Is it really possible to make money online?

[Korgeta]

There isn't anyone who hasn't seen an ad saying things like 'make $4000 in a day!' popping up or seen articles of people saying you can make money but never going on how you can. To my knowledge there are only two ways to make money.

1: if your a UK user, go on slicethepie and review music tracks for about 3p a track (if your review is good enough) I tried this and its not worth it, I'm sure they dropped the payment value as well but your review has to be very well written just to get 5p. A waste of time in my eyes.

And the second is selling online accounts...and that's about it!

I would like to do more with my laptop other then write, practice modding and go online, heck I even have a spare laptop as well and so far with both of these I am yet to find any way of making some profit online. I understand you can do it with websites with ads that have pay per click but for myself or others who maybe like me have all the time in the world and thinking of using their laptop to try and create a bit of profit is there any way to do it?

[Starglider]

Do you mean make money without having any notable skills? Because obviously you can use a laptop to do art commissions, article writing, contract software development and other freelance jobs you can find online.

[Broomstick]

The only way you'll make money on line with those sites that ask you to do things like review a song track or whatever is to live in a third world shithole where 5p actually is worth something.

I've made money on line via writing well enough that people actually pay to read my writing.... with money coming in maybe 1 or 2 times a year.... so I'm not sure if it's really cost effective and it's actual work, and most of the time you'll also expend considerable effort in promoting yourself so you don't sink into the sea of everything that's on line already.

Other than that - it's basically like Starglider says - you're doing business on line as a freelancer, with all the good and bad points that entails. There's no easy get-rich-quick way to make money on line.

[Korgeta]

Well I'm just learning more of my options the art commission I have some idea of and something i'll look into when i have the space to draw up sketches as well as being able to afford photoshop. I'm curious about the online writing and contract development software as I don't know much on those but in regards to what you said broomstick where did you start with regards to writing online?.

[Broomstick]

I was first published in 1977, long before we did such things "on-line" So really, for me it wasn't so much a matter of "starting things on line" as adapting to advancing technology. I went from manual typewriters and carbon paper through electric typewriters to word processors.

Some of it is work I specifically wrote for on-line, in response to inquiries or calls for work. Some of it was prior hardcopy writing re-published on-line. The specific software I've used are basic word processors - among them Wordstar, WordPerfect, Word, and currently OpenOffice. Really, for my purposes the specific software is secondary to the content, which often as not is re-edited for display by the publisher.

One way to break in is to look for "calls for submissions", which you'll find on publisher's websites, and through writer-support sites, many of which are genre or subject specific. For my non-fiction aviation writing I got the submission guidelines for various magazines and started banging away. Fiction I've had somewhat less success with, but again, you look for submission guidelines and/or calls for specific topics, then have at it. I will, however, point out that it is perfectly normal for most of your submissions over a given time period to be rejected, especially when you're first starting out. I have a very nice collection of "thank you, but we are not interested in your offering at this time" letters, some of which are pretty damn polite, really.

Contract development software can range from simplistic shareware to sophisticated, and very expensive, professional packages. What level are you planning to work at?

Really, there are a lot of ways to use "on-line" as a tool to make money, along with all the other tools of a given trade. More specific advice would be easier if you gave a more specific idea of what you're thinking of doing to make money. Even if you haven't decided on a specific line of work, throw out some idea of what you would like to be doing and maybe someone here can help.

[Mayabird]

There is Amazon's Mechanical Turk (you can find it easily in a simple search), where you can do surveys and whatnot for small sums. It can make you some money, but not much. I got about $60 in a couple months from an hour or two a day but then got a real job so I lost interest in it.

[Thanas]

To my knowledge there are only two ways to make money.

Of course, you can always simply ask people to give you money. Spammers do it because it works! Even this site begs people for money and I'm told some suckers gave to it.

Stop being an ass.

[Purple]

Did you consider gold farming? I don't know how legal it is, but it should be as no laws are broken even thou it can get you banned from the games. I have had experience with them, back in the day when I used to play a lot of Korean free to play MMORPG's and as much as I hate the practice I have to say that judging by how many there are it must be working for them.

[Steel]

Did you consider gold farming? I don't know how legal it is, but it should be as no laws are broken even thou it can get you banned from the games. I have had experience with them, back in the day when I used to play a lot of Korean free to play MMORPG's and as much as I hate the practice I have to say that judging by how many there are it must be working for them.

Again, it may be practical for them where they live if they live in a country where $3 is a small fortune, but that doesn't translate too well to the first world. These people can often get massively reduced subscription rates and have dozens of accounts on at once all afk farming in order to make money. Not too practical.

[Purple]

Again, it may be practical for them where they live if they live in a country where $3 is a small fortune, but that doesn't translate too well to the first world. These people can often get massively reduced subscription rates and have dozens of accounts on at once all afk farming in order to make money. Not too practical.

Erhm...

...
I would like to do more with my laptop other then write, practice modding and go online, heck I even have a spare laptop as well and so far with both of these I am yet to find any way of making some profit online.
...

He can devote 1 to gold farming and use the other for what ever he wants.

Did you consider gold farming? I don't know how legal it is, but it should be as no laws are broken even thou it can get you banned from the games. I have had experience with them, back in the day when I used to play a lot of Korean free to play MMORPG's and as much as I hate the practice I have to say that judging by how many there are it must be working for them.

Note the no subscription fee part.

And since I have seen them advertise 1 million gold for 50$ back 5 years ago when I used to play I think the payoff might not be that small either. As long as he is willing to do things no honest man would ever do and get his hands dirty in a way that the scum of the earth have the right to look down at him.

[Steel]

Jesus Christ. 'Dozens' does not equal 'two'.

Could you make 2 million gold (a worthless figure unless we know how long it takes to make that) in your Korean RPG every single day? Also sell it at that price reliably? If not, you starve to death.

[HeadCreeps]

Botting in many popular Korean RPGs is done without actually opening the game client. Rather, you open an exe which is designed specifically so that you can open multiple versions of it on the same computer. You can run as many clients as your RAM allows with bots.

Other than that, people in the MMORPG I played the most recently will run as many as 4 or 5 game clients on the same computer while playing legitimately. Depending on the specs of the laptop, it's conceivable that any number of low spec MMORPGs could allow for dual or greater clients on the same machine.

However, people who've made successful incomes using "Real Money Trade" are people who manage the virtual funds and buy from players to resell, not the people who farm the virtual money itself.

[Ariphaos]

There's a myth that's common on the Internet: give stuff away, and it will somehow work out well for you. That's not true - people generally don't pay for things that are offered to them for free; the vast majority of free users of your website or service will never convert into paying customers.

I make a fair chunk of my income from this sort of model, so I'll comment.

Yes, I would be ridiculously rich if each and every one of my members gave me a dollar a month. And I am thinking of rolling out a more directly for-pay service or services for things, if only because of the gender disparity that suddenly vanishes when you add carrots to the mix.

My servers cost a few hundred a month. Those are my physical expenditures. For that, they allow me to reach tens of thousands of people. Only a tiny fraction actually support me. Do I wish it was a bit higher? Sure. But the model is, in fact, workable.

[evilsoup]

By workable, do you mean 'self-sustaining', or do you actually make a profit?

[Havok]

I'd wager that if SDN charged every member a dollar every month, this place would be a ghost town.

[Ariphaos]

By workable, do you mean 'self-sustaining', or do you actually make a profit?

I hate to think of it as profit considering the time invested. It certainly doesn't make the same amount a full-time job at a living wage would. On the other hand having an excuse for two very powerful servers is fairly valuable. My costs to host other people's websites are effectively zero, as the main site is I/O bound and I basically have 20 terabytes per month, two quad core CPUs and a terabyte of disk space sitting mostly idle.

And don't downplay the level of effort involved in getting a website to the point where thousands of people consider it a valuable part of their life. It doesn't just magically happen. It is work.

I'd wager that if SDN charged every member a dollar every month, this place would be a ghost town.

I'd wager that it makes enough through Google ads that it's at least self sustaining, in fact I recall Wong saying as much. It'd be silly to try that first without otherwise making advertising more prominent.

[Sarevok]

I'd wager that if SDN charged every member a dollar every month, this place would be a ghost town.

Don't be so sure. Way bigger forums with less quality than SDN thrive on charging members for the right to post.

[HeadCreeps]

I'd wager that if SDN charged every member a dollar every month, this place would be a ghost town.

Don't be so sure. Way bigger forums with less quality than SDN thrive on charging members for the right to post.

I'm not altogether familiar with that. What forums do this? Actually I know some online video game forums do this in the sense that to post on their forum, you have to have an active account in their game, but with this the initiative to pay is almost entirely to play the game and not to post. What is the pull in wanting to specifically pay to post on a forum?

[evilsoup]

iirc, Something Awful charges a ~$10 registration fee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful#Forums, don't know if anyone charges a monthly fee though.

[Havok]

Only if you had a free e-mail. Just a security feature.

[HeadCreeps]

iirc, Something Awful charges a ~$10 registration fee http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful#Forums, don't know if anyone charges a monthly fee though.

If I understand their method correctly, they provide a normal website with regular content, right? The forum is in addition to this, and to entice users to pay, they provide annoyances for free viewers. Furthermore, there are evidently incentives for paying even more than the registration fee. AFAIK the site is the type where memes are commonly used, generated, and where general silliness is promoted heavily.

In case it isn't obvious, I'm trying to answer the question I asked - why would someone pay to participate in such a forum, and how can the incentive be raised enough to make the forum at least as successful as SDN?

[salm]

cgsociety.org used to charge a monthly fee but they got rid of it again. Now you can either register for free or register for 50$ and get a couple of (mostly useless) benefits.

[Broomstick]

www.straightdope.com used to charge an annual fee of $14 if you wanted to post past an initial 30 days. No longer required, although if you continue to pay you get some additional perks.