The Number-One Way To Make Money Online

07/2/2009 - Marketing Travelling around North America speaking at Internet marketing and affiliate marketing seminars and conferences, the most common question I'm asked is 'What's the best way to make money online?'. It's also one of the most common threads in forums, at social networking sites and throughout the blogosphere.

And after being online full-time for more than a dozen years, I've seen that question answered just about every way, except maybe the right way. While marketers talk about e-mail marketing, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing, blogging, using resell rights, doing podcasts, video marketing, teleseminars, taking offline business online and the like, they're missing the real point.

Yes, each of those is a way some people have made a lot of money online, and yes, they'll continue to be good ways to build a work-at-home business. But there's a common thread running through them all - a skill that truly is the key to making money online. Looking at that list, can you tell what it is?

To truly make money online, the really big money, with any of the above you have to be able to put your offers, products, services and/or affiliate links in front of a targeted audience. Just like a retailer in the offline world - if their store is in a small rural area there's little chance they'll have the sales of one in the big metropolitan areas.

So when you boil it all down to basics, the number one way to make money online is to learn how to drive traffic - targeted traffic - to your sites, your squeeze pages, your salespages, your blogs and your affiliate links. Targeted traffic just refers to people already interested in the areas you operate in, who are therefore more likely prospects for you than the general public. Untargeted traffic just chews up your bandwidth without adding to your bottom line, so learn how to target your traffic generation right from the start. It takes a lot of effort and continuous learning to become a traffic master, but those who have achieved that lofty status seem quite pleased that they put the time in to become experts.

Once you've mastered the skills involved in driving massive targeted traffic online, you can direct it any area of the business you choose to attack in your marketing campaigns. And best of all, most of the current methods to effectively drive visitors to sites are either free or low cost, like writing and submitting articles and press releases, authoring blogs, Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, Hub Pages and Google Knol, social networking sites like Twitter and LinkedIn and so many more.

So if you're considering a work-at-home business using the Internet, a full-time career as an Internet marketer or affiliate marketer or even just promoting an offline business online, do what you can to learn the legitimate, professional techniques to drive targeted traffic to your offers - and keep learning as much as you can about it as your business grows!