Earning money over the internet

[yotoman]

What are some good options to making money over the internet? There are so many scams it is hard to find a real job or part time work. I do write blogs, but I have only started that, and I enjoy it a lot because I like to write and be creative. I also am a composer, but I don't get too much traffic to my site yet to sell CDs and such. I probably get about 60 visitors a month.

I've taken out the links so I can follow the rules. Send me a message if you want to look at them to help me with this blog topic. Thanks!

Edited December 8, 2009 by yotoman
Take out the links...so I can follow the rules

[Mahone]

Hmmmm. It's considerably difficult to make any kind of money online and usually doing so takes more work and time than getting up each morning and doing a 9-5 job. If you want to sell your music, for starters it's very clear people are not finding your website. If you were getting 10,000 unique visitors a month and only one sale per month, then the issue would be different. But in your case, you need to do search engine optimisation.

Most people find websites through a search engine, through a link from another website or through word of mouth. If you sort out the links from other websites and word of mouth, the search engine ranking will sort itself out. Search engine algorithms work primarily on how many links point to a website (and what the links are called) in order to decide what sites should rank where for which search terms. For instance LDS.org ranks at the top when you search for "LDS" as most links pointing to that website have LDS in the name (e.g. The church of Jesus Christ of LDS). You'll also notice the churches websites rank quite high for the search terms "church" and "jesus christ" for this very reason on google (both on the first page).

Also try selling your stuff on a better known website such as amazon or ebay, with each sale having a link to your website. If you become popular on ebay or amazon, your website will also end up popular.

A little more technical detail I'm afraid... get rid of the music on autoplay on your website. Some people like autoplaying music, most hate it. If they are browsing your website at 1am with the rest of the family asleep, and the music starts blaring out, they won't be best pleased with you. It only works in Internet Explorer anyway. Instead, allow them to have an option to play it in a prominent place, but using a flash player so it works in all browsers.

I'm not sure if you did this already, but make sure all your websites link to each other as well.

I'd also bring someone you know on board to help you. Never try and set up something like this by yourself, it never ever works, no matter how good you are.

I'll just empasize here what I said at the beginning though. It's -really- difficult to make money online. You have to find a gap in the market and it requires a considerable amount of work, and even if you get both of those it could still fail. Most people who make money online had a bit of luck involved.

Edited December 6, 2009 by Mahone

[hordak]

I have seen sites where you make money taking surveys but the catch is you don't get paid until you hit $50 and the surveys pay like 2 cents a piece. Plus after like 3 months your acount goes to zero if your not making the 50$.

So if you can do 2500 surveys in 3 months...

Truth be told if there was an viable way for the "average joe" to make a decent income on the internet the streets would be empty.IMO

[yotoman]

you need to do search engine optimisation.

Does this mean I need to pay google and such? Or just submit?

Also try selling your stuff on a better known website such as amazon or ebay, with each sale having a link to your website. If you become popular on ebay or amazon, your website will also end up popular.

Can I actually sell I CD I make from home on amazon? I like that idea a lot. Ebay is a great idea ...I'd have to put in under like a classical music CD. Ebay also lets you post so many items for free...and if you don't sell it then it's okay. I'm just a student composer so I'm not well known yet.

A little more technical detail I'm afraid... get rid of the music on autoplay on your website. Some people like autoplaying music, most hate it. If they are browsing your website at 1am with the rest of the family asleep, and the music starts blaring out, they won't be best pleased with you. It only works in Internet Explorer anyway. Instead, allow them to have an option to play it in a prominent place, but using a flash player so it works in all browsers.

Thank you...it's annoying to hear every time. I just put up a youtube video on the home page. Do you think that is good?

I'd also bring someone you know on board to help you. Never try and set up something like this by yourself, it never ever works, no matter how good you are.

Yes, I am going to be using my mom and sister to help promote my published band piece. So my sister will be faxing advertisements to band directors and such. However, I'm not sure where to get help for the website. I've done websites for years, but I've never taken a class or anything. Just took basic html from a book I bought years ago, but webs.com uses this easy system.

[Wingnut]

I have a friend who is a singer-songwriter. She participates every year in FAWM, which gains her an instant community of fellow musicians. She put out her first CD earlier this year, and though you can buy it on Amazon or download it from iTunes, her first distributor was CD Baby.

[miztrniceguy]

My wife is a writer. We started a publishing company. We have published her first 2 books, and 1 book from someone else. Her website gets about 10,000 hits per month now. And she has about 900 follwers in Twitter.We sell about 2 books a week. We do have them listed on Amazon, but prefer to sell direct from our website. Lately tho she has started making some good money converting other authors files into different e-pub formats, like for Smashwords and others. All 3 books we sell are available in print and assorted e-book formats for download. She has inadvertantly found herself at the forefront of e-book publishing, which is a good thing.

[Guest xforeverxmetalx]

I have seen sites where you make money taking surveys but the catch is you don't get paid until you hit $50 and the surveys pay like 2 cents a piece. Plus after like 3 months your acount goes to zero if your not making the 50$.

So if you can do 2500 surveys in 3 months...

I've made a whole $2 doing those surveys... signed up for a bunch of those kinds of sites, most of them either have you collect points till they're worth something, and other places just submit you to some kind of sweepstakes for prizes with each survey. definitely not a brilliant idea in either case.

[Mahone]

Does this mean I need to pay google and such? Or just submit?

You can't pay google for SEO. You can submit your site to them, but this isn't a good idea. The best way to get a website recognised in google is to let google's spiders find the website themselves. Spiders are programs/algorithms which are designed to "crawl" the web. They do this through following links. They start off on some popular websites and follow all the external hyperlinks to other websites and so on and so forth. This is how most search engines build their database. By doing this, they not only find 99% of the websites online, they also know how many links point to each website, and what each link pointing to a website was called. They use this data to decide how high each website ranks for each search term. This isn't the only data they use, but it's the primary deciding factor. So get loads of links pointing to your website.

Can I actually sell I CD I make from home on amazon?

I don't know about this, I'm not too familar with the website. It's just one I thought of as an example.

Thank you...it's annoying to hear every time. I just put up a youtube video on the home page. Do you think that is good?

Yeah, the youtube player is the kind of thing I was thinking of. You could host it on youtube and embed the video in your website, or host it yourself. The youtube option is easier.

However, I'm not sure where to get help for the website. I've done websites for years, but I've never taken a class or anything. Just took basic html from a book I bought years ago, but webs.com uses this easy system.

Ever used a content management system? All of the bigger websites use one now we are in the days of web 2.0. Joomla (Joomla!) is usually my recommended one. It's free, open source and the biggest advantage is that once it is set up, a lot of the tedious work is done for you, allowing you to focus more on the content. Because joomla is so popular, there are countless free addons and templates for it, which make life so much easier when you are short on time. No point in reinventing the wheel. There is also a free support forum for any problems you might have.

[yotoman]

Maybe I should just wait until I get out of school to promote my website. lol It's not going to be until I get my music performed and get recognized in the music community that I'm going to make sells I think.

[Guest mormonmusic]

I made money selling items on eBay. I won't say how lest I create more competition. But they were harder to find items. I also made some money sourcing out of print books that happened also to be in Amazon's catalog. This happened all on eBay and Amazon. I did no external advertising, and made about $3500 in a year, less postage and the cost of driving to the post office to mail them all. It was a nice part-time income.

[Hemidakota]

Since Goggle brothers made billions on the internet, Yahoo founder also, you need a product that people will visit everyday and apply the game of advertisement as the means of income.

[FunkyTown]

I've made a whole $2 doing those surveys... signed up for a bunch of those kinds of sites, most of them either have you collect points till they're worth something, and other places just submit you to some kind of sweepstakes for prizes with each survey. definitely not a brilliant idea in either case.

Well, the dishonest people have set up macros for surveys. While I wouldn't help someone set up something like that, you could make a lot of money if you didn't care what the survey said.

[yotoman]

You see...I was thinking about selling something that is unique, like my aunt makes these really need arts and crafts and I think they would sell well, but I think it would be hard to promote it. I don't have much money, but it takes some money to advertise your product with google. You know? Is there a way I can start small...earn money and then keep investing until I get to making great money?

[yotoman]

Hey Mahone,

I have a few questions about Joomla. So I can create a website with this and manage everything easy? Because I do get tired of having to edit every little thing and use html to put the music on my site. (And it gives me some trouble.) I think there could be something easier. Although, I pay $20 a year for my domain name. What does Joomla cost? I would definitely want to somehow keep the domain name I have now.

I guess I should just download it and check it out.

Since you looked over my site. What do you think it could help me with?

However, I would love to even start something new separate from a business. Can I use it for 2 websites or more?

[Mahone]

Hey Mahone,

I have a few questions about Joomla. So I can create a website with this and manage everything easy? Because I do get tired of having to edit every little thing and use html to put the music on my site. (And it gives me some trouble.) I think there could be something easier.

Joomla makes websites far easier to manage. Many years ago now, most websites were completely static. Each page on a website was its own unique entity. You could change something on one page, and all the others would remain completely as they were (unfortunately this method is still often taught in schools). With CSS and server side includes, this is changing, so that you can update all your page with a brand new design in one go. A lot of people make their own basic versions of this, but joomla is an advanced system designed to effectively give you the pre-built framework of a website, without actually taking away any customisation of your website. You don't install it on your computer, you upload it to your webserver and go from there. The only way I can describe it, is a bit like this forum we are using now. It has a similar interface, but far more advanced. It even has it's own WYSIWYG editor built in (a bit like a basic web based version of dreamweaver), so you can log into your website from any computer and edit the site, without needing any software installed on the computer you are logged into.

There are also countless extensions for joomla, like image galleries, forums, templates etc. The idea behind it is to save people many hours building the framework to their website before they even think about the design or content (i.e. not having to reinvent the wheel). Plus it makes it easier for you when making the design and content.

Although, I pay $20 a year for my domain name. What does Joomla cost? I would definitely want to somehow keep the domain name I have now.

Joomla is free to use, modify and abuse, whether for business or personal use. Welcome to the world of open souce :). Most of the addons and templates are also free, however there are a few people who charge here and there. The only requirement is that your webserver is PHP compatible, as joomla is made in PHP. If it isn't, you'd need to swap to another webserver. However you will be able to keep your current domain name one way or another.

I guess I should just download it and check it out.

Since you looked over my site. What do you think it could help me with?

See above, and there is also a lot of info on the joomla website I gave you. I think there is a demo site on there somewhere as well, where you get to play with the backend a bit. Once you get your head around how it all works, you won't want to go back to the original way of designing websites.

However, I would love to even start something new separate from a business. Can I use it for 2 websites or more?

Yes. The software is free, you can use it for as many websites as you like. You'll need to install a different instance of joomla on your webserver for each website you want to build with it.

Edited December 8, 2009 by Mahone

[yotoman]

Yeah...this looks way too advanced for me. I'm not sure where to start seeing as there are like 20 different folders and such. I don't think my computer is compatible. Nothing will open. I have foxfire and internet explorer. But I guess everything is done online.

I may need to wait until winter break to look over all of this.

[Mahone]

Yeah...this looks way too advanced for me. I'm not sure where to start seeing as there are like 20 different folders and such. I don't think my computer is compatible. Nothing will open. I have foxfire and internet explorer. But I guess everything is done online.

I may need to wait until winter break to look over all of this.

It's not really dependant on your computer, it's mainly your webserver. But as long as they have PHP enabled (any good web host will) then it will be fine. There are instructions on how to upload it to your webserver via FTP on the website. It will also tell you which permissions you need to set on each folder (for securities sake). Once all that is done, you visit the specified page on your website (this is given in the instructions) and it will ask you to follow some steps to automatically set up an SQL database. It can be difficult to get your head around at first, so you're right in thinking you'll need some time to play with it. But once it's done and you figure out how to use it, you'll end up much better off for it. At least in my opinion. It's been a while since I've had to use it, but it saved me mountains of time when I did.