Money making Bullshit, who else did fall for the, “There is money online, you just gotta grab it!” Motto? It just like online Poker, people think they can win, but it’s still gambling, even when you do everything right you will lose. Not only once, often. Very often. The make money niche is better in many ways, you do something productive on the one hand, and you learn a lot of other stuff on the other hand.

First of all, we all dream about making money when we start reading make money online blogs, but actually, this stuff is pretty boring. Almost everybody seems to copy what the big guys are doing, or rather, they try to copy and suck at it.

Nowadays a blog is a pretty useless thing in case you want to make money through private ads. Ads are good when you have amazing traffic. Back in the days I did not have amazing traffic as I am not Darren Rowse or rather John Chow. How do you ruin a blog? Yes, you try to sell ad space on it.

Where is the use of this ad-space? Those small 125*125 Pixel Graphics … nobody clicks on them, alomost no one. This kind of ads is just one of the pointless inventions some bloggers had when they asked themselves how to earn a few bucks here and there, especially with no follow links.

First of all, private ads on blogs need some sort of audience, this might work if you have some sort of niche blog and you find some people who offer something to them. But in the make money niche, forget about that. Those blogs are useless, as most people who make a living online don’t blog about it. The handful of rich bloggers use their blog as an outlet to created a brand around their blog, it’s not like television where people are forced to see the ads, or even click on them. “CLICK on those ads or I won’t write any more content you freak(aka the reader)!”

This won’t happen as bloggers are attention whores. Everybody who blogs has the desire to tell the world something. And sooner or later he really wants to earn some money with it, but he usually does not risk losing reader by going a pay per read blog. Private ads are so 2006, you should consider removing them unless you get some bling for your space.

Advantages of Private Ads

You have control about them, you can reject people and give them away for free.
It can turn into a steady stream of income.
In case you can customize the ads and make them a part of your page they can be a great success.
In case you manage to think outside the box and create incentives for your adspace you can make good money.

Disadvantages of Private Ads

Pagerank selling is punished by google, so nofollow links are the way to go.
Standard 125*125 are boring and useless advertisments.
You have to take care of them and your advertisers.
They can be an annoyance when the banners/buttons are ugly.

Money making potential of Private Ads

It takes time to deal with your advertisers, takes time to place the ads, and worst of all, the average blogger is not even earning a lot of money with them, in case you can afford a program/script for this, it’s probably something else. It’s a joke when you think about ad pricing and that there are loads of people with blogs where ads cost almost nothing. Ads are given away through contests, or earn a measly 5-15 $ per month. Is it really worth your time? How much do you earn per hour in your real life job?
I guess you earn, and certainly deserve more for your time, unless you are already a superstar and get awesome deals for your web-space. From my point of view, private ads start to be profitable at +1000 RSS subscribers, PR4 and link selling or a niche that has people who need attention. Unless you have this, don’t even think about private ads, as they are a waste of time. Rather do something useful for your time that will last longer than 1 subscribtion period. Some examples are building links, adding a few affiliate product reviews. Or, in case you are a creative build a solid portfolio and sell your skills.
Overall the money making potential ranges from 1/10 to 10/10, depending heavily on the internet real estate you have. In case you have some premium spots and manage to create some killer campaigns that fit your blog you can earn a fortune, in case you don’t… don’t even waste your time with this, especially when you are starting out.

Wordpress is the Content Management System smashill is build on. The theme is handcoded, which is a great way to go in case you have a small budget. Now I am far away from being a tech geek, I find my way around certain things, but I am not good at coding! The great thing is there are resources that will help you coding your own wordpress theme in no time if you have some basic understanding of html.

The best tutorial on coding a wordpress design can be found at the no longer updated blog wpdesigner. It used to be a great source of information about wordpress until he sold it, but nothing happened after that sale. So who knows what happend there.
Anyways the site is still up, so do yourself a favour and grab his very detailed tutorial.
First of all he describes how to design a theme using photoshop, then he describes how to slice that design and finally how to code that design to create a wordpress theme. Each and every of those tutorials is pure gold for someone wanting to create his own wordpress theme with little knowledge about php or coding in general. Get them as long as the site is up and running
Prior to this wpdesigner wrote a tutorial series that can be accessed at the blog, but the pdf’s are far better from my point of view, nevertheless it’s the second best resource on how to create a basic wordpress theme.

In case you take your wordpress theme a step further, there are now other great resources about design and how to alter your CSS code to improve your overall site experiences, for example CSS Tricks. One hell of a great article is How to take wordpress one step further from Function Web Design.

In case you are simply thinking about creating a portfolio site, or a non wordpress related site, or a wordpress theme with a grid structure, check out Typogridphy or the 960 Grid System. The one is based on the other, but both are flexible and interesting foundations for good looking websites.

Are you a designer on a budget? Right when you are starting out, many people don’t have a lot money for their ventures. Sure you can sell yourself at some cheap contest sites, but to be honest, it’s not worth it. The concept behind a T-Shirt contest is pretty cool, the 3 biggest shirt contests have a huge audience and you recieve good money. Besides that you can get a few of your own shirts for free.

Threadless

Threadless is the mother of t-shirt contests, they have been around for a very long time and the competition at this place is very high. Nevertheless you always have the chance to win, and the prizes given away are some of the biggest around. They have a certain style that they prefere and in case you want to win, you just have to look at their winning designs and work according to those. So either be fun and whitty, have some cute or killer illustration skills, or make people think. The greatest thing about threadless is the huge community behind it and all the awards that are given at the end of the year. Their special contest are awesome as well, giving out killer prizes.

La Fraise

La Fraise is the European version of threadless, giving away good money while having less competition than the american threadless. Overall I think the shirt quality over at La Fraise is more of my taste and I prefere the site to threadless. The designs picked are different from what you see at threadless and I really prefere the style, this is probably cause I am european myself

Design by Humans

Design by Humans picks one Shirt each day and at the weekend they pick the winner of the week, netting you a few extra dollars in case you win this. dbh is the most democratic of all those sites, as any design can win given it’s artsy and the people there love it. In case you are starting out this is one of the best sites to hit.

If you are generation digital you are faced with some many temptation, all of them promising to earn you loads of bucks, fame or fun. 100 ways how I didn’t earn a fortune is my take on this whole make money online world.

Let’s face it, earning money usually is hard work, no matter what you do. Some people are gifted, others have to do a lot to keep up with those, but an old saying is, “No matter how gifted you are, you will always be kicked in the butt by someone who works his ass off.” This saying is so against the 4 hour workweek, or whichever propaganda you will read. No matter how people make money, most of them work hard. It takes time and effort to do something, it takes ideas and it takes dedication.

Maybe 20% of the action lead to 80% of the results, but, and that’s a big BUT, you have to take action.

Now I have been talking about temptations, snowball systems, online gambling, affiliate marketing for whack products, there are plenty of big markets, and there is money to be made, there is only one thing you have to understand, whatever sums you may make with marketing some fad diet product, or playing poker for a few hundreds or thousands of bucks, it’s not you who is winning, it’s not buyer or loser who is winning, it’s the company offering the products. Those companies. Those guys are making the money while you have to put in the effort.

I am not saying this is bad or wrong, it’s just that this is not really for me. I dislike people who sell some whack diet stuff, or get people addicted Casino games in their gambling rooms. That’s why those ways are not for me, and why I choose the creative, giving route to earning a living online.

100 Things that did not earn me a fortune will be a series about all the things I have been trying online, examining their money making potential and giving a radical and honest opinion on them. Don’t buy into everything you read, not everything will make you rich in a short amount of time. To get rich quick, you have to be lucky, that’s all.