With email subscribers it works like this: people like what you have to say so they give you their email address and allow you to periodically send them information and offers.

Over time successful bloggers collect thousands of email addresses. This is direct access to thousands of people ready to listen to what you have to say and sell. Write a new ebook and it takes just a couple minutes to send an email to all of them.

I do not have a email subscription list. It is a mistake, but it is not my biggest mistake.

Collected Emails Full Of Praise – Not A Mistake

Instead of a subscription based newsletter to collect email addresses, all pages on my site have a contact form which visitors can fill out and send me an email. They can make a comment, ask a question, or tell me how great I am.

I read the comments, I answer the questions, but the emails that praise me go into a special folder. The folder is called happiness.

When moments of self doubt surface, a couple minutes browsing through the happiness folder and I am back to being master of the universe.

Unlike other bloggers with 1000′s of half hearted subscribers, I had 103 people in this folder who love, praise and worship me – a loyal army ready to do my bidding.

Wrote An eBook For Vanity – Not A Mistake

Strictly out of vanity I wanted to be a published author. So I wrote an eBook,converted it to Kindle (good place to convert your ebook and publish it on Amazon), and published on Amazon (self published is good enough for my level of vanity).

To see your eBook appear on the Amazon website is a spiritual feeling. Your book is there just like Stephen King’s book. A cover imagine, a look inside option, comments section and an Amazon sales rank number.

Unfortunately everything was not exactly the same for me as for Mr. King. His comment section had comments and his sales rank was not a six digit number.

Books without positive comments and reviews do not sell. I needed people to review my book and write a review.

Time to call in the troops. I opened my happiness folder.

Asked My Loyal Email Fans For Help – Not A Mistake

I created a template email. Something like: ‘Hello reader, you mentioned in the past that you really like my site. I have written a book. I will send it to you for free and if you like it, maybe…if its not too much trouble…you can write a comment about it on Amazon.’

Going through every email in my happiness folder, and with small changes to the template, I sent 103 emails.

The response was immediate. My loyal fans said: ‘that’s great, I would love a free copy of your book, I am sure it’s wonderful and yes, I will write a comment on Amazon’. My inbox was filled with these enthusiastic replies.

I sent out free copies of my ebook and checked my Amazon page for comments.

Then I checked again. And then I checked again.

At present, 3 months later. 101 out of the 103 people who love, praise and worship me did not write a comment. Most of them didn’t even thank me for the free book.

Selling Catfights To Cat Lovers – A Big Mistake

Why did my biggest fans put in the effort to write an email simply to praise me but then completely ignore me after I sent them a free ebook?

To answer this question here is an example of a similar mistake.

Sandy has a site which documents how she goes around the city and collects stray cats and matches them with cat loving families. Every post describes how a half dead cat found on the street was brought back to health and given a warm home.

Cat lovers send Sandy emails full of praise – thanks for saving cats. They say she is doing an amazing thing and some even offer to send money if it means another cat saved.

Sandy doesn’t want to just take people’s money. She wants to give them something in return so she decides to write an eBook and sell it to her readers – if they want to give her money they can buy her ebook.

She writes the book and sends it to her biggest fans: ‘Hello biggest fans, here is a free copy of my new ebook – How To Place The Winning Bet At Illegal Catfighting Tournaments’.

Then she waits for praise.

No praise comes.

I made the same mistake. My site is about one thing (the struggles of making money with a website) and the ebook is about something else (how to start your own website). My biggest fans were readers who enjoyed reading about my struggle. They were expecting one things from me, but I gave them something else. They expected a book about struggle – instead I gave them a how-to book.

One of my fans wrote me, ‘I don’t understand, did you send me the wrong ebook?…the one I received is just the usual how-to book for websites. Sorry but I cannot endorse this ebook’

My biggest mistake – I lost the trust of my biggest fans.

No Trust, No Fans

The people in your email list trust you – that is why they gave you their email address. And as long as you send them relevant and honest information they will continue to trust you.

Before you hit the send button and ask your email list for help make sure its not a request that risks losing their trust. Because you will lose your biggest fans (or at least it is very embarrassing to ask them for anything again).

Related posts:

• Honesty Increases AdSense Revenue But So Do Big Numbers – Which Is Better?
• What Happens If You Do Not Update Your Website For 3 Months
• Creating Your Own Quality Backlinks – Humiliating But Necessary
• How Spammers Prevent This Website From Being Better

It takes time, but it gets faster.

Related posts:

• Social Networks. I Am Not Doing It.
• Creating Your Own Quality Backlinks – Humiliating But Necessary
• Millions Will Visit Your Website
• Commenting on Problogger Does Not Improve Your Blog

Building traffic to your website is a slow and arduous process. It is a combination of creating quality content and patience. You are good, you do not try to cheat the system by buying backlinks, keyword stuffing and writing junk articles just for the backlinks.

But there are people out there that do these things. And the problem is that some of these bad people are your competition. You are on page three of search results because page one is full of webmasters who stoop down to any level to get there. They have no ethics, they do not play fair, they do not care about the poor visitor who lands on their junk site. Your site is better, but nobody finds it way back on page three.

You Know They Are Cheating…What Can You Do About It

You are not bitter simply because you are on page three and stubbornly accusing everybody better then you of being a cheater. You have proof they are cheating.

Your competition’s website is just a few pages of content. These few pages are full of advertisements and buy now buttons. The content is scattered full of exclamation points, buy today, don’t wait, free and now! They provide no quality content, no authority, no value add – it is just a sleazy sales site.

Obviously they are doing evil to get onto page one on search results – how else could their crappy site get there.

You check a few of their backlinks and notice something suspicious. The backlinks are all the same.  All the backlinks come from blogs that have the same appearance and basically the same content – each of the blogs has a side bar link section called ‘recommended sites’ which links to their website. Obviously they control these blogs and planted the backlinks.

You know they are cheating. What can your do about it?

You can send them an email and try to extort money out of them.

Steps To Extort Money From Your Competition

Create an anonymous email address

You will be writing them an email. Because you are going to scare them and quite possibly anger them, you will want to remain anonymous.

Open an anonymous email account (for example: anonymousspeech.com).

Open an anonymous bank account

You are going to ask your competition to send you money. Because you will be extorting the money, they will not like you. You need to provide a method of sending you money without them finding out who you are.

Open an anonymous offshore bank account (for example: enumbered.com).

Write an Email:

Dear [your target cheating webmaster],

My job is to find and report websites that abuse the Terms Of Service of major search engines. I look for evidence of paid backlinks, keyword stuffing, duplicate content, unnatural backlink building, etc. Any activity that appears to be an effort to cheat the search engines and prevent them from providing the best content for their users will be reported.

Based on my analysis your website is involved in behavior that requires me to report your website to the search engines for further investigation. If they find your website to be in violation of their Terms Of Service then your website will be removed from search engine results.

You have two possible courses of action:

1) Ignore This Warning Letter

In this case I will be forced to forward my findings to the search engines.

If you have not breached the search engine’s Terms of Service then you have nothing to be concerned about. The investigation will find that you are within the terms and your website will not be removed from search engine results.

But if you have broken the Terms of Service and you ignore this letter the result could be a removal of your website from search engine results.

2) Request a Reevaluation

You can request a reevaluation of your website. For the one time fee of $1000 US dollars I can perform a reevaluation of your website.

A reevaluation will force me to suspend my report to the search engines. I will perform a deeper analysis of your website and its adherence to the Terms of Service. In almost all cases a reevaluation finds that there is no breach of the Terms of Service and the website is not be reported.

Please consider this a serious matter that requires your immediate attention.

To order a reevaluation of your website, please send $1000 US to account [your anonymous bank account number] via [anonymous bank account link] before [a date one week in the future].

Failure to order a reevaluation will force me to report my findings of your website’s breach of the Terms of Service to the search engines.

Regards,
[Your anonymous name]

What Happens After You Send the Email

Once your target receives this email his (or her) first reaction will be denial. He will think it is a joke or spam – he might even laugh. This is why it is important that you set the payment date to at least one week into the future. One week is enough time to let your email fester and ripen in his brain. He will have a hard time sleeping – it will always be on his mind – was it a joke? What if it is not a joke – I lose everything. For one week he will be biting his nails and staring off into the distance in a constant state of worry.

If he is making a lot of money on page one he will start to consider the possibility that it is not a joke. If it is real he can lose all his cheating work and the money he makes. After a week of misery, doubt and worry, a $1000 payment will start to look like an acceptable cost to eliminate the mental anguish and uncertainty.

All you do is silently wait. If he emails you, ignore it. Do not respond to any of his emails – you need to let him suffer in ignorance and silence. The best is to set your email client to automatically delete all incoming emails to eliminate any temptations you might have to respond (also to prevent you from having to read angry emails claiming that you are going to jail etc).

When the due date arrives check your bank account – is the money there? It is – great, you have an extra $1000 dollars. And if it is not there, do nothing. Do not report the website to any search engines because there is a chance you will lose your anonymity. Anyway, your email has served its main purpose – to bring misery to your cheating competition.

In Conclusion

Although outlined is a step by step guide to extorting money from your competition, I strongly recommend that you do not do this. It is a mean thing to do – and you are, after all, a good person.

Just let the search engines do their jobs. It might take time, you might remain on page three for a few months longer, but sooner or later the bad guys will be caught and sent away. Changes like the recent Google Panda Algorithm update are positive for you because they punish poor content and reward quality content.

As long as you keep doing what your doing – being good and patient – you will end up higher then your cheating competition.

And if you are not good. If you are the bad webmaster that people want to send this email to. Well…if you receive this email you will probably ignore it.  But the dark shadow will remain. You are always in a state of worry because everybody is against you. Everybody wants you to fail: your competition, the search engines, your visitors. They all want you to go away. Even if you never receive this email, you suffer a worse punishment – you go to bed at night with the miserable fact that when you awake your website might be gone and everybody will be happy. I might pity you if you were not my competition.

Related posts:

• Honesty Increases AdSense Revenue But So Do Big Numbers – Which Is Better?
• Creating Your Own Quality Backlinks – Humiliating But Necessary
• Why Most Backlinks Are Worthless And More Questions Answered
• How To Make Money With Jesus

Definition: Big vision is what forces you to continue in the morning even though you quit the night before.

Do you think that simply by making a website, filling it with content and promoting it you will have a successful online business?  No way, it’s not going to happen like that.

Here is how it’s going to happen: First you will be excited.  You will wake up early and go to bed late.  You won’t be hungry and Friday nights will be spent in front of the computer.  You will work and work like a donkey.  You will keep pushing yourself – a few more web pages, a logo, an AdSense account.

Your website is done.

Next stage: you promote.  Join forums and leave what seem like hundreds of comments on countless blogs.  You follow everybody who lets you and have more followers than Moses.  You are a machine.

You are ready for the money to start rolling in.

A few days pass – nothing.  A few weeks pass – nothing.  For a while you assume your email account is not working but after a few tests you confirm it works fine.  You scratch your head, where are the visitors, where are the emails, where is the money?  What happened?

What happened is that you are an Entrepreneur.

It Is Difficult To Be An Entrepreneur – Nobody Believes in New Ideas

There are three categories of people in the business world: people who want, people who make, and people that bring these two together.  You are the third type – you are an entrepreneur.

Your job  as an entrepreneur  is to find people that want something, find people that can produce it, and then make everything work so that the two of them have a mutually beneficial relationship.  When everybody is happy you get paid for setting the whole thing up.

For example, with a website your job as an entrepreneur is to find a problem people have, find (or make) a website which solves the problem and finally get the people with the problem to visit the website.  When it works everybody is happy.  People’s problems are solved and you get paid by monetizing the website.

It sounds easy, but as every entrepreneur quickly finds out – it is one of the hardest jobs in the world.

Being a entrepreneur is about trying new ideas.  But new ideas have resistance.

Your friends will support you at the beginning but when it take longer than it should your friends will urge you to give up.  When you have worked countless hours and see no results you will feel like giving up.   You will start to doubt yourself.  You will start to ask, if it is such a good idea why has nobody thought of it before, if its such a good idea why is it taking so long to become successful.

An entrepreneur must struggle through a lot of doubt and negative feedback.  When success is taking a lot longer than you expect and everybody around you is telling you to quit you need something that will force you to keep going.

Without A Big Vision You Will Quit

Adam Toren and Matthew Toren started being entrepreneurs before either of them were ten years old.  Since then they have had many successful business ventures ranging from importing stereo equipment to refurbishing and rebranding a pool hall.  They made money, but more importantly they gained a lot of experience.

They recently come out with a new book: Small Business, Big Vision.  They have this to say about an entrepreneur’s need to have a big vision:

“Every single person who launches and develops a business faces obstacles and challenges along the way – period.  There are no exceptions.  You, too, will come up against opposition in many forms, often even from within your own head.  And all the tricks, tools and action steps in the world – no matter how sound they may be – won’t help you one bit if you don’t have the right outlook and strong, clear vision.”

A big clear vision is what gets you through the rough patches along the way.  You need a big vision to push you forward when everything is pushing you back.

As a entrepreneur you are walking through uncharted fields.  There are no clear signposts along the way and no indications on how much farther you have to go.  You must simply believe and keep going forward.

A big vision helps you move forward.  Adam and Matthew describe the big vision as “that picture in your mind of future possibilities”.  Every entrepreneur has a big vision, it comes naturally, it is the reason you to make that extra effort to succeed.  Some people watch TV and go to bed but an entrepreneur will wake up early, go to bed late, and work and work like a a donkey – all for the big vision to come true.

My big vision is to wake up every morning, eager for the day ahead, able to do what what I love doing. Without this vision I  would of quit this website a  long time ago.

Have a big vision, without it you’re screwed.

Related posts:

• Successful Website Advice – Avoid It
• Millions Will Visit Your Website
• Know Your Audience
• Write Content That People Want to Read And Pay For

A dollar a day is a modest and reasonable goal.

It also an exciting goal.  Imagine falling asleep on the couch with an empty ice-cream bowl on your gut and your site earns you dollar.  Passive income is a magical thing – even when it is just a dollar.  You live your life and your site makes you money.   It feels like free money.

Your goal is to create a website that works for you.  A site that works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  It works when you are having dinner, when you are walking the dog,  it works when you are doing nothing at all.

A measly dollar a day – how hard can that be?

How Long Does It Take To Make A Dollar A Day

Not to brag, but I just reached the goal of a dollar a day.  I set this goal two years ago.  At the time I believed it to be a silly and simple goal – a goal for the sake of having a goal.  Start at a dollar a day and then move up from there.  I can now say with no exaggeration that I have never worked so hard for a dollar.

Due to the nature of my site, I keep track of a lot of statistics.  Besides keeping track of how many visitors I receive and how many pages they view per visit, I also keep keep track of how many hours I have worked on my website.

To reach my goal of a dollar a day I slaved for 705 hours.  Slaved, because before I reached this goal I was working for less then a dollar a day.  705 actual work hours – hours spent in front of the computer pecking at the keyboard.  705 does not include the countless hours gazing out the window hoping a post idea surfaces in my head, or the number of hours I have spent staring at a blank page.  They are 705 hours of moving the mouse and clicking keys.

Two years ago when I set the goal it did not seems daunting, after all, it is just a dollar.  A dollar a day seems like a natural starting point.  In blogging forums you see it often, something like, “I just started blogging, I am still learning, I would be happy with just a dollar a day”

The fact is that it is not just a dollar a day.  It is a tough goal.  Most bloggers never reach it.

Fortunately The First Dollar Is The Toughest

Do not be discouraged if you are not earning a dollar a day.  A personal investment planner will warn you that the first million is the hardest.  In the blogging world the first dollar a day is the hardest.  If you are struggling to make that dollar find solace in the fact that you are not alone.

Regardless how long it takes and the hoops you need to jump, once you reach the first dollar you can be certain that the following dollars will be a lot easier.

Once you achieve the goal you will certainly have the following personal traits:

• Patience.  It might take two years to reach this goal.
• Persistence.  Lot of things will not work before you find the few that do.
• Solid understanding.  You have a blog full of quality content, you have made many online friends and contacts, you know the difference between search engine traffic and social traffic.
• Not blogging just for the money.  Spending all your free time and effort for a dollar a day is a clear indication that you are not motivated only by money – this is good because at the beginning the money will not motivate you.

How long does it take to make a dollar a day?  It could be six months, a year, or like me it could take two years.  The good news is that once your goal of a dollar a day is reached you are well on your way to earning two dollars a day.

Related posts:

• Being A Webmaster Is Psychologically Challenging
• The First 100 Visitors
• The Price of Traffic
• Honesty Increases AdSense Revenue But So Do Big Numbers – Which Is Better?

They are good questions, here are the answers:

Question 1 – How Many Backlinks Do You Really Have?

In a blog entry you mention that you have 12 backlinks, but according to (some source) you have way more than that.  Why the discrepancy? 

Not all backlinks are created equal.  By checking my backlinks in Yahoo with  Yahoo Site Explorer I can see that this website has a total of 295 backlinks.  It seems like a lot, but in fact most of them are useless. 

When I leave a comment on another blog a backlink is created.  When I write a comment in a forum a backlink is created.  When I enter the website URL in stats guessing website like webtraffic24.com  a backlink is created.  Of course these kind of backlinks are worthless.

These backlinks might bring a few visitors who are interested in my comments on a blog or a forum but in terms of my search engine traffic they add no value.  They are worthless is because these are backlinks that I created myself with very little effort.  And if I create them myself with little effort so does everybody else for their websites. 

Backlinks worth is directly proportional to the difficulty of getting the backlink.  Imagine it this way:

1. 2 websites start with 0 backlinks – Google views these websites as equal.
2. Because it is easy the webmaster of each website leaves a comment on a Problogger post and creates a backlink.  Now both websites have 1 backlink each.  Google still views these websites as equal because they both have the same backlink, the backlinks cancel each other out.
3. But then one of the webmasters spend a week writing a great post.  The content is so good that Oprah Winfrey links to the post.  This backlink has value because it a backlink that the other website does not have and cannot get easily.  Google will now view the website with the Oprah Winfrey backlink as the better website.

This is a simplified view but it makes the point.  For any backlink ask: how difficult is the backlink to get?  If it is easy to get then assume everybody has it also – so it cancels out and is worthless.  The valuable backlinks are those that few people have because they are difficult to get.  It is easy to write in your resume that you are a great person, but if you want your resume to stand out get a reference letter from Oprah Winfrey stating you are great person.

There are companies that offer 1000 backlinks for $9.99.  If it was really that easy this website would of been successful 2 years ago.  Why would anybody spend countless hours creating quality content for a single good backlinks if for $9.99 (you can make that flipping burgers for 1 hour) you can have 1000 backlinks.  The answer – the 1000 backlinks are worthless.

Yahoo states that this website have 295 backlinks – but 283 of them are backlinks that everybody else has.  The only good backlinks this website has are the ones I had to work for.  For example I currently have 9 backlinks from guest posts on other blogs and 3 from websites that backlink to this website because they think it is a great website.  These are the types of backlinks that matter and the only ones I care about.  That is why this website has only 12 backlinks.

Question 2 – How Do You Update All Those Webpages?

You have a lot of webpages.  It is a lot of work to do global updates on the entire website? 

By last count there are 64 webpages on this website.  Fortunately this website was created with Dreamweaver because without Dreamweaver making changes to the website would be nightmare.

With Dreamweaver I created a template page.  The template contains all the sections of the website that are identical on every page.  Every page on this website has the same layout, header, and main navigation.  So when I need to make a change to the header all I do is make the change in the template – as soon as I make the change on the template Dreamweaver makes sure the change is updated on every page.

Dreamweaver also keeps track of the internal links.  So if I rename a page, move a page, or delete a page, Dreamweaver lets me know that links will be effected and offers to make the appropriate updates to the links. 

For these two reasons alone I cannot imagine managing a large website without Dreamweaver (or any other website management software).

With a large website it is also mandatory to use CSS.  The look and feel of the entire website is managed from a single CSS file.  Simply by making a tiny change in this file I can change the appearance of the entire website.  For example, if I want to change the heading colors from green to blue then I update the ‘<h3>’ CSS value to blue.  Instantly by making that single change all the headings on the website will be blue.

CSS is a must.  Without it the website would be a total mess.  Without it, if I wanted to change the color of the heads I would need to update every page manually – not only would it take time, but I would certainly miss a couple pages.  After a few updates like this every page on the website would look different.  With CSS you ensure that every page looks the same. 

With Dreamweaver and CSS I can completely change the appearance of the website – new logo, font size, heading colors, background color, layout etc in 10 minutes.  The advantages of Dreamweaver and CSS far outweighs the drawback of having to spend the time to learn how to use them.  Time and money spent learning Dreamweaver and CSS is time and money well invested.

Question 3 – Do You Use A Programmer?

For the Problogger Comments analysis post – how did you gather all that data?

With this website I make almost enough money to buy a coffee in the morning.  Unfortunately my body requires that I provide it with more amenities then just coffee, so I have a day job.  My employer pays me for my programming abilities. 

For almost all cases, programming is not necessary to create a website.  But sometimes it comes in handy.  The Problogger analysis posts are a good example where programming skills was a good thing to have.

In the Problogger posts I went through all the commenters on Problogger and performed a statistical analysis on how commentors on Problogger improve their odds of succeeding simply by commenting.  I could of spent weeks going through all the comments cutting and pasting the commenters into a spreadsheet but that would of been insane.  Instead I wrote a little script that goes through the Problogger posts and gathered the information for me.  The script took 3 hours to write and ran for about 5 minutes.

Another example of using my programming abilities for this website is the money number on the main page.  As you might of noticed the main page has a big number that emerges when you load the page. 

Although nobody has asked me how it works, I will tell you anyway.  In Photoshop I manually created an image for every number between 0 and 9.  For every number I created 15 shades ranging from black to barely visible.  In total there are (10*15) 150 individual images.  Then I wrote a script that takes a number, for example 806.69, and combines the individual images into a single animated gif.

Without programming the number on the main screen would not exist, the traffic and revenue graphs would not exist, the Problogger posts would not exist, and my day job would be flipping burgers at McDonald’s. 

All these things are possible without programming – every couple weeks I could spend Saturday manually creating the number and the graphs.  And on Sunday I can cut the lawn with scissors. 

Fortunately you do not need to be a programmer if you need a script to perform a mundane and repetitive task for you.  There are lots of people (mostly in India) waiting to help you.  Send them your requirements and in a few days they send you a script.  I have never used them myself but I have heard good things about vworker.

Question 4 – Do Backlinks Bring Traffic?

How Much Traffic Do You Get From Your Backlinks?

As you can see from this graph this website does not get a lot of visitors from referral sites (backlinks):

At the beginning all traffic was from backlinks.  At the beginning I left comments on other blogs, visited forums and wrote articles with links back to this website – it was the only way to get traffic.  At the beginning you get no traffic from search engines, the only traffic comes from backlinks and your mother.

The problem with backlink traffic is that it is a lot of work.  Leaving comments, visiting forums and writing articles takes time.  And for the time spent you get few visitors in return.  As an example, I was monitoring Problogger very carefully and watching for a new post so that I could leave the first comment.  I thought – the first comment must get a lot of exposure and therefore lots of people will click the backlink.  Problogger has over 150,000 subscribers, finally with diligence I managed to make the first comment, I received 5 visitors.

The problem with getting traffic from easy backlinks like blog comments or forums is that there are so many of them that people  just do not care.  Problogger has a post a day and every post has at least 50 comments – with so many comments people stop caring and stop visiting the commentor’s website.  Backlinks are not a great source of traffic unless its Opera Winfrey’s website and she is urging her visitors to visit your website. 

As time went on search engine traffic surpassed backlink traffic.  Now most traffic is from search engines.  A backlink’s main function is to please the search engine and not as a source of traffic.  If Oprah mentions your website in a post then you will receive traffic from her website for a couple weeks while the post is on her front page but then the traffic will stop when the post is replaced by newer posts.  But Google will reward you for that backlink for a lot longer.  With a backlink  from Oprah your website could jump in the search results and stay up there for months.

All my guests posts are buried deep in their respective blogs.  I get almost no traffic from older  guest posts – the sun has set on them and are long forgotten.  But Google remembers.  Goggle still sees my guest posts and rewards me by showing this website in search results.

Question 5 – How Are Your Search Rankings Doing?

Blog post from Day 601 talks about the position of ‘How a Website Makes Money’.  At the time is was at 6- where is it now and why?

The keywords for this website are ‘Make Money Website’.  According to the Google keyword tool 27,100 people do search for this term every month.  It is not a lot but if I can get the top spot for this term it would mean almost 1000 visitors a day.

Everyday I check the position of ‘make money website’ in the Google search results.

I picked this term because I use it at a benchmark.  By keeping track where this term is in the search ranks I know how much Google values these keywords for this website.  When I get to the top for this term it will mean that Google considers this website to be about ‘make money website’.  The result will be that not only will I receive traffic for this term, but all the various terms meaning the same thing. 

When this websites ranks high for ‘make money website’ then it will also rank high for similar terms.  The permutations are endless.  As an example this website already ranks quite high for terms, ‘website, much, how, money’.  Here are some of the phrases that people type into their search engine to find this website:

The higher in the search ranking the term ‘make money website’ goes, the more permutations of these keywords this website will receive.  How do I know?  Because I do a lot of searches to determine my competition.  I constantly search Google for phrases that I want this website to reach the top of – and I always see the same thing.  It is always the same websites that are at the top.  They have strong keywords so they receive the all the permutations of these keywords.  The same website is at the top for ‘make money website’ and for ‘can website make money’.

When I started keeping track of ‘make money website’ this website was in position 738 (page 7 with Google advanced setting of 100 results per page).   That was around a year ago.  Currently this website is somewhere between position 30 and 40.

And what about ‘How a Website Makes Money’  – the main question this website attempts to answer.  On day 601 Google felt this website was the 6th best website to answer the question.  Today, 160 days later, Google thinks this website has the best answer:

Related posts:

• Creating Your Own Quality Backlinks – Humiliating But Necessary
• How To Make Money With Jesus
• Search Engine Traffic Is My Sock
• Guest Posts Increase Your Odds Of Having a Successful Site

The most common approaches are already covered:

• Advertising. Create content and place ads around the content. The idea is that while people are reading the great content about how hard it is to make money online, they will glance over and see an ad stating they can make a thousand dollars overnight. They click the ad and leave this website for greener pastures – this website makes a few dollars.
• Product Sales. Create an ebook to sell to visitors. Visitors to this site are looking to make money with a website. They want to know how. So, for $49 dollars they can purchase a website starter kit, that will get them well on their way.
• Affiliate Sales: Visitors to this site either have a website or will have one in the near future. They need a web hosting service to serve their website to the internet public. So, spattered throughout this website are links to a hosting company that has agreed to pay this website when somebody purchases their services.

Everybody attempting to make money with a website is doing these things in one form or another. And that is the problem.

I am forced to ask myself: Would anybody notice if this website disappeared?

The answer is a blunt NO. If I selected all the files of this website and pressed the delete button the only watery eyes would be my own. The world will continue. A few people will gain a broken link in their favorites folder and Google will need to remove this website from its index, but ignoring these minor inconveniences nothing would change.

If this website dies, there are thousands ready and waiting to take its place. This website is just a plate at the buffet – take one from the stack and another one instantly pops up to take its place.

This website is not changing the world, it is not impacting peoples lives. True, it provides amazing intellectual insights and mental stimulus for its readers, but it does not impact them where it matters – the gut and in the heart.

To make this website matter it needs to have an impact on peoples lives. It needs to participate in the human condition. It needs to make people laugh, cry, love and hate. These feelings are the essence of existence – the meaning of live. They are what make us hug, hold hands, dance, make love and shoot each other. To make this website matter it needs to cause emotions in people.

To impact lives on a heart and gut level this website now offers a new tool that has the potential to solve problems that we as humans face each and every day. Problems that cause us worry, anxiety, pain and suffering. By providing a tool to solve these problems this website is bringing happiness to the world.

This website now enables visitors to send postcards from Prague to anybody in the world.

Sending a Postcard From Prague Solves People Problems

What heart and gut problems can you solve right now by mailing a postcard? Here are some common examples:

You Need To Show Your Wife That You Were Thinking Of Her
You and your good time buddies went to Prague for a week. It was the best bachelor party you ever had. Cheap beer and authorities turn a blind eye to prostitution. Every night was a drunken stupor falling from bar to bar, throwing money at alcohol found in beer mugs and mini-skirts. What a good time, what a riot!

On the airplane flight home you are suddenly struck by a terrible realisation. With all the excitement you forgot to send your beloved wife a postcard. You promised to send her a postcard from Prague. You bite your nails and look out the window – what are you going to do?.

You need to send a postcard. Pay this website four dollars US and address the postcard to your wife. When you arrive home, after all the obligatory hugs and kisses, sit in front of your computer and send a postcard from this website. A few days later your wife will receive a postcard from Prague with a beautiful message about how vacationing is not the same without her, you miss her, and you cannot wait to be in her arms again. As she covers you with kisses and praises you can mutter out-load at your displeasure with the mail system for taking so long to deliver a postcard you sent during your first day in Prague.

You Need To Make Your Mother Worry
Has your mother been pissing you off lately? Making you sandwiches but always ‘forgetting’ that you hate cheese – how many times do you need to tell her not to put cheese in your sandwiches? Does she constantly annoy you by hovering around picking up your clothes from the floor while you talk to your friends on the phone?

You need to send her a postcard. Pay this website four dollars US and address the postcard to your mother. A few days later your mother will receive a postcard from Prague with the following message: “Hello Mother, I know this will make you upset but I really wanted to go. Bobby has a cousin that lives in Prague and he said we could stay at his house for week. I knew you would say no, so I had to leave without telling you. Do not worry about me, I am having a great time. I will be back on Friday. Love, Timmy”

You Need To Make Your X Think You Are Out Of The Country
You just broke up with your girlfriend of five years. You found another who is taller and who whole heartily appreciates your baseball cap collection.

The problem is that conflict makes you squirm and seeing people cry makes you uncomfortable. So even though you are broken up with your x, she is not aware of it because you did not tell her. For you the best approach is to sneak around, not answer the door and let the phone ring when she calls. Your hope is that she will figure it out and leave you alone.

But she is not figuring it out – she keeps trying to contact you.

You need to send her a postcard. Pay this website four dollars US and address the postcard to your x. Use the postcard to break up with her. Tell her you moved to Prague. Tell her that you need to find yourself – its not her its you. You have moved to Prague to start a new life and figure out what the meaning of everything. All the best, good luck, it was fun while it lasted.

You Need A Friend
For reasons you cannot understand you have no friends. Nobody likes to be around you and your pleas for friendship are left unanswered. Every night is a lonely night. You try talking to the dog, but he just perks his ears up and thinks you are going to talk him for another sad stroll in the park.

You need to send yourself a postcard. Pick a picture that you think you will enjoy. Write yourself a poem about how special you are, how unique you are, how you could not imagine life without yourself. Pay this website 4 dollars US and a few days later a postcard will arrive specifically for you. Just imagine how happy that will make you.

You Need To Tell Somebody The Truth Anonymously
You go to work five days a week. Everyone of those days is spent sitting at your desk. Due to cost cutting at your company, offices are small and you are forced to share the office with another person. It is a tight fit, but you have managed to arrange the desks and chairs giving each of you a comfortable amount of personal space.

The problem is that your office-mate’s body odor is pungent enough to transgress the distance. The stench starts around 10am – that is when it first hits your nose. For the next hour you get little hits of it when he stretches or reaches for the phone. Then it gets worse. The small office acts like a greenhouse trapping the odor – by the afternoon you are surrounded by a tear jerking fog of stench. For three years you have suffered in silence, but now there is a solution.

You need to send your co-worker a postcard. Pay this website four dollars US and address the website to your stinky office-mate. Do not sign it and send it to his home address. The message will be simple: “Because you stink, others suffer. Please include deodorant as part of your morning routine.” He might suspect it was you who wrote it, but he will never be sure.

What problem can you solve today by sending a postcard from Prague?

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There are 1000’s of websites about making money online. But only a thimble full make more then a few dollars a day. The rest make pennies and dimes – this website is one of them.

There is a good reason why there are hoards of websites about making money. People learn about making money online from make money online websites. Their eyes twirl as they read about how easy it is to make a website, how easy it is to make money, how great life is online.

Without taking a deep breath, without stepping back and thinking, they create a website. And what better topic then the one they are currently excited and passionate about – how to make money online. This is exactly what happened to me.

Monkeys learn how to use sticks by watching other monkeys use sticks. I like bananas. I discovered making money online from a make money online website. So what did I do after I finished my banana? I made a website about making money online.

2 years later and I have not made enough money to buy a year pass at the zoo. This website has netted a profit of $98.

It is absurd – after 2 years of attempting and failing, I am still at it.

Why do I continue this charade of teaching people how to be like me. Who would want to be like me? Who would want to follow in my footsteps? After visiting this website why would anybody want to listen to what I say or buy what I sell. This website is a sham – it attempts to teach what it does not know.

How successful can a math teacher be if they can’t factor a quadratic? Can an obese man sell a diet program? How successful can a website about making money be if it is not making any money?

I should admit it. I made a mistake. I got excited and jumped without looking. Make a website about making money without making a money with a website – absolutely ridiculous.

I must of fallen off the tree and hit my head. Why do I persist dolling out information about a topic I obviously know nothing about? What motivates me to continue?

Stubbornness. I know I am not making any money. I know that people should ignore me. I know that the whole concept is absurd.

But I keep going.

I cannot quit now. I have put in too much work and I have learnt too much. There is no way I am going to throw it all away. Stubbornness makes this website possible.

How This Website Will Make Money Later

On my wall, tacked beside the monitor is a piece of paper which reminds me in big letters:

• Don’t rush
• Real people are reading what you are writing
• Become an expert

This website does not make any money now. Obviously. It is not plastered with advertisements. And I am not pushing products. How could it make money.

I am not trying to make money now. I am creating a website that will make money in the future. Right now the focus is content. There is no way for a website to start making money out of the gate. First you need to build something, and then you can start making money. Now I am building.

Once it is built the focus will shift to making money.

First build the store, stock it with goods, attract customers, and then and only then make sales. Right now I am writing content and attracting customers. Making sales is the last step, the one that I have not started yet.

When this website finally does start making money the true value of this website will be revealed. It will show how you cannot make money without content. It will show the process that one must go through to make money. It will show the hard times, the long struggle, the uphill climb, the truth.

People will ask. How do websites make money? This website will be ready and waiting with the answer years in the making. This is when dimes will turn to dollars.

If you are reading this blog you are probably not making too much money either.  You want to know how.  The answer:  Be stubborn and keep  building – the money comes later.

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My pillow should be soaked with tears.

But actually, things are going really well.  You can not see it in the money, in the traffic, in the number of RSS subscribers, or in the comments.  It is what is happening under the covers that is interesting.

Mother peeps into Timmy’s bedroom and thinks he is sleeping, but if she pulls the covers she finds a blushing Jenny from Math class – Timmy is wide awake.

If You Do Not Socialize Having a Website Can Be Boring

Nothing exciting is going on – almost boring.  It got to the point were I was sitting at the computer thinking of what to do next.  Twiddle my fingers, look out the window, look at the keyboard.  Nothing happening.

At one point it got desperate.  Sitting at the computer and nothing to do, I almost opened a Twitter account.  Fortunately as soon as I saw the little blue bird I closed the window.  It was a close call.  I quickly left the computer and went to get some air with the dog.

Bored enough to open a Twitter account.  What the hell is going on?

The problem is that ever since the website was designed and completed there has been nothing new to do.  At the beginning everything was fresh and exciting.  Creating a website, learning how, discovering new words: SEO, Webmaster, PageRank, SERPS.  Great stuff.  But when it is done – then what?

After the fun stuff came the monotonous work.  For the previous year and a half it has been always the same:

1. Write content for the website.
2. Read old content on website and make edits.
3. Write guest posts

Writing and edit this website.  Writing for another website.  Same thing over and over again.

Some say.  You need to get out there.  Make friends.  Join social networks, read other blogs, write comments, participate in forums.

I did that.  It was fun for the first 3 months but then it drained me.  Just the thought of opening up the forum and having to read the new entries sucks all my energy.

I never tried Twitter but I am certain that within a few days I would forget about it – just like Facebook.  Fun at first but the shine wears off.  It is people talking, endlessly talking.  Over and over again, same thing round and round.

Now I try to ignore everything in my niche – try to avoid all the chatter.  Every now and then I will have a quick look around just to verify that there is nothing new.  I might leave a comment somewhere but only because I want to, not because I believe it will better this website.

In high school Timmy arrives exactly at the morning bell, sits quietly through class, eats his lunch under the bleachers and heads straight home after the bell.  The endless chatter in the halls drives him insane.

Not that I am a social misfit.  I like people.  I like to help people.  I answer all emails with paragraphs.  I respond to comments directed at me.  There are a couple of bloggers that I exchange emails with.  I do not exist in a cave – I interact. I simply avoid the giddy school girls at a pajama party type socializing.

This website has no Facebook followers.  No twitter followers.  And only 80 very dedicated RSS subscribers.

Some website gage their success by the number of Twitter followers and Facebook friends.  Fortunately this website does not.

Waiting For The Big Traffic Explosion

What is happening under the covers? It is slow going but positive results are coming in.

According to the Google keyword tools there are 110,000 global searches for “website money”.  If I could get on position 1 for those terms then I could potentially get 3500 visitors a day from Google.  The key is to get to position 1 for these terms.

Currently this website is position 13.  Real progress.

Moving from position 70,908 to 13 does not increase my traffic, it does not make me more money, it does not bring fame.  But it is progress.  Position 13 is the same as 70,908 – it is invisible.  Very rarely do search engine users go to the second page.  Beyond page 1 is nothing.  This website is still nothing, but it is moving closer to something.

Only 12 positions to go until the explosion.  If I can get a top 3 spot for these keywords then my traffic will suddenly shoot up.

More progress:  6 months ago this website was nowhere to be found for the term ‘make money website’.  Then it appeared on the radar at position 730.  Then a few months later 380.  Few weeks ago at 120. Now 70 – the 4th O in GOOOOOOOOOGLE.  Still far, far away, but progress.

And some more progress:  The most relevant, ‘how a website makes money’.  Number 7.

So I yawn and:

1. Write content for the website.
2. Read old content on website and make edits.
3. Write guest posts

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What do you need to know?  What do you need to do?

Fortunately if your question starts with ‘how to’ then a solution is a few clicks away.

Turn on your computer.  Open you favorite search engine and type in how to ‘something’.  Hit the search button.  Milliseconds later you will receive a list of solutions.  And not just simple one sentence solutions.  You will be able to read pages and pages of information, download an ebook, be a subscriber to monthly newsletter, download videos and mp3s, buy a complete package which includes a 3 books, 5 pamphlets and 8 CDs.

Stacks of ebooks and CDs is what you would expect for questions like how to build a house or how to become an astronaut.  But surprisingly you can get a ebook and CDs that answer the question: How to win the lottery.

For under $30 dollars you can download a complete guide that will take you through the steps of winning the lottery.

Want to know how to win the lottery?  No problem.  Send $25 and you will receive an e-book that will show you step-by-step how to win millions of dollars.  Its fast, its easy and the best thing is that you can do it all from the comfort of your living room.

I hope you agree that a complete guide to ‘how to win the lottery’ is absolutely ridiculous.  Two things stick out as absurd:  that somebody made the guide thinking that people will buy it and that there are people who buy it.  But it happens – it is happening right now.  It is out there.  There are how to guides for everything and people are buying them.

Win The Lottery – Fooled By The Context

I do not want to insult anyone, but I pity the fool who thinks there is a $30 solution to the question: how to win the lottery.  But obviously the fools are out there.  People are buying, otherwise nobody would be selling.

Besides ignorance what can lead a human being to purchase this kind of nonsense?  The answer is context and presentation.

Our fool, lets call him Bob, uses the internet everyday to check the weather and sport scores.  He also uses the internet if he needs the definition of a word or needs to know  Lincoln’s birthday.  For Bob the internet is a magical place that provides true answers to his questions.

Bob is fooled by the context.

Win The Lottery – Fooled By the Presentation

Bob is sitting in front of the TV and listening intently as the pretty lady reads out lottery numbers.  When she finishes, as is Bob’s custom, he rips up the ticket and curses the TV.  Then one day, after losing for the hundredth time, he has had enough.  There must be a way to win the lottery.

Bob goes on the internet and searches, ‘how to win the lottery’.  The internet never lets him down, it must know the answer.  And sure enough it knows – Bob clicks on the first result.

Bobs eyes bulge.  So much information..  Pages and pages of information.  Testimonials, pictures of winning tickets. There are books and CD’s for sale.  For Bob books and CD and testimonials means that the information is real.

Bob is fooled by the presentation.

Are You Fooled By Context And Presentation ?

The internet is right about who won the Giants game and what to do about excessive ear wax.  But the internet has no idea how to win the lottery regardless of the size of the e-book.  Internet can tell you some things, but it cannot tell you everything.

The fact that there is an 200 page eBook and 3 hours of video does not mean there is information of any value.  Do not confuse presentation with information.

How can you tell if you are fooled by context and presentation?  If you are reading this post to find out how to win the lottery then you have a problem.

But you are not alone. According to Google – 27,100 people want to know ‘how to win the lottery’ every month. This post serves 2 functions (ordered by importance):

1. An attempt to receive 27,100 more visitors a month to this website.
2. Give you some ideas for your next website.

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