Hey everyone I became a member quite a while back now and made a couple of posts explaining my noob status and stating I was going to devote my time to learning the intricacies of the web with a view to making some money. Life, as it sometimes does, threw me a curveball and I developed a serious illness which i have been battling for months. Thankfully, I've managed to beat it but its been an uphill struggle. So months later here I am, alive and getting better every day. If there is one thing I have learned its that life really is too short to spend 8 or more hours a day doing the daily grind. With that in mind I came back to these boards looking for ideas on how i can put my skills to use for myself and gain some much needed financial independence. Can some of the knowledgeable peeps on here help me out? I'm not looking for anyone to give me a step by step (although that would be gratefully accepted! ) Just honest advice on what different routes there are to making money online. I was in IT a long while ago, but purely hardware. A lot of the terms on here are still greek to me but I'm putting in a lot of reading. If I list the skills I have and have used to make money offline could someone give me pointers on how I could monetise them online.I'm more than willing to learn new skills, am of a technical bent so was thinking of delving into web design myself but there seems to be a myriad of languages and protocols...which are most worthwhile learning? I have run a variety of businesses over the years although none online so understand that I wont become a millionaire overnight...hard work and determination are the watchwords I've gleaned from reading this site so far to become a success. Even if I can make a few dollars a day it would increase my confidence exponentially giving me the motivation to carry on. That said I think I possess the following skills: reasonably good writing and grammar good sales skills extensive background in IT hardware fairly good artist on canvas I've always made money from selling tangible items in the past, the concept of making money from intangibles such as clicks to a site are still a little woolly in my mind and I've always been the type of person to have multiple income streams rather than putting all my eggs in one basket so looking more for a brainstorm on lots of different avenues to explore. Any and all comments/advice is much appreciated. thanks
Congratulations on overcoming your illness! I see that you have good writing skills. I make a large majority of my online income writing articles for various websites. I cover anything from the NFL to PC gaming. I recommend checking out the "Looking To Hire" section at Site Point. If you have a keen interest in IT hardware maybe you should consider starting a blog about that topic. I hope this helps, and good luck!
Congrats, and you are right -- there is more to life than wasting away for 8 hours each day in a dead end office job like the majority of the population. With those skills, you should consider researching both art & IT hardware related niches, and joining some affiliate programs. A writing & sales background is a major feather in your cap that most others don't have. Get started in places like Squidoo/Hubpages, and maybe get a cheap hosting account and put up some affiliate sites with eBay or Amazon.
Good to hear that you are feeling better! Blogs are a great starting point if you want to earn some cash. you can monetize your traffic through Google adsense Clickbank Affiliate marketing first thing's first - You need to find a niche (topic) that you enjoy and love to write about but it also needs to be a profitable niche. From there you can either set up a free blog at blogger (googles blog system) or you can get your own domain name with a self hosted wordpress blog. There is a lot to learn but it will pay off with dedication and goal setting. Here are two killer blogs that might help you CopyBlogger ProBlogger
Really appreciate all the tips and advice given. Couple of points jump out at me which I would like to ask people to elaborate on. If i were to go down the road of writing articles, would it be better to put them on a free blog or better to stump up the cash up front and buy a domain and put them on there? Is it possible to do that myself with the thus far limited web design knowledge that i have. I'm tryin to keep costs as minimal as possible at this stage. Also I can understand that finding a niche would be good, but how does someone go about doing that? The net seems to have been around for so long that pretty much every topic of even the slightest interest has been done to death...or is there room for one more?
Buying a domain and hosting is by far the better way to go. You will not have a url like xxx.blogger.com. instead you will have www.yoursite.com when buying a domain name make sure your keywords (niche) are in the domain as well. for example one of my urls is www.stockmarketchat.us, although not a blog. notice how i included stock market and the word "chat" Most hosting companies have one click installs for blogs, from there you can search for a free wordpress theme that matches your niche and install it. There are fellow DP'ers (Digital point members) who will do this for a small fee. It shouldn't be more than $10 or so. it will take some research and learning but that's the fun part as well.
Yes,there are many niche out there. And you must be creative to use an existing niche and innovate it to become more better and thus it can help you make money
I've been quite interested in this myself recently, but I can't see how there's any money in it An article that must take a good 20-30 minutes to research, write, proof read and edit if necisary sells for $2 or so, surely to make any money at all you'd need to spend 10+ hours a day writing?
You can try writing. What I have done in the past is forum posting. There are lots of paid posting positions out there.