You’ve got to be kidding right? Why would anyone want to read about this? I mean, last month alone, Pat Flynn made almost $120,000 so who cares about a measly $1,500? Most people think that ‘www’ stand for World Wide Web, but I have a special URL where it stand for World’s Worst Website. Here’s the start of my story.
I’ve been listening to internet guys for a while now, but in kind of a schizophrenic way. Most of the time my brain telling me that guys like me – boring guys with corporate jobs and families and mortgages – can’t possibly make money online. I mean really, to be successful, you’ve go to to have blue hair or yell a lot about wine or have a personality that blows people away or just be one of the lucky few.
But then there’s that part of me – the part that keeps listening to these guys – that says maybe, just maybe, there’s something to it. There’s a lot of people out there who have figured it out to one degree or another.
So if you’re reading this, then somehow you’ve found your way here. I really have no idea how because I’m a terrible marketer. That’s probably pretty obvious to you (I’m trying to get better). This is important because it means that you can, regardless of who you are, get people to read stuff on your website too, if you make one.
Fits And Starts
I love the idea of passive income. Who doesn’t? I’ve always been in awe of these folks who identify their niche and come up with amazingly creative ways to monetize it and actually add value to people. I’ve benefitted from that stuff. As a wanna be artist, I’m a big fan of Mark Carder and Will Kemp and can tell you from personal experience that the products these guys create are excellent and worth the money. I wish I could do that! I love to make some art, but as soon as I finish a project, I’m on to something else.
And that’s my problem! Way too many interests to stay focused and that’s what you have to do, right? And because I’m always learning about something new, I’m not usually the expert teaching everyone else. A perpetual subscriber to other people’s businesses.
But I also can’t help writing about stuff, even if you may be thinking, “This guy’s not really saying anything!” That’s my point. WWW.
So I started a WordPress website. Actually, this is the second website that I started (I built my first with a platform called Joomla) which was a failed attempt at starting a video production company on the side of my day job, but that’s a whole other story.
When you don’t have a niche, as the saying goes, just name it after yourself. So that’s what I did, and here you have it. Another exercise that was kind of like my artistic life: something I wanted to learn how to make. I’m that way with building stuff, playing music and cooking too.
Most people, if they want to start a website, get an account with a hosting company like BlueHost (that’s the one I use now) and use the tools available to quickly create a new site. But my curiosity won’t let me just click the “one click setup” because I’ve got to figure out how the whole thing works. The database, the config.php file, FTP clients, all that stuff. Yep, I spend waaaay too much time in the details.
So I managed to get my website up. Basic, out of the box WordPress theme. Just dive in and figure it out as I go along. Make notes about blog posts that I still haven’t written. Stare at the blinking cursor in the new post editor…
The Only Smart Thing I Ever Did (and the biggest thing I didn’t do)
Because I was still living in the make believe world of Field of Dreams (if you build it, they will come), I signed up for a Google Analytics ID and put that on my site using a free WordPress plugin called Google Analytics by Yoast. While they didn’t come by the thousands, they did come by the single digits and having a trend of analytics has been helpful to see what people are actually looking at.
There’s a lot of good info here, but I have found over time that I refer to the JetPack analytics (the stuff that comes with WordPress) more often than the Yoast stats.
I also signed up for Google’s AdSense and installed another plugin called Easy Plugin for AdSense. I just used the default settings and set 3 boxes to display on post pages.
Here’s the big mistake and I hear others talk about this when I listen to podcasts and read the experts when it comes to online businesses: I didn’t put anything on the site to collect email addresses. In hindsight, that was probably my biggest mistake. Now, keep in mind, I’m really not much of an online business and my advice is worth about as much as you paid for it (unless you clicked an AdSense link and then you probably paid too much!), but based on some recent activity, if I had been collecting emails for a while, I might have a nice little list once I actually figure out what I want my online business to be!
When I came to the realization that I’ve been missing one of the main points of having a website (collection emails so that you can market products & services to your visitors), I added a plugin called Mail Subscribe List. The thing I didn’t like about this is that after a few months, I had something like 300 emails and they were all obviously spam, with long names and .ru suffixes.
I recently added the list builder & smart bar products from SumoMe. You probably saw my pop-up already and you can see the smart bar across the top. In the first couple weeks of installing these tools, I gathered about 7 emails, much to my shock and rather pleasant surprise, and they all appear to be actual human beings. If I’ve had those tools in place for a year or two, I might actually have a meaningful list.
And that gets me to this really important point which I didn’t really understand, but I’m starting to get now. If you really want to try to build an online business – either a hobby on the side or an all-in business – it’s all about building your email list. Trust me on that and don’t make the same mistake I did.
What In The World Do I Write About?
The problem I’m convinced just about everyone has is that first question, “What do I write about?” Most people finally figure out what they want to say (their niche) and how they want to say it (their voice). I say most because there’s always going to be ‘that guy,’ in this case me, who still hasn’t figured it out.
I think my first couple posts were interesting quotes. As if someone’s going to come to my site and read an interesting quote every day. Like, how many websites out there already do that automatically? And have I ever go to a website regularly to read a quote? I rest my case.
About that time I was making a few videos at work and my sister asked me to talk to a group about how to make them. I thought that might be a good idea for a series of blog posts. Maybe even an online course. But no traffic (uh, earth to Ed, no marketing, no traffic…)
It was about that time that I was training for my first marathon. So I thought maybe people will want to come to my website and read about how I felt and what I thought about when I was running early in the morning. Yea, I know, another really dumb idea. And somehow they just keep coming.
My reflections on business (it helps to actually be well known for people to give a rip about your “reflections”).
My smoothie recipes (I still think that one was a good idea!)
Random musings about life (I don’t even think my wife read any of them)
Then I wrote a post about How to Turn a Voice Note on an iPhone into an MP3 and got 9 comments. Honestly, I didn’t even know I had 9 visitors to my site! And that got me thinking that there’s interest in how to do stuff, especially stuff that I’m trying to figure out for myself.
My (Not So) Big Break
My not so big break came when I was trying to figure out how to send an HTML email out for a work project. Because the company was too cheap to pay the subscription fee for MailChimp but perfectionist me wanted to be able have nicely formatted emails, I spent a few nights (well… maybe more than a few) on the internet teaching myself just enough HTML to create some basic marketing emails. And because I didn’t want to keep doing it myself, I documented everything I did and created a series of articles on How to Create An HTML Email.
The secret sauce in that was that I made a handful of ‘screen capture’ videos showing some of the techniques using a product called Camtasia which was about half the price then of what it is now ($99 at the time of this post) but a great program! I also included a bunch of images of what I was doing and for that I found (and still use) a program for Mac called Snapz Pro. I like it because I can take screen shots of the whole screen, particular open programs or just selections on the screen. This is helpful when trying to show someone how to do something.
Here’s where I saw my traffic really pick up. “Picking up” is certainly a relative term. When you go from 50 visits a day (mostly from people who accidentally clicked a link that took them to my site) to 100 visits a day, that’s an impressive percentage, but not a lot of people.
The other thing I did that was kind of smart (you can count the smart things on one hand; you really can’t count the dumb things!) is that I “monetized” my YouTube videos. This is basically the same thing as AdSense, but for videos instead of the stuff on my blog. Suddenly I started seeing a few cents here and there on my AdSense account. While I initially thought to myself, “Hey, people are actually coming to my site,” the reality was that they were coming to my site, but watching my HTML email videos and clicking on the ads. My point here is that videos actually work. I wish that I was creative enough to make some of the really funny viral ones, but people do watch videos that show them how to do stuff. And they really do click on ads.
The take-away for you is that it’s pretty easy to use screen capture video to educate people on something you’ve developed some knowledge about. If you are learning how to do something, chances are there’s an audience out there of others who want to learn the same thing. In my case, I did not do any promotion other than to embed my YouTube videos in my blog posts. My (little) traffic was 100% organic, however I did finally start to see some AdSense revenue trickle in and that really captured my attention.
I have 2 pieces of advice for you here: Everyone has something to offer when it comes to creating content. Just pick something and write about it. Second, figure out a way to make videos. They drive traffic.
The Black Hole That I Got Sucked In To
Actually, it captured my attention too much. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably listened to some podcasts or read some success stories. Ever hear of anyone who made it big with AdSense? Neither have I! But that’s not what I thought when I first started to see estimated earnings and pageviews on the AdSense admin screen. Nevermind that the numbers were all to the right of a decimal point, it was activity and it was mesmerizing. Between the AdSense page and Google Analytics, my browser was always dialed in and I was checking it like 20 times a day. If only I spent that time actually coming up with some new content!
Google’s Real-Time Analytics also suckered me in and I found myself bouncing between all of these tools, staring at the screen waiting for people to be live on my site and then checking out where they were, what pages they were looking at, how long they were on the site and generally wasting a ton of time. It’s pretty addictive! Problem is that activity is not the same thing as results and while I imagined that the graph of revenue would continue to grow like a hockey stick because my content was so good (ahh… the delusions of a newbie), the fact is that other than the rare day where my revenue hit a few bucks, it was really just a distraction.
It might have made more sense if I actually had a product I was selling or promoting, but for me I spent far more time than I’m sure anyone else did counting pennies. Fortunately I eventually got to the point where I realized I needed to go cold turkey and detox from analytics. Even now that I’ve done some more stuff on my site it’s a temptation that I fight against. I probably need to join an AnalyticsAnonymous group! My advice to you: Ignore the analytics and focus on creating content!
Affiliate Links
In addition to the challenge of trying to figure out what to write about, is the challenge of time. I’m convinced that inertia and time are the two biggest obstacles for anyone who wants to create an online business. The definitely are for me!
Combine the scarce resource of time with my ADD approach to website content and that’s a paralyzing combination. This is a little besides the point, but I’ll share it anyway. Since I was thinking about my site a lot, I began to think of ideas of stuff I thought would make a good post. Then I’d forget these great ideas because I either didn’t write them down or I did write them somewhere but forgot where. Nothing’s more infuriating that having the next greatest idea that was going to go viral and forgetting what it was because it occurred to me in the middle of work (oh the distractions of the day job!).
My solution to this was to start using Google Docs to keep a running list of posts that I wanted to write and “project ideas” for extended posts. The beauty of Google Docs is that you can access and update from anywhere on any device so you really don’t have an excuse for forgetting the next big idea!
The thing that took my revenue to the next level (which sounds a lot better than it is!) was affiliate links, particularly Amazon Affiliate links. Here’s how it happened.
I wasn’t a stranger to affiliate links. Listen to any online business podcast and sooner or later you’ll hear about affiliate links. While I’m a big believer in them, my site isn’t focused enough on anything in particular (think WWW) to really promote a particular affiliate link. But that didn’t stop me from trying!
I signed up for affiliate programs through Commission Junction and LinkShare. Since I had content about HTML email, I used Adobe affiliate links. For my content on making smoothies I signed up for one with VitaMix (I love mine!). For my musings about art I signed up for Dick Blick Art Supplies (I pretty much order everything from them). But the funny thing about affiliate links is that you have to have traffic for them to work. With the exception of my HTML email tutorials, I didn’t have much traffic.
Then One Day My Dishwasher Broke And Everything Changed
What’s that got to do with anything, you ask? Well, as you can see from my site today, I like to make stuff, figure stuff out and fix stuff. So before I spent the $85 just to have someone come to the house, I searched the internet to see if I could figure out how to fix it myself. While I didn’t find a clear answer, I found enough to be dangerous. So I took my dishwasher apart and managed to figure out what was wrong with it. And so I didn’t forget how to put it back together, I took pictures of each step with my iPhone.
The result of that project became one of my most visited and profitable posts. The reason it’s profitable (“profitable” is a relative term… we’re talking $10s of dollars, not hundreds or thousands) is because of the Amazon Affiliate program. That was my 2nd game changer (after AdSense).
I ordered the part for my dishwasher from Amazon and fixed it. Then I wrote a detailed description of how I did it, complete with pictures. And I added an affiliate link to the part. Talk about niche marketing! Turns out, the dishwasher I have looks really nice but is kind of a piece of crap. And other people, actually a lot of them, have the same problem.
While I was searching online for how to fix it, I ran across a couple DIY forums with various comments about people trying to fix similar problems. So after I figured it out and wrote my post, I went back to these forums and posted a link back to my article. And lo and behold, people began finding their way to my site, following my instructions and ordering their part from Amazon. So, I’ve been able to help quite a few people fix their dishwashers and make a little revenue from showing them how. If I could get focused, I could probably do more of that!
There are a couple lessons here. First, once you find your niche, find out where people are talking about your topic. Hopefully yours will be a little more broad than an LGLDF6920ST dishwasher, but the point is that I found the forums where people with the same problem were and helped them solve it. That brings me to the second lesson. Help people solve problems. Pretty good advice for any business (if only I’d consistently follow it!).
The Thing I Thought Would be Big, But Never Was
Listening to Pat’s podcast, I finally checked decided that I needed to move my website to BlueHost. I had been using a different hosting provider for a year or so, but had helped some friends get websites set up using BlueHost and preferred the platform and had great experiences with their technical support. Besides, Pat was a big fan & that carried a lot of weight with me!
I had been wanting to move my website from where I had it to BlueHost for a while. I was paying for 2 hosting accounts and that was getting old! So one weekend, I finally committed to moving the site and documenting exactly how I did it. I did some searching online as I prepared for this and read a good bit of the documentation on the WordPress.org site. While all the information was there, I felt like there was a need for a detailed walkthrough of the whole process, including all the hosting provider stuff, along the lines of my HTML email articles. I was certain that this was going to be a game changer!
But it didn’t turn out that way. Since I published it about a year ago, I’ve had a whopping 60 page views with an average time on the page of 23 seconds. Clearly a dud.
The takeaway here is this: Just because I think the content is great (I still do, actually!) doesn’t mean that my audience thinks it’s great.
My First Digital Product
So far this year, between my AdSense revenue and Amazon Affiliate Links I’ve earned a little more than $1,500 off of this site. Granted, that’s not much, but I also haven’t done any marketing of my content whatsoever. There are tons of ways to do that, some of which are free and generally involve social media and some of which are paid, also generally involving social media (see a trend here?). I’m just starting to try and figure that out and I’ll be glad to share what I learn. This guy’s already starting to help me out here, just with his free content.
Earlier this year I launched my first digital product tied to what has surpassed my dishwasher post as my most read content. One of my many hobbies is building stuff and I built a slightly modified version of one of Ana White’s tables. Again, I detailed my project, took a bunch of pictures and created a post to help people build one for themselves, explaining some of the things in more detail and going over some techniques that I thought would be helpful. This has become my most read post with over 35,000 views so far this year.
I detailed my project in 2 blog posts that were fairly long. So a few months ago I got the idea that people might want to have a printable plan, formatted nicely, that they could use to build their own project. A sort of convenience purchase since blog posts don’t exactly print out that well.
So I created a printable PDF plan – I call it my first eBook! – and, using FetchApp (mainly because I’ve bought other digital products that were fulfilled on this system), I made it available as a part of my project post. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts about digital products and “the launch,” but mine was pretty anticlimactic. It’s a good thing I didn’t hold my breath because it was a couple weeks before someone actually bought one. But then I sold another, and another and every few days I get another order. We’re not talking big money here (my plan is only $5 and PayPal takes a cut of every order), but the good news is that I actually created a product and it actually sells… a little.
A little success, even if it doesn’t translate into a lot of money, is really energizing and gets you thinking of new ideas. So I’m excited to see what can happen in the future. If I can stay focused and find the time. My friend Dale Callahan is helping me in this area, particularly as I think through my goals.
So What’s The Point?
The point is that I’m living proof that anyone can earn some money online. You hear people say it, usually in the context of making phenomenal amounts of money, and might be inclined to dismiss it because it seems like it doesn’t apply to normal, average people. Don’t fall for that. First of all, there are no “normal, average” people. Everyone is unique with your own perspective, experience and interests. And while it’s true that everyone is indeed completely unique, the world has 7 billion people on it, over 3 billion of which are on the internet. So it stands to reason that no matter how weird someone feels, there are going to be people you can connect with. The odds are just in your favor.
Seth Godin talks about tribes. This is just another way of talking about niche markets. I believe – and I hope to be living proof that this is the case – that if you write for “you” (instead of trying to be someone you’re not), try to help people and deliver real value and don’t give up, then you’ll eventually attract your own tribe.
I’ll admit that I don’t know exactly who mine is yet, but I’m starting to get some vague ideas. Maybe you’re a part of it. Maybe not. But if I can help you with a few tips to get started on your own online journey, encourage you to keep at it, and help you believe that if I can do it then you can too (I have no doubts here), then I’ve delivered some value and that’s what I believe online business is all about.
Thanks for reading,
Ed