63 Opinions on the Best Way to Make Money Online

What You Can Do With All these Suggestions

There are quite a number of tips in this article and I think you can take advantage of this in several ways.

1. Use ideas that interest you. The comments and blog posts made on this topic were generously offered for free. Make use of them to improve your own ability to make money online. Do some further research, if you are so inclined, apply the suggestions to your own business model or website.

2. Visit the author’s website. The listed tips all come from real people: bloggers, business owners and entrepreneurs. If you find them interesting, feel free to check out their site, subscribe to it or perhaps even send them an email to introduce yourself. If their ideas are very coherent with yours, you might even want to consider working together on some projects.

3. Share and Bookmark the list. If you’re feeling generous, consider sharing this list of tips by your fellow Dosh Dosh readers with friends or social media audiences. It’s always good to help others like you, who are trying to make more money through their site. You can also cite any quote you like from this list on your site, just be sure to reference the author.

What is the Best Way to Make Money Online?


1. Daniel Scocco – Daily Blog Tips

Interesting, the best way to make money online right?

Coming from my personal experience I find that the best way to make money online is to build an authority website.

I see people developing schemes to create a site that will make $1 daily from Adsense, and then they think they just have to replicate it 100 or 1000 times. Well, this might work for some, but I don’t think it is sustainable, and I don’t think it is the route that lead to the really big money.

Building an authority site takes time, dedication, and the payoffs are down the line. Compared to other methods, however, it has many advantages.

First and foremost, the bigger your site the easier to land direct advertising deals. And these are the best form of monetization.

Secondly, having 1 established site will give you the opportunity to launch many others, “lurking” into the success of the existing one. Just take a look at the “Crunch” network created after TechCrunch.

Finally, an authority website will also put some lights on your person, and you as a brand. This, in turn, can also give birth to many other wealth-generating projects.

My 2 cents.

2. Roberta – Earsucker

I’ve been blogging since December of 2005 and in my own experience, I would say that the best way to make money online is to join a network.

Prior to joining b5media, my blog wasn’t living up to it’s full potential. It wasn’t receiving the number of pageviews that it gets today.

The site design wasn’t up to par at the time, either. Upon joining b5media, their design team put my blog on their professional looking theme and I started to feel like an authority.

Why I like the network is that they have a base pay and a certain dollar amount for pageviews. This alone is a lot to motivate us to want to blog more.

There’s my two cents.

3. Phil Van Treuren – Contest Blogger

Frankly, for me, tenacity and hard work have been the major reasons I’ve been able to make more money online than I ever thought I could. I don’t consider myself any smarter than anyone else out there, but I do try to work harder than every other blogger in my niche.

By working harder, I mean setting a posting schedule and consistently sticking to it, working your rear end off to post as much original, thoughtful content as you can, and working overtime to promote your project.

Of course, this concept goes for any venture in life: talent is only ten percent of it. Determination and an ability to concentrate on your short- and long-term goals will play a much larger role in your success.

4. Patrick Meninga – Spiritual River

My theory is to build an authority website and look for ways to monetize outside of the usual banner ads and adsense and affiliate sales. This is a long term strategy that will reap several benefits further down the road once the blog has gained a fair amount of authority.

One idea is to write a book once the blog is established and use the blog as a springboard for promoting the book. I’m not sure if it was the chicken or the egg, but Tim Ferriss’s blog and book are both doing quite well (great book by the way).

Another idea for an authority blog that doesn’t really use ads to monetize is for the blog author to develop a product at some point. This idea has a lot of potential (and appeal) because instead of paying for PPC traffic and cutting into your products margin, all of your traffic is natural and “free” due to the fact that you’ve build up a successful authority blog. No need to gunk up your entire website with lots of ads if you have two or three key products with high profit margins that you quietly sell on just a few key pages.

Just some ideas I’ve had as I watch what works for others. I always jump on the DoshDosh post when it shows up in my reader….

5. Deano – Deano.de

I think a lot comes down to budget and time.

I personally have a full time job and so am in no desperate hurry to get money. I therefore agree with what Daniel Scocco says and go along with creating a couple of authority sites (I’m going for two because it make the ups and downs of SERP changes a little more bearable). I think long term this is best, especially if you can afford to reinvest earnings to pay for quality content writers to accelerate the growth of your site.

But if you have a bit of cash to spare and want ‘instant’ results, then affiliate landing pages driven from Adwords are the way to go.

6. Dave Starr – Retired Pay (Link to Blog Post)

If you’d like to make money online the only real ingredient you need is passion … passion about something. All the technical support can come as it is time for each piece, but right now you just have to sit yourself down and decide what you, yourself, are passionate about.

7. Eric – MVFC Blog

Write about something you are personally interested in.

Take that from someone who started a blog about a local football team 4 months ago and has so far earned a grand total of $2.00…

If your blog is a labour of love, the money becomes a secondary issue. And if the money’s a secondary issue, my experience is that you’ll be happy with even the smallest of earnings. Now that’s a damn good way to make money.

Of course, if you’re out to make a substantial amount… then make sure you’re in it for the long run. You will not get anywhere without perseverance. Once again, it’s vital to write about something you are personally interested in. It makes perseverance just that much easier.

8. Mark – ProBloggers Matrix

There are several things that must be considered in order to find the best way to make money online.

I think that the best way to make money online is to blog effectively.

To do this you must have great content that helps your readers. If you can entertain them and make them laugh, then so much the better!

Whenever possible, post unique content. However, blogging is all about exchanging ideas, so post articles about topics that are already being discussed but be sure to express your opinions and viewpoints! Be opinionated!! Experiment with controversy! You want traffic? Controversy is one way to get it baby!!

You must interact with your readers. You do this by replying to their comments on your fine blog. Engage your readers by asking them questions when you reply to their comments. Better yet, ask ‘em controversial questions in the comments. Commenters, engage the blog author back any way you can!

Reward your readers by commenting on their blogs and by emailing them a simple thank you for their comments on your blog.

Reward your backlinkers by backlinking to them and by commenting on their blogs and emailing them your message of gratitude for their participation in the conversation.

Craft riveting, gripping titles! Use a negative slant whenever possible to drag your readers into your blog by the throat! Interlink your articles and craft sneeze pages to sneeze your readers deeper into your revolutionary blog!! Follow up your title with your best lead paragraph! Use vivid imagery! Use negative slants! You have got to tell people why they should even bother to read your article! You gotta dog ‘em! Tell them that their blog will crash right into the Dead Pool if they don’t read your posts! On the other hand, inform them of the dazzling surges of new RSS subscribers and titanic amounts of traffic they can expect to enthusiastically check out their entertaining blog, if only they would read your priceless articles! Then follow up with useful content! You’d better be able to back up your promises! Don’t even try to write yourself a check your @ss can’t cash!!

Build traffic to your dazzling blog by participating in blogging forums and commenting on as many blogs as you can. Post usefully on forums and in the comments in blogs both in and outside of your niche. Experiment with social media. Post excerpts from your blog articles on different social media sites and link back to your main blog articles, but also take the time to post articles exclusive to social media sites. You’ll develop readers there who will gravitate to your blog. Participate in blog carnivals, and experiment with blog carnivals outside your niche. Get out of your comfort zone and guest blog! Submit articles to article directories such as ezinearticles.com where they allow you to link back to your blog. Get involved in group writing projects! Check out and read carefully the rules for the GWP, then dive in by writing up superb articles and submitting them enthusiastically!

As you blog, you are establishing your expertise on a subject in the blogosphere. In time, you will establish your preeminence. People will use your site as a reference. You will experience increases in RSS subscribers and traffic and your blog will grow like the weeds in a rain forest in a record El Nino rainy season!!

Do not be afraid of ads! Just Do It!! Early to bed, early to rise, and advertise, advertise, advertise! Experiment with ads on your riveting blog! Try AdSense, Chitika, WidgetBucks and other means of ads on your blog! Experiment with and develop several different types of revenue streams on your blog over time.

Once you develop some serious traffic and standings in Alexa, you should sell ad blocks on your blog. This is a steady source of income for your blog and your advertisers will receive significant traffic to their sites.

You could consider setting up a membership site similar to Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind school for bloggers. Yaro has written up an impressive pillar series about how to set up a membership site on his blog, Entrepreneur’s Journey.

Selling your popular blog could be a source of significant online revenue.

From my point of view, blogging is the best way to make money online, but it is hard work, you must be willing to read a lot, learn a lot, and you must have a passion for it. If you don’t have a passion for blogging, then don’t start.

Once you have attained excellence in blogging, you will find it a lot easier to sell products in your online stores. This is because online sales are all about relationships with customers, not only with prospective customers, but also with your customers after the sale. Blogging offers an effective way for you to address your customer’s concerns, as well as to address your critics.

9. Peter – Liquid Media

In my opinion, making money on the web is a long term goal. It needs time and effort to build credibility with your visitors by creating value content, providing regular updates, and all different means of interactivity (feedbacks, comments, contact info etc.).

I’ve read a lot about advertising on websites / blogs, but I really think that the best way is to build a strong visitor basis, gather their email addresses, so you can communicate with them whenever you have something important to say.

After you reach a critical mass, you can create value added, pay content (an ebook, or any other product), and advertise and sell it using the email database you built over time. Make sure you communicate several times before and after launching your product to generate attention, interest, and desire.

10. Terence Chang – Terencechang.com

Make money online?

My answer to that will be e-commerce. I have worked on e-commerce for years. Selling goods on the internet will bring you static income regardless how bad the weather is. Personally, I find blogging harder than selling goods on the internet.

There are many stuff you can sell on the Internet. In my personal experience, selling goods for women and baby are the most profitable business. I have been doing well with the goods I sold on the Internet.

Start a new e-commerce web site is not hard. The hard part is to keep it running.

11. Monika – The Writers Manifesto

That is an interesting question and one that I have finally managed to conquer myself. I have struggled in the past with MLM and then affiliate marketing.

Since I have discovered my love and passion for writing about Internet related stuff and others things, I am making money. This is my way of expressing my experience and knowledge in the field as well as working toward financial independence. I am currently working for 3 people doing freelance writing and my income keeps rising every month.

Recently I have also had two people contacting me via my self branded website and considering it is fairly new I am very happy with the progress I am making.

Freelancing is hard work in terms of investing a lot of time writing. But I love it and therefore it isn’t a bother to me at all.

If you ever need a freelanced writer, then I am the person for the Job.
Anyway, hope this helps somebody who currently struggles. I also started to give back and donate 10% of my online earnings back in form of competitions on my two sites.

Take care and much success to you

12. Donald Mckenzie Jr

I agree….. selling things on the internet such as ebooks will result in unlimited sales. People nowadays do not really want to sit and read an actual book. Due to the fact that they are so used to the internet, they would rather read it while surfing online.

13. Maneesh – Unneglectable

I am compelled to think we are talking not just about blogging here, but making money online in general.

Wit that in mind, I think the best way is to approach things in a business like and professional manner, no matter if you work from home in your pajamas. The focus should primarily be on building a big brand. Money can’t be made quick and easy, at least not a sustainable one. So the approach has to be to build something which can spin other revenue makers over a period of time.

To my mind the best way to go about it is to have a network of websites. You can’t cater to 10 different kinds of audience with one blog or website, (if you do you might be losing an edge over others).. but you can maintain 10 different niche websites.

this takes time and patience though, just like Daniel said right at the top..

Advertising revenue is the primary source of income for any media and the Internet is no different. And if you see any off line media moguls you will notice how they have a vast portfolio of brands. You carry more power if you have a couple of popular websites under your belt. And offer advertising spots throughout the network leveraging on greater traffic and cheaper rates because of the traffic.

The next best way is to offer services, anyone and everyone is looking for easier ways to get things done. Brush up your technical base and begin offering services, its definitely a quicker way to earn some dosh as well as build a good reputation.

If you are more of an adventurous type lacking any technical know how, investing in domain names might be a good option. Spend some time researching the internet and daily world trends ..and pick domains like you pick stocks..

these are the three things that i know can work if done well, very curious now to see what others are saying..

14. Caribbean Web Development

The best way to make money online is to try any and every revenue generating option at least once.

The biggest and most significant is related to advertising on your website. Why are so many website owners or bloggers hesitant to try different types of ad networks…not all at once, but experimenting with one or two at a time over a set time frame for example a month. Adsense is what most people are displaying but from my experience adsense ads are so common now that web users are blind to them if they are not integrated (or camouflaged) effectively.

My advice is to try various ad networks as well as try to sell you own ads, if you have a well designed site that you have put a lot of work into you should be capable and knowledgeable enough to manage that on your own.

Basically one of the best ways to make money online is through advertising revenue.

15. Mehdi – StrongLifts.com

I’ve been reading Dosh Dosh for several months. It’s my favourite resource about making money online.

From my experience, you need two things before you can even think about making money online:
1) Content: offer value to your readers, talk about what interests them, become an authority, know your stuff, build a reputation: help your readers, know them
2) Traffic: social media (digg/delicious), guest posts, back links, increase rss

Then you can start making money online. Direct sales, affiliates, blogads, amazon, google adsense, text link ads, review me, federated media, donations, … There’s plenty to choose from. It all depends on what your blog is about. TTZ media will work well on technology blogs, but will obviously not work well on a site about strength training.

Lots of things will come full circle. Good content will build traffic. Traffic will attract advertisers. Many start the other way around.

16. Samara – Sinister Creations

Right now since I am still a beginner at making money online the most reliable source I have found as of yet are paid surveys. But for more long term and higher yield placing your site (selling something) within the right niche and building a loyal audience will give better results.

17. Partha Bhattacharya – Words2Content

I always believe the best moneymaker is one that is simple to use, yet it offers enormous value to the user. Though I’m neck-deep in blogging I do not think blogging can be long-term money earner since the value a blog offers is ‘usually’ not unique and is not difficult to replicate.

I think Terence Chang is more close to reality. For many, ecommerce is the main money earner (look at eBay). Terence though seems lucky to have the booming Chinese economy – both demand and supply sides – working in his favor.

If not ecommerce, then innovate an extremely attractive e-technology like YouTube. You’ll be floating on money.

18. Wulfen (Lobo Feroz) – Exito Social

I am a beginner in webmastering, linkbuilding, SEO and making money online. My site is Exito Social (spanish for “Social Success”) and its main content is articles with advice about sociability, seduction and relationships. My long-term goal is to make money with our own products like workshops (already doing them) and ebooks (in progress), also we have plans to run affiliate programs with other companies in our sector.

But I wanted also to monetize the website, having a lot of interesting blog-style content for free already, and growing. My first idea was to use AdSense, and so far it’s been not all that good. The site has been active for around eight months. I have a fair number of pageviews (around 300-500 per day, around 10.000 a month) but the CTR is abysmal, so the money earned is negligible. Maybe it’s the placement of the ads, or maybe is that spanish people don’t tend to click on ads, or maybe is that the seduction/relationships niche is not fit for contextual advertising.

My plan is, on one hand, to test varying the positioning of the adsense block(s), but mainly to search for new venues of monetization. Unfortunately for webs in spanish the scope of advertising options is more reduced than for content in english. Perhaps for my niche the best way would be selling products and services, but I plan to try everything (Ready, Fire, Aim!).

And Maki, thanks for this very useful site and your insightful posts.

19. Matt Jones

The easiest and quickest way to make a whole bunch of cash online is to come up with a hyped up viral product utilising a referral program. Something akin to Blogrush or the million dollar/euro Wiki.

An advertising budget of a couple of thousand dollars is needed but all it takes for success in this niche is to order up a few reviews on the top blogs and bribe them to be positive, or make the referral program so attractive they can’t say no.

Having the idea and believing it is good enough to take action is the challenge.

20. Alan – Ideas!Beta

Simple… The best way to make money is to generate traffic… Whatever way you choose, white, gray or black, as long as you manage to get sustained traffic, you will make money out of it.

I have a formula (*blatant self-promotion*: explained on my blog) : with Adsense, which does all the work of generating money from your traffic, you take your average daily number of pageviews, you divide by 10, and that’s what you’ll make monthly on non-optimized content.

So if you generate 40,000 pageviews a day, you can make around $4,000 a month… I advise anyone who wants to quit his job to calculate his own target, and work to reach it.
Believe it or not, but I first worked hard to reach that goal, and now I have the possibility to take a month off and go doing whatever I want.

And those figures I’m talking about can even be higher when you start to optimize your pages and use affiliates instead of Adsense.

So to sum up :
- First, build traffic. For that, work on 1, 10 or 10000 websites it’s up to you. Use Adsense and generate instant money so you can pay your bills
- start doing fine-tuned websites (maybe refine the ones you created for traffic) and put targeted affiliates programs on them. It will take longer but when the money starts to roll-in, you’ll have gained the knowledge to write one of those ebooks “How I make $1000 a day”.

In any case, there has never been a better time than now to make money and get your freedom. But you need to start working now, even if it is a few hours every week!!!







21. Sean from Warrior Blog

The best to make money online from personal experience:

Creating your own product and selling it to those who are also trying to make money online.

Step 1. Creating the product

I recommend you buy a PLR product from a trusted individual on forums and use what was taught inside. After testing it and using it, rewrite the ebook and add more to it from your personal experience, knowing that it really works.

Step 2. Create your sale page or squeeze page

All you need to do now is to decide whether you want to sell the eBook or give away a sample copy FREE, then in your email, lure them into buying the full version for whatever amount off the original price. I recommend that you do not sell your product at $7 or lower because it will seem less valuable if it is cheap.

If you are going to create a sale page, then use PayPal as an ordering system. You also need to create a simple website and get an auto-responder, but thats easy.

Step 3. Getting traffic to your product

There are several very effective ways that I am using right now to get FREE traffic but there is also Adword. Let me show you the free method:

a. Youtube. Create several videos promoting your product. Customize your videos so that it get them to click to your squeeze page or sale page. Include a URL in the beginning and end of the video. Also include it in your description box – this is very easy, yet powerful.

b. Articles Directory. Write dozens of articles everyday promoting your product and you will see results quickly if you work really hard on this. You need to learn a little bum marketing if using this method.

I personally try to write about 5 each days but sometime I can go crazy and crank out 12 or more in a day.

c. Craigslist. One of my favorite and it is free also. It work great IF you know how to use it. Many Internet Marketers have giving up on Craigslist because they simply don’t know how to use it to their advantage.

Post correctly on this site and you will see how powerful it is since the site gets over 8 BILLION Page Views per month!

d. Myspace. This is the simplest way to get traffic but not very targeted. You can get somewhat targeted traffic using this and it does work if you find the right people and know a little about copywriting.

Conclusion?

Create your product and promote it using many of the web 2.0 strategies I described.

I could probably go on into writing several pages of what I said above more meticulously, but that is basically what I do to make money online from $300-500 per month.

I can guaranteed you that making money online isn’t going to work for you if you aren’t willing to take the extra step and work harder and smarter. I hope that helped you guys!

22. Prashant

I am a beginner and just trying to understand the process.so studying more and more about the topic.
I think leaving comments is one good thing to market your website.What i understand from my study till now that you need to have a good content website and you need to market that website for getting good traffic.then blend different affiliate programs for earning money.

23. Jordan McClements

I sort of fell into making money from Adsense by accident.

I started a web design company a good few years back thinking that it would be easy money (it wasn’t) – and shortly after – since I enjoyed photography – I started a ‘photos’ section on web site, allowing people to download them for use as wallpaper / desktop backgrounds…

Before too long – I realised that I was getting practically no visitors to the rest of my web site but quite a lot to my photos section.

I started messing around with Adsense on these pages, and last month (September 2007) made over a thousand dollars…

But I must stress that hundreds upon hundreds of hours have gone into this part of my web site, so I have probably been working for less than the minimum wage in the UK so far….

24. Shams

I am very new in this field and only yesterday I could install Wordpress 2.3 the latest one. Now I can say that I am ready to start money online.

From my personal expereinces, I found it useful to go to some good sites, doshdosh is of course one of my most favorite, and read the articles from people who already got experienced in this field.

Not every one will have success from the same perspective. It differs from people to peple. As an example, Maki talks about making money online and he does. On the other hand, I don’t like to talk about making money online but I also want to join the “Caravan”.

Thereafter, it’s ones own path and work and patience that together will help making money online and will bring huge success in life. This is what I think personally.

25.Charles Lau – Charles Online Review Element

“Make Money Online” voices down to three classes:
1) The Rich Class: use his Money
2) The Poor Class: use his Time
3) The Middle Class: use his Time and Money

Hence I have three best ways depending on your class:

1) The Rich Class will just be satisfied as an affiliate, to do a meaningful landing page, buy keywords in Pay-Per-Click campaign, and drive the traffic to click on his advertisements and affiliate links. And let the money roll without any more effort.

2) The Poor Class will simply start blogging to drive natural traffic to drive the traffic to click on his advertisements and affiliate links. He will have to work consistently to keep the blog running and to socialize to have links flying around just in case he might get a few linkbacks, so he will rank better in search engines.

3) The Middle Class will work out a business plan for a niche of his contents. Then he’ll pay the “manufacturers” or create himself one or a few high quality information products such as software, ebook, music and video. He will then buy keywords in Pay-Per-Click campaign to drive traffic to his custom website to buy. He will also work out an affiliate program to invite interested partners to make even more money.

Conclusion
Of course, if you have lots of money to spare, the best way is to be the “middle class” in the Internet!

26. Blog Or Not To Blog

Well Maki first of all nice survey post and great question.

As some of you know I am into IT for over 10 years and my daily job requires internet for past 7 years. To make story short. About 3-4 years ago if someone would ask me “whats the best way to make money online” my answer would be ebay.com reseller. Now days thats over crowded but still you can make money.

HYIPS yes it’s a scam but that made my life happy because I like risk and I like to make money. Easy said what is hyip?
Well its “High Yield Investment Program” , there is probably 20-50 websites open on daily basis, that lets you invest your money and they offer you 20%-50% some even 70% money back in 24 hours! So this is how it goes!
Many people join, and people that for example joined to late “few hours later or 1 day later” they usually don’t get paid off, but people that entered their amount of money on time get paid 20-50-70%… Now this type of earnings online I would NOT recommend to people that have addictions.

Other ways to make money;
Yes as some of you described authority website, and of caurse with blogs by adding affiliate programs and other PPC programs.

Well my way to make money online and it’s one of the easy ways as well, is reselling domain names, for example i bought scion fuse website that car will come out in 2009 and i can’t just wait to offer for sale…

So in other words Maki, there is A LOT of ways you can make money online but the way that I make money is what I wrote above.

27. Sucker – InternetMarketingSucks

The best way to make money online is to have your own product which you sell online. I’ll give you a quick idea of how to do it and sum things up with reasons why it’s the best method.

The only two requirements to this are 1) The topic interests you, and 2) The topic is not “how to make money online.” ;)

You will want to start in a market that interests you and/or something you are good at. Then think about a product that does not yet exist, and create it. This does require some research and hard work, but it’s worth it.

Your product could be in PDF, audio, or video format, because these formats can handle a variety of products and are deliverable online. You could write about something, talk about something, interview people, create instructional videos, whatever you want.

Now you have a product, so you create a website about the product and have an ordering system. Then send people to the website, collect their money, and deliver the product.

Why is this the best way?

1. Each sales makes you a lot of money. (Unlike affiliate commissions and CPC ads.)

2. No ad networks to deal with or depend on.

3. You don’t wait 30 or 60 days to collect your earnings.

4. You become known as an expert. (Even if you’re not that smart.)

5. You can actually have an ad budget. (Each potential customer might be worth $5, meaning you can pay higher costs per visitor, unlike when you’re doing some PPC arbitrage.)

6. You don’t need to update your website daily with tons of unique content.

7. Get paid many times for doing one thing. (Once the product is created, your work is practically over. Most everything else can be automated or outsourced.)

8. Great opportunity for upsells.

9. Get famous.

And more…

28. Sean – Seanology

If someone were to pose the question to me today “How do I Make Money Online?” I would probably reply with “Wow, where do I start!”

For me up to this point, the most effective way to make money online has been using Adsense on content sites. I would recommend this to beginners as it is a simple way to get started and if done right can bring you a nice side income.

Another area that I have used effectively to bring in some extra money is selling text link ads on my sites. Once I get some traffic, page rank, and backlinks to a site the value of selling links increases. This income can easily overtake Adsense on a site as the top earner.

I have recently begun experimenting with PPC Affiliate Marketing which can be very challenging. This area is not for the faint of heart as it is easy to get discouraged and lose money along the way.

All of my ventures I am starting to document on my blog. I try to show real life ups and downs as I learn the art of making money online.

29. Dean Mapa

One way I do it is watch out for expired domain names that are receiving traffic. I then purchase the domain name, build a website around it, build a bit more traffic to it, and then sell it through eBay.

People like to see what they’re buying and it helps that a site is already up and receiving traffic even if I’m just selling the domain name.

It doesn’t give me thousands of dollars, but it’s enough to buy the little extras.

30. Shane ~ Thatedeguy.com

It’s a bit of a loaded question. As you said, the best way to make money online will greatly depend on the skillset of the person asking. Of course, I make most of my money through blogging, so for most beginners, that would be the first thing I would suggest.

As I’ve gotten more advanced I’ve also looked for other ways to make money and I’m still working on that. I’ve got plenty to learn before I make money doing those things.

Ironically, I don’t think that blogging is the best way to make money online. A far cry from it actually. You’ve got to be a shooting star of sorts to really make the money blogging.

Where the real money lies, in my opinion, is in Affiliate marketing. I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m working on it. The folks like Shoemoney (and even John Chow to some degree) make a majority of their money from affiliate work. It is a tough learning curve and I’ve had several losses, but I’m working on finding a few winners too.

31. Wendy Spiegel — Gen Plus

This is a great idea. Thanks for the opportunity to speak out, Maki.

I’m both a blogger and a business executive, so I’ll speak from both perspectives.

The intrinsic value of the internet is in finding information. While people “buy” on the web, they don’t like to be “sold”. The initial premise of the web was to be an information sharing vehicle, so content ruled.

My personal belief is that content still rules. By creating content that is value-added, over time I’ve built credibility. As a result, I’ll rank high in the search engines, traffic continues to build and I enjoy revenue from Google ads and other advertisers.

Blogging for money cannot be a get-rich-quick venture if you are a true blogger. So one’s motivation cannot be greed. It has to be in sharing information that is niched, desired and needed. I’m niched to 50-plus, so that puts me in a very specific category, but a relatively small pool of internet users (compared to Gen X, Gen Y, Echo Boomers, Millenium Babies), so my content must be solid and compelling. If I wanted to expand my reach, I’d run other blogs with a larger potential audience and try to niche in other demographics.

Maki, I’d say that your blog is a model of excellent added value. By freely sharing your knowledge, you’ve built up niche traffic in large numbers, a robust readership, and a responsive subscriber pool.

I’m older (late 40’s) so I tend to stick to traditional business models while incorporating the strength of the web. So, on the business end, once traffic generation is there, you need quality products to back up your credibility and produce incremental revenue.

I’ve found that some of the great traffic generators are not necessarily your best readers. The best quality comes from organic search and media links or reciprocal links from quality sites. I’m also a fan of carnivals to build general search engine awareness.

Any serious blogger needs a realistic 3-5 year plan in order to keep their sights on their traffic goals. And they must be prepared to spend several hours a day on their efforts until the traffic is strong.

32. Simonne – All Tips and Tricks

Making money online, at least as I see it, involves a few steps:

1. to know something very well, or to come up with an idea with viral potential

2. to be willing and able to share your knowledge with a broad audience, in such a way that they would perceive you as an expert in that matter

3. to investigate and test monetization possibilities (it can be contextual advertising, as well as selling text link ads, or developing your own products, or building a paid membership site)

4. to take your online venture very seriously and think long-term development strategies

5. to set clear, measurable objectives and to make sure you measure your progress the best way you can

6. to market your product (be it blog, e-book, membership site, or whatever else) better than your competitors

7. to keep in mind and always remember the GI-GO effect (garbage in – garbage out) and realize that if you don’t invest anything (be it time, money, energy), you’ll get nothing

Although, I cannot say I made a lot of money online, my best money makers so far are AdSense and Text Link Ads.

33. Mari-Lyn Hudson

Making money online for me is to simply sell information.

The Internet is just a tool to use to help you make money on line. Subscribing to your blog, certainly has educated me about blogging and how to do it better.

Blog, and do more blogging is one of the best ways to get subscribers who in turn will become customers. You have to give of yourself 1st in order to make money period whether you are on line or not.

Thank you for writing your blog.

I like to profile people in what they are doing and how they can help others.

Thank you.

34. Mike – 10,000 Birds

I’ve been blogging for over 4 years in a niche that is fairly challenging to monetize effectively. What I’ve learned is that most blogs will not make discernible money because the bloggers are in it mainly for fun. There’s nothing at all wrong with that, of course, but one’s expectations should be in line with one’s efforts.

If you want your blog to make money, treat it like a business.

Of course, your long-term satisfaction is improved if you enjoy your topic. But my point is that exceptional product, in this case your content, is not enough, just as an outstanding retail product isn’t enough if the retailer ignores the other aspects of his business.

How do you run a blog as a business?

- Show up every day
- Treat your customers (readers) like royalty
- Network constantly (links, forums, social networks)
- Never pass up a chance to promote your product
- Build your brand and make it synonymous with quality

These are just a few tips that relate to the underlying philosophy. If you can accomplish these tasks, then whatever monetization strategy you choose, be it ads, affiliate products, in-house products, web services, or your personal brand, will be in position to pay off.

The bloggers that make real money online have business plans and execute them with passion and professionalism. If you want to emulate their success, follow their example.

35. Rob – Yack Yack SEO

Good question Maki, I’m hardly the authority to say what’s the *best* way for as we all know there many good ways of achieving the same thing, but I’ll happily point out a few generalisations of what has worked very well for me in the past. :)

It goes without saying perhaps that in an ideal world the best way for anyone to make any money in this world is through building something of value and creating an interest in whatever it is they are selling. Bums on seats, eyes on the product. Build the product and sell it to the consumer.

Yet many people either don’t have the time or perhaps the energy, the money or other needed resources to create such things; so perhaps tend to adapt and build on that what already exists.

Affiliate marketing is one particular way where people can do very well indeed, but the niche is crucial. By picking the right niche and using content and supplemental content in the right kind of ways then there really are huge opportunities to be had.

Every niche has a potential for monetisation. Some people make the mistake of going for the highest paying keywords or sectors simply because of somewhere in their head they equate high affiliate commission levels as being the most lucrative, when the reality is that many other people are probably thinking the self same thing. As a result of this, competition increases and the space becomes crowded. Whilst this should be or could be seen as a call to arms, and a reason to excel in the niche that you are operating within; it can also mean having to work a whole lot harder to both achieve and maintain results.

The key is to think creatively and look for a way that harnesses new trends and interests. New trends and areas of activity don’t stay new for long. What with the myriad of services that exist enabling people to spot market kw movements, a newly discovered goldmine doesn’t stay so for long.

So yes, like practically every other business that lives by earning a penny off of someone somewhere, be it Walmart, Google, or some small time plumbing store right down to the part time blogger earning $2 a week from adsense a great way to earn money online is to become a successful affiliate marketer.

Get the traffic, convert the traffic, maintain the traffic,build a loyal userbase being the best way forward. Once you have the userbase then you can sell to them again and again and again. The key to success is distinguishing yourself from the rest, this matters a great deal, especially in the world of search engine traffic, if you aren’t seen to be adding value in the space then you’ll quickly find yourself replaced by someone who is.

36. John Brace – Level 80

The best way to make money online IMHO is by using Adsense ads. You just have to insert the ads and Google takes care of the rest (invoicing publishers, hosting the ads, choosing the ads etc) with what you earn monthly paid straight into your bank account (assuming it’s more than $100).

If you pay your hosting/domain fees by credit card it leaves you free to concentrate on the hosting/promotion side. As well as Google I do have other third parties I use for ads (and some arranged direct with companies).

With the private arrangements though – unless you have say a Paypal subscription arrangement with them you have to keep track of when their ads come up for renew – otherwise you’ll be letting them advertise for free. Also it’s more work (although more lucrative) arranging them privately as usually when it comes up for renewal they will want changes made.

When I started running adverts on the site, it was running CPA affiliate ads through Commission Junction which worked well for my niche (advertising ebay on a video games site) as it was a decent amount per a new account created.

Whether CPA, CPC or CPM ads are best for your site – depends on the content and visitors. I suggest you try them all out and experiment to see what earns you the most revenue.

One thing I haven’t tried out yet is creating a digital product and marketing this directly (eg an ebook and advertising via Adwords/giving a cut to affiliates). Personally I feel that actually selling a product (especially one with pretty much zero costs of distribution) would have more potential for growth and higher profit margins than the current publishing, but supported by advertising model.

Of course your niche may vary – video games for example attracts low CPC rates, but I have thousands of visitors to my site each day. A site about getting yourself out of debt or personal finance would attract higher paying ads and could make the same or higher amounts of ad revenue with less traffic.

My advice though is always have a fallback (offline) business. One month there was a major reorganisation of Google’s index and I lost 2/3rds of my traffic overnight. It’s always good to have another revenue stream to fall back on.

37. Bloggeroo – Guide to Egg Donation and Infertility

What’s the best way to make money online? I don’t think there’s any one way (CPC ads, affiliates, or direct sales), but I do think all ways of making money online necessitate some common tasks:

1. Customer research. No amount of hard work can make people click or buy if there is no initial interest on their part. There is a reason why socks.com went out of business. People just aren’t that interested in a socks superstore. Customer research — using Wordtracker, Google Trends, Google Adwords or other tools — about what people are actually searching for is a necessary step in making money online.

2. Competitive research. What are your potential competitors doing, if anything? Since the goal is to be a big fish–whether in a small or big pond–you should know what kind of pond you’re swimming in. This idea echoes your posts on the crowded pond of “make money online” blogs and how little return on investment they bring. If you’re trying to make money in an over-saturated market, you should know you’ll be working very hard for little in return.

3. Prepare to work. Hard. Here I’m piggybacking on Phil’s comment above. Few things in life come easy, and making money online is usually not one of them. If you have a blog, be prepared to update it frequently with high quality content. If you sell a product online, be prepared to field lots of customer questions via telephone and/or email.

Thanks for providing such a nice opportunity to share ideas, and for the link love Maki.

38. UltraRob – www.ultrarob.com

The thing that I’ve found works for me is affiliate programs. My web site has been online for about 2 years but I didn’t do much with until a year ago. I have a full-time job and a family with young kids so I don’t have much time to work on my web site. Even so I make enough to pay my mortgage each month. As with most ways of making money online, you need to get traffic. I think the best long term strategy is to create great content that other sites will link to and will rank high in search engines.

Select affiliate programs that are a good match for your content. Although I think if you have enough traffic banner ads can work, I’ve found that individual product links do much better. I see the highest click through rate on products that are in content. I only use them if it would make sense whether it was an affiliate link or not since I don’t want to seem like I’m pushing a product. Having a product link outside the content also works if it’s relevant. If you have a product page on your site instead of linking directly to the merchant, having the links will increase the search ranking of your product page.

Amazon is a popular and easy to use affiliate program. It is easy to link to specific products or they now have options that choose relevant products for the page and can also be based on the user’s Amazon history.

There are also affiliate networks such as Commission Junction, LinkShare and Performics. They have large numbers of advertisers and provide a common interface for getting banners and product links. Once you join an affiliate network, you have to apply to individual merchant programs. It is free to sign up for the networks and individual merchant programs.

In addition to banner ads and static product links, the big networks also provide datafeed solutions. Datafeeds allow you to regularly get product updates so prices can be current. Products that are no longer available are removed and new products added. Of the 3 networks I listed above, Performics is the only one that doesn’t charge to set up datafeeds. Some of their merchants however have datafeeds that can be accessed for free but you have to add your tracking code.

To really use datafeeds effectively you need to be have at least some basic programming skills. I’ve written code that allows me to display individual products using keywords and are updated when I load new feeds into the database. If you don’t have the programming skills you can use GoldenCAN or other tools to make use of datafeeds.

39. Jack – Bargain Jack

Making money online and offline really aren’t so different. There are fly-by-night companies in our neighborhoods and online, focused on generating a short-term profit. That is not in my DNA, so I chose something that I’m passionate about, worked hard at it, and keep my customers as my #1 priority. It works for me.

Establishing yourself as a knowledgable authority in your niche of choice is key, and it takes time. Creating a site that deliveres a consistent product is also key. This means that your readers/customers need to know what to expect from you, how often you will publish blog posts, what the quality of your content will be, etc.

One thing that surprised me is that you really can be successful in a saturated niche. BUT…you still have to be able to differentiate yourself within that niche. If you clone a popular site and offer nothing unique, you’re not adding value to your customer. Find a problem that people have, and help them solve it via your site. Keeping people at the forefront of your mind should help you create something that truly offers value in the marketplace.

Beyond reflecting your passion, your “product” should also be largely dependant on the amount of time that you have to invest in your business. The time it takes to fulfill orders of products that need to be shipped can be more than some can handle on a part-time basis. Running an affiliate site with the latest deals and coupons is a full-time job. But you can start small, test different products, market via different methods and see what works for you. Do not over-extend yourself to a point where you can no longer offer a level of customer service that would make you proud.

40. James – DigitalKeyToInfo

I really believe that a blog may be the easiest and best way to make money online.

Especially for a beginner. Pick a subject that you know well. One that you can write about, at least minimally, everyday. Pick a subject that other people are likely to be interested in. Then all you have to do is blog.

That is the real key to blogging and making money.

You actually have to write or blog. This is the reason many people don’t make money with their blog. They are not committed to making a post each and every day. They start out well, but after a few days or weeks it’s not so fun anymore. It becomes work. Posts become farther and farther apart.

It is also not necessarily fast money.

It’s going to take some time for your blog to gain readers. It’s going to take some time for you to get enough content up on your blog to get traffic from search engines. It’s not realistic to think that you should be making $1000 a month within two months of starting.

On the other hand, there are many examples of blogs have become very successful after a few months.

A good look at these successful blogs will show what it takes. In most cases, the blog owner made multiple daily posts. It also takes a lot of promotion. The primary key to a successful blog is posting content to the site.

The advantage of blogging to make money online is the low risk.

There is little or no investment in starting a blog. It costs $10 to get your own domain name. You can get a decent host for less than $10 a month. WordPress, possibly the best software to use is free. For less than $150 a year, you’re in business. If that is too much of a stress, you can start up a blog for free on Blogger or WordPress.com. Your only other cost would be your Internet connection and computer at home, and there are even free options for that.
I think that nearly anyone can be successful if they try and do it.







41. Melissa Chang – 16th Letter

The best way to make money online is to develop effective ways to build an audience. No matter what your business model, no matter what your subject matter, no matter if you’re buying or selling something physical or just ideas – you will not be able to make money online unless you have an audience. So learning – and then practicing – all the ways to build an audience will pay huge dividends in the future.

Of course, there are different ways that you can go about doing so, from SEO/SEM to co-registration, word of mouth to e-mail marketing, etc. But no matter your tactics, if you have a significant number of people who visit your Web site and care about your topic, you can make money.

As a bonus, it also helps if this audience is a group of people who you can rely upon time and again to come back and visit your site. So developing an effective way to get your audience to register and to agree to be contacted in the future is also key.

42. Nicholas

The way I make money online is through ecommerce

And if you ask me what do, well I am a “dedicated internet marketer”. Apart from dealing with a few delivery issues and accounting issues, I spend all my working day focused on the 3 most important functions to make money online.

1) attract qualified visitors to my web sites
2) convert visitors to customers
3) keep the customers sold

the trick is to work on all 3 together, I use Google adwords to get qualified visitors – adwords are very good as you, the user have full control. You choose your keywords, you write the advert, you choose the landing page. You can make a change and within minutes that change has taken effect. I also do all the “on page “SEO stuff, but for me, I have far less control, and I see this as nice to have, but not of great value. I am well aware that 80% of the real SEO is done off page with high ranking in bound links, and this is very difficult to archive.

Converting visitors is the function that is now getting my attention. I know if I can just double my conversion rate, I can double my sales. I calculate that I get less than 1% conversion, so right now I am aiming for a 1% conversion. This will increase my income a little, the goal is to get 2% conversion. When I achieve 2%, it will double my sales. Then, when I have a better conversion ratio, the next step will be to double my visitors. These 2 doubles will quadruple my overall sales. So now I take about 30,000GBP per month, double it when I get 2% conversion, then double that when I double my visitors, I have a 100K GBP month business – that equates to 1 million per year. All this with 3 little online shops. Then add another 3 shops next year and so on. Work on conversions, then visitors, add more shops.

During this process I must also keep adapting the third function, keeping the customer sold. I use drop shippers for all supplies, so as long as they can handle the increase in turnover I can keep on target.

When each shop get to a significant amount of turnover, around the 100K per month mark, I have a very saleable business, either sell the online shop back to the drop shipper, or to a competitor. That is when I make serious money.

But the key to all this is understanding internet marketing. I have to admit, having read through all the previous comments in this post, about how people make money from blogs, I am quite surprised and at the same time interested to learn more. I think the successful affiliate marketer is the one guy who knows his craft. Therefore my goal as a merchant, is to market on the internet like the best affiliate internet marketer.

I read a comment by an affiliate marketer who claims he gets about 1 million hits a month ( not visitors but hits ) and earns about 1,000 dollars per month from adsense. If I could get a million hits a month to my sites, well dream on….

I will conclude this post with two little pieces of marketing advise I received today

The first; Build a HERD with a CRAVING

Target loads of people and build a need, a want , a craving for what you have to offer
Show that the cost far out weights the value of the benefits to the customer
Suggest that If they miss out on this offer, they will regret it.

Secondly, switch from dabbling in MARKETING to understanding that your business is ALL about MARKETING and TEST.

I use 2 very good tools to test my internet marketing, hittail and getclicky. Hittail shows you where the visitor came from and the keywords they used. Getclicky shows you were the user went on your site.

By developing better landing pages, I have dramatically reduced my bounce rate, and have started to engage with the visitors. It’s a long process, but the pot of gold is well worth the efforts.

That’s my 2p worth

43. Sarah ch – Pajama Professional

In the six months that I have been writing this blog, I have tried an awful lot of ways to make money. A lot of them work and would work even better if I stuck to them. However, for me, the best way to make money online is to establish a niche authority blog. With an authority blog in a potentially profitable niche, you have many options for monetization

44. Wayne – Bliss of Being

Essentially
I believe that building a high traffic website that offers real value to people is the best way to make money online.

My experience
When I first came into this game I thought that I would sell a product (binaural beats), but I quickly realized that it fit my ethics and my needs more to just give them away for free, and make money with the free business model.

So I set up a website and quickly stared giving away beats for free. I started a forum and wrote some high quality posts, which has really increased my traffic (which is growing each day). I don’t earn much yet on adwords, but as the site continues to grow and as I become more recognized for the quality free binaural beats I produce, the more people click on the ads. Also I have just joined a couple affiliate programs, that are related to what I do, as another way of making money off my web sites.

How to make money online (IMHO)

1. Build a quality high traffic website that provides real value to people.
2. Give away everything for free
3. Sell adds and link to products via affiliates

This all starts to work really well when you become a respected member of the the community in your niche. In my experience its all about quality giving. The more you give the more people respect you, the more people respect you the more they are willing to try products you (truthfully) recommend.

Ultimately there are two ways to make money online
1. You can sell products/services directly to people
OR
2. You can promote products/services and get payed on commission (ads, affiliate, ext).

I personally have chosen number 2 because it efficiently aligns with my goals and skills. There is nothing wrong with either, both are viable ways to make money online, and no one is saying you can’t do both. ;)
With gratitude,
-Wayne

45. Jim – Paid Survey Reviews

The best way to make money online is to actually promote items or services you believe in, have tried and are interested in, and would be proud to refer to a friend. My rule of thumb is if I can’t recommend it to a friend, then it does not belong on my web site or blog.

So here are my basic suggestions:

1. Find a topic that you are interested in

2. Make sure that there are good affiliate programs that you can promote that deal with your topic – Do a little research, there are affiliate programs on everything.

3. Create a blog or website, and create quality content that is worth reading. I personally love wordpress as a blog platform. In fact, I love it so much that I maintain two wordpress blogs on my site.

4. I will say it again because its important, create quality content thats worth reading. Content is KING, interested readers are potential leads.

5. Once you create your content, mix a few affiliate links within the pages of your site tastefully. What I mean by this, is try to have an equal mix of contextual links (links within the text) and a few banners. Avoid bold (JOIN NOW)text and obnoxious banners.

6. Allow readers to comment on your articles and recommendations. This is where a blog is great. This serves two purposes, it adds content to your site and it validates your recommendations (if they are good that is).

This is just the basics really, and to be truthful in my opinion it doesn’t really matter what the topic is. Yes, some will earn more than others, but in the end it comes down to marketing yourself and your content.

I have an IT background, and in my case I became interested in Market Research Surveys Online, after participating in several paid Information Technology Surveys hosted by Fortune 500 companies. I quickly learned that if you are knowledgeable, and willing to share your honest opinions, people will pay you for what you know. After joining several good market research panels, the light turned on: If I can make money taking surveys, I can probably make money promoting good survey panels.

So find your niche and start promoting your idea online. The only other advice I can give is to keep your expectations low and your determination high. Making Money Online takes times and effort.

Maki thanks for the opportunity for letting me ramble on and share my two cents.

46. Steven Snell

I make money indirectly through my blog. I’m a web designer and the blog draws traffic to my site which helps me get new contacts for projects.

47. chtanxw

There are many ways to make money online. My first choice will be online options trading.
The reasons are :
1. It is the most flexible investment vehicle available in the markets.
2. The leverage is very high. Very low starting capital required. (You can start at as low as USD500)
3. More than 2 million options contracts changing hands daily. More than USD30billion in contract value traded on a typical day. In the US Markets, you can trade more than 3,000 stocks (optionable) and over 50 indices.
4. No customers, no competitors, no debtors/creditors.
5. No employees.
6. Passive monthly income.
7. No overheads, extremely low operating costs.
8. Recession proof.
9. No limitation of sex, age or physical ability.
10. You can trade everywhere as long as internet connection is available.
11. No licensing, no regulations …etc
12. You can automate your trading.
13. Be your own boss.

I take it seriously as my own business.

There are some prior requirements :
1. You must have extensive knowledge prior to engage in real trading.
2. Basic funds for your daily requirements.
3. Follow the markets closely.
4. Life long learning is a must.

The internet has provided everyone in everywhere a same platform to do your own research. It was a dream to do online trading few years ago.

I will venture to other online money making opportunity if it arises.

48. Fiar – Radioactive Liberty

You wouldn’t start up a retail service, open it’s doors, and then just sit there going, “OK. Where is everybody?” Then run to the cash register to check how much money you made, when you know that no customers have shown up, because no one even knows your business exists.

Don’t laugh. That’s exactly what millions of bloggers do. Start up a blog, slap some Adsense on it, then sit around checking visitor logs to see that no one knows they exist. Why? Because they fail to percieve what they are doing as a business. Whether they know business or not, they fail to apply the concepts of business and marketing. They don’t have a business plan.

49. Costa – Blogigs

You know when the wind of making Money Online started blowing about a year or two ago, I was also caught up in all the frenzy. So i went scourging all over the net on the best way to make money online with my blogs. In the process of looking for these info, I got myself all screwed up with all those articles and tips by so called money making gurus about how easy to make money by signing up with their programs or buying their e books.

I don’t have to tell you that 11 out of 10 times, those things don’t work with new blogs like mine and along the way, I lost more money buying those products than I was suppose to make. So I became very skeptical about making money online until I started reading blogs like yours,Darren Rowse, Yara and such.

I sort of discovered that there are no easy method to make money online. Until Paid Postings came along.

All of a sudden, an opportunity to really make some hard cash was laid in front of me. Even a blog that is 3 months old can start making some decent money through writing these paid posts. There is no need to worry about Page Ranks, though a higher one will have an advantage. There is no need to have a large readership base. Everyone who has a decent command of English can start making money, finally.

Of course there were many who appose of this Paid Postings saying we are selling our souls, writing post that has no real value. Writing without conscience. Well, i beg to differ. Of course there are really some who just write for the sake of making the 5 bucks and they fill up their entire blog with nothing but those 100 words posts, but then there are really some who writes very professionally when it comes to these paid posts.

In my case, I treat it like an assignment given to me by an advertiser who has confidence in my writing and one who admires the way I write. Thus I always tries to give them my best.

So coming back to your topic, on “The Best Way To make Money Online” I would tell my readers, if you have a blog that cannot match Dosh Dosh, go and sign up with some Paid Posting sites. It is the best and the easiest way.

Thanks for this opportunity to speak out my mind.

50. John – Keeper Skool

Making money online is just like any other endeavour, it takes time and tonnes of effort.

We started a niche soccer blog to teach competitive goalkeepers the best in technique, fitness and diet.

We have been running for 2 years now, and have had steady (albeit) small growth month on month, to the point where we get just over 10,000 unique hits per month.

I did not just start the blog without any thought. I had a business model (which was going to be offline)and strategy in place for many years before I even contemplated the net. I also have a degree in Business (Marketing), so I thought I might as well put it into use, seeming it was just kicking up dust!

I had written a comprehensive 10 week course for goalkeepers and thought about how I could sell it as a book. When I had seen all the different (and cumbersome)offline publishing models, I begun to research all about the Web 2.0 trend, blogs and online advertising models.

I studied blogs like Problogger and SEO Book (buy the book it’s a great resource), bought some courses from IMC as well and some work by Perry Marshall, and away I went.

I started the blog on Squarespace and have been using it ever since. I used eNom in the beginning to create our domain name (you should always think about long term branding, and the fact you may want to sell your site in years to come…a good name goes a long way).

Most of the initial (pennies) that we made were from Adsense, and over time I have realized that for my specific niche and visitor count, Adsense is not a viable business model.

I had built some significant rapport with our target audience, and decided to redesign the blog (done it all myself…took heaps of time and hair pulling).

I also decided to build a subscriber list by giving away our 10 week course for free (Since March ‘07 we have just over 2100 subscribers). The guide is now delivered via autoresponder, we created adwords campaigns and a squeeze page to collect subscribers and it is going ok.

About the same time we creaated an e-book for goalkeeper fitness and diet, and have been selling it pretty successfully. We created a sales page (old school long style, don;t ever underestimate this) and since April 07 have made 54 sales to date at $39.95 USD a pop.

We write regularly on the blog, we have about 500 feed subscribers directly to the website, and have distributed the feed to our free guide subscribers on our mailing list and have found we are getting some sales from this (feed subscription is becoming increasingly important as an advertising medium, don’t neglect growing yours).

I’ve begun writing articles on popular soccer blogs like SoccerLens and Caught Offside. So getting links from popular websites that are specific to my niche has also been very important for growth (it also allows you to build long term relationships with other well known bloggers, grow your audience and help other bloggers out).

I’m very big on building a brand, and we have also been working with an upcoming soccer gear manufacturer to be its official resource. So being able to do JV’s with other companies in your niche is important also. Partnerships can grow into long term strategic alliances in the offline world as well.

Building a brand, rather than just trying to make a quick buck, providing quality and free content (articles and video), then selling off some of your own conent (e-book, videos etc…) once you have built a strong readership is great when you own a niche site.

It takes tonnes of time and dedication, but over a period of time it is well worth it, as you become an authority in your field and leverage some of this popularity offline as well.

51. Brooke – Plain Advice

The key to making money online? I don’t think that blogging is the only way to go, but that is what I do so it’s what I know. Some things I have found effective so far are:

1. Work on building site traffic. If you have the traffic, the doors of (money making)opportunity are wide open. There is no sense in trying to highly monetize a low traffic site. That is like trying to put an electronic billboard in the middle of the desert, for the cactus to look at.

2. To get traffic, you MUST provide genuine value and quality to your visitors. You must be an authority on the subject you speak on, if you are attempting to teach or instruct. Rambling on and on about how cute your cat is probably won’t end up making you much money.

3. To provide quality content day in and day out, you better choose a topic that you love to think about, talk about and write about. Otherwise, you will get burned out pretty quick. Don’t make your niche too narrow… if you do you can quickly run out of things to talk about.

Those are just a few of my thoughts. Of course, one could write a book about all this. Thanks for the chance to share a little Maki! And thanks for the link…

52. Michael Walter

Import to Export…Online…

One relatively easy way to make money, I believe, is to import then export selective or niche items through the Internet. For me, it started with a friend who wanted an aftermarket 1968 mustang steering wheel (Grant brand for those who know their mustangs) that retailed around $550 dollars in New Zealand at the time. Navigating the Internet I purchased the item online from JC Whitney in La Salle, Illinois USA, at a cost of about $358 NZ with shipping.

I liked the JC Whitney site so much because of their huge category and product range, prices, and uniqueness of products (relative to New Zealand) that I purchased additional items and sold them relatively easily with a good profit, on an auction site called Trademe in New Zealand. Trademe is our most visited site in NZ with at least 15, 000 people on the site every second, and is a bit similar in format to eBay.

I sold the items at about 30 – 50 % mark-up. In fact many “power” sellers on our trademe site are basically importing and marking up the prices. I know, because I had bid against one such importer on eBay, and discovered that he was selling the items (Casio Protek watches) on the NZ trademe site. His pricing was between the eBay prices (factoring in shipping with currency conversion) and that of the retail shops here in NZ.

This experience prompted me to buy other items from online stores, mainly e-bay and associated websites through the e-bay stores. Again I sold the items quickly with good mark-up prices. So buying and selling online on a popular site or your own site, can generate good profits but perhaps you need to be mindful of potential pitfalls.

These include people and established companies with a lot more money or contacts who can purchase similar items in bulk. Because of this you need to constantly search online for unique marketable products within your country that you think you can sell easily on the Internet. You then need to factor in import tax and/or custom tax for bulk imports. You also need to consider the packaging of imported items, so as to prevent or reduce your buyers from tracing where you brought the items.

In fact the founder of trademe, a 28 year old, started selling on his site, and then he sold the site for NZ 700 million about 2 years back to an Australian company. Suddenly in NZ, many other auction sites popped up. Also many major commodity companies, e.g. car dealers, real estate housing companies, were increasingly listed on Trademe – all in a bid to sell…

53. Andrew Boyd

Best way to make money online? Let’s go with what works:
1. Pick a niche
2. Blog a lot.
3. Talk yourself up: self-promote like crazy – accept speaking engagements, write white papers, blog some more, get onto forums all over the place – be everywhere at once.
4. Write a book, go to step 2, repeat.

Maki – where is your book, man? You write well, you should do it. I’d love to review it.

54. Tobsy – BloggersJourney

Something I’ve been thinking about for a while:

Build a review blog (and have ‘review’ in the URI).
Focus on a broader niche. Like digital photograpy (it’s overrun, just an example).

Write lots of helpful (!!!) reviews of products, websites, services,…

Start monetizing right away. Put 8-10 125×125 banners in a sidebar, link to matching affiliate partners.

When you get enough traffic, put up an advertising page and rent out the banners that don’t perform well.

Look for affiliate partners for direct links in your reviews.

If you’re offered free samples to review, take them. Write the review and give the sample away in a contest.

If you can afford it, order reviews for your site.

Be critical. If you promote crap, your readers will stop trusting you.

Put your most critical posts in the sidebar, labeled as you most popular ones. Ripping big money a new one makes you look like the consumer’s advocate.

Okay, that’s all I can think of right now. If I come up with more, I’ll make a blog post of it *g*.

55. Andy Beard

I haven’t had time to read all the replies, but here goes…

There isn’t a single best way to make money online, but the best ways have some of these characteristics

1. They leverage your current or potential skill set or knowledge
2. The revenue exceeds the cost (time or money) to achieve the revenue
3. The business model is scalable or repeatable
4. The business model continues to generate revenue even if a key member of personnel is removed from the business
5. The business has built in “defensive traffic” such as a viral component

56. Walter De Brouwer – Pajamanation

In the beginning of the week I accepted the challenge to come up with 100 ways to monetize one’s machine: I believe that wherever people can put their hands on a machine that is linked to the world wide web, they will eventually be able to earn a (small but growing) living.

In my young Pajamanation blog (debrouwer.blogspot.com) I am now onto number 31 and will finish to 100 by end of next week. This survey will greatly help me and I will of course credit everyone due sources.

It will enable us to have a rather comprehensive directory of opportunities for people like us working from home. Thanks Maki.

57. Caroline Middlebrook

When I did Internet marketing before from 2000-2003 I used mainly affiliate marketing using PPC to drive traffic. But in those days I was getting thousands of clicks for $0.01. Nowadays I see people raving about how they bought traffic for $0.20 a click and that just makes me gulp!

I cannot say what is the best way of making money online but one thing I would say, is that if this is aimed at beginners it needs to be cheap, quick and low on technical knowledge…

58. derrick sorles-web 2.0 consultant

We get approached by a lot of people saying they want to start a blog because they heard there was big money in it!

First and foremost, that is the wrong reason to start a blog. YOu start a blog because you have to something to say – something to share – something to entertain. If the money comes later, great!

We started a few blogs last year to show a variety of styles to clients looking to start blogs. Our niche blogs do the best. We have Gay Travel Site and a Dog Blog that get great traffic and we have been approached by potential advertisers to either buy an ad on the site and/or trade gifts in exchange for writing about them.

I know a lot of people make a lot of money from Google AdSense – but I think advertising revenue is the best. But it doesnt come over night. We have a client that started a blog 8 weeks ago and he asked, when can I start charging for advertising? Our answer was, when they come to you and want to pay, you can charge. Keep writing. Keep growing. Be an authority people turn to. Develop a following. You will be found eventually.

59. Money $mart Life

One problem many people run into when trying to earn extra money is that they start out eager to generate extra income on the web but lose steam when their hard work doesn’t immediately turn into profits. In my experience, eBay is a great way to overcome this roadblock since you can start seeing the results of adding extra income in a relatively short period of time.

60. Juan – seopositivo.blogspot.com

Although the same process might not necessary lead to the same result, in my case this was more or less the sequences:

1) adsense in different blogs (little money and much work)

2) some sponsored banners in more specialised blogs that worked quite well (a bit more more and a more steady income)

3) after earning some authority, a bit more money out of consultancy (more efficient and greatful)

4) some Adwords campaigns for different companies (small/medium)

5) some Web-benchmarking for bigger companies

Most of the time I run projects from different categories, because unfortunately they do not always come when I would like and they tend to generate peaks of big activity and also periods of time with low demand (thanksfully short).

Hope this can help others.

61. Mariam – MoneyRelations.com

I haven’t been around long enough to make money online, but from what I have observed, if you’re inexperienced, the best way to go about it is to piggyback off a viral concept. These things are usually fun with a low start-up cost. You wrote about it yourself with Ashley Qualls and MySpace.

You’re also seeing it with the million dollar wikis. If you have skills to serve an already receptive micro-community, then I think that’s half the battle. Of course, these fads come but that doesn’t exclude you from making contacts and network with like-minded individuals for the longterm and build up the authority that everyone is talking about.

62. Emigre – Some Useless Info

I use both skills and non-skills based methods to explore online money making opportunities. Skills would include blogging, internet marketing and anything that requires a personal know-how. Non-skills would be everything else including making money using AdSense and other “get paid to” programmes.

However, I would have to say the best way for me to make money online is selling images – photos and illustrations – in microstock agencies. Since my background is graphic design, this method works for me as it uses my existing skillset to allow me to make my own “products” for sale with a recurring income which is an added plus point.

63. Karen Zara – Karen Zara Dwells Here

As far as I’m concerned, one of the best ways to make money online — if not the best one — is writing English non-fiction.

Anyone able to read and understand this text knows English, which is an obvious first step. Now you have two basic options: writing for your own site/blog or working as a freelance writer. Note however that these options aren’t mutually excluding and you can get the best of two worlds.

How do you actually earn money by writing? Here are some of the many possibilities:

1. Paid forum posts: Good for those in need of some quick cash. Unless you have lots of time to research and write (very fast) on various topics, you’ll only make a few extra bucks, as payouts in this area are extremely low.

Opportunities can be found on webmaster forums such as Digital Point and Free Host Forum. This is how I’ve earned my very first bucks on the Internet.

2. Paid reviews and blog posts: If you already own a blog, just read DoshDosh’s Definitive List of Paid Blogging Websites. Alternatively, you can look for opportunities and/or offer your services on webmaster forums like the ones mentioned in the previous item.

If you don’t have a blog, you can always try review sites like Epinions, but you will have a hard time competing against older, well-established members.

3. Articles: Probably the best choice for freelancers. It’s somewhat similar to writing paid forum posts, but in comparison with those, articles will earn you much more money even if you charge low prices. Plenty of opportunities can be found on webmaster forums (yes, once again), writer’s sites and forums (like Absolute Write Water Cooler), newsletters (such as Funds For Writers, Absolute Markets and FFW Small Markets), freelance job sites (Online Writing Jobs) etc.

You can either offer your services or look for existing job offers. Versatility and researching skills do count a lot in this area. The more subjects you are able to write about, the higher your chances to find customers. If you need a portfolio, and/or if your clients ask for samplings of your writing, read the next item.

4. Content for your own site/blog: If you are able to write good, strong, helpful content for your own site and/or blog and you promote it properly, you will be able to earn money by either offering advertising opportunities on it or by enticing your visitors to purchase your products and services.

A newsletter would give you one more venue to expose your visitors to your content and ads, so this is something you may want to consider as well. Keep in mind that if your visitors like your site’s content, they will be much more likely to subscribe to your newsletter.

A few years ago I owned two successful niche websites, each of them with its own newsletter. Unfortunately, at that time I didn’t know how to monetise neither the sites nor the newsletters. Consequently, they never earned me a single penny. Don’t you waste good opportunities like those.

Of course, you can try to apply all of these methods to non-English markets. Nevertheless, from my own experience I can tell that opportunities are much scarcer and payouts tend to be lower in most cases.

If you are a non-native English speaker (like me) and you feel more comfortable writing in your own language — or if you have no way to receive payments from foreign countries –, then tip #4 would be your best bet, unless you find a way to sell your articles to local third parties in a regular basis.





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