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 with eBay, where’s the margin?
So a friend of mine recently mentioned that he wanted to get into eBay as he heard it’s a really good way to earn money online (him along with rest of world). So at a basic level what most people on eBay are doing is buying stuff locally and then selling it nationwide with the hope of making a profit. This in itself isn’t a revolutionary concept but there are a few key things eBay does really well:
- They have the site/system already built. All you have to do is upload the details of your products and they handle the rest (all technical stuff). You don’t have to worry about building your own site and taking credit cards and all that involves.
- They provide the customers. Ok so you can advertise your eBay listing on your own site or in other places but most of the sales are going to come from people browsing eBay and finding what you have to offer. Don’t underestimate this bit because attracting customers is one of the hardest things to do online, there’s a lot of competition out there.
- Trust rating/system. If you have a new site it’s really hard to get people to trust you and even harder to get them to hand over credit card details, after all you could be anyone! EBay provides a great system for customers to view the history of a seller and what other customers thought of them. It’s a great system that allows small sellers to compete with the big retailers. I will trust a small seller with over 1000 positive reviews over a big retailer any day, they have much more to loose by providing bad service.
So on the face of it earning money with eBay should be easy right? Well not really actually, even with all these benefits the margin on selling stuff on eBay is terrible. For a start you have all these little costs that eat into your profit:
- Listing fees
- Final value fees
- Payment processing fees (PayPal/visa etc)
Don’t forget you still have to post whatever it is to the person, the whole thing seems like a massive headache to me so far. Here’s the biggest problem though, the margin you can make on most items is really low, around 5% – 10%. I know there’s lots of stories about people becoming millionaires via eBay but it seems to me the only way to do it would be sourcing a product that’s not readily available in a local market and adding a big margin. If you’re trying to compete with 100 other people selling the exact same thing you’re going to be haggling with other sellers to see who can do it £1 cheaper.
To me the eBay idea is great if you really don’t have a clue at all about the online world and you just want them to handle everything from the website to the marketing. But realise they are going to take a big chunk of whatever you earn for doing this. Also realise that they directly list all of your competitors right beside you every time someone searches for what you’re selling, eBay doesn’t care about your business on an individual basis, only the collective success of their site.
The problem for someone like me when I look at eBay is that I just see how much easier it would be to do all of that stuff myself:
- Out of the box ecommerce solution like oscommerce
- Take payment with PayPal (no need for merchant account I think?)
- Some proper marketing of your site with SEO and PPC
The last point is probably a little over simplified but it is possible to do with time and effort. Once your there though and your generating your own sales on your own products you will realise how much bigger your margins are going to be.
So that’s all I have on the eBay thing, I have a feeling my friend is probably going to just plough ahead anyway, he’s stubborn when it comes to money like other people I know 
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…
Starting an online shop to make money? Do your homework first
So I was thinking the other day just how many people I see on a daily basis starting out ecommerce sites with just the hope that they will make money (just because they are there). I suppose this attitude stems from the offline world where if you open a shop you will get a certain amount of foot traffic (and thus sales) from people who are just walking by. Thing is people just don’t stumble across your website (well not usually) as we don’t just go around typing random we addresses in with the hope that one will eventually work.
Back to the point, it’s amazing how much people will spend on the creation of a new website when it comes to design and programming compared to how little is set aside for promotion. In my opinion your promotional budget should always be a couple of times what your building costs are.
This also brings me to another very important point. If you’re hoping to be making money with this ecommerce thing for a while to come then surely you’re going to want to have this skill in house? After all SEO is a full time job do you really want to be paying money to an outside agency for the rest of your internet career? The way I see it if you are starting an online shop you have a few options when it comes to increasing your earnings with SEO.
- Go with a marketing agency. They should have a number of employees in different specialities from social media to link building, this avoids being stuck with a “jack of all trades” character. There will usually be different plans available but most people go for monthly “pay as you go” type option as its ideal for a small start-up business. The main downside that I can see is there’s no real investment going on from your own knowledge or training point of view.
- You can hire a wiz-kid SEO to work for you. Sounds simple as you could have someone working for you on a full time basis who will probably be cheaper than a marketing agency. However finding them might not be easy and they might not have as much reputation as you would like so the safety net might not be there. Also since they have to be good at everything they do need to be bit special as it takes a lot of skill (and organisation) to pull off all the aspects of net marketing.
- Learn it yourself? Sounds daunting as internet marketing is a constantly shifting landscape, do you have the time to stay up to date? If you have some IT experience then it may not be too hard to learn but others from a completely different field could struggle. Of course even if you do pay someone else to do the work it always helps to know the basics.
As you can see there’s 3 main options when it comes to increasing your sales (and hopefully money) via internet marketing but they do all have their downsides and plus points. Still internet marketing is never an overnight thing so you will probably have time to (and have to) go with all 3 methods at some point. Until next time.
Be an individual to really earn some money online
Ok so you want to learn how to make some money online but the start everything can seem pretty confusing right? Youve got a million and 1 bloggers all telling you that they have a new method that know-one has ever thought of and it can be yours for just £99, sound familiar? So i suppose the first thing you have to ask when you read these people is:
“If your making millions from this system then why do you need to sell it on the internet”
Its a good question and one that most people hawking these products wont have a serious answer for. I suppose at the same time there are enough people willing to ignore common sense and buy these ebooks or whatever it is in the hope that it could be the solution to all of their financial problems. Now i know its always good to be optimistic in life but you have to be a realist too! The most important thing to remember is that with any “system” the more people using it inevitably the less money is available for everyone. It just stands to reason as the minute a market gets saturated prices go down.
With this in mind i really don’t think there is any such thing as a “get rich quick” scheme because as far as i can see the only people who could possibly get rich are the ones running it. On the whole the people who really make it in the “make money online” niche are those who strike out on their own to earn a living. Now this doesn’t mean they have to come up with some revolutionary idea every day. Quite often the most successful money making ideas are just variations on other people’s ideas with a different spin etc. Also quite often it can just be that this individual puts alot more effort (and sometimes money) into making the process work, motivation can be huge and not just on the internet business world but everywhere.
One of biggest problems people have with Google and other search engines is that they don’t actually say how they work. For some people this is a problem as they want a nice safe system that they can follow but this is never going to be the case with SEO or even PPC, there is just too much money at stake and too much competition. Indeed even within the internet money making world people don’t share “real” information that often, after all would you give a competitor information that could ultimately lead to you making less money? I didn’t think so! So there you have it a little “reality check” for some who think they can just buy the latest ebook and get rich online in a fortnight!
