Earning From Online Income Businesses

By Russel Ison

These days, many people want to leave their office or factory jobs to engage in online income businesses which promises an almost unlimited earning potential without the tediousness and even boring setup of an office or factory job. But is earning an online income really what it's cracked up to be? Is the promise of unlimited earning potential while relaxing in your home office typing leisurely in your computer really true?

 

This book explores the many forms of online income businesses, from making smartphone apps, freelancing, online writing, podcasting, website ownership, YouTube, being an influencer, and many more. This book studies the intricacis of each online business together with your possibilities of finding success in each one of them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Russel Ison
• Release date: Oct 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223596400

Russel Ison

My pen name is Russel Ison. I write about novels which I think people would like but I especially like. I am semi-retired and spend most of my time researching all sorts of subjects. From Science, History, Mythology, Crime, Music, Movies, Saving Money, Romantic Comedies, my list goes on and on. I am however mainly interested in writing for people.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Introduction

Many people these days , especially the tech savvy, are interested in how to earn an income online. YouTube alone is filled with so-called business gurus who seemingly have the answer on how to become rich by working only a few hours on your computer and relaxing the rest of the day. As proof, they would show you snapshots of their income report which shows how much big money they are earning from their online business.

But the cold and hard reality is that just like any business, earning money online is not easy. You can slave away for long hours creating online content but never make even a cent for your efforts. But don’t be discouraged, earning money from any type of business is hard. Just to give you an idea of how hard starting a business is and succeeding at it, in the U.S.A, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics or BLS shows that approximately 20% of new businesses fail during the first two years of being open, 45% during the first five years, and 65% during the first 10 years. Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more. As you can see, there is a high failure rate in starting and maintaining a business in the U.S.A, and this business scenario is similar to other businesses in other countries.

But don’t be disheartened, earning an income online usually only requires that you have a computer and an internet connection, which most households have access to these days. At least if you failed in your online moneymaking business, you would have only lost little to no money and you can try again with another online moneymaking business.

1. The Allure of Earning Easy Money Online: Many people, especially in the U.S.A and now China, have grown up with tech success stories. We saw how Mark Zuckerberg working alone and still attending college, programmed Facebook right out of his campus dormitory to become a billion dollar tech company, making him one of the youngest and richest billionaires of all time. To YouTube fans, there’s MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson), who earned a staggering USD 54 million alone in 2022, making him the richest YouTuber. 

There is a near endless list of people making a lot of money via their online business; and media, especially American media, likes to promote and celebrate them. Media paints a rosy picture that even everyday common people through sheer hardwork and a little dose of luck can become millionaires or even multimillionaires by just creating online content.

What’s more, most of the online business success stories being featured by media depict people who don’t have much degree of education. Some are even still kids but still managed to become multimillionaires due to their online business. This is the reason why there is a growing number of children who don’t want a traditional path to a career anymore which is studying until college, work for a company by starting from the very bottom, and then finally earn good money once they reach managerial positions.

During 2019, a survey conducted on 3,000 children from the US, UK and China by Ars Technica which was sponsored by the LEGO company revealed that US and UK children would rather be YouTubers than astronauts when they grow up. The survey concluded that this was an alarming sign of how attitudes toward scientific frontiers have changed across the generations. This is because during the preceding generations, being an astronaut was the dream career of many children. But the results even get darker according to those which conducted the survey. Being an astronaut was the least choice of career for five other career choices. These other career choices were in order: teacher, professional athlete, musician and of course, astronaut. However, Chinese children’s number one career choice or aspiration was to be an astronaut. A whooping 56% of the surveyed Chinese children wanted to be astronauts while only 16% want to be YouTubers.

What’s more, a lot of people are taking inspiration from online influencers who even without little to no education but blessed with beauty, charm and with a talent for glib, managed to become multimillionaires in just a short time. It seems that everyone is after the pot of gold waiting at the end of the online income rainbow.

2. It’s Not Easy as It Seems: According to a report on April 26, 2021 by Alan Spicer at alanspicer.com, a YouTube-centric website, only about 0.25% of all YouTubers earn money. This figure was based on a cut-off YouTube income of USD 50 a month. Meaning that only 0.25% of all YouTubers earn a monthly income of over USD 50 a month. This is straight earnings from YouTube only. This means that this statistic does not include earnings outside of YouTube ads, donations and merchandise sales. For example, a YouTuber’s earnings from Patreon is not included into this statistic. But it is very clear that even if we include a YouTuber’s earnings from outside YouTube, a vast majority or almost all YouTubers are not making any living wage on YouTube. This disappointing earnings scenario is just from YouTube but could be similar to all other fields of the online income business. But this is not out of the ordinary. In almost any line of business, the amount of losers greatly overwhelm the winners. This is because for many businesses, the competition is very high, including the online income business.

3. Don’t Leave Your Day Job Just Yet: With so many online income businesses failing, it would be good to keep doing your day job so you can financially support yourself while you’re still not making enough money to support yourself with your online income business, if it ever does pay off.

In fact, it is strongly advised that you put more effort in your day job rather than your online income business at first. Many aspiring online income businessperson get so excited by the hype about making money online instantly that they tend to neglect their day job which is giving them reliable income no matter how small. You must remember that in the online income business, financial success is not always assured. You might instantly gain millions of followers and think that you’re popular, but the true metric of success in the online income business is how much net profit you earn. Remember, only a very small percentage of online income businesses ever make money.

4. Ideal for People Who Have a Lot of Spare Time But Not a Lot of Money: The reason why many very young people are involved today in the online income businesses is because they are the ideal people for starting online income businesses. Young people especially those who are still in school have usually a lot of time in their hands but don’t have enough money. The capital threshold for many online income businesses is very low. All that you need at the minimum to start an online income business is a computer and an internet connection, which many households these days already have.

However, the time requirement for online income businesses is a totally different matter. You usually have to spend a lot of time creating a lot of online content hoping a few of them would grab your customer’s attention which enables you to make money off them. For example there are YouTubers who create two or more videos a day. If you think that these videos are short, I know of YouTubers who create two hour long videos a day. If you have ever tried making videos on YouTube, you would know that creating and editing a YouTube video can take several hours on the average. So, if you for example want to have a probable chance of making full-time income in YouTube, you should treat it like a full-time job and work all day at it.

If you are already working at a regular eight hour long day job, chances are that you can only do at most one YouTube video a week, which seriously dampens your probability of making a full-time income in YouTube. So, young people who are still in school and are still being financially supported by their parents for the most part, can survive making YouTube videos for a long time, like in years, without even earning a cent for their efforts.

The example used here is making money on YouTube, but the same scenario is similar to other kinds of online income businesses. For example, I primarily make ebook novellas which are more than 25,000 words long, or almost half the length