For over a year, I have immersed myself in the online money making industry. Let me describe what "online money making" means.
1. Affiliate sales - primarily e-books, but open to other products. Popular choices are video game, MP3, and movie download sites. E-books are popular because just about everyone markets them and the sales landing pages are really good (well sometimes). Plus it is easy to get caught up in the hype of
Day Job Killer, Step By Step Profit and others. Other popular sites market products found on Amazon or Commission Junction partners.
Day Job Killer author "Chris" uses this as his primary means of income (besides writing e-books) which he claims earns him a six figure monthly income.
2. AdSense sites - really, these are blogs or website optimized for AdSense CTR revenue. Most of the boilerplate sites are being systematically hunted down and delisted by Google in the interest of "improving users online experience". Blogs are a better bet to me because they are updated frequently, contain user interaction and draw return visitors and traffic.
3. Blogging for dollars - This is the concept of building a blog and using it as a vehicle to make money on a regular basis. The best and most notorious example of late is
John Chow . His blog is about making money online with his blog and he does just that - to the tune of US$ 10K per month. Most of his money comes from affiliate sales, referrals and text advertisements, but it proves that it can be done in a relatively short time. In his case, he built his readership of several thousand daily readers over the course of the past year.
4. Arbitrage - The same basis as AdSense sites but heavily uses AdWords PPC to drive targeted traffic to a website rather than stumbling across it organically. The problem is two fold; cost of traffic is less than revenue of site AND building a quality site which does not end up delisted by Google as a boilerplate described above. Personality
Joel Comm is a big advocate of this online money making plan.
5. The Holy Grail - Build an empire like
Shoemoney AKA Jeremy Shoemaker. Shoemoney has literally thousands of domains pointing to a few dozen websites which generate him, allegedly, six figures a month. However, the cost of reaching this plinth is high and includes several thousands of dollars in PPC marketing, hours of keyword research and the skills of website developers and writers. Can it be done? Yes, but plan on spending years, a small fortune and hundreds of lives. (that last part is a joke).
So what I have tried? Just about everything except for number 5, of course. And that is the problem that I think most "make money online" participants.
We read about someone making 7000 dollars a month with 47 AdSense sites and we jump on that bandwagon.
Then we get an email about the latest e-book and how much revenue we can make off "just two sales a day!" and we start building sites, blogs and lenses devoted to "AutoBlogProfitKillerSmack" hoping to pick up a few deals.
Next comes an arbitrage deal, then a "domain real estate" play and before you know it, you have nothing but a hard drive of half completed websites, a stack of unread e-books and a credit card payment overdue.
So what can a "make money online" prospect to do?
First, focus on one thing. Pick one thing you know, do well and are willing to commit to.
First instance, take blogging. Are you willing to commit an hour or two to write good posts, publish and market them?
Are you willing to write and post related articles to article directories under subjects which will drive traffic to your blog?
Are you willing to research and try products which you would be willing to market and promote on your blog?
Are you willing to make a commitment to your readers to post regularly and respond to their comments and questions?
If so, then perhaps you can turn blogging into a several thousand dollar a month pursuit.
Apply the same rationale to any other "make money online" ventures you are considering. Be ready to make the commitment and start today. And stay focused.