Earning Extra Money – How to Earn Money on the Internet
Lots of people talk about it, but lots of people also fail when attempting to discover how to earn money on the internet, and there are a number of reasons for this high rate of failure.
Often, people lack a sense of scale and proportion. As with anything else that has the potential of earning you extra cash, you get out what you put into it, but most folks don’t want to hear that. They come into the game with stars in their eyes, completely enraptured by the people shouting that they can “make $50,000 by next weekend with no work! A system so simple, your cat could do it for you!”
Uh huh.
Look, if that’s the kind of program you’re looking for, then you’re in the wrong place. I told you on the home page of this site (article entitled “Extra Income Ideas“), that’s not how we do things around here. You get the unvarnished truth, even when maybe it’s not what you were hoping to hear.
So there it is. If you want to make money working at home (either on the internet or on something else), it’s going to take work, and anybody who tells you any different is 100% certain to be either lying or trying to sell you something.
Do you know how much I made during my first month online?
Wait for it….
Twenty-four cents.
And let me tell you, NOTHING tasted sweeter than that twenty-four freakin’ cents. I called my wife in to the computer just so she could see the little numbers sitting there on my Adsense earnings page.
Wow, I thought. I did it.
And it was a pretty huge accomplishment when you consider that the greater bulk of people who attempt to make money online never make a dime.
Heck, I made two dimes and change, and that was only my first attempt!
That figure seems laughably small, and let’s face it, it is, but it was a major milestone for me, and since that time, I haven’t looked back.
That twenty-four cents was my talisman. Proof that the concepts I was pursuing were valid and viable. All I needed to do from there was scale it up.
In the real world, “scaling it up” usually means multiply the number of hours you apply to a given project, but thankfully, on the internet, things work a bit differently, and once you’ve identified a profitable niche and set everything up, you can leave it in what I call “maintenance mode” and it just sits there, idling, generating regular income for you for months on end without you having to touch it. Of course, periodically, you’ll still want to check in and give it a bit of a tune up, but that’s nothing that takes any amount of time really, and in future articles, I’ll be showing you ways to minimize the time it takes.
Seriously, once you get a system in place that works for you, it’s just a matter of repetition. Some might even say it’s a little on the dull side. Certainly some of the mechanics of making money on being online are, well…less than glamorous, but others are downright fascinating, so you take the good with the bad. To be honest, even if it was flat out mind numbingly boring (which it isn’t), there’s still nothing I’d rather be doing.
I enjoy the freedom that the knowledge of how to earn money at home provides, and it is my pleasure to share it with you.
You might still be skeptical of that, and I don’t blame you.
If you’ve spent any time at all searching for “the next big internet money making idea,” then you know how many hucksters and charlatans are out there, and you don’t know me from Adam. I might have some dark and nefarious plot in mind to take your money while you’re not looking, and to convince you otherwise will take time.
I understand that.
You should know that one of the hallmarks of people who want to sell you something is that sooner or later, they’re going to ask you for your email address.
You will note that nowhere on this site, is there an opt in box asking for such information from you.
And there never will be, because that’s not what this site is about. (NOTE: you can have this site’s RSS feed directed to your e-mail, but at no time will that be used for anything other than a matter of convenience for you).
Anyway, enough on that topic. Let’s get to the meat of this lesson.
Ways to Earn Extra Income at Home
If you want to make money working at home, then more likely than not, the internet is going to figure into your plans. Even if you focus on business ideas that are better suited to a local approach (see the article entitled, “Earning Extra Money – Physical Goods & Services”), sooner or later you’ll find yourself making use of the ‘net to boost your earnings.
The first thing we’ll do is broadly define the various approaches you can take to earning money online, and then drill down further into each of them to discuss their viability, pros and cons. And here we go:
The following are the most common methodologies for earning extra money via the internet (note that some of these might also be considered options for your kids, if you didn’t find anything to suit your fancy over in the article on Ways For Kids to Earn Money):
• PTC Advertising Sites
• PTS Sites
• Survey Sites
• Hybrid Sites
• Freelance Sites
• Augmentation Strategies
• Internet Marketing/Advertising
I have listed these in what I consider to be their order of effectiveness, and the rest of this article will be spent discussing each of these items in greater detail.
PTC Advertising Sites – In my opinion, you’d have to be pretty desperate to attempt to make money using this methodology, but there have been some who’ve tried it and found it to be worth doing. I tried it and found it awful, but your mileage may vary, so I’m including it here for discussion.
PTC stand for “pay to click,” and the gimmick here is that you sign up with a company. That company displays advertisements to you, which you have to view for a minimum allotment of time (i.e., “ you must look at each ad for at least thirty seconds). Then, if you click the ad for more information, you make a few cents.
And there’s the rub. Yes, you can earn money quick using this system, but you’ll be earning pennies for a full day’s “work.” Add to that the fact that it’s just soul crushingly boring to sit there for hours at a time clicking on ads and…well, you get the idea.
There’s a secondary gimmick with this type of site, also. They almost universally come with an affiliate program attached. This means that if you convince someone else to do this, you’ll get a small boost to your account for ads they view too. Theoretically, with a sufficient number of people signed up under you looking at advertising all day long, you could make some decent money at it.
Sadly, theory doesn’t align very well with reality in this case. Your “bleed rate” (the rate at which you lose those under you) is very high, again, because this is frankly mind numbingly dull work, and most people who’ve tried it won’t stay with it for long. So you’ll have to continually ratchet up your marketing campaign to entice ever more people to do it for you in order to do much more than tread water. Again, if you have no other options and need a specific amount of money, maybe give this a go. Otherwise, there are more appealing and effective ways to earn extra income at home. Also note, most of these have minimum payout thresholds (i.e., “you don’t get paid till you have at least thirty dollars in your account), so while you can EARN money quickly, you might not get paid that money for a while.
PTS Sites – There used to be tons of these (Pay to Surf Sites) floating around the ‘net, and there’s a reason there aren’t any more. The business model sucks and doesn’t work very well. The only survivor that’s worth noting here is a company called Cash Fiesta, and more on them in a minute.
The gimmick here is that when you sign up with one of these companies, they install a toolbar on your computer. While you’re surfing, the toolbar is busily flashing various ads at you. You don’t have to click the ads or do anything in particular, and you get paid for the amount of time you’re surfing. Again, there’s an affiliate program involved, and if you can get people to sign up under you, you get a little bonus money for the time they spend surfing.
Once more though, we’re talking pennies per hour here. The only exception is the company I mentioned earlier, Cash Fiesta, and they’ve got a few interesting gimmicks that have ensured their survival when many of their contemporaries went belly up.
First, their toolbar is unique in that it ensures you’re paying attention to it. There’s a little icon running along in the toolbar. Periodically, he stops running, and when he does, you stop earning money until you click him (which starts him running again). Because of this, they can charge better rates for ads, since companies know you’re actively looking at the bar.
They’ve also got a program where you can complete a variety of free (or mostly free) offers made by advertisers associated with the company. The more offers you complete in a month, they more per hour they pay you to surf (up to a dollar or so an hour, if you complete at least 6 offers a month).
If you choose to do this, you will NEED to stay organized. You’ll need a spreadsheet with the offers you’ve completed so you can keep track of when to cancel them—because invariably the free trial comes with a stipulation of automatic billing after the trial period, unless you cancel), and probably an e-mail box dedicated to the task, so your main e-mail doesn’t get flooded with spam.
If you’re going to be online a good bit of the day anyway, you might as well get paid for it, but make no mistake, this will NEVER make you rich. Again, if you want to earn money quick, and your needs are relatively small, you can be set up with something like this in under five minutes. Still, keep your expectations in check. This will never make your car payment, and probably never pay your cable bill (tho if you market heavily for affiliates, you could realistically make in the neighborhood of a hundred bucks a month at it…more trouble than it’s worth, IMO, and while I signed up to be an affiliate for them, I’m not going to even bother to post my affiliate link). I turn it on now and then when I remember, which is honestly, not very often, though when I was hungry for ANY money I could make on the ‘net, I did use them for a few months. It’s legit, just not terribly effective. Again, there are usually minimum payout thresholds involved here, so the money might not be as quick in coming to you as you’d like.
Survey Sites – There are programs out there where people charge $27 – $47 for their “secrets” of survey site success.
I suspect that if those people find this site, they will not be very pleased with me, because I’m about to divulge everything you need to know about making money with survey sites.
First, it’s possible. There’s a market for it, and you can make money filling out surveys online. If they’re not free to join, don’t bother with them. Second, you will need an e-mail account dedicated to the task, because it will get FLOODED with spam. Get used to it. It’s one of the costs associated with doing this type of work. Third, you will need RoboForm. Taking surveys is neither glamorous or fun. In fact, it’s only a few steps better than looking at PTC ads all day, but the money’s better. RoboForm is free, and makes your life easier. Get it. Install it. Use it. You’ll thank me later.
There are tons of survey sites out there, and most of them are interconnected (they link to each other), so once you find a few, you’ll easily find a ton more. Start with SurveySpot, Vindale Research, and Opinion Outpost. Those are all good outfits, though Vindale is the best of the bunch and the most professional, in my opinion.
Survey sites come in three “flavors.” Paid surveys (you get money), Points surveys (you get points, which can be traded in for various things), or Sweepstakes Surveys. Obviously, cash is best. Take survey. Make money. Another instance of a quick paying internet work from home gig, but be aware that most survey companies have monetary thresholds (i.e., “you don’t get paid till you’ve got at least $30 in your account), so be aware of this. Points can be as good as cash, depending on what they offer. A $50 Target gift card is as good as a fifty dollar bill, provided you need what Target carries, so don’t automatically shy away from these. DO stay away from sweepstakes surveys though. Waste of time. Follow the money.
The key to success with surveys is mass. Don’t sign up with one or two companies, but twenty or thirty (start with the ones above and they will lead you to the rest in short order). The more you take, the more you make. Some have affiliate programs associated with them, and there’s something to be said for a bit of marketing here…give away information on surveys and provide (affiliate) links for others to click on. Then you get a little cut for your trouble. I’m not going to do that here, because that’s not the purpose of this site, but it strikes me as workable.
Anyway, the bottom line is that survey sites are a viable way of making regular income, and if you leave here and sign up for a few, you can start making money within the hour, though again, most have a minimum payout threshold, so don’t plan on spending that cash today. It’s repetitive and a bit dull, but you can easily keep the lights on and the internet running with the income you make. As an extra income opportunity, it’s certainly viable, but I am deeply sorry if you’ve spent any money at all to find out more about it. The things people will make you pay for! Sheesh.
Hybrid Sites– Sites like these combine the best features of several types of “internet, work from home” programs, and are generally stronger and more effective because of it. Sites like SendEarnings and Inbox Dollars (two that I have used in the past, when I was just starting out) combine offer completion, surveys, games, and paid e-mails (you get paid for receiving and reading advertising e-mails) into a means of making a small but serviceable income for yourself.
As with most programs of this type, there’s usually an affiliate gimmick involved, and you make a little something by convincing others to sign up (while I am still technically an affiliate at a few of these, I’m not going to place my links here…again, that’s against the purpose and main thrust of this site), and they come with a minimum payout threshold, so no immediately spendable cash, though you can start earning in a matter of just a few minutes. Combined with surveys and the aforementioned Cash Fiesta, I found that I could earn money part time at the computer, and it was the rough equivalent of a 20 hour per week job, in both time spent and monthly gain. Not a bad haul, but again, also not something that you could plan your retirement around.
Still, they’re easy to use, and they make it easy to track your earnings. Just remember: Dedicated e-mail account and stay organized!
Freelance Sites – Now we’re getting into the good stuff. The various sites, packages, and programs mentioned above are all essentially designed to make someone else rich. Sure, you get a humble slice of the pie, but at the end of the day, the guy who owns the company is the one making the big bucks, and deep down, you knew that.
Freelance stuff is different though. Now you’re more in control. If you have a skill you can market (editing, writing, coding, web design, etc), you can sign up and create a profile at elance.com, odesk.com, or other such sites, and sell your services.
You can start today, and begin making money as soon as your first assignment rolls in.
You can also join sites like eHow and do articles for them. There’s no way to predict how much you can earn from doing freelance stuff, but the upper limit is bound only by your time and what skills you’re offering (obviously, someone with twenty years coding experience and mastery of several programming languages will make more than a guy cranking out 300-400 word articles), but you get the idea.
Market yourself. Market your skills. Make money. With these kinds of sites, it really is that simple. And people said there was no such thing as a way to make money easy online? (I know, I know, this is probably not what the marketer was hawking when he used the phrase, but still!)
Augmentation Strategies – If you’ve an existing local business and want to expand, you can certainly use the web to do so. A perfect example of this: My wife makes jewelry. She sells some locally and does craft shows and the like, but recently, she expanded her operation by opening a shop on etsy.com (Creativisms, click to see!). Now, instead of selling to the city of Conway and surrounding towns, her creations are visible to a global audience, and THAT is quite a boost in exposure!
Internet Marketing/Advertising – And this, in my opinion, is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yes, it is true that you can make money working at home via any of the options mentioned above, but if you want to earn a second income and then hold out the possibility of quitting your day job and working your online business full time, then this is where you want to be.
We’ll devote the entire next article to this subject in particular (Establishing a Passive Income Business), but let me briefly go over the way this works.
Internet Marketing/Advertising is essentially about three things:
• Selling your site’s traffic to advertisers
• Marketing products with affiliate programs
• Selling physical goods via drop shippers, Ebay, and the like
In the first case, what you’re doing is building content sites for ad networks like Adsense. The idea is that you identify a low-competition niche (and more on how to do that in the next article, where we’ll cover this in much greater depth), make a site that caters to that niche, get traffic to your site, and start displaying ads.
Some portion of your traffic will click your ads, and you make a spot of money.
A good Adsense site can make you $5-10 a day in clicks, and even an average site can pull in a buck a day. Now, I know what you’re thinking…that’s not really all that impressive, but consider this:
Once you learn to do it, you can easily generate 5-10 such sites a month.
Even if your sites are all average (assuming you’ve done your niche homework correctly), and they only net you a dollar a day, look at what happens:
Month 1: 5 Sites @ 30/month = $150/mo
Month 2: 10 Sites @ 30/month = $300/mo
Month 3: 15 Sites @ 30/month = $450/mo
…
Month 6: 30 Sites @30/month = $900/mo
…
Month 12: 60 Sites @30/month = $1800/mo
And so forth. Once built, these sites continue to earn money month after month with very little input from you, creating a passive income business that will grow as big as you care to make it.
Now, mind you, it takes a fair bit of work, and it will probably be a few months before you’re good enough and efficient enough to crank out five of these sites a month, and the truth is that you may find a really good niche that’s worth devoting all your time and attention to for several months to really build and market it (in which case, that one site can earn you a substantial sum, all by itself).
Even so, the business market of a pure Adsense marketer is a little wonky, when you think about it.
I mean, at the end of the day, you’re designing a site with the HOPE that people will leave it (i.e., click an ad…you get paid, but they go away from your site).
So…you’re building all this content, hoping that they choose an ad over your content? Meh. Something just seems off kilter about that.
I’ll admit it. When I first started studying Internet Marketing, that was my goal. To make 100% of my income from Adsense, but here’s the thing.
Let’s say that the average Adsense click pays $0.50 (it varies wildly, by niche and loads of other factors, so don’t use this as gospel!)…but for the sake of example, let’s just say you get fifty cents a click. It takes the same amount of work to build the site for Adsense as it does to market an affiliate product though, and if you get a 50% commission on whatever product you’re selling (quite common to get that, or more), then each affiliate sale is going to be worth a LOT more than fifty cents.
What I’m saying is…Adsense is good, and I have it on all my sites, but why not also incorporate affiliate products? Same amount of work, potentially huge gain, and you still don’t have to worry about customer service, returns, and the like. Affiliate sales are every bit as “hands off” as Adsense is, so why not make use of it? They really work beautifully together and form a cohesive strategy. That is to say, you win either way.
On the one hand, if someone comes to your site looking for information and you have it, they’re likely to buy the affiliate product. If you don’t have exactly what they’re looking for, they’re likely to click an ad and keep looking. Either way, your cash register rings, and that’s a good thing.
The final thing to make note of here is the selling of physical products online, and this can take any number of forms, from drop shipping a staggering assortment of products (do a google search on “drop shipper directories” and you’ll see what I mean!), to selling stuff on Ebay (tangential story, on a dare, I bought something from the local dollar store, to prove I could sell almost anything on Ebay at a profit…it sold for $4.95 plus shipping!…Cake!), to more homespun online stores like Etsy.com, and a gazillion others. In every case, you’re taking either something you already own, or have made, or can buy at a discount (wholesale), putting it up for sale, and pocketing a commission on each. That’s where your money is, and this type of selling can be hugely profitable. In my opinion, it comes with some drawbacks not found with Adsense/Affiliate selling, but by no means can I call this a “weak” or inferior option. It all comes down to what you prefer and what you’re comfortable with.
In any case, both of these types of sites will be covered in much greater detail in coming articles, as there’s far more to be said on the subject, but I’ve kept you long enough for this session.
Whew! Okay, I know we’ve covered LOADS of material in this section, and I’m sorry it took so long, but the fact is, there are TONS of internet moneymaking ideas, and I wanted to give you a thorough and complete overview before we continued (and even this doesn’t cover the whole spectrum: There are money making forums where you get paid to post, and a host of other things besides…the internet is a dynamic beast, and people are constantly finding new ways to monetize it, so don’t consider this list to be all inclusive, by any means!)
Summary – “Big Secrets Revealed”
• There really ARE tons of ways to make money working at home
• There are a few ways to use the internet to earn money quick, but most of these come with strings and don’t pay all that much
• You get out of it what you put in. Anyone who tells you there’s no work involved is either lying or trying to sell you something. Keep your wallet closed! If someone tells you that by next Tuesday, using his newfangled $97 system, he can have your income on par with the GDP of Bolivia, put him/her on ignore and move along. If you pay him, he’ll get richer, you’ll get disappointed, and I’ll get to say I told you so. Save us both time and don’t go there.
• As always, the best money making opportunities online are the ones where you remain firmly in control. Freelance stuff is very viable. Augmentation strategies can pay off big time, and Adsense/Affiliate marketing in combination is wonderfully effective.
Freebies reference in this Section
None
