Sad to say, but in my experience it's a fantasy for most of us. There are a tiny minority who actually manage to make a pile but most of us barely scratch an existence, and many that boast of high incomes are usually lying to get you to part with your hard earned.
I've been 10 years on the net and can just about pay my rent and eat occasionally. It's taken me this long to build up my software website to receiving over 2,000 visitors a day. Did I hear you say "with that many visitors surely he should be raking it in"? I wish it were true but I've tried every type of remuneration from my software and finally ended up with a small one off membership fee for all of it, for life. Even then I'm lucky to get one new member a day out of 2,000.
What about advertising? Well here again I have tried pretty much every type. Companies like Bidvertiser, Valueclick etc., have received thousands of free ad impressions from me and returned just a few cents. Google Adsense is the only one in my experience that is playing the game. I can earn at least the odd dollar or two from them with even as low as 50 impressions on some of my new sites. On my main site, I have managed to squeeze it up a few dollars to at least make the check come each month i.e. over the $100 dollar threshold. The answer seems to be to make literally thousands of pages, so the small amount of income you get from each, totals a half way decent amount and submitting to the search engines by hand yourself, for free, is the best way to increase traffic, in my opinion. My list of links to 90 search engines is now available here if that will help. Plus my little search engine submission helper, freeware program is nearly ready.
There are always plenty out there, ready to promise the earth and take your money, but then that's how some get to be members of the tiny minority I talked about earlier. I admit there is an even tinier minority who have worked hard to get where they are, with no doubt a bit of luck too, but I challenge the likes of Shoemoney and Mr.Chow to comment otherwise and say it is easy to make a huge pile, and if so, how.
