On the Quora website, someone asks, “What are your 10 laws of making money online?” I think all our readers would be interested in this topic so I have written a response.

The first point is that the online laws are about the same as the offline laws. For example, persuasive writing is about the same. The steps of attracting a customer are the same, in principle, although new tools may be used to present the information. The old acronym, AIDA, still holds true. You need to create, in the mind of the reader:
• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

But I need to step back a bit to earlier phases of the process. The most fundamental law of earning a living, particularly as a self-employed entrepreneur, is “Find need and fill it.” Look for an opportunity. Opportunities grow out of problems, so that’s the place to look. Ask, “What problems can I solve?” and particularly, “What problems can I solve better than most people?”

You may have skills in more than one area (or “niche”, in the term used by marketers.) Choose one niche that best fits your skills and interests. For best results, it would be a niche with lots of interest by consumers.

You can determine the level of interest by checking Amazon and Google. Search both sites for terms (often called “keywords” and “key phrases”) related to your niche. Do you see lot of results for a term? If so, there is likely a lot of interest.

Another law is “Get Going”; don’t let research stop you from taking action. As soon as you have found a niche you know something about that has a lot of public interest, start selling something, even if you aren’t the expert you would like to be.

Imperfect action beats perfect inaction every time.

Start as an affiliate. It’s the easiest way (easiest, in the sense of least complicated, with no special knowledge or skills required, and no need for a big up-front investment. But there is still work involved and wise decisions to make.) to start earning money online. As an affiliate, you encourage people to buy someone else’s product, and you are paid a commission when they do.

The best-known affiliate opportunity is the Amazon Associates program.
Whatever your niche, Amazon sells something related to the niche.

Another merchant selling items for nearly all niches is Clickbank. Clickbank specializes in information products (books, videos, etc.) that can be downloaded.

You can use social media sites, email, or your own website to spread the word about the products you are promoting. It’s your choice. I have often herd that email is the most effective, but it may not be as good as it used to be because people get so much spam that they don’t check their email as often or as carefully. Social media is growing in effectiveness and may soon be better than email.

The main law for choosing which products to support is: Make sure you only promote legitimate products. You don’t want to be associated with a scam. Do your research to make sure what you are promoting Is good quality

The next law of success online is: You must build a mailing list. That grows out of applying a centuries-old law: Farming is easier than hunting.

When you hunt (e.g., for new customers), you may or may not find them. When you already have a customer, you can “farm” them, by offering them a second product related to the first. Then a third, and a fourth, and so on. It’s easier to persuade someone who has already shown themselves to be interested in your niche to buy again than to persuade someone new that they should be interested.

To repeatedly offer new offers to the people you have found, you need to remember who they are by placing them on a mailing list (online, an “email list”).

The easiest way (and for a large list, the only practical way) to do this is to automate it. There is a type of software called an “autoresponder” that specializes in collecting names and making them available for repeated mailings. You can search for “autoresponder” and find hundreds of choices.

Some are services you can subscribe to that keep your list on their server. You visit the server whenever you want to send an email. That’s the kind we use. Others are available as software that you download and place on your own computer, usually on the server you use for a website.

You can earn a living as an affiliate. But in the long run, (this is another law) you will make more money with your own product, if it is good, than with selling products as an affiliate.

There are at least three reasons for this:
1. Publishing a book (even a Kindle book) or creating another product will increase your importance and expertise in the eyes of people interested in your niche. And people want to do business with experts.
2. When you have a product to sell, you can attract other people to be your affiliates. With many affiliates promoting your product, more sales naturally follow.
3. When people buy your product, you can add them to your list and later sell them more products.

Once you have a product, promote it yourself and invite other people to become your affiliates. You will need to give them an incentive a commission) to promote. For downloadable products, 50% is typical.

It is during this promotion phase that you practice the AIDA process.

There are a lot of details to this process that I have left out. This is just an outline that will get you started.

You can become an expert in online marketing by getting started, learning as you go, and sticking with it. My site, Internet Marketing NewsWatch, gives you new ideas for improving your online marketing with its daily news stories.

Sharing is caring