Making money online -- fact or fiction?

So many people ask me, can you really make money online? Seriously, I get this in my every day life all the time. My friends at work are amazed when I talk about it. They all figure the only possible way online to make a few extra bucks is to sell junk on eBay, like an online garage sale, is pretty much all they think of. Nope, there are loads of other ways to make money online, and I'm sure I probably only know of a small fraction of ways.

Okay, obviously there's blogging for money, which I've already talked about tonight, and there are many different blog for money sites out there too. I personally use PayPerPost and Blogitive.

And there's Google's Adsense. Adsense comes with a minimum $100 payout, so in my opinion, you have to have a very busy site, or several sites in order to get regular payouts from them. It can happen though, and there are many people out there making good money with Adsense.

There's Cafepress, which is where I have my shop, The Funky Olive. This is a great place to make some money if you're into graphics, or just plain old witty and are able to make a .jpg or .png image, either with graphics, photos, or a text image. Or you can self publish your own books that you have written there too and sell them! You can even make money off of other shopkeepers items there too, but we'll get to that part shortly.

You can set up your own shop with Amazon as well. They have skads and skads of items you can sell, from books (obviously) to all kinds of household gadgets, electronics, clothing and shoes. They have pretty much anything you can imagine.

If you're good at photography, you can check out any of the sites that you can sell images from. Shutterstock, Shutterpoint, Photostockplus, to name a few.

Affiliating is big, and there are all kinds of sites out there that offer some sort of an affiliate program. One that I'm familiar with, is of course the Cafepress Affiliate program. You can make 20% off sales to any shopkeeper's items, pending they are opted in to the affiliate program, which probably about 95% are, because it's silly not to be. So you could make up your own sort of shop on your own website if you choose, using only items you like, or you can just use any of the very many ready to go banner ads, or customise your own to suit your blog or website's theme.

Another site that I have frequented is Helium. This is a site where a question is posted, and you give an answer to said question. Your answer is then rated by other people within the community, and you're paid based on how many times your answer is viewed, and the amount your paid per review is based on what rating you have for said answer. You can make money there, but don't expect to make a living off it. I currently have answered 122 questions, and am within $1.00 of making the minimum $25. payout. Maybe this month!

I've tried a couple others, but found them to be utterly useless. Mavishare, where you sign up for an offer, and are supposed to be paid for it. I signed up for one, did all I had to do, and never did see my $5.00 payment hit my PayPal account! Another is ReviewStream. They claim that you write a review of any sort about anything you want, be it a book, a movie, an item, whatever, and you'll be paid, I think $3.00. My opinion is they are a scam. Original comments removed here at Reviewstream's request, and upon further investigation, I have to say that I was wrong at quoting $3.00 per reveiw. After visiting their site again looking for my own reviews, I noticed they only pay $1.50 per review. My opinion of them has not changed, and I am entitled to my opinion. There was another too, 500cents-500dollars, where they claim you get paid for reading email advertisements. I got so much spam mail from them, all I can say is thank god for spam checkers!

That's about all I've tried so far, but as I find more, I will post them on this blog. Sharing is a good thing!

So in answer to the question making money online -- fact or fiction? Lots of fact, but steer clear of the fiction!

Cheers!

Olivia