Making money online - These three words grouped together form a phrase powerful enough to send lightening bolts straight down the main pipeline of the blogosphere. It is true. You mention the phrase make money online and you’ll create dreams and give hope the the most poverty-stricken and put chills down the backs of the super powerful and wealthy.
It is a term that is commonly associated with free ride, instant income, easy money, infinite wealth and quit your day job. Somehow people have removed hard work, self motivation, personal sacrifice and similar associations from the bone chilling and dream inspiring phrase. Why is that?
People spend countless hours, days, weeks, months and years in search for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It was just recently when I began to see a brighter light. This newly found light was more of a realization of the fact that people who have been searching long and hard for that pot of gold actually have the pot directly in front of them.
Tonight was an unusual night for me. Not so much that my routine was different, but more so for the level of conversation I had among four different people. I spoke with a certified flight instructor, an engineer for Texas Instruments, a project manager for I believe a software development company and a post production television show editor based out of L.A.
These people have two things in common. One they all have very good to high profile jobs. Secondly, they all share a common interest in the business of making money online. To me, this is the pot of gold that is directly in front of them and this is one of quite a few ways that people can make money online.
These are very interesting people. While making money online for these folks might or might not be a necessity, it is still a personal challenge for them. So how do you do it? How do you make money online?
And in answering this question, I’d like to get to know you better? What kind of job do you do? What are the things that take place in your day to day life? The above mentioned engineer for Texas Instruments is across seas right now in Singapore. To me, learning more about that guy is interesting. Having pictures of the trip and events that took place during the events is interesting.
What about the certified flight instructor? Man… that just reeks money on the Internet. If cards were played correctly this individual could host and harbor one of the greatest community driven flight instructor group writing projects online. I vision a site packed full of brilliant and high quality photos, amazing online videos and sellable flight instruction materials such as eBooks, study guides and video tutorials.
So the key lesson I want to you learn in this article is this: Consider what you do for a living, consider who you are as a person and what things that you do in your day to day life that makes you interesting and appealing. Some may say, “well I am just a stay at home mom, what is interesting about that?” My response: Everything! How do you do that? What are your thoughts when you take your kids to the doctor and the doc tries to sell you on giving your kid some kind of funky and newly FDA approved injection? How do you find deals on clothes with a limited budget? What was your opinion and review of the store you shopped at? How would you rate your level of customer satisfaction? Why do you take the kids to Subway instead of McDonalds? Why do you prefer signing your kids up for baseball and not soccer or football? Etc….
For stay at home parents, there is money growing on trees right in your backyard, at your local stores, at your doctor’s office and in your minivan on the way to soccer practice. People want to get to know you, people want advice, people want to cling to others for suggestions and trust.
For career working individuals, your job is very interesting. Taking pictures and talking about the things you do in your day to day business operations are appealing to others. From there you can position yourself into level to where you can sell you own divisions of products and services that you’d do for your own business.
In any and all cases, building up your readership is very important. That is the ultimate way to make money. Building the number of people that visit your blog on a day to day basis is powerful and can lead to wonderful things such as private ad sales and product and service reviews. People will pay good money to have their information broadcasted on sites that cater to thousands of people.
And to be honest… just being yourself and being who you are and talking to people about your day to day stuff very well might get you there. Don’t forget about marketing and promoting. You need to spend just as much time if not more towards marketing your blog.
Your blog address needs to be known. Tell everyone about it, friends and family, write it on the wall of a public bathroom. Spray paint the URL on your roof for Google Earth to capture it. LOL… marketing is everything and everything is marketing.
The Amazing, Compelling and Thrilling Challenge of Making Money Online is all about being yourself and representing things that interest you with an intense love and passion coupled with equal if not more drive and energy towards mass promotion and marketing.
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Date/Time: 3-20-2008 14:06:21 Comment #12645
Garry, another insightful post. Somehow you are yourself and you talk about what on other blogs seems faceless, making money!
Thanks again. I am struggling that identity crises right now. Who am I in the blogosphere. My random blog is stuck in a rut and I need to niche.
I used to be a Graphic Designer but got bored with the industry! Do I want to talk about design anymore? I don’t know.
I love animals and these posts get most attention but mys question is…. how do I make money from them?
My recipes seem to get a little attention too so was thinking about writing a 10-20 free recip-ebook. Is this the kind of idea you would suggest?
Date/Time: 3-20-2008 16:20:48 Comment #12652
Gary, this was an excellent article that’s both thought provoking and inspiring. It’s gotten me back to thinking about my place in the blogosphere. Thanks.
Date/Time: 3-20-2008 16:59:22 Comment #12657
Money can be made online so many ways… I did the 100 blogs thing and I still have them and post to them as needed… but to me, the golden nugget is having a community driven powerhouse web site that provides something special to users and makes people say “Wow”. I think that if you have an interesting life, that is an angle that you can play off. Many people including myself don’t have very interesting lives! LOL!!!!
The next step is to have a site that talks about something that interests you as well as a mass amount of people. The Airplane Blog would be an example of that. Who doesn’t like airplanes?
Date/Time: 3-20-2008 17:05:23 Comment #12659
It sounds simple Garry but is it really?
Stay at home parents… just blog about everyday things - how does that get people to your blog and in turn clicking the ads? Should it be more specialised say like info just about in your area? Of course then you have a smaller market as well?
Sounds like you mean just make blog like what blogs originally were for - an online diary - but do people want to read that and can it make money?
Date/Time: 3-20-2008 17:14:29 Comment #12660
Perhaps you don’t understand. Let’s look at this from another angle.
If you have a blog, and you’re really popular and everyone just loves you, etc… and your blog is a blog that talks about shopping and how much you just love to spend money on clothes.
Your blog has posts that includes pictures and videos of all these trendy and stylish clothes that you purchase on a regular basis and over the course of around 12 to 24 months you have managed to attract quite a large amount of readers, don’t think for a minute that a nationwide clothes department store wouldn’t do business with you in promoting their products. Don’t think for a minute that a desperate eBay seller wouldn’t throw you a few hundred bucks to cover a blog post.
The point I am making is this: Get out of this 2D realm of blogging for money. Money can be made by having a regular blog, a blog commonly found in the late 90’s early 2000’s.
Am I flipping? No… I think Niche blogs do well too? But the leading problem with niche blogs is the fact that authors struggle to put compelling content together.
When you write from the cuff and do things that come natural, this has more a buzz and reaction than writing a blog post about lawn chairs and patio furniture. I’d rather read a blog about some chick who rides go karts and frequently posts a bunch of online videos and FlickR pics. Consequently that same go kart girl could easily land a sponsorship or advertisement contracts from some off the wall go kart manufacture.
Are you with me now??
Date/Time: 3-20-2008 17:20:33 Comment #12661
Great post Garry.
I should get my wife to read this and maybe she’ll get motivated to start doing something with her time.
Thanks.
Date/Time: 3-20-2008 17:43:27 Comment #12664
Ouch!!!!
Date/Time: 3-21-2008 09:31:27 Comment #12683
Hello Garry,
thanks for the motivational post.
Being ourselves is definitely the most simple thing to do, and if we can work out the way of making money by just storytelling our lives to the audience it would be a “dream comes true”.
But, at the end, don’t you think that you should try to sell something through the website? I mean: telling stories is ok, but also we need to convince ppl to buy some products (hosting, ebooks, ecc) and by yr opinion which is the right balance between being personal and being commercial?
Don’t you think that writing a very deep and motivational blog, but selling affiliate links on almost every article, could disturb some of the ppl?
Regards from Italy - Nicola
Date/Time: 6-3-2008 01:55:13 Comment #14911
I was just telling someone this, you have to be yourself. That’s where it’s at, you’d be surprised to see who has interest in you.
Date/Time: 8-17-2008 15:29:25 Comment #18520
Thanks for your article, Now there is more reason to comment than ever before! This is a great fir for our project!