I picked up the latest copy of Personal Money magazine from the newsstand recently as one of the articles was about Nuffnang and about online entrepreneurs. The magazine article talked about three companies namely Elevyn.com, Nuffnang.com and Popfolio.net.

These entrepreneurs are not like us infopreneurs, they try to make their concept work by dealing with real world products and services and hawking them online.

Elevyn.com was about selling art and crafts and at the same time wanted to give back something to the community. I guess that is laudable, doing social works while making money at the same time. A bit like Body Shop concept about helping out communities while eking out a living.

Nuffnang.com is a advertising service media provider, a bit more like Adsense but not quite. And of course there were many competitors that were spawned around the same time including Advertlets. But somehow Nuffnang seemed to get themselves featured in Newspaper and magazines (like the recent March’09 issue of Personal Money). Nuffnang seem to be doing very well able to be breakeven in 9 months after inception.

While the last one called Popfolio.com featured in Personal Money was about providing music sharing service online. However their monetizing idea has not been develop yet, so only time will tell whether anything will come out from this idea.

While for the rest of us, to come up with some kind of online money making venture is not so easy. What can one do? Do you need to be tech savvy? Do you need to know how to program HTML/CSS/PHP/ASP/etc to make money online?

No, there is no need to know how to program. What you need is some kind of established platform that can let you earn something online like Sitesell’s Site Build It where they provide a complete system to start an online business. SBI not only provides web hosting, keyword research tools, link checking, and other essentials for developing a kick ass web site, but they also provide manuals and how-to to get your web business up and running.

If you intend to blog and make money off from Adsense/Nuffnang/Advertlets, then think again. The amount you can get is only pittance.

If using any of this service to make money, between the three, Adsense is the best. The other two are just plain hopeless. It may make money for the people who came up with the idea, but for the bloggers like us, we just get the crumbs. I think it has already been about one year already, my account for Nuffnang still stands around RM25.

Advertlets fare a little bit better because they provide a feature where if you write and endorse a company or product they will credit money into your account. And at this moment, I have about RM60. If compared in terms of click throughs, it is about the same as Nuffnang.

And what about Adsense? This is the best for I get on average about US$3-5 per month for a blog with a topic that runs everywhere. (That’s why SBI emphasizes on a topic/theme based web site, because your topic will be more focused, and thus you will get a more targeted visitors to your website. Also makes for a more coherent web site, unlike this blog web site of mine! Anyway this web site I do it just for fun!)

So what’s the point am I still keeping Nuffnang and Advertlets? For one thing they have nice flash graphics, so I use that more for decorating my blog. Haha! Yes, it is true! I just use it for decoration. Because the click through and earnings are just so dismal. I won’t use it for my other web sites though. Don’t want to risk diluting my Adsense earnings in my other more specific topic based web site.

What other ways are there to make money online? You could be an affiliate seller. But to be successful, you need a very heavy web site traffic. At least a minimum of 500 visitors per day to have any chance at all. I doubt I’ll be successful with any affiliate sales for this web site.

The other method is to go for direct sales copy style take it or leave it too good to be true selling. Why true good to be true? The sales tactic for selling these kind of ebooks is like that. You can’t read the content to know what you are actually buying. With a sales copy like that you can’t refuse the offer. But after reading the material, it is not quite so hot as what the sales copy said.

It is especially those ebooks about making money online that I find most dubious. Those seminars that I attended says that is how it was done. That’s how they made their money. Sure they also provide money back guarantee, but most people seldom ask for their money back. So I know their tactics and secret, but I will not go their way. Yes, you could make money like that, but if your ebook product is not very good, and the information is also easily and freely available elsewhere then I think it is not so ethical.

That’s why those that made the money went another way, by going into the service industry, like Tom Hua providing web hosting solution, or Bret McFall selling software that can churn out sales copy automatically. As they have a USP (Unique Selling Point) so they will do better.

Of course how you want to make your money online whether ethically or not is entirely up to you. Adsense should not be the sole way of earning an income. I feel it might be better to tie in with real goods or real service would be of more value to the purchaser despite what the internet gurus would say about soft goods that don’t require a store house to keep stock.

Of course, you still need to come up with a USP for your web site, otherwise your web site is no different from the many thousands if not millions of web sites out there in the World Wide Web.