The ocean provides you many opportunities with which to make money.  You can catch and sell all kinds of fish for consumption or for rearing, or you can even try your luck at uncovering sunken ships with their buried treasures.

The internet is just like the ocean. It provides you with many different ways to make money. So many in fact that it is almost impossible to list them all here (it may also be a good idea to look up some accounting online courses to track and manage the new cash flow). However they can all be contained within the four broad categories described below –

-          Affiliate marketing – this is best described as a way of earning money through selling somebody else’s products or services and collecting a commission for it

-          Selling advertising or text links – you collect a fee for selling advertising space or text links on your web site or newsletter

-          Selling physical or digital products through your web site or online market places such as ClickBank, eBay or the iTunes store

-          Writing sponsored reviews on products or services

To get started on affiliate marketing, you can go to ClickBank – the world’s largest digital product marketplace – to look for products to market. You collect a commission every time somebody purchases the product through your special affiliate link. It helps if you are a recognized authority on the niche of the product you are marketing. For example, if you are a famous golfer and you are marketing a golfing manual, your endorsement of the product will be gold. If you are interested in affiliate marketing for physical products, you can sign up with Linkshare or eBay. You can even make money through directing leads to insurance, car companies or banks through an affiliate network called Commission Junction! Some affiliate marketers make over a million dollars in sales annually.

You can sell advertisements or text links on your web site or newsletter if you have a substantial amount of visitors or subscribers. You can speak to relevant companies in your niche likely to advertise with you and cut deals with them. If you can’t get premium ad deals, at the very least, you can put up Google Adsense ads on your website to make some advertising income. But just to put things in perspective, some web entrepreneurs collect more than one thousand dollars daily through their newsletters!

If you are good at sniffing out cheap sources for hot-selling items, knowledgeable in certain areas or talented in programming, you can consider selling products through eBay or creating digital products to sell through ClickBank and the iTunes store. You will be interested to know that the top sellers in eBay and ClickBank make hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales every month while the top iPhone application makers make millions of dollars in a year.

A popular blog’s owner can make some very decent income through writing sponsored reviews on products and services. Blog owners can sign up at review networks such as Social Spark, Review Me and Sponsored Reviews to register themselves for sponsored review opportunities. Although the average review pays less than $20, some reviews actually pay above a thousand dollars! Top blog owners get paid a few thousand dollars to write a 500 word review!

And oh, in case you are into making money or winning great prizes while playing a fun game of bingo, check out these bingo no deposit websites!

I hope this article gives you a good idea on how to make money on the internet and the associated rewards.

Somebody has asked me the above question before. I thought that it was a question whose answer should be shared – and since this has something to do with my work and it makes sense to share this in the money making opportunities section -  here it is.

If you can write, but cannot draw or animate, what can you do to embark upon the path of cartoon production?

Well, believe it or not, a writer’s chances of producing a cartoon is even better than an animator’s!

Not convinced? Heard of the saying – “it’s all in the plot”?

75% of a cartoon’s success is dependent on a good concept and storyline, not how good the cast is or how good the animation is! Look at South Park! Do you call that good animation? But has the ridiculously simple flash animation stopped South Park from making families across the world roar with laughter and the producers from making obscene amounts of money? No! Yet South Park would just be a piece of crappy animation without the magic of the scripts! Incidentally, the producers are also the writers in most, if not all, of the scripts.

On the other hand, an artist is an artist is an artist. An animator is an animator is an animator. They usually just draw or animate. But please don’t get me wrong. There are some multi-talented animators and artists who can think of great concepts and ideas too. Just that the specialization is somewhat different and if you start off as a writer, you are more in tune with the top line aspects of producing a cartoon.

Now, if you are convinced you can really write, you may like to follow the steps below to embark on your journey to produce a cartoon.

1. Come up with a strong story concept and think of all the characters that would be in the story.

2. Work with an artist either through a partnership or through outsourcing to create a character bible.

3. Look around for an animation that has a history of producing their own intellectual properties (IP). There are plenty of such studios around, so all you have to do is scout around for a suitable studio that has a history of producing cartoons similar to your genre of writing.

Here, you can (a) pitch your cartoon character bible to them (b) offer to write a few sample synopsis and a sample episode for one of their ongoing cartoon series.

You would be very very very lucky if a studio options your cartoon concept and decides to produce it! It usually doesn’t happen for newbies because they don’t like to take chances with newbies, but most likely it’s because new writers just don’t have the ‘ooomph’ factor in their ideas yet.

Either way, if you are really good at your writing, it opens up the opportunity for them to consider you for a writing contract. If you fail to get an assignment, politely ask the studio for the reason. If it’s because they think you aren’t good enough, it probably means you aren’t good enough. You can go back to hone your skills some more or you can carry on trying. If more than 3 studios tell you the same thing it usually means you really aren’t good enough yet. But practice makes perfect. If you keep trying you would probably get your first assignment,

4. Once you get your first assignment, cherish it like gold! Be flexible about everything (including payment) and cherish the opportunity. Don’t do anything to destroy this silver bullet and do it like it’s your first and last chance! Nobody likes to work with people who are too straight laced and the truth is – after you carve a name for yourself in the industry – companies will scramble for your services even if you are expensive. Don’t be prima donna when you are just a newbie. In fact, my advice to you is never to be a prima donna.

5. Try to be involved in as many parts of the production as possible. Ask to be involved in checking out the storyboards and offering your 2 cents on how you think the camera angles should play out. Ask to see the animatics so that you can give your opinion on the pacing and also the animation. You get the idea. Don’t ask for extra fees because most studios would rather do without your help in these areas then. But you can gently request for some credits for offering your creative input. That at an early stage in your career is worth more than money! But don’t be too pushy because studios rarely want to give producer or creative credits to a newbie, no matter how good you think you may be. The idea here is to get you as much experience as possible on other parts of the production pipeline.

6. As you get more experience working on such projects, you can begin negotiating for larger roles besides being just the writer. And the best part is, you can start pitching your ideas to TV networks and studios and you can bet some good moolah that they would want to listen to what you have to say!

I hope that this blog post is useful for those who wish to try their luck at writing for or producing a cartoon animated series.

Below are a few good books I would also recommend to those interested in honing their skills to write for cartoon.

There are actually variables to the answer – such as whether you have the cash to invest or whether you have the time to invest. Either way, I do not want to delude anyone into thinking that making money on the internet is guaranteed. If somebody tells you that, you should not believe a word of what he says. Please also do not buy into the hype that you can make tons of money within a short period of time because it just isn’t possible unless you have been in the internet marketing business for a long time.

What I can tell you is that being able to make money on the internet is not a myth, but not without the investment of time, money, effort and smart thinking. And if you persist and do it well enough, you have a chance of making really big money on the internet. How long does it take to make big money? Well, some people take half a year, some a year, some a few years. There really isn’t a standard answer because it depends on what strategies you use and who you work with.

But – back to the question – what is the fastest way to make money on the internet? I’m not talking about a million, half a million, one hundred thousand, or even one thousand. I’m talking maybe a few hundred dollars per month (on the low side).

Well, my answer would have to be affiliate marketing – where you promote and recommend other people’s products or services in exchange for a commission or percentage of the sale. The first advantage of being an affiliate marketer is that there are literally hundreds of thousands of products and services you can promote and millions of ready customers you can promote to and earn a commission. The second advantage is that you will not have to spend time creating your own product.

I would further like to explain the different categories of affiliate marketing.

Email Affiliate Marketing
Email affiliate marketing involves building a list of potential customers who are interested in a particular niche. This list contains the email addresses of these potential customers, through which you can send marketing emails every time you have an interesting product to market. A percentage of these potential customers will read the email, a percentage of those who read the email will check the product out, and a percentage of those who check the product out will purchase the product.

The advantage of email affiliate marketing is that if you own a huge list of good potential customers, you can make a lot of money every single time you send an email out. The disadvantage of this is that you are probably not going to make fast money if you are new to internet marketing because it takes time to build a decent list of buying customers.

PPC Affiliate Marketing
PPC affiliate marketing involves purchasing Pay Per Click advertisements on search engines or various websites to drive traffic to products you are promoting. A percentage of people who click on the ads will purchase the product and the marketer makes his commission.

The advantage of being a PPC affiliate is that you won’t even need to construct a website because your only job is to drive traffic to the product you are promoting. Also, it can bring in the bucks fast if you chose a good product to promote and a good channel to buy your ads. The disadvantage of this is that you will need to invest money upfront to purchase the ad spots. How much your ads would cost depends on the niche of the product you are promoting and what channels you are promoting through.

Review Affiliate Marketing
Review affiliate marketing involves writing reviews on products you want to promote. A percentage of people who read your review will click on your affiliate link to find out more about the product and a percentage of those will purchase the product.

The advantage of being a review affiliate is that the people who read your reviews are likely to be already researching about the products you are promoting and if your reviews are written well and convincing, they might just buy through your site. The disadvantage of this is that in order to appear trustworthy, you will need to be able to write well and it is also better to own an informative site offering good information on the niche you are targeting.

So there you have it – my full breakdown on affiliate marketing.

So which category of affiliate marketing is the fastest way to make money online? Remember I mentioned earlier there that are variables to the answer? Do you have the money to invest or do you have the time to invest?

If you have a list of good potential customers, then email affiliate marketing can make you money fast (every time you send an email!).
If you have the money the invest in PPC advertising and you do it right, then PPC affiliate marketing can make you money fast.
If you are able to write good reviews and own an informative website with good traffic, then Review affiliate marketing can make you money fast.

There is no definite answer to the question. But in my opinion – affiliate marketing with its various categories provides the fastest way to make money on the internet.

If you would like to learn more about making money online through affiliate marketing, a good product to consider would be The Affiliate Code.

Please leave me a comment below if you find my article helpful.

Without further ado, here they are – my 2 favorite haunts which make me thousands of dollars through blog reviews.

Sponsored Reviews

One thing I really like about Sponsored Reviews is the fact that the approval process is almost instantaneous. All you have to do is to register as a blogger, register your blog and after that you can start sifting through the assignments to bid for them. All the advertisers here are genuinely looking for blogs to review their products and many of them have good budgets – $20 upwards. Some go as high as a thousand dollars although most are in the $20 – $100 range. How high you can go will depend on how much traffic your blog enjoys and what niche your blog is serving.

From my experience, the niches that pay best are – auto, entertainment, business, finance, technology. It is very easy to make a couple of hundreds here weekly if you are not too pricey and your blog enjoys decent traffic. Sponsored Reviews is prompt on payment and pays through Paypal.

Social Spark

Social Spark is quite a different vehicle from Sponsored Reviews. There are more choices to monetize from as it also offers CPA and CPC opportunities besides sponsored reviews. The sponsored reviews here usually have higher requirements but some of them pay very well – occasionally up to the tune of a couple of thousand dollars.

Signing up for the network and waiting to be approved however can be a pain as it is quite a lengthy process. You need to drop codes into your blog and wait for the network to review your blog before they will approve it. Only then can you look for opportunities. The website has a robust backed system and keeps its opportunities well categorized, so you will be able to look for assignments quite easily. One problem is that the high paying assignments are usually very competitive as there are no lack of top bloggers here. But if you persevere, you will get good assignments finally. Social Spark is also prompt on payment and uses Paypal too.

As a bonus, I want to tell you about two other blog review networks.

The reason why I don’t go to them is because the payouts are usually very low, but if you are just starting out and just want to get some experience and pocket money to go with it, then these networks can be your starting grounds – Smorty and Review Me.

I hope this post has been helpful to you. When you get your first assignment, do drop me a comment here. Good luck!

I know, because I do.

Following my post on Blogging For Money, I would now like to share where I go to get sponsored review assignments. (For those not in the know, sponsored reviews are assignments where you are commissioned by a 3rd party to write about their products/services/websites.)

Now, this is actually a very valuable post because I am sharing my actual experiences and sources from where I obtain assignments worth up to thousands of dollars. You will not see many internet marketers out there being so sharing. I hope you learn from my sharing and benefit through it. By subscribing to my blog and dropping me a nice comment that will be ample thanks for me.

Anyway, back to the topic.

There are actually several networks which match make reviewees (those who want their products reviewed) and reviewers (those who review products). I’ve been to all of them and from my experience, I can tell you that only two of these networks are truly worth your time.

Before I divulge which ones they are, I want to talk about how these networks work and how much you can expect to earn from each assignment.

How Blog Review Networks Work

Generally a product/service/website owner wants to generate publicity and word-of-mouth for their product, and they subscribe to the belief that the best way is to get blogs talking about it. So instead of approaching blogs one by one, they subscribe to a Blog Review network where there are hundreds of assignment-hungry blogs waiting to snap up the opportunity and post their opportunity.

On the other hand, bloggers who want to earn extra income through reviewing a product sign up with a Blog Review network and register their blogs. They will often be asked to classify their blogs under the appropriate categories.

Whenever there is somebody interested to have his product reviewed, he can then either look through the Blog Review network’s database to look for suitable candidates to review his product, or he can put up an assignment classified and let bloggers bid for his assignment.

How Much Does Each Review Pay?

Generally sponsored reviews can pay as little as a few bucks to as much as a few thousand dollars. Yes, a few thousand dollars!

From my experience, this depends on 3 factors.

1) the network you are subscribed to

Unfortunately not all networks are built equal. Some networks serve really low value assignments in the below ten bucks range while some other networks serve assignments worth up to a few thousand dollars.

2) the popularity of your blog and your web traffic credentials

If your blog enjoys high traffic, it means that the review will be read by many people, which translates to more potential word-of-mouth and sales for the customer. You can command a higher fee for your assignments then.

3) the niche your blog is catering to

Certain niches tend to believe in sponsored reviews more and thus tend to pay higher rates. If you are in the right niche, your assignments can be worth a lot of money.

In my next post, I will spill the beans on my 2 favorite Blog Review networks with which I have consistently earned hundreds of dollars (sometimes up to a thousand) per week. Stay tuned till then!

If you have not already done so, I recommend that you download my free guide on Blogging for Money.

It won’t be an in-depth post, just an introductory one. But over the next few posts I will be covering these methods more in detail and sharing my personal experiences.

In no particular order of preference, here they are -

- sponsored reviews

- advertising

- affiliate marketing

- selling your own products

That’s it! The 4 main methods of making money through blogging.

I’ve personally done all the above with varying success. Some of my blogs perform better at some methods while some excel in other methods. All these really boil down to the niche and target market involved.

I’ll briefly touch on the 4 methods now.

Sponsored Reviews – You are commissioned by a 3rd party to write about their products/services/websites. While some people may argue that being paid to review something is hardly ethical, it is a fact that reviews are a very powerful form of word-of-mouth. If you see a positive recommendation for a product by an authoritative person or website, chances are you will form a good impression of that product. The opposite is true. Sponsors realize that, and that is why they are willing to pay good money to have sites write positively about their products. This can be a very good source of income for bloggers. The only catch to this method of blogging for money is that your site will have to be quite popular before you can command a premium fee for your reviews. Most small-time bloggers can earn between $5 – $20 per assignment. Popular bloggers can earn up to a few thousand dollars per assignment. I will be sharing where to go to get such opportunities over my next few posts.

Advertising – You sign up with advertising networks who will give you a piece of code to put on your site, and you are ready to start accepting advertisements. Some ad networks serve ads almost instantaneously while others take forever. Prices are usually set by the clients or the ad networks. As your blog becomes more popular, you can look for advertisers and broker deals yourself. Usually that earns you more money. For beginners, it is recommended that you  start out with Google Adsense, as the ads get served almost immediately and you are almost always guaranteed to get ads, unless you are in a very obscure niche. I will be sharing various ad networks and covering advertising more in depth over the next few posts.

Affiliate Marketing – You sell other people’s products and get a commission for your efforts. If you keep a particularly good blog with quality posts and have accumulated a loyal stream of followers, you can sign up with an affiliate network such as Clickbank and look for good products that are related to your niche to market and sell.  This can be very good money if your website is very popular. I will be sharing various affiliate networks and covering affiliate marketing more in depth over the next few posts.

Selling Your Own Products – This involves creating your own digital or physical product and selling it via your blog. The concept  is almost similar to affiliate marketing except that you are selling your own products, but the fundamentals remain that you have to keep a good blog with a healthy traffic with a niche relevant to your product in order to make sales. And of course, your product must be of quality. I will be covering more of this over my next few posts.

So there you have it. The 4 main methods of making money through blogging.

Over the next few posts, as promised, I will discuss these methods more in detail. Do watch out for them.

In the meantime, do download my free e-book on blogging if you have not already done so -  “Aldric’s Guide to Blogging for Money”. It will cover what I have just discussed and more

Till the next post then!