How kids can make money on the Internet

<YAAAAAWN><STRETTTTTCH> Why hello there!

How nice of you to drop on by! Hope your day is progressing as optimally as mine – I woke up at the remarkably normal time of 4:20am (yes! Slept past 2am! Life rocks!), got the kids up for their daily circle walk and exercise, wrote WordPress for iPhone, download now! (PLUS 20 other resources) and am now tackling the other 472, ahem, opportunities for mental angst that are staring at me right now.

But I digress. 🙂

If you’re a parent like me, you probably have kids (true, that is kinda sorta the prerequisite for actually BEING a parent). Kids who, during the summer, immediately immerse themselves into the joys of studying Calculus, mastering Latin, tackling karate sparring and other wholesome activities!

Yeah, mine neither. 🙂 But as the summer goes by, chances are…your kids are going to possibly, just maybe, ask you for a 2 month subscription to World of Warcraft….

(After which they’ll decide Jeepers Mom and Dad, I’m no longer interested in it, thanks for wasting the $60 – not that that happened to me, no sirreee, not at all)

Or want to buy an iPhone or designer clothing or …. you get the idea. Right?

It’s at times like this we parents can breathe a sigh of relief, because quite frankly, our kids are growing with Web 2.0 (compared to us, who have to teach ourselves the beastie) and it’s only a very simple natural step for them to move from doing what they’re currently enjoying (MySpace, Facebook, gaming online, etc) to actually making money from the process itself.

How, I hear you ask?

Simple! Teach them to monetize their blogs, of course.

They probably already have them up and running! MySpace, Facebook, Gaia, etc…..all those social networking thingees that have kids indulging in them have already provided them with the experience of "blogging" – all you have to do is show them how to do it RIGHT (ie, bring in money).

And what’s the right way?

Spend $9 or so for a personal domain name (I bought all my kids their personal domain name, and that’s also my standard birthday gift I now give to my friends), pay for a years’ worth of hosting, point them in the direction of awesome free WordPress themes and free WordPress plugins, show them how to learn the tricks of Social Networking, and unleash them to bring home the bacon!

Here are some good deals on domain names/hosting:

GoDaddy
HostGator
DotEasy
NewWebsite – special deal!

Think about it. Kids are NATURAL consumers…and they have their fingers on the pulse of what their peers crave to own.

Point them in the direction of affiliate marketing so they can add all those Amazon and eBay goodies to their blogs!
Point them to industry niches where they can contribute their own ideas…and include direct links back to their blogs!
Point them to YouTube and let them learn how to create viral videos that direct traffic back to their blogs!

Kids are true naturals at this. Heck, earlier this month I was showing Honorable Daughter I how to create a carousel widget for her blog…her response when I told her to switch to HTML mode was:

Gosh Mom, like it’s not obvious you HAVE to do that ’cause it’s code?

And no, I didn’t tell her that 97% of adults would have to be told that clue. 🙂

Kids. Truly a joy they are!

I’m sure there are other ways for kids to make money online…but I’ll just stick with what’s easy (kids love writing about their hobbies) and what’s fun (networking) and, well, what works.

Some resources for the above ideas:

And if you’d like to read some other great articles about kids making money online, check out:

More following soon,

Barbara

Like this post? Please feel free to tell your friends and Digg It – I very much appreciate your time!

ps – speaking about making money for kids, have you read (or indulged in)

Amazon.com Widgets

Get Barbara Ling’s Newsletter

Looking to get inspiration? You can get Barbara’s Daily Morning Perkup for free. Click the button below, and fill out the information in the form!

Get Started Here

You’ll love what you learn… Promise!