times.
.-= Ryan´s last blog ..Starting An Online Business – The Mental Intangibles =-.
November 23rd, 2009 at 06:56
Thank you Ryan,
That’s the reason I started it, but the question is “how indepth do I go”? That’s the hard part.
– Jeffery
November 24th, 2009 at 06:09
Hi! I have been thinking about switching from blogger to wordpress, but have cold feet! Any advice?
November 24th, 2009 at 16:41
If you mean a self-hosted WordPress I say go for it. If you mean changing to the free host WordPress.com I say NO NO NO!
I did not have good experiences with them and from what I’ve gathered, I’m not the only one. I tried to put a link in to a resource I personally used and highly recommended because it’s good and works. They had a cow and kept shutting off the post.
I should be able to decide whom I am or am not going to link to, I don’t want their opinion.
Though Blogger has it’s rules it is more accommodating.
– Jeffery
December 5th, 2009 at 09:00
WELL JEFF JUST SAW THIS MONEY MAKING INFO SO FAR SEEMS TO BE HELPFULL LOOKING FORWARD TO MORE
April 13th, 2010 at 06:34
yep get wordpress and host it yourself
April 17th, 2010 at 13:00
That is best, but not always possible. Hence, the article.