what's your true story? How did you make your first dollar online?

I started off with content gateways :3

I'm still taking my baby steps in internet marketing but I made my first dollar the same day I got my first adsense click. I'm 18, finished my first year of uni, and started because I wanted to change my hobby of video games to a more profitable activity.

I spent the end of April learning all about internet marketing, SEO, and all that, so on May 1, 2011 I decided that it would be time to finally take action. My plan was to work on internet marketing as best I could after my 9-5 job, but of course life gets in the way of that. Otherwise, everytime I was home I would open my laptop up and get to work/ browse this forum.

Found a niche I thought was truly amazing since it had VERY low competition on first page and had 3000+ local searches a month. Soon found out about the "exact" option on Google Keyword Tool. Turns out it only gets 590 exact searches/month. I still stuck with it because it was my first site and I figured that since the competition was so easy that I'd be able to make my first attempt at getting to rank #1 on Google, especially since I got the exact match domain.

I created four other related keyword pages and started my backlinking campaign to get them all ranked. Since I didn't have any software at the time, I went with just blog commenting using a free list of do-follow blogs listed on this forum. I found myself going up in the SERPs for 4/5 keywords as well as getting some consistent traffic.

Near the end of May I got my first click and to my surprise it was for $0.97. That was a day of triumph. I was going at a much faster pace than I initially anticipated. I didn't even expect to reach my first click until the second or third month from all of the "Making 0 Dollars!!!- Quitting IM" threads. June was an even better month, but July I took a "huge" hit from what I was making in June. But now in August, I get a steady 1-3 clicks/day and seeing some actual progress. (although my CPC is went down from the initial ~$1/click)

By the way, I'm still not even ranked #1 for that site I was talking about. I recently was bumped up to #3 which was also exciting. Most traffic comes from long tail keywords. Also I made four more micro niche sites and hopefully in four months they'll grow to become an equal or better site than my first one.

Basically that's my ENTIRE internet marketing story!

-Mark

ohhh I remember my first buck like it was yesterday. I was so exited. Actually it was $247 from promoting CPA on Craigslist when it was still allowed on most networks. I have come a long way since those good old days.

lol I posted the same type of thread as this a couple days ago. If anyone wants to read mine they can just search it. But love hearing success stories.

I made my first bucks online at the end of 2006. To be frank, I was just bored the hell out of my new internet connection. I kept chatting and orkutting (orkut was brand new and quite popular especially in India in those days) and got bored due to the wastage of time. I had also left my job for a few months as my finals were coming near and so I did not have much to do. Then I saw about ethical hacking and a few websites where you could practice it. It was interesting as it was mainly hacking games and there I first learned about HTML etc. Then I realized that it might be more interesting if I used those html and coding for building websites as that would be constructive work. So, I built my first webhost on a free host and a couple of more free ones. Those were plan html pages websites and were on crappy subdomains which I took like nearly a week to build. I also got my adsense approved from that site. Then I expanded and gradually bought paid hosting, domains and have never looked back. Experience has made me successful and there is no shortcut to experience in the field of websites.

Mine started on eBay.

I bought a $37 book, HOW TO MAKE MONEY ON EBAY! Was about '96 I think. Anyways, of course the book told you how to set up an account, sell your existing junk, put some money in your pocket, etc. Then it went on to talk about wholesaling and how to buy stuff cheap and sell it for more...you know, how a REAL store does! Well, that is where I wanted to make my dough...

Instead of trial and error and wasting a ton of money, I just contacted the dude who wrote the ebook...I told him how much I liked his info, and that I wanted into the action where HE was (based on what he said, he was already making a killing in the wholesale game and he was a POWERSELLER and I verified his auctions via ebay...he was selling A LOT!) Anyways, by taking this action, turns out my timing was spot on. As it so happened, this guy had locked into a HUGE stash of ab rollers-he said they were $8 each if we bought a few hundred, but he was sure he could sell them for upwards of $45. His problem was...he had no storage space and this company wouldn't drop ship...ENTER: My garage.

At the time, I was in my early 20's, and still living with mom and dad. Without checking with them, I told the guy "Tell you what...you ship them here, you sell them, and I will receive the money and ship them out." I SWEAR ON MY LIFE...the guy sent me 300 ab rollers...he didn't know me from Adam, nor did I pay a dime. The deal was struck over the phone and through email...he trusted me thankfully and we were in business.

Well, when my dad went into the garage after work and saw those palettes of ab rollers he said "Linda, I think Mac robbed a truck full of exercise equipment!!!" He was concerned, to say the least. He did not for one second believe I struck the deal I did, but as the checks started showing up in the mailbox (not a one was done by Paypal although it was around, checks still ruled the day on ebay) he changed his mind. Anyways, I made a little over $5000 on that deal and I realized the power of the internet. Since that time, I have been making money via the internet in one way or the other...thankfully, my income has steadily gone up and I haven't had a boss for quite some time.

The deals and opportunities are out there...don't be afraid to ask for what you want, and it is often up to YOU to make it happen. If you really want success via the internet, it is absolutely possible!!!

Mac the Knife

My first check arrived in 2010 when i decided to begin blogging. It was AdSense and since then i've also received payments from Chitika, Infolinks, etc. However, never been able to make money from ClickBank or affiliate marketing schemes

Last November and December 2010 I started selling ereaders on line. Using Google adwords I advertised and sold 22,000 in Color Nooks from Barnes and Noble. My commission was 6% and advertising cost 7% so I did not make any money in the end but the things I learned and excitement along the way was worth the 1% expense. Since then I have focused on SEO and other means of free advertising with my other websites. It's been a slow process but I am selling.


Rod

I started off with a pre-built site, bad idea lol. I made no sales.

But back then It seemed smart. I soon started blogging and became good with WP.

I added some Ads and made a few dollars.

From there I decided that I knew enough to build my own site. I found some one to

help me out and everything just went from there.

I made my absolute first dollar on a PTC site called Neobux, a long time ago..

I started 15 years ago by offering a resume writing/editing service. It was what I knew. That's my first tip to those struggling to come up with something to make money online... start with what you know really well. I had been a recruiter and trainer for a large corporation. I'd probably seen over 1500 resumes and I was trained in what to look for and what to ignore. So I offered that kind of service through networking on AOL and on many BBS boards. You younger folks won't even know what a BBS is, but it was a great way to drum up business for a service back then. That's my second tip... go where the people who need your service or product hang out. Meet them where they already are. Don't expect them to come to you or you'll go hungry.

Now I'm in the IM niche. That's why I hang out here.

John

Services, services, services.

For me, it was writing content and copy for the web.

Still is actually...thought I'm selling more products now, mostly thanks to WF.
__________
Jeremy

I made my first dollar online 4 years ago when I first started doing video production, a few of my buddies had an office downtown & I went in one day to show them what I came up with for a video project I was doing & from right there they wanted me to do some work for them online. Now this wasn't my first online gig but I seen what they where doing & I wanted in so they showed me how to apply my skills online & turn it into a full time business. The first buck I made was right here in the warrior forum for a graphics service I posted, I made 175.00 off my first gig online & haven't turned back since. Now I have more than a few projects in the works on a daily basis & I plan on staying like that for a long while.

Mine was WAY different than most. Sold inservices to long-term care facilities in my state that help caregivers to be in compliance with state rules and regulations. Still do that, among other things. I advertise totally offline with postcards. They buy and download my inservices online.

That site of mine is proof that you can make money in a niche that has absolutely abysmal search engine results, virtually no online competition but no demand, either. Something that no one actually wants to buy and only very few do. But it's made me several thousand of those little green papers.

Ron

I made my first dollar as an affiliate for an online casino. Back when they paid out huge upfront cpa's just for a new customer. I made this website that would match there deposit which was less than my commission and it made it risk free for them to gamble. It didnt last long though because they changed there payment structure into a % of what your referred customer lost gamblng...

Ive been through many products on my journey to making money online. Now I create websites about things that I am passionate about and those seem to convert better and maintain better rankings in the engine. No homeruns yet but I wouldnt trade it for any of the jobs I've had. Creating sites and products around what you like makes it fun and thats when the magic happens. Keep trying and never give up!!

what's your true story? How did you make your first dollar online?

Online gambling 11 years ago. What a wild ride it was back then. Unfortunately you can't do it like that anymore.

Edit: I just saw the post above mine. Do you remember Casino On Net? How about fatbonus?

I made my first money online with my affiliate website.
The very first sale actually came from my mother-in-law who bought a few books from Amazon through an affiliate link on our website (before Amazon dropped California affiliates). That gave us a commission of about 36 cents ,only for Amazon to take it back a couple days later because they don't pay commission for purchases made by you or family members (she and hubby had the same last name and the same address, so they figured :confused. Lol!!
A few days after that we made another sale on CJ which gave us a commission of $1.28. I was so over the moon that we had our first "real" sale, meaning not from someone who's family or friends with us. Unfortunately the next day we realized it was my husband's uncle who had made that purchase - ugh!
Another bummer but at least we got to keep the commission, lol!!

Fortunately all our sales nowadays come from people we don't know and who don't know us
Our first sale from a non-family member was actually quite high for affiliate marketing - it was for a commission of $17.70 on Linkshare.

I wrote an ebook.

Only did "SEO"cause I thought paying for traffic was "stupid" : )

And a few months later had my first sale. It was an incredible feeling, as everyone says.

I think i have posted something in this debate but i cant see me post now :O

For me. I went to Hyip I've got profits. But when I stuck with it I've lost... A lot!

That's how I gain my 1st dollar.

Ps. I quit it a long time.

oh...that nice topic,

my 1st dollar was from adbrite but soon after that i have changed my ad service to google as they approves me and i am currently earnings 3 figures only from adsense

this is my story!

after promoting clickbank products till i was blue in the face, with no success, I made my first money with CPA and continue with it several years later, and make a lot of money. Its simple and its quick. Good Luck

wrote article for just 1$ per 500 words. And earned 200$+ in next 2 months

My first adventures into making money online came from selling concert tickets (i was evil back then) on ebay about 6 years ago, then i moved onto trading smartphones and accessories. I soon realised that although i did ok, it was harder and harder to find good suppliers, worrying about delivering physical goods, will they get there in one piece etc...

From the money i made on ebay i went on a backpacking trip for a few months, then came back to the real world got back into the daily routine but i always knew i was destined for something better, with more freedom.

So a month ago i started looking into the "digital products" instant download kind of products and now i'm trying to build a solid foundation for a long term business in the I-M niche. Going to be tough long road ahead, but i LOVE A CHALLENGE and the rewards at the end will be well worth it.

I think I made my first ever dollar online by writing for associated content. Too bad they suck now. I still get like $40-50/month from them on performance payments, though.

Well am quite new and am glad to have seen my first few dollars..

It was July 2011(YES THAT RECENT!) and i was fed up with the wheel screeching. I got on Fiverr.com, posted a gig and hoped for the best..

Well...about 3 weeks later some guy wanted my Gig, so i promptly did it for him(as you can imagine i was super excited) and he liked the work..and he ordered again..and again..and another guy and another guy..

i'll be honest with you folks, i Have not made more than $100 yet,but what I have done is break my mental disbelief that MMO is not for me..Sure Fiverr is a super slow way to go about it,but it is certainly a lot better than hoping and wishing that one day Manna will fall from the sky and help you get extra cash!

Thats me story..not glam..not life changing..but for me, something to be a bit happy about

I made my first dollar with my Internet Marketing blog through adsense =)

Great post with lots of insight.

My first dollar came from an affiliate website on World of Warcraft. I didn't have any marketing plan, SEO strategy, or even keyword research. I just built a website with lots of tips and guides and focused on delivering content and even though I was in a highly competitive market I got around $500 from that website, before I decided to redo it and start applying SEO - since then I closed the site because it stopped making me money (it can be because that market is dying).

Heh, I made and lost my first dollars at the same time.

When I first got interested in all things IM, I was that dilettante newbie who read everything and tried everything (but only for a couple of days). My first effort was a crappy little 5 page site for a clickbank product. Having read bum marketing, I wrote and submitted 3 or 4 articles to Ezinearticles. Once this was done, I lost interest and went on to other things, completely abandoning the site.

I spent a couple of years chasing the bright, shiny advertisements until I came full circle and developed a revived interest in affiliate sales. Reminiscing about that terrible first effort of mine, I decided to check to see if there were any products on CB I was interested in promoting. Logging in, I discovered that that original site, done in an hour and barely promoted had been actually made several sales (the commissions for which clickbank was happy to take from me for inactivity).

The day I saw that was the day I started getting more serious. I learned a ton of lessons from that first site.

I got VERY lucky. I made about 25k in a few months. The advatage is that I had the money and knew I could do it. The disadvatage is that I thought it was that easy. How did I do it? I found out where the sharks were biting and threw them the chum.

Note: Sometimes the hard part is finding the right chum.

I started 12 years ago. I loved the possibilities that I thought the world wide web offered. And at nearly 40 years of age I started over with a totally new profession. I wouldn't call it a career that would be far too grand a term for it!

I got my first order via my accountant (who promptly took 1/3 of the sale price). I had a friend who knew this new fangled html stuff (he took ages to build the site, and took a 1/3 cut of the sale)

The site was horrible so I had to learn html, then some javascript (JS shopping carts were all the rage at that time), then PHP & MySQl....

It took me two years of pretty much earning nothing then I got a lucky break and got a contract that paid me nicely for 10 days work per month.

I then started up a company with a friend where we grew sales online from 0 to about $25million per year. Then we sold it.

Happy days. I love the Internet - anyone can do it - everything I learned I learned for free from the many helpful resources on the web. It just takes a lot of graft and a pinch of luck.

I had an eBay store selling collector's vinyl and promo CDs, and it was probably '90s

The first money I earned online was a 0.03 adsense click waaaay back! It was months before I got another one ... this time for 0.01 !!!

I sold my first audio ebook at eBay.

Later, I wrote more ebooks and I continued selling them from my website.

I never had any success with affiliate products; only selling my own ebooks.

Hope I can make dollars tomorrow

The official first time I made money online was through eBay but to me that doesn't really count, as I never sold on eBay in the business sense, just to get rid of stuff.

When I was 14/15 I was having a big clear out of stuff, put all of it on eBay and got interested in selling on eBay, I joined a money making forum for eBay, I sourced some suppliers and planned to buy in the bulk and make a tidy profit on eBay BUT I needed a load of money to get started. There was a thread on the forum about ways to make money online quickly and easily, most suggested the same old stuff like selling unwanted items.

One person said to try this site called DigitalPoint because apparently you could get paid to write, when I first heard this, I didn't know about the many facets of internet marketing, so as soon as I heard that, I just though SCAM SCAM SCAM, you can't make money online like that.

Anyway I joined Digital Point and low and behold, I started making money online, in about two weeks I made about $200, I was absolutely buzzing and starting to believe you could make real money online. I was trundling along making money, at the time it was big money but looking back I was massively underselling my services because I didn't know their value.

Then I got into a pretty heated debate with another poster on Digital Point via the PM system, it went from vitriolic insults being slung to apologies then encouraging words of advice. The person who I had been arguing with recommended the Warrior Forum to me, I checked it out and was completely taken aback by it, I didn't have a clue what to do and quickly left.

Then my uncle who had been involved in affiliate marketing for a few years sent me a few ebooks and I slowly got more into internet marketing, moving away from providing services. This is when I made my come back to Warrior Forum, I looked at everything knowledgable eyes. Before I didn't understand that was being discussed, now I can easily sift through the BS and find the gold.

Anyway, at this point, I was offering my writing and keyword research services and making real money. I had a few very lucrative clients, one client stood out and was paying me $150 per article. Since then I've moved more and more away from the heavily time consuming jobs like writing and concentrated on more lucrative, less time consuming services like video creation and voice work whilst also building my own sites.

The FIRST dollar I ever made online was on ebay. I had school books to sell and ended up making a nice profit. That was a one-time thing though.

I've had some success with affiliate programs. But am not focused on creating my own products now.

I started a few years back with adsense/affiliate sites. I failed miserably and instead focused on my college work.

Exactly last sept I started back up again - but this time learned all about SEO. On November I made my first dollar selling my SEO services.


regZ

I've made my first bucks at 19 February this year. It comes from my first sales at Fiverr gigs that offering rewrite an article and just like you, it was the MOST exciting day for me

Till 30th May I've made 6 sales at Fiverr then I decided to move from Fiverr to Web Flipping at Flippa. I build brand new site then flip it for $56, not bad for newbie like me. Then I build another site and it sold for $197! How cool is that ? Till dates I've build 6 site and they are sold 100%.

For me,I upload products make dollars

I signed up to a CPA network and earn 500 dollar a month with ease. I used PPC to promote offers.

My first $9 was from business plan template I sold on eBay.

Article writing on freelance websites - just like quite a few people who've already posted. I was most successful with freelancer and vworker. It was difficult landing the first bid. Once I did and completed the project successfully with good reviews, it was easier from then on. I could pick and choose the better-paying projects.

I then went on to take IM coaching because I had tried so many things and really wasn't making any significant income. My coach is Chris Farrell (voted the best IM service company for 2010) and he's damn good. So that's how I finally moved away from article writing.

Wrote a 25 page report and sold it for $27 from my website.

I made my first twenty bucks with payperpost.com I made $500 my first month with them! Back then it was easy to get accepted by them and making money, lol!

Offering services on this forum. I made money within 24 hours. I was so happy