Making Money Online versus 'Offline'

Have you ever looked into the list of online money makers in Paula Mooney's blog? If you haven't, I suggest you do that now. The numbers are so appealing it makes you want to quit your job immediately. Who says you can't make a fortune online? They earn more than I get from a number of offline jobs I did for the past 3 years

I've been blogging for 4 years with no intention of monetizing the blog. Looking at the list, now is probably a good time to think again. When my wife introduced adsense to me, we read a lot about it from Joel Comm, we even bought some books on adsense like the one by Eric Giguere.

But why is it much more appealing than having a normal 'offline' jobs? I think it's probably down to these factors:

1. Skills versus Qualifications

In most of the cases for 'offline' way of getting money, you need some kind of qualifications to start with. Apart from setting up your own business, you pretty much need some kind of proof that you can do the job. Even in the application process itself, you need to attach your CV or resume, as well as all those relevant certificates. See, not everybody will be accepted. Even if you have a degree, maybe you don't have what the employer wants, maybe your qualifications are not up to their standards or maybe you're not competent enough. Maybe you have the skills but because of lack of qualifications, you are rejected. Life sure is tough!

This is not the case if you want to get involved in making money online. Most of the time, you don't need any qualifications. In fact, anybody can do it. University or college students can do it, a housewife can do it and the good thing is, even if you already have a job, you can add more to your income by doing extra work online. Nobody is going to ask you whether you're qualified to blog, or whether you have a degree in weblogging studies or whatever. People come to your site, buy stuff from you, click on your ads not because of tons of certificates that you keep but because of the quality that you presented to them. In most cases, your skills are your assets here. Skills in getting people to come to your sites, skills of building nice looking websites, skills of attracting people to buy your goods. All in all, it's the skills that count. Probably that's why Kevin Rose succeeds with his Digg.com site and John Chow succeeds as a blogger. And probably it's the skills that make all the dot com entrepreneurs succeed in their online business.

2. Physical activity

Most of the offline jobs require you to become physically active, depending on the nature of your job. Doctors, field engineers, factory workers, to name a few, are the jobs that involve a lot of physical activity. Well, even a CCTV controller needs to get off his seat sometimes, especially when somebody broke into the building. And of course, if you work as a cleaner like me, you need to be not just physically active but fit as well.

In the case of making money online, most of the time, it can be done in the luxury of your bedroom (or living room, depends on where you put the computer). Not much of physical activities involved. The only muscles doing most of the jobs would probably be your brain's and fingers'. You've got to do a lot of thinking though. If you want to set up a website or a blog, you need to plan the theme, webhost, contents etc. A blogger needs to keep his/her brain running everyday to get the ideas coming, and post regularly. Otherwise, you'll just drive traffic out of your blog. So just be careful on that.

3. Less for more

Generally if you venture into making money online, you spend less time, involve in less risk and do less work than the person doing an offline job, with the potential of getting a very high return if you do it correctly and everything goes well as planned. I think everybody wants to get money the least hassle as possible, legally of course. Doing less for high return is always an attractive offer.

You don't need to spend fixed hours of 9 to 5 in front of your computer everyday. You don't need to move around the room/building/country so much to earn $2000 a month. Generally, the startup cost varies from zero to probably a few hundreds, much less than involving yourselves to the outside world. Now, with these on offer plus a high return (again if you do it correctly), who would want to resist?

4. Freedom

I guess this is why people set up their own business instead of working under somebody or under any organisations. It's the freedom of choosing your set of actions, what you want to do and what you don't want to do. You decide on how much you want to earn as well as your future, not your manager or your superiors.

But doing it online involves more freedom and less formality. Nobody expects you to wear a blazer and tie, or a certain uniform while you're working in front of your computer. You can even wear a bathrobe, while lying down on your bed. No more of those annoying appointments (unless you get interviewed once you're famous), spreadsheets, paperworks and all other formalities. Just post a nice entry everyday, or stick a high quality website on the Net and laugh all the way to the bank. Less formality, more freedom. Nice.