We have all seen the sales pages. Internet marketers lounging on beaches, riding in limousines, dining at five-star restaurants. The message is always the same: making money online is easy.
But if your experience is anything like mine, you know the reality is different. Making money online is hard work. And if you have been at it for a while without seeing real results, it can feel downright discouraging.
That got me wondering: how many people actually make money online? And for those who do, how much are they earning?
To find out, I ran a simple anonymous survey of my readers to understand their internet marketing income, how long they had been trying, and whether they were having any success.
Internet Marketing Income Survey Summary
The purpose was straightforward: get a real sense of how many people are actually succeeding at making money online, and how much they are earning. I also wanted to understand what business models people were using and what they wished they had to help them succeed.
I kept the survey to just four questions, because nobody hates a long survey more than I do. I used LimeSurvey, a free open-source survey tool, and sent it out to a portion of my mailing list. The initial results came from 135 respondents.
Who Responded
The first thing I wanted to understand was how long people had been trying to make money online. If you are not making money but have only been at it for three months, that is one thing. If you have been grinding for four years with nothing to show for it, that is an entirely different conversation.
The results showed a wide range of experience. About 12 percent had fewer than six months under their belt, while well over half had been working online for more than two years. Eleven respondents claimed to have been online since 2000 or earlier.
Business Models People Were Using
Not surprisingly, most respondents were doing some form of affiliate marketing or blogging. What did surprise me was that many of those people were not also doing email marketing. That is a huge missed opportunity. Email marketing remains one of the highest-converting channels available, and if you are blogging or doing affiliate marketing without building a list, you are leaving money on the table.
Another surprise was the tiny number of membership sites. With all the buzz around recurring revenue models, I expected to see more of those.
Are People Actually Making Money?
The honest answer from this survey: not really. At least not on average.
The vast majority of respondents were making less than $1,000 per month. One respondent claimed $100,000 per month, which is fantastic if true.
But here is the encouraging part: about one in twelve respondents was making more than $2,000 per month online. That is actually solid news when you consider how many people quit too soon or were never truly serious about building an online business in the first place.
Do not take these results as evidence that internet marketing does not work. Rather, understand that in order to succeed online you need to work hard, have a good plan, add real value to your marketplace, and genuinely care about the people you serve.
My Honest Assessment
I am an engineer by training, so I look at data critically. There are a few important caveats about this survey.
First, 135 responses is a small sample size. These were initial results, and a meaningful analysis would require at least 1,000 participants, probably more like 10,000.
Second, most respondents were readers of my blog. And most of my readers at the time were reading because they were still figuring out how to make money online. So the survey was inherently skewed toward people who had not yet found success. People who are already earning a great living online are busy doing that, not filling out surveys.
What This Means in 2026
Looking back at these results from the vantage point of 2026, a few things have changed dramatically. The rise of creator-economy platforms, AI tools, and new monetization models means there are more paths to online income than ever before. But the fundamentals remain exactly the same.
The people who succeed online are the ones who pick a niche, show up consistently, build an audience, and create genuine value. They treat their online business like a real business, not a lottery ticket.
If you are just getting started or feeling stuck, know that it is completely normal to struggle in the beginning. The question is not whether you will face setbacks. The question is whether you will keep going when you do.
Great stuff Mark, I’m a bit of a data-junkie myself so love these kinds of results! It’s very noble of you to point of the possible limitations of the survey too.
Thanks for sharing!
Cheers, Rob
P.S. Off to do the survey now….
Thanks Rob. Appreciate the comments. You know what Mark Twain said — “Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics”. And thanks for taking the survey.
I agree that most people quit too early. There is a learning curve and it takes a while to sink in. You have to keep looking at the basics over and over even when you think you already know them. My advice is links, links, and more links, not pretty graphics and pretty websites!
Traffic is more important than anything — that is for sure. Finding offers is easy. Finding buyers is harder. Thanks for the comments — could not agree more.
Great study Mark. What I would love to see is what percent of those in IM for over 1 year are making x amount. For instance, I would imagine that of the 20 that answered they have been doing IM for 6 months, that 18 or 19 of them are also losing money each month.
A breakdown like that will give a lot more information on whether this is profitable. One other question that would be interesting to ask is what topic they cover, and then to find out the percentage of those in the “make money online” niche that are profitable.
Really a cool study, I hope it gets to 10,000 responses or that you will build upon the 4 questions to 6 or 8 questions.
Thanks — I am actually already working on that very graph (income versus years in IM). Will post here when it is available.
A good question to add would be “Does your internet marketing income come from the make money online niche or are you focused on non-internet-marketing niches?” Something like that…
Thanks for the compliment — pass the word. 10,000 responses would be awesome.
Thanks!
Great stuff! I think the results are pretty good. 10 people making between 2000-5000, and 5 that makes between 5000-10000 in Profit.
Just have to make sure to be one of the few that are doing really well:)
Not that many people are doing email marketing tho which is surprising to me. Building email lists are my nr. 1 priority for 2012. My goal is to become an expert on building email lists on social media sites. Social media is still relatively new and has huge potential. So many businesses aren’t using FB or are using it wrong.
Keep up the good work Mark!
I’d be interested in seeing how many people are following a program and how many are just trying to find out how to do the business on their own. I know things changed for me when I bought a program and actually followed it. The program wasn’t even that good, but it did help me get started. Then, I got and actually followed another program and repeated.
What we have found is that and incredibly large percentage of the people that buy our membership site NEVER open it or finish it. I’ve heard it said, among my peers, that 97% never get past the first chapter/module/video/etc of a product they buy… I think this says a lot!
I also see people focusing on the wrong things, like the shiny and new stuff rather then the fundamentals. There are so many places that the machine of online business can break down, the wrong niche, no real sales funnel, not actually asking for the sale, constantly changing models based on the shiny and new, not understanding it’s about relationships, etc. If you are 2 years into this and not making money then you have a broken machine. I’d buy something that teaches the FUNDAMENTALS and walk through your machine step by step and find the issue. It could be the slightest of changes, which is something we find when we tweak things. We added a pop-up optin box on our front page and DOUBLED our opt-ins. Why had we not done that years ago?!
What made it work for me is CONSTANT focus on the next step (and only the next step), buying my education, and persistence.
Awesome survey!
Beginners should not get discouraged by these findings. If you are really serious about online business, it should get you motivated seeing that it is completely normal to not make $ 10k in the first month.
Same as Shawn McAfee, I’d love to see in which earning range the ‘starters’ ( < 1 yr) are!
Keep up the great work!