10 Things I Wished I Had Known in 2013 About Making Money on the Internet

A decade online and 10 hard lessons learned

2013 was a relatively easy and great time to be online: Medium was only just founded some months prior, TikTok was yet to see the light of day and Instagram was only just a baby we all believed was the playground for those who loved, more than anything, to share their lives in color.

That was the year I went online professionally, with my first ever TLD, Notopoverty.com.

This year makes it 10 solid years I have been actively blogging, running online hustles, and making money online.

Here are 10 things I wished I had known earlier:

1. The (true) power of compounding

If there’s anything that is misunderstood to the high heavens online, it is the power of compounding.

It almost borders as a miracle how we all excel at calculating compound interest at school but fail woefully to put its simple wisdom to use, when we come online and have it staring us straight in the face.

Take Medium, for instance: if you’re like the rest of us, your first pay here was mere cents — probably from less than ten stories, total.

However, as you wrote more — and had the old ones working for you, your next month likely read something in the single digits.

Then, tens, hundreds, and finally, thousands…and if you keep at it, tens of thousands, very easily.

I wish I had known and understood this; properly understood, I wouldn’t have abandoned the many good things I started online then (and midway too), such as the beautiful blogs and businesses that slightly ‘delayed’ — but in the real sense, were only following a known, proven law.

This story, published a while back, amply does justice to this point.

2. Freemium rocks

This is one of the realities I picked up circa 2015 when I was forced to design a website with a premium theme that offered more customization options than functionality.

I contacted someone to help me customize my website then, with the premium theme I newly bought (I was making good money then and didn’t want the free basic, mostly unresponsive, themes again).

The fellow charged an arm and a leg; I simply refused to hire him, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work.

The result wasn’t the best it could be, but it was way better than the free affair and importantly, my website was now fully responsive.

Thanks to platforms like YouTube, you can learn anything, for free — if you have the time and patience.

That premium eBook? The info is already out on the internet for free; the premium newsletter? Not needed. That course that must be paid for in three figures? It contains nothing new under the sun that cannot be got for free, elsewhere…

…you only need to know where to look.

I wish I had known this earlier, in 2013 to be exact — when I took the internet more seriously and decided to earn full-time from it.

3. The Pareto Principle is real!

The Pareto Principle, named after the economist Vilfredo Pareto, is a cute, smart, badass principle: it is to the effect that 80% of your results will come from only 20% of your output.

Put in another way, 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes, asserting an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs.

At face value, this appears like some fancy economic jargon, offered when an economist has been continuously overexposed to figures on a bad day.

However, in practice, fewer things are more precise: for example, this past month, only about five stories of mine contributed to about 80% of my earnings here at Medium — and I have close to eighty published stories.

As can be seen, in my case, this holds true, even if the percentages are not exactly as the rule states.

The buck of your results will come from a tiny, minority segment of your efforts…I wished I had known this in 2013 and had focused on that 20% — instead of wrongly bothering to cater for the large, challenging 100%.

You’ll go far online and make serious money if you learn to measure output to determine where more input should go.

4. There’s power in going anon

Going anonymous has never been my thing: I always loved to be ‘authentic’ and to share things I can stand by any day or time.

However, this reality has severe limitations, limitations that I believe slowed my growth online:

1. You can’t share many things, with your name — especially, private, potentially embarrassing stuff…even if they’ll bring good money.
2. You’re limited to a niche, the one you’re well known in/for already.
3. You can’t duplicate your work and truly have your effort work for you.

I realized this around 2018 — and immediately, remedied it: the results were mind-blowing, to say the least!

I created niche sites using pen names and worked on them by the side: in less than two years, my income crossed the $5,000/month mark for the first time (in forever)!

I have never looked back since; I now have faceless YouTube, TikTok, Instagram etc. channels and accounts, each dealing with issues that I love, issues that will ensure passive income, issues that I don’t necessarily need to tie my name or identity to.

Then, there are published and upcoming KDP titles, all in pen names, in very lucrative niches.

I wish I had known this in 2013…

5. 98% (or more) of what you read online is false

Of all the sources of lies (and gross misinformation) you’re likely to be exposed to throughout your life, the internet is likely to take the crown as the biggest — and most impressive.

For instance, you don’t need ‘trust’, a list, or even any authority to make money online as an affiliate marketer.

It’s rather grossly unfortunate that this is the first thing you’re going to be told if making money online with the model interests you.

I was too — till I did the exact opposite and was literally blown away by the results.

Then I wondered why everyone kept saying the same thing…my conclusion was that they were either being plain deceptive or they didn’t know any better themselves and were actively relying on making money online as ‘affiliates’ by telling others they make money as affiliates (selling ebooks and courses in the process).

I wish I had known this sad, sorry fact in 2013 and the fact that the bulk of the internet is made of large, solid lies. I wish, instead, I had trusted my guts more and experimented where unsure instead of reading tips from folks who were desirous of making money online by telling me they made money!

6. Gaming the system is dumb

Shortcuts, in practice, are a great idea: if you know them well, you don’t only save time, you save gas, lower depreciation, and usually, arrive at your destination earlier than folks who take the freeway.

That is offline, in the real world.

Online, shortcuts, AKA gaming the system, are DUMB — and you’re going to get burnt faster than you made progress or even say jack!

In the early days of Google, for example, all that it took to rank a website was some sorry links, and boom, a site was on the first page of the SERPs.

Folks who took advantage of that only benefitted for a short while with their thin, affiliate-oriented, keyword-stuffed websites that offered no real value.

It took just a Penguin (pun intended) to settle that — and those folks were back to zero.

The folks who did their work as webmasters and kept off spam with the intent to manipulate rankings?

Many I know are still waxing strong!

Take Medium as another example: there are a series of bad habits, aimed mainly as shortcuts, some members deploy as ‘growth’ strategies, to game the system.

Do they work for now? Probably.

Will they work tomorrow? Most likely, not.

I wished I had known in 2013 that systems cannot be gamed; you either play by the rules or get kicked out…it’s as simple as that.

While I always try to keep things straight and cool, knowing this earlier would have saved me a ton of time as I journeyed online.

7. The ‘game’ is a marathon, not a sprint

A sprint can be wrapped up in a few minutes and get done with — not a marathon!

Taking hours at the barest minimum, stamina, and endurance are very important to record success with this race type.

Now, that is EXACTLY what the online world is.

I wish I had known that, to register results consistently, I need(ed) to put in consistent effort, daily, spread over a length of (sufficient) time.

I wish I had known in 2013 that I couldn't simply ‘get 9 women pregnant and expect a child at the end of the first month’ (apologies to the Sage of Omaha).

If I had understood that the online ‘game’ is a marathon — and not a sprint, I would have slowed down my pace — to avoid writer’s block and the slow, painful burnouts that followed, rendering me unproductive for months and sometimes, even years.

Over ambition, online, is as deadly as having no ambition at all…as a matter of fact, even worse.

I wish I had known this fact, in 2013!

I also wished I understood the power of just 500 simple, easy words a day in the face of 2–5k words that happened once, with pain, and then, never happened ever again!

8. No eggs in one basket in the name of focus!

There’s an old piece of classical wisdom:

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

This piece of wisdom makes sense — except that, online, you’re likely to meet its counter sooner than later:

Don’t spread yourself too thin.

The challenge, for the newbie now is: when does not putting all of one’s eggs in one basket change character to spreading oneself too thin?

I was going to learn this lesson, the hard way.

With niche sites that were doing very well, I simply ‘focused’ on them, conquering milestone after milestone — then, it happened…

…without warning, all traffic and with it, revenue was lost!

From someone who was making a healthy income online, I reverted to near zero — losing more than 95% of my income almost overnight!

I wish I had known in 2013 that putting one’s eggs all in a basket and spreading oneself too thin are all dangerous bits of the same coin; I wish I had known that the best approach was to diversify, immediately I earned the first $100 from the niche sites and make certain that at least, I had three consistent revenue sources, each contributing no more than thirty percent.

I wish I also had the foresight too, to, beyond these three basic income sources, create numerous other passive income streams that didn’t require my active time, as a writer.

9. Numbers are as important as quality

Back in 2013, there was a lot of BS about quality content, good writing, etc., and how content was king.

Unfortunately, ten years later, I still hear this absolute crap spewed online, usually, by folks who are NOT qualified to offer any counsel on the matter.

Granted, quality is good: I doubt if you would have read this story of mine up to this point if it were poorly written and formatted.

However, as much as content is touted to be king, quantity, without any argument, is queen!

No matter how well I write and how much you love my work, for example, there’s so much a story can earn.

Consistently published *poor-to-average* stories?

(Coughs)…

They have an infinite earning potential!

I wish I had known, back in 2013, that the hours I spent (re)designing my website and polishing content were basically wasted…they would have been better directed to creating new content, even if it wasn’t that stellar.

Thinking about this inspired me (amongst other inspirations), to pen down the article embedded below.

It may interest you.

10. Medium is the true home of writers, online

I came across Medium, sometime around 2015 — if memory serves and I created an account, right away.

I was blown away by how easy it was to use the platform and connect with others.

Unfortunately, shiny objects always came in the way: I’ll come in — sometimes, once a year, publish something and then, come back after another complete 365 days (or more)!

So bad was it that when I finally got serious earlier this year, I had to delete some of the drought-inspired earlier stories — as they no longer fit into my overall writing strategy.

I wished I had been consistent on Medium from the beginning — and at least, written a story, once a month, at the very least.

I wished I had known that, for writers and authors, Medium trumps every other social media network out there and perhaps, that is the reason why even when I attempted to cancel, I found myself back in the fold before the week ran out.

TL;DR

There’s so much the years can teach you; in this respect, a decade is a lot.

There also are no straight paths: one must learn, make mistakes, and learn again.

Fortunately, you don’t need to make all the mistakes I did nor do you need to take a decade to realize them: simply follow these ten tips and you already have a headstart.

• There’s (serious) power in compounding.
• Premium isn’t always better.
• The 80/20 rule is real.
• There’s no shame in going anon.
• The internet is populated with lies.
• Gaming the system is dumb.
• The online world is a marathon, not a sprint.
• Treat the ‘basket rule’ with caution.
• Quantity is the ‘queen’ of quality.
• Medium is the digital home of writers, online.

What have the years taught you? What lessons did you pick from my own experience?

I’d love to read (and respond) to your thoughts.