Although it is possible to make money online, many bloggers or small business owners fail to do so.
The main reason people don't make money online is that they think it's easy, and when they realize that it's a lot of work, they get bored and give up.
I have been working online since 2002, and based on my experience, I can assure you that it is possible to make money online, but it requires a LOT of patience and hard work.
In this post, you will learn why it is so hard to make money online.
Toward the end of the post, I will outline some solid ways to follow that work to make money online.
1. You Don't Have Enough Traffic
To make money online, you need traffic. This is how the online business model works.
If you are selling a high-converting product, you can make money with only a few visitors per day, but if you want to make money from advertising, you need a few thousand per day.
Without traffic, do not expect to make any money online.
When we talk about traffic, many people think Google is the only way to get that traffic, but this is not true.
You can use many sources of Internet traffic to meet your monetary targets, but you need to know where to find them.
2. Your Website/Blog Is Too Young
Don’t believe everything you read about making money online. There is no magic way to make thousands of dollars in a few months, and there is no magic way to make money without doing much hard work.
This also means that if you just started a website or blog, you will not make money soon unless you create an exceptional product or website.
From my experience, you need at least one year (usually more) of hard work before making any decent amount of money either from AdSense, affiliate programs or selling your own product. Read my post on how to start a blog and make money for all the details.
3. You Don't Practice Good SEO
SEO is important for many reasons, and if you believe that you can succeed online without following good SEO practices, then you are wrong.
Everything starts with SEO, and I am not referring only to keyword analysis or content marketing but to the bigger picture, which includes understanding your customers and using SEO to give them what they want.
Most webmasters still make SEO mistakes despite the plethora of information about proven techniques that work.
4. You Are Not Patient Enough
They say that ‘patience is a virtue’, and when it comes to working online and expecting to make money, this is more than true.
To help you understand how important it is to be patient, take into account the following examples:
- It may take 3-4 months before you start getting any organic traffic from Google or Bing
- It may take a few months until you build a decent number of Facebook and Twitter followers
- It may take months until you get your first email subscriber or comment on your blog
The bottom line is that you must aim for long-term success and forget short-term, temporary results.
5. You Created a Website For The Sole Purpose of Making Money Online
Creating a website for the sole purpose of making money online is a thing of the past.
A few years ago, you could create several websites, publish a few posts, build tens of incoming links, and make money with Adsense, Amazon affiliates, or other affiliate promotions.
It was a model that worked for a couple of years, and some people who were clever and fast enough to understand this made enough money.
This model no longer works. You cannot start a website for the sole purpose of adding Adsense or promoting a particular product or anything similar to this.
Your website or blog must have a purpose beyond making money.
You need to create something that adds value to the user by offering good content, free services, and incentives for the user to visit your website repeatedly.
When you do that persistently for many months, the money will follow.
I know it is difficult to understand this, especially if you are a beginner to the online world, but take my word for it. There are no shortcuts or overnight tricks.
Additional Resources
How Can You Make Money Online?
I don’t want to spread the message that it is impossible to make money online, as this is far from the truth.
To close this post with a positive message, here are some tested ways to make money – if you combine some of these methods, you can also make a living online!
1. Creating a website in a niche you are really passionate about.
You create a high-quality website with good content that offers value to your readers.
After some time, you will have enough readers and daily visits to make money through Google Adsense.
2. Write a book or create an online course
Write a book or create a course about a topic you know very well, publish it on Amazon (Kindle book), or sell it directly from your website.
For example, check out my SEO course.
3. Create a mobile application
Create a mobile application and upload it to Google Play, Apple Store, Windows Store, and Amazon Appstore.
The application can be free, and you can earn money from advertising or paid. To earn money from advertising, you must have many downloads (at least 200,000) and active users.
To sell your application, you need to have a good marketing plan. The competition is tough, and making a decent amount of sales without a marketing strategy will be very difficult.
4. Sell your services online.
If you have the necessary skills, you can sell your services online. This is not limited to IT, SEO, or Internet Marketing.
Check out peopleperhour.com and upwork.com to see examples of services offered and wanted.
I have used these four main methods successfully over the years and made a living online.
If you research the topic more, you will find other methods, such as selling on eBay or Amazon, running an online shop, and dropshipping.
I am sure these methods also work, provided that you avoid ‘get rich overnight’ methods.
My best advice is to find out what suits your abilities (either technical or educational), study it, find out what others are doing, make a plan, and stick to it until you get the desired results.
