Apparently we’re at a point of time where it’s not uncommon to come by people who seem to have this thought that MAKE MONEY ONLINE = BLOGGING. They seem to think that blogging is THE WAY to make a whole lot of money through the Internet.

I believe this misconception is spread by people who don’t even know what making money online is all about.

The Ever Expanding Internet

A Blog is a type of website. Blogging is an act of updating the blog. Blogger is the person who does the blogging, he / she doesn’t have to be the owner of the blog either, since a blog could have more than 1 person behind it.

That said, monetization has been around long before blogging came into the scene. And monetization for the masses only came about quite a while after blogging became popular.

Various Money Making Methods

Need ideas? Here’s how you could make money online……….

Serving Ads

The most common way of making with a website would be by serving ads. How much you make with it really depends on 101 other factors that it’s impossible to even gauge. Some ads are paid based on impressions, some pay per click, some pay on monthly basis regardless of impression or clicks. There are even those that pay base on Google Pagerank.

Some agencies have high requirements before approving you as their publisher while have minimal requirements that practically everyone can join their network.

That’s not to say you must go through any agent. Many sites sell their ad space directly, and at an affordable monthly fee.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are interesting and apparently not many are into it, well at least not here in Malaysia but there a some who did pretty well with it and earning quite a lot on a daily basis.

Making $$$ out of such program isn’t easy as it often requires people to sign up for a service or purchase a product before considering it a COMPLETE, but each successful “sales” could be really rewarding. Imagine being paid USD $20 for each completed transaction, and getting a few done on daily basis.

Buying & Selling a.k.a Online Trading

If your website is about selling items online then clearly your primary monetization is the profit margin of each product sold. The best part is that you still could implement monetization methods from ad providers just like anyone else.

If owning a website is not something of your preference, then you could consider being a seller on forums, or websites like Ebay, Lelong and other places. I do know some people who actually do trading, buying low and then selling them off at higher price and they do make quite a huge sum of money from doing so.

Writing

There are agencies that pay you for writing Advertorials, basically you the agency will provide you a list of their clients whom you are eligible to write about. You then choose one, write about it and publish the Advertorial on your site and get paid later.

Besides agencies, some websites also allow their readers to contribute articles and pay them for articles that are published.

Promote Your Services

Some may argue that this isn’t exactly MAKE MONEY ONLINE but I don’t think anyone can deny this as using the power of Internet to make money. In my opinion, this is no different from those who are selling goods online.

No Promises

Making money online is no different from making money elsewhere (that’s not online) – it’s just that many people speak out of ignorance, making it seem all so new and so alien!

Anyway, knock yourself out with the list of Ad Networks. I’m sure there’s more out there, do let me know if I’ve missed out any.

Making money online takes effort. It’s not something that brings you wealth overnight! It’s common for people to think that they’ll start to make money once they start a website, and I’m not surprise these end up in disappointment because a fledgling website could barely earn enough each month to buy 1/4 a loaf of bread.

Even if you do earn 0.50 sen each day, it’ll take 100 days just to get RM 50 and you might not even be able to cash-out the funds as ad agencies often have a minimum figure for you to achieve before issuing payment. If you think about it, you’re better off working on weekends as a lowly waiter of any restaurant – at least you still get money and perhaps even some free meal.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 4:47 pm and is filed under Computing & The Internet, Websites & Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.