One of the most common questions about making money online is how to do it as fast as possible. I see it a lot. So what is it then? Well read this and you’ll find out.
I have over many years studied and tried MANY different ways to make money online, and have succeeded in most cases doing it whenever I worked hard and long on a project or a site.
In very rare circumstances, out of the plethora of experiments I ran, in about 4 cases, I was able to succeed in doing it very fast and in this article, I will reveal to you those 4 cases.
But do note that is a catch you will notice in each case, and I am telling you this now so you don’t feel deceived.
There is often an ironic “cost” to making money online fast and that is that you either have to get lucky, OR spend a lot in hopes that it will work for you. But just read these case studies and see for yourself.
These are completely true stories that happened to me where I truly did make money online fast:
Example 1:
Several years ago, I had an experience in which within 3 hours time, I made several $100 dollars.
In the first hour, I set up a website promoting a diet program, in the next I wrote an ad that sent traffic to the site and in the last hour, I looked at my sales stats and noticed I grossed over $400. In the days that followed, I had periods where I grossed over $1,000 and on the biggest over $7,000.
Anyone who reads that paragraph will assume I made money online fast right? This is true and the key to making this work was:
- I needed to know how to make a website.
- I needed to know how to create ads and correctly set them up for maximum traffic results.
- I needed to know how to find a hot topic in a market I knew would sell.
- I needed to know how to write my site and my ad such that it would get sales.
In short, I needed experience and I needed to take action on that experience, which I did and it ended up working for me. In fact, I actually have 3 examples of this exact formula with the dieting example working, but the one in this case study was by far the most successful.
The lesson learned here is that if there is a hot market for a product or service, then if you know how to utilize this the way I did, you have a high probability of earning from it fast.
The con however is that it requires you spend money to see if this experiment works and in my case, despite this experiment working 3 times and making me well over 6 figures combined, didn’t work for most of the other similar experiments I ran and often I would end up losing money.
There is a price for these experiments and in my case, it was paying money to run ads. Would I recommend you try this?
Well not without having certain stages of success down which I will reveal to you at the bottom and also not without having an investment to spend and ready to waste. Trust me when I say, these experiments will most of the time lead to loss.
Example 2:Â
When I was just a beginner to online marketing (start here if you are too), my goal was probably like yours to make money fast. I was a college student and “didn’t have time” to work hard on building a business, I wanted a shortcut and I found it (Or so I though) in the realm of paid online surveys.Â
I paid over $50 to access a database of survey sites that would then pay me to take their surveys, but as I found out in a very cruel and unfortunate way, most of those surveys paid me pennies and in many cases, FRACTIONS of that.
Can one say that paid online surveys are a form of making money fast? Yes, but as you see, the other side here is that this is a deceptive thing because you make SO little, it can’t even count for income.
And trust me, I tried MANY different survey sites in my history, they all ended up being worthless. But as I did in the previous example, let me point out what I needed to know for this to work:
- I didn’t really need to know anything, I just signed up, answered surveys and was “paid” little to nothing.
Contrary to the first example, where I did need to know something to make something, this didn’t require anything, and as such, this led to me making nothing.
Example 3:Â
After seeing these experiments of mine fail and/or have a very high risk factor, I decided to sit down, build a real business through a website by following training in a program called Wealthy Affiliate.
I built a website (this one) in which I kept writing articles daily on the very topic of making money online, and dispelling the myths we hear (like this common one) about how easy and fast it can be.
Now the difference between this example and the others was that I didn’t expect to be rich immediately. And I had to work on this site for a GOOD year before I saw good profits returning.
But what started with NOTHING for me on this site, slowly grew, from several dozens of dollars a day, to several $100 a day. Just yesterday, I grossed nearly $700 in a single day from this site:
Now this is on a VERY good day and obviously, the previous day was not the same. It fluctuates, but the page makes something every single day.Â
Can one say I make money fast? Well yes and no.
No because I didn’t sit down and earn this immediately, but…
YES because I worked hard to reach a point where this would become automatic.
So what did I need to make this example work?
- Well I needed a program or some kind of training module to show me how to build a business.
- I needed patience and I needed to work hard.
- In the process of doing this, I built a business that has paid me for years.Â
Example 4:Â
In a near similar fashion as in example 3, I also built a site on the topic of dieting and through similar efforts of hard work, earned my way to collect an email list of 10,000’s of subscribers.Â
Each time someone would sign up, I would promote to them a specific program I really liked and made some good cash from. I ended up grossing $200 a day from this, but to reach that point, took me several months to do.
Then when I sent out a MASS email to these subscribers recommending something to them, I would end up making nearly a $1,000 a day for a short period.
Again, I ask you, did I make money quickly? And again the answer is, not immediately, but it did lead to it. And what did I need to do this? The same exact things I needed in example 3.
What to learn from these examples:Â
In the first one, people can say I got lucky and I will admit, to a certain extent I did, because as I said, I ran that same formula many times, in only 3 cases (which is a SMALL minority), was I able to do exceptionally well. But the price for the bad examples where it didn’t work added up and I could NOT depend on getting lucky to make money online fast.Â
In the second example, well, for a lack of a better word, it was an IS a scam. Paid online surveys will give you very little for your efforts and keep on you the hook to keep taking their surveys, holding your “earnings” hostage until you reach a certain payout point, by which time, all the time you spent working on them would have equaled to the time it would take for you to create a profitable online business.
Enter example 3, I stopped chasing these crazy, risky dreams that doomed me and so many, and worked hard to build a website that would be stable in income and I reached that point. To date, example 3 is the SAFEST bet I would advise people work for. The cost is nothing but time. You really risk no finances in doing this IF you follow this approach, but you do have to work for it and give it time to mature.
In example 4, we really have the same formula in working hard, giving it time but I just made money a bit differently.
How to become successful at this business. The 3 essential stages:
Stage 1:
You need to understand the business. I am sorry to tell you this (well not really sorry) but you simply cannot, on day 1, without experience get into online marketing and succeed.
You need to know how the process works. You need to have a blueprint of what to do. You simply cannot expect anyone to pay you for knowing nothing about this works.
Stage 2:Â
You have to start doing something based of the knowledge you get in stage 1, otherwise, you won’t get anywhere with it.Â
- How can you expect a surgeon to operate without years of medical experience and training?
- What about a builder? How can they make anything, a house, room, ect… without understanding the essentials and then building the house?
- How can someone who doesn’t plant a tree, wait for it to grow expect to pick apples from it?
- How can someone who farms expect to eat when they haven’t done anything to make the farm actually grow anything?
In the 4 examples above, notice that in ALL of them except example 2, I actually had these 2 stages down. I knew how to make money online and I did something to make it happen.Â
In example 2, I had no experience, expected to get lucky and got screwed for it. And I’ll tell you this: MOST people who enter this business actually fail because of examples like #2.Â
Stage 3:Â
Both stages lead to you making money and now you enjoy the results. From here, it is a matter of really continuing to do the same things you did in stages 1 and 2 to continue to grow.Â
Every single example of ANYONE who makes money online successfully is because they have these 3 stages down.
In all of the examples above, with the exception of example 2, I had everything down and it led to success.
In example 2, I didn’t even enter stage 1 and guess what? I failed.
The irony you need to understand if you’re going to succeed:
Like I said, without these 3 stages in place and correctly done, you will not make money online fast, you will simply be given a hard and expensive lesson like I was MANY times, that will lead you back to stage 1 and MOST people never even make it there.Â
If you manage to get through the 3 stages, you WILL reach a point and have a business that makes you something, every single day and THEN you can say you made money fast.
As in example 3, that near $700 day happened because I had the roots in place and the 3 stages completed. My business grew to the point where this was made automatically overtime.Â
And I assure you, everyone who succeeds at this business (and is honest about how they do it) will tell you the same thing. They may not explain it in the same 3 stages I just did, but it will be the same blueprint, I promise you.
I’m telling you this is the only way to go. If you don’t believe me, I promise you, you will basically be given the same type of lesson I was with example 2. My mindset back then was that I didn’t want to work on any of the stages to reach success, I wanted a shortcut and that shortcut made me lose money and time.
Like I said, the irony is that if you take the time and work on the 3 stages, you WILL succeed and reach the point where you do make money online fast. It is totally possible, especially in 2017.Â
I wish I’d seen an article like this years ago, precisely 12 years, it would have saved me years of problems and heartache. As it happens I’ve been with Wealthy Affiliate for nearly 4 years and they’re awesome. Prior to this I used to code my own site and blog for other big companies. Anyway, I now own 4 websites, one of which is for a local business which is thriving. The other sites are blogging sites and make good money. Wealthy Affiliate is the way to go if you want to be shown how to make serious money.
Great to see you’re doing well and on multiple sites too Sharon. Once you understand the idea behind what an online business takes to be successful, make it happen on at least 1 site, then replicating it on others is much easier to do and you’ve seen this already in your experience.
I am glad I read this article. Just to give me some clarity. I did the same thing. Trying to find a quick answer to making money online and fell into a dangerous mindset of failure.
I also found Wealthy Affiliate and started my journey with them. Like you said, you need to get through the 3 stages in order to be successful.
What advice would you give to help us understand making money on Wealthy Affiliate? I get that it is about being an affiliate but have you discovered other ways as well?
Everything starts and stems from their training. People think that just because I am a member there and make good money means I know something special. The answer is no, I simply put my energy into their training and had an open mind when going through it. From that training is where you will develop your own personal ideas to use on your business, but they will hold actual value since your mindset and experience will change for the better when you follow the WA training.
Hi Vitaliy,
Thank you for sharing your experience. I am new to online marketing and I enjoyed reading this article, there are some useful tips.
I joined Wealthy Affiliate a month ago and learned a lot through their training since. Except for the training, I would like to emphasize that there is a great community of nice and helpful people, and in my opinion, that kind of support from like-minded people is a significant factor in online success.
Yeah you’ll definitely get that good energy and support there Blanka. It is one of the many reasons why WA is such a great place. For online marketing purposes, I’d say the training they provide, for the price they charge is an absolutely AWESOME deal and there’s a lot you can do with it, even more than I did.
Hi Vitaliy, thank you for writing this very informative post and sharing your experience!
I have been burnt a couple of times in the past when starting out in the “make money online” world. My hard lessons came after joining a couple of MLM companies, promising uncapped earning potential to those who would just apply themselves. And they made it sound so easy, you would have mentors who would take care of advertising for you and you would easily find new people to refer.
The truth is, most of them don’t even have a valuable product to sell, only a vague service, like “teach you internet marketing”. They sell you the idea that you create your own online business and you’re in charge, but the truth is those on top of the pyramid already make the most money from all the downsides. Your website isn’t your own, and people without an already established network almost never succeed.
After getting myself untangled, I came upon online surveys too like what you mentioned, but thankfully it sounded like a scam to me so I didn’t even bother. I came to the realization that you can be successful only when you put in the hard work and think long-term!
I totally agree with you, there is no making money overnight unless you have already learnt the necessary skills and gained the experience.
For someone with many interests, do you think that it’s better to focus on one website when starting out, or create multiple websites on each niche?
Hi Nicky, start with just 1 website. Trust me, if you work on it it can absolutely be enough to fund you full time and unlike MLM programs, you get your own website and don’t have to re-sell shady services and opportunities.
With a personal website and one that helps people with problems, such as a niche audience, you are really creating a foundation for an honest business that you can be very happy with!
One of the biggest mistakes I have made that a lot of others in the beginning seem to make as well is doing multiple things at once rather than sticking to that first initial goal.
I have also tried a bunch of those survey apps as well as some other methods and I do not think they are worth it considering the amount of time you have to put in to get very little rewards.
However, now I have tuned out all of the other making money methods and I am just sticking to posting more content on my website.
My question is about example 1, how long were you working on that site before you had made $100’s in just 3 hours?
Hi Arie, a little over an hour, but this example is such a rarity and I’ve tried so many times to replicate it with hardly any success that honestly, the best conclusion I came to is that it’s best to do something along the lines of what I said in example 3.Â
It’s just SO rare to get as lucky as I did and IÂ have way more failure stories of how all that money I made just drained completely because I kept holding onto the idea that all I needed to do was keep finding hot products over and over and that would pay me forever, but it didn’t and that illusion distracted me from doing the truly important things to create stability through an online business. That was a lesson that took me a long time to learn and over that course, I lost several $100,000’s…Â
Amazing! I learned a lot reading this. My experience online has been a rollercoaster. Now it makes sense as to why I have not seen much results.
I kept doing little programs to “pay” for what I really wanted to do, however I wasn’t clear on what I wanted to do. I only wanted to make money.
I expected instant gratification in 2015 with a company called MCA and ended up quitting because I had NO understanding of how to promote online.
I came from traditional sales (door-to-door) and didn’t think the transition would be a big difference. As far as the effort and patience, that is what you need in life in general, however it is another world online.
Started back late in 2016 and failed due to a lack of leadership and still wanting “instant gratification”.
Fast forward to now, I have only been really focused for a few months, so I feel really good where I am at now. Also being a Wealthy Affiliate member is a accomplishment.
I have the training and support that I deserve and I get to witness people like yourself succeed and inspire others!
This was a phenomenal read!
Cheers!
Demetra
Hi Demetra, your roller coaster experience as you described it is very similar to mine the first few years I was in this business and like you, my goal was also similar in that I JUST wanted to make money. This mindset really led me in the wrong direction many times and it was also WA that really helped me solve this problem.
Okay, I must admit, I was encouraged by your article. I keep asking myself if I do that work and learn these skills will it pay off? According to you, yes. I have learned to avoid the scammy sites that make it sound too easy. I don’t mind working hard as long as I know the learning curve will not last forever. Thank you for that inspiration
No problem Robin. I think you’d really benefit from learning the business from Wealthy Affiliate, because they also showed me how to work hard and get excellent results from this industry.Â
Oh man, thank you for this article. I met this person that tried to get me to do paid surveys, but it sounded kind of sketchy to me that someone would pay me to review their products so I never bought into it. I’m so glad now that I never did, your article has just confirmed what I suspected all along. It would have been just time wasted without acquiring any skills in the process. Thank you for the recommendation of Wealthy Affiliate.
This person sounds like an affiliate marketer trying to make a sale into the survey site David and it’s great you didn’t join, I’ve said that survey sites which ask you to pay are total scams because they literally do nothing but just then refer you to other survey sites, the fee is literally for providing information on what other sites are available, and you can literally just Google that…
Like you I have drifted through the scams and false promises and lost money. Then I stumbled across Wealthy Affiliate and realized why I had failed. Doing surveys will pay but it is so little you need to work for at least a year to earn as little as $50. You are absolutely right that we need to have several skills to make money online and thankfully it is what Wealthy Affiliate teaches us. Nothing truly worthwhile ever came quickly or easily, it all takes work.
Agreed Margaret, in fact, in my experience, there’s very few surveys that would actually pay that much! And about WA, yes, I totally agree as well 🙂
I have been thinking a lot about online marketing and just your mindset towards it in general recently.
I joined Wealthy Affiliate well over 2 years now and for a lot of that I was stuck on stage 1 ( mentally I was stubborn).
Just like you said in this article that got me nowhere…
I was thinking about quitting but then Dom Wells gave me motivation by telling me my work was actually good. My mindset and approach were wrong.
The change that one small sentence can make in your life is incredible.
From a realistic standpoint I am still nowhere near earning a living online, (but to anyone reading these comments) leave your stubbornness behind and go through these stages.
Once you understand the process step-by-step, the world of online marketing becomes so much easier to understand.
Great article, Vitaliy.
Hi Anthony, I know Dom very well, we’ve met on several occasions in person and have done business too. He is one of the most successful people from Wealthy Affiliate and I assure you, I would give you the same advice that Dom did.Â
Wow, thanks for sharing your story through making your way online. As I am getting started, it motivates and encourages me to take even more action. Is it really true, that it took 1 year to really get a profit out of it? Sounds like sooo much work…
I liked the way you wrote it, it makes people identify with your situation back in the days. And how you made it, though. That’s amazing – keep going and growing!
Hi Andrea, I made money off this site earlier, but it took a year to reach profits that could sustain me. Though it may seem like hard work, the fact is that if you want to live a freelance lifestyle and enjoy working from home, you actually have to work to do it. This mindset of easy money and not wanting to work hard destroys people’s success.Â
I like to make the point about planting a tree that grows some sort of fruit. You need that fruit to feed you and when you plant the tree, do you ever expect it to grow in a single day or a few days? No, you expect it to take time to do it, but when you take the time to water it, take care of it, it grows, matures and then provides you.
With websites, I put in the work, I write the content and I push forward with the business and even though in the first few months, I will likely not see much growth, but that normally happens every time. It is the growing process that takes place within these few months, which if you stick through, will come back to reward you.Â
When I started thinking about making money online, I landed myself on a program called “millionaires club” which really manipulated me towards making money fast. I had lost my job at that time and so I wanted to make this money fast and I couldn’t afford to waste time so I did all it took. They promised that their program trades automatically online and so I will be earning 5k dollars within an hour. I started by committing my 250 dollars and that was the last time I heard from them. That’s when I realized you can’t reach their support team.
I later discovered that “Millionaires club” was a scam and I found so many complaints against it. I didn’t know that people had lost their money before in this! Fortunately, I landed on a nice review about Wealthy Affiliate and that’s how I managed to start my business. As you say, yes it takes time but eventually, it becomes the best investment.
The program you’re talking about is a binary options program. I think I should have included these types of programs as ones to stay away from in this article because, yes, they are all scams and they do promise fast results. Sorry to hear about this bad experience, but you found out a better, straight forward way to succeed as a result.
Hey Vitaliy, good read! I was laughing in the beginning on the paid surveys because I was trying that myself, just realized that I’m actually wasting time that I could’ve earned in a regular job and got paid much more than cents.
I started with Wealthy Affiliate and I’m half way through the training and yes it is a lot of work and dedication to understand how everything works and put it all together. But I do have a question for you, is this is the main site you created that you make money with or did you need to create few of them for more income and go through this building process all over again?
Hi Yulia, for the past few years, this has been my main website. I’ve had others before which on their own generated a lot of income, so to answer your question, you can make it with just 1 site if you focus on it. You don’t have to “restart” each time one site becomes successful. When it does, just build on it more to make it earn more.
Hi Vitaliy, thank you for writing such a great post. I learned a lot from this. I am new to affiliate marketing and this post had some great advice to keep me on track.
I really liked your comment on your email list of subscribers – over 10,000 members on your database is a fantastic effort. I have now set this as a goal and will do my best to work towards it. Thank you for sharing.
This isn’t a bad goal, but you should ideally focus on a website and traffic, this will itself lead to a scenario where an email list of over 10k will build on it’s own.
Thank you for your article. I have been looking for all kinds of ways to make money online and I checked out the survey thing. What a bunch of nonsense! There are so many scams out there.
Congratulations for making a full-time income with your online business. You made some really good points about not expecting it to happen overnight. Anything worthwhile takes time.
Thank you Diane, like you, I also ran into the same problem with online surveys, I totally agree they are a waste of time!
Dear Vitaliy,
Thanks for sharing part of your history. I really enjoyed your straight to the point style.
The irony that you have to be patient and work hard to make money fast is what I probably needed to hear at this point. Thanks.
Also thanks for the fair warning in example 1 not to jump in without having the 3 stages for success in place. Are paid online surveys even viable today?
Example 3 where you say that you made a decision to start using Wealthy Affiliate, how long did it take you to complete the training, since you already had marketing experience?
Thanks for sharing the lessons you learned from your experiences so I can learn from them and avoid the pitfalls and obstacles you endured.
Thanks for the awesome work.
Rudi
Hi Rudy, I’d say paid surveys were never a good way to make income. I experimented with them very early and it was before I even had a single site running successfully. Today, as IÂ read about the new survey sites that are out, they are literally no different than back then and I never made good money from them because their set up was made so you wouldn’t be able to do that anyway.
As for the training inside Wealthy Affiliate, yes it is true I had knowledge entering into it so I had a better grasp of the things they were explaining, so it allowed me to run through the whole training in an accelerated pace and I would say, their main training took me about a week to complete, but do note that while the training was finished quickly, the action IÂ talked about taking to create a business takes longer, months I’d say, but that’s an important part of the success process.Â
Thanks so much for the valuable information! I was just considering running an ad with google adwords, but you’ve changed my mind (at least for now). You said running ads isn’t a good idea unless you have a certain level of success already. When would you recommend running ads then (if at all)? Thank you!
There are really 3 circumstances when it comes to ads Matt:
1) You have some excess money to spend. Adwords generally gives you a coupon code if you get started and it can go all the way up to $150 if you look carefully enough.
2) You have had success with SEO, making sales online and understand how sales funnels work.
3) You understand how to set up ads and make them are clickable as possible, while also knowing what CTR is, how to set up high quality score ads, ect…Â
I would recommend you read a PPC tutorial I did awhile back. Just apply the main principals to Adwords. Do note that if you are running an affiliate site, it will be MUCH harder for your ad to get approved on Google, it’s just something I noticed when I tried it.