Does Anyone Make Good Money NOT Selling Products on How To Make Money?

it seems to me that the people doing the best seem to be the ones selling products and services on 'How to make money online' or 'Internet Marketing Tips'

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That's because the Warrior forum is about making money - not health, not music, not gardening, etc. Yes, there are lots of people making money outside the IM market - I'm one of them. I sell nothing in the make-money arena.

It is a HUGE market and that is why so many sell in the make money online niche. The WSO section is almost all this. Almost all of the 'gurus' make their millions doing this and most of the time they are just preying on newbies looking for that 'dream'. Their sales videos are convincing to the untrained and thus they make sale after sale.


I make a good living online WITHOUT selling products on how to make money online.

A service is a good way... it is related to making money online but you are not selling people methods or ideas on how to make money online in most cases but providing them the things they need to make money online.

Yes.

Most people that I know make their money via affiliate marketing and ads. The best affiliates tend to be Amazon, Ebay, CJ, and perhaps Linkshare. You find a niche by doing keyword research and testing, build a site or page, write about your niche (which includes product links, etc sprinkled carefully throughout), and try to bring in visitors. That's it.

Others build a site about a topic or with some cool features, then they slowly build up the number of visitors. Thus they get money from advertising.

I do know of some IM's that tout certain techniques for attracting visitors and building niches. Those are the ones that I would tend to follow personally.

Yes there are people who make quite good money promoting goods/services in different niches.

I know several of them; their current income and how long it took them to get to that point.

Your general comment though is exactly the one that caused me to look long and hard at taking on this business.

There is a lot of junk around. It sells (at least once.) There is an endless market of people who want to believe they can put in 4 hours or 40 and never "work" again.

The people I know who are successful have worked steadily and persistently and have built sustaining businesses, none of which are part of the "how to make money" niche or the other niches you mentioned.

The biggest challenge I've found was sorting out who to trust.

I found it helpful to take my time, to read posts and see over time which members are consistently reasonable, logical and honestly sensible in their comments and advice.

While I do agree the majority of marketing "stuff" streaming through the air is how to make money, it does not mean at all that that is the only way or even necessarily the best way to generate a good income.

There will be a bias in any forum talking about IM toward "talking-up" the money to be made by buying the latest make-money-this-way method.

If my niche is cucumber-slicers I could be making lots of money (well...probably not that niche :p) but I am not going to be telling people how much money I make in any specific niche other than the make money niche which is more product promotion than sharing "helpful" information.

Watson

I flip websites, sell domains, set up Google News sites. Since I do actually flip sites and work with Google news sites, I also have ebooks on those topics.

I was wondering that too! I have a physical product that I make and was looking for a proper way to market it off of third party sites (like eBay) and it seems I keep coming across affiliate marketing or blog focused marketing. That doesn't work well with what I do since it's my own direct product and there's nothing really to blog about on a regular basis. I've found a few things about how to get links and promotion, but as I said a good portion of it is about affiliates/clickbank type stuff.

Also, the title of the post is what caught my attention. I always told my family that the quickest way to make money is to tell others how to make money. It still holds true.

People are really desperate now because of the state of the economy which is why all of this crap is emerging promising people that they can make “tens of thousands of dollars” within the next 15-20 minutes doing practically “nothing.” I prefer to stay away from promoting crap like this, and focus on marketing things that help people who are currently running their own online businesses or would like to be. I make good money in the dating niche as well as other niches in addition to what I do actually offer in the home business/self employment niche if there is such a thing in the technical sense.

It’s hell being an employee these days as the ball rest entirely in the employer’s court. Employers are constantly exploiting their employees threatening to replace them with a person and/or machine who will do their job “better, faster, cheaper and with fewer benefits.” That said , these people come online looking to reclaim their independence and in turn end up being exploited by sleazy, underhanded people passing themselves off as marketers who give those of us who run ethical, legitimate businesses a bad name.

I personally resent make money products. No offense to anyone. I am actually tempted to create one..

I am tempted to create one because I LOVE marketing and sometimes want to teach it. But I am QUITE POSITIVE that many people, including MOST of the gurus, make BY FAR most of their money in this incestuous niche.

Yes, there's an enormous number of us, both "out there" and "in here".

In forums like this one, you'll see the "IM-advice" and "make money online" niches disproportionately discussed for the simple reason that they are, collectively and for obvious reasons, the kind of markets which people who are members here typically don't keep quiet about, regarding their own involvement in them and income derived from them.

In all the "non-IM/MMO niches", most people don't disclose their niches, so there's a lot less discussion.

Appearances can be deceptive, in other words.

It depends what you mean by "saturated".

The "avoid recurrences of inflammatory temporomandibulitis" niche is not saturated because it's in a healthcare market and "health products are saturated". This thinking confuses niches with markets.

Thousands.

Really thousands: I'm not meaning "hundreds" and exaggerating.

Just because "IM-advice" and "MMO" are the markets you hear about all the time, don't make the mistake of imagining that those are the markets in which most of us are involved. It doesn't work that way at all.

I collect old issues of "Popular Science" from 1930s through the 60s. The back ad section of these always has at least 25 "Moneymaking Opportunities", mostly asking to send some money for a book of ...... moneymaking opportunities. I bet if we went back to the stone age, there would be some guy selling some method for hunting meat without having to go out and hunt. He probably ended up being well fed!

Personally I stay away from anything I wouldn't use myself or sell to a friend, plain and simple.

I haven't really made any money from "make money" stuff. I just listed my first WSO in about 5 years (for my wife)...but other than that, I don't really do anything in that niche.

I've sold 7-figures worth of NON "make money" products and have been fully employed by my online efforts for years now with a good income.

You get that vibe HERE, because...this is a forum about making money.

If you can sell to this crowd, there is immense opportunity (I should probably make an effort). But if not, it's quite honestly easier to be in so many other markets.

I market a few different products which happen to convert well, none of which are about making money.
( I won't be specific about it right now because I don't want to create competition )

the 'money making' products all *appear* to be scammy not to say that they are. that's just the vibe they give off.

Why? It doesn't surprise me that much, really.

"Internet marketing" has a relatively low barrier of entry and usually requires no formal qualifications from accredited institutions and/or awarding bodies, of those who would like to engage in it.

It doesn't surprise me that one of the more popular mediums through which to seek out and undergo one's education on the subject is the internet itself. Where there are huge quantities of people scouring the 'net for IM-related information, learning materials and tools, there is inevitably going to be a copious, ongoing supply of products/services to meet that demand.

An internet marketing forum like this is a prime place through which these products/services can be marketed, and that is why high proportion of the topics discussed, products offered and advice given is specific to this subject-area.

You are right, however: a lot of people do make their money not so much by "doing" as they do by teaching. But the same could be said of a lot of people in other industries, too.

The main concern for me isn't so much in an individual's choice to teach instead of do, but in the question of "do they actually know enough about what they're teaching/selling to be in a position to effectively educate others on the subject, and do them a service as opposed to a disservice?"

That, admittedly, is sometimes an issue.

Yes. I've never made any money in the "make money online" niche, and have no plans to do so in the foreseeable future. Many of the people who I know, and whose advice I respect the most, are also not (or at least rarely) involved in the "make money online"/"internet marketing" niches.

Competitive - yes; saturated - not by any means, in my opinion.

Probably not niches/markets that newbies would be well advised to enter, however.

If you want to see internet marketers selling "real products to real people", then surf the web as you would a general consumer - not as someone on an IM forum who is looking to learn about IM, and who - for all these reasons - is inevitably going to encounter a bucket-load of people selling/discussing stuff related to just that.

The vast majority of people who purchase products online do not purchase MMO products or services and they never will.

The truth is, Make Money Online is actually fairly small and nowhere near the most profitable online money making niche.

You have a skewed impression of online marketing because you spend too much time reading marketing forums and blogs.

Once you step away from internet marketing forums and blogs where the owners and community make a living selling Make Money Online products and services you'll realize that the MMO niche isn't anywhere near king of the online sales mountain.

However, this whole thread is a sham since the OP only started it to drop a couple of sig links.

I like setting up mini niche sites. I let them run for a while, add content and manage them as necessary, then sell as AdSense sites or hold onto them for my own residuals.

Yes, I make most of my money doing online services for local businesses, such as web design, SEO, content publication, mobile sites, etc.

Thanks for all the replies.

I suspected as much, but great to have it confirmed that good money can be earned in more ethical markets. (Not that I'm accusing anyone here of being unethical)

I have been to seminars and bought many MMO courses and all they seem to promote is making money online doing the same thing as they are.

Time to get my thinking hat on!

hi Moreno here ,I guess one of the the answer could be that even peoples who are not tech savy bur have some how a website selling off-line products they need some knowledge to rank in google otherwise you are nobody , nowhere. I personally had a site selling olive wood products ( phisical items!) and to reach # 1 in google i had at certain point to learn how to, that's probably when i come in contact with all the " make money" stuff. For sure today many peoples are earing story of become rich via IM in a short period , and as everybody already said, that's where most of the "gurus" get them fish. Illusion of become rich quick by finding "the secret code ""the six click away from your dream life" and so on is hitting hard ,leaving people more frustrated then with the usual 9to 5 job , and with much less money in the pocket. As somebody said is not gonna end soon as long as the will be peoples believing this crap the will be someone to feed them. To answer to your question : yes you can make a lot of money outsite IM market "make money" by selling service to help peoples solving them problem , try self -confidence, interior design,or go see yahoo answer to have a pick about peoples problems. Again if you own a blog or if you are into social ,like FB, ther's a lot to sell into this kind of market , software etc.

There are just too many niches other than
products on how to made money,
so it really depends on what you are
passion about and focus on it,
i can assure you will made good money
promoting what you are good at.

I have several friends into other
niches, they are doing very well.

So stick on to your heart.

Interesting post,

I think to some extent you may be right that the marketing online world is not quite as limitless as we like to think sometimes. Some will tell you you can set up a site on second hand knitted tea cosies (Im from England:]) and if you have it on page one of google you will make money. I can tell you this isn't true. I make the majority of my money from the IM niche but you are best to stick to the markets that are already proven. As for saturation i think its a load of crap, if there are new customers entering the niche everyday then there are constant new opportunities for marketers including yourself to get into these time-tested proven markets.

Daniel Murray

I never really made any money in the IM niche, buit I did make some in traditional products and services.

Sure - thousands of people do and I'm also one of them. But my opinion of the term "Internet Marketing" might be a little different. I consider IM a "process" - not an "industry" in and of itself. Why?

Because if you have a business on the Internet, you must market it in order to be successful. So you are in fact marketing on the Internet, i.e., you have to literally DO Internet Marketing in order to get your business found online. Make sense?

So while a lot of the "IM gurus" have sites that are about "how to make money online," we out here that don't have sites that have to do with how to make money online still have to do "Internet Marketing" in order to be successful.

Want to see A LOT of other websites in thousands of industries besides how to make money online that are top of the line successful sites in service industries, product industries, inforpreneur industries, etc., then click here and browse around.

I just added a new post about what I think "IM" is about. :-)
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...e-term-im.html

Oh god, I'd go broke if all I did was market to the IM crowd! One of my biggest core biz's is offline marketing for an online world. It has nothing to do with Internet Marketing Make Money products, but more along the lines of opening up offline advertisers to areas online they may have never thought of before.

Virtual real estate is a great business to be in.

As their former ghostwriter, I can tell you that the make money products are icing on the already sweet cake for the gurus I worked for (John Reese, Ewen Chia, Travis Sago, Rich Schefren, etc...)

They worked in all sorts of niche. Travis is even open about his dating niche. Others made bank in baby naming (one guru ordered 12, 50-page ebooks from me on that topic alone!), wedding planning, credit repair, etc.

BUT...hell, once you know how to do it, why NOT share the workings and make MORE money? Never known a person yet to say they had too much...

A lot of people on these type of sites will be looking to sell that type of product. If you were to go on a bodybuilding forum, you'd most likely see people who are successful in marketing that sort of product online. That's just the way it is.

I think this is a pretty good FREE outline:

1. Choose A Market & Niche (Something Your Knowledgeable In And Feel Comfortable Teaching Other People About)

2. Build a Blog (Not Going To Teach You How... Google/Youtube It.)

3. Create a Lead Generation Product (Something You Give Away For Free In Exchange For An Email Address - A Free Video or Written Report)

4. Write A Ton Of High Quality Blog Posts

5. Build Your Email List On Your Blog (Not Teaching You How... Google/Youtube How to Use Aweber/Constant Contact/etc)

6. Get Traffic To Your Blog
- Youtube
- Articles
- Being a valuable forum member
- Blog Commenting
- Guest Blog Posts
- Interviews
- Podcasts
- Yahoo Answers

7. As your email list grows occasionally send them promotional emails

8. Find hole in your market and fill it... (create a product)

9. Write Sales Copy For Your Product

10. Get Traffic To Your Sales Letter
- All Of The Above Steps
- Paid Traffic
- Affiliates

I am actually in a few different niche. Fitness, Home Improvement, and Debt Reduction/Management are my bigger online ventures. Offline I am in the Finance and Business Startup area. I avoided the IM niche like the plague. Plenty of money to be made there, just not my area of interest. Virtually any niche can make you a good income. IM niche is one of the current largest, and saturated around. I'm glad I'm not in it.

define "good money". Yes, selling as an IMer to other IMers can be very tough.

As a rule, any niche which provides a SOLUTION to a hungry audience is good, health is very good...so is solutions for PC problems. I am making some bucks in those niches.

I personally make a living from Adsense alone, so yes.

Hi Steven,

I have several autoblog sites and a coupe of affiliate sites not related to the Make Money Online Niche. Although I am making some money from them, selling products makes much more. My product(s) are in the make money niche, but you can have a product in any niche.

Here is the thing with saturated niches like dating and health: if there is a lot of competition, that is a GOOD thing. This means there are many, many buyers paying for this info. Do not discount them if you want to make some good money. Evergreen niches like those are golden!

John

Of course we do!

Think of it this way: in IM some of the new products are likely to have a very limited shelf-life - 6-months to a year, 2 years max. But in very many of the non-IM niches many to most of the products are very likely to sell for decades to come.

It's not as clear cut and well defined, though, as it might appear. Everybody needs the basics regardless of niche; and everybody needs to adapt to changes in technology as it comes online.

And most importantly the same business and economic principles apply to both IM and non-IM marketers on the one hand and traditional brick-and-mortar start-ups: many of them simply aren't going to survive, and a relative handful are going to be wildly successful.

Start-ups online are ridiculously affordable - and even if you fail miserably you can still salvage much of your financial investment by selling the business, website and domain name. You won't get your investment in time back, but you should have learned enough from it to do it significantly better the next time. And that, I think, is crucial - learning from your mistakes and trying again.

This is a good example on how someone can come to faulty conclusion based on simple, but incomplete observation. You have to remember, that the Make-Money-Online market, while lucrative and growing, is just a tiny drop in the over all ecommerce world bucket. It's a microcosm on what's out there.

According to a wide variety of sources ranging from Entrepreneur Magazine, Jupiter Research, eMarketer, etc. there are far more people making money online selling products and services that have nothing to do with the MMO market.

Markets that deal with health, fitness, dating, weight loss, etc. are not saturated. People tend to mistake high competition with saturation, but there are millionaires created every single day in these "saturated" niches. Why? Because they know how to market. They know how to bring a solution to a specific problem and know how to convert using the appropriate distribution channels. Look at Eben Pagan, aka David DeAngelo, the guy started in the dating niche from his 2 bedroom apartment and today he's a multi-millionaire because he built a business on solid fundamentals.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Warrior Forum is an even smaller drop in the bucket, so what you see here is not necessarily representative of anything.

So to answer your inquiry, yes, there are plenty of people who make money online that have nothing to do with showing others how to do it. For every famous or well-known marketer you read about, there are literally thousands of others that you will never read or hear about simply because they do not market to opportunity seekers.

If you pick up a subscription to Entrepreneur Magazine for just a year (it's cheap and worth every penny) you'll read about plenty of entreprenuers who make a living online; many of whom have a hybrid business model where they earn sales from their website as well as a store front of some kind. Many of them started the business right out of their home.

I haven't had a job since 2001 and I've done it by providing products and services to a wide variety markets, then taking my profits and investing them. The first year online is always the toughest because you have to invest in learning marketing fundamentals and then applying them in the real world. But many newcomers tend to jump from one thing to the next, have no real plan, and neglect to do the basics such as test, track, and tweak their results. People tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in a year and underestimate what they can accomplish in 5 years.

I'm not talking about learning a money-making system such as setting up a bunch of autoblogs or using advertising / cpa arbitrage and making money of the margins, I'm talking about building a real business on solid fundamentals - a business that can be around for decades to come or one that can be sold or donated to charity. With all the automation that is out there, it is very possible to do this, but you have to set it up correctly.

There are dozens of ways to make money online and it all starts with the proper mindset because that is what will keep you focused on what needs to be done to start building a viable business.

RoD

I have a store with 500 products. Only a small percentage of sales are from how to make money online products. The majority are products that teach services like Fiveer, WordPress, ect. Another good portion is templates and scripts - all things build online businesses.

There are a lot of people that make great money selling physical products, offering services not related to IM, and participating in plenty of other income generating activities.

Yes.
In fact selling products on Amazon by particular make and model can be very lucrative.

of course there are other markets that make good money. For instance, I sell a product that helps married couples have better sex and it sells like crazy.

A lot of people never bother to think outside the box. It's crazy how much money you can make as a marketer outside the Make Money niche. I know a lot of people who have marketing business on the internet outside of the Make Money niche that are making anywhere from $500,000 to $2,000,000 a year by themselves.

Yes I have been building up a very successful drop-shipping company based on the help from forums like this.

I just wrote a post about how, in one of my niches, I make average of $400 per day and it's not the IM niche.

Before I share that, here is my contribution to your post:

You metioned "saturation"

In fact, these "saturated" niches are wide open!

Here is an example: I just helped my buddy create a website in the weight loss niche which is one of the most "saturated" niches there is...

He has a USP ( unique selling point )

He teaches people how to exercise while doing every day task, such as driving or while at your desk working, etc.

I've NEVER heard of this until we talked about it.

ALL YOU NEED IS A NEW ANGLE THAT YOUR AUDIENCE DESIRES

As you can see, his USP really says "Hey, you can lose weight while doing what you are already doing!"

That's pretty tasty, isn't it?

ok, here is the link I promised: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...400-today.html

I do very well for myself, thanks, and I sell absolutely nothing that involves 'How to make money online', nor will I ever. Best of luck to those that do make their money that way, but I want nothing to do with it. To me, they just smack of get-rich-quick schemes.

Because i gues money and health you can push people's emotional buttons. It's a lot harder with real products. What you see is what you get...with info..that's rarely the case.

yeah that's so true..I mean i know no-one in my family/friends...other people who are in that niche at all. In fact not oen of them sells one thing on the Net yet we think everyone does. We start thinking it's the only way to sell.

After reading your question I thought you might enjoy this video about SEO services--there is so much opportunity here, I think many people overlook it to go for the juicy WSO out there, or the next best product getting hype being launched.

Check this out--ever internet marketer should know these statistics and this video will give you goosebumps

(Remove spaces)
http: // ww w. you tube. co m/watch? v=n6G-G 330YFg

This is what turns a lot of IM away from affiliate marketing, as it brings it very close to the "how to get rich quick" crowd, since a lot of people are looking for these type of info, people just jump on the bandwagon and rehash what they have heard elsewhere

Nothing is saturated! Make sure you are looking the correct direction and you can see the future. (keyword research)

Steven,

I have a site that is a "Quasi-Make Money Online" in that it is a membership site that helps affiliate marketers by selling research, which in and of itself is not a "make money online" site. I also am building a coupon site for my wife, and have several others that sell general software items, courses, etc. So, again the short answer to your question is "Of Course!" As others have pointed out here, however, this forum is essentially how to make money from your marketing efforts, so it is bound to be biased to that end.

What you have to do is dig a little deeper - there are literally people here who sell just about anything that can be sold, who provide every possible kind of service, and who teach, write, perform, talk, video, audio, do seminars, on and on and on!

Good Luck!

-DTM

Just selling physical products online alone is huge!

Other than some offline marketing, the only thing I will touch is selling physical products online. All of the trends and latest news point to the relentless growth of online purchasing of consumer goods...and we're talking everything - from shoelaces to dining room sets.

That alone solidified my confidence in selling physical products and it has done very well for me....and lots of others on here!

My product has nothing to do with the IM niche and it's netted me better than $200 just 4 days after its release.