My dad thinks it can be a stable income if you combine "making money online" with the income from a regular offline job like waiter, computer programmer, etc.
My mom thinks it is "not worth it", and you're better off going to school then look for a 9 to 5 job. I think she has this view because I'm the only one she knows in real life who makes a few hundred or less dollars a month from "making money online".
I think most of my relatives don't really understand what is "making money online" since most of them are in their 40s, 60s, 70s, etc, and never really grew up using the internet, or online use it for a few things like Facebook, Travel sites, cooking sites and E-mail, but they do know Yahoo, Google and Facebook make a lot of money online from ads and selling services because the news talks about it.
I think some of my friends know a little bit about how to make money with Craigslist, eBay, Amazon and opening an online store, but not so much about paid to click, affiliate marketing, selling links, and selling re-seller web hosting or templates or software/scripts for websites.
Re: What do average people think about "making money online"
Making money online, enough to live off of, is just like almost anyother off beaten career path you chose. You need to be good at what you're selling and you need to find a niche.
Think about it, if you start your own plumbing company but you're a bad plumber you're not going to see success. If you try to make money online but are bad at it you're not going to see success either.
Re: What do average people think about "making money online"
Lots of well known corporations are "making money online" , e.g. eBay, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, FaceBook, etc. Plus less obvious online businesses, such as those who are traditional businesses who also sell online. Maybe you could mention some of these companies when explaining to people what "making money online" is about?
Re: What do average people think about "making money online"
Well I think highly of making money offline since this is one of my only main sources of income. I'm currently making about $500 a month off advertisements on my youtube partner account and website. I also work a part time job and was able to start working part time instead of full time because of the "making money online". Though my parents and grandparents look down on it because, as you said, they didn't grow up with computers or internet. They don't quite understand the potential of internet marketing.
Re: What do average people think about "making money online"
A lot of people in my experience also seem to have the view of "Google, Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo,etc" make all the money, and the rest of the money to be made online by the little websites are the leftover dollars and cents which people don't spend at Google, Yahoo, Amazon and eBay.
I think they have this view because of what business is like offline. Walmart, Target, Kmart, Best buy, and other huge companies have ridiculously low prices and a lot of marketing man power which pushes the local shops struggling to compete with the big name stores.
Lol, I feel that the media is not really presenting a good image on "making money online" since the News always talk about Spam, Facebook spying on its members, and keeping & selling their data, and the movie "The Social Network" also had some dark moments about Mark Z. the owner of Facebook, so some average people feel that "make money online" is a scam or kind of shady based on stuff the news and hollywood talks about.
