How to make money online with zero investment?

Hello this is Steve - online eGuru. I mentor (would be) millionaires. Most of my time, I spend mentoring and training people on easy ways of creating wealth. Where ever I go, the common question people ask me is "How to make money online with least efforts?"

I am giving you a Q&A section that has recently taken place at a work shop I conducted. I am presenting it here in a different style but content is the same.

Ok, now the mute question, how to make money online with zero investment?

The answer is very simple and straight. Sell or Promote something that you have. If you do not have something of your own, sell others'

You see many of them at Commission Junction and Clickbank. There are Hundreds of them eagerly awaiting you to promote their products ranging over Thousands of categories.

http://cj.com (I like this since these are real products)
http://clickbank.com (I don't like this since these are ebooks and digital downloads)

Sign up with them and you have overwhelming number of products in different categories that you can sell or promote to others for a commission.

There are other sites which offer same kind of service but these two are the best and free. Signed up with these sites, you can promote others' products which is called affiliate marketing. Its not selling because you only promote links to products and such leads that you generate through promoting affiliate links directly go to vendor's site and make a purchase there.

Affiliate Marketing is easier than selling because all you need to do is simply promoting a link. Actually, in affiliate marketing, you are selling leads to vendor for consideration of a commission.

The advantage in this way is you need not own a website or online store. You can simply promote affiliate links any where online or offline like in public forums, groups, blogs, emails, market places etc.

The disadvantage in this way is the lead you generated will become customer of the vendor and you do not have any control over the leads so generated. Once the lead purchases something from vendor, he becomes his customer and next time he directly purchases from him without using your link. Your leads never know that you exist. And you even do not know the particulars of leads unless you have some lead capturing mechanism in place before sending them to vendor's site.

If affiliate marketing does not excite you and you really want to sell something like a real business you can sell products instead of just promoting. If your choice is to sell products like something of your own there are some drop ship services which can facilitate selling of their products like a wholesaler do. These are different to a wholesaler in that they do take care of every aspect of selling like shipping, handling, support etc. You can try these wholesale drop ship services. Here, you sell the products or services, your customer pays you and wholesaler ship the products directly to your customers. You can pay to your wholesaler after the item is shipped and you got the money from your customer. With drop ship services it is like white label selling as your customer never sees your wholesaler and you act as a retailer without having to ship the products as your wholesaler do take care of shipping, handling and support on your behalf.

Here you have relationship with customer and you can sell to him other products or the same product as many times as he wants and if he satisfies with you he may even refer other customers to you.

You need to have an establishment like a website or online store to show case your products and a payment processor account like Paypal or 2CO to collect money from customers. You have to take some responsibility of what you sell. You get good results to your hard work. The more you work hard the more your business grows.

http://minyurl.org/dropship

Many products that are auctioned on eBay and other market places are actually products of various drop ship services. Individuals sign up with drop ship wholesalers and sell those products on eBay for profit.

If you are doing affiliate marketing you can promote them in various forums, groups, to your friends through emails.

If you are selling some products, you can sell on your own site and/or can sell at market places

http://ebay.com
http://bonanzle.com
http://ubid.com
http://amazon.com

Hehe stupid question. In market places you just open your shop and showcase your products that you want to sell. People who are interested in your products automatically come to you and buy from you. So, select a product that has more demand and less competition. In fact ideally there will be no such product which has more demand and is being offered by fewer sellers, unless it is prohibited to be sold at public market places. Well, lets not go into that as I also don't know about that.

Haha yes, I know. If people can come to you as soon as you open an online store or website why business owners waste their time on social networking. Initially, people won't come to you. You need to go to people and let them know about the existence of your store and products you are offering and led them into buying from you . Once they buy from you and your store get reputation, believe me there will be a constant flow of customers and you will be overwhelmed with new orders every day.

You can get leads either by advertising or social networking or through affiliates. Since our discussion is about making money with zero investment, I strike off paid advertising and recruiting affiliates as both involve some investment. But, you can get good results with Google Adwords if you prepare to spend some money and you have more or less a unique product to sell. Google adwords works better only if you have a unique product to sell where you have less competition. If you sell the same that is offered by many like you, Adwords will actually result into a overall loss as your advertising costs eats up your profit.

Advertising your products for free at various public forums, groups, blogs and social networking sites is a good strategy to get traffic.

You can get quality traffic from social networking sites like sta.rtup.biz and others.

http://myspace.com
http://facebook.com
http://twitter.com

Well a businessman should not be ashamed of advertising his products. When you do business be like a businessman.

So, what? Who knows, today's social networking sites may be tomorrows market places. So don't be shy and just feel free to tell about your products to others. If they are interested in what you are selling, they buy from you since you are networking with them. Don't directly ask anybody to buy from you, instead tell them what you are offering and how the product is going to help them if they buy it.

Hmmm! People don't come to you and ask you for help because you are nobody. There is no direct way of finding what people are looking for on social networking sites. But fortunately a better way is there. People go to certain places or persons whom they think are resourceful (actually these persons may be resourceful or not, since people think they are, people go to them) and ask for help on what people are looking for. And if you know where people are going and asking for help you can just see what they are looking for and whether you have any chance to sell them any of your products.

Suppose a newbie wants to start his online business and chances are he asks for help somewhere someone. If you know that 'somewhere' you will know the person who is looking to start his online business. So, the problem of finding one in need is solved, and now you can sell to him a domain name and hosting. Since any person who wants to start his online business must need a website. This is only an example and the places where people ask for help are called Forums. Again that is a big area and lot of competition. Many experts are there to answer and help the queries of people. Ok forget about popular forums.

Here on this site, people go to CEO and she asks every one what he/she is looking to do here. They tell something and ask her for help. Just go to her profile and look there what people are asking her. Feel like you are the CEO and comment on their profiles with something sweet and helpful. That's how you start networking and this is the easy way of networking. Then after two or three comments tell them about what you are offering. If they do not want your product, don't get discouraged. Once you have a lead, chances are that he would buy from you later if not now. I just give CEO profile as an example as I earlier said people ask for help others on social networking sites. Make networking with as many as you can to build your own network of active friends. As your network grows your business flourishes. Do Well.

The answer is simple all you need is some marketing. There are various marketing techniques and short cut methods to sell your product to others provided you have more or less something unique and something of your own to offer. In that case, I highly recommend you to take a simple training on JV partnership and affiliate recruiting which enables you sell your product like hot cakes.

http://minyurl.org/training