Ok, being a geek, a person of Chinese descent (hence the love for money and good deals), lazy, and naturally a greedy person, I met the stereotypes of people who should have been easily sucked into the hopeless world of shortcut to riches. Luckily I have a wonderful group of friends and family who would rescue me or knock some sense into my head before I sink to the deepest pit of any get-rich-quick scheme.
Perhaps these were also the reason why I once joined Amway many years ago and wasted a lot of money. I did learn a very important lesson though – sales. But that’s for another story.
Anyway, I have attempted making money online through a couple of ways. Some works.. some don’t. Mind you, when I started, the Internet was not mature enough. (Geezz… I spoke like a wizened user of the Internet). Internet connection was still very expensive. So it wasn’t as easy as nowadays.
I am going to list the top 5 ways to earn money online that I have done before. This method will be ranked by profitability (Profit $$ = revenue – cost). Your cost will be both time and money cost.
The prerequisites to any of the following method is:
- Good Internet Connection (as low cost as possible, free would be ideal – you may steal your neighbour’s wireless connection or you can work at an Internet Cafe while doing this).
- A computer to access the internet.. DOH!
- Willingness to learn and embrace the concept (ability to withstand any insult or objection from your non-geek friends who claim they live in real world).
None of the method I am listing is a get rich scheme. They require EFFORT!! If it’s too good to be true, it probably is not true.
Note: Do not attempt to do any of these during working hours – unless you want to get fired.
The easiest way is no. 1. Anyone can do it. Number 2 – 5 requires some webmastering skill.
1. Selling DIGITAL PRODUCT on EBAY
I have found that if I have a good resalable digital product, I am always able to move them on eBay. In the past I have sold:
- eBooks
- Templates (HTML, Flash, etc)
- Web Scripts (PHP, JavaScript, etc)
- Domain names
- Websites
eBay works on the concept that sales is a number game. Your product has very high visibility. Even when you are selling an absolute garbage, you may still make a sale. However, if your product is unique, useful and properly targetted, your conversion rate is higher.
My highest selling products are web packages. I scoured the internet for resalable templates, web scripts and eBooks, sort them out (lots of crap out there), repackage and sell them as downloadable package for $10 or $15 as CD/DVD.
I also made sure that I wrote a compelling sales copy and provide good photos to entice ebay users to buy my package. In the past, with minimum effort, I used to move 5-10 items perweek.
My time cost was spent heavily on the researching, repackaging the items and writing copy. After that.. it was a breeze. eBay+paypal only takes a tiny percentage of my sales.
So, let’s say you spent 2 hours repackaging and listing your items on eBay and your rate is $50-$80/hour. You will break even after 2 weeks with minimum sale. If your normal rate is less than $50/hour, then you’ll break even in less than a week.
Hint:
- To maximise your profitability, sell when eBay has special promotion such as no listing fee or low final valuation fee.
- Buy these stuff for $1 on eBay.com and resell them at $2 or $5 at local ebay (ebay.com.au, ebay.com.sg, etc). eBay.com users are more experienced. There are also more products there.
- Research eBay trend. If you’re selling web packages, check what time most of the geeks are online. Check what’s current hot stuff (i.e. mobile web template, ebook on dieting, etc).
- Use eBay application to turbolist multiple items (save you from copy and paste text all the time) and schedule when your listing should come out.
Ofcourse you can also sell the stuff from your garage or the clothes that you can’t fit into anymore.
2. Adsense Money from Google
The concept works by allowing google to advertise ads on your websites. For each click of google ads on your website, google will pay you money. The amount varies depending on the topic of your website. Some topics are highly niched (more expensive), some are very popular (low cost).
To do this, you need to have a website. You can build it or you can buy it. Your cost will be:
- Web hosting and domain name (unless you can find an ad-free hosting account that allow google adsense).
- The cost to buy or build the website (time and money)
- The cost to update your website.
The key to be successful would be content, traffic and high-converting niche. You will need to update your website regularly to maintain or increase your traffic level. Your website must have unique and highly useful information in a very popular subject. You need to do very good SEO to make sure that your website ranks highly in search engines so you have a lot of traffic coming to your website.
OK… that seems like a lot of effort. Want to cheat??? use AUTOBLOGS.
(Attention bloggers: please do not spam me. You are still way ahead of autoblogs because your contents are unique and your fans love you because you’re interesting).
Back to AUTOBLOG.
You need… a cheap, reliable hosting account that can host multiple websites and domain names.
- Install wordpress
- Install auto-generating content plugins (such as PureCaffeine) – set it up to ‘steal’ content about highly niched but popular subjects
- Install SEO plugins
- Install Google XML Maps
- Install Adsense plugins
- voila…. you suddenly has a money making machine.
When I still have them, my autoblogs cost me $0 – $50 to set-up. $0 to host because my main web hosting is unlimited hosting. $2 – $9/year for domain name depending on if goDaddy have some specials. I used to have autoblogs about pets, wedding, health and work from home generating $10-15/month with no effort after the initial installation process.
Note: You can also earn google adsense money if you run a forum or user group (not just content website).
3. Advertising Money (not including Adsense)
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. This works in a similar way as Adsense. Except this time, you will subscribe to different types (sometimes highly niched) of advertisers. You will need a website. You need to SEO-ed your website to the max. You need to update and maintain your website to get traffic and click on the ads. If you’re popular, you can set up your own PPC application to track click and invoice businesses who want to advertise on your website.
- You can also use twitter to get advertising money. It’s still PPC. So basically you tweets the ads on your twitter account. Your followers click on that ad, you get PPC money. Advertisers are paying 0.01 – 0.15 per click.
- Pay-per-view, usually charged at CPM/Cost-Per-Million (impression) or CPT/Cost-Per-Thousand (impression). If your website is very popular and influential, you can charge the advertiser higher. Note: impression means how many times the ad is rendered/displayed on your website.
- Advertorial/Writing reviews on your website. Again, this depends on your popularity. The more popular you’re the more likely businesses to pay you to advertise their products.
- Affiliates/Referral – This is one of the oldest advertising method. Basically, businesses pays a percentage of sales made when the buyer is redirected or come via a link on your website.
Method 3 and 4 are very popular amongst blogger. There are even specialised blogging advertising company set up to cater for this market. I have tried the above 5 methods. My favourite way is no. 1 and 4. I am working on no 3, but I lost so much traffic because I had neglected PatriciaChan.com for so long. I have recently decided to blog again so I will need to grow my readership.
4. Customer Group
How many times have you seen the ad – earn money by filling out surveys. Guess what? They do exist. Just make sure you join legitimate companies that pay you money or voucher you can use and has been established for years. My favourite at the moment is PureProfile, courtesy of Australia Post. I think my bunny also join EmailCash. But I swear.. I saw him more on PureProfile than EmailCash. PureProfile also pays you for visiting their advertiser’s website.
I don’t think this method has much potential to grow. Your earning power depends on how many businesses decided to advertise on these Customer Group websites. Do not quit your job if your retirement scheme is making money online from filling out surveys. This is only good if you want to kill some time or earn that $10 petrol voucher or try your luck on their sweeptakes.
5. Freelancing Online
To be honest, this is my biggest revenue stream online. I got people who found me online to design and develop them some web applications. I got people who engaged me to do SEO on their websites or simply provide some copywriting service.
I listed freelancing last because Freelancing requires the most effort out of the four method I listed above. Freelancing is not passive income. It is actually not a business. There is no profit. Your effort + cost = your revenue.
The only way you can profit is when you subcontract your service to another freelancer. Depending on the agreement with your buyer – this may be a breach of contract.
The reason why I included freelancing on the list is to highlight how it evolves as fast as the Internet evolves.
You can advertise yourself online and people will get you to do some work for them. You can join freelance sites like eLance or getafreelancer or guru or odesk and many others. You can even join design contest (crowdsourcing) to practice, build your portfolio and earn some money. I am not a big fan of crowdsourcing but I think they are helpful to designer from developing countries and help keep us on our toes (make sure you are alert, keep updating your skills so you can withstand the competition). They are also helpful for students of if you just started freelancing and want to build up your portfolio.
As you can see, my effort in using any of the above methods so far has been minimal. The income I got from them would not be enough for me to quit my job (besides, I kinda like my current job). So, to my bosses, if you read this – Don’t worry. As long as you keep on
treating me well spoiling me, I’ll stick close to the company like a glue. However, apart from method no. 4, they all have the potential to grow and provide you with a steady income. You will still need to put some effort into it because.. again.. there is NO GET RICH QUICK SCHEME.
Anyway, this post was supposed to be short. Somehow it turns into a mini novel. SO, I can’t be bothered proofreading what I just wrote. Again, I have full-confidence in my readers’ ability to read my Engrish.
Ciaaooo!!
p.s. as a disclaimer, I make no guarantee that if you attempted any of the above method, it will generate some money for you. I am confident you will, but unless you are me… I won’t guarantee anything.
– Do you like my pink lil mouse?