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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