Answer to all your doubt

I received emails occasionally asking about my experience in making money online (or by blogging to be precise)… I normally will reply to them with a long winded email; and since that my reply is almost the same all the time, might as well post my thoughts here.

This will be a long and messy post… I will write whatever comes into my mind in random.
I received another 2 email requests during the weekend; and guess what, they won’t get a reply because a simple reason… they forgot to mention my name.
I wrote that I replied to all emails… well, not exactly. These days there are lots of emails in disguise that are made to harvest email addresses for spam etc. once you replied ‘they’ will not that it is an active email address and will continue to spam it.

Use my name when contacting me
The best way to differentiate between a genuine email and a spam mail is the greetings. Just say “Hi Cherie” and I will know that it’s a human being writing to me and not some spam bots. Besides it’s the polite thing to do to start a contact with greetings using the person’s name.
If someone is lazy enough to not find my name from my blog… don’t expect me to reply.

So, how much money am I making?
I used to work freelance in various projects… about a year ago I started building more websites of my own, which I aim to provide me passive income.
I am not going to tell anyone the exact figure that I am making online… I didn’t even tell my mum, let alone friends and strangers. What I can say is that I am not rich, and my income is decent enough to replace a normal job.
Do note that this blog is making peanuts only… enough to pay some bills perhaps. You need some better themed blogs to make serious money; personal blogs don’t perform well in this matter.

Know your goal
Don’t get over-excited with the dollar sign… newbies need to have a goal to start their venture into making online. How much do you want to make? Why do you want to do it online than to work in other conventional methods? How much time and investment are you willing to put it to your venture?

It is not easy
It is not difficult to make money online; it is not easy as well. You will need lots of time to learn, test and adapt. Besides if your primarily idea is to make money from blogging, you need time to write as well.
Out of the thousands of bloggers monetizing their blog, I bet that less than 100 are making a decent level of income (at least matching their offline job) from blogging.

Don’t start a blog to make money
There are difference between starting a blog and monetize it; and to start a blog to monetize it. You have to know what is your primarily plan… which is more important… your blog or the money?
If you don’t care about your blog… and the only thing you want from your blog is your money… don’t blog. You are wasting your time.

Find your topic and niche
Find a good topic that you have interest in (even better if you are really good with the topic)… do some research on the growth potential, monetization value and competition.

Join some forums and read more useful articles before starting your blog.
Quite often the success of your blog is already determined by the topic you choose… SEO and other promotion methods are to fulfill your blog potential; it cannot go beyond the limit of your topic if you chose the wrong topic to start with.

Read the right stuff
Read and learn, but make sure you are reading from the right person… what I mean is if you want to make money online, read from some one that is actually making some good money.
There are numerous Malaysian ‘how to make money online’ blogs that started in recent months, and the irony thing is that most of them are making close to zero dollar everyday… why learn from them?
So make sure you read from the right source… in fact, don’t believe in everything I write here, I could be wrong in some stuff.

Be patient and enjoy yourself
Continue to learn and implement, be patient… don’t expect anything to happen within the first 6 months.
Enjoy yourself as well… if you find that it’s not enjoyable, quit blogging.

Be thankful
I have actually read complaints from newbies that experience webmasters aren’t helpful and don’t want to share their secrets. I even received an email calling me selfish for not willing to share more than the basic.

Point is… why should we share our secrets with someone we don’t even know?
Besides, even the basics would work if a person follows the rules correctly. Be thankful that someone is willing to share just the basic.