22 Myths about Making Money Online
There are many myths about Making Money Online. To start making money online, you need to bust all the myths about it first. Only then can you master the tricks of online earnings and earn a decent living.
To help you dispel all the myths about making money online, I have compiled a list of 21 myths about it. The myth list contains both partially true and fabricated stories about making money online.
Throughout this article, we will examine the merits and demerits of each myth. This will help you know the truth about all your assumptions and learn tricks of the trade. Making money online is like any other trade. You need to make use of all the skills you’ve already acquired over time. If you are a beginner, you should first learn the necessary skills. Only then should you jump into the race to make money online.
#1- Earning Money Online Isn’t hard. Everyone Can Do It
Making money online may not be hard but not as easy as many watchtime hungry YouTubers claim. If it is so easy, do you think they would waste their time giving you long lectures?
Making money online is a skill in its own right. It teaches you how and where to look for money-making opportunities online and how to exploit them. It also teaches how to make use of your already learned skills to make money online.
Online environments can be very challenging for many. To make money online, you may have to learn new skills alongside honing your existing ones. The more you learn, the more you will earn. Updating your skills requires constant effort. There is no easy money making online, so be prepared to work hard.
#2- Without Any Skills You Can Earn Money Online
Making money online without any skill is impossible. Even to play FlashCard Gambling requires you to learn how to handle the cards and what to bet on. So until you learn how to make money online, you won’t have significant earnings.
My brother once jumped into the online money making race ahead of time. He started trading virtual gold coins on a website without having learned how it works. After losing more than $10,000, he realized that only if he had learned before jumping into it, he would not have lost his precious money. He remains in debt to this day. Even if you don’t invest your money, still you will lose your precious time and efforts. So take your time and learn before jumping into the race of money making online.
Online money making is a huge field. Depending on your skill level, there are plenty of opportunities. But each opportunity requires a specific skill set. But each opportunity requires a specific skill set. Without the appropriate skills, one is almost destined to fail.
#3- Getting Rich Online Is Easy
It’s partially true. Online markets have a lot of earning opportunities. It all depends on how you take advantage of them. Exploring opportunities and exploiting them increases your chances of becoming rich.
Want to become rich? You need to explore more and more opportunities online and take advantage of them. Your limited skill set won’t let you take advantage of many opportunities. Learning new skills is crucial to maximizing your chances of earning. The only way to get rich online is to keep learning and earning more.
#4- To Make Money Online You Must Quit Your Offline Job First
Don’t even think of quitting your current job. Keep working online as a part-timer till you start earning regularly. When you start earning more than 50% of your monthly salary as a part-timer and earn it for consecutive six months, you may think about it.
Online income is not consistent. You can earn three thousand dollars in one month and not a single penny the next month. Wait till your online income becomes consistent. Even till it becomes sufficient enough to meet your domestic needs.
If you’ve already lost your job, then you don’t have any other choice. Just be aware that it will be a rough ride. Without setting aside some money to meet your daily needs, you won’t be able to concentrate on your online work. I have learned this the hard way.
#5- Develop a Website and Then Launch Your Product, You’re Done
It’s not that easy. In comparison to a single success story, there are hundreds of failures. It is easy for us to boast about our success but no one dares tell you about his or her failures.
Like any other business, a successful online business requires proper planning and feasibility. Identify all the possible online income sources. Prepare a feasibility before getting started. Online business needs time to mature even if it has been established after proper feasibility and planning.
Launching a website or a product doesn’t come cheap. Maybe it takes little money to setup but to keep them running until they start paying off requires money. Do your homework before embarking on an online project. Additionally, you should have alternative means of meeting your household needs.
#6- You Can Make Money Online by Copying and Pasting
Let me tell you, you won’t get free lunch anywhere, you must earn it. The same applies to the online market. Computers have taken over many manual jobs such as secretarial and clerical work.
According to a recent study by researchers at Oxford University about 35% of current jobs in the UK are at high risk of computerisation over the following 20 years. In today’s tech world you can’t make money online without skills. Yet, there are many selfish YouTube gurus that would tell you that you can make 100’s or even 1000’s of dollars daily by doing a copy and paste job.
The execution of a Digital Marketing project may involve a small portion of copying and pasting work. To earn long monetization hours, these gurus would tell you the half truth about such projects. They will mainly focus their lectures on that small portion of copying & pasting work. They won’t tell you the full process of the job which involves digital marketing skills. Same time, they will show you the earning of other freelancers whih they have earned after completion of digital marketing projects. These gurus would show those freelancers earnings as proof of copy and paste jobs fairy tales.
Avoid watching such fairytales shown by such self claimed online money making gurus. Watch only tutorials by reputable YouTubers, and see whether you can find any actionable tips or tricks in them that will enable you to start earning online.
#7- Making 100% Passive Income Online And Living The 4 Hour Workweek
Passive income does not exist. It’s possible that some highly skilled people, whose work or product has gone viral, may earn its dividends for a period of time. Also, in the case of some online investments, you might earn profit for a period of time. But it won’t last forever. You can generate a passive income for a period of time by selling your digital products or earning commissions on sales.
Furthermore, following the 4-Hour Workweek schedule is also impossible. Anybody who earns money online has to spend a large amount of time and energy to make it happen. Even famous youtubers who upload 10–20 minute videos every day or every week spend the whole day or days planning and making those videos.
#8- Everything Youtubers Say About Online Learning Is True
Earnings on YouTube are directly linked to the number of YouTube subscribers and watchtime of videos. All those YouTubers whose subscription and videos watch time hit a certain number start earning from their videos. Engaging content is key to increasing the number of subscribers and earning long hours of video watchtime.
Many Youtubers create quality content for winning a large number of subscribers and earning longer watchtime hours. Others resort to unethical means to engage their audiences. This includes;
a) Exaggerating about the content of their videos in the introduction to their tutorials and YouTube video thumbnails.
b) Telling half-truths about online money making so that they could entice money making aspirants to keep listening to them
c) Telling fake stories about their online money-making experiences.
This is also evident from the mix quality of the online YouTube tutorials available online. Whenever you search for any topic tutorial, you will find tons of YouTube video tutorials on it. But only a few of them you find will worth watching. The rest will be worth throwing in a dustbin, such as their copy and paste projects ideas they suggest you work on.
If you check the monthly earnings of many such scammers, you will find that they are less than what they claim you can earn through copying and pasting. This is the evidence of their lies.
How to identify if it is a just a myth or useful tutorial? Simply analyze at the end of each Youtube tutorial you watch and find the following:
- Was there any takeaway for you or other audience in it?
- If there was any takeaway in it, was it actionable for you or the other audience?
Let me quote one such ferry tale example wherein one was saying “If you can operate a computer you can also do computer troubleshooting. Here comes an idea: Start earning $2,000 by selling computer troubleshooting services online? However, he did not explain how he calculated the projected $2,000 monthly earnings.
Repairing and troubleshooting online is a challenging task even for trained computer technicians. Even those technicians who repair computers in their shops can’t do system troubleshooting online. It is difficult to comprehend how a normal computer user would accomplish such complex tasks and earn money online.
#9- Earning Money Online Doesn’t Cost A Cent
It all depends on the existing skills of the person and his adaptability. If you are already skilled, and there is demand for your skills online, then you can earn without spending any money. You can start earning by selling your services online by simply registering on the appropriate webportal.
Unskilled or semi-skilled persons may find it difficult to start earning online straight away. They may have to spend some time, effort and money for them to refine their skills to compete in the online market.
#10- Follow Your Passion And Money Will Follow You
Another popular myth is, “When you follow your passion, money will follow”. In most cases, it isn’t true. Instead, you need to go where there is money and create a legitimate business that keeps growing over time.
Let’s be honest here. Passion can make your business efforts more enjoyable, but sharing your favorite sports, TV shows, and foods won’t make you rich. It is important to keep your passion in mind but make sure it has a business model that must tie it into the world.
Enjoy the things you do most. You will eventually turn your work into a passion once you start enjoying it.
#11- You Can’t Make Money Online
Unless you have the right skills, you won’t be able to make money online. Learning the right skills and finding the right platform to earn money is the key to making money online.
Making money online is completely different from other forms of income. That’s why First learn Freelancing. Second, identify what skill set is in demand for online jobs in your field. Third, find out where you can sell your services or products. Fourt, start selling your services or products online.
#12- Everything Online Is A Scam
With all the money making opportunities online, unfortunately there are many online scams. A job announcement that seems amazing might be a scam. The reverse could also be true. Something you doubt could be a real, legitimate opportunity.
To be on the safe side, sell your services only on well-reputed online platforms. This list includes Upwork, Fiverr, Peopleperhour, Freelancer etc. They have processes to prevent scams and their transactions are reliable. Ask for advance payment when someone outside these platforms approaches you to do a job.
If you receive an exceptionally great offer and are not sure if it’s a scam, check the client or client’s company name on Google for scams. Try typing ‘scam’ into the search for their names online. You may find helpful information from previous scam victims.
With the passage of time, you learn to differentiate between a genuine work offer and a scam.
#13- It Takes Money To Make Money
Not necessarily. The online market offers you the opportunity to earn money without spending a single penny. All you need is to sharpen your skills and explore available earning opportunities online.
To compete on the online market, you might need to spend a bit of time and money on online or offline courses to sharpen your skills. Similarly, you may have to pay small startup charges for a domain name registration and website hosting etc.
In the beginning, keep your investment to a minimum. And once you start earning online, then you may invest a portion of your earnings to increase your earning potential
#14- It Takes Expertise To Make Money Online
This is a tricky question to answer. You need not be an expert on something to make money online. Still, your earning potential is directly linked to your experience and skill level.
To make money online, you have to be fairly good at what you offer as a service. Once you start getting service orders, you will enhance your skills by doing your clients’ tasks. Most expert freelancers have enhanced their skills by working on client jobs.
# 15- Only Scammers Can Make Money Online
Making money online is an art. The art of persuasion; and the art of marketing yourself and your services. This helps you adapt your skills to the needs of your online market clients and get results for them.
Anybody who knows how to market himself and his services or his products can make money online. You can learn this art free of cost online and use it to make money online. Since scammers are very good at using this skill, they are notorious for exploiting it for their material gains.
#16- Just A Lucky Few Become Online Millionaires
Online Millionaires are not Lucky to make money online. Rather, they have the guts to act on their learnings. They have courage to repeatedly try after failure of their multiple tries.
Making money online is an art of persuasion, marketing yourself and your services. This helps you adopt your skills to the needs of your online market clients and get results for them. Scammers are very good at using it to unethically gain their desired results.
Anybody who knows how to market himself, his services or his products can make money online. You can learn this art free of cost online and use it to sell your services or products and make money online.
#17- Only Digital Marketers and Graphic Designers Can Be Successful Online
Online demand is not limited to Graphic Design and Digital Marketing only. There are many other skills such as Computer Programming, Photography, Video Editing, Voiceover, Accounting, Virtual Assistant etc which are also in demand.
All high in-demand skills share one thing in common: specialized training. If you are skilled and have specialized training then you are good to go. Working online can be very rewarding for you.
#18- It’s A Lonely World Out There
No, not really. Just like in any new office environment, you need to adjust to working online. In a common office setting, you will have your colleagues to socialize with. But in an online job, you need to find your like minded people to socialize with. This can be done both online and offline.
To socialize online you can join professional Facebook groups, or youtube channels that interest you most. Even various freelancing portals have community groups where they discuss their day-to-day challenges and their solutions. Choose the group that suits your needs and interests.
To socialize offline, you can organise or attend family and friends get-togethers.
#19- Remote Work Is Less Productive
Being a boss of yourself could be enticing as well as frustrating. In an ordinary office, there is always somebody to supervise your work and keep an eye on you and your deliverables. But in a remote work job, you are your own boss and only responsible for deliverables to your clients.
It may be difficult to balance your online work and household chores. This in turn can affect your productivity.
To succeed, you must organize yourself and also ask your spouse and other family members for help. The key to success is planning and prioritising your work and household chores.
#20- Communication Is Difficult
That is completely true to an extent since you need to communicate with people of different cultures and languages. But over time, your communication skills will improve.
Communicating online requires reasonable verbal and written English skills. You will have to write proposals for your potential clients to hire your services or buy your product. These proposals could generate queries. And you will need to respond to them verbally and in writing.
#21- No Information Is Safe
The safety of your information is directly interlinked with your online activity. Learn the necessary procedures and protocols for online security and follow them. Basic guidelines prepared by various antivirus software like this one will help you keep your information safe.
#22- Working Online Is Full Of Strees
It depends on your choice of job category and skill set. If you manage to land jobs within your area of expertise, you won’t feel stressed. However, if you go for any job available regardless of your skill set, you will become stressed.
Occasionally, you may encounter clients who try to get more work done than they pay for. But it wouldn’t be that stressful than the unhappy clients, who are not satisfied with your work.
Try your level best to secure jobs within your area of expertise and you are good to go.
CONCLUSION:
Making money online is hard, but you can learn it. If you have a subset of skills in demand online and know how to market them, you’ll be able to make a living. Your chances of becoming rich online increase with the pace at which your skill set advances.
As in any offline environment, there are challenges and difficulties to overcome in online work as well. You have to get used to it once then you will start to enjoy it and succeed in making money online.
