Making money online?

[Randy]

Have you every made money one the internet? If so, how did you do it? How much did you make? Are you still receiving a "pay check" from the internet?

 

[Jazzy]

I won a posting contest twice on another forum. I won $100 each time. After the second posting contest, the owner didn't want to pay up. I finally got my money after the moderators pooled their money to pay me. There was never another monetary contest on that forum.

 

[Evil Eye]

Can't say I have. Would be interesting.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

I have put ads on my forums before and made like $5 or $10 here and there.. It takes months to make that amount so its not really worth it.

I have sold things like forum software licenses and household stuff (on ebay and craigslist) but of course when you sell something used, it has to be cheaper than its worth so I didnt really make any money there either.

 

[DrLeftover]

My wife has photos on several stock photo sites, and she does ok on them. The advantage is, once the photo is accepted, it is out there, and if somebody uses it, she'll make a little money. Not much from each sale, but when you have hundreds of photos on a half a dozen sites, it adds up.

I've got books listed on several sites, including on Amazon in Italy:

KADA [Brossura]
Lewis Levite (Autore)
Recensisci per primo questo articolo
Prezzo di copertina: EUR 11,17
Prezzo: EUR 10,61 Spedizione gratuita per ordini sopra EUR 19. Dettagli
Risparmi: EUR 0,56 (5%)

https://www.amazon.it/KADA-Lewis-Levite/dp/0557023564

, but unless you actively promote, which I hate doing, you don't sell very many.

 

[DrLeftover]

I got this group email this morning from "the publisher lady", she had sent it out to all of the writers under their banner.

Okay, so you all wonder why I'm not crazy about Ingram's and Amazon where our paperback books are sold. We do fairly well on kindle sales as far as retaining the money - we get 70 percent if American sales for books that are novels - short stories we get 35 percent but foreign sales aren't as high percentage.

Without divulging the titles I copied and pasted a recent report from LULU on quarter 1 book sales. See below and you'll see why I'm not a fan of those 2 places I mentioned above.

Paperback Ingram 1 US $1.20
Paperback Ingram 1 UK $1.19
Paperback Ingram 1 US $1.20
Paperback Ingram 1 UK $1.92
Paperback Ingram 1 UK $1.71
Paperback Amazon 1 US $1.04
Paperback Ingram 1 US $2.15
Paperback Ingram 1 US $2.15
Paperback Ingram 1 US $1.85
Paperback Ingram 1 UK $1.86
Paperback Ingram 1 US $0.76
Paperback Ingram 1 US $1.15
Paperback Lulu 2 US $10.40
Paperback Ingram 1 UK $1.34
Paperback Amazon 2 UK $2.89

See how low the actual money we collect from Ingram's and Amazon is?
But check out the money from LULU - that's a direct paperback sale of monies from lulu for paperback books. Grant it, the books are around $12.95 and above and in that lulu sale for 2 books we received $10.40, but its a heck of a lot better than 2 paperback sales in the UK Amazon and we only get $2.89.

This is highway robbery. If I could boycott these places I would. The best thing you can possibly do for yourselves as authors is to direct people at facebook and your public places to go to lulu and buy it there or buy the kindle ebook or the ebook from Melange website.

I am sharing this with you now because last quarter I was inundated with I think 30 authors at the minimum asking me why such poor monies. This is why you hear me complain about those 3rd party vendors.

I want to add one more thing; if you follow any big New York pubbed author websites you'll see they're leaving their publishing houses in droves to self-publish. Yes, they have to do all of the work but they retain all of the money. Even a big house can't satisfy them any longer.

Nancy

 

[Evil Eye]

Meagre pickings indeed...

 

[Jazzy]

@Doc: Do you intend or do you now self-publish?