Welcome

What Is So Great About This Blog?

The only chance this blog has of succeeding is to be different then the 100's of other 'How To Make Money Online' blogs.

What makes this blog different:

• This blog is about a website. It discusses and analyzes the creation, maintenance, and performance of howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• All claims are backed up by actual data. You will not see claims like: 'post comments because it increases traffic'. This blog will show, by using actual data, how much traffic posting comments has brought to howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.
• There are no false claims of how I made 1000's of dollars a day using a secret system. With this blog, lies and exaggerated claims are impossible because howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com reveals all of its stats.
• Being a webmaster is not always a sunny day. This blog discusses the real trials and tribulations of being a webmaster. If this blog/website are doing poorly then you will see traces of tears in the posts.
• This blog has no advertising or selling of any kind. It is simply information and entertainment. The website howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com does all the money making, not this blog.
• Most blogs expect you to follow their advice on the assumption that they are an authority on the subject. This blog expects you to look at the data and decide for yourself.

All Posts Are Written With The Following in Mind:

• Honesty.
• Mix information with entertainment.
• The visitors time is valuable. Provide clear and original content.
• No claims without data to support it.
• One day this blog and the website it discusses will be successful.

Enjoy!

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Ever since I created this blog I have wanted to know what my odds of success are. Out of 100 people that have a blog how many fail? After searching around the best I could find was 99%. You see it everywhere, 99% of all blogs fail.

This is an interesting number but the problem is that there is never any data to back it up. The number comes from nowhere. Maybe it is just intuition – the people that have been around a long time notice that most bloggers come and then they go. To them it seems like 99% of them disappear.

Intuition gone wrong is the cause of the current 50% divorce rate – intuition is not good enough. I would like to see some data to back up the claim. I can find out the chances of killing myself skiing, so why can’t I find out the chances of success with a blog?

Blogs Die Without A Trace

There is a good reason why there are no actual statistics for becoming a successful blogger. The problem is that blogs do not leave a body when they die – they disappear. They are like aliens in a computer game – once you shoot them with your photon laser they disappear. No trace remains, no clues that they were ever there, no dead bodies to count.

To find out my chances of dieing on a ski hill is easy. All I have to do is to go to the ski hill parking lot and wait till the end of the day. On a piece of paper I draw a line down the center. On the left side top part I write ‘Alive’ and on the top right side I write ‘Dead’. At the end of the day I make a mark on the left side of the page for everybody that leaves the hill with their skies and for the skiers that leave in a body bag I make a mark on the right side. By doing this everyday for the entire season I will have nice set of statistics. By adding up the marks on the left side and the the marks on the right side I can easily figure out how many people out of a hundred die skiing.

Unfortunately this kind of data gathering is hard to do with blogs. There is no way to count dead blogs. Looking around the internet there are only two types of blogs: successful blogs and those trying to be successful. The blogs that have died leave no trace, so there is no way to count them, there is no way to gather marks for the right side of the paper. All you see are the living blogs.

Problogger to the Rescue

Problogger is a very popular and successful blog. The owner, Darren Rowse, has been doling out advice on how to write a successful blog since 2005. His audience is thousands of eager bloggers trying to figure out how to make their own blog more successful.

Everyday he writes a few paragraphs of advice and tips on how to improve a blog. Most of the visitors are beginning bloggers – bloggers who just started their blog and want to learn how to make it better. These advice seeking bloggers consume his wisdom in the magnitude of approximately 15,000 visitors a day.

With this kind of traffic it is no surprise that each of his posts have lots of comments. People leave comments for many reasons: 1) To give praise. 2) To show disapproval. 3) To increase their own traffic. By leaving a comment the person also leaves a link back to their own website in the hopes that somebody will click on it and visit their site. This is great for them, but it is also great for us because they leave a foot print – a permanent record of their existence.

Problogger has an archive section on which is stored all the posts and comments since 2005. Anybody can go and look at the posts from 2005. The posts are there and so are the comments. BINGO!

We can go back in time. We can go to 2005 and have a look at the comments for each post. Each comment has a link back to the commenter’s website. In 2005 the commenter was a beginning blogger seeking Darren’s advice on how to make his blog more successful, full of hopes and dreams. Regardless of what his dreams were in 2005, now in 2009 we can find out if (s)he succeeded or not.

A Website That Estimates Traffic to a Website

Lets imagine you are sitting at the bar and next to you is a beautiful and sexy girl listening to you as you eagerly describe your blog. Her eyes are wide open with wonder as you talk about your blog. You are an honest guy: you tell her how much work it is and how slow it is going, how you have been trying to get more visitors but it is a ongoing struggle. She smiles and touches your knee – she seems to like you. Being an optimist you start to think about what you will make her for breakfast in the morning.

But then disaster strikes. In walks a fast talking, Fabio haired, blue eyed, muscles bulging from his tight shirt lady’s man. He has it all – he rarely leave the bar alone. He sees the girl next to you and makes his approach to her with a complete disregard of your feelings. He runs a hand through his bangs slowly, making sure the girl notices his camel back biceps. After introducing himself and making a lame joke he begins to talk to her about his blog. He claims that it has 10,000 visitors a day and that he makes $100/hour. The girl is impressed – you are screwed. Looks like it is going to be another night of checking your pathetic blog stats alone.

But all is not lost yet. Fortunately you never go to the bar without your laptop. You pull it out and go to the website webtraffic24.com. It is a website that provides an estimate of how many visitors a website gets. You simply type in a URL and click a button. webtraffic24.com will then check the page rank, alexa rank, backlinks, etc of the website and using an algorithm return an estimate of the amount of traffic the website receives. It is not perfect, it is just an estimate. But an estimate is usually all you need – you need to know whether a website gets around 10 visitors a day or 10,000.

After typing in the stupid brute’s blog address you get the results – 20 visitors a day. Just as you suspected – another bullshitter making false claims about their blog to pick up girls. Proudly you show the girl the results. Seeing the number she slaps the brute and turns back to you – ‘tell me more about your blog’.

 

Combining Problogger’s Archives with Webtraffic24.com to Count Dead Blogs

Using the URL left behind by the commentors in the problogger archive with the webtraffic24 tool we can count dead blogs. All we need to do is to go back to the old comments, for example in 2006, and using webtraffic24 see how the blogs are doing now. To simplify I have broken up the amount of daily visitors a website receives into 3 main states:

• Dead (0-500 visitors/day)
• Serious Injury (500-2000 visitors/day)
• Alive and Well (2000+ visitors/day)

Webtraffic24 is not 100% accurate but it is good enough – it can separate the dead from the living.

How to Find Out the Success Rate of Blogs

To determine the success rate of blogs and websites I have done the following:

1. From the problogger.com archived posts comment section I have taken all the URLs for the month of January 2006. There was a total of 2514 comments for that month.
2. I had to do some editing:
   • When somebody put a link to a specific webpage I edited the URL to just the homepage. For example, if the the URL was www.mywebsite.com/my-dream-of-having-a-great-blog.html I changed it to www.mywebsite.com.
   • I excluded Darren Rowse’s comments.
   • I excluded all URL’s that were email addresses.
3. After getting rid of all the duplicates (same person who made more then 1 comment that month) I was left with 693 distinct URLs. 693 eager bloggers and webmasters hoping to be successful one day.
4. Using webtraffic24 I checked each URL to see where it stands today. Is is dead, injured or alive.

I gathered all the data into a single table (download table). Each URL and its statistics are recorded. With the table complete it is a simple matter of adding up the living and the dead.

 

How Many Blogs Become Successful And How Many Die – The Results

• Total URLs: 693
• Dead: 497 (download table)
• Serious Injury: 81 (download table)
• Alive and Well: 115 (download table)

If you were a commentor on problogger during January 2006, here are the odds of what state your blog will be in three years:

Analysis

72% chance of total failure. It is high but not as high as the 99% claimed by people who ‘just know’. Another way of looking at it is you have 28% of your blog not being dead in 3 years.

I was quite surprised by these results. They are much better then I expected. Even while working on this blog I was under the assumption that there is a 99% failure rate. I am glad that it is not that bad.

To answer my original question: 72 out of every 100 blogs die.

Of course this experiment has some flaws. The biggest one is that there is no way to tell how well these blogs where doing at the time they made the comment (January 2006). It is possible, although very unlikely, that all the Alive and Well blogs where alive and well in January 2006. The only real conclusion that can be made is that in 3 years 72% of the commentor’s blogs have died.

The second flaw is that problogger commentors do not represent the entire blogging sample. There is a lot of commentors but they do not represent the whole. It is possible that by being a problogger commentor you improve your blog and your chance of avoiding death. Maybe problogger commentors have a 72% chance of death but bloggers as a whole have 99%. Unfortunately there is no way to tell because there is no means to count dead bodies on the entire blog population. This experiment applies to all blogs only by assuming that problogger commentors are bloggers just like everybody else. But if you want the certainty of a 28% chance of avoiding death then become a problogger commentor.

More Then Dead

497 blogs are dead. Above I defined dead as having less then 500 visitors a day according to website24.com. Having anything less then 500 visitors a day for a website or blog is only virtually dead (you probably will not be making too much money) because even 3 visitors a day is still not dead. True dead is 0 visitors. 0 visitor happens when website24 cannot find the domain – which means the owner of that domain canceled the hosting and the domain is unused. Out of the 497 dead blogs 192 are truly dead – 28% of the total and 39% of the virtual dead.

Further Study

The data for this experiment was only 1 months worth of problogger comments. Of course it would be better to use a whole years worth of comment URLs. But, as you can probably imagine, that would be a lot of work. For 2006 problogger probably has over 30,000 comments. If you eliminate the duplicate URLs you might be left with at least 5000 URLs. I cannot imagine anybody wanting to collect all those URLs and then run them through website24. I would be glad to see it, but I am not going to do it.

What I might do in the future is to check how many blogs die within 6 months.  Instead of going back 3 years I will go back 6 months.

Acknowledgments

• Thank you www.problogger.net for having such a great archive.
• Thank you www.webtraffic24.com for not blocking my IP during my 693 website checks.
• Finally I would like to thank Robby G for his post http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/06/28/perseverance-will-save-your-blog/ because it gave me the idea for this post.

Time to blow some dust off this blog.  It has been over a month since my last entry.  Many things could of happened to explain the lack of blog posts:

• A terrible accident with the lawn mower– all my fingers scattered in the backyard.  I tried typing with my elbows but found it very uncomfortable.
• A friend gave me a dog as a present.  The dog cannot deciede where he wants to be.  He wants to go outside, then back inside, then outside, then in, out, in, out, in, out.  My days are spent opening and closing the door. 
• I could not see the words on the screen through my tears.  Tears that formed every time I looked at my AdSense revenue.
• I stumbled over a tree root and hit my head on a rock.  When I woke up I experienced a  instance of perfect clarity and reason in which I realized that this website was a big waste of time.  So I quite this blog and went back to watching TV reruns.

All these are possibilities but none of them is what happened.

The Website Starter Kit

About a month ago, just after my last post, I was walking across a parking lot carrying a bag of potatoes and a big chuck of cheese when I suddenly realized that I know a lot more then I give myself credit.  I know things, things that other people do not know, things that I could sell them.

During dinner as I munched on my baked potato I started to formulate what was to become the ‘Build Your Own Website – Starter Kit’.  A complete package composing of a few ebooks and website templates.  The ebooks would explain to the beginner everything they need to know to start their own money making website:

• How to create a website
• How to setup a web hosting account and domain name
• How to decide on a Niche
• How to write content for your website
• How to get traffic to your website
• How to setup AdSense and generate revenue
• How to become an affiliate and generate revenue

As you probably know ebooks about this topic are plentiful.  Ebooks about ‘making money online’ are offered like trinkets in a Mexican resort town.  So I needed to differentiate myself somehow.  That is why I also created a special template that comes with the ebooks.  It is a complete website template  – the same one used my howthiswebsitemakesmoney.com.

A person who buys my Starter Kit will get all the information they need to be able to understand the ‘make money online’ business and they will get a website to apply their knowledge.  All they need to do is add their own content and make a few stylistic changes to make their website unique.  What took me months to accomplish on my website, doing all the research and creating the website, can be done in a matter of days with the Website Starter Kit.

I loved my idea the instant I came up with it.  So for the next month I sat at my computer and punched away.  I could think of nothing else but my Starter Kit.  If I have a flaw then this is it – I can only focus on one thing at a time.  I had to complete the entire package before I could write another blog post.  Even though my traffic started to suffer – where once I was averaging about 70 visitors a day I was now averaging around 45.  The blog was calling me but I was not listening – must finish the Starter Kit first.

The ebook ended up being 5 main parts and over 200 pages.  I am so glad that it is finally complete.

One of my biggest fears is the blank page and everyday I had to confront it, 200 times in total.  And on top of that some parts of the ebook were extremely boring to write.  Specifically the tutorials on how to use the website template.  The tutorials are step by step screen shot based guides.  So I had to do every step, take a screen shot, format the image and then place it properly into the document.  Hours spent fiddling with margins and padding just to get the images to appear properly on the page.  There are 80 images in the ebook – 80 instances of grief and frustration. 

But that is the past.  It is all done now.  The past me suffered but the present me will benefit.  Now all I have to do is sell it.

The Damn Button

You have probably had this experience or something similar.  You buy a large shelving unit from IKEA,  you are a handy person so putting it all together will not be a problem.  Following the instructions and using the special tools you put the cabinet together.  You are almost done – everything goes without a problem, all that remains is to put on the last little cabinet door.  So far to build the entire cabinet has taken two hours.  But now the stupid little door just does not go on.  For the next 3 hours you try everything to get the door on.  It just does not fit properly – the fu*king thing won’t close.  What started out as a pleasant Saturday afternoon project turns into a red faced cursing day in hell.

That cute little button you see at the top right corner of every page on this website was my last cabinet door.  The entire Starter Kit went relatively well.  The ebooks, the templates, the landing page all went quite smoothly.  All were done in calmness and in a state resembling nirvana.  Sometimes I whistled while I worked.

The little button was left for last.  Such a simple thing – make a little button and place it in the top right corner.  I did not even consider it as a task.  It was just something I needed to do after I was done the Starter Kit – put the ribbon on the Christmas present.  I allotted 30 minutes.

Now looking back I am surprised my laptop lived through the ordeal.  If I would of expressed my frustration in a physical manner the laptop would be on the floor scattered in a million pieces, the bottoms of my feet would be full of computer parts lodged under the skin.  But fortunately I am able to keep my feelings of hate and disgust safely to myself.

It ended up taking 3 hours to put that button where it is.  Sometimes it was on the top left corner, sometimes it was in the middle of page, sometimes it moved around when I re-sized the browser window, and worst of all, sometimes I could not find it anywhere on the page.

But now like the cabinet door which now opens and closes perfectly, the button sits where it should.  It does not move, and looks the same on all pages and on all browser versions.  There were some good things that came out of the experience.

1. In CSS I fully understand the difference between absolute and relative position.
2. To make absolute position work on a <DIV> tag the container in which the <DIV> tag sits must have have the position element set as relative.
3. browsershots.org is a great website to check the browser compatibility of your website.
4. For the little cabinet door you need to use number 13 screws not 18.

First Two Starter Kits Are Sold

If you have been keeping an eye on the number (total revenue) on the homepage then you must of noticed the recent large increase.  For the first 160 days this website managed to make $150 and then in a matter of days it jumps to over $400 hundred dollars.  Looking at the revenue graph you can barley see the Adsense revenue for the last 30 days – the Starter Kit and hosting Affiliate sales dominate the graph like four skyskrapers in an native African village:

The explanation is simple – I sold two copies of the Website Starter Kit.  The two sales of the Starter Kit completely overshadow 6 months of AdSense earnings.  Am I excited?  No.  These two sales did not come easy.  I had to invite a couple of my friends over for dinner, fill them up with alcohol, and then spend the night persuading them to buy the kit.  Being my friends, and drunk, they capitulated.  The day I put the kit up for sale they bought it.  The money is real, but the sale was forced.

If I could get you drunk and force you to buy the Starter Kit I would.  But unfortunately I cannot.  Selling to you and other visitors is a lot harder.  I will be excited when someone buys the Starter Kit through the traditional method: Loving this website, wanting one of their own, clicking the landing page button, reading the landing page, clicking the buy button.

You can find the website starter kit here.

A couple months ago I stated that I was not going to create my own backlinks.  That I would wait till others backlink to me.  I was not going to shame myself by tooting my own horn, by begging for backlinks.  I was going to wait patiently until others backlink to me – let the website speak for itself.  But guess what – nobody has backlinked to me.  Four months have passed since this website went live and in that time no backlinks.  Nobody has been impressed enough to link to this site.  Surprised?  So am I.

So with a paper bag on my head I must admit defeat.  If I want backlinks then I will have to create them myself.  Climb to the rooftop of the tallest building and shout, “look at me!”.  How humiliating.

How to Create Backlinks – Article Submission

Article submission is the easiest way to create quality one way backlinks.  I signed up on ezinearticles.com and wrote 3 articles.  In each article I summarize one of the pages on this website. 

My method is simple.  I read a page from this website and then close the window.  Then I open my word processor and rewrite what I just read.  Same main points but new words.  The article version is shorter and more to the point.  The articles need to be at least 250 words.  My articles tend to be around 400 words and take about 30 minutes to write.  It is easy to do because it is not new material.  Just a summary of key points from this website.   At the end of the article I place one link to this site and one link specifically to the page being summarized.

The backlinks from this method are great because they are one way backlinks.  They link to you with out you having to link back to them – Google loves that.  Also, when you create the backlink you can use the keywords of your choosing for the anchor text.  This is good because Google uses the anchor text of a backlink to figure out what your page is about.

Get Your New Webpages Indexed Faster

Besides backlinks, another advantage of articles submission is that you can get your own webpages indexed faster by Google.  Normally for this website it takes up to a week before a new page is indexed by Google.  But if I create an article and backlink to the new page then the page gets indexed in under a day.  Here is how it works:   

1. I create a new page on my website
2. I write an article summarizing the new page
3. At the bottom of the article I link to the new page
4. My article gets published. Since ezinearticles.com is a popular site Google indexes the article within a hour.
5. While indexing the article Google notices the link to my new page. Google discovers that the page is not indexed yet.
6. My new page gets flagged by Google for immediate indexing

Besides getting backlinks creating articles is a great way to get new pages indexed.  For an example of one of the articles and the backlink have a look at my article Do Guest Posts on Other Blogs Really Bring Traffic.

How to Create Backlinks – Guest Posts

Guest posts are harder then article posts.  Creating articles is easy because unless you really screw up and do not follow the rules your article will be published.  Guest posts are much more difficult because they have a very selective gatekeeper – the blog owner.  It is up to their discretion whether your post gets published.  If he stubbed his toe just before reading your email requesting a guest post and therefore in a bad mood you could be denied just because his toe hurts.

You spend a few hours creating the perfect guest post specifically designed for a specific blog.  You send it to the blog owner and wait.  A few days later you get a rejection email.  ‘Sorry, but at this time I am not taking guest posts’, translation: your post was denied.  Now you need to decide what to do with the post.  Do you put it on your own blog or do you alter it and submit to another blog?  Either way time is wasted and the post is tainted by the stench of rejection.

Fortunately this did not happen to me.  I created a guest post and submitted it.  Within a few days it was approved and published.

What a great backlink.  A one way backlink from a popular blog back to my website.  Does not get better then that.  It was a great success – a perfect backlink.  The only problem was that nobody agreed with my post.  Not a single comment agreed, even the blog owner stepped in and stated that he does not agree.  But that is just a technicality, not really important.  Nobody agrees, I am wrong, I do not know what I am talking about etc…but I got my backlink.  By the way, I still think I am right, everybody else is wrong. If you want to disagree with me then see my guest post Put Time Into Your Guest Posts.

Organic Search Traffic Is Improving

The first couple months this website had backlinks, but they were all natural backlinks.  I frequented forums and made comments on blogs.  I did this not to create backlinks but simply because I wanted to be involved in the forums and blogs.   The backlinks came naturally, they came as a result of me simply participating in my niche.

For the last month I have been actively generating backlinks via articles and guest posts.  Again I can only assume that this is why my organic search traffic is continuing to improve.  It is still a small number but improving.  It seams that backlinks do work.  It is humiliating and pride must be swallowed but creating backlinks is a must to improve your organic traffic.

Forget your pride, ignore your shame, humiliate yourself – create your own backlinks.  Go out there and brag about how great your are.  Because if you don’t then who, besides your mother, will?

A couple days ago I was surprised by an email.  In the email the person stated that he enjoyed the website – that is understandable.  But then the email got strange.  He concluded his email with a request for advice.  He asked me to advise him on how to generate more revenue and get more traffic to his website.

The guy missed the whole point of this website.  With my traffic and revenue stats fully disclosed this website clearly shows that I have no idea what I am doing.  Why would anybody want to seek advice from me?  It is like somebody showing up at the scene of a car accident and asking the stunned driver, “Can you please teach me how to drive”.

Why You Should Not Ask Me How To Making Money Online

I have mentioned it before, both on the website and in this blog, that I am completely new to making money online.  Four months ago I never heard the phrase ‘Search Engine Optimization’, or ‘Meta-Tags’.  I had no experience with CSS or Dreamweaver.  I had never made a single penny online.  I was as green as a freshly mowed lawn.  I still am.

I have been at it for four months.  I have learned some things.  Now I can read about website design techniques and adsense monetization and understand what is being discussed, but I still do not have a clue how to make money online.  I thought this fact was obvious.  The whole website is a testament to my ignorance.  Simply by viewing a few pages on the website you quickly discover that:

• I have worked for 365 hours. For my efforts I received $131 dollars. If I had spent that time working at McDonalds flipping burgers and cleaning out grease traps I would now have around $3300 dollars.
• I make 36 cents per hour. The lowest wages in the world are paid to garment workers in Bangladesh. They get paid 22 cent per hour. The second lowest wages in the world are in Cambodia, they get paid 33 cents. I have the honor of having the third lowest wage in the world at 36 cents. A Pakistani garment worker makes more then I do at 37 cents per hour.
• On average this website receives about 50 visitors a day. This has not changed for almost 3 months. No progress increasing my traffic. Commenting on forums, blogs, creating articles for backlinks. All for nothing. Traffic does not budge – 50 visitors a day.
• So far I have spent $491 on this website. The website software (Dreamweaver), domain name, hosting, voting script. Since I have only managed to make $131 dollars, I am running at a loss. Not only am I not making money online, I am paying money to do it.
• I have been promoting this blog for 3 months and wrote 26 well thought out posts. This has gained me around 25 subscribers. My condominium’s monthly newsletter has more subscribers and all it talks about the problem of people not cleaning up after their dogs.

All this information is clearly stated on the website.  Tables and pretty graphs are used to make the point obvious.  That is why I was so surprised that somebody would ask me for advice.  They seem to  not care that this website makes no money.  The only person who should be asking me for advice is a Bangladeshi garment worker.  I can help him make more money.

There are websites out there that claim they know how to make lots of money online.  The webmaster claims that they have discovered the secret of making money online.  They claim to be experts, to be rich, to know it all.  Of course they do not give any proof of their success except for a few pictures of big houses and fancy cars.  These are the websmasters that at least give the impression that they know what they are doing.  So I would expect people to send them emails asking for advice.  But to send me an email asking for advice is ridiculous.  There is nothing on this website that gives the impression that I know how to make money online. 

Maybe In The Future I Will Be Able to Give Advice

Am I bitter?  No.  Do I consider this website a failure?  No.  Do I spend my nights soaking the pillow with tears?  No.  I realize this is just the beginning.  Making money online is not easy.  It is a process that takes time.  The beginning is hard and bound to be full of failure.  Just like anything else.  Even Wayne Gretzky was a bad hockey player at some point.  Time, practice and persistence made him a great player.  Success comes with the passage of time.

So far the only thing this website teaches is that making money online is not easy at the beginning.  That everyday feels like a failure.  That progress does not come overnight. 

If you have a site and you are still learning and not making money then you can come to this website and see that it is normal.  Misery needs company.  It makes you feel better that this website is also doing poorly at the beginning.

What keeps me going is knowing that making money online is possible.  Other people are doing it.  I just need to find out how.  Until this websites starts making money then there is no point in asking me for help increasing the revenue for your site because I have no idea.

If you want to know what I have learned so far then visit the How Well Is This Website Doing section of the website.

Aristotle accomplished a lot in his ancient Greek life.  He can be credited as one of the founding fathers of western thought.  He studied and made observations about morality and aesthetics, logic and science, politics and metaphysics.  In his free time he was a tutor of Alexander the Great.  A person like this is not common.  He has the ability to keep going and going – doing more and more.

How did he keep motivated?  What helped him get out of bed every morning and dive into his work?  Aristotle’s answer:

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.

Goals.  Man needs to set goals for himself.  Without goals there is no meaning – there is nothing to strive for.

My Goal – Make Money Online Website

Who am I to doubt Aristotle.  I must set goals.  This website was started willy-nilly.  It was built with the intent of just seeing what happens. But that is not the right approach.  I need something to strive for.  If it helped Aristotle become one of the greatest thinkers of all time, I am sure setting goals will help this website.

The main keywords for this website are: make,money,online,website.  My goal is to be one of the top five results in Google search for the term ‘make money online website‘.  When somebody types ‘make money online website‘ into Google I want to see this website appear in one of the top 5 spots.  Currently for this term this website is nowhere to be seen.  I checked as far back as the 500th result.  No luck – not there.

Know The Enemy (the competition)

Before I tackle this goal I need to know who I am fighting against.  Who are in the top 5 spots now?  The best way to beat them is to know who they are.  What have they done to get there.  By studying who they are I can adjust my strategy to either mimic what they did to get there or find a weak spot in their approach.  Find something that they are missing, or not doing, or doing poorly.  Once I know how they got to where they are then I can do what they are doing and add a little more – that extra push that puts me above them.

The nice thing about the ‘make money online’ niche is that it is about revealing what you do.  So most of the blogs and website are about how they got to where they are at.  So it is only a matter of going through their website and finding out what strategies they recommend for online success. 

I am going to focus on two of the top 5 holders, because they have very different strategies.  And they are very good writers – they do a good job explaining how they got to the top.

A Brick and Mortar Website

The top spot is currently held by 2createawebsite.com.  It is a really good ‘Make Money Online’ website.  The owner is Lisa.  Her website made it to the top in what can be called the traditional approach – time, quality content, and persistence.  She started making money online in 1998 and has stuck with it.  By constantly adding content and maintaining a presence on the Internet she has made it to the top.  Hard work and time.  Posting on forums, answering questions by readers, making comments on other blogs.  By helping others her name became known.  Slowing, but steadily she gained readers.  10 years later, it is paying off.  Now she has inspirational youtube videos and tutorials, a busy forum and a popular blog.  She has become an trusted authority in the field.  Her opinion is respected.  She does not hide her identity and is completely honest about everything she has to say. 

Her website is a rock.  It is well designed, clear and well written.  Quality material, a great personality, and high ranking.  She does everything by the book and there is little chance that her ranking will fall.  Her website is like amazon, or ebay.  A trusted and quality site.  Exactly what Google likes.  Google rewards her by placing her website at the top.

Understand and Exploit

The website at spot 4 is makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com.  This website is almost the complete opposite of the one above.  It is not pretty.  No flashing graphics, logos or pull down menus.  Actually is it a basic free blogspot blog.  Simple design – black text against a white background.  His posts are extremely long, something that your ’suppose’ to not do.  The owner is Grizzly.  He does not reveal his true identity.  All that is known is that he lives somewhere in Northern Canada.  His blog is only 3 years old.  He does not participate in forums and does not do any Internet marketing.

But he is in the 4th spot.  He is doing something right.  With his completely non-traditional approach he has manged to make it to the top.  How does he do it?

Grizzly knows how Google works.  He can think like Google.  He does not care about having a great website, or people thinking of him as an authority.  All he cares about is making money online.  So he focuses specifically on Google and does whatever necessary to make money with it.  The best way to describe it is that he understands the underlying principle of Google and exploits it.  He focuses in on the fundamental principles of Google and does whatever necessary to make money.  He knows how to force Google to put him at the top.

The great part is that he does not keep it a secret.  If you read all his long well written posts, he reveals exactly how he does it.  You need to read a little between the lines – but it is there.  And his proof is not in words, but in results.  Do a search for ‘make money online’ and there he is – on the top.  He knows what he is doing.

How Am I Going To Get To The Top?

It is not going to be easy.  Both of the above examples are smart people.  Masters in their art.  They have completely different approaches, but both successful. 

My approach will be to learn from both.  Not to copy their approaches exactly, but to combine the two.  To mix the two approaches into a new hybrid approach.  Have a traditional website – brick and mortar, well built, organized and pleasing to the eye; patiently become a authority in the field and gain people’s trust.  But also not ignore what Grizzly has to say,  his approach is untraditional but cannot be dismissed.

Hopefully, by taking bits and pieces from the people at the top.  Combining it in a new way and creating something new, I can acheive my goal and become a member of the Top 5 club for ‘make money online website’.

To find out how this post will help me towards my goal please see post How to Make Money With Jesus.