Is it hard to generate income online?

[ahimel]

I posted a thread the other day on how people generate income. (Go check it out and post -- I'm still curious about what ideas people have.) I was suprised by the number of people who said that they do something similar to Steve's approach -- they have a blog or website, and generate income off of the traffic from it (via adsense, affiliate programs, etc).

After reading Steve's How to Make Money From Your Blog, I got the impression that creating a money-making website was very difficult. Instead, it seems that every other post is someone who's making at least some money from their website, even people who hate running a website and don't provide anything of value. Are there just a lot of smart people on this forum, or did I take Steve's, "It's very hard and only the smartest people can do it" too seriously? Or has something changed since he wrote the article in May that makes it easier now?

I'd like people's opinions on what it takes to generate money online. Have you tried it? What was the result? Do you still do it? Why or why not? Did you find that Steve's post covered most of what you need to know, or are there some other tips you would offer?

[Zach]

In my experiences, yes. It takes a LOT of hard work, many hours of writing unique, good content that people will come to and enjoy.

[Ibanez]

Well, most people can make some money. But that "some money" might be like 6 bucks a month or so. What you have to do is find something you are good at and enjoy doing and everything will really flow from that. Plus you have to provide real value. You just can't reiterate the same crap over and over again.

[zpivat]

If you have some idea about the technical parts of creating a website, then making money-making websites is not that difficult.

What's more difficult is having the proper mindset required in IM (Internet Marketing). You have to be very disciplined, and you have to have goals, and specific roadmap required to achieve the goals. More and more people making 5 or even 6 figure monthly income ONLY from the Internet, and persistence and focus are what separate them from the rest; not that they have super genius IQ or anything.
I would write down the exact dollar amounts that I wish to make from my site, and amount of time that I plan to go through before achieving it. Then I would reverse engineer the dollar amount into monthly value, and then daily value, and how many websites I'd need to create, how much keyword research I need to do, how many contents I need to develop, etc.
There are what's called the blackhat techniques, allowing one to make easily millions of pages in seconds, with a hope to get some Adsense clicks, and while it used to work well in the past, now it's close to dead; well, not my style anyway, as I prefer to provide something of value (as Steve says, provide contents that are eternal).

It's also very important to outsource, and I can't stress enough its importance. During the beginning stage of your online career, it is okay to do every single thing on your own, but as you progress and make more money, it's only smart to outsource, because not only does it allow you to focus on the most important things, it also allows you to make even more profits......

If you want a free, non-hyped, no fluff step by step guide to making money online, why not start with Dr. Andy Williams' "Creating Fat Affiliate Sites" at http://ezseonews.com/cfas/CreatingFatAffiliateSites.pdf . You can skim through it and decide if it's for you. It should get your feet wet.

[Henry]

You might want to check out Shoemoney - Skills to pay the bills and http://www.problogger.net.

They have tons of resources for making money online. And yes it does take lots of TIME and it requires lots of eyes seeing what you made.

Sidenote: digg / All makes $300,000 per month from Adsense alone.

[Steve Pavlina]

I think the tricky part about making money online is that you'll usually fail if making money is your primary aim.

The key for me was to think about providing value instead. When you think hard about how to provide value and about how to get that value into the hands of as many people as possible, you'll create something positive. If it's good, you'll attract traffic via word of mouth. And with traffic comes income.

This is why a lot of popular online services are started with the idea, "Build a great service, and figure out how to monetize it later." Although people still fail with that model, it is valid. However, I think you should at least have an idea of how you'll monetize a site when you do have tons of traffic.

[trekr5]

I really do agree

Put yourself in the shoes of a typical customer. When you have two shops selling identical products, what would make you choose one over the other? Is is the price?, is it the ambience of the place?, is it the sort of service you recieve from the staff? That is value. That enhances the customer's experience. I think it would be the same online. What can you offer that no-one else can or what can you do differently/better than everyone else? You don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

Examples
digg- democratic news
plentyoffish.com - largest free dating website
myspace - space for people to come together
techcrunch.com - web 2.0 scoops
amazon.com - superior customer service
quizilla - website for quizzes, puzzles, games, community

[Johanka]

What if you really aren't that interested in providing value for as many people as possible? Some "kinds of value" (artistic and scholarly work come immediately to mind) just don't get appreciated by enough people to guarantee a solid income if we were to apply Steve's online passive income generation model. You usually need to be backed up by an institution or have a grant to be able to do research full-time, for instance. You can't do it on your own and have enough money to pay the bills, or can you?

[Patrik]

The great thing about the internet is that you can reach a lot of people. Business models that would fail in a town or a small city might work online. Of course you have to compete with the whole world, but that is generaly easier if you are writing/working in a small niche.

But if it is enough to support full time research you have to find out for yourself

[trekr5]

Johanka

Use keyword tools and do your research (go to digitalpoint, nichebot, nichewatch) then you can put in the keyword into say google and find out how many competing sites they are.See how popular they are (page rank) and see how many sites link to it (read up on analysing a web page using SEO techniques) Take a look at the sites and do what they aren't doing. There is still a lot of opportunity out there. Don't forget that a lot of people using the internet are from out side the US and that is still a large unexplored area.

You have people just blogging about lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, HP 3750 (ink jet printer) and they are making enough to pay their bills every month. And no you don't need a grant/institution behind you. The research can be done in one afternoon/evening.

[thadroe]

I could not agree more with Steve's statement of providing value. It's sooo important. I tried several things to make money online over the last year and it really didn't start to come my way until that really clicked with me. You will not attract customers or readers in the absence of value.

Find what you're interested in or have a passion for and really dig in to find what people are looking for, what problems they are having, and try to deliver some great value.

I'm finding it's not as difficult as you might think, but it really comes down to the standard principles of any business: find a hungry market, understand what they are hungry for, and give it to them. That really doesn't change whether you are talking about generating income online or offline.

Thad

[Dwane J.]

"what it takes to generate money online"

Time and persistence. If you don't plan to spend on advertising it takes lots of time to generate organic traffic. You also need a way to stay motivated when the results you expect don't materialize.

"Have you tried it? What was the result?"

Yes, for the past 12 months. So far I have made around $143 with adsense. My numbers are on an upward trend both in traffic and revenue. Currently I am working to increase my blog's conversion rate and then move into other on-line revenue models.

" I got the impression that creating a money-making website was very difficult"

Wouldn't say difficult. You need the ability to fail forward and learn. Don't worry if you don't have these skills, I didn't but acquired them with time and persistence.

"Did you find that Steve's post covered most of what you need to know, or are there some other tips you would offer"

His post gives you a high level overview of different ways to make money off a blog. However, there are other ways to make money online. For example there is affiliate marketing, drop shipping, private forums etc, or come up with your own business plan.

Having a business solely on adsense and blogging is like building your house on sand. Google controls the number and can ban you at any point in time. On day you could receive 10 clicks at a dollar a piece and the next day 20 hits at 3 cents a piece.

Don't start a blog and expect to have Steve's results overnight. Before Steve started his blog he already had an online presence. He had some great articles on the old dexterity site that was very motivational for entrepreneurs and personal development. I think this helped his current site because he already had traffic coming to dexterity for personal development topics.

[thadroe]

If you don't plan to spend on advertising it takes lots of time to generate organic traffic.

This is very true. For the most part. Can you still generate organic traffic in a short amount of time? Yes, but it will take ton of work and organic listings can be somewhat volatile.

That's why I've personally chosen to use paid ads for my affiliate marketing. I can get a lot of profitable traffic in just a fraction of the time it would take me to work on organic listings. The key with paid ads though is being ultra targeted and providing real value. Otherwise, paid advertising will burn a huge hole in your pocketbook.

However, it all depends what your true goals are and what you want to experience. For me, using paid ads and affiliate marketing is merely part of a transition plan to help me break away from employment...and it is starting to work well. That will give me the freedom to focus on something more related to what I feel my true purpose is....even if that means not making money from it at first.

Thad

[babuji]

It seems that the majority of us on these forums are relatively young. Keep in mind that Steve P. went through many tough life experiences in which he can use to provide material to write on (going to jail, living check to check, having his own game development biz.. etc)..

I have to admit.. I am trying to think of a hundred different ways to provide value to people through the means of an internet blog, etc.. but it just seems that being only 25.. I have a limited set of experiences in which I can write about.. I'm sure with age will come experience.. and with experience will come more lessons learned with which I can share with the rest of the world..

Nevertheless, I am not saying that you should wait till you're 30+.. but rather find ways in which you feel that you can provide the most VALUE to others.. and keep that as your main focus... a method like journaling can go a long way to write down your life experiences.. and from there go on and discuss what you learned and how others can gain insight from your experience..

[ahimel]

Originally Posted by Johanka

What if you really aren't that interested in providing value for as many people as possible? Some "kinds of value" (artistic and scholarly work come immediately to mind) just don't get appreciated by enough people to guarantee a solid income if we were to apply Steve's online passive income generation model. You usually need to be backed up by an institution or have a grant to be able to do research full-time, for instance. You can't do it on your own and have enough money to pay the bills, or can you?

Actually, (according to Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert) what matters is not how many people like it, but how much those people like it. Dilbert is a case in point: 90% of the people who read it are too young to have worked in a corporate environment, or too old to have worked in today's Hamburger Management corporate environment, or are self-employed, or work for a good corporation, or are too dumb to recognize themselves as the pointy-haired boss. They think this strip is stupid, and can't imagine why anyone would ever read it. But Scott Adams is still filthy rich, because the 10% of people who do read the strip think it is the BEST STRIP EVER CREATED!!!!!!! They read it religiously. They buy Dilbert coffee mugs and Dilbert mints and Dilbert voodoo dolls and Dilbert t-shirts. They write letters to the editor of the local newspaper threatening to lynch them if they don't publish Dilbert in the newspaper. So the Dilbert empire grows.

Actually, stevepavlina.com is another example. As a percentage of the population, there aren't that many people that interested in personal growth. A large number of people come to Steve's website attracted by a title, but decide that Steve's advice is too hard, or that his standards are too high to reach, or that he's a nutbar talking about psychic development. So they never come back.

Those of us that stay, though, really like the site. We lose days of productivity reading through back articles. We subscribe to the feed. We tell everyone we know to visit the site. So Steve makes a lot of money.

If you want to make an artistic or scholarly website, go for it. You don't have to appeal to a large section of the population. You just have to make sure that the section to whom you do appeal (artists or scholars) get enough value from it to keep coming back.

[Ellesse]

but it just seems that being only 25.. I have a limited set of experiences in which I can write about.. I'm sure with age will come experience.. and with experience will come more lessons learned with which I can share with the rest of the world..

I don't deny that experiences that comes with age, but seriously I've met so many mature people in real life who somtimes, don't seem to know what they are talking about. On the other hand, I've read so many articles by young bloggers (such as 18 year old PD blogger Scott Young, 12 year old Problogger David Wilkinson), which carries great insight. At the end of the day, I believe one can somehow compensate the lack of initial experience with reading, learning and critical thinking

[Joe826]

People on this forum seem to forget that blogging is just one way to make money online, and it's not even a very good way. In order to make any really good money at blogging, you have to be big time like Steve.

There are lots of other great ways to make money online that will yield much better results. Check out some of the more popular forums like digitalpoint, sitepoint, and wickedfire to get a taste for whats out there.

Making money online isn't really hard or time consuming if you're creative. Most of it is learning and then putting your ideas into action. If you really like writing about a topic, then go for it, but if you're just pumping out articles on a subject you're not really interested in, think of something else to put your time into.

[Jenny]

[quote=ahimel;4606]Actually, (according to Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert) what matters is not how many people like it, but how much those people like it.

Great insight! I've never thought of it from this perspective before.

[Gene]

Originally Posted by Joe826

There are lots of other great ways to make money online that will yield much better results. Check out some of the more popular forums like digitalpoint, sitepoint, and wickedfire to get a taste for whats out there.

Thanks for the links to places with valuable information on the business of making money online. I had been to sitepoint before and found it useful. I briefly looked at the other locations and book marked them.

[Kayceezharold]

Hard or not, really depends on how motivated you are, how much and how badly it is you wanna make money online. The more motivated you are, the harder you will work at it, and I guess results will show.

But making money online is really like what Steve said, a result of providing lots more value than the amount paid for to you. People always look for value in trades. I wanna make sure that I get value for my hard earned money.

The other aspect of online money making is the relationship you have with those that buy from you, or at least pay you money. Your customers want to know that the person they are paying their money to and getting stuffs from are reliable and sincere and credible. All of us are like that.

There are many money making opportunities out there, but you gotta be very careful not to get conned. Most important is to do your due diligence, research on the industry and the company that you wanna invest in. Or better still, create your own products to sell online! This way you know for sure you won't be cheated; but then you have to prove to your potential customers that your product is what they want!

For me, I'm learning about Internet Marketing myself and looking at the possibility doing it. One business you may want to research further on is Success University. They compile lots of articles and lessons and stuffs on success for life challenges, all from people who are experts in their respective areas. One tough part about this business, though, is that you've gotta learn and apply promotion and marketing strategies, like blogs or article marketing and stuffs like that. Can be quite painful... but pays off!

Another possibility is subscribing to pay-to-read email businesses, but this pays very slowly!

My personal view is to develop your own system such as a electronic book for sale. And this should be something you are passionate about.

Hope this helps!

Kayceez
The World Thru Kayceez Eyes
My Success Plan Through Personal Development

[JohnB23]

I don't think making money online is necessarily "hard". I have a little ebay business that only takes a few hours a week to manage and run.

What hurts most people is that they don't have a foundation.

They don't have time management skills, solid decision making skills, they don't have clear and focused goals.

I was reading Steves piece on the lifetime value of a blog post. How many people looking to "make money on the internet" have ever thought about that?

You need a real prejudice towards taking action to make money online. In one of his articles, Steve talked about "decision making in 60 seconds". The average person has to get much, much faster at making decisions, or it'll never work.

[torilink]

I've worked in affiliate marketing for over 5 years, and in my experience blogging is the most difficult way to make money online. Niche market products have made me the most $$.

The trick is finding products people WANT to buy - and a merchant that will pay you a great % of the sales.

It is like any JOB, you have to focus and put in a days work, every day. Only I get to do it in my PJ's if I want and my days are usually midnight to 8 am.