Although it is possible to make money online, a lot of bloggers or small business owners fail to do so.
The main reason for not making money online is because you think is easy and when you realize that it is a lot of work, you get bored and give up.
I am working online since 2001 and based on my experience, I can assure you that it is possible to make money online but it requires a LOT of patience and hard work.
In this post, you will learn the 5 main reasons why you are not making any money online.
Towards the end of the post, I will also outline some solid ways to follow that work for making money online.
1. You don’t have enough traffic
To make money online you need traffic, this is how the online business model works.
If you are selling a high-converting product you can make money with only a few visitors per day but if you want to make money from advertising you need a few thousand per day.
Without traffic do not expect to make any money online.
When we talk about traffic, in the minds of many people Google is the only way but this is not true.
There are many sources of Internet traffic you can use to meet your monetary targets but you need to know where to find them.
2. Your website/blog is too young
Don’t believe everything you read about making money online. There is no magic way to make thousands of dollars in a few months and there is no magic way to make money without doing a lot of hard work.
This also means that if you just started a website or blog you will not make money any time soon unless of course, you created an exceptional product or website.
From my experience, you need at least one year (usually more) of hard work before making any decent amount of money either from AdSense, affiliate programs, or through selling your own product.
3. You don’t practice good SEO
SEO is important for many reasons and if you believe that you can succeed online without following good SEO practices, then you are wrong.
Everything starts with SEO and I am not referring only to keyword analysis or content marketing but to the bigger picture which includes understanding your customers and using SEO to give them what they want.
The majority of webmasters still make mistakes with SEO despite the plethora of information about proven techniques that work.
4. You are not patient enough
They say that ‘patience is a virtue’ and when it comes to working online and expecting to make money from it, is more than true.
To help you understand how important is to be patient, take into account the following examples:
- It may take 3-4 months before you start getting any organic traffic from Google or Bing
- It may take a few months until you build a decent number of Facebook and Twitter followers
- It may take months until you get your first RSS subscriber or comment in your blog
The bottom line is that you need to aim for long term success and forget about any short term temporary results.
5. You created a website for the sole purpose of making money online
Creating a website for the sole purpose of making money online is a thing of the past.
A few years ago you could create a number of websites, publish a few posts, build tens of incoming links and make money with Adsense, Amazon affiliate, or other affiliate promotions.
It was a model that worked for a couple of years and some people who were clever and fast enough to understand this, made enough money.
This model does no longer works. You cannot start a website for the sole purpose of adding Adsense or promoting a particular product or anything similar to this.
Your website or blog needs to have a purpose that goes beyond making money.
You need to create something that adds value to the user by offering good content, free services, and incentives for the user to come and visit your web site again and again.
When you do that persistently for a number of months, the money will follow.
I know that it is difficult to understand this especially if you are a beginner to the online world, but take my word for it there are no shortcuts or overnight tricks.
Additional Resources
How can you make money online?
I don’t want to pass the message that it is impossible to make money online, because it is far from the truth.
To close this post with a positive message here are some tested ways to make money – if you manage to combine some of these methods together then you can make a living online as well!
#1 – Creating a website in a niche you are really passionate about.
You create a high-quality web site with good content that offers value to your readers.
After some time you have enough readers and daily visits and you make money through Google Adsense.
#2 – Write a book or create an online course
Writing a book or creating a course about a topic you know very well and publishing it on Amazon (kindle book) or selling it directly from your website.
As an example, check out my SEO Course.
#3 – Create a mobile application
Create a mobile application and upload it to Google Play, Apple Store, Windows Store, and Amazon Appstore.
The application can be either free and gain from advertising or paid. To make money from advertising you need to have many downloads (at least 200,000) and many active users.
To sell your application you need to have a good marketing plan. The competition is tough and without a marketing strategy, it will be very difficult to make a decent amount of sales.
#4 – Sell your services online.
If you have the necessary skills you can sell your services online. This is not limited to IT or SEO or Internet Marketing.
Check out peopleperhour.com and upwork.com to see examples of services offered and wanted.
Speaking of online services you can check out our SEO audit services and our SEO packages.
These are the four main methods I have used successfully over the years and made a living online.
If you search more on the topic you will find other methods like selling on eBay or amazon, running an online shop, dropshipping etc.
I am sure that these methods work as well, provided that you stay away from ‘get rich overnight’ methods.
My best advice is to find out what is more suitable to your abilities (either technical or educational), study about it, find out what others are doing, make a plan, and don’t escape from it until you get the results you want.
Mike says
Hi Alex
How much money can you make with Adsense? I get a few clicks per day but the earnings are low, is there any way to increase it?
Alex Chris says
Mike Hi and thank you for your question. The amount of money you can make with Adsense depends on a number of factors. The most important from my experience are:
The keywords your website is ranking
The type of keywords (are they ‘buy’ keywords?)
The amount of traffic you website receives
I will write a new blog post and explain all the above in detail but as a rule of thumb if you want to make more money with AdSense you need a LOT of traffic and you need to start targeting ‘buy’ keywords and not just general terms.
I will send you an email once the post is out.
Alex.
Aanya Virani says
Hi Alex,
Very useful and nice post. Most articles hesitate to admit the harsh reality of the money made from the internet. I myself has been trying to do for more than 6 months but haven’t started to earn any serious money. But I hope that the law of providing quality content will soon be proved fruitful.
Alex says
Aanya Hi
Don’t give up…if you are providing quality content consistently and if you are patient enough, it will pay off at the end.
Thanks for passing by
Alex
satish kanaujiya says
hi alex
give me some tips based on your experience to develop a traffic website to make money
Alex says
Satish hi
These will help for sure:
https://www.reliablesoft.net/10-free-ways-to-get-more-visitors-to-your-web-site/
https://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-increase-web-site-traffic/
https://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-grow-your-website-traffic-without-building-links/
Thanks
Alex
Andrea says
How many visitors do you need before you start getting paid by adsense
Alex says
Hi Alex,
An informative and truthful post. As an entrepreneur, I have tried various ways make money by finding right strategies. Trouble is that there so many of them and it hard pick right ones.
With regards blogging I think you right in that one needs patience and keep working away at it.
Josh says
Alex,
I enjoyed these steps to not making money online. I feel like I’ve built a great affiliate program but I am having a hard time getting it going. I’m trying these points that you’ve mentioned. Any other tips?
Josh
Yusri Big says
There are so many ways to make extra money that nearly anyone can find a method that suits their skills and capability. The reason for people failing in their efforts of making money online is not that they couldn’t find an appropriate way or that they couldn’t manage time for their new venture.
Krista says
The patience is the hardest, at 8 months we’re starting to see some really positive momentum but it’s taken a while to get there.
Elavarasan says
Hi Alex,
Its hard to maintain a website with fresh and good content always. And we have to pay money for the domain and hosting. So, can I start Adsense with like blogger, wordpress ..?
Dennis Simsek says
Great advice thank you
Rahul Yadav says
What a great post. Making money online is not that really easy.
Alex says
Hi Rahul
It’s true is not easy, but it’s not impossible either. Keep up the hard work!
Thanks
Alex
Paul Veenendall says
a newbie tryin to get started.
Alex says
Hi Paul
Best of luck!
Thanks
Alex
Isaac Wanyoike says
Hi Alex,
If i should start to write a blog or google Adsence, where should i start to write in facebook or in google?
Alex says
Hi Isaac
You need to start a website (on WordPress for example) and then promote your work in both Google and Facebook.
Thanks
Karoline Passos says
Great post! Thanks a lot!
I’am brazillian but I live in Portugal, and I have a blog at least 1 year and I had to tought to give up, because I have only 15/20 views per day ;-/
But this week I had the first comment on my blog…from a person that really liked what I wrote…
So I’m trying to understand what I can improve, because I really like to write on my blog but I need to make money with.
I have a question…
I begun my blog with a lot of diferent topics and only now I understood I can´t keep this way…
Do I need to delete some topics? Or can I choose one or two and keep writing?
Thanks and sorry for any mistake in my english…
Alex says
Hi Karoline
No need to delete them, you can choose one or two and keep writing.
Thanks
Alex
Veronica Jackson says
Excellent post very useful. Thank you!
Josh says
Great post by the way. I’m glad I finally came across someone who’s admitting the truth about starting up an online business and I actually think your reasons above are why I haven’t got insane amounts of traffic yet but I will soon. It isn’t easy at all.
Sagar Rai says
Hey Alex Amazing Tips, Thank You For Sharing this sir really this is awesome tips sir
Alex Chris says
Hi Sagar
Thanks! All the best with your online efforts.
Alex
A. Simmons says
Good article.I wish i knew this before to avoid many mistakes
yogi ajit says
I used to read this blog long time in which I got new info. After reading your post I increase my knowledge because your blog has amazing info. Please keep it up.
Kristin Brause says
Thanks for an honest insight into the realities of making money online. It took me 8 months for my blog to make some money. One thing I would add to your list though is mindset work. I don’t know about you, but I also had to work on my mindset hard every day to believe before there was proof.