Want to Make Money Online?
Well, Blogging about MMO, won’t MMO.
Why Not?
Most of us working Blogs in this MMO/Internet Marketing niche try to provide advice (basically to each other) – we talk about affiliates, on-site advertising, reviews and whatever, and the majority of what we talk about is aimed at the guys working in the same kind of field.
There’s a lot of needless obsessing about subscriber numbers (and artificial and temporary ways to boost them), Alexa rank, PR etc, and a lot of chatter about methods for making money online.
While it’s true that these Blogs can provide a lot of inspiration, and a small number of people make decent money from them – the truth is that the kind of traffic we get is not good for converting. Most Blog/Webmaster type visitors are too savvy to click on ads, and the kind of traffic you get from social networking is transient and not focussed (as a rule).
What works?
The recent massive sale of Bankaholic (widely reported elsewhere) is a perfect example of a brilliant piece of business and should serve as the real lesson for those of you who want to really Make Money Online.
Bankaholic is a Blog/Site with unspectaclar traffic and Alexa ranking. However, it is squarely and directly aimed at a very high-paying target market, ranks highly for major credit/banking keywords (due to it’s content and SEO) and this (plus its layout/structure) will bring a visitor population that is highly focussed on the subject matter and MUCH more likely to click/convert.
The timing of the sale (given the current Credit Crunch) is a bit unfortunate, but the appeal of the site to the Buyer is unquestionable.
What Next?
So – the lesson to be learnt (as always) is that finding and focussing on a target niche, building good content and running effective SEO/backlink building is the way to Make Money Online. So stop talking about it, go out and try it for yourself.
I will be running a 1-year experiment starting soon, developing between 10-20 sites based on selected niche markets and I’ll be reporting on progress here. But don’t wait for me, or anyone else, to do it:
- find a niche (preferably one with good pay-per-click, pay-per-action)
- find a domain
- build some content
- build a site
- SEO it
- build some backlinks
- plant some occasional link-bait
- repeat until Rich
Don’t talk about MMO – go and do it.
Cheers
Dave
This is certainly my strategy. Although, I’m continually mining out the same niche, building different sites to eventually cover it all.
While it may not pay off as much, since in some respects I’m my own competition, it does have it’s benefits. If you’re making a new site in the same niche, your older sites can be used to promote it (that’s some high quality, relevant backlinkling right there!) and you already know everything there is to know about the niche in question. If you’re already on top of the learning curve, starting out again in a new niche will take valuable time away from other stuff.
There is money to be made in every niche. Even the blogging/mmo niche. It is true that you, me, and our friends might not be clicking on ads all of the time, but sometimes we do. An example would be OIO publisher. Almost everyone uses it which means a ton of people have bought it (yourself included).
Not to mention there are newbies always looking for the product that is going to make them the quick buck and those sell pretty well too. The MMO/blogging niche may be difficult to make money in, but it isn’t impossible.
Adam
Thanks, Adam – yep it’s possible to make money via MMO and these Blogs (including mine I hope) are useful tools/resources/encouragement. I just want to emphasise that people shouldn’t restrict themselves to operating in the MMO area – there are lucrative niches out there waiting to be plundered
IBabel,
You are completely right. I have two niches I would like to get into if once I hit my stride in the mmo niche. I think both books and diet niches could have huge profit potential as those niches have many more buyers that the mmo/blogging niches do.
Adam
I have just made a step away from MMO with a new blog. I picked a niche I had an interest in, and I think it has a lot of potential. But it’s the same with everything – we just need to stay committed to them.
Very good advice. Will try to follow what you suggest here for more traffic and more clicks. I like the “rinse and repeat” idea.
Thanks for creating this blog, this is one of those few blogs i see in this topic that really puts good information out there.