The first obstacle people face when they want to make money online is EXACTLY that. How to make money online? There are so many ways you can make money online that it’s easy to get DISTRACTED by the next thing that comes along which catches your eye.
So, first you need to pick something. Whether that’s learning SEO and monetizing sites with Adsense/Affiliate offers, selling on Ebay, Affiliate Marketing or building a list and creating products, you need to pick one then you need to learn about it.
I don’t recommend creating a product initially because there’s more of a learning curve here. You’re better served by making some money first to get your confidence up and so you can see this whole ‘make money online’ thing is more than just a pipedream.
It CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE………..but first you need to do some learning and then you need to take ACTION.
So pick something. For newbies I recommend either starting off with learning how to build sites and monetizing them. Initially I would say go with Adsense because it’s a great way to learn the ropes and you can definitely make good money doing this. You’ll also be seeing money coming in relatively quickly because you are being paid per click as oppose to per sale. While it would take 100 clicks to generate a sale on a product converting at 1%, you are going to get paid SOMETHING for every qualified click with Adsense.
So staying FOCUSED and taking ACTION is good. It’s good to maintain this focus until you are earning an income. I would even go as far as saying it’s good to stick with this until you are earning a meaningful income. What is a meaningful income? Well, to some people it’s $100 a month and to others it’s $1000 a month or more. For a lot of people $2,000 a month is at or near job replacing income.
Once you are making a meaningful income you can continue doing this but I DON’T recommend it. At this point I recommmend diversifying ( note I said “diversifying” and not “di(worse)ifying” 🙂 ).
Why?
Well, it’s easy to explain but I’ll paint a picture for you so you get a clear idea of what I am trying to get across to you here.
Scenario:
You start building niche sites and monetizing them with Adsense. You do pretty well at this and after a while you are making $1,000 a month. Great right? Right! At this point you know you are doing things correctly and you can scale up this business. This is great, but don’t forget to throw diversification into the mix! Think of your online business as a chair with 4 legs. If you build it all on one leg it isn’t going to be very stable and could collapse. If you lose one leg what do you end up with?
Nothing.
$0.00
Imagine you were earning $5,000 a month as an Adsense publisher ( if you are reading this and earning 5k+ a month then congratulations 🙂 ). The stuff of dreams for many publishers online. That kind of money is life changing while it continues to come in.. and there’s nothing to say it won’t keep coming in. However, this is the point where you are taking a chance as you don’t control that income and you have no safeguards in place to ensure you can keep going if you lose that monthly income. What would you do if your account was closed? You would then be making $0.00 a month. Imagine if you were relying on that money to pay the bills, go on holidays and maintain your lifestyle.
This is why you need to create other income streams and diversify so you have a much more stable business. Do some affiliate marketing with different companies, get different cheques rolling in. Concentrating on increasing your Adsense income ( etc ) is fine as long as you don’t solely focus on that ONE thing when you are relying on the income to live.
Let’s be clear on this, you’re the only person ( and your family/friends ) that really cares about you as a person… as something more than a number. Companies you are affiliated with really DON’T CARE if you can’t pay your mortgage or if you can’t pay your food bills when they cease to be affiliated with you. They still go on and make tons of money just fine without you. I’m not being a harbinger of doom, I’m just saying, “Think smart and don’t rely on one thing indefinitely”.
Once you have a nice monthly online income I recommend you learn affiliate marketing, how to build lists and a customer base and once you see what is working think about creating a product further down the line. This way you’ll be running a business which is solid.
All too often I see people following ONE business model which is reliant on an external third party for their monthly pay check. This can be precarious and is assuming nothing is going to go wrong. While it pays to be positive when running an online business, you also have to consider worst case scenarios and then reverse engineer that thinking to plan your income strategy.
In a nutshell => You can never have too many decent income streams. I’m not talking about spreading yourself thinly, I’m talking about learning something, applying it and taking action……..FOCUSING … until you are getting a good return off that thing ( or until you decide it isn’t worth your time investment ). Repeat this until you have at least 3 or 4 income streams ( i.e. Adsense, Affiliate cheques from different companies, services, selling your own products and so on ).
In the back of your mind always say to yourself, “If the company sending me my monthly cheque went bust overnight or if I lost my account, could I keep going”.
If you’re already earning a good income and you are saying to yourself, “If that happened to me I would be making $0.00 a month” then wake up and smell the coffee. It’s time for you to diversify and get money coming in from more than one source.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Really really good advice Dean.
When I started to get good with making money online the only thing I was worried about was the few companies I was involved with and doing well with would go into liquidation leaving all my hard work building downlines and income gone.( luckily its never happened yet)
So anybody reading this post, soak it up and learn from it, you really need to stay on top of your game and have back up plans tenfold, this is also true for how you market your biz don’t rely on one source of web 2.0 have back up plans for that also.
Hi Dean,
Yes I totally agree with this, its common sense not to put all eggs in one basket and I have been a little guilty of this my self. But I always know I need to get other streams of income or It could be gone tomorrow. Thanks for good post
Thanks
Yep, REALLY good advice. I put all my eggs in one basket and it fell through, so I’m starting over.
Don’t depend on one source (or one client) for your money. Diversify. Keeps it interesting too…you won’t get bored if you’re doing a couple of different things.
I agree with this post entirely – the only thing I am not sure about is how do handle the demands of building more than one income stream? For example if you are building niche sites and decide to develop a product, well to keep the niche sites profitable they would have to be updated as well. Any suggestions, or should i be looking at autopilot ideas?
Thanks
Lisa
I tried Articles marketing, Adwords, the seo and ppc but nothing works. Just nothing. Keep trying I guess. But thanking for your advise.
Michael.
Yes, very well said. Hatching the first egg is the toughest part though. If you can get one thing going to the degree that it sustains you and if it doesn’t consume all of your time then diversifying is indeed a very wise and logical step. I second your warning to get one thing going well first. Doing too many things at once initially is a recipe for getting nowhere.
@Mark – Spot on my friend! I’ve had it happen to me. Fortunately it was only a supplementary income at the time. One thing people can do to reduce the risk a little is affiliate themselves with companies that have a long term and proven track record. Also some models are more stable than others, but the best way to reduce your risk is not be dependent on income from one source. If you’re earning 10k a month from Adsense and nothing else, it’s an accident possibly waiting to happen ( and I don’t care what anyone says to the contrary because they are wrong 🙂 ).
@Mick – You’ve seen the light and that’s the main thing!
@Melody – Sorry to hear that. It’s hard to start again when that happens but you are now armed with the knowledge that diversification and controlling assets as much as possible is the way forward.
@Lisa – Good question. I think the first thing is that it’s important not to get distracted by too many things all at once. So if you are building niche sites, focus on that until you are seeing a return that means something to you. Once it starts to mean something to you personally, that’s the time to diversify and get money coming in from another source so if it falls through you aren’t back at square one. With regard to constantly updating content, what I would do is develop smaller sites to see which ones are most profitable, then look towards making those a real business ( i.e. build out an authority site, build lists in that niche etc ). Autopilot ideas are fine and can often be outsourced once you have good money coming in.
@Michael – You are trying too many things before mastering one. The truth is ALL those things you mentioned actually work, it’s just a case of sticking with one of them for long enough to start seeing results. Contact me personally with what you have done so far if you are still stuck. Decide on what you want to do and go for it with absolute focus until you see a return.
@Vance – Agreed. Too many things at once will just have you spinning wheels getting nowhere fast. This is what most newbies do online. They keep seeing shiny new objects and buy into the idea of money that comes in without doing anything, but the truth is everything requires work. That’s the secret ( Action + Application ). There is also a danger of overthinking and waiting for everything to be perfect, which it never is and so it can pay to disengage the brain and just go for it. Really ugly sites can make good money!
@Mick – Love the avatar, what is it exactly? A walking pink elephant or ? 🙂
Dean