Poll - Has it been hard to make money online.

So do you find that making money online is easy for you or not?

It has taken me almost two years for me, and it has not really been an easy thing for me, learning seo, affiliate marketing, content, etc, etc, etc.

So what has been your experience on this?

 

Not the hardest thing in the world, but not very easy either.
You have to dedicate a lot of time and to be patient.
As in any other job - if you work hard you will succeed

 

I was just wondering that, two years ago when I started in Internet marketing I thought that it would take me a few months to learn and then I would be making a lot of money but it turn out to be more difficult than what I thought.

I am sure that a hughe percent of new webmasters do not even 10 bucks a day here is why

1. A new site will not get thousands of visitors a day specially if you depend on SEO, why the search engines do not send you traffic right away it takes time.... and more time.... so SEO is a very slow process. Specially if you rely on Google.
2. Social sites are full of webmasters trying to get some traffic, the problem is that most of this traffic does not buy any of your products.
3. Affiliate marketing & CPA is SO saturated, just check how much webmasters are paying on Adwords for keywords like "ringtones", $3 - $4 dollars a click, in my experience you will get a 1:40 conversion so if I am pretty sure that most webmasters are losing money... web hosting, domain name registration... SATURATED.
4. if you use PPC to drive traffic to your site for arbitrage, well let me tell you something QUALITY SCORE, yep so try to get a .05 keyword for any word on adwords, you will end up paying between .10 or .15 at the least, and what happends on the landing page if somebody clicks on something, you get paid .01 or .02 yes this is what happens.
5. eBay? mmmmm another Saturated market, you pay .60 to $20 per listing and you end up selling NADA! "Nothing"

So basically here is the circle.

You build your site, great content, put affiliate links and adsense, you exchange, buy or get quality links from directories or social sites, you wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hoping that google, msn or yahoo or somebody will send you some traffic well a month or two and nothing after that you probably say, well let me BUY some traffic from the SAME search engines that you are specting traffic right, well if you go to Overture you will pay at least .10 per visitor but that does not mean that you will be ranked #1, you go to Adwords, QUALITY SCORE tells you to bid $1 dollar, and MSN... (they have no traffic ALMOST).

So you go back and say, well I will promote affiliate programs, well you end up on the search engines losing money.

So what happends at the end, you come to DP and sell your site for $10 bucks and guess what....

You have to start all over again....

Am I right or wrong

Sorry for my mizpellings, I am a bad writer

 

Its not easy as people think it is put it that way.

 

It sounds easy in theory but I've found it to be difficult. I've had some small successes but many more failures. I'll keep plugging away though. It's fun.

 

It is very fun, I spend many hours playing this game and it can be very profitable but when the market is so saturated and hundreds of thousands of people are doing the same thing is hard to make decent money.

 

Good follow-up post netmaster. I think keys are to enjoy what you're doing, and keep doing instead of dreaming. Just keep building the site contents, links and everything, and don't even look at the money for a year.

 

netmaster and politician both said it very well!

Just pick something you love and work hard on it. Forget about the money the first year.

Every site where you work really really hard on WILL (no matter what niche or industry you're in) eventually become big, it's the law of the internet.

With most of my sites I've seen success between 12-24 months. So be prepared to spend a lot of time, sweat, blood and tears (not to mention money) before you can expect to get something in return.

Never give up!

 

It had been hard for me at first. But what I found from experience is that, once you know how to do reasearches and get it down packed, you wouldn't have that much of a hard time marketing and profiting. All the other technical stuff comes after words. I use that theory to get through and make things easier.
And Yes, you do have to like doing what you're doing or you'll fail.

 

This poll isn't covering my option.

.1 Very Easy a 10 year old can do it I Make Thousands a month
Humm, that's a joke right, isn't it.

2. Hard.. I spend Hours In Front Of My PC and I make a little bit of money
I spent years in front of my PC to get where I am now. And I make decent money cause I use my brains and my abilities.

3. Almost Impossible I have Dedicated Years and still I make No Money!
Then you should stay away from your computer.

 

Fortunately, there are resources such as DP that take a little of the mystery out of how to get started. I have been in the IT industry in various forms for the entirety of my career, but I only recently started pursuing my own business online. I started selling my old junk on eBay with little success, and one day I stumbled upon a domain name for sale in someone's item list. It caught my interest, and I ended up over-paying for a couple of garbage domains that I have since dumped at a loss.

A few Google searches later, I landed here. It is tremendously helpful to be able to leverage the collective knowledge of people trying to accomplish the same thing. It has saved me countless mistakes and wasted time. While I am not "raking it in" by any stretch, I am doing better than I would have had I not had a forum full of information to rely on.

 

I think it depends on what you want. There are so many different ways to make money online.

You can make $ by selling text links or paid blog posts, writing content (per piece or rev share on sites like Associated Content), things like that where traffic development doesn't factor in. It's not hard to earn a couple hundred a month this way but you're scrambling each month to refill the kettle.

If you want to develop websites that are popular with visitors (who come back) and sell actual goods or premium advertising, quality traffic is key. And that's when things get hard, especially for noobs with new domains and no link buddies. But that's fixable by just sticking with it, letting domains age and developing friendships online. It all takes time and patience and hard work.

 

I'm still not making much after a year, so option #2 for me. I wouldn't say it is impossible, but there really is no easy way to MAKE $$$$ QUICK like those ebooks say...

I've made only little bit, but haven't "hit it big" yet. My niches are quite low paying though, so I don't expect too much

 

Right now.. it's much better when I first started. It too took me around 2 years to get this started. I think it'll be easier as years pass and as I gain more experience of course.

 

It's somewhere between Very Easy and Hard - you need one more option.

 

To me this says it all. It is less about money and more about scoring more points in "the game" for me.

I've never had a problem making a good living in IT, but I'm pretty new to using a site to generate revenue directly, and I'm learning a ton.

Whether I end up making big bucks or continue to make just a few, I get to learn something new, which is always fun for me. I love figuring out new ways to get traffic (haven't figured out how to retain any yet) and create revenue.

I'll continue to work hard at it and create new content because I enjoy it, and because I believe that is what will eventually lead to success.

 

I am by no means an internet success story, but I have started making a bit of money online. What I have experienced is that it takes time and money to be successful. A lot of people like to think that you do not have to invest in your website; I disagree.

In order to do it all on your own, you need to know how to do everything like: programming (in HTML, PHP, JAVA, perl) SEO, Link Building, designing graphics for your site, and how to truly write quality content. I can do some of these things but not all, especially the programming

I would love to spend no money and make a mint, but unless I can increase my programming and graphics capabilities I will have to spend some money on growing my sites.

What amazes me the most is when I see people come here and ask if a $5 to $15 service is "worth it". It is as if they are saying "I want to make $3k a month, but I really don't want to spend money on that $5 link in a directory (or whatever the service is)"

I think if you approach the internet as you would a "regular" business you can make some good money at it, in time. By this I mean working 8 hours a day on your site (not checking your adsense or SERP's every 15 minutes, not spending 3 hours a day on DP ) and by investing in it so that you can obtain a solid Return On Investment (ROI).

 

This describes my situation EXACTLY.

 

The most difficult thing is to do the repeated stuff all the time. I just cannot do that. If I could stand that I would increase my earnings with $500 every month, but I puke from the repeated stuff.

 

I make decent money doing work for others, but now, I am attempting to go against some rather largely invested companies, that are struggling, but in it for the long haul.
Everyone thinks I am crazy, but I just don't think they are doing it right, so here I am.
I have a few sites that do ok, but not big time. They pay the bills, and some extra, but not "Moving to Costa Rica" Money.
This is my first shot at something that could be big.
It's hard, but fun.