With the financial crisis in full swing (don't let the government Inc fool you), many people are turning to the internet as a way of making money. I have made my living online for three years now, and I can promise you - it is no easy feat.
A few lucky souls hit big time by chance, and I am always amazed at the occasional "rags to riches" stories. You know the ones - single Mum starts a blog about the trials and tribulations of raising three kids alone and gets picked up by a network with a big deal TV show and goes on to world wide acclaim and fortune. I will let you in on a secret - NOT GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU. Sorry - reality bites. The chances of this being you are so slim - you would be better off buying a lottery ticket if this is any part of your plan to online success.
It is competitive out here; and I mean really, really competitive; the sort of competitive you can only dream about in the "real world," because you are not limited by geographic location and are competing with the entire world. I have had sites hacked and taken out of commission for successfully targeting the right keyword. I have people following me around and buying sites with similar names to the ones I own, and then emailing me trying to sell them to me. I have people here on hubpages copying what I write and writing an article about the same thing 3 days later. I spend more time protecting my personal sites from hackers and spammers, building links and doing background work than I do writing.
When I first started out to make money by blogging, I had this idyllic image in my head. I am well educated, can turn a mean phrase and like to think I can be witty when the moon is in the right ascension. Piece of piss - I will sit down at a computer, write about the world according to Mark and be rich and famous by next month. Ha!
Sadly - the qualities our society seem to value are not the ones I speak about. I am neither controversial enough or nasty enough to be a total success. I should be paying some Russian hacker to break into my competitors sites and destroy their databases. But - I am too much of a nice guy to do that.
Don't get me wrong - despite the fact that I live in Europe and get paid in dollars - I make a reasonable living, but it is at least 10000% harder than I anticipated, requires constant adaptation and is far less lucrative than a lot of people would have you believe. Most of the people making real money online are doing so in an underhanded - if not criminal - fashion. And that includes google.
Making money at hubpages. I would heartily recommend - if you are a beginner - starting out on hubpages and using them as a way of learning what will and will not work as far as making money goes. This site os not a blog - nor will it ever be, but there are distinct advantages to using their technical knowledge that is worth giving up 50% of the income. And yes - I know hubpages only takes 40% of the impressions - but the site is set up ion such a way as most people visiting will only visit one page of yours.
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