Why most websites never make money
Id love to know the stats but I’m betting that the vast majority of new websites started by amateurs online never make any money. There’s many reasons why but the end result seems to be the same for so many people, they spend lots of time/money getting the site up and running and then nothing happens for months and they cant work out why. Before giving up they usually try offline marketing methods in an attempt to get things going, like leaflet drops, business cards in supermarkets and even launch parties (my favourite).
The thing is no matter the size or function of your site unless you embrace SEO, PPC or both then your doomed to failure. The problem is though both these skills are time consuming to learn and implement, but isn’t everything? Even when you know seo it still takes plenty of time to get results so that combined with running the site could make it hard to achieve part-time, but anythings possible.
Ok so after all that negativity what do you actually have to do to make it with your site?
- You have to get out there and connect with other bloggers and websites, this is at the core of Internet marketing. A good way to get started is guest posting, this is were you write a post or article for someone else’s site and in exchange they give you a link back, sounds simple but trust me its still a lot of work. As we know incoming links help both with search engines and your overall popularity so no-matter how long it takes you’ve got to do it. If your not sure where to get started myblogguest is a free forum where you can write guest posts for other webmasters.
- You have to stand out at least a little bit because there’s a million sites out there all doing the same thing. Honestly if you want to build up return visitors you’ve got to give them a reason to come back. Ultimately you’ve got to give your audience what they want and in a clear structure they can understand. So if your an online store offer discounts the competition cant because even though you take a hit in the short term on price the exposure you gain long term is always worth it.
- Consistency is another big part of the equation, are you going to stick with this gig? Are you going to be getting new links for your site on a weekly basis. Will you be creating content for your site for the next 12 months every week to keep it fresh? Obviously the amount of work required is going to depend on the niche your in but even so the work is going to be there until you reach your goal, are you prepared for that?
So that’s my problem, I’m just a realist I suppose but better that I think than one of the get rich quick gurus. I’m always looking for legitimate ways to earn money online that actually deliver a return for the time spent. I cant imagine anything worse than spending lots of time and money on some system that I didn’t fundamentally understand, are you prepared to trust in luck? Or do you want to spend time learning a process like Internet marketing which is already proven?
Earning money part-time – practical?
On the one hand it seems like the perfect situation, make extra money with the web whilst still keeping your day job. But just how practical is it to do? Well for a start it’s by no means realistic for all types of web businesses, for example with a full online store. So I’m talking about a proper ecommerce site where you’re taking orders and shipping out products to customers. Don’t get me wrong an ecommerce store requires much less man-power than a real one but you still have all the usual headaches like dealing with customers, returns and managing stock etc. This is before you get to all the other essential activities like marketing and site development, there’s no way your going to manage this when you get home from work. Actually something like selling on eBay could be quite a chore too, anything that involves a lot of communication with people is going to require plenty of time.
I hear a lot about passive income these days but I think many people have the concept wrong. It’s not an income without work but it does mean the business doesn’t need constant attention in order to earn money, you can often put the time in when you have it which is ideal for many people. So what is the system and how much does it cost? Well I’m not selling a system for a start but in short I make money by building sites that I then sell advertising on, the great thing about this concept is I’m not responsible to anyone. How much time you want/need to put in is really up to you, but ultimately only you will be responsible for your success.
There are some other great little businesses that earn money with the net but if you’re looking to start part-time then:
- You can’t be spending too much time dealing/negotiating with people.
- Shouldn’t need you to check in every day, you want to only spend time when you have it.
- Not much investment (I’m assuming if you’re willing to do 2 jobs you’re not rich!)
- You want to focus on learning one or two main skills, you don’t have the time to learn everything.
The great thing is that building sites really does tick all of the boxes above and its getting very accessible for non-technical people to get started. But since I’m not trying to sell some overpriced ebook or pyramid scheme there’s no need to promise a magic formula that will do the work for you. It’s still a complex and time consuming business to learn, but if it was easy wouldn’t everyone be doing it?
On a slightly un-related note check out the video by Jim Rohn above, only just discovered his stuff lately but he does have some genuinely good points (not just the Anthony Robbins hype). Until next time.
Are you wasting time on the latest scheme?
I was reading an article in the times (paywall) at the weekend about how more people are trying to work for themselves at home in the downturn. It was interesting as they talked about a number of income opportunities and people’s experiences with them. One guy they talked to was a kleeneze agent which if you’re not familiar is door to door selling with those catalogues. The way it works is they sign up for a kleeneze pack which gets them all these catalogues and they’ve got to drive round to 100s (maybe 1000s) of homes dropping them off. Then they’ve got to go back a week later and pick them all up (hopefully with some orders). So this guy was an unemployed graduate (so had some brains) but after 3 months he had only made about £300, plus he had to take his costs for petrol out of that! Interesting forum thread here too.
So here’s the main problem I have with this kind or direct selling, you’re trying to sell people stuff that they’ve never asked for and people are naturally resistant to that. I suppose people feel if something needs that much “selling” to make money then it probably isn’t a very good product. You don’t see Microsoft or Apple calling people up and asking them to buy stuff. Maybe what annoyed me more about the article was they didn’t feature any internet businesses on there, it was the traditional work from home stuff. To me that’s weird as more people than ever are asking me how they can make money using the net, it’s become a daily question in my emails.
Another worrying factor about this “scheme” is that most of the money seems to be earned from singing up other people under you. Because you get a percentage of what that person earns you can in theory make much more money signing up other sellers than distributing the catalogues. Indeed when you see claims of people earning thousands of pounds in the sales copy it’s more than likely because they signed up 1000s of other people and not from distributing catalogues. Now the only question is if all you have is lots of people signing up other distributors and not selling anything isn’t that just a pyramid scheme?
On the one hand I do kind of feel sorry for these people, after all there getting off the sofa and trying to do something with them-selves. But you can’t really expect some carbon copy scheme they sell to 1000s of other people to make you rich, it doesn’t stand up to reason. Maybe it appeals because they claim all you have to do is put in the work, you don’t need to do any thinking for yourself, just keep paying for catalogues and signing people up and it’ll work out. The people that do make money with it though learnt one very important thing though:
“Scale”
They figured out a way to signup lots of other “sellers” cheaply, essentially they worked out how to scale better than everyone else who was just signing up their friends. But here’s the thing, it’s much easier to scale online than it is in the real world. Going from 100 visitors a day to 1000 doesn’t cost you anymore in terms of running the site but could result in £1000s more.
I suppose in some ways this system is no different than the get rich online eBooks you see plastered all over the web, though probably the eBook will cost less in terms of time and money. I.E the guy in the article spent 3 months fulltime on this for essentially nothing. There’s no guarantees but if he spent that same time online learning the basics of internet marketing he would at least have some useful knowledge (that could be turned into money later). I admit it’s not an easy industry to get into with a million systems selling you a way to make money online that’s never been seen before. Still the knowledge is out there if you’re prepared to invest some time in finding it. That brings me back to one of my favourite words:
“Investment”
You see despite all these claims of working for yourself with a company like kleeneze your still working for them because you rely on them paying you and keeping the business model going. What happens if they go bust? This kind of money earning scheme is not an investment in the same way as building your own websites and experience is. You see for me I don’t just have one source of revenue online, I work with many different companies so if one fails to pay or does something I don’t like then its cya!
Investment in yourself can be scary though, what if it doesn’t work out? Well that can happen with anything, just look at the kleeneze guy, but he didn’t make an investment, he picked the simple option and saw pound signs. If I could say one thing though about where to invest yourself it would be to be able to solve a need or problem that people have, the bigger the problem the more money you can earn. You see these people receiving one of your 1000s of catalogues didn’t have a specific problem, you were just hoping to win with volume. Do you know how much easier it is to sell to people who come to you with a problem? There’s not a lot of selling involved.
So there it was, another Tuesday and another rant lol. I don’t mean to be too negative but I feel like in order to explain what I do I have to counteract the millions of other scams out there. There are lots of legit business opportunities online though and over time I’m going to be bringing some of them here to the blog. But don’t expect them to be plug and play systems though, it always requires thought, preparation and hard work, they don’t say that in the get rich quick ads.
Paid surveys and competitions won’t make you rich
I remember reading years ago about a family that was constantly entering competitions (1000s) working on the theory that they would eventually win something and they did. What they didn’t mention though is the amount of time they had to spend filling out all these forms and signing up for offers. In fact if you added up all the time they spent vs winnings it came out at the minimum wage! Also bear in mind that many competitions require you to buy something or at a minimum give away some personal information, there are very few truly free competitions.
Another craze going around at the moment is the whole paid surveys thing. Now it’s true that there is a big market for statistical information especially by large companies who have to base products and services around the way we think. But the price they actually pay per survey is often ridiculously low ie Scambusters recently blogged how it worked out around £0.20 an hour. Also these surveys can be really detailed and require a lot of personal information, I don’t want to go all tinfoil hat but do you really want to be throwing your life history around the net for under 50p an hour? At a minimum don’t be surprised if you get a huge increase in junk mail to your supplied address.
This week I was also reading on a popular “Money” blog about a system to beat the roulette wheel at online casinos called the Martingale system and if anything it did give me a laugh. Don’t you think if there was a way to beat the casino everyone would be doing it? Actually some people have beaten the casino before with things like card counting but that method is scientifically proven while Martingale has lost a lot of people their life savings.
So far this post has been pretty negative and maybe you’re wondering if there are any legitimate ways to make a living online? The key is the word “Earn” because to me if all you’re prepared to do is follow some £99 eBook then you don’t really deserve to make it. All the people I know who have been successful online have brought their own ideas to the table even if it is someone else’s system they are following.
A big part of it may be desperation as with money getting tight many people are looking for a way to make money on the net from home but that desperation often leads to wishful thinking. But some people are definitely getting rich though, do you realise that all of those bloggers and webmasters who send you to survey and competition sites are getting paid a fortune for doing so? You can get angry at the middlemen or you can analyse what they are doing and find the real profit for yourself. Remember for the people pushing these get rich schemes it’s not a scam to them, because they really are getting rich from it!
So what am I doing to increase my earnings? Well there’s a limit to what I can talk about here for one as I have mentioned before the more people in any given market the less money there is. But I will say that I’m always working on more than one method at a time, partly due to my short attention span and my need to keep myself entertained. I do hope to give away some solid money making advice here but I can promise it will always be based on reality and not the latest gimmick. Until next time.
What the “gurus” aren’t telling you about making money
So I feel a rant coming on. I only have myself to blame though as for some reason I can’t stop reading 100s of different SEO blogs, it comes with the territory of being interested in something I suppose. Don’t get me wrong there’s lots of “interesting” content out there when it comes to internet marketing but there’s so much fluff too that you gotta wade through html for days before you find that nugget of useful info.
So anyway I was reading this post today at seo-theory.com where Michael essentially says people are way too hyped up about link-building. I don’t necessarily disagree with this to a point especially when it comes to some of the useless link-building techniques I see around the net today. However he then drops the bomb that he only spends around 10% – 15% of his time link building at also that uber googlar Matt Cuts says links are only 1% of the algorithm. I mean seriously, go spend 10-15% of your time building links for “car insurance” with the rest on your “site architecture” and get back to me. I probably won’t see you in the top 1000.
This is by no means the first time I’ve seen a post like this on a SEO blog but it’s still weird every time I read this stuff. The only explanation I can come up with is people are trying to setup pre-made excuses for clients about the more difficult aspects of SEO.
“Link building is very 2005”
Still as I’ve said before there can only be one guy at No1 making money on every search and for the rest there’s a million excuses. When it comes down to it there’s really only one thing that matters and that’s if you’re making money from your site or not, everything else is just technical nonsense. Part of the problem of course is the inherent nature of internet marketing when it comes to making a living as few people really get the concept of earning money online and how much work it actually takes to get off the ground. Indeed the delay search engines impose on new sites is probably one of the most off putting things for new people that most don’t make it past the first month.
People often ask me what the keys to a successful website are and it’s really one of those impossible questions to answer just because every site and more importantly every market is different. For instance if you are an online store selling physical goods your margins are very different than someone setting up a blog and selling advertising to make money. The problem is that even though people are developing wildly different sites “Gurus” are handing out this universal advice as a one size fits all solution. I’m hoping not to get into any of that rubbish here on the blog and will try to be as specific as possible (even when I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about sometimes!).
This brings me on to another point with the Internet marketing Gurus, all the terrible products and books they sell. Don’t get me wrong not all the money making ideas they “sell” are scams but I’d say about 95% are. They are quite easy to spot though, if they promise the world within 24hours of purchase then you know what to expect and only have yourself to blame. With that being said though I have bought 2 very good IM products this year which have saved/made me quite a bit of money, however I did have to waste a lot of cash on other useless stuff before I found them. Now I’m not actually going to say what they are here, first because I don’t promote other peoples products here (yet) and second because unless you understand the basic principles website promotion they really aren’t going to work for you anyway. It’s probably one of the biggest problems with the make money on the web industry, they are selling these advanced programs to newbie’s because all the advanced people have already bought it (there’s not that many advanced people). I will say though its v exciting when you finally find a program/system that allows you to save days or even weeks of work. Notice how I define the value as saved time and not direct money because at the heart of this thing is work and the time to do it. The work will always be required but the processes can be streamlined, improved and sometimes even outsourced.
So the question remains, how do you know if the latest money making scheme you are reading about actually works? Well you don’t but for a start it should never be a scheme and it should always be founded on principles that you do understand. For instance if you do understand how article marketing works in relation to your website promotion then a tool that helps you speed that up a few hundred percent is obviously going to in-directly increase your income. However if the “system” is another mysterious promise and only talks about the money you can make how likely is it to be legit?
So anyway this post started out as a rant about one guys “seo theory” and ended up in the more general area of internet gurus, are they the same people? The thing is being able to sort the good information from the bad is the fundamental principle of learning in general and not just this internet business stuff. If I had to give advice to someone just starting out in the online world I would say start small with different techniques and see what works. Also you need to understand the general principles of what’s happening in any marketing situation in order to suss out whether a new opportunity is the real deal or not. Blind faith is only going to get you so far my friends.
So that rant lasted a bit longer than I expected but still it’s nice to let of some steam in html form. Until next time…
