Guys and ladies: How did you make your first money online?

[wgn_white]

My first online income that I can use the money to buy real things is ebay.

Before ebay, I'm with adsense but it never reach the payout.
So I go for ebay and the payout almost instantly.

[St Croix]

I botched my KW research like nobody's business when I was a noob. Created a website and targeted a far too competitive KW in the lose weight niche.

Logged into my adsense account after a few days and found I'd made $1.80 from 2 clicks - AWESOME :P

Haven't logged in again in about 2 years - good idea! Might find some spending money!

[projek001]

I got my first income through Graboid Affiliate Program.

Now, I earn income from it passively.

[mayapearl]

Wow, so many ways to make money online!
I made my first money with ebay, but that stopped being interesting. I now want to concentrate on adsense and an E book I am writing. The thing is to keep trying new stuff and have fun with it.
Maya

[johnnwabueze]

Mine was Online Survey and Data Entry.

I make some little buck like $500 in the first month.

That was in 2008

[tomw]

Some years ago I was in a planning meeting with one of our advertising clients...

(the maths are purely for illustrative purposes and I'll keep them simple)

They were paying the agency about £1 million in order to generate 20 plus. Of this we would have made the usual agency fee of around 20% or £200k.

The client also mentioned their affiliate program, where they would be paying their top affiliates around £100 on an insurance product with an averaged price of £350.

So around 30%.

Straight away I thought,

"Huh? You're potentially giving away around £7 Million to these 'affiliates' but only actually paying us £200k for the whole campaign?"

Soon after, I got a few developers, creatives, a production guy and an account girl together and once the campaign was underway we performed a small scale media buying/affiliate offer "test" that made close to £40k in about fourteen days.

I've never looked back.

Tom

[GavinStephenson]

I started my first website, registered with free directories, directed free traffic, adsense, private ads etc. Worked out better than i expected though.

[Justin Bott]

Hey all, a few years back I made about $5 with adsense and found out that it's possible to make money online. My roommate and I decided a few months back to give this a real go and have been working on driving traffic with adwords to some clickbank products. We got our first sale after about a day of advertising. We've so far made over $1500 in commish, but started getting unbalanced on how much we were spending to how much we were making. Exploring some new things now.
Justin

[soladollar]

Wow, Testimonials from left and right. As for me the first money i made was actually from selling a research to a fellow formite, That broght me 12,000 naira (Thats about 96$)... I later went on to make money from clickbank (71$), i went dormant for more than neccesary and i was booted out of clickbank.

Need a coach...

soladollar

[actionplanbiz]

I created multiple craigslist accounts and posted on all the popular cities

[sbucciarel]

I had an Ebay store. Spent a lot of money getting a lot of items listed and was making sales .... no bad feedback ... no violation of terms ... Ebay shut it down without explanation. I was selling clothing and other dropship items ... nothing unusual.

Opened up an Amazon store then. Was really making some nice sales and good profit. Amazon increased their fees and it just wasn't worth it any longer.

Then went to purely affiliate marketing and made bank on one particular offer.

[john_kennedy]

1997. I received a spam email about buying magazine subscriptions wholesale. I signed up and started selling magazine subscriptions. Took mail in payments only. Later I added an ebook to my product line.

[cage73]

My first online income came by way of eBay.

[metafitx]

Sold a clickbank product through yahoo answers. Unfortunately that was my first and last product sold via YA.

[ddistco]

My first sales came from eBay. It was a silly little product that I bought from a company called Magik King back in the like 2003. Before then I was searching for a way to make money online and found that eBay was easy to make money. I then became frustrated when I learned that the more I sold the larger my eBay Seller's account was about 20 25% of my total revenue. At that point I really started searching for ways to create money online without using them. Eventually it brought me to the Warriors forum. I just need to dig in and network with all of you here

[Affiliate Portal]

I hate to admit it but I was way into adsense before getting the boot and graduating to Aff Mkt... that seemed like the end of the world but it was actually the key to letting my wife quit working and me starting my affiliate marketing business. Rolled that into a membership site which lead to coaching at PPC Classroom... seriously, I love this stuff... Great idea for a thread!

Cheers, Corey Bornmann

[antiquenh]

I got paid with content writing first and got paid on a per assignment basis. Then I started to put adsense on my blog and have started earning more.

[EdmundDantes]

I earned my first online dollar by creating a website for someone. That got me started in the whole internet money thing. After that it sort of steamrolled from there.

[EquestrianGal]

PLR was my first source of internet income. I can't describe the feeling when I was at work and saw that my hard work in writing was bringing me cash and I just sat there watching it roll in. So exciting!

Since then, DH and I have dabbled in adsense a bit, flipped some sites, hosted the sites we flipped, and are now doing offline sales to local companies. There are so many places online to make money. The secret is not becoming ADHD in trying everything at once and instead, focusing on one thing until it works - or until it doesn't work and then learning from mistakes.

[BradCarroll]

My first service money was $4.58 for an article I sent to Associated Content.

My first affiliate cash was from Amazon, for $1.98! I've never been more proud of two bucks in my life!

[hotftuna]

I worked at a small web site marketing firm and had a client that was trying to generate debt leads from his Credit Counseling company site.

I was able to increase his leads and set-up my one site on the side. This client bought my leads and I have been generating debt leads ever since. That was 10 years ago.

[tecHead]

I created an online automated version of the "5 on list; you pay top person; take them off list; put your name on bottom of list" and stuck a full fledged web consulting business behind it to make it legit.

This was back in '01 before the current Pyramid Scheme Act was passed.

Made the mistake of using a merchant account and got two bank accounts seized with about $60K total in them; pissed Visa/MC International off because there's a rule about crediting a CC for more than what was debited. Lost my merchant account and got banned from ever having one, again (supposedly).

Had 15K members actively promoting and profiting so had to find a new transaction engine. Went and opened a PayPal account. Their head developer called me personally to investigate; saw that there was an actual business behind the matrix and gave full approval.

Decided it was still a bit risky and opened an e-gold version, as well.

The numbers were crazy! Used to have a page auto-reload about every 5min and would see a minimum of 20~30 new accounts being created. Fun, fun times!

[Steven Downward]

My first sales online took a little bit for me to get but it was through an an article about an affiliate product. I did not even know the sales happened for a little while so it was a great feeling. As soon as you see some money, the game is one.

[Monika Mundell]

Oh, the good 'ol days. I think I actually made a Clickbank sale as my first online money. Not that I knew that I was doing, it was sheer luck.

A lot has happened since and life is good!

[Damien Roche]

Made my first money online as a virtual assistant. Oh, the days...WORSE than a 9-5.

[Anup Mahajan]

My first online check was from Adsense but it took a while to reach the minimum payout level... I had a blog on Indian Stock Market that used to get about 1000 hits per day....

Cheers,

[Steve Faber]

About 5-1/2 years ago I started a Yahoo store and drove traffic to it with PPC. I used a couple of fulfillment houses that drop shipped everything for me, so I had no inventory to worry about. In a couple of months I was grossing about $5k. Unfortunately that only amounted to about $1,000 in net profit and that was mostly used for the PPC campaign, with some other being taken up with Yahoo fees and payment processing fees. After about a year, and losing about $5K, I started to see some profit.

Unfortunately, the customer service aspects of the business were too time consuming. Instead of outsourcing it, I cut it back so that after a few months I was basically done. Ironically enough, my last sale made me an $800 profit, still my best day in IM.

I was starting to get a decent amount of free traffic. Knowing what I know now, I would have kept going and concentrated more on getting free traffic, optimizing my PPC campaigns, and outsourcing my customer service. I would probably be doing a pretty good business now, but it's not really the kind of business I want to have. Many of the products were too low margin, and although I choose them with an eye toward minimizing returns they still happened on occasion. The $20 - 40$ I made on most of the products just didn't seem worth it at the time.

My second money I made online was with PPC and Clickbank with the free download products. That was great for about 6 months until the refund rate started to get out of hand, so I stopped.

[Tony Sanford]

My first online cheque was from Adsense made about $300 dollars in a few days i used Tre-Advertising they are cheap and you get targeted traffic.

[showpage]

I sold some herbal pills, back in 2007. The price was $80, and I got $32 commission. I made 3 more sales... And it was all done just buy submitting 4-5 articles to few hundred article sites.

[Folusho Orokunle]

It's funny, but I actually made my first sale online selling a guru's "make money" ebook. After I made my first $50,000 selling his stuff, I figured it was time that I create my own product. I was backed into a corner because I had to make money because I had gotten fired for coming to work late everyday.

At that point I didn't even know anything about sites like Clickbank and the WarriorForum

[Paula Steen]

I don't even remember the year when I first made money online... maybe 1998?

There was a company online where you got paid to use their browser and look at sites that were advertising. You got paid like a penny each. I was thrilled to get a check for $10 each month!

Around that same time I bought my first domain Links2FreeStuff.com which made a few dollars promoting offers.

Then in 2001 I discovered affiliate marketing. I bought some three REALLY good domains... make some product sites.... and got up $2,500 - $3,000 a month in commission... not knowing anything about backlinks, advertising, etc. It was because my keyword domain sites were first on Google.

Then there was something people called the Google "Florida Update" where you couldn't rank first on Google for competitive keywords just by having them in your domain. My commission fell to about $300 a month.

I bought lots of domain... made lots of sites... then sold most of them about three years ago.

This year I'm starting over and learning all I can... up to about $100 a month... taking me longer this time.

Thank you to the Warriors here who are guiding me along.

I can't wait to be back to $2,000 - $3,000 months again!

[Gerardas Norkus]

I created a simple SEOd website many years ago and put some banners that paid for clicks during this period. This is how I made my first online income.

However, later I learned how to build membership websites using PHP and MySQL. I built a simple Paid Email website and started making more money since then. This model works up until now.

I also have created several AdSense websites that make me money today.

Thanks!

[TheDebtEliminator]

I have worked online to create a offline income that has increased each year.

During that time I have authotes 3-eBooks that I still need to monitize

All the Best

[Andie]

Thanks for all the awesome stories and insight, folks! Nice thread!

Andie

[munkyscripts]

Free Template and Wallpaper sites, funny thing is its still making me money at least on the template side

[Ken Leatherman]

Freelance writing for a Warrior back in 2005. $50.00 for 10 articles

Ken Leatherman
The Old Geezer

[dndoseller]

Adsense on web proxies. Its a crazy gray hat business.People love proxies or hate them.

[Shawn Mason]

The first time, in 2005 it was from creating a product that landed me some JV's..

Then bad things happened.. lol

The second time I started with blogging and made a bit of adsense income first while I was still working on creating the product.

[MattSteel]

Originally Posted by Kustom

My very first money I made online was selling my services as a designer. I was 12 years old at the time and designed a fansite for "Neopets". I orginally designed the site for fun because I enjoyed both Neopets and Design at the time. Then somebody offered me some money for the website so I sold it.....


Kustom.

lol My sister started off on NeoPets and is very successful. Me? I advertised my AutoCad/Drafting services on an online club site. I sold my first set of plans for $600 (about 25 hrs of work, about 8 years ago). That was the biggest "high" of my professonal career!

[Branlan17]

My first sale online came from a betta fish guide. I had just gotten a fish and so I decided to see if clickbank had any related products, low and behold, they had several guides! I marketed the one whose sales page I liked the best and after a week of article publishing got my first $10 sale... I was thrilled lol.

My next, and more prominent success, has come in the penis enlargement industry where I've made about $800 in the past 2 months I've been working on the niche.

[darrencochran]

Does anybody know of a good Safelist program to join?

[Profit-smart]

I made my first buck online designing websites for the mom/pop shops where I grew up!

As far as IM goes, I made my first (hundred) bucks pushing a clickbank offer with a good incentive. Pure organic traffic =]

[Gark]

In 1997, while living in Las Vegas, my wife asked me to build her at store online. She was an avid collector of anything related to Wolves. I told her I would just as long as the store had nothing to do with Wolves. She demanded to know why. I told her the objective was to sell the items and not adopt them. We began selling high end angel statuary and Angeltowne.com was born.

After a year, I decided to build a store selling very expensive patio furniture and accessories. While I was building this store, my wife was telling me I was crazy and that no one would spend that kind of money online. I perservered and put Patiotowne.com online.

I did make good money from Adsense on all of my sites but it was never enough though.

Several months after it went live, we went out to Tony Romas one evening and when we got home, my wife jumped out of the car, ran in the house to check to see if we had any orders. (it had become her favorite thing to do). I let the dogs out and looked up and my wife was standing in the living room. She took my hand and led me into the office. She told me to close my eyes and sit at my desk. I did.

When I opened my eyes, I was staring at a $13,000 order. I'll never forget what my wide said. "Okay, I was wrong." LOL. Not only would they but they continued to do so.

In 2004, very unexpectedly, I lost my wife to cancer. The medical bills were horrendous and I was forced to close the businesses. I returned to Florida, found employment and after three years, I became a statistic of unemployment. Trust me, at 61, there are no jobs out there. I am here to learn from the Pro's because today, I have to make this work. It is a lot harder today than it was back in the 90's.

[Michael Lewis]

I Made my first $100 writing 2 How to Articles on Ehow.com. Also from Clickbank. Yay!

[JBorhez]

Like so many others I would also have to say eBay. I made over $3000 selling physical items but really hated the shipping aspect of it. My next plan was to sell digital products through eBay but not allowed anymore.

I'm still new to the IM world however...

Great question...thanks for posting

[Jillian Slack]

My first money online was made by purchasing scrapbooking items and then selling them on eBay. This was in the early 1990s, when scrapbooking was just starting to grow. There were retail stores here and there, devoted to scrapbooking, but it became more and more difficult to sell this type of thing on eBay once Wal-Mart added scrapbooking to their inventory.

Then I wrote my first ebook and watched it become the #1 best-seller on Booklocker.com within a couple of weeks. That was pretty exciting.

And that's how I got started.

[mlevenhagen]

$40 Affiliate Program Commission from a Niche Website I built back in 2002ish?.. at the time I was only focused on Offline Advertising and Referrals. And then I said.. what's the Affiliate Marketing thing again?

[cronealis]

I bought Daniel Molano`s book on article marketing.
Two weeks later I made my first sale, it was a clickbank product, 30$ commission, what a rush

[mzperx]

I made my first money online as a camgirl (but in non-adult category :-P) , then I noticed the webmaster programs on these sites. If members sign up through my referal code, I get 15-30% of what they spend on any chathost.I like the revshare programs, because I still got money when I didn't refer anyone for a while... I'm a newbie, and I'm just attending a sitebuilder course now, so I don't even have own websites. I only gave the links to members on one site to bring them to another one.Yes, it was a very prehistorical method )I make 700-1000 Usd per month with it, even if I referred the last member a very long time ago..Hopefully when I can build my sites, I will have more success. So I'm mostly interested in the adult cam business, but I'm open to try new things as well ...

[Patrick Mader]

my very first money online i got from adsense... just created some sites and earned money...today live is not that easy..

Cheers,

Patrick