aground chide: Don't chase the money - Chase the passion.

I get messages from people all the time who want to make money online. ?They read the blog/newsletter, ?see my phat AdSense Check and think I have the magic bullett.

Guess what I DO! ?Prepare yourself for it!

You have passion and expertise about something. ?Share that with people.

Let me give you some examples. ?I will start with myself.

In 2003, while working a full time job and also reselling computers online, ?I discovered a way to format ringtones and wallpapers for my Nextel phone. ?I loved doing it. ?It was a fun hobby. ?Long story short ? I ?took that knowledge and created a website that others could upload ringtones to. ?By 2005 the site was getting a ton of traffic. ?I got a call from Google that suggested I put AdSense code on the site. ?Overnight that site turned into a multimillion dollar website that I sold in 2010.
In 2007, ?after having success with contextual advertising and affiliate marketing I thought it would be fun to create AdSense looking ads that got high clickthroughs but instead of going through Google I would bypass them and use my affiliate link. ?Then I thought it would be fun to allow others to use this. ?Then one day at a conference a person from eBay said eBay affiliates were doing really well with my ShoeMoney Ads ad network and suggested I build it just around eBay. ?I created AuctionAds that did exactly that. ?I created this with a part time developer and within 4 months it was generating over 2 million a month and I sold the company literally 4 months to the day that it launched. ?Again this was a fun project that was almost like a hobby.
In 2003 I started a blog for fun sharing my life. ?Not a ?how to make money? blog but just shit I was doing. ?It evolved into what you are reading now. ?And its made millions of dollars.
In 2010 I shared my knowledge and experience on how I learned to make money online via a product called the ShoeMoney System. ?It?s sold over 2 million dollars worth to date and still continues to sell.
In 2011 for fun I created a website called freeseoreport.com. ?It was a free site where people could run a report on their site and a keyword they were trying to rank for then showed them what they were doing vs the top 10 people in every country and ever search engine. ?This was something I found of value myself in trying to figure out backlinks and onpage stuff that I was missing out on. ?I made money on the ?backend? by sending people value added emails educating them on a variety of subjects related to seo with affiliate links. ?There was also a viral component where for each person you?referred?to the website you got another free report. ?The site was getting about 600 new people a day running about 3,000 reports per day. ? The site was purchased 7 months later by an SEO firm.
Many years ago, ?really before I was well known, ?3 other marketers and myself started a high dollar conference called the elite retreat. ?Its 8k per person and limited to 30 people. ? We will be having our 10th event this fall.
In 2012 I created an automated email marketing system called the PAR Program. ?This is my total focus now. ?I stumbled into this because I took what I loved about email marketing and all the money we had made from it, ?did it for a large company and after seeing the results started offering it as a service. ?I have done ZERO marketing (I am bogged down with sales) and the company is growing like a rocket.

Ive done other stuff but those are the key ones. ?I have also had failures. ?Not because they were bad ideas but I just did not have the resources time wise to devote to making them work. ?All of them were fun projects but more importantly great experiences.

Lets look at others:

A friend of mine who is also passionate and educated about mixed martial arts started a site called ufcjunkie.wordpress.com (now mmajunkie.com due to trademark). ?He started the site as a hobby just putting his thoughts about the world of mixed martial arts online. ?He started the site on a wordpress free hosted platform. ?Within 5 years the site sold to USA TODAY for 8 figures.
2 kids from hawaii, who were passionate about cats, thought it would be funny to post a picture of a cat captioning it with what they think the cat would say in ?cat language?. ?They uploaded a picture regularly and people found them funny. ?Again this was on a free wordpress hosted blog. ?The site was called icanhazcheeseburger.wordpress.com. ?The fun site got massive traction so they allowed others to upload their funny cat photos. ?Then one day they stumbled on to a blog called ShoeMoney.com, ?saw some guy holding a 134k AdSense check and put the code on their site. ?It made a ton and they sold the site for millions.
A long time ago a kid who grew up with his parents owning a wine selling business decided to start blogging about wine. ? People started stumbling on to the site who were also interested in wine. ?Then he started recording himself and the video?s started to become very viral. ?So much so that he got invites to appear on Conan Obrien and Ellen. ?He is now a multimillionaire with a #1 best selling book bringing in residual income. ?His site is?winelibrary.com and his name is?Gary Vaynerchuk.
A?Chinese?immigrant with very broken english started a blog because he was interested in making money online. ?Then he decided to show how much he was making online monthly. ?Started with very little. ?Then the blog started getting traction. ?He did this all while having a computer business. ?But he kept on sharing how he was making money online from his blog and exactly how much he was making. ?People loved it and he started getting a following. ?The site literally is called ?I make money by telling people I make money online?. ?Thats it! ? And now his site literally is nothing but promoting affiliate products or doing paid reviews of people?s ?how to make money? products. ?It worked out for him? ?He now makes a high six figure income basically doing nothing?. ?He has someone doing his posts for him as he travels around the world making more money month after month. ?He recently released a product keeping the same theme of being transparent and walking you through how to make money with a blog. ?He crushed it. ?- ?John Chow of johnchow.com
A former collegate pitcher decided to make a website offering a product to teach people how to gain more MPH on their fast ball offered a dvd set doing just that. ?He now has a thriving business at topvelocity.net
A guy started a blog making fun of celebrities for fun. ?Years later it evolved into perezhilton.com

See a trend here?

Lets get back to the original question? ? ?I want to make money online. ?Where do I start? ?

I don?t know ANY successful internet millionaire who did not stumble onto their internet success. ?None of them had visions of being a internet millionaire. ?They had passions, interest, and education about a subject and?pursued?it. ?That is the key. ? None of them had to quit their day jobs. ?They all started because it was a hobby. ?It was fun?

The one thing I have learned is when someone starts something that they consider ?work? they will give up quickly.

I have handed over websites to people that were generating hundreds of dollars a month for them to take and run with. ?Guess what? ?They didn?t do anything they just sucked up the revenue and let it die.
I have given PPC keywords to people that I was making a lot of money with promoting affiliate offers. ?Guess what? ?They ran it until they died then came to me for more keywords. ?The didn?t research or even care how it was making money.

?But honestly thats just the top of the ice berg. ?

For everyone who is making money on line there is millions of people who ?want to?. ?Out of those very few will take action. ?There is no doubt anyone can do it and the best part about it is you can do it from anywhere in the world no matter what level of education or experience.

This?opportunity?will not be around forever. ?Mostly because big brands are just now starting to see the value of some of the marketing techniques and dumping in tons of money where guys like us just can?t compete. ?Fortunately they move at a snails pace and for now guys sitting at home can do much more cutting edge techniques that big businesses can?t keep up.

I got a little off topic but my point is that if you really want to make money online it costs you no money at all to take action right now. ?And I mean RIGHT NOW.

Chase the passion not the money.