I’ve read it a million times in overpriced eBooks, Special Reports and across a plethora of webmaster and online business forums, “build a site around a topic you know and love then the money will follow”.
I call that the Field of Dreams Scam. Field of Dreams because it plays so closely on the supernatural whispering of “if you build it they will come”–and a scam because it’s the biggest load of garbage anyone can sell or tell you. And sell it to you they will, because it sounds easy, it sounds like something anyone can “just do”, and it sells well with desperate people who need extra money just to pay their bills, or who’ve been trying and failing for a while online already.
Don’t get me wrong, there are times when someone can build a profitable site around some topic that they love, but only when there is a perfect confluence of their passions with a profitable market that form a sound strategy for taking the hobby to business level.
But that’s rare. More often than not people who build from passion are destined to crash and burn. There’s a reason that hobbies exist, because they usually can’t–and shouldn’t–be turned into commercial ventures.
Sure you can make a couple dollars here and there with any web site on any topic by having AdSense or affiliate banners on your pages. Eventually they’ll get a few clicks now and then. But that isn’t a business model to build on. You probably won’t ever be able to pay your mortgage or feed your family from it.
However, while I think it’s immoral BS to tell people to “build a site about something they love” as a business model, I do believe people can love what they do.
That’s my approach. I love the process of finding a good market, researching the products and people in that market and then building a site or network of sites to connect those people with the products.
What the market (or topic) is doesn’t matter to me so much as the actual process. And it isn’t even about aiming for the most profitable markets either. I just get my enjoyment from the process of going from abstract idea to money earning web property. So I love what I do, but I don’t confuse that with the notion that I could do it around any topic that I loved.
I know this posting may be a little more cynical than I normally write here, and my intentions aren’t to discourage anyone from trying to earn a little money online–or even from starting a full business plan if that’s your goal.
I just think there’s an over-abundance of crap being spread around and sold to desperate people–because they’re easily taken advantage of–and I wanted to point out that if it sounds too easy, or too good to be true…it’s probably garbage so don’t waste your money.
I’ve bought and read well over a hundred eBooks and Reports about making money online over the years, and with very few exceptions none of them were worth my time (let alone the money I spent on them). There’s usually a small nugget here and there of good information in them, but it’s almost never enough to justify the time or money spent on them.
Making money online takes honest work, just like making money in the real world does. It isn’t rocket science, there are no “hidden secrets the Guru’s don’t want you to know” and there aren’t any “fool-proof systems of success”.
Save your money and your time. If you want to earn money from AdSense or other similar advertising that pays publishers for clicks rather than commissions on sales then learn from Google themselves. They have a fantastic (and free) knowledge base for publishers that covers all you need. Next spend a little time learning about traffic and search engine indexing so you can get visitors, then pick a popular topic and build a site around it. Create tons of pages of content, grow your traffic. Create more content pages. Keep growing your traffic… keep repeating.
Personally I think affiliate marketing is a better choice to trying to build a business around paid for clicks advertising networks, but the paid for clicks model is easier and faster to start earning a little money with.
If you want to make money online with affiliate marketing just spend a few days learning the basics of identifying a good market, researching your market, writing sales copy, web site and traffic building then take action.
The information you need is everywhere. On blogs, in forums and even at various free eZines. Heck, even as random as my postings on this blog can be I know for a fact that 2 people have taken ideas they found here and created profitable web sites from them.
The “secret” isn’t in what you learn… it’s in what you do with what you learn. If you’ve been researching online for a while now, reading eBooks and reports whenever you can find them… then odds are the people making money don’t know anything that you don’t already, they’re just applying what they know while you’re still looking for answers that aren’t there for questions that don’t matter.
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