Okay, so maybe it’s a little late for making money by selling products for Halloween.  But now is the perfect time to ramp up for the big push toward Christmas.  If you have one or more established sites, you’re in great shape.  But there are things you can do even if you’re just getting started here at the end of October.

And of all the ways you could possibly make money online, I think the fastest and easiest way to go from zero to profitability as quickly as possible would be to start a niche store.  This is especially true throughout the holiday season.  I’ve operated several of them for well over a year, and they continue to provide a nice monthly income.  Although they’re fairly easy to set up for someone with a little computer knowledge, they can be tricky for newcomers. The niche store site provides some good reference material to help you get started, but feel free to ask me a question if you get stuck.

I’ve learned some interesting ways to create sites that attract visitors and keep them coming back.  And I continually look for ways to add value to my sites beyond just the products that are available to purchase.  This is very important because anyone can set up these niche stores and compete with you.  You have to find a way to stand out from the crowd.  And you have to know how to get the visitors to your store in the first place.

That’s why from now until the end of the year, I’m going to be offering lots of tips and tricks for getting the most from your online niche store. There are several store scripts out there, so you don’t necessarily have to go with the one I recommend.  In fact, I’ll cover a couple of the others as well.  But I happen to have my preference simply because I think it’s the easiest to set up and maintain.

Go ahead and subscribe to my online niche store blog to be sure to get every tip as I post them.  It’s time for the holidays, and you’ll want to be ready for making some good holiday cash.

Here are a couple of earlier posts that may be helpful as you begin to build your new store:

Choosing a good web host 

Getting content for your niche store

Reasons for starting an online business

Finding good niche keywords

Getting traffic to your online store

eBay recently launched their new affiliate program, called the Ebay Partner Network.  Commission Junction has managed their affiliate account until now.  If you’re not familiar with sites like Commission Junction and LinkShare, they manage the details of paying commissions to thousands of online publishers for many of the largest online sales sites.  With today’s launch of eBay’s new self-managed system, publishers will have more tools and resources available for promoting a huge array of products.

Plus, this is also great news for anyone selling on eBay.  With an army of affiliate marketers working day and night to promote your products, you’ll likely sell more with less effort.  If you haven’t heard, the number of web publishers promoting products on eBay is growing like wildfire.  That’s because eBay pays a percentage of their take on each transaction that is referred to their site via a third party publisher’s site.  And, what’s even better is that, as an affiliate publisher, you can promote products all around the globe through eBay’s partner sites in countries all around the world.

I’ve been making money as an eBay affiliate since last summer, and my income has grown steadily as a result.  I’ve enjoyed working with Commission Junction, and I plan to continue working with them to promote their expanding list of products.  I’m equally excited about the new eBay-managed affiliate program.  I’ve checked it out, and it looks very promising.  As I transition my sites to the new system, I’ll report my results.  You can see an example of one of their new affiliate web widgets in the sidebar to the right.  There are several different types of widgets available, and many more are on the way.

In the meantime, be sure to give the new eBay Partner Network a look.  It might just be the ticket to your online success.  And be sure to subscribe to the Profit with Your DotCom feed to stay on top of new and exciting ways to grow your new online business.

When you first decide that you’d like to make money online, you’ll probably have dreams of spending the next three months in Hawaii while your bank account expands on autopilot.  While that’s a great dream, it usually doesn’t happen quite that quickly.  You have to build a solid foundation and continue to grow from that foundation until profits begin rolling in.

When I first decided to make money online, I thought I’d build a website and make millions.  I suppose you could do that if you built Google, YouTube, or Facebook, but I’m just not that creative or technically capable.  So, instead of millions, my first website made about $30 per month after expenses.  It was profitable, but far from the dreams I had in mind.

 So, I began to study various ways to increase traffic.  Through my SEO efforts, I increased the profit on that one website to about $50 per month and added a second website that also brought in close to $50 per month.  I decided then that volume was the key.  I would build dozens of sites and make a little from each one.  That worked to some degree.  I built a few more sites and began seeing several dollars per month from each.  But the work required to maintain all of the sites just wasn’t worth what I was making.  There had to be another way.

Then I signed up for a coaching program and added a few more weapons to my arsenal.  This time, I used private label rights to create ebooks and content for sites.  I added affiliate links within the ebooks and added product reviews to the sites to attract visitors.  I advertised with PPC ads, and I set up an autoresponder to build a customer list.  Things began to look up.

Next, I found a great script for building affiliate storefronts very quickly.  This script has allowed me to build one very profitable website and several others that continue to improve each month.  Added to the systems I’d put in place in the beginning, I was able to leverage my knowledge to quickly build a decent income with these new tools.  If I had found this system prior to learning the details of SEO, list building, and basic marketing, I wouldn’t have seen the same results.

So many people start trying to make money on the web and give up after only a short time.  They want immediate results, and when they don’t come, they assume it won’t work.  I read post after post about how those that make money online are all scam artists out for a quick buck.  While there may be a few, most are legitimate.  It is possible to make money online – and very good money at that.  It simply takes a little time and energy to achieve. 

If you want a free ride, you’d better look elsewhere.  But if you’re up for a little adventure, get on board.  There’s plenty of room for anyone willing to put forth the effort to achieve their dreams.