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Permalink Reply by Tom McCann on March 13, 2009 at 9:24am

It is different for every site and person.

However, most online success stories happen over a long period of time through a process of lots of time and effort.

It is possible to have quick success, but this only happens if you have something very interesting or unique that will spread quickly through word of mouth or get a lot of press attention while having a good monetization model.

Another way to have quick success is to find a good offer that converts well allowing you to buy lots of pay per click traffic. Pay per click traffic is expensive and sometimes hard to buy so having a good conversion rate will allow you to bid higher amounts.

Otherwise, the goala is to build a good site with lots fo content that attracts search engine listings, visitors, repeat visitors, and links form other sites in the same topic area.

For most people, making money online is a long process. Keep trying new things and keep working on your site(s). You will continue to learn things and figure things out. Unfortunately, making money online is not a get rich quick effort for most people.

If your PPC traffic isn't converting, it could be a problem with the traffic or it could be a problem with how your traffic is set up. Is your traffic going to multiple pages or is it coming in to your site and backing out right away? Do you have an analytics package such as Google Analytics set up on your site to see what the traffic is doing, where it is coming from, and how long it spends on your site?

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Permalink Reply by James Scott on March 14, 2009 at 11:31am

I hope this doesn't bum you out too much, but I have been working on my websites for over 10 years and I still don't make a large steady income. My main problem was that I'm not very good with technology, but now it is much easier to make really good websites. Now I just need my websites to grow and get more traffic.

I had a few years where I did well, but things keep changing. Once you find something that works, keep learnig and trying new things (with other sites) to diversify your efforts and income. If something starts to work, stop fussing with it. Let it work for awhile because sometimes you will make changes and not know what changes made it stop working.

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Permalink Reply by lea on September 21, 2009 at 1:50pm

Thanks for your input.

Instead of asking "how long" does it take to make money online,
I should have just asked "how" to make money online.

I got burned pretty good by trying to buy PPC traffic.
It is a hard game to play as others on this site have said.

I think my main goal now is to find ways to generate traffic.
No matter what offer I have, it doesn't matter unless I have traffic.

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Permalink Reply by James Scott on October 12, 2009 at 10:38pm

Traffic generation is definately the key. Playing with conversion rates and testing new offers is fun and exciting. Trying to build traffic is labor intensive, expensive, and just plain frustrating.

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Permalink Reply by Tom McCann on October 15, 2009 at 4:24pm

In terms of buying PPC traffic and getting good conversion rates, make sure you are tracking and testing everything. I've made a few small changes (in text, colors, etc...) that have resulted in huge conversion rate improvements.

Sometimes it is the quality of traffic and sometimes it is the design of your landing page and the copy of your offer.

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Permalink Reply by OICUAM2 on December 11, 2009 at 9:52pm

It matters what business model you use, how successful you are at getting traffic, and if you can get something to go viral where people come to your site without you needing to pay for them to see an ad. Word of mouth can be a very powerful thing.

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