Note: I know, right? What better way to kick start a website about ways to make money than telling you about my failure(s!)? I just wanted to go over the things I have done in hopes to save you some time choosing carefully how you wish to make money online.
Ever since the early days of the internet, I have always admired people who were able to make a living online. Remember the guy who sold every single pixel of his homepage and managed to raise a million dollars? Here is a screenshot of part of the million dollar homepage.
What about the guy who swapped a red paperclip for something bigger and better until he got a house? Or Ebay’s founders? They were not even selling anything, just creating a marketplace for people to buy and sell stuff. Once this types of sites were created, I wondered why no one (me!!!) had thought about it before, it seemed so obvious. And knowing nothing about how to create or manage a website, I thought I was bound for failure anyway. So I tried a few things.
Taking surveys
Back when Hotmail was still an acceptable email provider, I often received spam asking me to take part in surveys. Some would offer a points system and you could then trade your points for a low cash value or a higher value item, and others would enter you in a prize draw with a chance in one million to win. I don’t know if those were the actual odds, and if there was a legit prize at all, I thought like DC who enters tons of giveaways all the time that eventually, I would win something, and since I used to take surveys during my boring lunch hour anyway, it was not a big time suck.
I quickly got bored, never won a thing, and never reached the minimum for a prize or payout on other sites. I bet they make most of their money from dropouts like me.
Selling my products
I own an energy saving company in Spain, together with a business partner. When we started, we were selling filters and low flow shower heads to reduce your water consumption. We thought we just had to open a shop on Ebay and orders would flow. Wrong. The demand at the time was pretty low, six years ago people were just starting to hear about such items, and did not even know their names. If they were into DIY, they would try to get them at the hardware store. And online, it was hard trying to make a case for our quality German product against cheap Chinese imitations at half the price.
I am convinced that there is money to be made on Ebay, although nowadays the fees (and Paypal’s) are pretty steep and it takes a lot of time to properly list and item, take a good picture, ship it, follow up and give after sale support. It can work if you have a high turnover of high demand products, such as iAnything or collection items.
We sold a few products, but for the time invested it was really not worth it.
On a related topic, find out how Jessica made $100,000 from Amazon.
Mechanical Turk
I had read somewhere that Mturk was the new thing going. You perform a very simple task that takes minutes, like checking that a sentence is properly traduced and makes sense in English, and earn a few pennies. Again, like the surveys, I thought the time spent doing that was time I would have been procrastinating online anyway so I signed up. It was actually a longer process than this, as your actions had to be validated by the client, sometimes they would not validate and not provide a reason, and unless you give the tasks your full attention for a full hour, you are far from making minimum wage. You could specialize in one task assuming there is a recurrent task that you are good at doing, if you can do it faster than average, you can make a little money, but don’t expect the big bucks.
Elance
The next natural step from Mturk was Elance, or Odesk, or whatever virtual assistant marketplace. I signed up mainly hoping to get translation jobs. I don’t have a degree but translating something from English or Spanish into my mother tongue, French, is simple enough, and Elance allows you to take a test to prove your skills and make up for the degree.
I started bidding on some projects, and felt more than once that I was a perfect fit, but had no references, and was either outbid by a cheaper freelancer (lots of members are from Africa, speak perfect French and bid 70% lower) or some established freelancer with dozens of glowing references. Having used Elance as a client, I would also go for the one with more references, or the cheapest if the task is really basic.
Another such site you can try is Taskrabbit, the advantage is they only take US based freelancers, so there is still a bidding war, but less so than when it is a worldwide affair.
Didn’t even try: selling pictures
I saw there was an opportunity to sell pictures to marketplaces and hope some bloggers and online publishers would buy them. I am not a great photographer, and between the time spent to select, optimize, upload and describe the few good ones that I have, I am not sure it would be worth the trouble.
All those ways to make money online are perfectly legit and have been used by people more gifted or diligent that I was to make money. They just did not do it for me. Thankfully, I did find a few successful ways to make money online, but that is for another post…
This post was featured on Eyes on the Dollar, Cash Cow Couple, thank you!
Matt Becker says
Thanks for sharing. I don’t really have any experience making money online, but the idea of doing surveys or something like Mechanical Turk never really interested me. It’s not scalable and felt like you’d never make enough to be worth all of the wasted time (at least it felt that way to me).
Matt Becker recently posted…Carnival of Financial Planning
Pauline says
I liked that you could do it on the couch while watching TV so it was like being paid for your free time, whereas blogging is an intellectually active endeavor. But the pay was in proportion to the effort!
Thomas | Your Daily Finance says
I think everyone who has tried to make money online has a few of these stories. In some cases you could have been one right decision away from making a great deal of money. In others some people just dont know what the heck they are doing and are mislead. There are a lot of people making money and there are a lot of people making money off of selling the idea of making money. Hopefully you have found something that makes you money online. I like that you started with how you didn’t make money online at least people know there is a high chance of failure even if others are making money.
Thomas | Your Daily Finance recently posted…Paying For College with Federal Student Loans
Pauline says
The odds of failure are high! At least those were activities that are free to start, they don’t mislead you into buying a $99 starting kit so you can earn $12,000 a month doing nothing from home.
E.M. says
Thanks for sharing Pauline! I have never tried to make money online (yet), but my mom used to do those surveys in her spare time. I am pretty sure the most she got out of it were free samples. I was thinking of trying to go the virtual assistant route, but there is probably too much competition and like you, I don’t have any references right now. Always something to work on! Can’t wait for your post on your successes.
E.M. recently posted…What Is Family Worth To You?
Pauline says
I just hired a VA to work 20 hours a week on my two blogs, and don’t think anyone in the US would compete with the rate. But I know some other PF bloggers are happy to have a VA who knows the PF world already, to do more tasks than mine does. You just have to contact them at the right time. Look for that 6-8 months old blog that is starting to get popular, where the blogger writes “I am under the water with XYZ at the moment”, and offer to lift a few weights of his/her shoulders. Carnival submission, commenting, article editing, even ghost writing… are what they would be into at first.
E.M. says
Thank you for the advice, I really appreciate it!
E.M. recently posted…What Is Family Worth To You?
Laurie @thefrugalfarmer says
Love how you raised the point that some money-making ideas are not worth the trouble. I looked into one couple who would find stuff at a great deal, then re-sell on Amazon. They’re making huge cash, but I know that for me having to find the deals, keep track of inventory, etc., would just stress me out. So I’m looking for the ways to make cash that fit in with my skills and my interests. I want my online income job to be FUN!
Laurie @thefrugalfarmer recently posted…June Recap – Happy 6 month Anniversary and the Three-Legged Goat
Pauline says
I admire people who are gifted at it but like you it’s not my scene. My house would be full of worthless stuff I am unable to resell!
DC @ Young Adult Money says
Haha thanks for mentioning my giveaway work : ) As far as giveaways it still should be viewed as a fun side thing that might never make any money – after all, you could get really freaking unlucky and lose 5,000 straight giveaways…but you also could win 3 in a row each worth $1k with only about 5 minutes of effort. I digress…
I also am very impressed with people who make money online and I would like to do it more in the future, if not full-time. It’s fun to see what works and what doesn’t (obviously more fun to find something that works, tho!) and I’m excited for this blog in particular and hope we can share ideas.
Pauline says
Giveaways are fun and they are free, so you only lose your time. Much better than lottery tickets!
As per making more money online it depends on your personality, you can be a great Ebay reseller but a crappy writer and blogger, etc. You just have to find your money niche.
Chris @ Stumble Forward says
I tried the whole survey thing and it was just a waste of money. I tried another site called Ciao.com which paid you to write reviews online, but again it only paid pennies on the dollar and would have taken a 100 hours to make $50. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Pauline says
They always seem to find an idiot to do it though.. Better trying to lower your bills or start clipping coupons than work 100 hours for $50.
Alexandra says
Thanks for this post! I tried something that seems similar to Mturk myself; the website was based on a peer review system, and I was rejected occasionally with responses such as
“no,” without explanation (or capitalization, or punctuation). It was very frustrating, and I’m glad to see this is not an uncommon situation.
Alexandra recently posted…Your Journey to Financial Freedom Step One: Inventory
Pauline says
I think they try to get 5 people to do the same job and then only accept one, if any, it may be due to the system not telling you when a task has been done and letting you save it when the client has only agreed to pay for 1 task.
Mrs. Pop @ Planting Our Pennies says
Thanks for the breath of fresh air, Pauline. So many people act like there’s no way to fail making money online, but people do it everyday! =)
Mrs. Pop @ Planting Our Pennies recently posted…Why We’re Hoping For a Net-Worth Drop (And You Probably Should Be Too!)
Pauline says
Well if you work 80 hours a week AND do all the SEO stuff AND network with 250 bloggers every week, AND push all kinds of products like there is no tomorrow, AND… then there MAY be no way in earth you can fail. But 99% of people won’t dedicate more than a couple of hours a day and in this case you can easily not make a penny for months or years.
Debt Roundup says
I am pretty sure I have tried all of these as well. You really have to work hard to make money online. There is so much competition that you can price yourself right out if you don’t do it correctly.
Debt Roundup recently posted…Why is Prepaid Such a Dirty Word?
Pauline says
Work hard, and generally work for yourself. The lower you are in the hierarchy, the more money you’ll make for the site owner.
Rich Uncle EL says
We all fail sometimes, but that should not deter us from trying again. Those who succeed for the most part failed once.
Pauline says
They failed 100s of times but weren’t afraid to get back on the horse! I don’t mind failure, but I am a bit wary of losing money. Time I am always ready to invest (even though time is money, it doesn’t hurt as much as parting with real money) to check out a way to make more.
Sam Gill says
Pauline first of all congratulations for your new blog about making money. You have come long way with your online experience to make money and blogging is natural path. I have similar story. Good luck for all your future endeavors and blogging, you will succeed for sure.
Sam Gill recently posted…Time to market, resources and cash flow : Start up business
Pauline says
Thank you for the encouragement Sam!
Daniel says
I think just by looking outside the box (a day job), you’re way ahead of most people. Sure, not every attempt to make money is going to work, but you just need one good idea to make it big!
My favorite way I ever made money was during my Freshman year of college. I played Free-Cell against other people for money. Made a cool couple hundred dollars on my account and then had friends sign up so I could earn a lot on theirs, too!
Daniel recently posted…Second Quarter Business and Personal Finance Goals Update
Pauline says
That’s a real fun way to earn $200! Sure it is all about trying, not being afraid of failure and trying some more. Then one day, it pays.
Budget and the Beach says
Yeah taskrabbit has become so challenging because I keep getting underbid. Like way underbid and people are doing these tasks for dirt cheap. 🙁
Budget and the Beach recently posted…What Financial Independence Means to Me
Pauline says
Like you said the take me to the airport tasks are not worth the gas, time and car depreciation, maybe you get underbid by someone who has to go to the airport anyway and can do it for $5… But if you have a system, say you do websites and do sites always from the same theme you can bid low compare to custom made websites with new themes each time.
Cat Alford (@BudgetBlonde) says
I’ve had good luck with Fiverr – about $1,000 a month of my income comes from there. However, I’ve never done elance or anything like that because I know I’d be outbid!
Cat Alford (@BudgetBlonde) recently posted…Writing Wrap Up + A Restful Week
Pauline says
impressive! I haven’t dug much but if you have something you can do quickly, and quicker than someone who would only have to do it once, you can certainly market it.
cj says
Thanks for saving me the time and energy on those fool’s errands. They do sound and look good on the surface, but when I stared digging a bit, they are far too much work for far too little pay off. Look forward to seeing your further recommendations. This is a marvelous start!!! Have a snazzy weekend, Pauline!
cj recently posted…Walking Your Day Away
Pauline says
Thank you CJ, hope you guys are having a lovely time as well.
cj says
Oh, sorry, forgot to ask. Did you do away with all share buttons on both sites, or have I even got stupider?
cj recently posted…Walking Your Day Away
Pauline says
no, I most certainly didn’t. I noticed on here but didn’t know they were gone on RFI too! yay, looks like I will be coding today… thank you for pointing it out.
cj says
Oh good! Now I can share your stuff more easily! But sorry you have to go to the trouble of coding:(
cj recently posted…Why I No Longer Eat Cheeseburgers
Kim@Eyesonthedollar says
All I’ve ever gotten from surveys is a bunch of spam email! We have made a few thousand dollars on Ebay over the years, but it’s because I often have optical equipment or high end but discontinued sunglasses or frames that bring a pretty good resale. Most people would not have this kind of item to sell. I tend to look at any online income as a bonus. I hope I make money, but it’s not my sole reason for doing anything online at this point. I’m not hoping to give up my day job and probably could not replace that income. That balance seems to work for now.
Kim@Eyesonthedollar recently posted…Financial Independence Day
Pauline says
Great idea to unload your discontinued glasses on Ebay. If my glasses broke and I loved them I’d want the same pair and would be ready to pay more for it.
SarahN says
Oh yep, I spent so many student years on those survey emails! Overall, I might have made $300 I think?! I’ve never thought of the other options seriously though. The translating thing is good, til you mention there are much poorer nations where people have the same skills :s
SarahN recently posted…Bathroom trolley shelves
Pauline says
$300 is not so bad! well if you don’t consider the hourly rate… yeah, those guys bid so low it is hard to follow, but some people prefer native French from France which is slightly different and then you have an advantage.
carlbentley says
I make quite a lot money with affiliate marketing 😉 Maybe you should also try it
carlbentley recently posted…$385.63 in four days!
Renee s says
I agree with the list except Mturk..I do surveys on there that last about 15 minutes which pay out about a dollar. It’s not much money, but it adds up. What is really nice is that it can be used to purchase items from amazon, so if I ever am wanting something, I just do a bunch of surveys, haha Maybe I have too much time on my hands, though…
Pauline says
What I am saying with Mturk is if you do 4 surveys per hour you still make below minimum wage. You are at home, comfortable and you can work whenever you have time so that is the plus. However if you want to make money you will make more picking up a shift at a local store because the income will be consistent. Or putting the same efforts you put into Mturk for a few months into a blog.
Jared Helm says
Great post, though I have to disagree with you about taking surveys. I think few people put in the time to find quality survey sites, and then get mad when they are spammed, or worse, scammed. If you do some simple math, you can usually figure out which sites will pay you nothing, and which will pay you fairly. I’ve used surveypolice to help me find sites that pay well. I don’t make a ton of money, but it’s simpler than running an etsy or ebay store – that requires too much commitment for my liking. Anyway, making money online is always sold as something that’s so easy to do, when the reality is that very few people make anything worthwhile doing it.
Pauline says
Surveys are great if you do a lot and put in the hours. At the rate I was going it was not worth my time but I imagine it worked for a few, as any online endeavor.
Charles says
Thanks for this post. People don’t make money online because they give up too soon. The ones who are to succeed are the one who realize that failure is not that big of a deal. All it takes is one hit, and you are set.
Charles recently posted…Social Media Is Where It’s At
Pauline says
Exactly, and losing $12 in a domain is really no big deal.
Ronee says
My husband has several websites. On that he has, a food blog, was turned over to me. I have gotten some great ideas from reading this post. Thanks for the good information.
Ronee recently posted…It’s Already August – A Little Closer To Those Holiday Cookies
Pauline says
You are welcome Ronee, thanks for stopping by!
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