Whatever their reasons, it’s not the point

OK, I am about to talk about the Make Money Online niche and how well “the dream” is being kept alive by a couple of selected bloggers. The fact that three good bloggers decided to sell their blog is just what I needed to post and write about the MMO niche and it is in no way related to the bloggers themselves. They all have different reasons to sell and that is perfectly fine with me. In fact, I spoke with Cooper from Linkers Blog and his reasons for selling are more than valid.

The dream

There is a dream out there my friends. The frickin’ dream that by blogging about making money online you will make money online. There is a CRUCIAL step that a lot of people tend to forget: successful “Make Money Online” bloggers were ALREADY making money when they started their blog. “The dream” keeps a lot of people going while the big guys are making the money.

The shift

The shift is about to happen guys. There are gazillions of MMO blogs out there and you know the funny part? Most people think that the only way to make money online is by running a MMO blog! Wrong. That’s just the dream and that dream is branded very well.

I see a lot of MMO blogs shutting down in the near future as the niche will get even more saturated and hard to monetize. Three big blogs are shutting down and I’m telling you this is only the beginning.

Internet Marketing is the next saturated niche

Unfortunately for me, I feel like the Internet Marketing niche will be extremely saturated as well. It’s important not to confuse Internet Marketing with MMO as IM is a lot larger and while it includes monetization, it also includes Internet strategies, social medias strategies, blogging, branding, etc. It will eventually become a much bigger niche as more and more people become “experts” and that the dream is kept alive. But you know, standing out of the crowd will be fun and challenging. At the same time, it is a nice reminder that it is important to focus on what’s outside the Internet Marketing niche because this is where the real potential is.

The winners will be the creative people

You know who will be the real winners in this industry my friends? The person who blog about cars, food, beer, tennis, chess or whatever, but with enough creativity, manages to be successful. These will be the next big Internet Marketers.

What are you waiting for?

OK, I actually know that most of you blogging about MMO/IM run a lot of other stuff in parallel and that is the way to go. I just want to say that if a MMO blog is the only thing you run, what are you waiting for? The MMO niche is not the real world, it’s important to know what’s out there and make a difference for the average Joe!

By the way…Just before you ask, I run other stuff

]]> http://bentremblay.com/en/sell-your-blog/feed 34 http://bentremblay.com/en/are-you-ready-to-take-risks http://bentremblay.com/en/are-you-ready-to-take-risks#comments Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:02:18 +0000 Ben Tremblay http://www.frogstr.com/?p=303 I really want to talk about the fear of taking action today. While I don’t know if I can call this “fear”, there is something holding a lot of people from taking actions and it is the main reason I think some people will rise faster or reach success while others won’t.

The step by step guide to success

Why do you think ebooks are so popular? I’m not talking about the ebook you write and give for free just to get more subscribers to your newsletter (By the way, if you have a newsletter, please make it interesting!), I’m talking about 5, 10, 100$ ebooks sold with the help of ugly (but very effective) landing pages. Also, why step by step articles and step by step guides are so popular? Why the hell do advertisements like “You can become rich in three easy steps! If a 15 years old can do it, you too can!” work so well?

I say it’s because most people want to have success overnight and most people don’t want to work. Trying to sell a “success package” with a sales pitch like “You’ll have to work your ass off and sleep 4 hours per night for the next year to MAYBE get some sort of success” probably won’t work even if that’s the reality. I don’t know a single person who made money online overnight without hard work.

Anyway, you already know you have to work hard so let’s get back on track. So we know people buy these “Make money overnight” packages, but do they really take action?

Risk of failure

I think the main reason some reach success and some don’t is the fear to fail. For example, let’s take a “success package” detailing how you can make a million dollar within three months by investing 25,000$. Let’s say there’s a pretty well detailed way on how you can convert that 25,000$ into a million dollar. Are you going to take action? Are you going to invest 25,000$ to build that million dollar? Would you actually take a 25,000$ loan because you know you can convert it into a million dollar? Most people won’t. Why? Because of the “What if it doesn’t work?”. If it works, you get yourself a million dollar, but if it doesn’t work you just lost 25,000$.

On a smaller scale

This is a pretty extreme example and I personally don’t think I would take the risk of  losing 25,000$ I don’t have, but let’s transpose this to a smaller scale. Are you ready to take some small risks? You know, I think it takes money to make money, but it doesn’t have to be a lot. By small risks, I’m talking about a small 10$ or 20$ here and there that could help you make 20 or 40$ after a couple of months. You’re not experiencing the results right away and it takes some time, but converting 10$ into 20$ is 100% ROI.

As an example, I bought OIO publisher (Shamelessly putting an affiliate link here) this month to manage the ads on frogstr.com and I will also be using it on other websites. OIO publisher (John Chow get out of this body) is 30$ with a promotional code (I used “johnchow”) and that’s what I paid for it. At the beginning of the month, I didn’t have a single clue if I would sell advertisements here, but I decided to take that 30$ and take a small risk. You know what? It’s already paid, a little less than a month later. The next months will be 100% profit and I can only see the amount of money to growing.

You see, when I say taking risks it has nothing to do with investing 25,000$. You’ll make some good investments and some bad investments, but in the end if you invest wisely it usually pay off.

Experiment

Taking risks can also mean just wasting your time. My first ever online revenue was through Google Adsense, but do you think it happened overnight? I actually tried a couple of niches and spent a lot of time building non-profitable websites before getting things right. I didn’t invest money, but I invested a couple of hours of my time every week without having a single clue if I was going to make money out of it!

Then I started making 0.10$ a day, then 0.20$ and eventually over 10$ a day. It’s important to accept that making 0.10$ a day for a month or two is actually OK and that eventually by working the same amount of time it’s going to be possible to double that amount every month.

Moderate risk taker

I’m a  moderate risk taker. I don’t want to ruin my life by investing 10,000$ I don’t have, but I’m ready to invest some money here and there. It’s also important to consider that for some, 10,000$ might be a small investment: it’s relative to the amount of money you make and the amount of money you’re ready to invest usually grow with the revenues you’re making online.

Some have big balls and don’t fear losing it all. Good for them and good for you if you’re one of them! I really admire that because you really maximize you chances of making money, but you’re also maximizing your chances of losing it all unfortunately.

Take the risks

What I wanted to say was that if you don’t take any risks, not much will happen. These risks don’t have to be related to money: it can also be your time or anything you personally consider a risk.

You know, a lot of bloggers want to be at the top, but aren’t ready to take the same risks the big guys took.

The preview feed

I think most bloggers started this way with their feed. What’s the point of putting ads on your website and publishing your content in a different place? What’s the point of having 5,000 readers if they all can read my content ads-free? Well, I’m sure you all read other blogs and even yourself get frustrated when you can only read a preview of an article in your favorite news reader. You don’t feel like visiting the website just to read a single article, so what’s the point of subscribing if you still have to visit the damn website? My usual reaction is simply to unsubscribe.

If myself, as a reader, unsubscribe from “preview” feeds, I’m sure you do and I’m also pretty sure that’s what your readers do! That is one of the main reason some blogs aren’t able to increase their number of subscribers. You might gain 10 readers a day, but there’s a strong possibility you’re also loosing 10 readers every day.

So, what do I do?

You should publish your full articles into your feeds. You can also place some ads into your feed if you really want to maximize your profits: it’s something we’ll see more often in the coming years. I personally don’t like to put ads in RSS feeds but this really is a personal decision and I don’t think this would impact the number of subscribers a lot. The main reason why you want a full feed is to keep your subscribers. You might not get a buck from your RSS feed, but loyal readers will comment on your blog often and also talk about you on other websites. What you really want to do is getting loyal readers in order to make long-term gains.

Thinking short-term is usually killing a business. Long-term thinking gives you less money at first, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run. I personnaly think full and ads-free RSS feeds are the way to go. You just have to make sure you write good enough content so that people feel the need to comment or visit your website for whatever other reason.