Nowadays, many students are looking for ways to make money online in order to cope with bills.

 

The amount of debts that students end up with at the end of a four year or even a two year program is outrageous.

 

As a student you need money for tuition, to pay for a place to stay, to buy food, books and other personal things and to buy a car or pay for a way to get around and to pay for extracurricular activities.

 

The economy is though and parents can only do so much to help. Some parents even forget you exist once you complete high school. You are on your own tough guy and gal. What can you do to make life easier?

 

Many students turn online for ways to make money because they can do it while studying. They don’t have to leave the comfort of their homes in order to make money. And finally, they can work from pretty much anywhere.

 

If I told you that there was a way you could use your phone, table or laptop to make money online, will you believe me? Maybe not but it is true. I do applauded you for your caution though because the online world is pretty scary.

 

There are so many scammers online, so much so that, finding a legitimate make money program is tough. But worry not, I have some ideas that will help you.

 

You will be able to pay your tuition and have some money left to take care of other needs after you learn how to make money online.

 

There are many ways to make money online. I will be telling you today about how to make money online using affiliate marketing.  Before you start, you will need to have a website of your own.

 

How can I build a website for free?

 

A great place you can go to build your first website for free is called wealthy affiliate. You can build up to two websites for free with them. They already have WordPress installed so it takes less than a minute to get your website up and running.

 

They also have this amazing free starter membership where you can learn the ins and out of online marketing.

 

Once you have built your website, you need to find a place to host it. Many places will charge you a small fee to host your website. It could range from less than $4 to anywhere above $20 depending on the tools they offer.

 

When you build your free website with wealthy affiliate, they will host it for free too. So you don’t have to worry about hosting.

 

Once you have your website up and going, you will need to find a market niche.

 

Finding a market niche

 

This is the point where you decide what your business is going to be all about. There are a bazillion niches you can use but you need to find a really lucrative one that will start making you some money relatively faster.

 

Niches in the make money market are highly competitive but have a great potential to make money for you. Niches that deal with passion and emotion are also very good; for example, romance and music.

 

Niches in the health field are also great; for example erectile dysfunction, autism , back ache and many others.

Beauty niches are other excellent place to look at too.

 

When you find your niche, make sure you narrow down enough that you are addressing a specific problem. This way you will have a targeted population to drive your message to. Plus it will be easier to draw traffic to your narrow niche website than a broad niche one.

 

For example, instead of basing your website on health care problems (very broad), you could target people with nocturnal muscle cramps for example (much narrower).

Once you have figured out which niche you are going into business for, you need to find a domain name and register your website.

 

Finding and registering your domain name

 

Finding a domain name is one of the most important stages of the process of making money online. If you do a good keyword research, you can find a name that will be easy to remember and will also rank high with the search engines.

 

This high ranking will help bring free traffic to your website. Or you can decide to go with something unique and branding. It is all up to you. Your domain name will be something like xyz.com. So in the case of nocturnal muscle cramps, you could go with the name noctorialmusclecramps.com if it is available.

 

Yes you heard me right. Sometimes you find a really great name and when you go to register it, you find out that the name has been taken and you have to start all over. You do this until you can find a great name that is not taken.

 

How do I register my domain name?

 

There are many domain name registrars that will help you register your domain. The price of a domain can be less than $10 a year or more than $50 a year. I am not sure what determines the price but I have noticed that names that end with .com, .edu, .org, .net are more expensive than the more elusive ones like .pizza.

 

Now, if you choose to go the wealthy affiliate route, you can either get a free domain that will end with .siterubix.com or you can buy one. Now you see that you can build, buy your domain name and host your website in this one place without having to transfer your website from one place to the other (makes life easier).

 

So, after you have done all the above, it is time to get to business. You need to start putting captivating content on your website.

 

Writing captivating content on your website

 

This is the step where you start filling your site with great content in other to draw traffic to it because the more people you get to your website, the better your chances of making money.

 

Before you can begin to write, you need to carry out keyword research for each topic you are going to write about. A keyword is a phrase that people type when looking for something online. For example, if someone went to google and typed “how to make money online”, that is a keyword.

 

Keyword research will give you information about how often a particular keyword is searched online in a month, how many other businesses are competing for the keyword and the probability that you will rank high on the search engines for that keyword.

 

The more the competition, the lesser your chances of ranking for it. Better ranking leads to more organic traffic, which is free traffic from the search engines.

 

Once you have many great content on your website and start seeing substantial traffic, you can start monetizing your website.

 

How can I monetize my website?

 

There are many ways to monetize your website. I will focus on affiliate marketing here.

Affiliate marketing is the type of business where you make money online by referring the product or services of others.

 

After you put enough content on your website, you can apply to affiliate programs for an affiliate account. These websites check your site and if it meets their standard, they approved your application.

 

You can then start posting affiliate links on your website. When people click on these links, it takes them to an advertiser’s website. If they take an action on this website, you get paid commission.

 

For example, if your website is about nocturnal muscle cramps, you could apply to a company that sell supplements that relives this problem. If they approve your application, you can start posting product links.

 

When people come to your website and click on these links, it takes them back to the supplement website. If they buy this supplement, you will make some money.

 

Bottom line

 

You can make money online as a student if you find a lucrative niche to build your website for. It takes hard work and patience and as long as you don’t quit, you will succeed.

I hope this post was helpful.

Cheers Denise.