What You Need to Know About Making Money Online

It's probably one of the most popular search terms in the world: “how to make money online”. But it can also be one of the most difficult things to accomplish. There are thousands of work from home jobs, as well as literally thousands of ways to make money online – but it can be really tricky to sort through the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, to find the right opportunities for you. Here's what you need to know about how to make money online.

·         If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Thousands of positions advertise astonishing salaries, job perks and much, much more, but it is very rare for any of these perks to actually occur. Use a little bit of savvy when searching for positions and in general, always follow the rule that if it seems to good to ever be true (especially if the position mentions that you might think it is too good to be true), it likely is.

·         Competition is fierce. The work from home industry is huge and worth millions and millions of dollars a year and because there is the potential to earn so much money – if you know where to look – competition is particularly fierce. If you're looking for jobs online, or through freelancing sites, competitors in other countries that have a lower cost of living could easily undercut you and this does tend to mean that you really have to prove yourself in the market. If you have the skills, you can expect to claim a higher price in the market – but if you're new and still trying to prove yourself, you might well find it difficult to compete and so it's important that you spend a little bit of time on developing your skills before you get started.

·         You need to put in a lot of work. There isn't one magic system that can help you make thousands of dollars a week by clicking a few buttons. No system is truly automated and you will always have to work. Although adverts might tell you that all you need to do is “click this button” to receive thousands of dollars a week from Google, it is simply a way to get you to click on their ad and buy their product. If you want to make serious money, you have to put in serious work – but the bonus is that you can do it from home.

·         You can make more money than you would in a “real” job. Some people have a bit of a misconception and believe that working from home isn't a “proper” job and that you can't make “proper” money. Wrong. The only difference is that how much money you make is dictated by what you do. You can't coast and play games on your phone all day. Although this can be scary, it can also be a particularly powerful motivator.

·         This isn't a 9 to 5 job. Although you can work from 9 to 5 with an hour for lunch and a break mid-afternoon, you'll find that your earnings increase massively if you'd be willing to put in a little bit of work in the evenings and at the weekends. Also, you'll probably end up working with people who live in completely different time zones – and this means that you might have to stay up late or get up early in the morning for a Skype chat or to answer an email. But the flip side to this is that although you might be working, you still get to be at home with your family – and that's why so many people want to work from home.

·         You can always go back to working in the “real world”. There is a bit of a misconception that if you leave the world of work and set up your own business or work from home that you can never go back. But you absolutely can. As long as you don't leave your job and sit at home for six months before you do anything, working from home demonstrates that you have a lot of business savvy and the potential to be something amazing.