Good income from internet?

[KarenV]

I make more money on marketing.... I realized I was better at marketing and SEO than selling and designing. Internet marketing is a full time job that pays well. Find your niche! It all fell into place for me when I realized there is no one right way to develop your thoughts and ideas on the net.

KarenV
www.MovingLead.com

[yahoohaha]

KarenV

It all fell into place for me when I realized there is no one right way to develop your thoughts and ideas on the net.

that one got me, will you please expose a little more? thanks!

joe

[deepstar]

Spamming the search engines like Google will get you the number 1 position for a short time. Afterwards, you will be banned for life. Your competitors will find out that you are spamming and report you at http://www.google.com/contact/spamreport.html . Google is the only search engine that you currently need to be listed high on.

I agree with some thoughts that eventually PPC se advertising will eventually die out as consumers will eventually find out that the ad words at google and the top 3 listings at yahoo are nothing but advertisements and may not contain the most relevant content.

There are a ton of affiliate programs that can generate revenue if you know how to work it. I happen to be part of an affiliate network that produces leads for colleges and universities. We have sites that generate allot of leads for our clients and earn a significant amout of commission every month. These sites that generate a large volume of leads are either optin companies, large college related companies, individuals that spend tons on PPC engines and search engine optimization experts. SEO experts will jump on an affiliate program that they think could generate well because they know that they can achieve top rankings on google. The opportunity is there, finding the right opportunity is the hard part

Eric

[2gajgops]

I do very well with affiliate programs. It's all about getting targeted visitors. You can't buy a foreign language domain with 1000 hits a day and expect to convert 1000 Chinese speaking visitors into purchasing American products written up in English.

It takes a lot of up front time investment to create a profitable affiliate business model, but it can be done. Search engine optimization, high conversion rate products/links, and a lot of trial and error are the keys.

Many people expect too much too fast and give up without giving it a chance. I primarily use cj.com because of the wide variety and consistent payments. I tried my own products/services, but found that the time requirements were more than I wanted to commit to, and impossible to take a break. With affiliate programs, I can "set it and forget it".

[yahoohaha]

this thread has twice much viewers than other threads.

why? we all want to make $ from the net.

what's your chance?

internet is a casino for chance takers. every webmaster and every domain hunter is a player.

thay pick their favor games and play their best. some lose, some win.

for hunters, chance is decreasing by time.

for webmasters, tomorrow could be better. if you find a valid market with tiny competition.

wake up from the hunting dream, no more golden deer is out there. buy domain now is like buy verisign stock, unless you are going to develop it.

if you want to build a site that might get some traffic from domain players, i suggest you make a site for retired domain hunter to hangout, maybe call it domainfart.org.

if you want to get webmaster traffic, simple, offer price for design and idea contest. what's a good name for it?

tough net, interesting challenge, many will never wake up, i am one of them.

my principle, bet on red and let it ride.

[TexasFilly]

i can't give away all my worthy secrets..

but i can say this..
that the internet beholds a wide arena for business to business entities..

some industries have never felt the effects of the dot~com crash..

pick your industries wisely, in which you promote..

'these times'
are 'still'

just scratching the surface of their potential..

GoodLuck

[yahoohaha]

if a hot chick shows her half tit only, maybe she don't have nice nipples.

[mole]

Originally posted by TexasFilly
but i can say this..
that the internet beholds a wide arena for business to business entities..

some industries have never felt the effects of the dot~com crash..

pick your industries wisely, in which you promote..

'these times'
are 'still'

just scratching the surface of their potential..

Couldn't agree more, wanda. The established bricks-and-mortar companies were slow to come onto the internet boom which was driven primarily by the virtual companies that rose from nowhere.

The Internet continues to become more indispensible every year for businesses, and B2B is an area that bricks-to-clicks are exploiting more and more to improve their communication and transactional efficiency.

[oneguy]

I'm sorry if I'm digging up a past thread ... but this thread will be one that interests the most people.

IMO - we are all here for the same purpose. To learn, exchange and hopefully be able to put some cash into our pockets.

Looking back at my experiences, I would say, it takes an experience to tell if it works ... for me I have tried

(a) Affiliate program for supposingly a internet marketing "guru" -Cory Rudl ... Mmm didn't get me a single cent

(b) Affiliate program with another internet marketing "guru" - sent some 2500 visitors there ... not a single sale

(c) Went into domain reselling ... lost money here .. registered domains that were completely useless

(d) Now, I'm into registering domains that are least with Yahoo ... but I'm very sure ... I will lose money here as well ...

So where does all this lead me ? I'm been losing time, effort and money in every single one of them. Why do I bother to keep trying ? Simply because the knowledge gained, the know-how, the overall experience and the lessons learnt ... I get kicks out of these.

But, for those whom truely have made some money on the internet, my kudos to you. Would love to hear your side of the story and learn more from all this ....

BTW - I would agree with what has been said "You can't buy a foreign language domain with 1000 hits a day and expect to convert 1000 Chinese speaking visitors into purchasing American products written up in English."

I'm from Singapore ... and I don't think there are many Singaporeans on this board ... so maybe ... just maybe ... I could learn something with ALL this time, effort and money spent that could someday open up a niche market for me in Singapore ....

In the meantime, I guess its back to the keyboard again ... and hoping someone would show me how it should really be done.

"Making money from the Internet " - Hype, Reality or Simply ... MY BAD LUCK ! ......

God Bless everyone ...

[spudleyk]

I am really interested into this....

Now, i do have a full time job, but been trying to make some extra income online for some extra spending money. Of course, then after my Fiancee got laid off and is going back to school to change careers so now it's needed to offset what she isn't making anymore.

Had so-so luck so far myself... But overal, lost more money than made.

- Made an online store for my fiancee's home made spa products (hobby of hers) and i'v added a sub store for electronics (dropshipped) since i'm a geek . Result... No spa sales online, a few electronics sales before the holidays but to be competitive, i had low markups and that didn't work out too good. And of course, after burning ~600$ in Nextag,overture and google ads. (www.spudleykingdom.com)

- Entered the domain name game... Well bougth about 15 "interesting" domains in my oppinion. Well based on appraisals, only a few might be worth something buy have yet to do a sale. Seems like the only way to make money with those right now is to have a 2-3 letter .COM name. Since i have a few interesting domains, i'll probably develop them and sell them on ebay (seems like domains with websites sell much better on ebay than just plain domains). We'll see how that goes. (www.spudleydomains.com)

- Started a gambling portal as my entry into the affiliates world. Now that one hasn't made me any money either yet but then again it only has been up for ~2 weeks. So i'll seek working on SEO and getting traffic to it. Will see how it works. Worst case, since it's developped, i can always sell the domain and site (www.gamblewhiz.com).

And i have another idea on the backburner. A software registration company (like swreg.org). Since it's essentially a payment processing/software delivery business, not too much operating expenses beyond the servers (with can probably be rented dedicated servers at first). And since our company already has a merchant account, that part is covered too. Just need a decent domain and a website done for it, just need time to write the PHP code

Anyhoo. Overall, i spent ~2000$ in my online attempts so far, and i'v made back ~200$. Now verry productive so far.. Just curious about people who has been successfull.

[izopod]

This is the beauty of online forums. You can share ideas and insight.

My thoughts on the ability for someone to make money online is

1. If you want "full-time" type income from the internet you can't work "part-time".

2. Stay focused with your online venture. Pick a niche market and stick with it.

3. Don't chase trends unless you truly are on the "ground floor" of something. One of the problems I see in everyone's approach to making money online is that they get into the market "late". I hear comments that "Porn and Gambling" sites are "what's making money. Yeah, that might be true to the top 10% of these sites. The bottom 90% of these sites are simply feeding off the crumbs dropped by the bigger sites.

4. Ask yourself this question "How much time do I really have to devote to this online project"?? If you have less than a couple of hours a day to work on the project, look for "self contained" online businesses. These would be affiliate type sites, whereby immediate customer service on your part would not be required. If you're in this group, you will want to do your homework as to the best affiliate program out there. This does not necessarily mean the one making the most money "right now". Look at up and coming sectors to determine which affiliate you should use. Again, don't chase markets which are already saturated. Once you've got the affiliate program set up...optimize, optimize, optimize. Your couple of hours a day should be devoted to this. Also checking to see where your traffic is coming from. This is a big part of optimizing, is to finding out who your market is. One last thing. Make sure you have some information/educational related information on your site. A affiliate only site is a non-starter. These used to be called link-farms.

If you have at least four hours a day to devote to your online project, I would go with a 50/50 mix. Sell a small product line and have affiliate advertising on the site. Again, have information/educational links. Half your time should be spent optimizing, the other half dealing with customer service issues (i.e sending products/answering questions).

If you have more than four hours a day to devote to this project, I would recommend a 90/10 split. Sell a middle to large product line, and keep affiliate advertising (why not!) to 10 percent of your business. You don't necessarily need affiliate advertising, but in the early start up phase this is a good idea to keep money coming in. After your site is established I would will still keep your affiliate advertising stream, but certainly affiliate advertising isn't the only thing you could do. Maybe in the space where you'd normally advertise other affiliate products, that you would in fact yourself advertise for affiliates to promote your products. This would be smart since the bulk of your business would come from selling your OWN products. This type of business model is by far the biggest consumer of your time, and as such nets the biggest results (if done right---right product, right site, right time)

5. If you made it this far you should begin to understand why you are not making money online. If you only have 2 hours a day to devote to a project, and are chasing a market trend whereby you are the 1,000,000,000th porn site it's a no-brainer why you are only bringing in a few bucks each month. Even with optimizing a site in this type of market it's hard to break into the top 10% with only 2 hours a day to work with. If you really want to succeed, you'll need to increase the amount of time you spend promoting your site (trading links, online forums related to your market, etc, etc)

6. If you are going to sell your own products, just one rule of thumb---don't sell things you aren't really that interested in. Also if you are not a natural sales person, hire someone to do this for you. Try to get affiliates to do it for you. Trade links.

The main reason why people aren't able to sell their own products is because of their lack of interest in the product(s) they are selling. The other reason is because they don't now how to sell. Take domain reselling for instance. There is a reason why some sell o.k names for a fair price, and why others have good names that "just aren't moving". Moral of the story in this particlar case: If you really hate selling "domain names"---don't sell domain names. Find something you are really enamored with that does have some market appeal. As in the case above, even so-so products can be sold if you "believe in the product" and have some natural ability to sell.

7. Don't give up if this is something you truly want to do. Eventually you'll succeed. Success is 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. Write that somewhere and don't forget it.

[spietreser]

Whoohoo izopod! Good stuff

[spudleyk]

Thanks izopod.

Although most of this is "well duh! obvious!". Lost of people like me still fall in the same traps.

Now in my case, having a full time job, i can't spend 8 hours/day on any project, but i can spend lots of my weekend time.

I have a project idea in my head for shareware software sales. But i'm still trying to guage the time/money investment required.

At least so far, the lessons i'v learned

- Stay away from the current trends. As izopod said, lots of people like me get into trends way too late when the market is already saturated. Of course it doesn't mean you couldn't succeed. But definetly puts the odds agains you.

- If you don't have a product of your own. Then i think there is 2 good options.

1) Affiliates. The problem there is finding something for which there may be a upcoming trend and for which the market isn't already saturated.

2) Find something low cost or free (to you) to sell. My point being... With my electronics store, i use a dropshipper as my source of products. My supplier has really good prices, however to be competitive online price wise i can't allow much more than a 10% markup. But then remove the CC processing fees, and other overhead, it only leaves you ~10$ revenu for a 200$ sale. Not too good unless your a giant like Amazon and make up with volume. This would explain the proliferation of the eBook business online. A product which virtually costs nothing to the seller so all proceeds are essentially revenus. Now that being said there are other things to be sold besides eBooks. But from what i have read in "regular" business starting books. Is that service companies are usualy easier to start than product companies. Essentialy in the sense it doesn't require as much of an upfront investment.

Now, i'm really starting to consider my software registration business idea... My fiancee will probably kill me for trying to start yet another business

Great post izopod, trying to make money off the internet is like playing the stock market in my opinion. Sometimes the stocks can be at their all-time high one day, and then plummet the next. Making money off the internet is a risky business, but with time and effort, it is possible as mentioned in previous posts.

[oneguy]

I think many would have benefitted from the post by IZOPOD
Great post ... and I'll have to agree with the points made.

Having a full-time job myself, devoting 2 hours every single night to my "part-time" ventures have been very taxing ... I have not been able to do a good job on them and that's most probably the cause of my failure ...

I will be looking towards devoting more time to these "part-time" ventures but in the meantime - I'll have to stop eating those crumps from the Big Boys first. Got to find myself a niche and probably buy my own dinner instead of "licking" after people !

[DotDuDe]

Yea neat stuff thanks

Personally, I think the best way to make money online is through an online auction site. I've been picking up various items at pawn shops / thrift shops / yard sales and then selling them on ebay for 2x-3x what I buy them at. It's a nice business and if you stick with it, you can make a decent amount.

[oneguy]

Great idea ... very good move
Wishing you the very best Crazyac3

[cluelessdomainer]

this is all very good information for me. thanks to everyone. i will learn and try these techniques.

[domainAddict]

Interesting how ones that are actually making money dont want to post here Greedy guys indeed..