Can I Blog Online Without a Website?

Many people mistakenly make a lot of assumptions about the business of making money online. They assume that you need to have a lot of technical knowledge and you should be an expert in web design and coding. They assume that you need to already have a long list of powerful business contacts. And they assume that you need to have one or more websites in order to turn any sort of profit.

And they’d be wrong.

While having all of those attributes is definitely advantageous, they’re not necessary. And the truth of the matter is that while the more conventional way to go about things is to have a website — an online business, a blog, an online store, a forum, a system-as-a-service, etc. — you can still be very successful without one. And this goes beyond the worlds of remarketing, arbitrage and search engine marketing too.

Sell Books and eBooks

The way that e-commerce works these days, it can oftentimes be easier to work within the system than to try and create a whole new system of your own. And this is indeed the case when it comes to writing and selling books and ebooks.

It’s actually not that difficult to self-publish a book on Amazon. That includes having the option of a physical print edition (typically in paperback) as well as an ebook for Kindle. If you want to sell your ebook through other channels, like Kobo and Apple iBooks, you can do that too.

The goal here is to tap into your existing expertise, provide a unique perspective, and offer some real value to prospective readers. The books are sold through a trusted marketplace (Amazon) and you don’t have to deal with any of the logistics for accepting payment, printing books, or getting them delivered. Another alternative, particularly if you have a higher value digital product, is to use a marketplace like Clickbank.

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Email Marketing without a Website

It has been said many times before that the power is in the list and you should be building up your mailing list. That’s how you can get in direct contact with people who have already expressed explicit interest in what you have to offer and the email newsletter could be a great channel for promoting both your own products, as well as other people’s products through affiliate links.

Again, many people assume that you need to have your own website in order to have an effective mailing list. After all, how are people going to sign up for your list in the first place? While it’s still a good idea to have your own site–and preferably with a landing page for your newsletter too–it is possible to have a hosted sign-up form.

There is a handy tutorial in the Aweber Knowledge Base that walks you through the entire process. It’s just as easy as setting up a sign-up form on your own website, except Aweber will generate a custom URL on their domain to host your form instead.

Leveraging Social Media Platforms

Internet users are spending much more time on social networks than ever before and you can really capitalize on this growing audience to make some money online too. If you’re a part of the Amazon Associates program, for example, you can promote affiliate links for great product deals through Twitter or Facebook quite effectively. The same can be said about other affiliate programs and other social media sites too.

As a prime example, you might remember when John wrote about how to make money on YouTube. One of the best ways is to do a video about a particular product and then include a “buy it here” link in the video description, making mention of that link in the video itself. If people like what they see, they’ll hit up that affiliate link and you’ll earn a healthy commission.

And while you’re at it, there are several more ways to monetize your YouTube videos too. By combining these strategies and growing your YouTube following, you can have a very successful YouTube channel that consistently generates a fair amount of revenue for you. There are several YouTube celebrities who easily earn a full-time income doing what they do, even outside of what they may earn beyond the realms of YouTube.

Grab the Cash on the Table

Does it make the most intuitive sense to have a website (or hundreds of websites) to make money online? Sure. But that doesn’t mean you should discount the opportunities that are available without having a website at all. If the mindset of online entrepreneurship should teach you anything, it’s that even the less conventional paths can be surprisingly lucrative. You just have to believe in it and yourself.

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