Quickest Way To $500 / Month

If you are trying to make money as quickly as possible the best way to do that is to offer services. People need all sorts of tasks done for them and some will pay you quite well. This can be anything from article writing to website design, etc. You probably have more marketable skills than you think. Doing this will allow you to get some cash flow.

All the while you can set up affiliate site(s) with opt ins on there and begin to capture subscribers. If you aren't skilled yet at setting up affiliate sites then a simple squeeze page with a valuable free offer will suffice. Start to drive traffic to it with article marketing. You mentioned you have a bit of a budget so if you don't want to do it yourself then go to a freelance site and hire someone to do so. Once you have subscribers on your list you can begin to market products to them. Then you'll have money to set up more websites, which in turn allows you to get more subscribers with your opt ins, etc. etc. Rinse. Repeat.

P.S. I've stood exactly where you are standing in your avatar. Good Aussie times!

$1500 a month is quite easy to get to, just write articles on eLance or Freelancer, it pays about $.01 a word, not bad for getting started.

Buying sites in flippa is a good idea but IMHO, better to pick your own niche or stuff that really interest you and from there come up with your own product or service. Its better that way because you'll personally know the strengths and weakness of what you are offering.

Its not easy to do at first because you have to invest some of your time and money but it will surely pay off.

The service sector is pretty easy to reach $500-$1,000 a month if you have some cash to spend on advertising, backlinks are hot at the moment and there's loads of media buying going on for those type of services.

The quickest thing I will do is to use the 'Search' button because I think or, at least, feel that someone has asked this same question.

If you have good experience in look building then you can make money quickly as well.

You can build link using forums as well, just advertise your services in webmaster forums and start working.

Do whatever you wish but do not just buy some sites cause you have the money... always research what you are getting into... I have know people who have just bought sites on flippa as it showed potential & then did not know what to do with it. Just my 2 cents

You can actually make more money writing for content companies. Apply at Wise Geek, Break Studios, and Demand Studios. I think Bright Hub is also hiring. These sites pay $8 to $15 per article on average. Whether you get accepted or not is another thing. It depends on your experience. Work for these companies to get some money rolling in while you gradually build your own web sites and blogs because it can take about 2 to 5 years on average to create enough traffic to make REAL money on the web and this only if you follow the rules and keep up with the constant SEO changes.

It should not take 2-5 years to drive traffic to a website to make money. If it takes that long then somewhere along the line something is definitely wrong.

Traffic is a whole 'nother discussion but believe me, there are ways to do it.

I will assume that you don't want to offer services, and want to make some sort of "automated" business model. Maybe not completely hands off, but at least to the point that you can go out of town for a week without a major loss of IM income.

So, let's start with breaking it down into smaller chunks. $500 is about $17 per day. It always looks easier if you divide it into smaller chunks.

If you are just getting started with IM, I would recommend building some Adsense sites. These are usually smaller sites that have anywhere from 1 to 10 pages on them. Some people prefer to have only 1 content page that is laser focused on a particular keyword. Some people prefer to have several related keyword topics on the same site. Regardless then are very simple sites and can be created with Wordpress pretty easily.

After you've built the sites, put Google Adsense on them. Somewhere above "the fold" is certainly best.

It all starts with keyword selection, though. Make sure the keywords you are choosing are getting enough traffic to even be worth it. Go for keywords that get 1000 - 5000 searches per month.

Next, make sure the competition for those keywords is weak. You know it's pretty easy to get on page one of Google when the front page has 3 or 4 domains less than a year old with PR0 pageranks. It's even better when a couple of those are somewhere in the top 3 of Google.

If you know how to write, you may want to write the content yourself. I have tried probably a dozen writers from the WF and I still haven't found anyone that I'm thrilled with. Most of them send me content that I have to spend hours fixing. But, maybe I'm just too picky.

Then, the final step is backlinking. You could do this yourself, but I wouldn't. Hire this out to someone with the tools and the time to "drip feed" backlinks to your sites over the LONG term. Day after day... Month after month. Your sites will dance around a bit, but with good keyword and competition research, along with consistent backlinking you should be up on the front page in a month or two... or three or four.

Personally, if you are just getting started, do more than 1 site. Make a goal to put up 10 of them. Out of 10 sites, you are bound to end up with 2 or 3 that do pretty well, even if it's on accident.

There is a TON of information out there on this subject... and what I'm describing here is a very stripped down summary of the process. Although there are certainly more profitable ways to make a living in IM, such as creating your own info product, list building, CPA, membership websites, etc... for newbies, Adsense one of the quickest and easiest ways to start making an "automated" income from IM.