My Family’s Money

This is a serious question that I want to know the answer to.  Can I make money online?  I’m sure that we have all heard the hype about making money online and come to the conclusion that if there is any money to be made it certainly isn’t by us.  Instead of being a nay-sayer and self-doubter, I am really trying to give this business venture a go and see what happens.

There were a couple of factors that led me to pursue this type of business to supplement my income.  The first is that the internet is everywhere.  I could make money in San Diego, California just as easily as I can make it Lexington, Kentucky or Shashemene, Ethiopia.  As long as my computer can get onto the internet I can make money on it.  This fits in with my goal to develop portable infrastructure for my family, providing money that will follow me wherever I go.

This is not the case with a standard brick and mortar business.  If I invested lots of time in getting some type of small business going here in San Diego I would suffer a complete loss when I move in the next year or so.  My time spent on the business would give me much needed experience, but once I moved all my clients and built up infrastructure would be lost.  I didn’t want to go through that.  I wanted to be mobile, portable, and profitable.  I thought I might be able to get that in an online business.

The other reason that I wanted to try my hand at making money online is that I wanted to at least be at home around my wife and soon to be born son when working my “second job.”  For some reason, I like being in the same room with people that I love even if we aren’t really talking or doing something together.  Since I love my wife and my soon to be born son, I figured that it would be better to be home where they can see me and I can sneak away from work for five minutes to kiss my wife, give her a hug, and tell her how much I love her.  After working all day at the button factory I need this type of contact with the wife.  It is important to me and a traditional “second job” just couldn’t give me that.

I also think that there is money to be made in the online world.  There are people making it hand over fist and I figure that I could at least make something if I put my mind to it.  I work relatively hard, am fairly coachable, and I can write English sentences.  Those are fairly decent abilities and I think they could help me make some money online.

So can I make money online?  The short answer to this question is yes.  So far I have made over $250 since I started blogging in December 2007.  This is not a lot of money, but it is something.  I guess the real question that I am asking of myself is, “Can I make a significant amount of money online?”  That is a question that has yet to be answered.

But to be fair to myself and the process I really didn’t start to know the first thing about how to make money online until sometime near the end of May 2008.  Of the $250 I have earned 93% of it was earned after this date.

My Making Money Online Journey

In December 2007 I started looking for a useful hobby that might happen to lend itself to making an extra buck here and there. I briefly considered getting in to baking, but that never really panned out. My wife is already really good at baking so duplicating our efforts there was probably not the best idea anyway. Sometimes I still wish I could make cookies that soccer moms will pay me hundreds of dollars to bake for their kids, but I have given up on that dream … for now.

After a few days putzing around the internet I stumbled upon personal finance blogs. A light went on in my head – my wife likes blogging and thinks it is fun … I like thinking about personal finance stuff … why not join the two together and maybe make some money online while picking up a new hobby?

My Family’s Money was born shortly after. My first contribution to the internet happened on December 14th, 2008. I talked about how I want gold. Good times, good times.

My experience with this blog has been pretty fun and a few months later I decided I wanted to host my blog on my own server rather than on Blogger like I was doing. I went with DreamHost because some other blogs I read used it. It has worked fine for me.

The fact that I went with DreamHost is important to my making money online story – they offered a free domain with the hosting package I went with. I had already bought myfamilysmoney.com through another registrar, so I had a free domain just waiting for me to use.

Then I found Courtney Tuttle and his blog about internet marketing. He used to talk about a way to target specific search traffic with an entire blog. He used to say that you could optimize an entire site for a long tail keyword term like “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of gum.”¹ He also said that by using Adsense you could turn that traffic into money.

Since My Family’s Money wasn’t really making any money, I decided I would use my free domain name and give this whole targeted site a try. I started my first site like that at the end of May 2008 and right now I am projecting to make around $70-80 this month on it. Not terribly awesome, but that is $70-80 more than I had last month.

I have to admit that I still have a ton to learn. I try to read a little each day and do a little work each day to make my sites better – both in terms of the content they provide and the experience that I give my users. I want them leaving happy and getting to the place that I, advertisers, and they want to go. I figure by making everyone happy I can make money online for a long time to come.

There are some real resources out there that will teach you how to make money online. I have been pretty skeptical about who I will listen too and what products I will invest money into. Of all the sites I have read, there are a few that have really helped me understand how to run this type of business. They are:

• Courtney Tuttle over at Court’s Internet Marketing School who has a great post up about understanding keyword authority and how to get it
• Vic at Blogger Unleashed gave me vision for creating an online business portfolio in my quest to make money online.
• Griz at How to Make Money Online for Beginners helped me really understand how to make money with Adsense.

If you are asking yourself if you can make money online then I highly recommend that you take a look at these guy’s sites. What little I know I have learned from them and I could really do to learn some more.

The question remains, can I make money online?

1. Well the keywords he recommended weren’t that long, but you get the idea [↩]