Having a website means having content.  And unless you pay somebody to write it, you are going to do a lot of writing.  So it better be about something you want to write about.

This is the advise you will always hear.  Choose to create a website about something that you enjoy – something that you can write endlessly about.  It is good advise.  Nothing will kill a website like an owner who does not want to update it.  Who wakes up in the morning and thinks, “Oh God, what am I going to write about today.”

The problem is that what you like to write about might not necessarily be something that people want to read about.  A website is a partnership between the writer and the reader.  The writer agrees to write and the reader agrees to read.  If either partner does not fulfill their side of the bargain the website will fail.

You Love Writing About Gerbils

You want to start a website about gerbil care.  Your pet, which you lovingly call Tooku, is the best friend you ever had.   He listens when you complain about the world, he watches TV with you, he even lets you know with a cute squeak that it is around supper time.

You have been with Tooku for many years.  In that time you have learned a lot.  What he likes to eat, his favorite toy, how to keep his cage nice and clean.

Your going to write a website about proper gerbil care.

The website will be called “Taking Care of Tooku – Your Guide to Taking Care of Gerbils”.  It will be a great looking site.  Lots of pictures, tutorials, stories and even a video of Tooku eating a whole carrot in just under 6 hours.  There will be lots of content – you love writing about Tooku and how to take care of him.

So far, it looks like you have everything you need for a successful site.  Your love of the topic, and lots of content.

Problem 1 – Nobody Cares

But there is a problem.  Does anybody want to read about gerbil care?  My gut instinct tells me no.  But there is a way to find out.  Go to to Google’s keyword search tool and type in “gerbil care”.  What you will discover is that for the last month the words “gerbil care” have been searched for only 2,400 times.  That sounds like a lot.  But it is not.  In a whole month only 2,400 people care enough about gerbils to look them up on the Internet.  Compare that with the number of Internet users who care about carpet care – 33,100.  People on the Internet care about carpets 15 times more then they do about gerbils. 

Problem 2 – If They Care, It Will Be Only Once.

I cannot imagine somebody spending their Sunday morning on your site reading about gerbil care.  You could be the most entertaining writer and have the best advise.  But nobody, besides your mother who loves you, will want to spend too much time reading about gerbils. The few visitors that do find your site will just want to quickly find out if it is OK to feed their gerbil left over spinach.  They will not forward your site to all their friends, they will not make it their homepage.  They will quickly get the info and leave.  Completely ignoring your story about how you took Tooku to Disneyland.

Problem 3 – They Might Care, But Not Enough To Spend Any Money

People who do searches for gerbil care are not going to buy anything.  Your visitor is probably a six year old boy wondering why his gerbil has been sleeping for 4 days straight.  He is not going to click on the ad for ‘One size fits all gerbil boots’.  Nor will someone purchase your 156 page e-book ‘What to do when your gerbil is too fat to fit in the hamster wheel?’

Also consider that according to the Google Keyword tool the advertiser competition for the word gerbil care is low.  So if someone does click on the ad then you will get 2 cents.  Best case scenario:  everybody who searches for ‘gerbil care’ finds your site and clicks an ad.  You make  2400 * .02 = $48 that month.

It is Nothing Against Tooku

He is a great gerbil.  A real pal. He has taught you lots and you love to write about him.  But that is only half of it.  Your visitors need to care, but they don’t.  Your visitors need to spend, but they won’t. 

In case your wondering - no, I have nothing against gerbils.  I am just arguing that if you want a successful website you need to write about something that people want to read about.  For example, “Pest Control” which has 1,000,000 searches a month.

What YOU Should Do

Before you begin creating your website you need to know who will be visiting it.  Knowing your audience enables you to build the website to suit their specific needs and tastes.  What writing style should you use?  Should you have videos, pictures, flash movies?  The only way to know the answers to these questions is to know who will be visiting your site.  And what they will be looking for.

Knowing your audience also helps determine whether they are likely to clicks on ads.

When I  was thinking about my website’s visitors I quickly realized that I might have a problem.  I do most of the adverting for the website through forums for webmasters.  The problem with webmasters is that they are ‘non-clickers’.

My Ad Non-Clickers

My website is most useful to a new webmaster, or someone considering becoming one.  Someone looking to start a website but does not know what to expect.  By looking at some of the data a aspiring webmaster can get an idea of what the future holds for them.  That is why the forums I visit are motley for webmasters. 

The forums are a great way to advertise my site.  I have the URL of the website as a signature so every post I make my website is displayed.  This is good because the people on these forums are mostly webmasters and therefore will find the website relevant. 

The problem is that webmasters will not click on my advertisements.  The advertisements on my website are mostly about making money online.  “Make 100 in 1 day”, “Work from home and make money”, “Easy money”.  For most webmasters these advertisements are useless – the webmasters are already working online.  And most importantly they have seen these advertisements hundreds of times before.  They have clicked on them in the past and will not click on them again.

So it looks like I have a problem.  My target audience.  The audience that the website is specifically built to serve will not click on my ads.  Of course there will be a few clicks here and there, but definitely not what it should be.  My CPM (clicks per thousand views) should be very low.

But my CPM is not low.  Why?  Because the purpose of the webmasters visiting my site is not to click on the ads.  Their purpose is to forward the website to their friends.  Friends who are not webmasters.  Friends who are thinking of becoming webmasters.  These are the visitors that will make me money.

My Ad Clickers

My revenue generating visitors are not webmasters.  Instead, they are people who just passively use the Internet.  Non-webmasters.   True window shoppers of the web.  They bounce from website to website.  No real direction.  Just going where their friends send them.  Passing the time between dinner and bedtime.

Like most people, they are not happy with their current financial situation.  Like me, they go to work with their heads down.  Their days at work are unsatisfying.  One of their reliefs is to come home, fire up the computer and be entertained by the Internet.  Amusing themselves with the wacky and wild online world.

Then one day they receive an email from their friend the webmaster.  “Here your go buddy, check this link out.  Now you can quit your hellish day job and work online”.  Well…something like that.   It does not matter how non-webmasters end up on my site.  But once there, here is what should happen. 

1. They see the number on the homepage clearly stating how much the website has made.
2. They look at a few information/data pages and see what is involved in making money online.
3. They think to themselves, “Hey, I can do this”.
4. But then while reading about the countless hours I have spent creating the website they suddenly notice, on the left panel, the statement “Easily Earn 100’s of dollars from home”.
5. They click on it.

If your reading this post you are probably a webmaster, or at least planning to be one.  You know what to do…(hint: )

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, What YOU Should Do

If you are a webmaster you probably do not have a balance sheet. You do not need one. What would you put on it? What would you put as your assets and liabilities?

Of course it is possible to start being a webmaster with absolutely no assets. OK, actually you do need one asset. A public library card. Go the library, use one of the computers and sign up for a free online blog (like Blogger). Everyday you go to the library and write your blog. Completely free and no big assets.

Assets

I am sure that there are a few blogs out there created from a free access computer at the library, but most web masters use their own computer, at their own desk, and on their own chair. There you go – three assets right there. Computer, table, chair.

Next you probably do not want to use a free online hosting service. They look unprofessional and your domain name will be tom.freehosting.com. So you register a domain name for 1 year. And because you are not sure you really want to be a webmaster, you sign up for a six month hosting service. There you go again – more assets. You have prepaid a years worth for a domain name and six months for a hosting service. These are assets that you now own.

Liabilities

Now for the liabilities. For a month straight you slave away long into the night punching away at your keyboard spewing out Hemingway quality content. Nobody is paying you. You are doing it for free. But it is still work and you expect to be paid back one day. It is like you are giving your website a loan. One day when the website is making money it will have to pay you back. This is a liability to the website as wages owed to you. After a few months the website will start making lots of money. As soon as it does it will have to pay its debts. Namely the one to you. Your salary.

Equity

You own the website.

After it has paid you and if there is still some money left over that will be your equity. Equity=assets-liabilities. The amount the website is worth to you. If you could sell all the assets and pay off all the liabilities the amount left over would go into your pocket.

Most businesses when they start the equity is not a pretty sight. This is especially the case for all webmasters. You put a little bit of money into the required tools (computer, desk, chair) and then a lot of time into building the website. Once it is built you still have nothing. You have spent money and you have spent time. But you still have nothing. Just a whole bunch of megabytes sitting on some server’s hard drive.

Only after the visitors start coming and click on ads and buy your products do you recoup your initial investment. Only then does your negative equity begin to slowly turn around and begin its climb into the positives.

As I write this my equity is still deep in the negative.

Actual Stats From The Website Used, There is a HOW TO in the Post, What YOU Should Do

My high school English teacher explained that to get your ideas across in writing you need to do the following:

• Have an introductory paragraph which clearly states the thesis
• Summarize the key points to be argued
• In detail argue each point
• Have a concluding paragraph which summarizes the arguments and clearly states the conclusion.

If I tried to do that for this post then nobody would read it.  You would give me an F.  Blog posts are a completely different entity then high school essays.

First of all the audience is not your teacher – a person who is paid to read your writing.  Teachers must dread reading that rambling, formatted, go nowhere dribble.  They constantly remind themselves that they are doing it to put food on the table.

Blog posts must not resemble high school essays at all.  Look at any successful blog and you quickly get a sense of the format.

• Exciting title
• Attention grabbing sentence withing the first few sentences
• Short paragraphs – just a few sentences each
• Lots of lists
• And if possible pictures

A blog post should resemble a children’s book.  Why? Because the audience of your posts are people who do not need to read it.  They are using up their free time to read your post.  You better give them something; and you better make it easy to read.

Actually even asking them to read it is already asking too much.  They will not even read it.  They will just skim.  Reading every 4th word.  Or reading just the first sentence of each paragraph. Why do they do this?  Because most likely your blog is not worth the time.  This can be deemed from the fact that 99% of all blogs created are failures.

A visitor has a 99% chance of landing on a bad blog, one that in a short time will fail.  So why should they risk the time to give it a careful read.  They will quickly scan, find nothing of interest and look for another one – gone forever.

Maybe after your blog has a loyal audience which has been reading your short, interesting, list filled posts, can you dare to please your English teacher.  But even with a loyal audience I still doubt that anybody will read it, including your English teacher.

What YOU Should Do