It’s funny now – when I think about this question… How Much Money Can I Make Online? It makes me think about the people who are asking this question. Maybe you are one of them! People who are just curious or people who are just getting started with trying to make money online. You want to know the realistic possibilities of how much money can actually be earned online.
All of us who make money online wondered the exact same thing at some point. We all had to start somewhere. We were all beginners or newbies – whatever you want to call it. But for those of us who have been making money online for awhile – it’s sometimes hard to relate to newbies. It’s not easy to recall how little we knew back when we, ourselves, were newbies.
I try my best to remain conscious of this and I try to keep it real here on this blog. There are lots of people who work full-time online and claim to make insanely unbelievable amounts of money. There are even more who work really hard (part-time) and earn next to nothing. That was me for the longest time! I currently fall somewhere in between and I’m about to share some annual numbers that I’ve never really shared before.
Working Online on a Very Part-Time Basis
First – I need to share a little bit of perspective. This whole ‘working on the internet’ thing is very much just a part-time side hustle for me. My internet endeavors are almost always at the top of my mind. But realistically – they are #3 on my list of day-to-day priorities. Family is #1 and day job is #2.
I’m just a regular guy. I don’t have a college degree. I work a blue-collar job as a truck driver. I have a beautiful wife and 3 amazing kids and I work hard every single day to carve out our slice of the American dream.
I get up (almost always) at 5am to work on my internet stuff. I sacrifice sleep in order to create the time necessary to grow my internet income. For me – 5am to about 7am is the ONLY uninterrupted time that I can find. The rest of my household is asleep at this time and my mind is fresh and sharp at that early hour – especially with my favorite stimulant. Coffee!!
For several years now – I’ve remained dedicated to this schedule. Persistence and commitment have been huge factors that have led to my ability to create income. And perseverance when things weren’t going right has also been key.
Persistence, dedication, perseverance and commitment - keys to successfully making money online.Click To TweetHow Much Money Can I Make Online?
I’ve come to realize, after several years of moderate success, that the sky truly is the limit. My internet income is only limited by how hard I am willing to work, how much I am willing to learn, how much time I am willing to spend and maybe luck plays a small role.
Instead of trying to speculate – why don’t I just show you exactly how much I’ve actually made over the last few years…
Note: In the past, I regularly published detailed monthly income reports. I decided to discontinue those. I’ve never shown my overall yearly income numbers and I think those would be relevant and interesting to show as part of this post. So here they are!
My 2015 Overall Income and Expenses
Total Income: $31,446.38
Expenses: $16,954.35
Net Income: $14,492.03
My 2014 Overall Income and Expenses
Total Income: $34,597.78
Expenses: $22,289.60
Net Income: $12,308.18
My 2013 Overall Income and Expenses
Total Income: $4,758.52
Expenses: $2,423.40
Net Income: $2,335.12
My Total Income amounts listed above represent ALL internet related income that I was able to generate throughout that entire year. The Expenses are ALL expenses associated with any of the internet related ‘business’ stuff. And of course, the Net Income is simply the Total Income minus the Expenses.
The money I earned in the few years previous isn’t even worth mentioning. It was very minimal and I didn’t even keep careful records of it. So basically, I made next to nothing my entire first 3 years of trying. It wasn’t until mid 2012 when I started to kind of figure out what I was doing. 2013 was okay. 2014 was pretty good… I thought. And I’ll admit – 2015 was a big disappointment. I truly thought my income would explode in 2015. But I barely earned more than I did the previous year.
Is My Passive Income Obsession Holding Me Back?
Getting back to the original question – How Much Money Can I Make Online? – I often wonder if I would or could be making a lot more if I weren’t so focused on creating passive income streams. I’m fairly certain that I could be earning much more if I did things like freelancing or offering services. But those types of income are suspiciously similar to trading time for money – just like I do at my day job. It is SO much more fun to create websites and/or systems that keep generating future income for me.
I literally make money while I sleep almost every single day now! Some days I make quite a bit and some days I make very little. But the passive income is flowing and nothing beats the feeling of watching it roll in day after day – whether I work on my websites or not.
Want to Start Your Own Website or Blog?
Does this passive income thing with a website (or sites) look like it might be something that you want to try? The best piece of advice that I can give happens to be the same piece of advice you will read or hear over and over again as you explore your options – Just get started! Don’t over-analyze or over-think everything. Just jump in and get started. Make mistakes (they are inevitable) and learn from them. Everything can be fixed or changed later. Just jump in and start doing something!
The best place I can lead you to get started is my Start Here page on this blog. If you’re brand new to this whole website thing and don’t have a clue where to start – that page has some pretty good information. Included on that page are 2 very detailed videos that show you exactly how to get your first web hosting account (free domain name included) and also how to load WordPress onto your site (easiest way to get content published on your site). Click here to get started or click on the image below…
I hope this post has answered one or more of your questions and maybe even provided a little bit of motivation for you. It IS possible to make decent money online – on the side – on a very part-time basis. I know! If a dumb ole truck driver can do it – you can too!
If you have any questions at all – feel free to ask them in the comments section below and I will try to respond as soon as I can.
Good Day!
Matthew Allen
Couldn’t agree more with your quote about persistence. There’s a clear trend among people who succeed!
On another note, you could still offer services but outsource them or hire people to help, Jon Haver style, but there’s nothing wrong with $14k a year from passive income by any means!
Thanks Dom. I’ve thought about continuing to offer services and outsourcing everything. I honestly have no desire to manage a bunch of people Jon Haver style though. That guy is a beast when it comes to that stuff and nobody does it better. I’m content managing just one writer and one VA for now… Eventually I might grow my team a little bigger. Baby steps for me.
Yeah – $14k net equals a little over $1k/month. Most people would be happy with that. But I really thought I would do better in 2015. Watch out – 2016 is the year of Matt!!
Some quick napkin math suggests that’s about $29/hour, not counting whatever those hours contribute to future earnings by way of building your brand, future passive income, etc. Not bad Matt! Keep it up!
Mike – I almost wish you wouldn’t have shared your napkin math. I honestly NEVER make those calculations. As you know – almost all of the work I do is to build future income streams. But your calculation is quite interesting nonetheless. I’m sure lots of people who are exploring “making money online” for the first time would gladly work online for $29/hour!
I literally make money while I sleep almost every single day now! – I do too now and it’s the awesomest feeling ever. I had three sales of the Ultimate Azon Theme just last night while I slept.
I agree with you too that I could be making a lot more online right now but I’m staying 100% clear of anything that feels like trading my hours for a set monetary gain. The whole point of this for me is to get away from that!
In 2014 i averaged around $300/month in online income – in 2015 I averaged around $950/month – not bad growth for 1 year. Now that I have a detailed growth plan in place for 2016, and I’m utilizing a new VA thanks to your advice, I expect to double or triple that monthly income
As for figuring out my hourly earnings in my own napkin math … I can’t even come close to saying how many hours I spend working on things, so I just take my monthly earnings, divide by the total hours in the month, and see how much I make hourly – every hour of every day. That’s the number I want to see increase over time.
I figure since I make money online at any hour of any day – that’s the only hourly pay I can calculate. Probably a worthless calculation – but it inspires me none the less.
Great article!
Hey Dave – be careful about mentioning how I helped you hire your VA – other readers might want in on that! Lol… Seriously though – I really should write that post one of these days.
It’s been really cool watching your income grow over the last couple of years. I admire your ability to stay focused. And about the calculations – yours is another interesting way to do it. I don’t bother calculating any hourly rates. Those figures don’t matter to me at all. What matters is the money that’s in the bank! (and making sure enough is set aside for Uncle Sam)
Thanks for sharing this Matt.
Great numbers considering how much you actually hands on working on it.
I recently scale up my team and now I have more time for formulating business strategy rather than just doing day to day operation. The scary part is the cost and obviously what we do today won’t show any results right away so fingers crossed.
Good luck with 2016. Looking forward to your next big announcement.
Cool post Matt. It’s awesome to see how much you’ve progressed over the years. So many people fall into the trap of believing the only way to make income is to trade time for money. But there’s no feeling better than waking up and seeing that you’ve made income literally while you were sleeping.
No doubt Dominique! Trading time for money online is a valid way to actually bring in some extra cash. But the more passive ‘making money while sleeping’ version is much better – in my humble opinion. 🙂 Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
No problem, keep up the great work with the blog!
Great post Matt. I have been following you for a while now and love your honesty and candidness.
Waking up at 5 am, massive props man, that is not an easy thing to do and takes dedication…something I need to try more myself.
I have 1 question though: Being a truck driver and on the road for I am sure a long time; how do you deal with having great ideas pop into your head? Do you keep a notebook handy or use an app or something? I find this happens to me all the time, but when I have time and actually open up my computer, my memory has a sudden bout of amnesia!
Great question Harry! And you are right – all of my best ideas do come when I am driving around during the day. Probably because that is always the time that I listen to my internet marketing related podcasts…
I actually have 3 tools that I use for this. The most common is email. I just open up a new email on my phone and type out a quick line and send it to myself – then star it in Gmail for later. Typically, I star important emails when they come in via my phone then get to them later that night or the next morning when I am on my computer.
Evernote is another great tool. But honestly – I find myself hardly ever opening it up on my computer. I save stuff in there quite often on my phone, but rarely look at it on my computer. I find that if I actually take the action to save something – it causes me to remember without having to go back and look.
Lastly – there is this thing called Google Tasks. You can create little to-do lists with checkboxes. It opens up as a small pop-up right over top of my gmail on my PC. It also has an Android app that automatically syncs on my phone. So I can add a ‘Task’ easily with my phone and it shows up on my to-do list on my computer!
By far – I use email reminders the most – only because I 100% know I will actually get back to it that way.
Great post Matt!
Most people think making money online is easy and simple. But you actually have to put the hours in like you do!
And I think your passive income approach is the way to go. You can create streams of income that depend on your time and get more money now, but passive income will provide you with cash flow even when you are not actively online.
Thanks money grower from the UK guy! You’re spot on with your comments. Nothing beats the feeling of waking up in the morning and seeing that a whole bunch of passive income poured in while I was asleep the night before! Or working at day job and an email comes in that I see on my phone informing me of a random deposit to my PayPal account because somebody just purchased an affiliate product… Love it!
What is “VA”? Please excuse what may be a dumb question. I’m just not familiar. Thank you in advance for your time and assistance.
VA is a virtual assistant. It is an actual person who who assist me by doing certain tasks online. They are called virtual because I only interact with them online. I have never met any of my assistants or writers in person.
No need to apologize for asking the question! The only dumb question is the question that goes on un-asked.