The Internet is filled with so many good articles on how to make money online from home, side hustles for teens, etc.. but the truth is some of these information on how to make money online is becoming outdated and oversaturated sometimes making it hard to make $50 within a short time.
In the coming years it might become harder to make money online… I’ll tell you why as you read on.
In some of these other blogs, we’re being told to start a website, sell stuff online, affiliate marketing, start a YouTube channel, sell your Services on Fiverr, paid surveys, Join Amazon kdp, etc.. so it’s no use repeating the same things again here. The thing with these articles is that everybody is doing or trying to do these same things to make money online.. i.e following the same steps on how to monetize a website and make money, how to do affiliate marketing, how to start a YouTube channel, videos, etc and at the end of the day, It’s going to look like we just wasted our time. Like what’s the use repeating already created content or creating content when at the end it’s those with a good number of subscribers, views and likes that gets all the attention…
Google’s march 2024 algorithm core update crippled many businesses, entrepreneurs, even hidden and outspoken SEO’s.. everybody felt the heat.. why?.. due to this update many websites lost over 90% of their Organic traffic (.i.e 90% of revenue or income), others got de-indexed, some others lost all of their traffic overnight coupled with the fact that most websites were yet to recover from the algorithm update of 2023…. Imagine having a website with 10,000 visitors per month bringing in $1000 and you woke up next morning to see that 90 percent of this traffic has disappeared.. . Or traffic dropped 50% during an algorithm update and then dropped 50% again to zero during the next update (which can be a year after)… the feeling is more than losing a regular job.
We hear again and again two things; Diversify your traffic sources. Secondly, get an expired domain, or a domain that has existed before. The first option is still viable but the second, not so much and I’ll explain why.
Nowadays, we ask ourselves if SEO is still as relevant as it was years ago why? Because it’s harder to rank on Google these days.
Is SEO still relevant?
SEO is still relevant as long as people are looking for answers, solutions to problems, ideas, recommendations and people like you and I providing the solutions, making us money in the process…
SEO may become irrelevant soon because all major social media platforms are now adding AI search engine or research functionalities to keep their users hooked on their respective platforms and cut the need to reach out to independent publishers and creators like you and I.
Secondly, back in the day you could make a couple of $$ with survey sites but right now, not so much… have you bothered to ask yourself why? Everyone knew about the opportunity and right now everyone is trying to make money doing surveys pushing the competition up. Something similar is going to happen when everybody finds out that articles can be written with AI and can also get paid for it. Which already happened with the Google spam update.
Third, small websites that are solely Informational, transactional, product reviews, may never rank on Google anymore. Why?.. AI is there to answer nearly 50% of these informational queries, AI can write articles, translate and edit content too so its just a matter of time before these “get paid to write sites” figure this out and maybe decide to shut the doors to human writers. The beginning of the end for sites like “Fiverr for freelancing”. Secondly, Google is giving preference to big websites and forums for informational and transactional keywords. Why?… According to them Websites with high authority have more EEAT. But is this entirely true?… Not at all… many legitimate sites and businesses went out of business just because of this recent Google update.
What does this all mean? I’m sure the answers are starting come together in your head…. Does this mean the beginning of the end?…. Who knows?
According to experts like Neil Patel, backlinko, Matt Diggity, SEO Jesus, Nathan Gotch, Ahrefs, Wes McDowell, etc you’ll need to wait between 6 and 12 months to see results with SEO that’s if you’re targeting low competition keywords or if you’re building your website on a new domain and they all further complicated the whole thing for newbies by adding that we also need high quality backlinks to rank on Google.. and sorry to say, this information itself has become outdated and somewhat non useful because right now Google will end up ranking websites with high authority. Does this mean there’s no need creating websites? No… It simply means that Google should not be factored in as a major traffic source when you’re creating your website.
Google recently removed backlinks from the top 3 ranking factors so we can now breathe down a bit right? Nope.. Not at all. Infact.. backlinks increases your authority. Does this mean I should buy backlinks?.. Not at all.. which is why you should Diversify your traffic sources.
If you’re building your website today solely to depend on Google for traffic on a new domain even with low competition keywords then you may not get it because Google has started giving preference to bigger well established sites and forums with alot of authority.
With expired domains, you get to rank a website and get traffic fast in less than the general average waiting period. The advantage you’ll get with an expired domain or domains that has existed before is the fact that they already have backlinks that are already known by Google and these domains may have even ranked for a keyword or certain keywords in the past meaning you can easily rank on Google within 1 to 6 months with these domains.
I luckily randomly got this domain (abgist.com) by typing in random names.com on my browser. This domain already had 400 backlinks with Domain ratings of 35 and above but was returning a 404 not found error on my browser so I quickly registered it.
The original idea behind this site was to design a multi site to help people publish their articles, share content online, connect and chat with each other, create groups, etc.. we were having over 2000 articles published on this site from different people and we were doing well… then Google’s update crashed us too and we ended up ranking for zero keywords except for those searching for the site to publish articles. But why did we get hit? Honestly we don’t know.. most of us don’t know. Maybe a low Domain rating I guess… or… backlinks are irrelevant to the content on the site which is kinda equal to no backlink at all.
Just so you know, in the next 5-10 years, it may not be very profitable creating websites anymore unless you’re a business, E-commerce site, or offer specific unique kinds of services, or your content is totally helpful, original and not some copy and paste stuff.
For you to really make money online generally in today’s competitive space, you must be ready to take advantage of all the ways to make money online using them all at once.. For example, you have a website about pets, you should also create a youtube channel that talks about all things pets.
Note: it’s not compulsory to show your face on your YouTube channel as it can be a faceless channel straight to the point.
Create facebook groups and pages and reels about pets, a pinterest account and pins about pets, write or copy and edit books about pets and submit to Amazon kdp and alternatives including your website url on your books as a relevant resource, take advantage of linkedin, medium, tiktok, Instagram, etc and link all of them together. You’ll be surprised at the results.
I’ll conclude here by saying, in all, you must have passion on what ever you wish to write about or talk about, share or discuss online to make money. Your primary aim with having a website or a YouTube channel, etc should be to solve people’s problems and answer questions.
When you can now successfully answer people’s questions and people can trust you, the answers and indepth explanations you give on the niche you’re in, people will naturally be ready to pay you even over $1000 for the services you offer (that’s where things like Fiverr come in) , you’ll get more backlinks from other websites easily, you’ll rank very high on Google, get more organic traffic and eventually make even more money.
Before you go exploring other articles on the site, I want you to understand that even with all these heart breaking moments, If you can solve a problem, you can make money whether online or not.. try think of something new to bring to the table, don’t copy and use what’s already out there. Instead, copy and improve on what’s already working to work better and then you can make money.