In my previous post (So, What Do I Plan To Write About, posted about 36 hours ago), I described my mission: try to make money on the internet in an honest way, part time – and blog about it. In the intervening time, I have been surfing for information on websites, blogs, forums and eBooks. Actually, I am amazed at the amount of total junk out there on this topic. The problem seems to be that one way people are trying to make money is by advertising products to help people make money. There is a ton of get-rich quick stuff out there. It reminds me of those “Make Money from Home Stuffing Envelopes” ads that you see in the back of weekly news rags, right next to the “atheletic SWM seeks blond SWF ad.” Very sleasy.
I failed to mention it before, but what got me started on this was a segment that my wife saw on the Today Show. The story aired on Tuesday (27 November 2007) and described how retirees (“Gray Googlers”) were making money on the internet using Google Adsense. A similar story ran in USA Today. Amazingly, a guy calling himself “The Natural Handyman” claimed to be making $11,000 a month. Very impressive, because I would not exactly describe the site as “commercial slick.”
So, I decided right then and there that I would investigate this. Google was interviewed for the story and claimed that they paid out over $3 billion dollars last year (2006).
The bottom line of the entire story was
- Pick a topic that you really love and that people are interested in
- Create (a lot of) useful content that people want to hear about
- Optimize the site so that it ranks well in Google
- Monetize the visits by placing ads using Google Adsense
So, I have decided to “pick a topic.” More on that in my next article.
