How do you make money online?

January 17th, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

This is the question I have asked myself since I first started using the internet when I was a wee boy, well, about 25 years old. It is only recently I started seriously asking the question and only recently since I started making money on the net. I am extremely interested in this as a model for creating wealth and for creating the life I want. I have spoken to a lot of people who have made it online and without exception all of them have said the same thing:

‘Anybody could do it!”’

Anybody could do it!

When I first heard this I thought it was a joke. I thought you have to know hundreds of people who would help you, I thought they all have time on their hands and no family to consider. However this is not the case. Most of the people who have made it, have had families, started part time, and due to their persistence have been able to give up their 9-5 and start their online business.

That’s another word I keep hearing from internet business owners is:

‘Persistence’

It is the key to making money online, you never ever ever ever give up. Sometimes you will strike it lucky on your first shot, sometimes you will have to fail 10 times before you get a success.

Changing your psychology

The trouble when I first started trying to make money was that I was aiming high. I was looking at earning $140,000 to pay off my mortgage and give up my 9-5 job and concentrate on making a sustainable living online. The problem with this type of thinking is that $140,000 seems insurmountable and my unconscious mind almost gives up before it’s even started.

I read an eBook that changed all that called ‘5 Bucks a day’ by Dennis Becker (Don’t worry I am not going to put my affiliate link here, if you are interested you will find it). What this guy said, and it’s very simple, is aim for earning $5 per day profit and then ‘rinse, lather and repeat’.

Rinse, Lather and repeat

This is the phrase internet marketers use when they are explaining the process of making money.

Basically when they find a winning formula they repeat this formula over and over again.

For example, imagine having a blog that makes you $5 per day in adsense you then repeat the process and build another blog, and another and another and pretty soon you are earning $100 per day just from adsense. No, it’s not that easy as you have to drive traffic, however you now have a network of blogs which link to each other which means your search rankings are higher which means more traffic which means more adsense earnings. So the first blog might be hard to build as there is a steep learning curve but now you have learned about driving traffic, SEO, interacting with readers etc you don’t have to learn so much for the second blog so there is not as much effort. That was only a quick example. There are literally hundreds of ways to make money online.

The route I have chosen is affiliate marketing and it’s now starting to work out for me. Undoubtedly the biggest thing I have done is join affiliate marketing forums and I would strongly suggest finding a forum in the market you are interested in. For example if you are interested in building blogs as a way of making money join one of the big blogging forums, if it’s affiliate marketing then join a well subscribed affiliate marketing forum. This will increase your learning curve dramatically, in fact there will be a period of information overload as there is so much great information from a good forum.

Free reports and making money list

I know a lot of readers are not interested in the topic of making money, which is why I don’t post a lot about it. However, for those of you who are interested I am putting together a mailing list where I will be sending lots of great links, free reports and free online videos. If you would like to join this list please put your name and email address in the box below and you can start your learning curve immediately.

To start off I will be sending you a free report called The Million Dollar Briefcase’ written by Karl Warren.

10 ways people make money online

Blogging - There are plenty of six figure bloggers out there who are making it big with their blog; Steve Pavlina, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, and John Chow all come to mind. What they did was to give great information to their readers and then monetised their blog with affiliate links, adsense, chikita ads, etc. It took them time to build up their readership but look at them now, I am sure they would all say it is worth it.

Membership sites - There are a lot of people making money by starting membership sites. Basically this is where you start a site and for a monthly fee you give information on your chosen niche.

Writing - With the internet almost anything is possible and writing is a skill in demand right now. If you are good at writing then there are people willing to pay you. If you are a good writer you can make a lot of money online and offline. Sites like www.elance.com , www.rentacoder.com all advertise for writers. there is one drawback to using sites like this and its the competition. People want writers on the cheap, however if you have very good English and know your topic you can command higher prices.

Selling affiliate products - This is the method I prefer when making money online. There are tons of affiliate networks now; www.clickbank.com www.cj.com , and www.linkshare.com to name but a few. You have no physical product to ship out. I like to sell instant products whereby the buyer can download their product immediately after their purchase like an mp3, or an eBook.

Write your own eBook – If you go to www.clickbank.com you will find thousands of ebooks and it should give you an idea on the breadth of topics that people are writing about. If you have a specialist skill, can write and have people to sell to then this is a good way to make money if you put in the effort. It’s not as easy as writing it and then hoping people will come to it, you have to promote it, this is where joining a forum comes into it’s own.

Sell your skill – Do you have a particular skill? Are you a whiz at blogging? sell you skills to people who know nothing about blogging. Are you a qualified counsellor? sell your services online. Can you build a website? There are still thousands of small businesses who do not have an internet presence and are willing to pay someone to build a site for them. Truth is we all have skills that we can sell it’s just a matter of who can promote themselves the best.

Start a directory - There are a ton of directories out there and a lot of them charge a fee for inserting a link to their site. If you have a niche blog or website you can start your own directory. It might take some work initially to set it up and promote it but a $20 annual insertion fee could bring in a recurring income for you all of it passive income after the initial setup. There are lots of free scripts out there to help you do this, just have a search on google for them to find the best one.

Website flipping – If you know what you are doing and are good at SEO and getting links you can start a website and sell it on a few months later. A lot of people are now doing this with blogs. To make it worthwhile you would have to have a few on the go, build them up and then sell them.

Putting ads on your site – This is an obvious one but not one to be overlooked. Adsense and link ads are the easiest ways of making money from your site but you can also have affiliate links to the products you are promoting like the ones I have in the sidebar.

Write an eCourse – A lot of people have made big money from writing an e-course on their speciality. Again, all the work is done at the beginning. You write your course, a quality one, add some audio, video or other ways to make your presentations professional and sell it to a niche audience. Once your course is written, you can set up an autoresponder account at somewere like www.aweber.com and split the course into 7 -12 parts. The beauty of the auto responder is that you can send out emails on a timed setting i.e. send part of the course out once every 2 days or once a week, whatever you want. Then all the work goes into promoting the course, not easy but if you have a skill it could be a good money earner.

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There Are 24 Responses So Far. »

Comment by etavitom on 17 January 2008:

superb post! thanks, brad

Comment by Karl Staib - Your Happiness Matters on 18 January 2008:

Bloggers keep writing to join a forum and I’ve been reluctant, but after this post I’m convinced. I guess your post is the straw that broke my back. Thanks for the push!

Comment by All Inclusive Vacations - Make most out of it! on 18 January 2008:

Hey cool!

Really i was always thinking about how to do such
stuffs instantly, but now i got it.

Thanks for this post.

Comment by diane on 18 January 2008:

Very nice!

Thanks for all the terrific info — now to put it to use.

Comment by Nick Grimshawe on 18 January 2008:

Thanks for the post. I like the idea of starting with earning $5 dollars a day. That really makes the goal attainable and you just keep doing it till you make the five dollars, then as you say you start over again.

Working toward $5 takes the presure off.

I read through all your top ten list for making money on line. Some of them I will be following up on then.

But ultimately the word persistence is the key to success.

To many people I have worked with want instant success and believe that an internet business should not require an investments. For those that get past all that, then persistence takes over.

Thanks once again.

Nick

Comment by Keith on 18 January 2008:

I belive, ultimately, the market is always “niche” oriented…so if one writes for a specific market sector and provides related goods, services and info for that market, then one will make money. After being on SU now for one year and stumbling through several thousand sites, it is easy to get tired of the sites that have no focus. So, again, the key to success on the web is FOCUS and concentrate on a specific market sector…and do a good job of serving the best interests of that market. Regards, Keith Johnson, Hallandale, FL

Comment by The Real School Survival Guide on 19 January 2008:

I have to agree with Keith. Those sites that are focused generally attract more of a concentrated audience.

Superb post, in any case. Thanks!

Comment by root123 on 19 January 2008:

Pretty engouraging article. I believe the Internet is a magnificent platform to earn and learn.

Comment by sir jorge on 20 January 2008:

i love this article. it’s awesome, and encouraging

Comment by Mike Cruz on 21 January 2008:

great post. Good to have a realistic discussion on the possibilities of making money online…although I haven’t done it myself, it seems as though multi-blogging is a good route.

Comment by Steven Aitchison on 21 January 2008:

Hi Everyone

Thanks for all your positive comments on this. I might put more money making articles in the blog as this received some good comments.

Etavitom: Thanks for your positive words, i can always count on you for something good to say, thanks.

Karl;- joining a forum has been great for me so far and it also brings in traffic, but that’s a secondary bonus. Once people get to know you on the forum they ultimately click your signature link.

Diane: Thanks for your kind words

Nick - Dennis Beckers ‘$5 a day’ was a turning point for me. It’s a small eBook which has a big impact. You’re right about persistence, I could have given up many times but it is starting to work out.

Keith: I agree with you wholeheartedly on this point about Focus. When making money online, I think too often people are that excited about the prospects of making money and the multitude of ways of doing it that they get all excited, myself included, and flit from one project and niche to the next without ever sticking with one project.

Cube: thanks for your comments on this

Root123: It’s just finding that niche

sir jorge: Thanks for your kind words, kind sir.

Mike: A lot of people are making a lot of money by multi blogging, again Darren Rowse springs to mind here with his b5media group.

Pingback by How do you make money online? | passive income on 21 January 2008:

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Comment by aika on 25 January 2008:

good post Steven, very helpful indeed especially for us internet marketer.

Comment by Download Icons on 29 January 2008:

Your right ‘Persistence’ is the key everyone has their own ideas on how where & when without ‘Persistence’ though your unlikely to succeed most people give up when they realise that $5 a month is probably as good as it gets during the first few months. Luckily that increases with time & ‘Persistence’

Comment by Myra on 15 February 2008:

Thanks for very informative post. I’m looking forward to learning more.

Comment by Finnea on 28 February 2008:

Hi!!! nice tips for me and also to other bloggers… continue sharing it with us, its a good idea. We are all looking for that one program, idea, concept that will make us the money we are looking for. But if your mind is not ready to “accept” the new idea…. it may just pass you by without you even knowing it. What I’m trying to say is it’s important to know just what you are looking for before you go hunting.

Comment by bob on 4 March 2008:

ice idea

Comment by Make Money Online on 8 March 2008:

Great ideas, continue sharing with us. Myself , I am newbie to making money online techniques. I liked this very much. As we all know, we buy expensive ebooks and never implement them, put them to work.

Comment by Steve on 17 March 2008:

There is no doubt about it there are lots of ways to make money online.

I like many others here have bought ebooks and read articles about building an online business.

Has anyone ever thought about combining different skills and working together?

The home of the web is the USA and one of the things I’ve noticed is their preparedness to create wealth by partnering with others. This goes beyond outsourcing and is more about sharing in the wealth that is created.

And what about combining the offline world with the online world?

There are people in the UK that are building web pages for businesses and almost becoming a wholesaler for them. Sort of like super affiliates or joint venture partners.

There are so many different skills needed to build businesses including online ones that I sometimes think we have to do everything ourselves when in fact we don’t.

I would welcome peoples views on what my business partner and I are doing with a mortgage broking business called Vibrant Ventures. Hopefully you can follow the link from my name.

This is all about delivering a world class service and we have included a few of the online world ideas including a free report on how to save your time and money with your next mortgage.

My strengths are around the “how to” part so if anyone has a particular passion or skill please contact me.

Best wishes

Steve

Comment by Download Infoproducts on 1 April 2008:

This is quality info here. I personally have done the eCourse and found a lot of success with it.

Comment by cynthia on 10 April 2008:

There seems to be sooo many ways of making money on the net, can’t wait to try them out!
Just a bit about myself, I am a property fanatic, looking to kick start a property portfolio however I have one stumbling block - cash! If there’s anyone out there who has the cash but is afraid to go into property investing on their own, please please please contact me!!
I know I can do it, I attended a property workshop and although it was not that informative (I knew most things there!) I managed to leave with one info which I am trying to explore at the moment.
Hoping it makes me cash so I can go ahead with my ventures!
Thanks Steven for the info!

Comment by jack on 15 April 2008:

ts a good idea. We are all looking for that one program, idea, concept that will make us the money we are looking for.agree with you wholeheartedly on this point about Focus. When making money online, I think too often people are that excited about the prospects of making money
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jack

Did you see it? One more time? You won’t get faked out here! http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com/?t=wc

Comment by Josie Smith on 25 May 2008:

just make your comments valuable to the topic and it should be base on the topic.Also…follow the correct format in order to have a unique posting.
_____________________________
Josie Smith
Did you see it? One more time? You won’t get faked out here! http://www.SelectWealthSystem.com/?t=wc

Comment by Johnny Cash on 2 July 2008:

I’ve worked in the internet industry for quite awhile and have never found a shortage of ways to make money online… avoiding all the scammers however is not so easy.