This blog is about making money online the Andrew Carnegie way, by means of contributing real value to society.
If you do something useful enough for enough people, you will get rewarded with money.
How does this principle apply to operating a website?
The website must help people in some way or other. This concept alone already sets your website apart from 90 percent of the crap on the web.
For example, if you hire free-lance writers in third-world countries to churn out 500-word articles with keywords for your niche, you are contributing absolutely nothing to society. You are simply trying to game the search engine into sending traffic your way.
Ideally, your website should be about a topic you are more knowledgeable about than others.
If you have only average knowledge, or below average knowledge about baking, then you won't help society at all by putting up a website about baking. You would have to trick the search engines into sending you traffic. The traffic that does arrive won't be too happy, because the information you provide won't be that useful or interesting. In the long run, you will fail.
But if you are an expert baker, things are different. Many readers will learn and benefit from your site.
If you are not an expert on anything, should you forget about putting up a website?
Not necessarily. You can develop an app, i.e. a web application that does something useful. If you don't have developer skills, you can do original research. In other words, you can use the website as an avenue to gain expertise, and share it as you learn.
What this means is that putting up a website that society will find useful isn't easy. If it were easy then everyone would be doing it, and making oodles of money. Most people don't have useful websites and don't make any money at all, for this reason.
Most wanna-be netrepreneurs approach the selection of a topic for their website by looking at keywords and assessing how many searches they get, and then stuffing content on their site to match those keywords. That doesn't help anyone.
Wow. Never looked at this way. Truly eye-opening. Look forward to more.
ReplyDeleteThis article makes a lot more sense than what I hear from the so-called gurus. I never felt too comfortable about putting up a ton of third-rate articles, but everybody was doing it, so I did it too. As far as I can tell, it isn't really working anyway. Good post. Time to strategize.
ReplyDeletereal quality definitely wins long-term. if you don't have it your pages get hammered by google's FARMER algorithm update. that's the trend.
ReplyDeleteIt just so happens I can bake! LOL
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted to really get into historical research and put it on the web or in a book, in the area where I live there are some fascinating stories dating back to the Civil War and before. It would be nice to do dig those up and get rewarded for my efforts. And a lot more fun that peddling electronic cigarettes. I need to know more about marketing though.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of developing an app is appealing but it will probably cost me even more than hiring writers for 200 articles. Something to think about though, definitely.
ReplyDeleteYou're right in that 90 percent of the websites out there are about as useful as a pair of skis in Florida. Make that 99 percent.
ReplyDelete