I just saw a blog post on a blog (I’m not going to link to it because it’s a pretty spammy site that pushes splog software and was filled with lots of affiliate ads) that made me laugh (and feel a little depressed all at once).
The topic of the post was about how to make massive income through AdSense and Affiliate programs through creating ‘niche content sites’. Here were their steps:
1. Set up a Blog – they recommended a variety of free blogging platforms (including WordPress.com – which if you dig even a little you find don’t allow you to use Adsense, YPN, Chitika or most other ad systems on wordpress.com).
2. Add your Google Adsense Code – (with affiliate button)
3. Find a related affiliate products (they recommend ClickBank – of course with an affiliate link)
4. Promote your blog (using pinging software – more affiliate links)
Easy isn’t it!
But what’s the missing step in this process to creating massively successful niche content sites?
How about Content?
While the article in question was obviously a cheap and nasty way to generate some affiliate sales for the author, I’m sad to say that the attitude of ‘build it and they will come – and you’ll grow rich’ is one that many bloggers buy into.
I’ve come across a few angry bloggers this week who seemed to feel that it was their right to have traffic to their blog after putting the effort into making it (despite the fact that they only had 10 or so free articles and a couple of 2 sentence original posts on their blogs).
I know this is pretty basic stuff for many ProBlogger readers (apologies) but I’m finding it is a constant conversation that I’m having with bloggers.
BEFORE you set up a blog it’s important to ask yourself a series of questions to help you work out if a blog is for you:
• Am I willing to write regular (I recommend a minimum least 5 times per week – 5 is ok, but in practice I find 10 or more is ideal) content on my blog?
• Am I willing to interact with readers who might comment on my content?
• Am I willing to deal with comment spam (while there are tools to help with this, some will get through and you need to put time into deleting it as it comes in)
• Am I interested enough in the topic to blog about it for a long time?
• How much time am I willing to put into this blog each week?
• Do I know enough about the topic I’ll be writing about (or am I willing to learn)?
• Am I willing to stick at this blog for the long term – even if my blog isn’t successful quickly?
• Am I willing to watch what others in the blogosphere (and in other mediums) are writing on this topic?
While there are probably a few well trafficked blogs out there that break a few of these rules I would suspect that most successful bloggers work pretty hard at their blogging. Looking in from the outside, making money online can be quite ‘easy’ (and there are elements that some people do find easy) but the fact is that it takes a lot of hard work also.
