Unless you’ve only just joined the online world, you will certainly be aware of the various “success” stories on the internet. Men and women who came from nowhere, completely unheard of before, creating virtually an overnight success of themselves. Sure there’s the stories which make front page headlines, such as the 3 or 4 people who started a little online video web site called YouTube and then sold it to Google for what was it – nearly $2 billion? All that in the space of 18 months as well. Wow!
But there’s also plenty of “one man band” success stories, names no-one had ever come across before, suddenly making $500,000 in a few months. Of course, for every success there’s probably at least 100 failures. I think the major problem that the newbie such as myself is confronted with is
Where on earth do you start?!
OK, there’s supposedly lots of people making their fortunes online. Sure, as with everything else there’s no shortage of scammers, but the likes of Joel Comm, Mike Filsaime, Armand Morrin, Marlon Sanders etc etc are earning a LOT of money with their online businesses. That really isn’t in dispute. The “problem” is there isn’t really 1 easy blueprint for the newbie to follow. I say “problem”, OK on a certain level it is a great advantage that there are so many different methods of making money online, so there is “something for everyone” so to speak. That’s fine for someone who already has a clearly defined plan of what they want to do. But how about the guy or gal who just “wants to start earning earning money online”, who has no prior experience?
Off the top of my head (literally), these are all the different ways I can think of making money online, that are being actively promoted by the “gurus”:
- Google Adsense
- Pay Per Click
- Affiliate Marketing
- Product Creation
- Private Label Rights
- Blogging
- Auctions
- Web 2.0/Social Networking
- Video Sites
- Graphic Design
- Article Marketing
- Ebook Marketing
- Viral Marketing
I doubt the above list has even scratched the surface, and I’m sure I’ll think of many additions before I’ve even finished writing this post! But, I hope the point is made. So, once you’ve decided which of the above you are going to follow, the next problem is the web site. If you’ve never created a web site before, this is a list of things you are going to have to learn about:
- How to use a HTML editor (if you don’t know what that is then you have another thing to learn!)
- How to construct a web page
- Graphic design
- Writing a sales letter
- Promoting your site
- Setting up an autoresponder
- Driving traffic to your site
- Search engine optimisation
And that list is just for starters! It’s not as easy as you thought it was going to be, this idea of making money on the internet is it? Certainly not as straightforward as some of the “gurus” would have you believe!
Actually to be fair, it isn’t that difficult – the problem is “information overload”. We are bombarded with all sorts of ways of making money online, each one promising to be easier, quicker and more profitable than the last. What you and I need to do is filter out the rubbish from the good stuff, break each method down, learn what we need to learn and work to a plan. We’ll have a look at that in greater detail the next time!