Hype and Thought on Making Money Online

As more and more people joined the bandwagon of online business, this not only restricted to stay-at-home mum and dad, even those high flying corporate executives are lured to it, is it really true one can make tons of money online?

Honestly speaking, the answer is Yes and No. Like all things in life, there is a lot of uncertainty lying ahead and is difficult to predict, doing business online or making money online, I would say wouldn’t go far away from reality as well.

Basically, I feel that if you are a middle level executive or above and have a decent income from your present job, stick to your job and at the same time learn the ins and outs of the online trade before jumping into it.

However, if you find that your present income not justifiable for your living, being lay off or maybe you feel comfortable with your employment income but due to personal reasons, such as fed up with your boss, tired of working under someone, and others that only you know, then perhaps online business is something you want to consider.

What I am going to share with you is my personal opinion, to be honest; I am not belonging to those elite groups, i.e. super online income earners. But unlike those who do not tell you the true, I got to be very honest with you, to earn money online is not going to be easy, in fact it is very tough and take time to build and to see the results, and is even tougher if you don’t want to spend money to earn money.

If someone were to tell you that you can earn very good and quick income online, you better go far and fast and keep your pocket money tight, because if it seems too good to be true, it is too good to be true!

If you have made up your mind or wanted to know something about the online business models that are available, I have appended those that came to my knowledge, and pen down the salient points of each, I hope you will have some ideas of it.

As to the online passive income, I would think that that is provided if one is active in the online field that he is pursuing, else the passive income will diminish over time, because as more and more wed sites, blogs or other platforms are created daily, your web sites, blogs, articles, and others will be lost in cyberspace if no actions were taken to promote and make it active to get people attention. For your info, according to statistics, the estimated worldwide internet-using population is about 1.08 billion in 2005 and was projected at 1.8 billion by 2010, from here we can see that hundreds of thousands of domain names will be created every single day and at an astonishing rate as well.

Now let us turn to some of the common online business models and online income stream that you may want to know about.

Affiliate Program

This is a kind of program that you join and help to promote other people/merchants’ products and/or services by earning a commission of what you sell or refer to them. It can be on a tier basis, meaning that for those referrals that later join as an affiliate through you, you will earn an overriding commission through sales generated by those affiliates.

Things you need to know are:

1. Should be no joining fees or whatsoever charges involved, else go far and fast from it.
2. Good to have your own web site or a platform to build on such as a blog for long term continuity of income and success. Try to avoid those “complete internet store solution” that offer you a complete web site to sell products or services, as I believe that it wouldn’t help you in the longer run as there aren’t any differentiation of what you offer compared to others. However, if you want to have a feel of how thing is going and doing, you may want to try initially, provided the cost to get it is not high. (To learn how to write your own HTML code and to better understand how web pages fit together, you may want to check these sites, i.e. webdesign and w3schools.
3. The learning curve is steep, but is not difficult; however, you will definitely experience confusion and distraction along the way.
4. The income is potentially very high if you are really good at it, however, a lot of effort and hard work is involved in order to achieve it. If you are looking for some quick extra income during spare time, then don’t waste your time on it, instead look for some online income stream that can help you earn some quick income without spending much time to learn and to build it, such as those paid for survey, paid for reviews, etc.

If you are seriously looking for affiliate program, then just do a search over the search engine such as in Google or Yahoo, by typing in words such as affiliate program, affiliate network, etc, a lot will pop up and for you to choose.

eBay

This is another online business model that you should seriously consider which can potentially reward you with good income, if affiliate program does not sound interesting and suit you. Generally, you don’t need to know how to build a web site, as one can subscribe to eBay’s Storefront which is like an ecommerce web site to conduct business online.

Like in affiliate business model, time commitment is very important to ensure long term success and reap the potentially high income in order to wholly support a living and not just some little extra income. Also, if you are looking to earn a little income by selling a few products, then by all means go for it, if the items’ price is attractive, the turnover period will be faster than in selling product in your new affiliate program, as many affiliates are selling identical products with the same price and the competition is fierce.

At this juncture, it may seem eBay model is more attractive than affiliate program, like all things in life, there are pros and cons of it. The pros and cons as compared to affiliate program:

Pros:

• Learning curve is less in order to get the thing up and running, for example, you don’t need to have a web site as one could subscribe to eBay storefront to conduct business online, at a nominal fee. Compare to engage someone to work out a web site for you if you do not have the knowledge and that you are budget tight.
• Less or zero to spend on advertising, as eBay is already a well known brand and a hot marketplace for consumers looking for products to buy and for sellers to transact business online.
• Turnover for selling products is usually faster as you compete among sellers within eBay, while for affiliate program, one need to compete with so many affiliates for either the same products or products with the same purpose from other affiliates on a global basis.

Cons:

• I feel that it is quite restrictive and routine in nature in listing items for sales as one need to follow eBay rules and regulations to list and to sell, in contrast to affiliate program, you can creatively work out on how you want to display your items, how and where to link it to, incorporate forum and blog in your web site, as well as incorporate third party advertisement such as Adsense for generating extra revenue and many other things.
• If you are selling your own products in eBay, you will find yourself need to constantly involved in delivery and shipping kind of thing, which some may not like, unless you are using drop shipping suppliers for your products. Bear in mind, selling own products will no doubt give you a better profits margin and create a brand name of your own to ensure long term success.
• Also there are other things that might be quite discouraging to new sellers, for example one need to have certain feedback score in order to sell at fixed price format. I personally feel that the feedback score will put new sellers at quite an uncompetitive position as there will be a period for new sellers to be on the same level playing field with the others to sell an item.
• A lot of times spend on email correspondence to resolve issues, which may scare you.
• You may feel that after so hard finding a supplier, the price you offer still can’t compete with others merely due to element of delivery and handling costs, you will feel frustrated and demotivated upon discovering why your items can not be sold.

If you want to get involved in eBay, you have to know that it is a very price driven marketplace for buying and selling, hence you should source your products directly form either the manufacturer or the wholesaler, instead of from a middle source which will make a profit out from it, hence your pricing will not be competitive after doing your own profit markup. Further, you need to aware that there are a lot of unscrupulous sources out there just to make you believe they are the manufacturer or wholesaler, also never pay on any one time joining fees or monthly recurring charges to join or to utilize what they supplied to you as legitimate sources will never charge you on anything.

Simple Online Money Programs

These programs should be free to join and will usually pay you a small commission for a little effort on your part. Basically, they paid you for:

• Reading emails
• Surf the net
• Filling out survey forms
• Review merchants’ products and services
• etc

Most of these programs allow you to build a network organization by introducing people to the programs and entitle you to earn some overriding commissions’ form those people you referred to and from transactions performed by them also.

Compare to affiliate program and eBay, these program are usually straight forward and take less time to earn some extra income online.

What were mentioned above is just some of the popular online programs; there are many out there waiting to be explored. I hope it gives you a general overview of making your first income online come true.

If you have your own products or services be it in physical or in digital form that will be the most ideal as you are able to capitalize on it to create your own brand name and to ensure your long term success. Those who are doing exceptionally well online are those who have something belong to them, to be honest.

To your success!