“You will only ever be paid for the value you create – from the customer’s perspective.”
– Eben Pagan
How much can you easily make online?
It took me an entire year of hard-work before I ever started making serious money off the Internet. And even now I probably make less than most office drones.
My annual earnings aren’t going to blow anyone’s mind.
The Internet is a tough racket. I’m not going to lie about that. Forums and message boards are filled with dudes making less than minimum wage as they brag about earning $400 each month.
If you want to make easy money go teach guitar lessons or walk dogs. You’re guaranteed an income and can still have fun.
The three-minute video clip that got me into freelance writing
In the fall of 2013 I had pretty much given up on making money online. I’d followed all the expert advice, making blogs and writing eBooks.
None of it had worked for me.
I didn’t have the experience or the skill to sell products and make any type of serious passive income.
By conventional Internet marketing wisdom I was a failure.
And that knowledge, that I wasn’t talented enough to reach my goals, really hurt me. I lashed out and was miserable for a long time.
Fortunately, a random Tweet saved my life.
Someone post a link to this video:
(Mike Wolfe discusses how he supports his entire family with Fiverr gigs)
That three-minute clip really motivated me to try my hand at freelance writing. I ended up launching a reviewing service that made me over a hundred bucks in the first two weeks.
The following month I netted $800.
And things continued to grow until Christmas.
How much can you make?
Most guys would give you some cheesy pitch about the sky being the limit. They’d roll out a fiend who made “1 million dollars overnight” (if we don’t count the decades of work to get there) and pitch you a $900 seminar.
Truthfully, your earning potential is tied to talent and experience.
The odds of a guy with no business experience making thousands of dollar a day is virtually non-existent. Anytime you start something new you’re going to suck.
Can you increase talent?
Talent can be raised. But it takes a conscious effort.
I used to believe that repetition was the key to success. I was wrong.
If you write a sh*tty article a day you’re going to end up with a lot of sh*tty articles.
Anyone who wants to improve needs to focus on making progress. “I’m going to write” isn’t good enough. “I’m going to write content that is more engaging” will actually make you better.
Writing without a goal is a waste of time.
Where to get more experience
Get paid to learn. Open an oDesk account. Respond to Craigslist ads. There are tons of options out there. Go home after work and write three articles a night.
You’ll get about $15 a day. That’s an extra $450 every month.
Put the money in a savings account. Most people live paycheck-to-paycheck. You’re better than that.
After a few months you should have learned something. Start hunting the bigger clients. Making $50 an hour becomes easy once you have the reputation of a winner.
As you make more money, start to implement your knowledge into personal ventures. Invest an hour a day into blogging or selling something.
I’ve published articles that have made me hundred of dollars in passive income. None of them took more than an hour to write. When you know what you’re doing the money is easy.
Closing thoughts
The guys who complain that there’s no money to be made online usually suffer from two problems. They’re very misinformed, believing that you really can throw up a one-page website and make $30,000 a month, and they want instant results.
Building a business takes time. You can’t expect to turn a profit on the first day. That would be like going to the gym for the first time and getting upset that it didn’t make you look like a bodybuilder.
While you can easily make money online, it takes months (if not years) to reach that point. You’ll have to experiment around and develop a marketable skill-set before you can ever see any major returns.