I have decided, for what ever it's worth, to write an article from the point of view of someone who is in a transition between messing around online and building homepages and hobby sites -- so being someone that has decided to have a go at making money online full time. I might not be "Mr Professional", but I know things some people around here might be able to benefit from or relate to, so I don't think my opinion is utterly invalid. So just take it what I say for what ever it's worth to you. Over the years, I've had the odd site up. The websites I've created never stayed up long. They were mainly homepages which were filled with my rants that 20 people a month came and visited. I'd often get sick of looking at them, delete them and start all over again -- and.. again, and again.. I never did keep one sit up for very long. I've joined various affiliate programs, and I have got to the point with many of them (usually after a year of promoting them) where it was time to "cough up". The problem is (and I'm not joking), the vast majority of them never did! So that put me off and made me lose interest. However, I have had some success in the past with actual sales. For example: I've sold some stuff on eBay. There's also an Australian site called oztion -- and I've sold some stuff on there. I actually build up $1300 in sales of pendants on eBay once. But I ran out of pendants and couldn't get tjem again, so that was over. Apart from that, I've made some "shrapnel" from Adsense. I've been registered them for a very long time. I think over the past seven years or something I've received two small payments which "just" made the $100 margin. But I guess I've never really had an overly popular website, so --I don't know. Maybe I'll try them some more. So during my travels above, I have actually become a bit of a jack of all trades, master of none. I can do pretty much everything involved with a website. Since I have at least learned the skills, I figure I might as well make a living from it. Or, at least, try. So, (shy of "affiliate programs"), I've decided (and after reading some advice from people in this forum) that the best way for me to make money is for me to build my own "proper" website -- with a domain, and build a portfolio and try to get some credibility around this place for doing a good job and providing good service. I know one thing. It is very hard to make money online. Anyone who says it's easy is a liar. Well, there's some people who actually already have a few dollars to play with, and I guess those people can afford to play around with PPC and advertising and all that, and probably got fairly good at it and make money relatively easily. I don't think online is any different to making money offline. If you've already got money, making more is 1000% easier then if you've got "jack" (like me). So at the end of the day, I think to make money you have to have your own website. I've also joined the odd marketing newsletter, safelist, banner exchange etc. From what I can tell you are more likely to make money from people who either know you, have experience with you or trust you for some reason or another. I can't see myself becoming an "email marketer" or anything like that, but I do think it's important to build a list of people who you've dealt with and communicated with in the past. Therefore, I think it's a good idea to have a forum or something on your website. Something that you can use to communicate with people that already know who you are. On a forum, you have everyones contact details, so you can contact them. Or you can save all the emails that you get from people who contact you through your site to some sort of list. But I think the very best way to make money is one on one communication with people. I think making money from a "service" or "product" is much more lucrative (in the short term) if you need quick money - but building a website up to become popular and visited by a lot of people and to get search engine rankings, etc is probably a better way to make money for the long term. So I think a person like me should probably start out doing both. I'll offer my skills to those who can use them, and I'll also try to build up a popular website. That's my plan.
That's exactly what I do. Services for short term consistent cash. For long term set and forget type income I set up websites. It has been working well. Steven