How do you generate income?

[teatree]

Well you can try writing articles for Helium, if you enjoy writing.

Be warned that initially Helium will disappoint, as they pay about a cent per page view. This is not a quick way to make money. However, make sure that you promote your articles - submit them to Reddit, Digg etc. Create a Squidoo lens that links to the articles - the more links to the URL for the article, the more likely Google and other search engines will pick it up. It's VERY important to promote your articles when you first write them, to give them a fair chance.

With Helium you get earnings for the life of the article, as long as people continue to click on them. After a bit, when you've built up a portfolio, and if you've promoted them properly, you start to get monthly income from it.

The best thing is that you can write about anything you want, so you can concentrate on topics you are an expert in, feel passionate about or have useful information to impart to the reader or have a useful slant about a topical subject that the mainstream edia are missing. The better your article the more pageviews you will get.

Helium are currently running a promotion, where in addition to the earnings you get from page views, they give you bonuses based on the number of articles you have rated and how well your articles have been rated by others. For details see here.

[alexinspire]

I normally use blog as my main income tool. Steve is right. Look into what value you want to provide for others and provide the value that others want.

Post new articles 2 times per week and do 2 hours traffic generation everyday. constantly do it for 3 months. Once you traffic hit 1000 visitors per day, you might get $500 per month through:

1. Pay per post
2. Affiliate sales- Clickbank.com
3. Text-link-ads.com
4. Selling links directly on your blog.

Those 4 steps will work well only you do good with writing articles and 2 hours traffic generation. If you want to know more in details, you can PM me.

[sirkinm]

Originally Posted by teatree

Well you can try writing articles for Helium, if you enjoy writing.

That's part of what I do -- write a lot of articles for sites like that. Personally, I use ehow, but other choices include Associated Content and Triond.

[Fred Tracy]

I'm making a decent chunk of money from my website right now, but not enough to pay all the bills or anything.

But that will change as I spend more and more time on building traffic and creating great content.

I think the most important thing to do is to find something you love. If you really love it, and you're good at it, then you can find a way to monetize it.

My latest article was actually about this very subject – I'll PM it to you.

[Traikan]

I'm just starting to try my hand at making money as a musician, and yes, it's terrifying. I released my first album late last night and today I'm in the "everyone is probably going to hate it!" stage. But I know what I'm really saying is "I just stepped outside my comfort zone!" and I also know that's a necessity for growth.

Anyone have any experience earning money as a musician? I'm considering offering commissions on my website, but I don't get nearly enough traffic yet so I think my time would be better spent building that up.

Fred, I took a look at your last blogpost and there's a lot of good stuff there, I always smile when I see a lengthy article (at least when I get linked to it from a forum like this) because that usually means there's some real value in there.

[Fred Tracy]

Originally Posted by Traikan

I'm just starting to try my hand at making money as a musician, and yes, it's terrifying. I released my first album late last night and today I'm in the "everyone is probably going to hate it!" stage. But I know what I'm really saying is "I just stepped outside my comfort zone!" and I also know that's a necessity for growth.

Anyone have any experience earning money as a musician? I'm considering offering commissions on my website, but I don't get nearly enough traffic yet so I think my time would be better spent building that up.

Fred, I took a look at your last blogpost and there's a lot of good stuff there, I always smile when I see a lengthy article (at least when I get linked to it from a forum like this) because that usually means there's some real value in there.

Aww, thanks!

I try to provide as much value as I can.

As for being a musician, I used to play before I got carpal tunnel, but I never got in a situation where I could make any money from it. I know some people who get paid for being in bands and so on. I don't know about getting commissions from actually selling music though.

If you could pull that off, that would be SWEET.

[moonrambler]

Just to mention, this old thread got bumped by spam.

Carry on

[Fred Tracy]

Originally Posted by moonrambler

Just to mention, this old thread got bumped by spam.

Carry on

Sorry boss, I didn't know.

[VinceG]

Any new thread I see that pops up now with more than like 15 or 20 posts, I make a habit of checking the post date of the OP.

[itybiz com]

I'm a firm believer that for those who are unsure of what they want to do for income, they shouldn't launch themselves into one single project.

I think you're on the right track for trying several sources of income, in fact I'm starting a blog on the idea that several small or micro businesses can make a bigger impact than one single minded business.

From experience I find that by running several 'ity businesses' at a time, I was able to work through hurdles of each and find out which ones I liked better. Some businesses naturally need time to mature and forcing it too much at the beginning can cause frustration and lead to failure or abandonment.

That said I think there are people out there that need your services. You may not be able to charge for them directly, but have you thought about creating something and giving it away for free on a site that shows ads? If you're good with Excel perhaps you could preassemble spreadsheets for various businesses and make them available for free.

Something like that would take research, but perhaps you could have a section for real estate investors with several types of spreadsheets that offer calculations they need. I have a couple investment properties and have looked for them myself.

You could go to the library and analyze different types of businesses and find out what forms they would need. You could also do basic cash flow forecasts or family budget forms etc.

People flock to areas with things that are free and you'd be monetizing on the traffic, not the forms themselves.

One thing to keep in mind is that the work is all up front and it would take time to develop. You'll want to have several ideas like this on the go. Something I'll be talking about soon on my blog is that finding a part time job that offers free time to do your own work is a great way to keep the bills paid and you on track. I think back the hundreds of hours I wasted working the night shift at a convenience store could have provided enough to cover my costs while I built websites and online stores that would be paying me passive residual income right now.

Sigh.....

[J in Carmel]

My issue is more about leverage. I've been able to create and generate a pretty significant income through online teaching and course development-for several Universities. My problem is I can't farm out anything to anyone else, so I can't replicate income at any level.

While I know many are struggling to make income in the first place, it is frustrating as well to not be able to grow within a niche you have created for yourself.

[DavidJ]

I am doing real estate business and in my opinion it is the best business for generating more profits because in other business there are equal chances of profit or loss but in real estate business you'll almost get profitable return on your investment..!!