What are Your Biggest Challenges Regarding Making Money Online?
Read more about: Conversation, Online Marketing, Traffic Monetization
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You and I both know that there is an extensive amount of information on the web regarding internet business and making money online, both paid and free. Sometimes I think there is too much info out there, which most of the time makes it harder to figure out who to trust, or what is right, or how to apply it to your own business model.
I didn’t really set out for this blog to be a how to make money online blog, though it has kind of evolved into covering that niche much of the time. It has evolved that way for three reasons :: Reason one, you asked for it. Reason two, I love helping people work from home. Reason three, there is a ton of $hit information out there, and I work my a$$ off to help make sure that OUR readers don’t lose money on these garbage programs.
Thinking of new ways to help you be more successful and profitable keeps me up at night. Seriously, it does. So what better way to help you more, than by asking you what you need.
So what is your biggest challenge regarding making money online? Whether you have a blog, an eCommerce site, an eBay store, or even a service based business that you market online. What is the hardest thing for you? Driving traffic? Finding good paying advertising? Converting leads into clients? Converting affiliate traffic into sales? Something completely different than any of these?
Please let me and the rest of the authors on this site know how we can help you better.
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I’m having problems finding paid posts that fit my blog. Mine’s more of a personal, hodge-podge kind of blog.
That, and finding something I can, that brings in regular money, but doesn’t require me to pay out more money, or have a landline. We have cells, because everyone is long distance, and my husband drives 45-60 minutes each way for work. Cheaper, and more efficient that way.
That is too funny that you just posted this, as I’ve just been in IM conversations with a friend (also a blogger) about the very same subject. I literally just closed my IM window to check out my feeds, and here was your post
I’d almost say all of the above, lol, but my biggest issues at the moment…
- Driving traffic
- Converting leads into clients
- Converting affiliate traffic into sales
I’ve been doing some research, but as you say, there’s so much crap out there, it’s hard to know what’s valid and what isn’t.
I definitely trust your advice, though, so I’ll be looking forward to your posts on the subject!
I’m starting to get the traffic now but it’s not converting well. I have to work so hard just to earn a couple of cents and most affiliate networks don’t pay until you’ve earned a significant amount, so my balances just sit there, mocking me. Paid posts are often ridiculously off-topic so I won’t risk driving my traffic away by accepting too many of them.
The biggest challenge you will be facing as a webmaster is the callenge of time. Sure, it’s easy to be excited about a certain project but what do you do once you start losing momentum? Do you continue to give it 110% or do you simply give up? A lot of projects with great perspectives have ended up as failures because the webmasters in questions have not been able to keep going under such circumstances.
Alan Johnson
I think keeping the content up to par is the hardest. It’s hard to be original with everything that’s out there today.
In second place would be traffic. Establishing a readership and keeping it is hard.
This is a good topic Wendy! I would say that my two biggest challenges are converting traffic (like Gina Marie said) and time.
Driving traffic and converting users. If you have a good idea and you think its something people would use, how do you get them to get on board?
This is obviously a rhetorical question, but something I work on everyday.
Where’s the magic bullet!?
My biggest challenge is figuring out a balance to actually writing, planning, marketing, social media, and stats evaluation.
It seems that I can’t figure out how to balance my time in all of those. Like today I spent most of my time working on social media (entreCard)
Yesterday I spent most my time planning next weeks schedule and researching ‘planning better’
I would like to be able to get all of that done daily. I have been trying but it isn’t working.
My idea of an ideal day would be to spend say an hour writing, an hour marketing, an hour researching, etc. But I end up spending the entire day being sidetracked and not really accomplishing very much in any one area.
Simple, answer- time management (see, even in a comment I just can’t stop and leave it at that! :-)) I am hopeless!!
Fighting the perception that because many people write, anyone can write well. Want to light a fire under my ass? Tell me, “Oh, anyone can write that!”
NO! Dammit, NO! Anyone can run, but does everyone make it to the Olympics? SHEESH!
To those asking about advice on conversion, two things: selling, compelling content and a navigation on your site that leads visitors to where you want them to be. That’ll do it.
Lol! Very on topic for me today. (I would be the other half of the conversation WAH Web Mommy was talking about.) I think for me it’s two things.
1) Getting traffic! I’m actually going to experiment with some off the net community service / advertising. I want to package all my recalls and health news for each month into a pamphlet that places like daycares can handout with their monthly newsletter. Something cool for them, promotes child safety and has my site name on it.
2) Balancing content and marketing. This is in some ways part of #1. I work so hard on caring for a 2 year old and publishing my content my marketing plans have really slowed down. That pamphlet was supposed to start at the end of Dec and I’ve had to push it to the end of Jan.
I guess my biggest problem is that I haven’t earned my first million yet.
I’m happy with the first check that Google sent me– I can afford to feed my family for three days on that. It’s too bad that it took me 9 months to earn it.
I get good conversion ratios for my advertising on one of my blogs (haven’t yet monetized A Good Husband beyond one book review), but I don’t get near the traffic I’d like to see.
The other big problem is comments. It’s a rare post that actually gets a comment on my blog. Could be because I use Blogspot, IDK, but I don’t think so.
@ Cory - I took a quick look - the inhibit responses post was pretty neat, but it could be punchier and snappier to be more engaging. The white on blue is tough to read, especially with the cloud effect going on, so you might want to change that. Your blog’s purpose isn’t clear either - what’s it about? Who are you? What do you do? What can I expect to find on your blog? These things help to increase readership and convert hits. And at a quick glance (which is all your visitors will give you), I didn’t even notice you sold a book on your site. Everything has to be really clear for site visitors and engaging to get them to stick. My two very quick cents, for what it’s worth.
Regarding traffic - are you doing something to go get that traffic? How are you encouraging traffic to your blog?
@ Rose - I tend to push down non-paying stuff, too. Then Harry took me aside and said, “Yes, the money we earn is immediate - but we have to treat *each project* that we have as if it were a paying project, or else we’ll just keep pushing it aside. And it will pay,” he added. “But not until we get it done.”
I’m shy, so any kind of marketing or promotion is hard for me.
@ Trisha - You’re on the Internet. That’s about as anonymous as it gets
Write up an email marketing campaign. Submit articles to directories. Go around writing great comments on blogs. Send potential clients some swag gifts or a discount coupon.
I think the biggest challenge is begin patient. In my learning process one teacher said, “If you think this is get rich quick then get that out of your mind. This is a get rich slowly business”. Whenever I feel the money isn’t coming in fast enough, I think of this quote. It has helped me a lot.
Leigh, patience is indeed the name of the game and a lot of projects with great potential end up as failures due to the fact that most webmasters tend to give up when things get hard. The main difference between winners and losers: winners get things done while losers come up with excuses.
Alan Johnson
Excellent Post! You echo my sentiments about the information that is spread all over the blogosphere. Besides the legitimacy issues it seems that there are so many different models for making money online that it’s really hard to know what will work in my particular situation.
I’ve been blogging for a little over a year; just to get the hang of things. Doing it well is not as easy as it looks has been the big discovery. I am at the point of launching out in earnest but struggling with how best to market this gray hair. So content is the big question for me. I have a broad background with some special skills but I have this feeling that I am overlooking simply because it doesn’t seem important to me.
I had NO idea when I started blogging I would have to learn about traffic building, seo, monetization, etc. I really did open up a pandora’s box and with the information overload it’s almost overwelming and makes me want to quit and relax watching The Apprentice or something.
My priority topics right now are getting traffic and learning about affiliate programs. But I’ll find value in anything from you really.
@ Jaki - It’s a common misperception to think that blogging = writing. Blogging is, in fact, highly different from writing per se and is a job and career of its own that requires a wealth of online knowledge that many writers don’t have. Good on you for going after that knowledge!
James Chartrand - Men with Pens’s last blog post..3 Can’t-Fail Steps For Writing Without Intimidation
For me I would definitely say maintaining a steady stream of traffic. I’m happy with my content by driving enough traffic is always problematics and I don’t want to resort to spamming, because in the long term this destroys your blog.