How to make money online?

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TopHatFox
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How to make money online?

Post by TopHatFox »

Is making money online actually a viable way to make money for the average person?

Have any of ya'll done this? What did you do?

All of the How to Make Money Online Web sites seem over hyped and overoptimistic to me.

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I replied to this in your other thread already but I'll reply again here. Yes, it is possible to make money online. Will it be quick? No. Will it be easy? No.

As you've seen it's very difficult to get good info in this area. Remember that the people providing the info need to keep you optimistic so that you keep coming back to buy training, software, or click their ads. Learning from these people is a lot like reading a book about a surefire method for trading stocks. If this person was so great at trading stocks or making money online, why would they be explaining how to do it to you? Wouldn't they just implement their method and retire in a year or two? Why would they want competition?

If you want to go down this road I'd recommend starting with Pat Flynn. He's way too optimistic (for the reasons above) but at least the info is generally good and he teaches you how to make things that are useful rather than spammy garbage.

Even if you do everything right success can be very random. You only have so much time so you have to pick a project to work on. You can do a good job of picking a project and work very hard but it may not work out due to reasons beyond your control (google algorithm change, powerful competition gets in at the same time, etc.).

All that said, there's at least one person (I can't remember the name right now) on this board who is living off of internet marketing so it can be done. I'm earning a few hundred a month (see journal). He might not like the term but Jacob is also a successful internet marketer (ERE book, ERE blog and forum).

Dragline
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by Dragline »

I honestly don't know from what I have observed, but it appears that the people who do the best do something that others have not thought of doing, but attracts a demand. I would also read Tim Ferriss's Four-Hour-Work week on internet businesses if you have not read it. But I see a lot of people trying to do the same thing and hoping lightning will strike their blog, etc. It seems like a lot of work, unless you really enjoy the work aspect even if it doesn't make money. (As a consumer of blog material, I'm happy that so many people do.)

Now this person has found a strange niche in our consumer culture that makes money hand over fist: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/youtube-s ... 06350.html

I think you could write an interesting psychology paper on why that site in so successful. But I never would have thought that anything so banal could be so interesting to so many people. What do I know?

subgard
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by subgard »

Do you want to build a money making machine (actual website), or just work remotely (freelancing)? The former takes the skill, knowledge, time, and hard work of building a business in real life, but perhaps not the capital. The latter takes the time and effort of learning marketable skills in real life.

Or, that's my conclusion after having looked into it for myself.

The psychology of Youtube videos is very interesting. Some of the most popular channels are simply a way to experience mundane, yet pleasurable activities vicariously. The Disney unwrapper has hit the jackpot because the same kind of people who get a thrill out of unwrapping new consumables are the same kind of people who will click on an ad to buy a consumable. F*****g brilliant, really.

jacob
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by jacob »

Like subgard pointed out, you can distinguish between two (or three) different kinds of online businesses.

x) A website which is an actual product on the internet.

y) Freelancing in which the internet just serves to connect you to your customers and which is really not that different from using a telephone, a letter, or a carrier pigeon.

z) A store front from where you organize and ship products.

I only have experience with the first one.

Here you can get paid in two ways:

1) By selling value to your customers. There are many ways to do this and they depend on the customer and the product.

2) By selling your customers (eyeballs) to advertisers.

The focus completely determines strategy. For example, for (1), you have to spend a lot of time developing quality value along with a good reputation. For (2), you have to spend a lot of time advertising yourself so you can get a lot of traffic and then write boilerplate junk(+) to make people who are unintentionally fooled into clicking on you via google to click on to a more relevant-looking ad. A hybrid somewhere in between these two is affiliate marketing.

(+) Every day I get at least 2 emails from content "writers" trying to hawk their keyword optimized articles to me: "Hello, I find your < insert blog name > very interesting and I too have thought a lot about < insert tailored phrase >. I especially enjoyed the article about < insert whatever post was published a few days ago >. I have a bunch of ideas I would like to run by you. < insert list of 4 articles >."

Value to customers seems to be either by way of ...

a) curating --- if you're reading a lot and summarizing the best reads for others.
b) thought leading --- if you're creative individual capable of individual thought
c) execution --- if you write in an engaging and relatable way

(and of course a potential combination)

This is of course tricky, because the average person doesn't like to read; the average person doesn't tend to think; and the average person writes like a high school B-student.

In order to succeed you have to do this better than 95% of all other people in your niche whether that's x, y, or z or a, b, or c.

The internet is a winner-takes-most field(*). I might get my tomatoes from the second best farm even if they're only 90% as good as the best one because they're cheaper or the best one ran out. However, in fields where infinite copies of the best performance is available, why would I spend time on second-best if I can just go to the best.

(*) People who make their money on the internet teaching other people people how to make money on the internet will mention the one person making $10000/month. They won't mention the 9 others who make $1000/month or the 40 who make $100/month; or the hundreds who gave up before they managed to make enough to pay for a cup of coffee. There's no linear relation between payout and work-input. The person at the top will only be working marginally harder than the average.

workathome
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by workathome »

Sometimes you can learn from failure:

http://johnathanward.com/make-money-online-failure/

Pedal2Petal
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by Pedal2Petal »

Zalo wrote:Is making money online actually a viable way to make money for the average person?

Have any of ya'll done this? What did you do?

All of the How to Make Money Online Web sites seem over hyped and overoptimistic to me.
Yeah I do this, I actually learned more about how to make online business work from ERE than from the "MAKE BIG $$$ ONLINE" sites which you should pretty much just ignore...

I built my site over the course of about 16 months, only half of that I was working pretty hard at it. The site started earning equal to my living expenses around sep 2013. Now I generally ignore it and let it do its thing. It has consistently earned roughly 2x my living expenses for 12+ months solid now. Could earn more if I was willing to sell "sponsored posts" but I don't do that anymore because of the HASSLE

Funny how WorkAtHome mentions watching other people's failure because I have done quite a lot of studying other failed online sites and trying to understand why they have failed. Also I have studied Paul Wheaton and his sites to see what to do correctly.

Dragline mentions finding an idea that others have not done but gains attention. I built maybe a dozen different sites before hitting on one of these and I'm still coasting financially on that one idea. You may have to go through a series of failures first like I did, that's normal but unfortunately somewhat discouraging. But working a 9-5 is even more discouraging so here I am.

The best way to learn for me was interning with a company that built their business online. Their revenue model was selling job board listings at 25$ a pop, and google adsense. Their traffic strategy was primarily SEO but they went so far as to actually hold job fairs to get attention for their website. I also really got a lot out of the 30-day challenge at http://challenge.co but unfortunately this class has COMPLETELY changed from what it was and I don't find it useful at all anymore. 2nd best is probably SmartPassiveIncome.com. Mr Money Mustache actually recommends this site too... You're probably better off ignoring most of the other "MAKE $$$ ONLINE" shit out there, save maybe 4-hour work week which was also brought up in this thread.

Jacob is quite disparaging about selling eyeballs to marketers but it does work and does not necessarily require "trickery" as he seems to suggest. Nowadays many lazy writers are writing "clickbait" which is a strategy that works, but only in the short-term. You can certainly work instead toward a much longer-term traffic strategy.

To see a long-term traffic strategy in action, just google "flea control" and you will see Paul Wheaton's article about flea control on RichSoil.com near the top of the results. This is a good article, one of the best on the internet about "flea control" according to Google, and does not require trickery to get someone to click through to the page. The flea control article is monetized through the Amazon Affiliate program for the diatomaceous earth product he recommends. This is "affiliate marketing" that Jacob mentions. Whenever any visitor that buys ANYTHING on amazon after clicking through one of Paul's links, Paul gets paid around 8% of the shopping cart total. For the next 24 hours. They can buy a 1500$ digital camera instead of DiEarth, and Paul gets 8% of the value of the camera (this scenario with the camera has actually happened to me.)

This page is also a prime candidate for monetizing with adsense. It seems to be absent on the page (even though the tracker is installed for some reason?) In my experience, a page like this will earn approximately twice as much through adsense as it will through amazon. Although my estimate could be skewed by the value of the term "flea control" which is EXTREMELY valuable term through adsense, costing an obscene 4$ per click.
Last edited by Pedal2Petal on Thu Mar 26, 2015 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Scrubby
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by Scrubby »

I think the only thing that is certain is that it's not possible to make much money if you follow a make money fast recipe. I have been trying to figure out ways to make money (besides normal work) since I was a child, and about three years ago I finally found something. I didn't know or expect at that time that it would turn out this well, but I saw an opportunity do apply a well known method in an area where there was very little competition, and in a way I found to be interesting and rewarding even with little monetary gain. I've made more than $150k since I started, from an initial investment of less than $1500. On average I've probably spent less than 10 minutes/day, most of it in the beginning.

I won't go into detail about what it is because it doesn't scale, and any profit gained by others will cost me at least the same amount. The reason why nobody else had filled this particular niche was probably that I found it very early. Nobody had had the combination of knowledge about economy and programming, and interest in the particular area, which was required to both see it and take advantage of it.

My best advice is to be relentless. Spend time finding out how other people are making or have made money in the past, and try to apply it to new areas. It should be inside an area of which you have some interest, otherwise it will be too painful to get the knowledge and spend the time required. Be aware that it requires some luck, most ideas won't work out, and maybe you'll never find anything. However, as the saying goes, "the harder you try, the luckier you get". If you want a safe way to make money you should just get a job.

arrrrgon
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by arrrrgon »

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Last edited by arrrrgon on Thu Apr 16, 2015 2:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

workathome
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by workathome »

@arrrrgon - Like how you used an affiliate link, lol. ;-)

arrrrgon
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by arrrrgon »

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Last edited by arrrrgon on Thu Apr 16, 2015 2:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

workathome
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by workathome »

Trying to make money fast is, even if it works, generally not sustainable. The right way to do it is try and build something that will last as long as possible (aiming for 5-years in internet-land is probably equivalent to forever). Right now the free mobile games with in app purchases are killing it. In general, mobile has exploded, but is also what everyone is looking at now.

workathome
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by workathome »

arrrrgon wrote:It's not affiliate. I logged out before I copied the link. I'm in Illinois. I can't even have an amazon affiliate account. I'm not sure why I even bother.
My mistake, I thought the "ref=" was an affiliate code.

arrrrgon
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by arrrrgon »

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Last edited by arrrrgon on Thu Apr 16, 2015 2:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Sclass
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by Sclass »

Pedal2Petal wrote: I built my site over the course of about 16 months, only half of that I was working pretty hard at it. The site started earning equal to my living expenses around sep 2013. Now I generally ignore it and let it do its thing. It has consistently earned roughly 2x my living expenses for 12+ months solid now. Could earn more if I was willing to sell "sponsored posts" but I adsense, costing an obscene 4$ per click.
This is cool that you've done this. Good informative post too. Thanks for the ideas.

I have run two ecommerce sites. The first site sold some electronic products I designed. Not really an Internet cash machine but rather a storefront for my products. I sold circuitry and EPROMs to a industrial customer base. Did some SEO so they could find me (this was back in 2001 so it was really basic stuff to pick up crawlers).

Second site sells an app note useful to a small number of desperate designers looking for a silver bullet. I sell four sheets of paper in PDFs. Same as first site I use SEO to get up in front of desperate searchers on Google. Took a night to build the site and a year to come up with the product. I had an aha moment where I solved something and realized people would pay for this. Not really a big cash machine that runs autonomously like some download site but it does make money. Surprisingly nobody knocked off my material and posted it up. I've run this one since 2006.

I've been tempted to expand but I do this for fun, not for living expenses.

this post was inspiring. I wanted to open an app note library years ago and pay commissions to my expert level engineering friends who would write technical papers for the site (to sell to desperate engineers). I lost interest because it seems like a lot of work that I don't like doing.

I like the stories of the guys who use SEO to put up sites to redirect you to sites that pay big bounties for sign ups like Netflix or Xfinity. I heard these guys make bank till Google catches up with them.

My look into most of the businesses that sell info found three major types. I'll show you how to get sex, I'll teach you how to make easy money, I will improve your physical features in some way. There are some real doozies out there like cure your ulcers with my secret formula from your local grocery...60 day money back guarantee, which means drink a mixture of Apple cider vinegar and Granny Smith Apple juice everyday for sixty days and if it doesn't help you well, you get your money back. Most people give up and go away.

workathome
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by workathome »

It's true, targetting a permanent human need like health (diet, fitness, etc.), relationships (dating, sex, marriage, etc.), money (careers, school, get rich, etc.) are permanent niches. I used to make money in a housing-related niche, which is another basic human need, and a huge industry with a lot of potential niches. These all tend to be highly competitive (these days? it seemed easier 8 years ago).

Hobbies and flukes of culture might be harder to spot, but can also be great. I've heard stories from people who got rich online in golf, firearms. Joshua Kennon started his fortune doing varsity letter jackets - this is something that certainly would have never popped into my head, but also looks way too competitive now to try.

Every time a new technology develops though it creates room for entrepreneurship. The shift to mobile opened a lot of doors. New websites often open up opportunities, though often only temporary (Myspace, Facebook, Etsy, Twitter, etc.).

simplex
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by simplex »

Some random thoughts about the making money online problem:

You need to get/earn attention. A possibility is to focus on how-to related material. Google answers millions of how-to related searches every day, and if you find a theme (or niche) where answers to the how-to are related to buying, you have a chance to develop income. See e.g. the "flea control" article in Pedal2Petals post.
It's hard to fight for attention. If you cover celebrities, thousands of other sites do. My impression is that sites geared to older (above 45) people have less coverage by the mostly younger internet marketeers.

Probably the fastest way to income is through selling yourself as a service. This requires direct customer interaction. tropicalmba.com has some interesting podcasts on this:
How to Make Your First $1,000 Online: http://www.tropicalmba.com/1konline/
10 Business Ideas You Can Launch in 7 Days: http://www.tropicalmba.com/quick-launch-biz-ideas/
These are about the internet/tech as business platforms, so you must have technical knowledge.

workathome
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by workathome »

I've seen a crapload of (what I'd consider) arbitrage sites on Facebook lately. They buy "sponsored posts" with clickbait articles loaded full of ads. A couple sites have used Adsense. Someone is making money, though no clue what the margins would be, etc.

Pedal2Petal
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by Pedal2Petal »

simplex wrote:My impression is that sites geared to older (above 45) people have less coverage by the mostly younger internet marketeers..
Totally bang-on with this one. 45+ internet users are generally not using adblock and tend to have a lot more cash to throw around...

workathome
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Re: How to make money online?

Post by workathome »

So ERE folks should market to older folks, who may be looking to retire? lol

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