A. Get Your Head Right

Firstly, right from the start, you need to get it into your head that AdSense, affiliate marketing or any other genuine online business ARE NOT “GET-RICH-QUICK” schemes. Hence, we need to do a lot of work especially at the beginning. You need to understand exactly what to do and how to do it. So read through this material several times to ensure that you have educated yourself enough to start. Don’t hesitate to ask for help. Attend worthwhile workshops and training sessions as you can afford them.

Secondly, it is possible that you do not make any money in the first month. That is okay. There could be a number of reasons for that, which you may not discover yourself. Hence GET A MENTOR!

Thirdly, you must set your income goal and determine the strategy for realizing your goal. How much is your monthly income? When do you want to make your first dollar? What strategies in terms of internet access, own PC versus Internet café, etc do you want to use? How much time do you want to put in this business – remember it is a business otherwise forget it. What will be your regular routine? Make sure you consider these thoroughly before you start.

B. Organize Yourself

This step is crucial for organization purposes. You require a number of tools, registrations and the like. So get the following ready:

1. A Notebook for the business, where you will write down everything from registrations to niche market info to usernames and password to emails, etc.
2. Get 2 or 3 email addresses from Yahoo.com and Gmail.com
3. Get your DOM account or at least the name you will use to open one later.
4. If you have your own PC, create a special folder on your PC for your Affiliate marketing information. In fact, you should use different sub-folders for each niche.

C. How To Get A US Address and Phone No

As a Nigerian doing business from Nigeria, you will be discriminated against by most of the online sites you will need to work with. This is mainly due to the fact that a few Nigerians who have been involved in “419” activities have given us a bad name and necessitated our being singled out as potential scammers. Most websites would rather not have anything to do with Nigerians than risk losing their money to 419ners. However, Nigerians have found a way out of it. We use a Virtual Address and Phone number for registration and money collection purposes. There are many ways of doing this – getting a trusted friend’s or relation’s address or buying virtual address on the internet. But one of the companies that has been found to be reliable and has agents in Nigeria is Graphcard.com. Graphcard.com provides you an opportunity to get a USA address and telephone number, a virtual debit card you can use to pay for your online services and can also ship your goods from overseas to Nigeria. They can also help you send and receive money to and from any part of the world. The process for registering and getting your US address and phone number is as following:

Step 1: Register with VTN and Fund It

VTN is a network that provides quite a lot of services that are useful for your online business. For now, we want to use it to fund our Graphcard account. The procedure for registration and funding is as follows:

• Go to www.virtualterminalnetwork.com (VTN) and complete your membership application form. It is free to join.
• Fund your VTN account. It involves paying some money to Bank PHP and confirming your payment with your teller number when you login to VTN. You can also buy ePin from the bank and use it to fund your account. The full procedure is in the members’ area when you login to your account.

Step 2: Go to WWW.GraphCard.com

Step 3: Register as a member – It is FREE.

Choose Personal as your member type.

Step 4: Fund Your Graphcard.com Account through VTN.

Login to your Graphcard.com account, click on Add Fund and follow the procedure to add fund to your Graphcard account.

Step 5: Purchase your US virtual address by clicking on “Buy virtual address” within your Graphcard.com account.

Note that you must have at least $60 to get a US address as the cost per month is about $5. You can also check if you can pay in installments, in which case you can purchase for just one or few months.

Step 6: Don’t buy a phone number if you don’t need it for other purposes.

You can use Graphcard.com support telephone to complete your registration with Clickbank.com. Be informed however, that Graphcard.com frowns at using their support telephone number for such registration.

Your US address is useful for registration in so many sites that don’t accept Nigeria. Also, use the payee name: “LFR Communications Inc” as the name to receive your checks wherever you use the US address. Graphcard.com will cash the checks, take their commission/charges and transfer your own part into your DOM account.

D. How to pay for products & services online

However, you can get credit (debit?) card from most Nigerian banks. However, some of these cards are discriminated against by online merchants. Another way of getting over this is to get virtual debit cards from several card merchants. Virtual cards are not plastic cards but you are given the numbers that normally appear in plastic cards to use in purchases. However, a lot of the card merchants are fraudulent and their cards are not acceptable by many online business merchants.

Today things are changing. Some Online merchants accept a few Nigerian credit cards. Examples are 2checkout.com (an online payment processor), Hostgator.com (a hosting company), Godaddy.com (domain registration). So you can purchase a domain name from Godaddy.com, a hosting account from Hostgator.com and pay any merchant that sell their goods/services using 2checkout.com. These are the services I use myself.

E. How to receive your money here in Nigeria

How do you receive your money back to Nigeria? It depends on the merchant you used to process payments online and the options available for cashing your money. The following are some of the methods you can use to receive you money:

1. Using Nigerian Domiciliary Accounts

In addition to many other options such as PayPal, there are two options which are generally available:

1. By Check
2. By Bank transfer

In the case of transfer by check, the payment processor company will send you a cheque which you can pay into your domiciliary account here in Nigeria. The check will then clear after say 3-5 weeks.

For bank transfer, you will enter your domiciliary account information into your online account with the payment processor company. When you want to withdraw your money, you will request for it and within 2-10 days your money will be transferred into your domiciliary account.

2. Using Virtual Address Services

There are many affiliate programs that don’t accept Nigerians, such as Clickbank.com. If you are in Nigeria, you need to register with sites that provide you with US address and phone number to register with such sites. You can then arrange with those sites to collect and cash your money and send it to you here in Nigeria (via your DOM account or Naira account) after deducting their service charge. An example is Graphcard.com. You can get a US address through Graphcard, just by paying for a virtual billing address. This can be used for registering with sites that don’t accept Nigerians.

Note: There are several other methods of receiving money in Nigeria or getting virtual address to use for your online business. Just search on Google.com and you will find hundreds of them.

3. Using Payoneer Card

Payoneer is an alternative way of withdrawing your money from your online business to Nigeria. Payoneer is an international payment distribution solution that pays directly to a prepaid MasterCard card. The procedure for obtaining a card is:

1. Sign up for a card from a Payoneer partner website. You cannot sign up for a card directly from Payoneer. Examples of partner websites are 2Checkout.com and Plimus.com. With 2checkout.com, you sign up free as an affiliate and order a Payoneer Card. To get your card, sign up as an affiliate using the following link: https://www.2checkout.com/va/signup.
2. Activate your card online. Your card will arrive to Nigeria within one month. You will be able to manage your account online.
3. Choose Payoneer as your payment method. Your money will be loaded into your Payoneer card.
4. Once there is money in your card, use the card anywhere that accepts debit MasterCard – online and offline shops, restaurants, and ATMs worldwide.

There you have it. These tips and information will help you overcome some of the bottle-necks most Nigerians encounter at the beginning. Hope they will help you as well. Feel free to contact me at oneness@naijaonlinemarketer.com.

Some of the questions newbies (those new to making money on the Internet) always asked are: “Can I genuinely make money on the Internet (or online)? Is it not one of those scams just to swindle me of my money? How can I make money online? Is it FOREX? Can I really Fire my Boss and make my living online? Can I do it part-time? How can I get my money back to Nigeria? And so on. Well let’s answer these questions by stating very important FACTS:

1. Making money online is REAL. Internet Marketing is selling goods and services using the internet as a marketing medium, the same goods and services that are marketed offline. In 2007, about $300 billion was spent by people buying one thing or another online. Therefore, this amount of money was earned by those who set up their businesses online to market their goods and services to these hungry buyers. You too can.
2. There are scams online as well as offline, but this does not stop us from setting up businesses offline and making money. All we need to do is sieve out scams from genuine businesses.
3. There are millions of people all over the world whose only income comes from marketing goods and services online. Some make as much as $1m or more a month. Others make as little as $0 a month. The difference is mainly in the level of knowledge and application of the methods that work. One other factor is individual mindset. Some think it is a “get-rich-quick” scheme and are just looking to find a button they will push and millions will flood their bank account. These people not only make $0, but also lose several thousands of dollars to scammers. Others treat it as a business and invest a lot of time (especially at the beginning) to learn the basics first, and know that it is a long-term business.
4. This business can be started part-time, putting just 5-10 hours a week and later fulltime as the money start rolling in. Secondly, you can decide to do it in the morning, afternoon, evening or night, depending on when you are free. It doesn’t matter. Internet is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While the Nigerian market is closing at night, the American market is just taking off, and so on.
5. Transactions on the Internet are mostly done using credit cards, bank transfer, Western Union, etc. You can retrieve your money via credit cards or transfer to your domiciliary account (dollar or foreign currency account) which you can open in most banks in Nigeria. You can also get your own credit card (VISA, MasterCard, etc) to purchase goods and services on the Internet from these same Nigerian banks. It is that easy.
6. You can market physical products (e.g. electronics, printed books, etc.) or create, package and market digital products (e-books, videos, software, audios) or offer services to prospects (write books, reports or articles, design websites for them, etc). You can also trade in currencies (FOREX) or stocks.

As you can see from the above, the same products and services you market offline can also be marketed online. However, since the medium is different, the approach and modalities may be different. There are also similarities. But one thing should be clear to every newbie: YOU MUST LEARN THE BASICS, otherwise you are wasting your time. Some of the similarities are as follows:

1. You must have a business name. This is called a Domain Name. Example is naijaonlinemarketer.com.
2. You must have a business place or website. You create your website as a set of linked files and put them in your own space on the Internet called Hosting account. So when somebody enters your domain on the web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer) address bar, your website will be opened for him to view. Your website is your office or online store.
3. You must have a product or service you are marketing. This must be what people are looking for and are ready to pay for.
4. You must have a way of collecting your money. If the product or service is your own, then you need a payment processor. Otherwise you must agree with the product owner how you will be paid.
5. You must get people to visit your website to view what you are selling. You cannot make any money if nobody knows your website exists. Therefore you must advertise your place of business to enable people visit your website to buy what you are selling.

These are just a few of the similarities between offline and online businesses. One of the main advantages of online businesses is that you can automate almost all the operations so that your business can work on “autopilot” using Internet Technology. The technology that will be applied on your website must enable all transactions to be completed without your intervention. Remember, you are not physically present in your business place when someone visits your website. So everything has to be presented to the site visitor such that all his questions are answered, otherwise he will leave your site without taking the action which you want him to take. So the write-up or ”copy” on your website must be convincing/believable enough.

These are just but a few of the things we will be discussing in details in this book. We shall provide you with the detailed information, techniques and ways of making money on the Internet, selling other people’s products and services for good commission (commonly called affiliate marketing). We shall focus on digital or information products and services (e-books, reports, articles, videos, audios, software, templates, online courses, membership sites, etc.). The acceptable commission for information products (also called infoproducts) range from 40% to 100% of the cost of the products. You can become a dollar millionaire in 2-5 years if you do it correctly. However, you can just make enough to be comfortable if that is your goal. One thing is very clear – you must work for the money.

Different Models for Making Money Online

Making money online is the fastest, easiest, cheapest and most exciting way of making money today. Why? Because:

• You don’t need much capital. In fact you can start with zero capital.
• You can do it from your home.
• You don’t need employees
• You can make as much or as little as you want
• You do all these at your own time.
• The market is 24/7, i.e. 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• Your prospects are worldwide – no geographical boundaries
• You have more control, less hassle, greater freedom and more money.

There are hundreds of ways you can make money online. The following are genuine businesses you can start today and make real money:

• Affiliate Marketing:Here you just register with merchant websites to market their products and services. You will then refer people to these websites and when they buy, you will receive commission which ranges from 10% to 75% of the cost of the product or service.
• 
  

  Information Creation Marketing:

  In this model, you create products e.g. electronic book (e-book) or video and set up a simple website to market it and collect your money through credit cards. It is easy. If you can’t do it yourself, you can hire the services of freelancers to do it for you. It is one of the most profitable ways of making recurring income online.

• Google AdSense: This is a form of Affiliate Marketing called pay-per-click. You setup a simple website, allow Google to put their adverts on your website and when people who visit your site click on any of the adverts, Google will share the advertising money with you. It is that easy.
• Resell Rights Marketing: Here you buy reseller license to other peoples products. Then you set up a simple website to sell them and keep all the money for yourself.
• Private Label Rights (PLR) Marketing: It is similar to Resell Rights marketing, except that here the rights you get entitle you to do whatever you want with the product, including putting your name as the author or creator to the product.
• Membership Site Marketing: Membership sites are like clubs where people register as members. They pay a certain amount to become members and it could be a one-time payment or recurring monthly payment. They benefit from the information, products or services you have provided for them in the members area of the site. It is a Goldmine you have to exploit.
• Freelancing: In this model, you will market your skills or talents online by helping people with their chores, technical challenges, professional work etc. You can even trade your time giving your opinion as in Online Surveys.

These are just a handful compared to the number of income opportunities existing online. Some of you may have heard of FOREX (buying and selling currencies online), Stock trading, Get Paid to read Emails, drive a car, shop, sample products, etc. The major thing is to start with a model, learn it very well and start making money with it before moving to another model.