Can You Make a Living Online? 10 Steps
Many people ask “Can I make a living online?” The answer is… it depends. I know, not what you want to hear, but read on. Making a living online requires a few keys:
1. Making a living online is some combination of running your own business and freelancing. You need to understand some basic business concepts or you will never succeed (or if you find success through dumb luck, you will not be able to sustain it).
2. There is no boss online so you must be self motivated. If you need a time clock or someone to tell you what to do forget it – stick to a work for hire job.
3. Find something you love to do, a topic you care about. If you don’t believe in and love what you do life is drudgery. If you don’t love it, you will not stick with it. Also, lack of passion will show in your work and the monetary results.
Sure there are topics you could tackle that are not glamorous (marketing financial services anyone?) but every topic can be spun to be interesting somehow.
4. Be helpful. People don’t want to be sold, they want to be helped in the journey to buy. Provide great information and link to useful info, rather than pushing what you are selling. The benefits are many:
-others might link to or “like” your content helping out. There are SEO benefits to links and likes.
-visitors will feel more at ease.
-you deliver value to people and they than feel more comfortable buying from you. Blogger Pat Flynn exemplifies this principal as he delivers top quality informative content and only works in affiliate links to useful products he recommends, never hard selling them. Readers feel like rewarding Pat and he makes a very good living online.
-More quality informative content brings search engine traffic.
5. Think outside the box and don’t be afraid to jump into online business out of necessity. This blogger in Malaysia found that blogging pays more than engineering when he had trouble getting a job in a recession so he started a freebee site and than grow other web properties.
6. Learn about the tools to succeed online. Here are some places to start:
-There are many websites that share revenue and are great for building backlinks from.
-Autoresponders and mail programs are great for managing mailing lists
-Unique online content marketplaces like Constant Content are great for sourcing high quality content for your projects. Odesk is another great source for inexpensive help on your projects – no need to learn to build a website when you can have a nice website whipped up in India for $50 overnight.
7. If cash is needed faster, consider working for others freelancing as you develop your own passive income (from online properties) sources. Some places to start:
-(Constant Content is also a good place to earn money writing)
-Odesk is a fantastic freelance marketplace
-Demand Studios – I don’t recommend them, but many writers have some success here.
8. Find a good horse and ride it. This is what one of my early online inspirations WriterGig did, building up a very nice residual ehow income. When you find a good plan that works for you, wash, rinse and repeat – in her case hundreds of short ehow articles.
9. Never stop exploring new opportunities as you continue on a quest to earn a living online,. The online work is constantly changing and what works today might not work tomorrow. It might also work better tomorrow – you just never know. eHow died as an residual income opportunity, but WriterGig had already developed skills in niche sites and other areas she could make even more money from.
10. Have fun and always keep learning! Earning online is like a big puzzle, the scope of which keeps changing. Keep exploring and learning and you too will become an expert on earning online.
Tagged as: blog income, blogging, Smart Passive Income
0 comments:
Post a Comment