34 replies to this topic

[MedEvil]

Yesterday there was an interseting topic started, by a friend of mine, who used to work in advertisement.

The point was, that though we all have heared about all those ways to make money online, noone knew anyone, who makes enough to make a living of it.
My friend claims that this is, because there is noone in the whole world.

After doing some reseach today, i think he might be right. Nothing seems to pay enough per hour, to make a living of it.


Does anyone here makes a living online or knows someone personly that does?
Excluded are all businesses, that just happens to sell online instead of a store.

[steve6375]

I know someone who is an investor and who buys and sells online - does this count?
Many people work at home remotely, does this count?
Some people set up fake sites, phishing sites, scam sites, etc. does that count?
Some people are professional online gamblers (poker, horse racing, etc.) does that count?
I know people who buy and sell on eBay (source from car boot sales, charity shops, etc.)

Or do you just mean - does anyone make much money from running their own website or websites that carry adverts but don't directly sell products?

[MedEvil]

I know someone who is an investor and who buys and sells online - does this count?
Many people work at home remotely, does this count?
Some people are professional online gamblers (poker, horse racing, etc.) does that count?
I know people who buy and sell on eBay (source from car boot sales, charity shops, etc.)

All of the above do not count, imo, there is no new quality, to working from home for your company, over working from your office for your company, to count
btw. I don't believe in the professional gambler lore, as a way to make a living.

Some people set up fake sites, phishing sites, scam sites, etc. does that count?

I would count this, as it is truly a online activity, which would not work without internet.

Or do you just mean - does anyone make much money from running their own website or websites that carry adverts but don't directly sell products?

Basicly all non traditional business models count. Also everything that woudn't work without the internet.

For instance, a single person, who sells it's software online, would still count, a big company not.

[Holmes.Sherlock]

If I "relax" the conditions a bit more from "making a living" to "assured earning of a few bucks", then also is it possible? To rephrase it, can anyone suggest any way by which one can "surely" earn a few bucks online no matter whether it is suffice for his living? What do you say?

[MedEvil]

Making a few bucks is absolutely possible.
There are several ways to get paid, doing mostly advertising, which is suppose to not look like it.
Like writing in your blog about how great ??? is.
You have no blog? You can make money writing for someone elses blog.
There are also sites which pay for reviews.
Writig is not your thing? You can upload videos to youtube and get paid per view.

My daughter is creating content in the rendering community and makes considerably more than her allowance.

All the above are sure ways to get paid, IF and only if you're good at it.

There are also some "jobs" that require no talent, like clicking on ads, taking online surveys and such.
Those jobs pay really poorly. I read that a max. of 10$ should be possible a month per provider.

And then there is having a site with high user traffic like reboot.pro and selling ad space.




PS:Too bad i can't include writing scripts here.

[Brito]

I've used several options during the years. For example, one can resort to the Amazon Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome

Working online works best if you keep a sharp mind and invest your time in learning good skills. What I have done in the past when studying was applying to translation works from English to my native language (Portuguese). It was a boring task and paid little over 30 USD per day. However, working hard (while studying at the same time) became possible to gather around 600 USD per month, helping me to support my family and studies tuition in hard times.

If translating is not your strong, many times I also applied for requests of article writing and that would provide around 5 to 15 USD per article of ~500 words, however, it takes up a considerable time and research effort to write an accepted article. To make things worse, many times I found people who would get the article and then reply it didn't met their quality standards to then skip any payment and keep your work. Translations are usually less problematic..

Another option is programming on request, as seen here: http://forums.digita...splay.php?f=116

I sold sites and web domains in the past (such as sqliteforum.com: http://www.nunobrito...m-was-sold.html), not enough to be something reliable or punctual.

If reboot.pro and winbuilder provided enough subsistence to work on them all day long, I would surely live very happy and publish more projects and quality works. However, it is not the case and I work hard to build up a career in real life just like all the other folks around here.

[steve6375]

As well as Pay per Click type ads like Google AdSense, you can use Affiliate advertising. This is where you can place you own ads on your site which have a link to the affiliate's web site with you ID tagged in the URL. If a person clicks on this link AND buys the product, you get a kick-back. This can be quite large (e.g. 40%-50% for some software products).

[MedEvil]

There are 3 kinds of ad payments.
Pay per view, pay per click, pay per business.
From the former to the later it get's harder to get good rates. On the other hand, from the later to the former the payout per unit drops.

The best business model, i have seen so far, is, living in a low income country and selling over ebay in a high income country.

[Holmes.Sherlock]

My daughter is creating content in the rendering community and makes considerably more than her allowance.

What community are you talking about?

[MedEvil]

She does a few. The one i remember is renderosity.com

[sbaeder]

You can also be "lucky" (i.e. be in the right place at the right time). Look at a site like DistroWatch.com It started as more of a hobby, then took off. Now, they generate enough income for the main editor, but also to be able to give back to FOSS community part of the monthly income. There are also folks like Loyd Case and other "writers" who have switched over to a web based model to promote themslelves and what they do, etc. While it isn't really selling ads on their web sites, they do make a living as an independent writer of articles published on the web, etc...Maybe that is stretching it a bit, but they were enabled using the web to self promote, and reach a worldwide (but focused/smaller) audience.

So, it is possible - just not necessarily probable.

[sambul61]

You can also be "lucky" (i.e. be in the right place at the right time).

I guess another condition would be to "Identify, Form and Fulfill the Need". Since most obvious transferable to web activities are seems to be covered by now, if not overflown, inventiveness is about the only passway to a Facebook like income. What's interesting, web related inventiveness proven more suited for younger folks - don't know why, may be sensing better if a trend may become HOT, and envisioning a broader range of possible transforms.

Still, no country's economy moved towards web to such a degree that was envisioned when Al Gore "invented the web". Yet these guys managed to create millions of new jobs without significant infrastructure investments, and this talent is nowhere present in current policy makers, they reverted back to oil based economy and related wars, or economic countries hijacking. One starts wondering, wasn't it obvious at election time or forming bureaucratic structures like EU?

So, may be the right way to increase web generated income for all is to elect the right people to power? How interesting its all connected...

[Holmes.Sherlock]

Another option is programming on request, as seen here: http://forums.digita...splay.php?f=116

Another option might be http://www.vworker.com/

[DarkPhoeniX]

you can also make money on youtube see ray william jonson

[Holmes.Sherlock]

you can also make money on youtube see ray william jonson

Well, but you are breaking the rule of the game as that is not am "assured" income.

There are no guarantees under the YouTube Partner agreement about how much, or whether, you will be paid. Earnings are generated based on a share of advertising revenue generated when people view your video - the more views you get, the more money you'll make. Please review the agreement for more details.

[MedEvil]

Another option might be http://www.vworker.com/

Affordable: 36-80% cheaper than traditional hiring.

Given the fact, that most people do not make 3 times the money they need, in their offline job, i would guess that one can't make a living of that.

[MedEvil]

What's interesting, web related inventiveness proven more suited for younger folks - don't know why, may be sensing better if a trend may become HOT, and envisioning a broader range of possible transforms.

I think the problem is more that business on the internet is stupid.
For instance, people are willing to shell out money for phone apps and games, something they can easily live without. Yet noone is willing to pay for winbuilder scripts and projects, something that makes work a lot easier for a lot of people.

Does this make sense, to waste money rather, than to invest it?

What about people fooling themselfs by calling their facebook buddies their friends? Those arn't friends. They're not even acquaintances.

[Holmes.Sherlock]

What about people fooling themselfs by calling their facebook buddies their friends? Those arn't friends. They're not even acquaintances.

Quite unrelated though, I can't resist myself from saying that, once upon a time I was in a silent competition with myself in increasing my FB contact list. A while later, I realized how "fool" I was & what sort of security threat it might posses & un-friended a bunch of those so-called friends. Now, my FB contact list is quite small & contains only those people who are "known" (both in form of real world & online acquaintances) to me.

[Wonko the Sane]

Does this make sense, to waste money rather, than to invest it?

Things like this:
http://www.plop.at/e...mngrusblog.html

Last but not least: Because of the flop of the commercial licence (only 1 sold licence) I changed the licence back to free for commercial use. I don't want to think longer about the commercial stuff. That demotivates too much. However, the donation path was not really better, only 9 donations in 1 year (with a few hundret thousand downloads). I think, I don't have to comment that. It's a wonder that I released 5.0.14 version.

are those that are really saddening.
Elmar is a really nice guy, giving away his nice work for free to non-commercial users and asking for a very reasonable fee for commercial, he is not going to make a living out of it, but maybe he could pay the site hosting expenses and a few beers/Sachertorten/whatever.

I think I could find here on reboot.pro several peeps that did post about PLoP - and clearly use it at work.

So no, it is unlikely that anyone will make a living out of the web.



Wonko

[MedEvil]

I think I could find here on reboot.pro several peeps that did post about PLoP - and clearly use it at work.

So no, it is unlikely that anyone will make a living out of the web.

If people wouldn't buy in general on the net, it would make at least some sense.

But it's like:
A:) "You need this medicine or you die."
B:) "I don't pay for medicine! Hey look lollipops! Two dozend please."

[sambul61]

This picture seems to resemble a guaranteed income from web commerce for an average Joe.



Some cleanup after a nice EBay trade:



And of course one needs reliable web commerce tools:

[Brito]

Last but not least: Because of the flop of the commercial licence (only 1 sold licence) I changed the licence back to free for commercial use. I don't want to think longer about the commercial stuff. That demotivates too much. However, the donation path was not really better, only 9 donations in 1 year (with a few hundret thousand downloads). I think, I don't have to comment that. It's a wonder that I released 5.0.14 version.

Ditto for many other developers around here. However, having hundred thousand downloads is a good result. Helps to build a reputation on real life as a developer with demonstrable success and gain experience "on the wild" rather than "contracted" by a company to a develop a product that is delivered and forgotten.

If our work online helps to build a good reputation in real life, the outcome is not really so bad.

Yet, sure it would be nice to do this all day long as a living. Perhaps one day we can provide better conditions to our developers.

[MedEvil]

Nuno, sorry to contradict you, but that's a dream and has nothing to do with reality.

Writing in your job application: "I have worked my butt off for years, on a free project on the internet." has not even close to the impact of: "I did sloppy work at M$."

If you wanna build a reputation, to profit from in the real world, you'll have to build that reputation in the real world.

[Holmes.Sherlock]

Writing in your job application: "I have worked my butt off for years, on a free project on the internet." has not even close to the impact of: "I did sloppy work at M$."

Yep, if one day Team Reboot continues to come first in all the CTFs held across the globe, then also I don't think that any of the members can put it on their resume & can earn some +ve points in job market. Whatever we do out here are solely quenching our own thirst of knowledge & social networking in some other form.

[Wonko the Sane]

Yep, if one day Team Reboot continues to come first in all the CTFs held across the globe, then also I don't think that any of the members can put it on their resume & can earn some +ve points in job market.

Maybe first step would be starting to come first in a single one?

@Medevil
We have at least one single example of someone that got famous online and got hired from MS: Mark Russinovich
http://en.wikipedia....ark_Russinovich


Wonko