How realistic is it, really?

I've been on this forum for about ~10 months now, and have yet to make a single dollar. I've purchased different programs and software, tried many different methods, but I'm only in the negatives now because nothing I have done has profited yet.

I thought this forum would help me a lot, because before I came on here, I had been trying to make money online for 2 years before, but did not make a single dollar profit. I was very optimistic about this forum, but now I am questioning the whole "internet marketing" game.

What percent of people are actually legitimately making money on their own, and are not being paid something to say they are with a particular product or something?

For the past 6 months or so I purposely got fired from work so I could live on unemployment for a while and work on this stuff. I spent over 12 hours a day studying different information, learning how to program and write code, and none of it has been going too well. Does this mean that I'm not smart enough to make money online?

I've met lots of friends through this site and this whole game in general, but most of them tell me that I might not be cut out for it if I haven't made any profit in almost 3 years. Not that they are discouraging me, but they make a point by saying at least with a minimum wage job, I have secured some income as long as I do my job, because I have been looking to replace my burger-flipping jobs with internet marketing. So my friends are encouraging me to stick with my dayjob unless I want to be homeless again.

The thing is, it's not that easy to find a job where I am in NYC, especially with my credentials. I never finished college, and I'm not very good at any field in particular. NYC is also expensive, but the reason I cannot move is because if I become homeless here, I know all the spots I can sleep without the police bothering me, I know all the joints that give free food, and I know all the places with the best wifi signals. I've been living here almost my entire life so I'm familiar with the city. If I go to a different state and become homeless, I won't know any places to go.

The reason I'm really posting this thread is, actually a followup to one of my introductory threads on here when I first joined: http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackhat-seo/making-money/258185-do-you-have-smarter-than-average-biz.html

Maybe you really do have to be above-average in intelligence, and only a select few are actually making decent money. And then the rest are just sheep the intelligent can profit off their failures somehow.

no you need to find one thing and get great at it what tools do you have what do you like and so on i am old and out of date compared to most on here and i do fine so it must be you approach not your intelligence.

Dizz

Actually, there's a zillion people making a lot more money and not buying crap stuff around.

Fact 1: Guys who sell, mostly follow simple rule: get some on those who want to get some. Money, ofc.

Fact 2: You actually don't need any software or WSO or anything. If you were focusing on 1 single thing for 3 years with no "methods" and tried to focus on making it awesome (imagine any site in niche YOU like with above average search volume) it would do you more good.

Fact 3: Don't give up, try to re-think your approach. What you may have been doing wrong, what can you do better, faster?

p.s. - and never go full blackhat if with lower experience.

If you're a decent writer, PM me and I'll help you out...

If you are not very good at writing, you can at least try. Find something you are passionate about, or even something that you wanna be passionate about. Submerge yourself in it, learn everything there is to know about it. Become an authority in your niche. That may be the route for you to get started. This is what I did, and I suck at writing. Just gotta put yourself out there.

I think we are all good with at least one aspect of internet marketing. For myself, I like content rich sites that are well structured and deliver the readers with some value. Others are good at gaming sites like facebook, others are good with CL, others are good and pure bh adsense. Some guys here are great at SEO and can rank small sites very well.

Find what you like to do and stick with it. If you've worked 6 months straight on one thing and still can't make money, then you need to rethink your strategy and try something else.

-sigh- You're not supposed to quit your job until you've got reliable online income, not the other way around. But, if you managed to learn programming or coding, I would freelance some local work to build up some cash and then invest it properly

You don't need fancy tools or anything else to get you where you need to be. Yes, some of them help, but I made and still make most of my income without them. I just have invested in LinkPushing to maintain or improve rankings - that's all. Small investment.

It's uber relistic to make money online.

I'm 54 and started close to 5 years ago with one site and now have 50 that
generate in the 15K a month range... all passive income and the majority of my sites were set up and backlinked without any tools.

You have to work hard to make money online just as if this was not the digital world.

At some point you may find something that works for YOU and then you roll with that.

Hey bro I felt like a total failure fuck up for 4 years trying to make money online and just losing it. I'm now making a few hundred a month and I'm only 16 so that's almost as much as my minimum wage job pays me. You just need to do one thing at a time and focus. Find something that can make a small income and push it to it's full potential then come to something else. At least the first thing you did successfully will be able to pay for your next project.

Hey man gotta keep your head up im in the same boat i quite my job back i n june im a single father of 1 and i don't get unemployment i have auction off everything of value just to stay alive. I just started IM in may so far ive made 62.00 and thats from adsense (waiting on my pin still). but it is possible i cant not write code, i can't design websites heck i can barely spell , i have no talent but the only thing i have is hard work and determination if you keep working hard and reading the forum i think u can be successful i think if you keep acting it will come.

Don't give up. If you haven't made any money yet try a different approach. If you've really been at this for 3 years and have yet to make a single dollar, it makes me think that maybe you're jumping around to every new thing you hear about instead of sticking something out. Money doesn't roll in super quickly, (unless you're really lucky or find a GREAT idea) it takes time. If you stick it out and apply yourself I'm sure you can make some decent cash.

As flexnds said, you might want to try writing. Your grammar appears to be pretty good, and that alone puts you a step ahead in providing articles for others. I would say try for that. Surely you can find something that interests you, or something that you know about, to write about.

dont give up......get a job and keep working online.....

As a "new player" around here maybe my advice won't be that great or meaningful, but it's the best advice I can give for your current situation.

Stop coming here.

Do you know the term information overload? I bet you do. And I bet your hard drive has more than a couple of gigas of ebooks and software from our members download section... You must stop coming here for that simple reason.

Stop trying to learn and copy that new cool thing that all J R . V I Ps are doing, take a decision and stick to it. You won't make a dime out of the internet 'till you put something out there for s a l e. Maybe you are s e l l i n g leads, maybe clicks, maybe downloads, maybe a product or service, but you must s e l l something or you won't make a single dime till you realize this.

I was in a study vacuum not so long ago, maybe exactly where you are now.

Since I realized I needed to get out of it I've made money from adult, from Adsense from downloads... Nothing to fancy, but at least for now I can pay for my investments in other areas trying to grow my income.

It's not about if you were born smart or not, it's about doing what it takes, about stop being afraid of failure and metaphorically masturbating with information while deceiving yourself, thinking you are being productive, when actually you are just masturbating with the idea of being great instead of doing it.

TLDNR: Stop studying and reading every post around here. Go s e l l something or you'll never make a dime!

I can tell you, you got some nice responses here.

I'm assuming you tried one method, it didn't work right away and then you gave up and went on to the next one.

you really must be doing something wrong if you ain't earnt 1 dollar in 3 years
it seems like you have trouble to get the hole game running
maybe you should look out for a member which can you teach 1on1 how to make money online!??

gscan,

thank you for this post. i'm a newbie myself as well and i have been questioning how you can really make money here. it seems those making the money are those selling products/services to other IMers.

you've got those making money from selling backlinks, articles, etc and you've got those programmers making tools to do kw research and the like... and it seems EVERYONE is buying those tools. so it really makes you wonder, are there that many IMers really making any decent income, from NOT selling to OTHER IMers?

i've added you on my AIM list. if you don't do AIM, please add me to your skype "omisore.ao." i havn't made a DIME from IM but I'm looking to build a small network of those in the same boat as you and myself to hopefully start to earn some type of $ online.

anyone else interested, please feel free to also contact me.

Black hat is a risky first start. If you haven't established something white hat yet, you should really start. You need to buy a niche research tool and that's it. Unless you are clueless about making a site or don't feel like working 10 hours a day, then you can buy ready-made sites.

gscan said:

I've been on this forum for about ~10 months now, and have yet to make a single dollar. I've purchased different programs and software, tried many different methods, but I'm only in the negatives now because nothing I have done has profited yet.

I thought this forum would help me a lot, because before I came on here, I had been trying to make money online for 2 years before, but did not make a single dollar profit. I was very optimistic about this forum, but now I am questioning the whole "internet marketing" game.

What percent of people are actually legitimately making money on their own, and are not being paid something to say they are with a particular product or something?

For the past 6 months or so I purposely got fired from work so I could live on unemployment for a while and work on this stuff. I spent over 12 hours a day studying different information, learning how to program and write code, and none of it has been going too well. Does this mean that I'm not smart enough to make money online?

I've met lots of friends through this site and this whole game in general, but most of them tell me that I might not be cut out for it if I haven't made any profit in almost 3 years. Not that they are discouraging me, but they make a point by saying at least with a minimum wage job, I have secured some income as long as I do my job, because I have been looking to replace my burger-flipping jobs with internet marketing. So my friends are encouraging me to stick with my dayjob unless I want to be homeless again.

The thing is, it's not that easy to find a job where I am in NYC, especially with my credentials. I never finished college, and I'm not very good at any field in particular. NYC is also expensive, but the reason I cannot move is because if I become homeless here, I know all the spots I can sleep without the police bothering me, I know all the joints that give free food, and I know all the places with the best wifi signals. I've been living here almost my entire life so I'm familiar with the city. If I go to a different state and become homeless, I won't know any places to go.

The reason I'm really posting this thread is, actually a followup to one of my introductory threads on here when I first joined: http://www.blackhatworld.com/blackh...185-do-you-have-smarter-than-average-biz.html

Maybe you really do have to be above-average in intelligence, and only a select few are actually making decent money. And then the rest are just sheep the intelligent can profit off their failures somehow.

Click to expand...

gscan - I've been a member here for over 12 months but I've only here active here in fits & starts. I've got a lot going on in my personal life at the mo (and that's no excuse) so I can't dedicate as much time to IM as I'd really like. That said I've got a piss poor adsense site up which I bought ready made (in a niche I know nothing about and have no interest in), I've done nothing with since and I've earned a paltry $5 from Adsense which is nothing BUT, I'm happy - I've spent a few quid to test the water to really see if money CAN be made online and the answer is YES, it can. The only thing holding each of us back is ourselves.

As mentioned above, I've got a stack of stuff on my plate at the moment BUT I've set myself the deadline that by the end of December this year I'll be in a position to dedicate about 20 hours a week from what will be the 'office' in my new house (It should have been start of November but we're running behind schedule on the new place). But my argument is that if I can make $5 from adsense by doing NOTHING then surely by dedicating 20 - 25 hours per week to IM then surely I'd be pulling in many times this.

My advice? Don't give up and don't jump from concept to concept. Pick one thing and stick at it until you can honestly say you've exhausted it.

Why not go offer some "No Money Down" SEO services to a local business or two on the basis that you don't charge a fee until you get them to Page 1, top 5 and No.1 or 2. Like you've said yourself you're making nothing at the moment so you've got nothing to lose by doing this and you'll gain some worthwhile experience.

Best of luck anyway but I'd say stick with it. If you're resourceful enough to know where you can sleep and the police won't find you, where you can get free food or where all your cities wi-fi hotspots are then you're already thinkin' outside the box!

OP, you are joking with us. I do not believe you. 3 years is a long time. Every one can earn some $ for 3 years. Even if you are super lazy. Just use Sharecash or Fiverr for your first bucks. Write some aticles. You cant? So leave BHW for now, improve your gramatic skills (i know my English sux), reg in Fiverr, offer articles writing for $5 and thats it. Once you earn some money, you can continue reading the forum.

PurpleSEO said:

are there that many IMers really making any decent income, from NOT selling to OTHER IMers?

Click to expand...

Tons... not only me but I know a lot of guys that make real good passive income from their sites.