How We Make Money Online

I thought that making money online would be easy.  That’s certainly what all the online money-making ads say.

I was wrong.  Way wrong.

Finding and reviewing skincare and beauty products is easiest.  Getting people to read your reviews and buy the products is much much harder.  The same thing is true for any online business.  It ain’t a walk in the park.  It’s harder than anyone will tell you.

Not that it takes any particular set of skills.  And it doesn’t take any particular schooling or an MBA.  And it certainly doesn’t take genius.  It just takes what used to be called stick-to-it-iveness.  Elbow grease. Tenacity.  Single-mindedness.  In other words, work.

Werk!!??

So I started with this website and a couple of others, 420Beginner and BigBudsGuide. I didn’t really know how to build a website.  I knew how to write.  And I knew how to teach.  But I didn’t know how to build a website.  So i bought a ready-made website from a guy on Flippa.

Big Mistake.

I paid way too much and I got way too little, although I didn’t know that until several months down the road.  But I hadn’t done my homework.

If you are going to buy a website, learn something about understanding Google Search Console and Google Analytics and reading an income statement and verifying sales and on and on and on . . .  that is a topic for maybe another day.

Eventually, I learned that teaching people by writing decent advice was valuable to other people. I learned how to use keywords to make myself a little more findable on Google.  I learned how to write something that people would want.  And I learned how to do affiliate marketing.  Do what??? you say.

Affiliate Marketing

Basically, it means selling someone else’s product and getting a commission on each sale.  Amazon is the biggest affiliate marketplace but there are tons of others.  Again, a topic for another time.

At first, selling stuff by finding and reviewing decent products on Amazon was a reasonable way to make a bit of money.  But Amazon, in case you missed the news, tends to throw its weight around.  And it likes to keep every penny that passes through Jeff Bezos’s hairless fingers.

So gradually, and then suddenly, Amazon turned down the dial on commissions it was paying.  Turned it down so far that it became basically worthless to work at selling stuff from Amazon.

So I looked around.  Sure enough, there are a lot of affiliate marketing sites that pay much better commissions.  But for the most part, they either don’t sell the kind of stuff I want to review or they are in China and it’s difficult to judge quality–assuming you can understand the fractured syntax in the first place.

My Solution-Sort Of

So I am working out how to continue making money on the interweb.  Because after all, finding great skin care products only takes you so far.  I have one old solution and one new solution.  And the point of this post is to introduce you to both of them.

Advertising is the first.  Telling people by email about digital products (like this one) is the second.

Advertising

Everybody hates it.  Everybody uses it.  Amazon, Google, Facecrack and a jillion others make almost all their money from — wait for it—ADVERTISING.  Like TV used to do (Because TV was free, sort of—Not Any More).

As you have undoubtedly recognized, I put advertising on almost every page on this site.  But it’s not as easy as it looks.

Nobody really wants to pay for advertising, but everyone realizes they have to do that.  But that means big ad agencies control where the advertising is placed and where the money goes.  So if your website is not generating a LOT of eyeballs everyday, forget about getting much advertising.

Digital Products

But what I have recently discovered is that neither advertising nor affiliate marketing is enough to sustain this site.  Maybe that is due to the Cheeto-Colored Plague that is locking everyone down into deep deep depression.  Or maybe it’s because everybody knows that money is going to be tight for a long long time.  (Everybody except Cheeto Jesus and Pollyanna, I mean.)

So I have turned to digital products.  Email marketing digital products.

Yes, I know–the very same emails that you wish would go spammer’s hell.  The very same emails that tell you how some fast-talking failed car salesman made “$1,384 in 24 hours–And YOU can TOO!”

I have seen these and received these and way too often have paid money for these schemes.  Or scams.

But you know what?  I never really worked on them.  I believed the hype–that it was really dead-simple, automatic, sit back in a recliner, don’t pay attention–EZ.

Sure enough–I proved the point–they don’t work. . . . Because I didn’t work.

What Now?

Finally, I asked for a refund from the seller of one of these programs that I bought and he put me straight.  Here is what he wrote:

This shows your work ethics when it comes to building your business.  Do you think that simply raising a dispute will get you your money back??  You did not take any action whatsoever and just raised the dispute when I had already told you that you have crossed the refund deadline. It is not my fault that you did not ask for the refund within 14 days. 14 days is a lot of time to judge whether something is good enough or not. You were so lazy that you did not even login and then raised the dispute. I wish you had taken action in the reverse direction. You would have made your money back already. Simply buying the product only to refund it later won’t take you anywhere period!!!!

Boy that email made me mad!  And then ashamed! Because he was right–I had not taken any action.

So that email made me determined also.

And I logged in to the member’s area where I had bought access (price= 20 bucks) and I started reading the directions and listening to the (fairly short but still somewhat tedious) training videos.

And then I took action.

And guess what.  The guy was right. I am making money.  A lot more than I expected (admittedly, I expected nothing at first.)

And I am going to take more action.  I am going to write follow up emails to the people that have been kind enough to try out the system by buying it. I am going to look for other likely systems and take action on them too.

So That’s The Secret

If you want to try it, learn from my mistakes.  Don’t buy a website. Not worth the money.  Don’t try to start a website.  Not worth the hassle.

Find a good digital online money-making system and take action.

Here is the one that I started with and it’s working.  You can use it too.  Try it out.  Take action on day 1.  Don’t be lazy like me.

Plant. Grow. Teach. Activate.

MaryJane Farmer