Do you remember the first dollar you made online?

When I began blogging in 2004, I never even thought that you could earn money online.

Back then, all I wanted to do was write. I was more concerned about recording my bloggable moments and tweaking my blog theme than anything else.

I only had a vague idea about making money from blogs when I saw Adsense on my Blogger dashboard. I also came across Adbrite and placed it way, way down on the sidebar of my blog. They were more of an afterthought rather than an intentional thing. I even remember being slightly annoyed at the ads.

My online world changed when I stumbled on paid blogging four years later. I got myself my own domain, taught myself how to set up a self-hosted blog and I applied to all the paid blogging sites I could find.

I almost couldn’t believe it when I received my first $35 dollar payment in my Paypal account. Wow, this is actually the real thing, I thought.

That’s when I started to scour the web for other make money online opportunities. I tried paid to click sites and survey sites but at .01 cents per click, I never made enough to reach the payment threshold.

But I continued to focus on paid blogging and my Paypal balance was steadily growing.

Click, click, click!

It’s funny how the web works, you just click, click, and click some more and before you know it, you’ve come across a whole slew of information you’ve never known before.

That’s how I stumbled into affiliate marketing. One click after the other led me to blogs and lenses about selling other people’s products through Squidoo. I bought a couple of ebooks about making money on Squidoo. I made a handful of lenses but I still couldn’t quite figure out how everything works. I wasn’t getting any visitors so I wasn’t making any sales.

Like most newbies, I gave up and moved on to the next big thing. More than a year after setting up my Squidoo lens, I received an email from the affiliate manager of a course I promoted previously telling me she was sending me a commission check for $500. I must have read her email a hundred times.

When I received the check two months later, I opened my first ever dollar account and deposited it there. Until now, the money is intact and untouched. It was great that my efforts still paid off and the commission I earned was worth more than the ebooks I bought. So I still considered that  a profitable venture.

Dabbling with Fiverr

The first time I heard about Fiverr, I signed up and launched a WordPress set – up and troubleshooting gig.

By this time, I had already set up dozens of blogs as part of my real job as a web producer. I wasn’t a WordPress expert, but I knew more than enough to set up sites within minutes. I knew enough CSS, HTML and PHP to make the sites look the way I wanted to. I also learned how to spot WordPress problems and fix them in a jiffy.

I took the time to craft a good description for my gig and I got clients on the first day. It was fun to get paid for tasks that were easy for me to do. I also got some extra work outside of Fiverr from clients that liked my work and they willingly paid my asking price.

But my enthusiasm for Fiverr didn’t last long. At some point, it felt too much trouble for very little pay so I closed my gig and looked for another income stream.

Navigating the Amazon

Since I had some funds in my Paypal account, I decided to invest in building Amazon niche sites. I made one as an experiment in June 2010. I wrote articles and built links every day.

Two weeks after I published my first post, I made my first sale. It was $2.32 — my first real taste of passive income. With such a small commission per sale, I thought I needed to build 20 or more sites to make a decent income. It wasn’t particularly appealing to me since I was already burning out just writing and building links for one site.

I put it on the back burner knowing the potential was there. I decided that once I had more capital to invest, I would go back to making Amazon sites, maybe automate the tasks I didn’t like and find ways to work smarter.

I mentioned in my previous post that I wanted to sell my Amazon site to get some seed money. But after writing that post, I saw that made another 5 sales in my Amazon account. So I’m still on the fence about selling it. Maybe not yet.

Lessons I’m still learning

Perhaps my biggest lesson — I won’t call it a mistake — was buying too many shiny things.

I signed up to too many guru email lists and I blindly bought almost every product they threw my way. Every time, I would justify my purchase. I would tell myself, This is it, this is gonna be the method I’ll make money online. Surely I’m gonna earn back what I spent and more.

The thing about Paypal money is it’s too easy to spend. I can’t even look back at my Paypal transactions and see how much I’ve spent over the years. I’d probably kick myself.

I was like an ebook junkie always looking for the next make money online high. But more money was coming out, and less was coming in. I kept buying and buying, banking on the promise that this will be the last ebook you’ll ever need.

It took me months and hundreds of dollars later to realize it was only these gurus who made bank. I had to stop when I saw all the ebooks in my MMO folder. Slowly but surely, I unsubscribed from IM mailing lists and only retained the ones who offered real value.

A new start

Looking back, I can’t say they were all wasted because I learned a lot. A whole lot. I learned things I never even thought I would. I used to be a technophobe, but now I actually consider myself tech savvy.

It was only after trying too many things that I finally realized I need to zone in on one income stream first until it is profitable.

Other people can give you advice about these things, they can tell you this is what you need to do. I will tell you what I know so you can avoid my mistakes.

But it’s only after you experience it, after you make all those “mistakes” yourself, that you actually learn the lesson.

Now it’s only a matter of keeping focused, applying what you learned and taking action.

No matter how many obstacles you face on the way to your goal, as long as you keep going, you’ll eventually get there.