Rich or poor, young or old, employed or unemployed, people love to receive freebies. You can make money by giving away freebies to the Internet users. This is the golden rule: Give your customers what they want in order to make them do what you want.
"Are you kidding? How is it possible?" George asked me. I replied, "One of the favorite activities of the web surfers is software downloading. The other top activities are email, chat and research. People spend a lot of time in searching for free or low cost useful software programs that would enhance their productivity or just give them fun. As there are thousands of software programs, many a time people download useless programs loaded with advertisement and become frustrated."
George said, "That's my experience too." I told George, "Some intelligent web entrepreneurs have created websites that list only the good programs that their niche visitors would download. People love such websites and become repeat visitors. These websites become popular by word of mouth advertisements."
"I understand why people would love such websites. But, how do I create a list of software programs and how do I make money?" George asked me.
"Software programs that we are interested in are of many types such as freeware and shareware. Freeware program authors give away their products free of cost with the hope of making money from ads embedded in their programs, donations and sale of their other premium products. Shareware program authors give away their products free of cost with some limitations such as expiry after a certain number of days and locking of certain key features. They hope to make money when the satisfied users pay for their products so that the limitations are removed," I said and continued, "These authors can make money only if they achieve tens of thousands of software downloads. They can do it only if they cooperate with the other website owners. So, they offer cash incentives to all webmasters that help them increase the number of downloads. Make a list of such programs, review them, promote your website and you will make money."
"But I don't know how to write reviews," George was worried. "That's not a problem. Most vendors provide description of the programs. You can visit big download websites such as download.com and tucows.com, read the review of the experts and end users, and then create your own reviews," I encouraged him.
George asked me, "This project seems to be easy and feasible. Can you please give me details about a specific program so that I can replicate the process?" I replied, "Start a website or a free blog for software reviews and add some content. If you go through similar websites, you will get an idea. Then go to the website roboform.com and sign up for the affiliate program. Opt for Plan 1. Roboform is the top-rated Password Manager and Web Form Filler that completely automates password entering and form filling. It memorizes your passwords and Logs you in automatically, fills long registration and checkout forms with one click, encrypts your passwords to achieve complete security and offers many other useful features. Every web user will find it very useful. Create a webpage recommending the software using the approved content and your affiliate link. Ask your friends to visit your webpage and download the program if they think it'll be useful to them. For each free download, you will get some money. If they buy it you will get more money. If you create such web pages for hundreds of programs and promote your website through search engines, you will be able to earn in thousands. It is easy to create such websites. You don't have to be a software professional to write such reviews."
George took leave then and contacted me again after a week.
"I have good news! It took me 30 minutes to start a free blog using blogger.com. Then I applied for the RoboForm affiliate program. I spent less than 15 minutes in the sign up process. Within an hour I learnt about blogging and created a blog page on RoboForm. I used my affiliate link in the download link. Then I asked all my classmates and college mates to visit the blog page. Within 3 days there were 450 download. For each download I was paid Rs.2. So I earned Rs.900. Three visitors bought the software using my download link. That generated Rs.500. With one webpage I have earned Rs.1,400. There is no doubt that I will earn more if I add more such revenue generating programs."