Sam podcasted today on How to Own Your Niche. It was a good podcast and worth a listen. In it he mentioned follow his advice and in 5-6 months you should be doing well. I have no idea the audience that was geared towards, however I don’t think it’s true for newbies. My opinion only and no slight towards Sam or the podcast, it was great, and I used it for the inspiration to ask:

How Long Working At Making Money Online Before I Can Pay My Monthly Mortgage?

Certainly this has to be a huge goal for people that have an interest in making money online. It’s one of people’s largest bill and would be great to have paid for every month from online earnings.

However, if you are telling someone about making money online, and they asked how long it would take to achieve this goal, what would you tell them?

Every Situation Is Unique

I know, there is no real answer. Haters move along ;)

However if you want to take a guess it would be interesting to see what most people’s opinion is. Just a guess on the “average” time it would take.

Let’s assume the mortgage is in a developed country on an economy house.

What Do I Think?

My guess is 1-2 years for busting your but and treating making money online as a part time job.

Certainly there are exceptions, I could probably name a dozen, but out of the tens of thousands that try, only being able to name a dozen or so that achieved it in their first year is a small number.

The Veterans Advantage

Earlier today I made $2.10 in adsense from a page I wrote in August of 2004. 2004 was the year I started writing online but it wasn’t until later that I started trying to directly monetize the writing.

I may not have any better articles or marketing than you, however having a large quantity of content out there already gives old timers a leg up that newbies don’t have.

lol, and I’m reminded everyday that I’m still a newbie. (I joked about something from 1997 today when I wasn’t even thinking about affiliate marketing and Shawn Collins mentioned how it really was. Man some of these folks have been doing this a LONG time already)

Not only the fact that veterans have a large volume of content and experience to draw upon, they also have nicely aged links/domains/networking/reputation to use to their advantage. And honestly probably even more than I know about.

There is almost no way a newbie can get the Veterans advantage without putting in the years.

I’m not saying you need an “advantage” to make money online, just saying it’s not usually mentioned that productive time is a huge factor in making money online.

Underestimating Making Money Online

I captioned in the video “the concept of making money online is easy, the reality isn’t”

It’s so easy to explain how to make money online. Send a merchant a sale, you get paid. However the implementation of that is where 154000 blogs and tutorials come from.

I hardly ever see people saying it might take 2-5 years to make the small amount of paying your mortgage, however that is a much more realistic expectation than 6 months in my opinion.

The beauty is though, if you stick it out and work smart, you eventually start making some ok money in your sleep ;)

Of Course Just Cause Your Are Around Awhile Doesn’t Mean You Will Earn A Dime

I reiterate that I know just putting in the time isn’t worth anything, you need to be smart and work hard and have a pinch of luck. However,

If you were to guess at the average time it takes someone to work online to pay their monthly mortgage, how long would you say? Is there a “rule of thumb?”