Making money online
This first ‘making money online’ post is an introduction to the possibilities - further posts will follow at regular intervals.
Is it possible to make money online? Yes, certainly. Is it possible to make lots of money online? Yes, definitely. Is it easy to make lots of money online? No.
OK that’s all you need to know right? You can make lots of money, just you and your computer, but it takes a lot of work and effort. Well, most of us don’t mind working hard if their is a decent reward at the end of it.
Problem is, you won’t know for months or even years if there is gold at the end of your rainbow. Because it’s not just hard work that is needed, but the right type of hard work, and it takes a long time for websites to attract sufficient visitors to generate much income. And there is no definitive way for a newcomer to the business to be sure whether they are heading in the right direction.
You will read on the forums of people making $5,000 a month after six months, and others who struggle to make $50 a month after the same time. Part is skill, but an equal part is good luck - choosing the right subject, capturing a lucrative market etc. So our challenge in this section is simple: identify the techniques that experienced webmasters use to make money online, and try and learn from them.
As a clue to the ways in which people make money from the internet the most common include:
- affiliate schemes - referring your site visitors to a merchant, and getting a referral commission if they buy something
- ebooks and products - selling software and ebooks, and receiving a referral commission
- online shops - affiliate schemes where you actually have a shop on your site where customers can order goods directly
- online contextual advertisers such as Google Adsense and Yahoo PublishersNetwork - they display ads on your site appropriate to the site content, and you receive income according to how often these ads are displayed or how often they send a visitor to the advertisers site
- selling links - there is a large market in ‘link selling’, where advertisers or webmasters pay to have a link to their site added to your own site, both for the link benefits and the traffic they might receive as a result
- buying and selling products through ebay
So you can see there are many ways in principle to make a living online - and not all of these even need you to have your own website We will look at all of these in more detail during the coming months, to try and determine which are the most successful, which the most lucrative, and which are best for your particular site and circumstances.