Death by a Thousand Cuts – Making a Living Online

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For the last seven years or so I’ve made my living exclusively online.  In that time I’ve been rich, I’ve been poor, I’ve been rich again, and now I’m clawing my way back once more from poverty.  Through all of this, though, I’ve never been able to explain to the satisfaction of myself or anyone who doesn’t make a living online exactly what it is I do. 

Allow me to explain.  For the first six years of my online career I was a freelance copywriter. Few people have any idea of what that is, but essentially it means that I wrote content for the owners of websites – usually these clients would be Internet marketers looking for sales copy, with the products ranging all the way from computer printers to diet pills. 

That’s simple enough, but even that was enough to draw perplexed looks from some people (mostly the older generation, who still don’t understand just how much money changes hands online).  The typical response to my job title would be ‘… Sssooooo, you write for newspapers?’

Anyway…

One day last year the worst happened.  My largest client, a company that paid me an obscene amount of money in return for a laughably small workload, suffered a massive blow.  Their largest web properties were slapped by Google, and almost overnight they vanished from the search results for their most lucrative terms.  Another thing that vanished was their income.  

And mine.

Suddenly cast out into the world, quietly cursing the fact that I hadn’t put aside more savings in the boom years, I realised that working for a single client online is a recipe for disaster.  After taking a few months to come to my senses I settled on a new approach: multiple income streams.  I’d never again allow myself to be at the mercy of one source of income.  I never wanted to repeat that horrible email from my biggest client: ‘Sorry, we have to let you go.’

So what do I do now?  Well, that’s the problem.  I don’t really know, and I couldn’t explain in a concise, coherent sentence.  In short, this is where my income originates:

1. Amazon affiliate earnings

2. iWriter freelancing

3. Various Fiverr gigs

4. eBay trading

5. Medical product affiliate earnings 

6. (And this one is my favourite right now) Kindle erotica eBooks

You see how varied I’ve made my roles?  This is the secret to making a safe and steady income online.  My Fiverr gigs make around $60 each week.  My iWriter earnings come to around $150.  My Amazon affiliate earnings are around $80, other affiliate programs net around $60 and my eBay trading makes me around $100.  All in all I’m bagging the meager sum of $450 each week – and that’s if I work very hard. 

You see that I missed out #6 there?  This is the problem.  A couple of months ago I began selling erotic short stories on Amazon.  Right now I have 21 books on sale, with my bestsellers a collection of erotic babysitter stories and a couple of erotic werewolf stories.  Weird, I know, but lucrative. 

Since I uploaded my first story my income has grown and grown, reaching around $650 a week from book sales alone.  Though I have no complaints, you can see why this might become a problem.  You see, if more than half my income is coming from one source there’s a sore temptation to devote all of my efforts to that one income stream.  If I can make this much from 21 books, what about 50?  What about 200?  Why not write for 18 hours a day and publish a new book every day for a year?

Well, what happens when that stops working?  When, once again, an income stream fails I’d be back at square one, and in the meantime I’d have lost the momentum I’ve built with my other income streams. 

The solution, it seems, no matter how painful to miss out on quick cash, is to continue to develop each stream equally, in the full knowledge that I’m missing out on a quick payout from Amazon.  It’s painful, but sensible. 

 

How Long Does it Take for a Beginner to Make Money Online

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Everyone is different. Me. I made $3.46 my first week online. That was a long time ago – over 10 years. The first month I made $82.26. The second month I doubled it and by the third month I saw over $500 in profit. I was hooked and I never looked back. But I didn’t keep doubling my money and sometimes there were disastrous months.

In November 2003 Google unleashed in the infamous Florida update to it’s Search Engine Results and my traffic fell by 95 percent and my revenues by 100 percent. I didn’t even really know what Google or search engine traffic was. The money had been flowing and I was grateful. With a lot of hard work I rebounded and started making a steady living wage of about four to five thousand dollars a month. How?

A lot of content. I mean dozens of websites and tens of thousands of pages. I think that the biggest mistakes that newbies make is that they don’t realize how much hard work it is to work at home and make money. They also don’t realize how much they will have to learn – and keep learning. Every day is a new set of challenges.

I almost don’t hang out on any of the forums anymore, because I’m tired of hearing people say they’ve got 100 pages of content and aren’t making any money. Making money online for me means that I work 6 to 7 days a week usually 10 hours a day. I also have a husband and children.

I get up early in the morning to check my statistics and sales data and to decide what needs to be done. Then as I do my chores and get meals ready, I do my thinking work. Design new websites, think about key word strategies, and come up with some general ideas for marketing copy.

I’ve also learned to do chores quickly and multi-task. To save money and make sure that my family eats healthy meals I cook everything at home. I’ve invested in kitchen appliances like an egg poacher, rice cooker and pressure cooker pot, that let me easily and quickly prepare home made food. I set up the food in these appliances, then I can put a load of laundry in or check some sales data and return and the food has always progressed nicely.

I buy a lot of food when I go shopping and then I freeze it. That way I don’t have to spend so much time in the grocery story. My husbands shirts do go to the laundry. I don’t have the patience to iron them. Every thing else in the house can be wash, dried and worn without ironing.

The truth is working from home and making money online can happen quickly. But you’ll have to work long hours and set priorities to make it happen. Your family might not immediately see the value in the hours you spend. But once the online profits start coming in, you’ll make a believer out of them!

The Reality of Running a Home Based Internet Business

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Finding internet business opportunities, legit ones, isn’t that easy. There are literally thousands of businesses and programs that you can join. Which one is the right one for you? Before I get into that, let me give you a picture of the reality of making money online. Most of the people who attempt to earn an income online, fail. Not only that, many of those people lose money. Some of these people lose a TON of money. Why? They buy into the dream of quick riches.

The reality is that running an internet business from your home is just like running a physical business. It takes a lot of hard work as well as a concrete plan. It’s also going to take time to build a decent income in most cases. You’re going to have days where you won’t feel like doing any work because you checked your stats and found out that the traffic to your websites just plummeted. You’re going to have days where you will question whether or not this business works. These are the things that you will have to deal with and those who can deal with it make money. Those who don’t, quit.

This is why the best home based business for you to join is one that you actually enjoy working on. That enjoyment alone can bring you through some of the challenges that are inevitable in this business.

Can You Really Make Loads of Money Online Even While You Sleep?

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Making money online is a hot topic these days. It seems that everybody is trying to take advantage of the online arena and the possible income opportunities it presents. While there are ways to make money online even while you sleep you won’t make money overnight with no or little work.

Just like at anything else you have to do work  to get results, it is just the same when you want to succeed online. In the initial stages you will have to put in work advertising your product or service so you can get your website or blog recognized and on the first page of Google. This is how you get customers as most people (yourself included I am sure) don’t even bother to go the second page of search results when you perform an internet search.

There are a number of ways you can make money online even while you sleep;

  • Enroll in an affiliate program and get commissions off the sales you generate. You can write reviews to get people to purchase through your link. This can be done for any type of product. You can write flex belt reviews or reveiws for books  etc.
  • Sell an information product such as an eBook.
  • Offering Writing Services; blogging, article writing etc.
  • Selling your unique product or service
  • Selling advertising space on your website and so much more

No matter what you choose to do you have to stick to it in order for it to provide you with a long term stream of income.

 

Earn Money Online Through Paid Surveys

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You can earn some extra money every month by taking part in paid surveys online. Most people will be satisfied in taking the first paid survey that they come across since it is easy to do at home. They can however make more money if they put some effort and searched for the highest paid survey. In this industry not every provider will give you the best rates and one has to keep searching for these surveys regularly.

It does not mean that the highest paid people are the ones who fill in the most surveys. One only needs to sign up with a good paid surveys provider in order to make a good income. This means that you should avoid paid surveys providers who have poorly developed websites that are tedious to browse through since they are not user friendly. Ensure that the service provider has a good support system for clients and members so that you can get instant assistance should you run into any problems with a client who either gives you ineffective products or refuses to pay you.

The best place to sign up as a paid online survey member is getting an invitation to become a member of a focus group. A focus group is one which comes together and discusses the merits and demerits of a particular product. If you want to earn money through these surveys, then you should search for as many invites as you can to such focus groups. There are directories of paid survey providers that you can research and join. Some of them charge a membership fee but that should not dissuade you from joining. Some have a cash back policy if you are not happy with the services that they provide. It is best that you sign up with many providers so that you get a list of varied products and collect several bonuses.

Making Money With the Amazon Affiliate Program

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Making money online can be a very lucrative business as long as you know what you are doing. There are many bloggers who are trying to earn a living online with writing, but the truth is that most of them are having a hard time getting anywhere.

A major factor when making money online, is consistency. You need to be able to focus and put in quite a bit of work in order to see any return of investment, but many people are too impatient and jump from one money making method to another. They just don´t have the focus to stick with one way of working and in the end they give up, because nothing works.

A great way to actually make money online, is through the Amazon affiliate program. True, there are plenty of affiliate programs that will pay you out a higher percentage, but the great thing with Amazon, is that they have a great name when it comes to customer service, plus people are very confident buying through Amazon.

With Christmas in sight, many marketers are setting up small shops or sites reviewing all sorts of products on sale through Amazon, because once a customer goes through their link to Amazon and starts on a buying spree, all the products they buy will generate affiliate income.

If you want to make money with Amazon, it is advised to set up a site that really offers great value to your visitors, to get them in the right buying frame of mind. You can for example, review all sorts of Lego toys, and give in depth reviews on the lego technic 8110, lego 8052 and many of the other Lego technic models so that you make it easier for you visitor to see what they are getting, and of course, where to buy it at the lowest price.

It might seem like a lot of work, but this way of setting up sites, offering loads of great content, comparison charts and opinions, will certainly increase your earnings with the Amazon affiliate program.