How long does it take to make money online?

This is a very tough question which I always get asked by new, online entrepreneur wannabes.  It is a very hard question to which there isn’t a clear cut answer.

It will change depending on each individual person.

What is your motivation?

Obviously you need to have a lot of motivation to do this, however that is not going to make you the next door millionaire is it?  You need to stay motivated even before you see any money hit your bank account.

Get familiar with your niche, with managing your website / blog and make sure your proficient at the techy part of your new business.  You should have a strong motivation to learn these as they will greatly impact upon your success.  Also, when you start out, you don’t want to necessarily have to hire a developer to do the work for you otherwise you might end up spending more than your making.  However, if this option is available to you then it can greatly accelerate your results.  OR at least allow you to spend your time writing useful posts as opposed to learning how to get the video embedded properly (those issues will come up at some point and you will need to learn how to do it).

I can guarantee you that before myself or any other successful online entrepreneurs made any money, we were learning about HTML, how to use wordpress, get to know about marketing strategies and utilize tools like Aweber.

Patience and hardwork is the main aspect that will impact upon you making money online.  They say that on average, it takes between 6 months to a year before most people see any significant money from their online websites.  So stick at it, learn from your mistakes and improve each day.

The magic word ‘Marketing’

Marketing is crucial to any successful business, whether it be an online blog or a convenience store.  Sure, they might be done in a different manner, but without effective marketing the business will not survive.  Some businesses live off a comfortable period of time where they possibly inherited free marketing or just stumble upon marketing, but when times get tough, like they are at the moment with the economy going further downhill each day, marketing is ever more important to stand out from the crowd.

Marketing your website is key to making money online.  Know who your target audience is, learn how they think, react and what they want.  Then give them value.  Do you really want to make money online?  Then you need to offer your readers, your customers and visitors something different.  Get in their shoes and provide them real value.  Market your product, your brand or website so that it stands out.

You need to work out who exactly you are trying to appeal to, then you can work out where they are on the internet.  Don’t just come up with your great idea and then let it sit idle.  Work on it, and spend the time it deserves.  If you really want to make money online then you need to dedicate time to your idea to make it work.  Its no good having the best product, articles or information if you can’t get any one to your site is it?

The key is to stay on top of the latest trends, developments and activities on the web.  If you know what will help your site to be successful you will have an edge and advantage over the competition.  You don’t exactly have to spend tonnes of money on it either, just make sure you know everything you can about internet marketing.  The people who are able to successfully make money online aren’t sitting in front of TV each evening and letting their website go.  They are actively monitoring, trialing and testing different strategies to get traffic to their site.  Stay with it!

So how can you stay on top of things?  Well, make sure you are reading what the authors of the top, successful blogs are saying.  Learn from them.  Subscribe to this blog so you are up to date as new information is posted.

Develop relationships with other sites and start to negotiate back links / cross links.  It is very well known that to improve your ranking on Google you need to have many high quality related sites linking back to your site.  Get your brand and website out there and build the links. 

It would be a pretty big fluke if people just landed at your site by accident when you first start, so make sure your active.  Even participate on forums, guest posts on other people’s blogs and use social media.

A final word, when you pick your topic, you might want to go for a topic such as work from home, make money online, get out of debt, lose weight etc.  These are extremely competitive areas.  While very rewarding, be prepared to stick it out for the long term before you get any success.  It may be worth while starting out on a less competitive niche to get some experience, build up your brand and then branch out into the other competitive areas later.

Remember, above all, HAVE FUN!