Entries Tagged 'Tips' ↓

Before I explain what I mean by this I will address a very obvious objection to my headline. Why am I telling you not to create webpages, blogs or products about making money online when I blog about making money online?

Very simply, I don’t make my money online through this blog. It currently represents only about 1-2% of my total online income. I assume that this proportion will rise somewhat as it becomes more popular, but I never expect it to be more than about 10% of my total online earnings.

I enjoy writing this blog because it helps me to think through my own ideas about Internet business and because I want to help people improve their lives by starting their own Internet business. Obviously, if I can make money from this blog so much the better, but the earnings from it could disappear tomorrow and I would hardly notice.

OK, enough about me for one post, what does this have to do with you? In fact, I think this point is extremely important, because it is the biggest single mistake I see people online making online.

Why Do People Think Writing or Even Creating Products About Making Money Online Will Make Them Money?

I think the simple answer is that they see other people doing it and decide to copy them and do it themselves. For example, they see supper bloggers like John Chow who report incomes as high as $30,000 a month, writing about making money online and think well that looks like a good idea, so they copy it.
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I spend a ridiculous amount of time online. When I am not working, I spend time reading blogs and websites about topics which interest me, such as business, politics, entrepreneurship and financial planning among others. However, many things bug me about how websites and blogs are often presented.

So, I decided I would create a list of 3 common mistakes that I seem to constantly come across. There are definitely dozens more than these out there, but these are the three that annoy me the most. Both new and experienced website and blog owners make them; although I think newer ones probably make them more frequently.

Try to avoid these mistakes when making a new site or blog and you will be way ahead of the game. Moreover, you will stand out from everyone else who is making them.

1. The biggest problem I run across are websites that have too much advertising. I find that this is problem with sites big and small, old and new alike. In fact a great example is super Blogger John Chow whose blog is filled with ads. But he makes great money with his blog so I should just copy him, right?

Wrong! John Chow and other owners of authority websites, can put many ads on their sites because people know and trust them. People want to read the content on the site and thus put up with the ads. Unless, you are an authority site you should not even think about putting up a ton of ads that get in the way of your content.

Work towards building up a solid base of people who like your site and then slowly put more ads on. However, you never want your ads to make your site more difficult to navigate. Again using John Chow’s site as an example you can see that even though there are a lot of ads they do not make it that much more difficult to navigate his site (see point number 2). Continue reading →

Well it looks as though my outsourced work still isn’t finished yet. It is not the end of the world, since I don’t have to pay until the project is complete, but it is annoying since it delays the other things I want to do. So, today I thought I would bring you another simple Internet business idea.

It can take a long time to build up both traffic and content of a new website or blog to a respectable amount. Depending on your niche area of focus it could take from 3 months to 2+ years before you really start seeing any return on your results. For some people this is just too long.

The good news is that an alternative does exist. You can always buy an existing Internet business and then expand it on your own. This can save you precious time. Plus, if you buy a site that is already generating money you will also have some instant cash flow.

The most popular places to find fully developed websites for sale are Sitepoint, Website Broker, buysellwebsite.com and the Digital Point forum. Continue reading →

This is part two of a question and answer session I am doing with myself. Look at yesterdays post for questions 1-5. Here are questions 6-10.

6. Why am I keeping my new project a secret?

I think I have already addressed this in my previous two posts. I don’t want any competition and I don’t want to influence the result. Beyond this, I want to prove to myself that I can actually build a successful Internet business from scratch not based on PPC.

However, just because I am keeping the overall project a secret does not mean that I won’t post updates on how its doing. Moreover, I plan to tell you about which tools I am using and how well they are working for me.

Nonetheless, for the time being I do not plan to reveal any specifics about my project any time in the future.

7. What things stand in my way?

My main obstacle in this new project, as with all my projects in the past, will be me. I am going to have to overcome some of my laziness and my tendency to procrastinate. To help me I have outsourced some of the work (I will explain more in a future post).

At the end of the day though, I will still have to put in a fairly substantial amount of work to get the kind of results I want. It is going to be a long term project, so it is going to require a sustained effort, something I am terrible at.

I will post updates on my progress here as well as my setbacks in terms of both laziness and procrastination.

8. What are my goals?

Obviously, I want my new project to be a success. For me that means that I would like to have net earnings of $10,000 US a month or more. If you read yesterdays post you will see that this is substantially higher than my current income.

I plan on saving the vast majority of this extra income and investing it. Ultimately, I hope this will give me total financial freedom. This will only be achieved, if I continue to live somewhat frugally. What really matters in terms of long term financial success is not how much you earn but how much you keep (both savings and investments).
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As I am sure you can tell yesterday’s post was the first in a long time. However, reading it again I felt that it was not as clear as I would have liked it to be. The overall tone was correct but I think it could have been a bit more straightforward.

So, today and tomorrow I am asking and answering a total of 10 questions to myself. Hopefully you will find them interesting but if not, they should at least serve as an outline to where I am coming from and where I hope to go in the future in terms of my own Internet business.

1. Do I make enough money online, to live on?

The short answer is yes I do. However, as you will see below, many people will probably think that I what I earn would be enough for them.

2. So how much money do I make?

This varies a fair bit from month to month but recently my net monthly online income has been between $1,600 US and $3,200 US. Both my revenue and expenses can change dramatically from month to month so there is not as much stability as I would like.

However, that being said, my non-Internet related expenses are usually less than $1,000 a month (including rent, food, booze etc.). So even in bad months I am able to save some money. I live very frugally, but that is not to say I would not be happy earning more money. I will elaborate more on this point tomorrow.

I am sure many people reading this, think $1,600 US a month is too little to live on; but the fact is that I can work (almost) whenever and wherever I want. This independence for me is the most important thing for me at this stage of my life. If I had a family this arrangement would probably have to change, or I would have to start earning more.

3. How many hours a week do I work?

Again this varies widely from week to week depending on what I want to get done and what needs to get done. For example, last week I took a short trip and I think I probably only worked about 5 hours. And to be honest I never work more than about 30 hours a week due to my laziness.
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