How to Make Money Online
January 24, 2010
Making Money Online
This post was inspired by a comment I read recently about unemployment. The person wrote that the hardest thing about it was the boredom. I want to show you how to get rid of that and make some money at the same time if you so wish.
Getting Rich Quick – Lock Up Your Wallet
My spam box fills everyday with email from someone on how to get rich quickly online. Anyone who tells you that there is an easy way to make lots of money online wants your money. It is fairly easy to make small amounts of cash quickly from web sites or even from eBay shops – but getting rich overnight?
The only one that will get rich from these emails is the sender. You, if you read and believe them, will get pulled in slowly. They will outline a plan that has worked for them. They will often give away some very good information – but before you get the full information there will be that email that tells you pay me $x00 – it can be very tempting, but don’t do it.
I will never do this. One of the main things when starting out is spend as little as possible until you see a return from your time.
For every scammer like this there will be someone else giving away the same information “for free”. Free is never quite free on the internet. I give away information for free on this web site and on many more, however there is always a purpose behind the information – mostly it is advertising.
Making a Little Money Online
I have spent the last four years building up my web portfolio. I didn’t start building websites with the intention of making money – I was just bored and slightly incapacitated at the time. I was meant to be studying at Vienna University – however I had just undergone an operation. I thought I would be up and bouncing around within a few days – the reality was recuperation took a few months.
I woke one morning, four years ago, and decided I should know how to build a web site. I needed a topic for my project; that was easy – I had walked the Camino de Santiago both of the previous summers and loved it. So I built a web site on the Camino.
Starting Out
Thankfully there are much easier ways now to build a good website than how I started.
I began by learning HTML and CSS and made a very ugly duckling – not being able to design was quite a handicap at the start, (it is still not the swan I want, but the info is great). I sometimes spent days leaning how one little bit of code worked – I would not recommend this way to start it is very hard going and can lead to walking away from the project.
Today almost all of my web sites run on WordPress. WordPress is a blogging software that has come a long way during the last few years, it can run websites as a content management software – blogs or websites of thousands of pages are fairly easy.
Handling Expectations
I came across the 30 Day Challenge a few years back. It wasn’t quite as commercial as it is now, but it is still a good resource for starting your web project. During the project I followed a few years back they set the expectation of earnings early on.
They wanted the participants to consider themselves successful if they made $10 during the 30 days of the challenge. I endorse this idea and would say don’t expect to earn more than $100 per month for between 3 – 9 months.
Doesn’t sound like much does it? However I like the idea of building very good resource websites that will last a long time and continue to pay me month on month into the future.
How the Money Will be Made
Mainly adverting and some affiliate programs. The adverts will come from Google so you don’t have to go out and sell your website to get ads.
All the information in the following posts can be used as a guide to starting a business website, just forget about the advertising part and follow the other guidelines.
Where Now?
Start thinking about your interests, your experience, previous employment, and your knowledge; use a pen and paper and write down as much of this as possible. The next post will delve into this area deeper making sure you can get some traffic and compete in your chosen area.
The following will be part of this series:
Picking Your Web Site Topic
How to Build a Web Site for Less than €100
Using WordPress, Themes and Plug-ins
Content Creation
Promoting Your New Baby
Keeping at It
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