Making money online gets tougher – covers the business models and problems faced making money online in India. I have noted some of my observations based on personal experience, since I have a pure play online business model. Basically internet business income (not a service provider) is unstable, you can earn US$5,000+ in one month and less than $1000 the other due to factors beyond your control.
Your ability to make money online over the long term depends on a number of factors like:
- How you manage your overheads – if you keep them sufficiently low, it is much easier to survive.
- Your family responsibilities and finances – if you have a lot of loans, a dependent wife and children, it can be difficult to survive during the downturn.
- Level of technical competence and ability to learn – if you can do the server admin, content writing and manage advertising yourself it helps
- Diversification – revenue from multiple sources ensures that there are fewer variations in income.
- Ability to take risks – If your business is doing well, it is easy to become complacent, but if you do not take risks and fail, it can adversely affect your future business.
- Choice of business partners – it is important to work with reliable companies who provide good customer support.
- Compared to Western countries making money online is a lot more difficult, you cannot sign up for many advertising networks (since you are from India), affiliate commissions are routinely stolen due to cookie stuffing, so you have to spend a lot of time in front of the computer experimenting to find out what works. Some people may get bored or lack the discipline to do so.
- Lifestyle – If you lead a lavish lifestyle, parties,expensive luxury products, foreign holidays, you have less to see you through difficult times, so a job is better for you.