Do you have to be unique to make it online?
Here’s a concept I’ve been thinking a lot about lately and that’s how unique or new does your business have to be to make it online? On the one hand you have the really big successes like Million dollar homepage which was a unique idea marketed perfectly, it was even on the news where I live! The problem with many great web ideas is that they don’t have the marketing strategy behind them to turn them into money spinners. I remember the guy on million dollar homepage generated lots of publicity at the start by contacting radio stations and newspapers about his site, he then sold some of the space at the beginning to family and friends. People often underestimate the value of hype because that site would never have gotten off the ground with it.
In some ways it does depend exactly what idea you’re trying to get off the ground because not every site is competing in the same type of market. However the principle of getting what you’re doing out to influential people holds firm no matter what your site is about. To me the basics are:
- Contact other bloggers, don’t just ask for a link but explain what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.
- Forums are a great way to get in touch with real people. But not just any forum, try to find one which is related to your industry, you need people who are engaged.
- Twitter/Facebook/Youtube have changed the game in terms of how fast you can become popular. It’s now possible to reach millions of people in a matter of hours, but only if you have viral content (that’s a big if).
You see whether you’re the exec at coca-cola or your some local mechanic trying to rank your site in your home city, the principles are the same, it’s just the scale that changes. At the heart of this game web promotion is a popularity contest and there’s a million ways to become popular (just like the real world).
The reason I’m pointing all this out is that so many people do have great and unique ideas for websites and ways to earn from them. But unless you have your marketing/seo/ppc strategy 100% then you’re going to fail. The problem still remains that even in 2011 internet marketing is the afterthought post web-design. Honestly id rather spend ¼ of the budget creating the website and the rest promotion, at least that way I have a real chance of making money.
So that’s it for this post, what crazy methods do you have for promoting your idea?
Why do some websites fail while others are winning!
Please excuse the Charlie Sheen reference, I know were all “winning” in our own way but how do you win when it comes to creating a successful website? If two people are sites in the exact same market what determines which makes money and which doesn’t? It can’t be luck all the time.
1. Picking the right market. This is essential, if you’re in a super competitive industry then you better be there for the long haul because in the online world nothing happens that quick, especially if you’re trying to build a brand. Remember it’s better to be number no1 in a niche than No 83 in a multinational dog-fight. Maybe it’s an ego thing but I keep seeing people trying to compete with million pound companies with 1% of the resources and quality, it’s not smart thinking.
2. Dedication. It’s easy to give up on anything when results are distant but you have to accept that any legitimate business opportunity weather its earning money online or opening a shop on a high street it takes time. I suppose people think that because it’s the internet there should be a way to make money online instantly. The truth is reputation and trust are built online the same way as offline, it takes time.
3. Spending time/money on the wrong things. This usually happening when people start their first website and many hours are accrued just by tweaking that top banner image 10 pixels to the left. No site is perfect and the thing is if you have no traffic at the start it really doesn’t matter if the new shade of lilac goes with the grey menu or not. It’s important to have a professional looking design but don’t go nuts with it, in the scheme of things its way down the to-do list.
4. Finding a path to cash. It is essential you have at least some idea how the site is going to earn money before you start. Yes I know Google,Twitter,Facebook didn’t know either (twitter still doesn’t make money) it’s not the same thing. If you’re building the site to earn a living and not just as a hobby then it’s an investment and it needs to make a return at some point. There are lots of revenue streams from advertising to ecommerce that can generate big revenues but only if implemented correctly, monetisation isn’t one of those things that works out itself.
5. Marketing strategy. The reason most people leave this out is because internet marketing is much more of a technical exercise than in the offline world. You really need a plan out where your visitors are going to be coming from and how you’re going to work with that medium. If its facebook then you better understand viral media and social marking. If it’s Google then you better have a strong grip on SEO and PPC. And the thing is if you don’t understand them then you better have the money to pay someone who does otherwise your going no-where my friend.
So I didn’t include luck on the list even though as we know it’s always a factor in everything we do. However I believe very much in volume and quantity when it comes to success online, do enough for long enough and something’s gonna work (not very technical I know). There’s more to a successful web business than this and certainly true if you want to earn real money on a consistent basis but if I were starting out I would concentrate on those 5 points and as Mike Tyson said, “Refuse to lose”!
Eternal question: How to make money fast
Ok so I was thinking about this today. If I was starting from no-where and I had to learn how to make money fast with the internet what would I do? It’s one of those weird hypothetical questions because what exactly are the rules of the game? If you’re saying that I have none of the knowledge or resources that I have now to help me then it changes the situation quite a lot. But anyway technicalities aside I wanted to look into the question as I think it’s one every new person to the internet business world is asking. One thing I do want to clarify is how much money we are talking about and what kind of timeframes are involved. There’s so many get rich quick scams on the net these days that promise millions overnight with no work that I want to be realistic with people over what can be achieved. So what I’m going to look at is how easy would it be for a completely new person to the industry to make £500 extra a month part-time (I’m going to assume most of you still have day jobs).
- Writing content. I have actually talked about this one on the blog before and I really do see it as a legit source of income that you can just get started straight away with. The thing about writing content though is that you don’t really get paid all that much in the beginning. This is because there’s a big price range when it comes to quality of content as people are using content for all types of purposes. Most of the prices are in US cents and I’ve seen quotes from 1c per word all the way up to 3c. There was a post by a guy over at smartpassiveincome.com where he talks about how he started his online business just by writing guest posts for other bloggers. Seems like he was actually getting quite good money but I think the key to his success was getting developing a regular deal direct with bloggers who were looking for quality content. So there were no middle men and he was writing quality content for around 3c a word. He says he was only doing about 2-3 hours a day yet was making over £600 a month which is very impressive. So it does seem worth looking into but you’re going to have to wait for a while till the bigger pay cheques start to come in.
- Building websites. So as you can all guess this is my favourite method for making money because it’s the one I’ve spent most of my internet career on. It’s a method with solid foundations because as long as there’s an internet there are going to be people surfing around trying to buy things and if you can attract those people (even if it’s a small number) there is money to be made. There’s no doubt that this technique is much more technical than the last of just writing content for money however the great thing is that a website can be making you money while you sleep were a labour intensive things like content creation can feel more like a 9-5 job. One major problem with the website thing though is the time it can take to get results. Since Google and other search engines will be one of your main sources of customers you need to realise it can take a few months before you get any traction there. Still the webmasters who have mastered the overall skill are often able to generate money quickly.
- So this method is very unusual and it’s something I only recently learned about myself. The good thing though is it seems like a very fast way to make some extra cash, indeed some of the figures I’ve seen says it’s possible to make around £500 in a week or two with it. I first read about the idea at theregister which is an IT news site. They don’t usually have stories about making money through the internet but this “gambling for free” idea caught my eye. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not advocating gambling as a way to earn money as I hardly ever do it myself. I don’t even play the lottery because I think it’s a system to keep people lazy and stupid. Anyway you may or may not know that many of the online betting sites give away cash bonuses for new players or so called “free bets”. They can do this because of the huge potential value of a new customer on these betting sites. The “free bet” can be anywhere from £10 to £100 and it’s added to your account as soon as you sign up. However the thing is you usually can’t use it until you deposit and equal amount of your own money via credit card and then you have to bet the whole amount (and hopefully win) in order to claim it. Ok so no secrets so far however there are also lots of sites that let you bet on a team to lose like Betfair etc and this means you could bet against yourself ie the free bet on the other site. So normally when you bet against yourself both bets cancel themselves out however when some of the money is free (ie 50% of one bet) then you are guaranteed a return. Now the return probably isn’t going to be huge as you can expect anywhere between 60% and 70% profit. So on a £200 bet 50% of which is free you could maybe make between £10 and £30 profit depending on fees and other conditions. That amount of profit may not seem like a lot however when you consider the sheer number of betting sites that are doing introductory offers its clear you can make some good money very quickly. The original article here probably explains this better than I have done but hopefully I’ve got across the basics.
I actually have a few more ideas for making some quick cash but I don’t want to confuse people with more ideas than they need as the internet is often confusing enough. It’s also worth noting that if something’s too good to be true it probably so all the methods detailed above require a reasonable amount of work in order to earn a return. Even with the last “gambling” idea you have to keep detailed track of what you’re doing and spend time signing up to all these sites and adding your details, nothings easy lol. Still hopefully it will give you guys some inspiration on how to make money fast with the internet.