There are a lot of reasons to be online, not all of them are to make money as we talked about in a post last week (What’s Your Revenue Model?) but if you are online to make money the question has to be .. how do you make enough money monthly to help with the bills or even as a primary income source?
Before you know exactly how much money you can make online you need to understand how money is made online and what revenue models exist. Once that’s accomplished you need to take a look at how much money you can make and the methods for reaching those goals.
If you’re online to make money then you need to look at how a basic advertising model such as Google Adwords can earn you cash. It’s actually pretty straight forward although it’s a little daughting for some new comers.
- Sign up for a free account with Google Adsense
(note that when you’re selling ad spots you use Adsense, when you’re buying ad placements you use Adwords)
- Register a domain name and setup hosting with a company such as BlueHost
- Upload your website to your domain, or use a free blogging package such as WordPress
- Install your Adsence code into your WordPress or website template
- Promote your website and write great content
These five easy steps are all that it takes for anybody from an out of work stock trader to a stay at home mom or retired couple to make real money online. It works because there is always somebody one step behind your learning curve in a chosen specialty or your stage of life. The first true step to making online money is realizing that the things that you know are valuable and people want to share in your wisdom and experiences, it doesn’t matter if your 25 or 75 … you know things and people want to read about it.
How much money can you make online?
That question is a pretty big one to answer and it depends upon a few things:
- How much time can you invest in being successful online?
- What can you share with the world?
- Will people want to read about it?
Plentyoffish.com is a free online dating website, it’s run from the owners apartment and makes a million dollars a year … I’m not kidding. Askthebuilder.com pulls in $40,000 a month promoting home building and renovation expertise. The trick is to establish your CPM (cost per thousand) for a market and increase your website’s traffic to build off of that traffic. The Adsense report to the right demonstrates how a simple website can build not only increased traffic but also revenue from visitors with the placement ads.
In that example, the website owner received 35,243 page views yesterday which resulted in 265 clicks and earnings of $128.33 for the day. Assuming this was an average day for the author, his revenues for February would be $3,593.24 … not bad for running an online blog about something he (or she) was passionate about.
Shameless Self Promotion – Blogging is easy but sometimes the technical gets in the way of telling the world about yourself and your interests. When I’m not writing about blogging, I setup WordPress blogs for people at a reasonable rate, so if you need help please feel free to drop me a line.
