I have a number of free legitimate ideas for making money online that I'll share with you here and now. There are numerous ways to generate income from websites. There are Adsense and other ad programs, and there is a new audio ads program just coming out. There are of course affiliate programs as well.



But the key to success is to have a website that gets traffic. Without traffic you have nothing. Get enough traffic, and you can sell anything.

I subscribe to the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch. To be successful requires some work. These money making methods have worked for me and will work for you if you put just a little effort into it. (OK, sometimes it takes a lot of work)

If you are looking for a quick buck, I probably can't help you...unless you already have a website that gets lots of traffic but doesn't earn you any money...that situation could produce near instant money.

These methods will work to the degree that you work on them. You can do it part time or full time. I've even built sites while vacationing on a cruise ship. I have websites about my cruise ship vacations that earn me money! In the beginning I used internet cafes while cruising in the Greek islands to upload the previous day's photos. These days high speed internet connections are widely available on most of the cruise ships.

Well what do you know! I just gave you the first idea. Build a website about your vacations, and monetize it. Lots of opportunities here like camping, fishing, hiking, tennis, golf, softball, extreme sports...

Traveling, vacations, cruises, gambling getaways, are all things that people search for online. If you had a great vacation riding dune buggies somewhere in Southern California, then you have a potential for making money from it. If you have tips for golfers or sports fisherman you have potential web sites!

Here is what to do.

Find a subject, do research with keyword research tools online to make sure that people are searching for the kind of information you plan on offering, and get started Build your site with your human visitor in mind. Make it simple, straightforward, easy to navigate, and put in great content. Make sure it's easy for spiders to follow links to every page.

Pick your title carefully using your most searched for keywords if possible. Make sure you have a good meta description. Put a few keywords in Alt tags for images, but do not overdo it. It's best it if is real and useful to humans. Formulate and act on a linking strategy. Spell check your work! Be professional and don't allow errors in grammar, spelling, or punctuation in your text.

Whenever you feel like it you can add a page or two to your site and increase its earning potential. The more you work at it the more you earn. The more good content on your site, the more visitors you will get.

One of the cool things about money making websites is that they just keep on going year after year. Some of my sites make less than $50.00 a month. But they do make money, month after month, and, year after year.

The cost of building and hosting a website is tiny. You can get a domain name for less than $10.00 a year and you can get hosting for about $5.00 a month or less. Unless you are excited by the idea of learning or using HTML, you would need to invest in a WYSWYG editor for building web pages.

I use FrontPage 3000 which I bought about a couple of years ago for a few hundred bucks.

None of this is quick though. It takes time and effort to build a good website. But there are so many online tools available these days that you don't need to have much in the way of skill or experience to get started and do a decent job.

You will want to promote your site to get traffic. You can issue press releases, write articles and submit them to article directories and blogs. You can start your own blog. There are even submission services online that will write articles and submit them for you. Beware though that you will want to proof read and make corrections to such articles?English is probably not their native tongue.

And offline advertising can be quite effective too.

It also takes a while to get listed in the search engines. It can take up to a year or more for a decent ranking on Google. It also takes time to obtain back links which are important. There are two things that you need to do that most people won't do in order to succeed at this endeavor.

The first is you must actually start the site, and the other is you must finish it.

You can learn in great detail about any of the things I've mentioned by simply doing research. Everything you need to know is on the internet if you look hard enough. You should not have to look hard though.

Since I've always been self employed I didn't have a retirement program. I do now! I have websites that make money. If I stop working, they keep right on sending me monthly checks

So don't wait any longer...follow the steps I've provided on this site...pick a domain name, get hosting, get an editor, build a site, start promoting, and build a nice long term income.