Friday, March 22, 2013

Making Money Online or Cut Your Losses

Sad Face Coaster
Sad Face Coaster by funnyjokes
Find more Sad face Coasters at Zazzle



When is it time to throw in the towel and cut your losses with your online business or businesses?

Many of us have many different outlets online for making money. Print on demand shops like having a Zazzle shop., a CafePress shop or maybe a custom shop that makes money on Amazon as I do with my 3dRose products on Amazon.

Out of those three, CafePress is not making me money. Recently I decided to give it one more try as I refuse to pay for a premium shop there. Is this a smart choice or should I have just closed up shop? Well, I did close down many of the shops.

What about social networks?

Some of these offer a royalty fee or ranking fee each month. Others don’t. Squidoo pays in tiers (ranking) and a share of Amazon and eBay sales with their modules. If your ranking goes below 400,000 then your lens (article) is considered a WIP and can only be seen if you send out the link.

HubPages pays out in their ad program. They also allow you to make money for Amazon, eBay products sold and Adsense. They will decide if they no longer want to feature your hub (article). With means no one will find it unless you send out a link.

There are other social network sites, but these are the ones that I am on more so then the other ones.

Spending most of my time online and making pennies a day on social network sites, am I wasting my time?

What about blogging? Soon I plan on killing some blogs and keep it down to this one, Gifts You Treasure and Pets are Family.

How are you doing online? Share your opinion?
(All comments will be deleted with link, except for those added within your name).

Speaking of towels, here are some kitchen and body towels found on Amazon.


8 comments:

Virginia Allain said...

Sandy, I'm sorry to hear your efforts are not being rewarding. My husband keeps telling me, "If you want to really make money, get a job."

Since I'm retired, it's not really about the money for me. Earning more each month is just one way I get validation from my online efforts.

The main motivation for me is having a place to express my creativity and display my interests. I get caught up in lensrank and how much money my Zazzle or my Squidoo makes, because my competitive side kicks in.

Each one of us has to decide what the "payout" is for our online efforts and if it is worthwhile.

Marsha Cooper said...

Years later I still don't have it figured out :(
I got kicked out of adsense with my blog within a week, they claimed fraudulent clicking--I have no clue! I've asked 3 times to get back in and all 3 times I have been refused. This also means that I can't have the ads on my youtube videos either.
As far as squidoo, I've been building since 2007 and the most I've made in a month is around $14. I don't have what it takes to get those sales like some do! In fact, I'm always in shock when someone does buy something from one of my lenses. I have never had any lenses make it to tier one, in fact, it's been a couple of months now since I've even had a lens in tier 2. Part of that is my own fault because I don't do updates like I should.
I'm not doing too bad selling my crafts, but still only making a profit of about $15 a month! I need to just get busy getting things made.
I don't have all that many things in zazzle like many do. In about 3 years I have about $15 sitting in my account there.
I do some paid to clicks, just a few.
I write and share on gather.com but their points are way down from what they used to be. I used to earn anywhere from $50-$80 a month on gather but now it's only about $10 a month. Again, that could be maybe $20 if I was there more.
I get free products in to do reviews on my blog, which does count for something I guess. In the past I've had a company pay me for posts, but they've not contacted me in months.

Helene Malmsio said...

It's always a struggle nowadays... so different from 8-9 years ago when the internet and IM was FUN... remember those days?

Now even Sqdo has become too frustrating and changeable every month, and that was the last of the web2 profit-share platforms I had anything to do with.

To make money online you need to create your own products, that are under your control, and spend your time blogging and advertising them.

Even Amazon for Kindle and printed books is a bit lame nowadays as they have been flooded with crappy 10 page 'books' that annoy buyers, so I have to find more retail platforms to sell books as well.

You have to OWN your own website or blog, and you have to FOCUS your marketing and promotion on that blog, and promote your products from that blog.

You can't spread yourself around anymore. Find one or two websites and put 90% of your effort into building a list and traffic.

The other 10% should be spent on always creating new products... books, ebooks, kindles, PLR articles, graphics, any products that you have exclusive access to sell.

Unknown said...

Sandy sounds like you are weening out the money taker sites. There are enough sites that do not cost a dime ever to join and earn income. I think the trick is staying with what you really enjoy and letting go of sites that weigh you down.

For me the trick is trusting God. When I did that the ship started sailing. He sends the readers. I am so blessed. I look at all I have learned emotionally and spirituallon linene. God is my source and somehow the money always comes in. Not much from the sites but elsewhere. God owns it all anyway. So I try to keep Him in charge. Many Blessings Sandy.
Keep at eventuallylly you will earn a few bucks.

Love, skye2day.hubpages.com

John Dyhouse said...

If you do find an answer I would love to hear it. I am having fun at the moment on Bubblews. Looks like I may start to use htis site and largely close down any writing on RG, various blogs and some aspects of social networking sites. Not gonna make a fortune but better than all these put together. I will stay with Squidoo for those lenses which are in tiers but otherwise will reduce activity.
I have also tried several POD but keeping several balls in the air is time consuming, Red Bubble is my main alternative at the moment.

Lisa said...

It took me a long time to figure out a mix of my own sites and third-party venues that allowed me to make a full-time living online. It works, but it's not a perfect mix. I don't have enough diversity in income to wipe out my main sources and still make enough to survive.

As long as Google controls so much of the web, it doesn't matter whether you have your own sites or write for someone else's. EITHER option could spell overnight financial ruin if you don't diversify to the point that you could survive with 50% less traffic to every site/article or you could get by if you completely lost any one of your income sources.

I'm not there yet, but that's my goal. As long as Google has a monopoly on search, they will continue to cause major upheavals to any site on the web at their own whim.

Unknown said...

I am no expert but you can get a hell of a lot more traffic to this blog. I see its no search friendly.

If you look in your browser you should see the title of your post not the title of your blog.

Its simple to do or fix you will get more traffic.

My blog and hubpages is the only earnings I get and hubpages is managing to screw that up.

My blog out performs my hubpage domain big time. I been there for 4 years with 90 articles I got 60 on my blog and its about 2 yrs old.

I earn better from my blog and have more traffic and I think my post at hubpages are way better. Go figure!

I got to the point I hate to write!

I had an article on hubpages averaging 400 hits a day a month ago it dropped to 20 and thats bragging!lol

So ya I feel for ya it sucks! I am backing down and if I write a post its because I have something to say. I no longer think about the money. Its just not there anymore.

Nice Blog

AndyPo said...

Oh dear. Sorry to hear things are not going so well. Seems to be a common problem and getting worse. For a while Squidoo was a reasonable source of income and even Zazzle, Helium etc. made a nice extra trickle of cash without much additional effort. They are hardly worth the effort any more. Fortunately I make a living mostly from stock-market investment and just use these other methods as an extra income stream.

Good luck.

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