The guest post by Roman a few days ago prompted me to write this. This advice seem so obvious but for some reason, many new bloggers just don't get it. When choosing a topic to blog about, don't blog about making money online if you've never made any money online. Yet, I get emails like this one at least once a week.
Love your blog! I started a blog on how to make money online. Can you tell me how to make money from it?
I will admit, I'm part of the cause of this problem. Many people see this blog pulling down hundreds of thousands in income and conclude (incorrectly) that blogging about making money online makes a lot of money. What many don't know is that I was already making hundreds of thousands online before I started blogging about it. And that is why I went from zero to $40,000 per month within two years of starting the blog while Roman's How This Website Makes Money blog took 654 days to make $734.87.
I'm sorry to break the news to you but blogging about making money online will not make you money unless you've actually made money online (and quite a bit of it) and are willing to share your knowledge and experience. People want to learn from someone who is at where they want to be. They don't want to learn how to make money online from someone that isn't making anything online.
If you look at all the big make money online bloggers, you'll discovered that they were all making money online before they started their make money online blogs. Shoemoney was a search engine marketer making over $100K a month off Google. Darren Rowse makes far more from his Digital Photography School blog than he does from Problogger.
Without the past online money making experience to back you up, it's going to be next to impossible to make money from a blog that teaches people to make money online.
The old says, "Quitters never win and winners never quit" is not true. Winners know when to quit. One of the best books on the subject is call The Dip, by Seth Godin.
The old saying is wrong—winners do quit, and quitters do win.
Every new project (or job, or hobby, or company) starts out exciting and fun. Then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point—really hard, and not much fun at all.
And then you find yourself asking if the goal is even worth the hassle. Maybe you're in a Dip—a temporary setback that will get better if you keep pushing. But maybe it's really a Cul-de-Sac, which will never get better, no matter how hard you try.
Winners quit fast, quit often, and quit without guilt—until they commit to beating the right Dip for the right reasons. In fact, winners seek out the Dip. They realize that the bigger the barrier, the bigger the reward for getting past it. If you can become number one in your niche, you'll get more than your fair share of profits, glory, and long-term security.
Losers, on the other hand, fall into two basic traps. Either they fail to stick out the Dip—they get to the moment of truth and then give up—or they never even find the right Dip to conquer.
How do you know you're in a Cul-de-Sac and not a Dip? I would call making a net income of $98.36 after 654 days with a make money online blog a Cul-de-Sac. While I admire Roman for sticking with his blog this long, I rather see him create a blog on topic that he knows more about.
The next time I get an email from someone asking how to make money online with a make money online blog, I'm going to send them the link to this post.