This is the third in my series on How to Make Money Online.

In the first installment How to Make Money Online with a Virtual Store, I covered how this is probably the FIRST thing you think of when you hear the term “make money online”.  Instead of paying rent on a brick and mortar building, one simply sets up a website and begins selling products.

In the second installment of the series, I covered how if you’ve got the talent to create an easy to navigate website that gets a lot of traffic, you may choose to become a virtual merchant.  As a virtual merchant, you charge other retailers monthly fees (or per-transaction fees) for the opportunity to market their products on your site.

How to Make Money Online as a Virtual Matchmaker

Back in the 1990’s, it was all the craze… virtual matchmakers flourished matching buyers and sellers online - until the dot com crash.  Many virtual matchmakers didn’t survive, but a few did and there’s still a need to connect buyers and sellers.

The most successful company currently making money online as a virtual matchmaker is eBay.   The auction giant essentially acts as a middle mane, connecting buyers and sellers via online auctions.  eBay makes their money by charging the seller a fee.

Other virtual marketplaces simply charge buyers and sellers monthly fees for easy access to each other. Most virtual matchmaking sites target a niche market like Mfg.com which matches equipment manufactures with smaller component suppliers.  Another example of a company playing virtual matchmaker is eLance.

From Guru.com to SelfImprovement.com, there are a number of businesses making money online by connecting buyers and sellers.

Transparency is the way of web 2.0 so to find success as a virtual matchmaker, be sure to find a way to offer users a way to rate others on the site.

It’s also important to note that if you decide to pursue the online auction route, you’ll need more sophisticated software than just an E-junkie account.

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This is the second in my series on How to Make Money Online.  In the first installment How to Make Money Online with a Virtual Store, I covered how this is probably the FIRST thing you think of when you hear the term “make money online”.  Instead of paying rent on a brick and mortar building, one simply sets up a website and begins selling products.

How to Make Money Online as a Virtual Merchant

As I suggested in the last post of this series, renting a warehouse to store inventory is OPTIONAL when it comes to making money online by selling merchandise.

If you’ve got the talent to create an easy to navigate website that gets a lot of traffic, you may choose to become a virtual merchant where charge other retailers monthly fees (or per-transaction fees) for the opportunity to market their products on your site.

In case you didn’t know, this accounts for a full 28% of Amazon.com’s revenues in 2006. However, it’s not just physical merchandise you can move in this manner.  There is a 25-person company which charges businesses to post help wanted ads in San Francisco, New York and L.A., and also collects fees for apartment listings in New York City.

In order to get started making money online being a virtual merchant, you’ll need a domain name, hosting and then build website.  In addition to, you’ll need above average SEO (search engine optimization) skills to excel in this arena - but the rewards are well worth the investment of time and effort.

If you enjoy the web and understand the basics of SEO such as keywords, backlinks and article marketing - then you may want to consider making money online as a virtual merchant.  Essentially you’ll be helping the non-web savvy take advantage of the opportunities available on the web!

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