Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2011. Google AdWords is now Google Ads, and the free website and hosting options linked in the article reflect that time.
Can you make money online? Can everyone do it? Can I get rich with an internet business? This is one of those articles I enjoy, because I get to say I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the answer to all three questions is yes. You can make money online, everyone can, and you can get rich with internet businesses.
The bad news is that it’s no different from traditional businesses, where anyone can get rich by starting their own company, and just as with brick-and-mortar businesses, not everyone will succeed online. There’s another difference, too: there is a lot more deception online when it comes to presenting a business.
I’m sure you’ve visited hundreds of pages offering to make you rich in 3 months or promising that you’ll earn thousands of euros or dollars a month with minimal effort. For a start, they’re already lying to you: that doesn’t exist, and making money takes sacrifice, like everything else we try to achieve in life. You can read our article When they’re lying to you about a business.
As a rule, you’ll find these claims in affiliate programs, forex trading, paid-to-read emails, paid surveys and so on.
That said, I met someone who made €50,000 in a single month selling affiliate products online. Of course, this man had already been working on his websites for years. He prepared, developed an excellent online marketing strategy and invested more than €70,000 in Google AdWords. By the end of the month his affiliate product sales came to €120,000, and after deducting the investment in paid ads, his profit was exactly €52,300, quite a record for a Spaniard.
I should say that in the United States, many people who work with affiliate programs earn those amounts. If your question is whether everyone can do that, the answer is no, simply because these people have invested time, money and a great deal of effort; they never expected to earn those sums by doing nothing, which is what most people are looking for.
Obviously, I’ve yet to meet anyone who got rich filling in surveys or reading emails. If anything, I’d say most people who start in these “dubious businesses” to make money online end up badly disappointed.
What does it take to make money online?
Exactly the same as a business on the high street: patience, learning everything you can about the business you’re going to start, a business plan and a study or strategy to follow, and in most cases a small investment.
I know you’ll have heard that you can make money without investing anything at all, and that’s absolutely true, but it will take much longer.
Today, the internet gives you all the tools you need to start a business without investing. You can build a completely free website, get free hosting for it and use all kinds of tools. The rest of what you need is a lot of upfront work, a lot of patience and constant learning. And if at some point you find a shortcut to quick money, remember that in business there are no shortcuts, and if there are, they only lead to failure.
No exceptions: all profitable businesses require sacrifice and an initial investment of time.
Further reading
- Can you make easy, quick money?
- Ways to make money online
- Online business ideas: services for companies
- Ways to make extra money fast
Featured image: Nenad Stojković, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
