A month ago, I began a social experiment, to see if it’s indeed possible to make money on the internet, without the use of a web-camera (if you know what I mean). I am a stay-at-home mom who loves surfing the internet, and I thought, wow, maybe I can make money off of it! Of course, I thought this was the most original idea known to man until I started researching it and realizing that everybody (and their mama) has a blog about making money on the internet. It’s very overwhelming to know where to start, and to not fall into pitfalls along the way, so I intend to create a series on my social experiment in the months to come. This is the first in my series. I’m calling it “Making Money on the Internet”. Original, huh?
The first place I started to look was on www.WAHM.com to find what other stay-at-home moms were doing. While I was pregnant, there was a huge buzz on medical transcription, but I didn’t want to pay money in order to learn anything. I wanted to utilize my own talents (i.e. knowing how to Google), and waste time. Not saying that medical transcription is a time-waster, it’s just not for me. I found out that a lot of people were also selling cosmetics and kitchen utensils. Once again, not for me because I’m not a good sales person. And I can’t do that while chasing behind a baby. Not saying other people can’t, just not my deal.
One thing that interested me on the WAHM forum was that moms were doing surveys and getting paid for it. I know it sounds weird, but I did not realize there were valid paid surveys on the internet. I am usually circumspect about all those “click here” banners, so I never did. However, I found that forums were a great place to learn about what surveys were scams and what surveys actually paid money. Another great resource is Annika’s. I found out so much from her site. There’s also a lot of free information on Survey Police.
I’m not planning on endorsing any survey or company here, but I will go into detail on my own blog. Some of these details are from Evergreen Wealth Formula 2.0 reviews.
After I stepped into the cold waters of paid surveys, I realized that only a few of them make any difference in my bank account. Since this experiment is a month old, I have only gotten paid once, but I can see the trend, and I soon understood that I needed to broaden the ways that I can earn income over the internet. So I decided to start Paid To Click services. Paid to Click (PTC) are companies that send you emails and you have to view the email for a certain amount of time (usually 30-60 seconds) and then your account gets credited. Usually you earn $.02 per email. Of course that doesn’t seem like much, but the companies I’ve signed up for send 5-10 emails a day, so it adds up.
Now, I’m not trying to get rich here. What I’m looking for is making enough each month to purchase diapers, maybe wipes… maybe mascara.
In addition to Surveys and PTC, I decided to start blogging. I definitely did not know people were paid to blog. I did not realize that the advertisements on the blogs were put there intentionally to bring in revenue. I thought the ads were a by-product of the blog being a free service. Maybe, in certain cases, they are, but overwhelmingly, smart bloggers are getting paid to include advertisements on their sites. So, you get a free blog, and then get traffic, and then sign up with companies that pay you to write blog posts on their products or pay you to have their banner on your site. Once again, I’m not endorsing any company on this article, so if you’d like more information, please visit my blog.
Now, I’ve also just started blogging, and hoping to increase my viewership. It’s best to get involved in different networks, and update your blog regularly (from what I’ve read) to increase page views and loyal readers. I suppose interesting posts would also help!
This is just the beginning of my experiment. I’m happy with the results so far (a $3 check in the mail! woohoo), but I know it will be hard work in order to make money on the internet. Stay tuned for more about my experiment.
