An Easy Way to Make Money Online?

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Will Edwards — No Comments ↓

As many of my regular readers will know, my own experience in creating a successful online business leads me to counsel against ‘get rich quick’ schemes. I have repeatedly said, over the years, that making money online is about providing solid value, that it is not rocket science and that anyone can do it with persistence, focus and dedication. And, before we discuss this matter further, I want to make it plain that is still what I believe.

That said, our recent experience with the new Loyaltepays program has got me thinking about how things often evolve, not gradually, but in steps. If my memory serves me well, Stephen Jay Gould called this idea punctuated equilibrium. It is the theory that change usually does happen quite quickly. A quite small event can cause a significant and rapid change. Of course, I am relating this thinking to non-organic evolution, but as I think about it, I realise that change often does happen quickly.

When the Wright Brothers finally figured out how to fly, for example, it was a tiny tweak that made the difference. They had been building their flying machine, making continual adjustments and refinements for some considerable time. But it just wasn’t working until, eventually, they were able to make one final and quite minor addition to the design and suddenly, they could fly! Just think about that for a moment: quite literally, one moment nobody had ever flown and the next minute, mankind (humankind if you like – I’m not sexist) could fly. It was as sudden, and momentous, as that.

The Wright Brothers’ story is a kind of analogy for what it can sometimes be like when you are building an online business. You end up doing all kinds of things to get it going and in the process, perhaps, end up shedding a lot of blood, sweat and tears. But sometimes all it needs is one final little tweak – and that can make the same kind of difference. A similar experience to the Wright Brothers’ - one minute you are not making money; the next, you are.

Thinking back to when I first started, adding Adsense to my site had exactly that effect and, after so long trying various ways to monetise the traffic I was already getting, I was astonished. I thought to myself, ‘it can’t be as simple as adding this code to a few more pages’ but, as it turned out, it was. Adsense remains an important income stream for me today, reliably earning me thousands of dollars every single year.

Recently, the addition of the Loyatepays program, through which we are making our rebrandable books available, is having the same kind of effect. Just like Adsense, it added an additional revenue stream to the site instantly. In case, you are not familiar with Loyatepays, it is a program that rewards people for sharing information. As an information publisher, it fitted in really well with what we are doing.

The Loyatepays program solved the problem we faced as a result of the new UK Cookie Law. You may recall that we decided to stop using cookies to comply. It is a stupid law, but we had no real choice in the matter, as a £500K fine is a very real possibility for offenders. The change meant that our rebranadble books (which used a cookie) could no longer be made available. This new program effectively solves that problem for us and we are busy making all of our rebrandable books available in this way – at present, we have 25 books available.

The results I have been getting, so far, lead me to believe that the Loyaltepays program could be a very significant step forward for me. With many people, these days, searching for an easy way to make money online or a way to make money fast – hence the title of this post - the Loyaltepays program could very well be the answer they have been searching for. Of course, it takes some effort. After all, this is a program that pays you to share information, so you do actually need to start doing that. But our books provide the ideal raw material.

For many years, people have voluntarily shared our books with the world. They are, quite literally, all over the internet. People are already using them as sign-up bonuses for their list-building efforts; they already give them away as bonuses to their digital products and they are already recommending them to their friends based on their own merit. So that’s why I believe the program is working so well for us - because it provides a means of allowing people to get paid for what they were already doing.

Social sites allow people to share information very easily without the need to setup websites or blogs and, as we all know, people just love to share things. Getting paid to do that is the next great internet idea.

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