I need to make $13,900, by August 1st, with my computer/online. Any ideas as to how I could do it?

You could try that trading thing -- someone started with a paperclip and ended up with a house.

Found it:

http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/p/one-red-paperclip-project.html

I'll be able to recommend more once I know more about you and what you can do, but I'll try to get the conversation started.

First of all, making money online tends to break down into 3 main categories:

1) Giving away content and selling ads.

2) Selling a product online.

3) Selling a service online.


Of those three, the first is the easiest to do, but has the lowest returns. You already know a bit of this, but to hammer the point home: able2know won't make 14k in advertising by August, and that is on millions of pageviews. In fact we'll probably make less than a third of that through advertising.

The reason is that it's a general site (also a forum, that tends to monetize much more poorly than other sites due to usage patterns) and we get under $1 for ever 1000 ads shown (this is called a CPM, or cost per mille.

On the other hand, I have other sites that will earn about that much by then with much much less traffic because they are about topics that earn a higher CPM.

So if you are going to publish content, my point is that it's a lot easier to choose a more profitable niche than it is to grow the massive scale you will need to make money on content that doesn't pay as much.

If you want to know how you can tell what pays or not you can use Google Adwords, the keywords that are expensive to buy on google are topics that will generally have higher CPMs. But a word of caution, don't just pick an expensive topic for the sake of it, there are a lot of people playing that game. For example several years ago one of the most expensive keywords was "mesothelioma", this is a health topic but a lot of webmaster tried to cash in with poor content (do you really want medical advice from them? Remember to think as a user too). . You'll have a lot more success talking about a subject you can produce quality content about.

If there is a high-dollar subject (anything people spend lots of money on can be, real estate, lawyers, investment etc) that you can write authoritatively about this is one way.

Ok, now let's move on to #2. You can make a lot more money per visit when you sell the product yourself, but it's harder to get the sales than it is a free page view. When done right e-commerce can be very rewarding but this has a bigger barrier to entry because you need inventory and payment/shipping logistics (you can drop shipping if its a digital product). An example of something you might be able to do quickly is sell a digital product like an e-book.

As for #3, here you would provide a service of some sort through the internet. Most services that are easy to start will be your own, things like providing writing, editing etc. Building your own service from scratch isn't easy but you can also use marketplaces for this where many service providers and buyers meet. Examples are: Amazon MTurk (mostly very very low amounts with the exception of translation) or Elance (a good freelancer marketplace). There are a handful of other such sites I can recommend to you if you want, and each work a bit like ebay in which your only starting cost is the need to build up reputation on their system.


So that is a quick overview of the main ways, but now let's get to the nitty gritty. You don't really have time to build traffic or a business by then that is instantly profitable. Those solutions may be better for you in the long run but if you really need to do this according to your timeline then I think you should really focus on #3. And from what little I know about you (basically just that you seem to be able to write well enough, but feel free to fill in the blanks if you want more ideas) what I would recommend is that you sell writing services. Most writing isn't going to be compensated for very highly but you can earn $5-$20 an article on those marketplaces and if you can do it efficiently then you can make serous scratch because there is a lot of demand for this online.

In fact I'm willing to be your first prospective client, and I'm willing to help you get your reputation going on one of the freelancer sites. I don't have a huge content budget right now but was intending to make some purchases in the near term. I'm willing to give you a try with test project to see if you are a good fit (the topic is not the easiest niche, which is the only reason I think you may not be).

Let me know what you think about the ideas so far and if you want anything more specific about any of the things I discussed, and let me know what you are interested in, what you can do and such as that can open up a lot more ideas.

Good luck!

This was a great idea. The problem with these is that only the first guy who does them usually makes any money because the commodity is the originality and the horde of imitators can't replicate the success.

Another such idea was the "million dollar home page", he got there but every day I see imitators who won't break $50.

Thank you, this is great advice!
You may be right about the third option possibly being the best in my situation. Although, as you point out, the writing jobs on these sites don't pay much. I have taken a brief look at some of the sites, and I'm not yet convinced that I would reach my goal at the rates paid for regular writing jobs. But as you say, if I can work efficiently, it might be doable (?). I guess I would have to try it to get the answer to that.
I would imagine there is also the option of offering services where parts of it are outsourced, perhaps setting up Website projects etc..
Anyway, I'm more generalist than specialist, both when it comes to interests and skills. Particular interests would be anything related to psychology/philosophy, emerging technologies like AI/augmented reality etc, and coaching/motivational stuff. Although I wouldn't claim to be an expert. I plan to learn a lot about this stuff in the course of the next few years, and convert it into content. I suppose the ultimate skill I "want" to have is the ability to create great content websites. I guess that's the direction I'm headed in :-)
I would be interested to know what kind of writing you need done.

There is huge competition to make money online, tons of people want to work from home and tons of people in developing countries want to telecommute their way to a better life. There is simply way more supply than demand no matter what approach you take.

Your goal is simply not an easy one no matter what you try, and may need more than a bit of luck to pull off.

But it's definitely doable with #3 while the others I think would need some of the kind of luck I have not personally witnessed very much.



Yes, but I think you'd face more competition there. There are a lot of people in developing countries with superior skills in that area but who can't write.

But you can certainly get bigger projects when they are technical.



Unfortunately those subjects aren't big ad markets that pay top dollar (except maybe some of the tech stuff).



Well if you take a longer approach like that (years, not months) you can certainly get to that income level but it's really hard to make a website make 14k in 3 months from scratch. For that I think you'd need a LOT of luck.



I'm currently shopping for someone to help generate nursing-related content. Not technical/clinical so much as news, industry trends etc.

Usually I pay nurses to do this and their prices usually range from 10-20/article (depending on how long etc) on elance.

Anyway, if you need to make the deadline I'd not rely on internet publishing, but if you can take the long outlook that is the one I personally find more rewarding.

I could probably do that well enough. Although I would imagine a nurse or nursing student would be better.

At the moment I'm considering writing, at least as one stream of income while I perhaps test other models. I'll have to make a decision soon on what is the best approach.

Would you say that elance is the best one, and do you have experience with/ recommend any of the other sites?