what is a realistic goal for someone starting out?

There are lots of different methods to making money online, and it really depends on what you're aiming to achieve.

If you're focusing on adsense in the Make Money Online niche(worst idea ever!) then you could expect a very long, unfruitful road.

If you were focusing on selling $3k web services to local businesses you could make much more.

If you're going the affiliate marketing route, you could easily spend 3-6 months to generate a $200-$500 income.

If you were to create a product and it did amazingly well, you could earn a 6 figure income in the same time frame.

If you're serious about working online, I'd recommend creating your own products.

When I started out...

I took me 3-4 months of hard work and testing to hit $50 a day.

This $50 a day last for about a month than started to fall a bit, but I working the whole time it was coming in, so I had new campaigns start to pick up.

As a newbie, your goals should be focused upon progress.

If you have never built a site or tried to make money online, a monetary goal is a little "cart before the horse."

In my opinion your should start with goals similar to these:

Goal 1: Research business models and decide on one that is right for me.
Goal 2: Do in-depth research on the business model I chose as begin constructing a plan to implement this business model.
Goal 3: Get something up! Construct the pieces of my business model (landing page, website, blog, ecommerce store, whatever) and get it functioning.
Goal 4: Produce X amount of pieces of content for my business by Y.
Goal 5: Attempt to obtain a minimum of 20 unique visits/day (or 1 opt in/day, or whatever)
Goal 6: Earn $1 per day avg with this business while increasing growth.
Goal 7: Earn $10 per day avg for a month.
Goal 8: Earn $100 per day avg for a month.
Goal 9: Earn $1000 per day avg for a month.

Of course, with your first goals simply centered around getting something up/launching something.

Good luck.

Don't be carried away by all the self acclaimed millionaires and expert you see.

Do your research combined with common sense.

Also, you need to know that making money online is no different from making money from offline, you need wit.

Don't look for "a day" goals first off. When starting out there will be NO balance in something as pinpointed as a "day range" go for $10 a month. Then $50 a month. Etc. work from there. It's just like weight.. You'd be an emotional roller coaster if you measured weight daily lol.

Being realistic, means earning a little money at first and then scaling it up and earning more.
Once you, find a system that works, just scale things up and make more money. It is all about, finding system that works for you.

Heya Vojohn33,

Carefully consider the things below, in order to ensure that you have realistic, attainable, profitable, sustainable and scalable targets, plans and projections.

First, what are your specialized real world expertise, substantial authority knowledge and other available relevant resources (time, money, network resources, credit resources and so on)?

Second, which specialized industries are your expertise, knowledge and resources relevant to?

Third, which specific urgent problems and immediate needs of players in the B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer) markets under those industries can your specialized real world expertise, substantial authority knowledge and relevant resources help resolve and satisfy?

Fourth, what type of solutions can you create for those specific problems and needs of those B2B or B2C markets, with the use of your relevant resources, real world expertise and authority knowledge?

Fifth, which of those specific B2B or B2C markets can you zone in on, in order to: (1) Customize your solutions for them; and (2) Integrate more value added propositions into your solutions for their maximum benefit?

Sixth, what kind of competition will you be going against when promoting your solutions?

Seventh, what sort of pricing structure and monthly continuity system can you integrate into your solutions, in order to make your solutions better and more enticing for your target B2B or B2C customers, in terms of the overall value that your target customers can get from your solutions by willingly exchanging their attention, time and money for the overall value of your custom solutions?

Eighth, based from your projections, what could you end up with, in terms of net profits per day or week or month or year?

Lastly, decide whether your plan at this point is something worth your while, in terms of RoI (Return of Investment), or if it'd be better for you to target other problems/needs of other B2B or B2C markets under other industries.

*** Keep in mind that you can hire or partner up with others who have significant real world expertise, substantial authority knowledge and relevant resources in various industries and subject areas, specifically potentially profitable subject areas and industries where specific B2B or B2C markets have particular real world problems and needs that can be resolved or satisfied by the custom products you can create and promote with the combined resources of your employees, associates or partners.

The amount of money a newbie can make varies depending on who they are. Are you able to follow simple directions easily? Do you take action and follow through on a specific task? Are you persistent and never give up?

The amount of money you can make online is directly correlated to how badly you want to succeed.

Don't believe all the hype. Do lots of research and don't expect to make thousands of dollars right away. Find something that works and stick with it.

The first $100 dollars is the hardest to get. Once you start making money it becomes easier because you know whats possible.

A realistic goal is 1 buck. You heard me right. Why not work on making a buck a day.
Set a goal and reach it, then set the next and the next and the next while having your longterm goal handy to look at also.

Marketers tend to want to make alot of money very fast while missing some very important steps.
Look at it this way, if you set a goal to make 1 dollar a day for a week then 2 then 3 you would make 52 dollars a day in a year.
I am sure if you do it right the numbers will be higher and the goals higher as you move along but why not at first just do 1 buck. Who knows you may hit five bucks the first time and 15 the second and so on.

A realistic goal is a goal which you truly believe you can achieve. It may be high to others, or low to others. As long as you know you can achieve it, it's realistic.

If you think you will make $1 million by the end of this year, and are willing to educate yourself by any means possible, and work harder than anybody on the planet, why not?

Even $10 million is possible. But you just got to want it THAT BAD. Then from then on, believe in yourself and be willing to put in sick amounts of hard work and research.

Let's hope that you've already developed the judgement to stay well away from anything that makes an income-claim, anyway: that's one of the hugely important aspects which determine whether the overall odds are stacked in your favor or against you.

I remember wondering the same thing. Everything's complicated and non-linear, this is the problem - and for an apparently simple question, it's really hard to answer. I offer two observations ...

(i) Most people starting out with anything new overestimate what they can achieve quickly, but they also significantly underestimate what they can achieve slowly;

(ii) If you can earn an average of $25 per day profit (not income) over a whole month, then as long as you're not doing that as a service provider in a time-consuming way, there's probably no reason in principle why you shouldn't eventually be able to make a full-time living (Western income-level, I mean) from it. So I think $25 profit per day averaged out over a month might be quite a realistic answer to your question.

Good luck!

Wow some good and some bad responses in here.

First thing you need to understnad is that your goal has to be tied to the amount of time you put in. You need to pay for your time. Here is what I mean. I dont know what you normally do for a living but I will use myself as an example. Before I went to school and learned programming I was a carpenter, as a union carpenter I could make around $25 per hour. So that means for online work I need to make at least $25 for every hour I devote into working. If not Im loosing money by underselling my time. So for example if I spend 50 hours working online I need to earn at least $25X50=$1250 per week or else Im loosing money. That should be your first goal, to pay yourself a wage for your time.

Second goal is to pay yourself a 'good' wage for your time, that is to make more than you could doing your other vocation. For example now that I have been doing this for a while (just over 5 years) Im not happy with $25 per hour, heck I could go back to the union and earn that and get free health insurance and a 401k so now I need to make closer to $50 per hour of my time. Generally I do better than that. So my next goal is to add people to my team so that I can then reduce the number of hours I need to work, thus increasing my effective hourly rate (this might not be relevant for you depending on what method your using to make money)

So to sum up:

1st: set your goal to earn an amount that you could have made if you devoted the same amount of time to a job in your skill set.

2nd: once you are doing that consistently set your goal to an amount that is around double what you could earn if you spent the same amount of time in a job in your skill set.

3rd: if applicable to you, work on adding paid workers to do the work for you so you dont have to do as much of the work yourself.

A 'realistic' goal is '0.' Nobody said realism was very inspirational

The world is yours! Set your goal to 5K/month in the next 6 months. It might be ambitious, but if you work hard and you're dedicated, it's really possible.

I teach my students to make their goal more specific. Why do you want to earn 5K/month for example? Because you want to quit your job and you want to spend more time with your family? Then your goal should be:

"I want to earn $5,000 a month so I can quit my job and spend more time with my family."

Good question... Rather think small initially than be thinking '$5,000 in next 2 months' like you see so many WSO's promising. I'm sure a lot of people come here, see those WSO's, think that type of money will be coming in within the next few weeks then get disappointed and leave when they get no where near that.

It is realistic, but you have to have a realistic game plan. If this is your first foray into IM then it is probably not going to happen, not that quickly anyway. On the other hand, if you have a solid blueprint to follow and somebody guiding you along the way then it can become more than a possibility.

Well, I think you should have a short term and long term goal. For example, $10,000 per month would be your long term goal. You might want to reach that kind of earnings in, let's say, one year. If that's the case, your short term goals would be $100 per month in about a month or two, and then $1000 per month in 3-4 months, and then $5000 per month in 6 months and so on.

Once you reach your $10,000 per month goal, you'll set more goals, again, long term and short term goals.

That's how I do it. There is nothing wrong with setting bih goals, but if you have smaller goals building up to your big goal, you'll find that the journey is easier.

Good luck.

For someone starting out it might better be to target your online asset growth rather than income. For example:
- Make 100 blog posts in one month.
- Write 100 articles and submit to directories in one month
- Get 100 subscribers in one month
- Etc

Just think about building your pillars first.

To be honest if you really want to make money, you have to work for it. You will fin many guys telling you the same story "I made 10k in 30 days"
It takes time to build an audience and business.
I bought many product buy non of them were actually realistic. Few weeks ago i joined a club of people which was the best invest of life. Some people making $25,$100 and even $1000 a day.
But it takes sometime to learn all that stuff or you can go fast and invest money hiring some one to do it for you.

I make more money off-line, but i started see good earning from an online network. What i mean is nobody will sell you an $10 dollars ebook to teach you how to make $1000 a week.

Start with $1 and build your way up from there

Don't expect to become rich but once you have made your first dollar online rinse and repeat to make $2 etc

This is the best practice to use stay focused test your methods and don't give up!

I looked into finding a good mentor and following what they said was the best bet for me. Stopped the information overload.

All this get rich in a day method is targetted to people who are lazy and dont know what they want. You mist have a plan, a solid business plan that is. Make sure you do your research well about the product you are selling, select the target market and be passionate about what you are doing. If you are not good at selling, seo etc. get expert advice.

And best of luck. There is no easy money. If you were not born rich then you have to work hard.

"Figure out what the hell you are doing."

That is your first and foremost goal.

Worry about the money once you have some clue what you are doing and why you are doing it.