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Not making much money online? Want to know why?

The reason is simple it’s because you’re lazy and running your blog like a hobby you’re sorta into. Imagine if you ran a business with the dedication you currently put towards your blog? Chances are it would fail to be profitable as well. Sound familiar?

I have a newsflash for myself and everyone. Blogging is citizen journalism. Whatever niche you’re in you’re competing with journalists. People who are really into the topic and gain satisfaction in releasing the latest and greatest news from the industry or writing in depth pieces on topics of interest to that niche. That’s where the money is at in blogging; being at the forefront of journalism online in your niche.

Why do you think so many Make Money Online blogs go nowhere?

A) because the author doesn’t make any money themselves

B) The author gets his / her “stories” from other larger popular blogs and regurgitates them

C) The author is quasi committed to the blog; the occasional update coming at varied times and nothing really written in an authoritative manner. (Do you write in that manner when you don’t know what you’re talking about?)

Next let’s talk about Social Media. I’m sick of hearing about how it improves traffic / this / that. Yeah it does to some extent but it’s ultimately just an ego booster. So many people so happy with Stumble Upon traffic or something similar. I’d go as far as to say I’ve never EVER had a conversion from Stumble Upon. Twitter has brought in some decent visitors but if you factor in the time I’ve spent on twitter the conversion rates would be one heck of a good laugh if that had been the intended purpose. I use twitter because I like it; if you’re going to signup only to drive traffic to your blog / site. Better ways to use your time.

Look at your activities online; are you working or just doing your “thing”. What’s “Your Thing” you may ask? Well for some it’s checking sports, stats from websites that have made no sales, scrolling through forum posts to find?? what is that we’re looking to find?, reading bloggeries and following the links from one site to another, starting an idea getting a roadblock or seeing something else that looks good and then going after that abandoning the first plan, find something else repeat.

I’d go as far to say that MOST people online who aren’t making a dime have an incredible arsenal of online time wasters. Also traffic from most sources is just an ego stroker. Something to brag to other geeks about through instant messenger or on some forum where you’re trying to act cool.

So now assuming you did put some content together, built that small “Build a Niche Store” or whatever else… It’s time to promote!I think there are a few types of web users such as promoter, tinkerer and the helpless.

Promoter: The kinda guy who will start yelling from mountain tops to anyone who will listen about the new site they have that is still UNDER CONSTRUCTION. You’ll get visitors and a bounce rate that would make a sophomore on scholarship grin ear to ear. Nothing like a good score from 85%-95% when we’re talking bounce. Not.

Tinkerer: Flip it around to the other type of person who spends ridiculous amounts of time online, may have web related health conditions coming down the pipeline and still makes no money… This is the type of person who will spend an entire weekend redoing a theme to a site that has no audience. These people rarely launch ANY new projects because they are so busy working inside the project that it NEVER gets done because it’s NEVER perfect. These are the sites that you find that look professional but nobody has ever heard of them; heck how did you even find it? This person is the polar opposite of the promoter. If they could meet in the middle something might happen; sadly you’re usually one or the other.

Helpless: This is the web user who has convinced themselves that they can’t make money before they even try. Everything is overwhelming, they have no clue about any technologies so chances are most web talk sounds like latin to them. They need to take it slow but they just want to make money. If they have some money and drive they are a consultants jackpot. They’ll spend stupid amounts for someone to install wordpress at the click of a mouse or for some theme that they can’t edit. They either get conned by consultants or never get anywhere because they are suffering from information overload. SADLY these are usually the people with enough life experience on a topic to make a worthy site.

Who is Making Money with Blogs?: Most people making money online are NOT doing it through a blog. Every niche has their big boys who are pulling in the majority of the money for the niche. They have older, long established blogs and usually treat their online ventures like a business. Also they usually sell you something they made like an ebook or something. Typically they aren’t just making it off adsense or pay per post.

Who is Making Money Online?: A friend of mine was selling a large site on sitepoint and I brokered the deal. In the process I chatted with a few gents that had pretty hefty domain portfolios and had the pleasure of picking their brains. I learned from them which I guess I had already learned but never realized that content sites typically don’t pull in the bank. Content is good to get someone who is interested in your niche but it’s commerce sites that make $$$. People looking for content are typically doing just that; looking for free information. Where we got the crazy idea that we’d monetize all of it I’m not sure. Obviously some niches are easier for monetizing content traffic then others.

This is how I believe people are making money online:

1) PPC w/ Affiliates: They make an affiliate site geared to SELL; then advertise it with pay per click on major engines.

2) Affiliates w/ Article Marketing: Make an affiliate site geared to SELL; then write articles that are precursors to your items for sale. Let’s say you sell a cream that clears an embarrassing condition; you write an article about how embarrassing the condition is highlighting why it’s embarrassing; what others would think of it and at the end a link to your STORE. The point of the article should be to give them what they were searching for but also to buy NOW from you.

3) Advertising: This is where MOST think they will earn and sadly it’s the HARDEST to make a living from. There are probably a billion +++ sites online and the top 1,000-10,000 get 90%+ of the traffic I’d say.(kinda like the world gros income sadly) Most of us go to the same sites everyday and its the same sites that others go to. Building a massive hub if isn’t easy; neither is making a tone (000’s a month) from advertising. Part of the reason with advertising is if the advertiser doesn’t make money first month they cancel. Now if the advertiser running an affiliate add on your site keeps re-registering doesn’t it tell you that they are making more from the ad that you are charging so why don’t you stop charging for the ad and put your own affiliate banner up?

4) Consultants: Some are good, some are bad, some are selling snake oil. For the most part if these consultants are such pros why aren’t they busy doing it? Why aren’t they making passive income and living on a beach? When hiring consultants I’d say never hire someone who sells a dream. Hire someone who performs a service; the more defined the better. For instance if you need something coded hire a coder. Need someone to build your link portfolio? Hire an SEO with a track record etc… Need an article written about an obscure medical condition? Hire a Doctor who creates content. Just make sure you’re paying someone with a track record who is performing a service / delivering a product that will help you achieve your goal.

This has turned into quite the Monday morning rant hasn’t it? To sum this all up; if you’re building a blog treat it / run it like a business or you’re wasting your time unless you’re purely doing it for fun. I’m talking about making money online though. Start looking at your time spent online. If making money is your goal are you using your time well or are you simply just wasting it? Every hour you spend online is something you could of spent doing something else. Do you have people in your life that you don’t spend enough time with because you’re “working” towards nowhere?

Take a look at your computer habits; where your energy is going and what you’re getting from it. If making $$$ online is your goal; the majority of your time should be spent planning, researching, planning before you ever pick up a mouse to start building the first line of code. Treat it like a business and make a plan; not like a hobby that will miraculously start paying your bills. YOU’RE DREAMING! The computer is simply a tool that many of us treat as a hobby for it’s other functions. To put this in perspective imagine waking up every morning and running to fetch your hammer and hammering nails in everywhere but towards no end? Your loved ones will ask if you would like to hang out and you’ll say “I can’t I’m working”; are you? What’s the point. If you’re using the computer because you like it / enjoy it fine; do that but don’t fool yourself that WORKING on the computer and PLAYING on the computer are the same thing. They’re not.

This may seem kinda crazy but is twitter replacing traditional RSS feeds? Someone who subscribes to your RSS feed just subscribes to posts from a blog. Someone subscribing to your twitter feed is subscribing essentially to YOU. They want to hear what you have to say or at least they want to hear most of it.

With the advent of TwitterFeed you can have it set so that any blog post you make on any blog you own is automatically tweeted into twitter. You may have 50 subscribers on your humor blog, 230 on your business blog and 35 on your health blog. Traditionally you’d send that info to your subscribers and that’s it. Realistically if someone likes the way you handle and write things in one domain they could enjoy your work from others.

Imagine you had 2,000 twitter followers. Each time you make a post it’s sent to them. Sure it’s not in a feed reader but many with feed readers have them jammed with other feeds or don’t necessarily check them each day. Also people on twitter are a different breed to some extent. It’s people that are actively interacting, sharing etc… Also if someone likes your post they will most likely retweet it by sending it off to their followers list. Write something great and it can go viral really fast thanks to social media; twitter in particular.

I will say use twitterfeed cautiously and only if your blogs are somewhat related. If you make 5-10 posts a day on all your blogs it will look like link spamming ESPECIALLY if you aren’t active. If you make 70 tweets a day and 8 are links to your blog who cares. If you make 12 a day and it’s basically just links to your blog I don’t think you’ll retain your new friends very long. How would you like to basically just get a stream of links from someone? I wouldn’t.

If you want to send lot’s of links be smart about it. Send links that aren’t yours but of substantial value to anyone in the online world and of course mix some of yours in there. People aren’t stupid and your twitter friends are just that; people. Send them useful things and engage in conversations. If something you wrote is helpful than by all means send it; if not don’t bother.

Ultimately I see twitter as an active RSS feed rather than a passive one. Passive could be compared to a 1 way communication channel such as a radio or television. Twitter is like a telephone; you send out info but each subscriber can answer back at their leisure.

With all this being said do you think that twitter and the similar services start sprouting up may lead the charge to eventually replace the traditional RSS? I’ll be posting something in the not to distant future about my experience with twitter after ~1 month of use. If you aren’t already on twitter; just do it.

When it comes to the all to elusive goal of financial freedom; information is key!

Some of you may be scratching your head and saying I thought income and spending less than you brought in was the key? It’s a large part of the puzzle but if you aren’t managing your funds and tracking where they are going how will you ever patch up some leaks in your financial “ship”?

Knowing where your money is going, not going and how much you have at any given time are all key to being financially successful. It’s easy to spend like an idiot but still think you’re doing ok until that credit card bill or unexpected car repair smacks you into the poor house if you haven’t planned. Even if you have a huge nest egg if you spend without recourse you won’t keep it for long as chances are you had a different mental attitude when you amassed the funds compared to when you depleted them.

In 2001 I used to track all my income, expenses everything to the dollar almost. Whenever I’d receive change I’d write it off as rest in change. Change was the only thing I did not account. At anytime I could have a graph / pie chart showing me where my money was, how much was coming in, out, what my major expenses were etc. Since building a good cushion I stopped using the same techniques I had originally and what should not be to my surprise my funds have depleted.

It’s easy to spend $5, $10-$20 here and there and if you don’t keep track you really have no clue how much you’ve wasted. I’m starting to track all my income/expenditures again. A huge bonus of doing this is that since you have to mark it down you’re less likely to spend impulsively and by following you will only have 1 month of total shock. You add up your lunches for the month and boom $200+ or other expenses that are draining your account;  you may have 5-10 that equal $50-$125 a month… That’s a lot of money when you add it all up.

Point of this post is track your funds if you wish to be in charge of them. A fool and his / her money shall soon part is true. If accumulating money and holding onto it was the path of least resistance in this world we’d all be rich on  beach somewhere wouldn’t we?