Be Your Own Boss

I get a few e-mails every day asking me why I write “for free” or if I make money on my various websites. The answer is usually pretty basic: I don’t really write for free, and the money I make writing is used to fund others, but could turn into a viable income if I wanted to spend the time focusing on that portion.

The new big business for everyone seems to be making money online, somehow. I believe eBay is the best way to make money on the Internet from your home, but it requires real work — building up a market of items to sell and then staying on course. If you get lazy, you’ll end up with negative feedback and no real way of getting ahead. The most successful sellers on eBay spend more time dealing with software than you’d spend in a regular 9-5 job. A good friend of mine makes a good 6 figures annually, but he also spends a good 60 hours a week coding, packing, selling and dealing with irate buyers. The money is good but he never gets to see his family or friends.

Making your own website (or blog) is a great way to get started in finding an income online, but it isn’t easy. Income streams from writing online are directly tied to how many readers you have and what you’re writing about, and the competition is fierce. I know many people who have tried to write and gave up after just 2-3 weeks. For most people, your income in the first year might not even hit a few hundred dollars.

That’s the rub, actually. There ARE a rare few people who made money overnight — yet the ones who did are not being honest with you. The Million Dollar Homepage kid spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on buying promotion for his site, and this knowledge didn’t come to light until AFTER he had collected his million bucks. Even successful “home grown” websites such as slashdot didn’t really start making money until they were corporate-sponsored or even bought out — and it took years to get there. When they were new sites, the Internet was still relatively new so their competition was minimal if there was any. Today there is more competition than you’d believe.

If you’re going to try to make money online, I’d stay away from the various “make money online” schemes that you’ll come across on your daily readings. Go ahead and find some that you can read up on — every one of those sites is generally not a good way to make anyone money except for the person who owns the site and charges you for their guide. I found the ultimate rules for making money on the web and I’ll share them with you.

The ultimate rules for making money through the internet are:

1. It takes time. Just like a “real” business, expect to invest 18-36 months of your life, full time, in building your site, no matter the subject.

2. Others will get ahead of you because of using fraudulent “black hat” techniques to get more visitors. The biggest internet advertising firms are fighting these black hat fraudsters, so over time they may make a lot of money, but in the long run they’ll get nothing and be banned from all the systems.

3. It takes money. The best way to generate traffic is to go out and buy advertising for yourself — this way others who run similar sites to yours may end up displaying your advertising, bringing users back to you. This means more traffic, which might mean more money.

4. It takes focus. If you want to run a website dealing with diamond studded dog collars, you want to find information that is unique but you want to make sure you update the site consistently. If you only update it once a month, you’ll see your visitors dropping and the search engines ignoring you.

5. It takes patience. I don’t mean time here, I mean real patience. I’ve helped a few people start their websites, and they’ve seen huge peaks early on — great income streams within just a month or two. Yet they quickly fell back to earning just pennies an hour and they were frustrated so they stopped publishing. The Internet is no different than the retail market — there are up weeks and there are down weeks. The week before Christmas is great for websites focused on presents, the week after Christmas is great for websites focused on deals and values. The month after Christmas is usually bad for product sites but great for diet sites.

6. It takes intelligence. If you can’t spell and don’t have a concept of proper grammar, you’ll look like an idiot. Take some classes or read some books and get a basic idea of how to write. There are dozens if not hundreds of books at your local library or bookstore.

7. It takes confidence. If you write from a “poor me” perspective, people will get sick of you quickly. You not only have to believe in your topic, you also have to believe in yourself. Readers can quickly see if you’re a fraud or if you’re real, and if you’re there for the long run or just a quick buck. That leads to the final rule:

8. It takes a desire to ignore the income. Write because you truly like the subject you’re writing about. Write because you’re ready to invest in your future. Don’t write to make money. I see all over the Internet links on buying good keywords to write about — these are mostly fakes. I also see people asking questions on what is the best topic to write about — the answers don’t mean anything. Write about what you love. If you’re one of the best of the billions of people out there, you’ll do great. If you’re not into the subject, you’ll be out in weeks.

Through all the rules, you have to understand one thing — if you plan on making money, it is now a business. If it is a business, ALL these rules are valid and MUST be followed. For those not interested in making money in writing online, though, these rules still hold true to anything you want to do.

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