Which courses are most effective for learning how to earn money online?

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Asked by Question Bot11/Mar/20131 answer

1 Answer

Faisal Khan

Answered 11/Mar/2013

Let me give you the bad news first, there is no easy way to make money. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, lets examine how you could make money and what resources are available to you online.

Please read the disclaimer statement at the end of this answer.

There are literally millions of online resources on how to make money.

Millions.

From Ponzi scheme to Pyramid scheme, from Affiliate marketing to Multi-level marketing, from Work-at-home scheme to The 4-Hour Workweek, from Online shopping to How-To's on Brick and mortar businesses, from Foreign exchange market trading to How to become a Stock trader, from Get Rich Click! by Marc Ostrofsky to making a living by Pay per click and everything in between and sideways and however you can mash it up.

For most who tap online in the digital pursuit of making money, they inadvertently brush elbows with WarriorForum - Internet Marketing Forums, where at any given time has some 20,000+ people reading the forums on how to make money.

Some are selling, some are buying, others are scratching their heads and trying to make sense of it all. Shy of the numbers that Warrior Forums has, the 2nd best place on the Internet for Online Marketing is Digital Point's Forums (See: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/).

Between these two forums, everything in the Internet / Affiliate / Online marketing space is covered.

Well almost.

There is this fabulous online course (for free) called The Challenge, which used to be called The 30 Days Challenge, it is a great course to take, even if you don't intend to go into the Online advertising (or Internet Marketing) space. It will teach you a lot, from what is an Affiliate, how to generate content, how to drive traffic, how to signup with affiliates like Amazon, and the likes, how to conduct keyword research, sourcing, drop shipments, etc.

Do look it up - the official website is at: The Challenge (I believe the course starts every May or June). I cannot stress how cool of an online course this is to take ...and its free!

What you should be exploring first is what is it that you love to do and can work on? One could guide you to the lucrative resources online on equities trading, but would it be worth your interest? Probably not. The Challenge helps you find your niche. I'm not advocating that you pursue what The Challenge says, I'm just saying its a great course for you to learn and be cognisant of what is out there, on the Internet, and how people are making money.

You could setup and go the Online Store route, in which case, you will find 10,000s of websites and videos telling you how to go about as such. I wrote a pretty detailed blog post on this:

How Do I Start An Online Business? (the answer is also here on Quora: Teenage Online Entrepreneur Advice Starting An Online Company General Hints Tips And Help.)

YouTube is a fantastic resource for learning. So many people overlook that aspect of YouTube. The scammers and spammers are on YouTube also, but then you will also find great Channel where 100s of learning videos have been put up. You will find some fantastic resources (read: people) who offer great advice on business, techniques, short-cuts, hacks, efficiency and above all explaining mundane things and concepts to everyday folks like you and I.

Quora (product), in itself and Yahoo! Answers are two great resources of information. A lot many ideas and resources can be found via these two resources.

Since, you will be searching a lot online for resources, do remember there is a lot of hidden wealth in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, pages of Google search results. Do not discard these pages. More often than not great articles and resources are drowned by all the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work done by people vying for a higher position. Don't let this discourage you.

Also, Google (company) isn't the only option in Search Engines, there are plenty of others, please learn to use them.

If you are starting out, there is no need to pay for information.

Read that again. If you're starting out, there is no need to pay for information.

Chances are, most of it is already out there, either it is deeply buried in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) (Search engine results page), or you're using the wrong Keywords to search for your information (learn to use Keyword Research to your advantage and especially how Long Tail Keywords work) or its simply dispersed, and you need to find it and put it together.

Since you will be searching online, I would highly recommend you install Xmarks - to backup your bookmarks.

Freebie: Here is some advice worth in gold for you: Bookmark everything you spend more than 30 seconds viewing. Categorize it - and bookmark it. Your memory is not as good as you think, and once it has been bookmarked, you can always search through it and find it, rather than going crazy.

Since you will be searching and reading up online resources, install Evernote (product) and Pocket (app) - it will help you save the pages for later reading and viewing. A must have for online research.

If you already have a talent you want to market, Freelancer or Freelancing is an area you might want to pursue, here are a couple of great resources for Freelancing:

If you know of an area you want to work in, say Jewelry or perhaps you are a Work At Home Mom (WAHM) http://www.wahm.com/ - then do frequent the forums that cater to such verticals. Forums are your best friends. You can ask questions, chances are, your questions (or something similar) have already been asked repeatedly, so make good use of the search box. You can read up on people's experiences who, not long ago, were in your shoes.

Your goal at all point should be to rid yourself of the clutter, spam and scams out there. Don't be attracted to them, surely you are not that gullible.

Information overload is something you will have to come to terms with. With so much information out there it can easily cause you to be overwhelmed by it all. Give yourself time and space out. Let it all sink in and absorb. You cannot possibly learn mathematics - all of it in 3 weeks, so don't even try it for your subject matter.

StumbleUpon is a great website to literally stumble upon some great handpicked content on the Internet. If you were to follow topics like Business, Internet, Money, Small Business, etc. you will find lots and lots of amazing websites and material for your online pursuit of making money.

Two such that I found from http://www.stumbleupon.com/ are below:

It is very important for each and every website you visit, for you to see / read if they are selling you something. You should be able discern if the message is a sell-ploy or if information is genuinely being shared. Learn to differentiate between sales Landing Pages and information pages. Learn to differentiate between websites and people who have authority, versus those who do not.

I wish I had the time to share 1000s of more URLs & Websites with you, but then again, that in itself would be an information overload.

Find out what your passion is all about, and then delve into it. I will conclude with the importance of 5Ps - Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

Don't be disheartened if your first attempt at making money online did not work out, only you can be the best judge of it - as to when to give up. Just as a closing note, the scientists who cloned Dolly the Sheep, succeed after 276 attempts, before they were successful in cloning. (Source: HowStuffWorks "How Cloning Works").

Don't give up that easily. Best of luck.

Here is something just thought it would be interesting for you to read:

Source: The Ultimate Web Cash Flowchart

Here is another one that I really like as well:

The Source of this image is: 200 Ways to Make Money From the Internet

Disclaimer

All the links (URLs) provided here are straight-through URLs. There are no affiliate links whatsoever. I am not advocating any website, nor am I associated and/or working with any website(s) / resource / book(s), etc. mentioned here.

With respect to Affiliate Marketing, please see my (negative) answer on this subject here on Quora: Faisal Khan's answer to Can you really make significant money using affiliate marketing?

Since it is your money and time. I suggest you use it wisely. The Internet is full of charmers and con artists. If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. There is no such thing as quick money. For peaceful sleep at night, don't spend money online for learning / ebooks, etc. until and unless you are absolutely convinced of the authenticity of the website/author/resource.

Almost everything I have learned online, was/is available for free. Again, put that wallet away and be careful in what you delve in. Three rules to live by:

When in doubt - Don't.
When in doubt - Check it out.
When in doubt - No.

Best of luck in your online/offline venture on making Benjamins.

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