The global financial downturn is driving millions of people to try to earn extra income from the Internet, without losing what little they have.

Many thousands of internet entrepreneurs have succeeded and attained financial security. So what is their secret? How do they get a steady stream of visitors to their website and how do they persuade them to click the “Buy Now” button? By far the majority of marketers use a combination of Google Adwords and Search Engine Optimization.

Google Adwords carry millions of small ads every day, for every conceivable product or subject imaginable. So it must be the way to go, right? Sure, many people are making a good living from Adwords and a few can make a fortune at it. But, if you’ve tried it, then you’ll know it the true difficulties involved.

Being potentially very profitable, this market is very difficult to break into. First, you have to learn how this thing works, then you have to constantly improve your ads and you will need to spend money before you find the best performing keywords and the most profitable ads. You can set a daily limit to your spending but just twenty dollars a day will mop up 600 bucks in the first month.

Most popular keywords cost anywhere from 50 cents to 2/3 dollars per click, so twenty dollars won’t buy many clicks and, at a click-through rate of two or three percent, you will not get many visitors per day.

There are only about eight slots for ads on each page of Google, so the competition for these slots, particularly on the first page of results, is very fierce and often very sneaky. Each of the eight “tenants” of those valuable places on Page 1 are striving to get to position one, which, on average, gets over 70% of the traffic on that page and the only way to do that is to push the others down. All the Adwords users on the second and third pages are also fighting to climb up the greasy pole.

It is now possible to buy software that will allow you to spy on details of competitors’ campaigns and to see what keywords they are using and even what they are paying for each keyword, so you can potentially bid slightly higher and gain a higher position. If you do get your ad on Page One or Two, someone will be sniping at you with this type of software. Even if you have gained a comfortable position on Page 1 of Google, it is a constant struggle to maintain that position.

There is an alternative approach to running a successful Google Adwords campaign. You can employ a specialist team of experts, with the experience and the time to do the whole thing for you. The problem is, they won’t be interested unless you’re going to be a big spender on Adwords. That’s why I say that Google Adwords may be one of the most difficult ways to make money on line, certainly for a newcomer with little money to risk.

So how about Option Two? Search Engine Optimization. Surely this is the ultimate solution!

You learn how to design and build a web page which meets all Google’s guidelines (and I’ll tell you what they are) and then you get on Page One, with a page which costs nothing to be there and wait for the money to roll in. How cool is that?

This is all you need to do. Find a suitable keyword phrase (preferably 4 or 5 phrases) which gets at least 100 searches a day and which does not have many heavy hitters in the competition. 1,000 searches a day is obviously much better but is likely to have strong, well-established competition.

Then you need to get a domain name which incorporates the main keyword or phrase and build your web page so that it includes the keywords in the Title of the page; in the Description of the page; in the URL of the page; in the Headline of the page and in the Anchor Text of all links to other websites. That’s not too difficult, is it?

Then, to convince Google that yours is an “Authority” site, you need to get multiple links to your page, from other related sites, dealing with the same subject, whether it is Health, or Family, or whatever. The more important these other sites are, the more weight Google gives to these links. I can tell you, getting these links is hard work.

Here’s a real example. My website is on Page One of Google, for the phrase “Stop Arthritis Pain”, out of 2.1 million results. Last time I looked, it was at position 6, on Page One, and has been there for months. The same search phrase is on Page One of Yahoo (at position 2), out of 21.7 million results. Impressive eh?

I’ll bet you’re thinking “that page must be pulling in a ton of money”. Well, it isn’t. The reason is, that keyword phrase is not a popular search term and only gets about 20 visitors a day, so it makes a few dollars a day but nothing significant. Think about those other twenty million pages, who are getting even less traffic than those on page one.

So, if you can get onto Page One of the big search engines, you may make a lot of money but 99.9% of the pages up there are having no impact at all, in terms of making money for their owners. In many cases, it’s a lot of time and effort for no reward.

A well established method, used by High Street businesses for many years, is gaining credibility in online marketing. Make money by giving stuff away for FREE! We’ve all heard of BOGOF – “Buy One, Get One Fee!” How about, “Get this valuable stuff, without buying anything”? Many internet marketers, smarter than I, claim to be making excellent earnings with this method and without the aid of Google Adwords or the Search Engines.

This is a quote from an expert, who has many profitable websites from using these methods -

“There is no more powerful way to sell your product than by ‘preselling’ it with free and useful information, typically with a free ebook.”