The Make Money Online Hype versus Reality!!!!

The Make Money Online Hype versus Reality!!!!

In this post I'm going to share with my readers my own experience so far with setting up this web/blog site and trying to Make Money Online, and some of the things I've learnt on the way, so hopefully you may avoid some of the pitfalls yourselves.

The Make Money Online Hype

If we're honest with ourselves, we're all doing this to make some money in one way or another.

It's nice to share our rantings and ravings about our favourite subjects and find like-minded souls in cyber-space who are prepared to listen to us, and engage with us in these things. That is the important point, engagement. How do you get people to engage with us, connect with us sufficiently to want to become friends, internet buddies, share ideas and thoughts with us. In the end, it's probably one of our most deep-rooted and emotional needs, that wanting to 'connect' with people, to make 'contact', a real emotional connection with another human being.

When you look around the internet, there are very few PURE sites, by that I mean sites which are there simply for the higher good of mankind and the world at large. In contrast there is a plethora of sites ready to sell you something, asking you to click here to make your fortune, enticing you in one way or another to hopefully part you with some of your money. For, let's face it, that is the purpose of advertising, TO SELL SOMETHING. And the internet does it really well. In the Times Online article of 30th October, you can see how just in the UK:

Google racked up £925 million in advertising revenue in the UK in the first nine months and is set to come in at about £1.25 billion for the year as it continues to expand. A year ago it generated £871 million, overtaking Channel 4, meaning that its UK annual growth is about 43.5 per cent.

Google has overtaken, month by month revenue form the UK's Commercial TV Advertising Channel ITV1. In the US, Google revenues topped $5.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2008, an increase of 39 percent compared to the second quarter of 2007. These are staggering figures, which clearly demonstrate there is money to be made, and it is these kind of statistics that has led to the thousands of blogs and websites all promising to help us 'Make Money Online'.

Believe it or not, if you're reading this, you're already caught up in the hype. As I was too, because, I'd seen all these google ads on all the pages I'd visit, and yes, I wanted to know how it worked. On top of that, I was being literally spammed out (does that make sense!) by all the Internet Marketeers who claimed to have made hundreds of thousands of dollars online through the internet, and how the money was literally rolling in 24/7 365 days a year, without them needing to do anything after the initial set up. Oh, by the way, you have to put your name and email address, click on this link to get their FREE e-book on how to do this overnight. Yes, I've been suckered into it all too!!!

The Reality

Well, anyone who thinks making money online is easy is in for a big disappointment. The answer is, it's not easy. Those who are doing it have had to put a lot of effort in to establish their websites with good content, built up their rankings on the search engine results pages, and don't really rant and rave about it. They're not making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Despite all the pictures of Ferraris you see, all the photos of payment cheques they've recieved, don't be fooled. It's not that easy, and if you think about it, is n't that true of most things in Life. Anything worth getting, is worth spending time on, and at the end of the day, you will only get out what you put in, don't expect miracles.

If you look around at all the Make Money Online sites, they all have more or less the same information, it's duplicated time and time again. The reality is there really is NO substitute for good quality original content. If you have something to say, it's genuine and has substance, people will want to know about it. Google will find it and you will get your rankings. There is no simple way to do this, it's going to take time.

The important thing is don't set up unrealistic expectations, if you do, you will only be disappointed. Start off small, and then raise the bar. But do have Goals, for these will motivate you and drive your success. But be realistic, have a passion for what you're doing, set up your stall on the internet, light your flame and let it burn. The light, if it's strong enough, and burns brightly enough, will bring you your just rewards. Remember, money is n't everything, it's the way we use it that's more important.

My Experience

Well as you can see, I've set up my stall, and lit the flame.

But that was only the beginning of it. I was so eager to learn about Adsense, how to get it into my pages, about Affiliate Programmes and ways to monetise what I was doing. So I put these things onto my pages, submitted it to the search engines and truth is NOTHING happened. I loaded up STATCOUNTER so I could see what was happening. I could see two regular visitors, one was me of course, and the other one was a friend who visited my site regularly, but I could n't see anyone clicking on my site. Then I realised, nobody knew about my site, my title was so obscure, TechnicalArticles, who's going to type that in!!! So I started joining web-forums, blog catalog sites, and visiting sites and leaving comments so I could get backlinks to my site. Slowly, I was beginning to get traffic, not huge numbers but a bit more than just my friend visiting.

So far, on 21st October 2008, the site is reporting $26.54 from the time I installed ADSENSE which was 1st October 2008. No, I have n't missed out any zeros, that's the hard facts.

Conclusions

Do you know something, when I saw the figure $26.54 I was over the moon!!!

You might say, why? The reason is because, it was WORKING!!! When I'd started, I had no idea anything would be possible to make money online. But to do it myself, put it into practice and actually earn some dollars, however small they may seem, I was well chuffed (pleased)!!!!

So in conclusion, don't get drawn into the hype and set unrealistic expectations that are impossible to achieve. You can do it, just like I did. Look through my site, I have listed out the steps on how I set up this web/blog site, and if you need more information, just let me know.

I would be interested in your own experiences in the comments below, how have you found your journey of making money online, has it been an easy ride or a hard climb.

NOTE: Originally published on our sister site: