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:

Making Money from Domain Names - Part 1

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Making Money from Domain Names - Part 2

Making Money from Domain Names - Part 2

This is a follow-up article from the last one on Making Money from Domain Names. In the previous article we covered the interesting developments in the global internet market on the actual worth of Domain Names, that the market has grown big enough for people to actually consider looking at Domain Names as actual real tangible assets, much like property or real estate.

If you're wondering about Domain Names, and have thought of a brilliant name that you're just dying to get out there and register it before someone else claims it, then you can read the step by step guide in my article on How to Register your Website/Blog DNS Name and go to my preferred domain name registration service 123-Reg to do this. What we're going to consider now is, once you've got your Domain Name, something you can call an asset, what do you do with it, if you're too busy with your day job and have already got 50 blogs running, ok maybe not 50, but 1 or 2. And, more importantly, each of these blogs is taking up all the bandwidth of time available to you.

Enter Domain Parking

Domain parking is when people register a domain name and they don't intend to use it themselves at the moment for various reasons. I had heard it mentioned before, but never really connected the use or purpose of it until I wrote my article on making money from domain names, and started to promote it on social community network sites. One of the people from this promotion efforts, commented on my article as follows:

Author: diTesco
Comment:
Very informative post about domaining. I did try to register something
on sarah palin on the dot com arena, but unfornately did not have much
luck. Got one for dot org though and it is parked at namedrive.

Anway, you might want to check out my articles relating to this
subject.
http://www.iblogzone.com/search/label/Domain

Have a nice day

Anyway, I did go and check out his article and it was very informative on the terminology used in this area, and I would encourage my readers to go and check out his article as it provides good information which you will find useful if you want to get into investing in this area. Now, let's find out what the wikipedia has to tell us about Domain Parking:

Domain parking refers to the registration of an internet domain name without that domain being associated with any services such as e-mail or a website. This may have been done with a view to reserving the domain name for future development, and to protect against the possibility of cybersquatting. Since the domain name registrar will have set name servers for the domain, the registrar or reseller potentially has use of the domain rather than the final registrant.

Domain parking can be classified as monetized and non-monetized. In the former, advertisements are shown to visitors and the domain is 'monetized'. In the latter, an "Under Construction" or a "Coming Soon" message may or may not be put up on the domain by the registrar or reseller. This is a single-page website that people see when they type the domain name or follow a link in a web browser. Domain names can be parked before a web site is ready for launching.

This is exactly what we want to know. For after all, we don't want to register a Domain Name just because it's catchy, we want to become savvy investors. So the trick is to get your Domain Name registered (and look at ways to monetise it. Thankfully there are plenty of companies out there you can go to which will make your life easier. Of course if you have the time, you can litter your new Domain Name with a whole load of adsense and a few bits of information, but in truth, people see through these sites pretty quickly and don't bother to re-visit. Plus, you'll be creating a negative impression on potential buyers who might want to use your name, and are willing to pay for it.

Domain Parking works because there are companies out there who provide a well tailored professional-looking web presence on their own servers, and promote advertisements using your unique Domain Name to get to them. When people click on these adverts or links, you get a percentage of the revenue earned. That's what we want to do, get our Domain Names registered, and then park them with a reputable Domain Parking agency.

Lets just look at one such company, it does n't matter who at the moment, because we're not recommending anyone in particular. At this stage we just want to know how to go about Domain Parking.

1. You will have to register and open a Domain Monetisation Account. No big deal about this. Interestingly, one of the questions they ask is 'What kind of Traffic do your domains get' and give you a choice of 'type-in', 'back-links', or 'arbitage'. Another is 'How many visits per day do your domains get'. These must obviously be for domains people have used, but decided to stop maintaining them regularly and let someone else do it for them. Anyway, to settle it I've sent them an email to their support desk to see what they say about registering a blank unused Domain Name and I'll update this article when I hear from them.
2. Once you have your account, the next step is to add your Domain Name to the account.
3. Next you will have to go back to where you registered your Domain Name, and change the name servers on there to point to the Domain Parking agencies servers. This is quite an easy task to do, and if you read my article ( How to Register your Website/Blog DNS Name ), and use the company 123-Reg I recommended, then you'll have all the steps you need to do this in the articles I have written on this and external hosting.
4. Next you can choose a template or category for your Domain Parking, this will give it the look and feel you think most appropriate for your new Domain Name.
5. Then select up to 3 keywords that you want to be associated with your Domain Name. This is important, because these words will be used by the Domain Parking company to customise and tailor your website presence on their servers.

That's it. So it's not hard to do.

I hope you liked this article on Domain Parking. I guess I need to find out now which company to use, and what others recommend. So watch this space, for the next article, which will be about who I've chosen and why, and also if we have enough space we'll get ourselves a new Domain Name, register it, and park it and show you all the ropes of how I did it.

This is a journey, I hope you'll join me and keep me company as we go along.

Please leave me your comments so I know it's not a blank abyss I'm talking to!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NOTE: This article was first published in our own sister site at:

Is Barack Obama Superman, can he really 'Change The World'?

He is supremely confident and full of rhetoric charm, but can the new Democratic nominee Barack Obama really 'Change the World'.

Can any man change the crazy new upside down world that will be left behind after the financial meltdown of the world's biggest banks, the crisis in our housing markets, the rising unemployment, the continued uncertainty of a global crisis. But in this Brave New World, which is crumbling away as we speak, we need visionaries, men with a drive and ambition, leaders who can inspire and lift the United States from the mire it has collapsed in. Yes, we need Barack Obama and his kind to help us out of this mess!!

He is also cautious, he knows polls can be misleading and he has his work cut out. He is a realist and see's that the race is not finished until you get to the finishing post, so he warns his over-enthusiastic supporters, "We are 19 days away from changing this country. Nineteen days away. But for those who are getting a little cocky, I've got two words for you: New Hampshire," said Mr Obama.

Yes, New Hampshire was an important lesson for Barack Obama, but a wise man, is one who learns from his failure and seeks out ways to avoid them again. We hope he's right, that his caution and judgement, will let him continue his rise up to the presidential seat.

"I want you to believe," says Barack Obama. "Not so much believe just in me but believe in yourselves. Believe in the future. Believe in the future we can build together. I'm confident together we can't fail." And this is the message the Americans need now. We need people to lift up our spirits, there's enough doom and gloom being reported every day in the press. Indeed the 'BUZZ' from all this negativity is downright soul-destroying, so well done Mr Obama, you're doing the right thing.

We need to believe in something, to believe in someone who is willing to lead us out of this mess and not just hide behind the corridors of the Whitehouse. We need a front man, a representative of the people we can believe in, someone to challenge us and lead us into the future.

"I promise you. We won't just win New Hampshire. We will win this election and, you and I together, we're going to change the country and change the world."

Yes, we need confident leaders, but we also need to look at who they are, where they come from and are we willing to trust them with probably the most responsible job in the World. Lot of the people will let you believe he's already won, but YOU need to decide, at the end of the day it's the people who elect the nominees that make the difference with their vote.

What do YOU think, is he Superman?