If you are looking for an online income opportunity – proceed with caution. Its a jungle out there – and an unregulated one! Unfortunately with the collapse of the property market and the loss of many jobs in the US a huge number of people seem to think that the Internet is where they can make their fortune – for free, and preferably while they sleep with no money down.
Sorry to burst your bubble – there are online income opportunities galore – but you will have to sift through a lot of chaff to get to the good ones. And you will have come face to face with the fact that the Internet is the ultimate force for globalization. In other words you may well have to compete with people who live in very low wage countries (such as India and the Philippines) who will happily work for a lot less than you will.
But an Internet job is not the the only way to make online income. Opportunity abound for someone who is prepared to develop their own business – and this is really where the Internet comes into its own – reducing the costs of start-up to nearly zero.
So lets look at won’t work to start with – there is nothing that will guarantee you an “Online Income Generator” – there is no way to use the Internet to automatically deposit money into your bank account – its not going to happen, sorry! The thing is that if you even vaguely thought there was – then – really you really don’t know enough about the Internet – go and get your self informed before you even look at earning a living online.
The Internet is not some magical new thing that has different rules of business and different ways of adding value! What is magical about the Internet is that its now so much cheaper and technically easier for you to develop a business online. But you still have to add value to your customers, you still have to offer something that is of value to someone – and they are willing to pay for.
Online Income Sources
So that said – what are genuine income sources?
1. Selling your skills online. This is probably the source of the majority of online workers income. They are paid to do something: write, design websites, be a virtual PA – those are the common ones. Using the Internet is just the cheap way of communicating with someone who may be half the world away from you.
2. Making money from affiliate sales. This gets about as a good press as MLM – but the same applies – yes you can make money taking a commission selling other products be it from Amazon or some other affiliates (and there are thousands and thousands). Wny would someone pay you a commission – well for the same reason that a real estate agent is paid when they sell a house – you have introduced a buyer and the company has made a sale.
3. “Classified”advertising – this is different from Affiliate sales – in this case you get paid when someone clicks on the ad that is on your site – whether or not they ultimately purchase from the advertiser. Google’s own Adsense program is the best known of these programs – but there are others. Often perceived to be the easiest way to make money – they aren’t – in fact its one of the most difficult.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell -those 3 are the basic ways some people use the Internet to make an online second income – or even a full-time living.
Notice how I failed to mention being paid to do surveys, paid to click, paid to read email. That’ because the vast majority of such schemes are indeed scams – why would anyone pay you to mindlessly click a website? I’m not saying you won’t make a dollar or two – but that will most likely be all that it is.
Is there a legitimate Online Income Opportunity?
Its very easy to decide that the whole money making online thing is a one huge con. Hell I’ve even tried to persuade people I know in person, and have known for years, they don’t disbelieve that I make a living online, but they still won’t commit to making it work for them.
And that’s fair enough – because there is one little detail that most of the get rich quick, while you sleep schemes leave out:
making an online income takes an awful lot of hard work!
As I’ve said to many people – if you need to make money this month or next month – get a job – take any job, clean toilets if you have to – this online gig won’t pay you in the first month!
Even if you are taking the approach of selling your own skills online – the quickest and easiest to start with – you still will need to learn on the job and break into the market – it will still take you months to make more than a few dollars.
If you are an affiliate income or other advertising sales- then it will take a lot longer to learn what you need to know and to develop your websites.
It took me over 3 years to get practically nowhere doing it the hard way.
These days its easier -there is a short cut – I use and recommend the Keyword Academy – and I do so because they are legit, and their methods work – simple.