This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.
Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money. Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords. I knew nothing about how to make money with a website. So what did I do next? I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.
Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance. Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.
Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online. The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.
The site has been two years of disappointment. Two years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense. Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it. Two years of working without pay. Two years of scratching my head.
So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy. Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.
What happened when I changed my intent
Six months ago I created a new site. This time my intent was pure pleasure.
I live in Prague and I love it here. So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit. It was built in a month. In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.
It was so easy. I did not agonize over what to write about. The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard. I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas. I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know. It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.
As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague. Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard. After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email. I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write. After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.
I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.
Again, I was wrong.
My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.
I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom! Sorry for not calling in last few days. But I am in Prague with friends. Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap. Say hi to Dad.”
I have written postcards to countries all over the world. Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!
I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.
I feel like I am making the world a better place. I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.
And yes, I am making money.
Intend to enjoy and you might make money
I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.
New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies. For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.
Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing. If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit. But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.
What’s your intent?
Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money. He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.
In early February we wrote about Flavors.me, a simple, beautiful aggregator that lets you pull together all of your social media identities like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Posterous, Netflix, LinkedIn, Blogger, Goodreads, Foursquare, YouTube, WordPress, Tumblr, Etsy, and RSS on a simple, personal splash page.
Just like Gmail replaced Hotmail and Facebook replaced MySpace, often times the second to the stage has the most talent. With an attitude that says, “I am your new virtual business card,” About.me is a service like Flavors.me but with more functionality, smarter options and it’s all free (for now).
Why it’s different
About.me focuses on personal branding and analytics, rather than just creating a simple online identity. With a free About.me account you can see how many people see your profile, where they’re coming from (your Twitter bio? your e-mail signature?) and what they are doing on your page.
About.me is FREE. “We don’t believe that people should pay money for a set of front end tools to set up a profile of themselves. We just dont think thats a long term business model nor do we think it’s interesting,” says About.me’s co-founder Tony Conrad.
The URL is better. It’s pretty clear that, particularly for professional cases, About.Me couldn’t be a better URL for its use. For example, let’s say you are making an e-tro. Instead of writing, “This is Courtney, the East Coast Editor of The Next Web who lives in Brooklyn and enjoys reading Russian literature….” You’d just say, “This is Courtney, and here’s her about.me.”
What’s cooking at About.me?
At first About.me limited the number of services you can connect to because “too many confuses users” but due to customer feedback, they’re adding YouTube, Vimeo, Pandora and Formspring soon. In the meantime, users can add any URL they wish to their About.me page.
They are planning to move towards a freemium model. “While we currently have a kickass free version, there’s a whole other class of users out there that will pay money for services that make sense,” says Conrad. For example, they may cater to small companies that need social media behavior analytics. Conrad also believes there’s money to be made in domain name management and providing people with About.me e-mail addresses.
Want a Beta invite? Go to the comments below and follow my instructions. Then please RT this story! :)
Co-founder Tony Conrad says, “Searching for people on Google is like dumpster diving, our site enables you to pull all of that information onto one page and that’s very powerful.”
The company was founded by Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young in January 2010. Their investors include True Ventures, Radar Partners, Freestyle Capital, Scott Kurnit, AOL Ventures, David Mahoney, Founder Collective, & Ron Conway.
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Small Business <b>News</b>: Small Biz Bonanza
On this day after Thanksgiving, we thought we'd create a feast of small business resources ourselves. Please dig in and enjoy every tasty morsel. This bonanza.
openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>
“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company finishes
Small Business <b>News</b>: Small Biz Bonanza
On this day after Thanksgiving, we thought we'd create a feast of small business resources ourselves. Please dig in and enjoy every tasty morsel. This bonanza.
openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>
“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company team
This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.
Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money. Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords. I knew nothing about how to make money with a website. So what did I do next? I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.
Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance. Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.
Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online. The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.
The site has been two years of disappointment. Two years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense. Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it. Two years of working without pay. Two years of scratching my head.
So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy. Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.
What happened when I changed my intent
Six months ago I created a new site. This time my intent was pure pleasure.
I live in Prague and I love it here. So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit. It was built in a month. In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.
It was so easy. I did not agonize over what to write about. The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard. I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas. I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know. It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.
As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague. Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard. After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email. I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write. After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.
I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.
Again, I was wrong.
My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.
I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom! Sorry for not calling in last few days. But I am in Prague with friends. Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap. Say hi to Dad.”
I have written postcards to countries all over the world. Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!
I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.
I feel like I am making the world a better place. I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.
And yes, I am making money.
Intend to enjoy and you might make money
I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.
New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies. For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.
Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing. If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit. But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.
What’s your intent?
Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money. He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.
In early February we wrote about Flavors.me, a simple, beautiful aggregator that lets you pull together all of your social media identities like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, Posterous, Netflix, LinkedIn, Blogger, Goodreads, Foursquare, YouTube, WordPress, Tumblr, Etsy, and RSS on a simple, personal splash page.
Just like Gmail replaced Hotmail and Facebook replaced MySpace, often times the second to the stage has the most talent. With an attitude that says, “I am your new virtual business card,” About.me is a service like Flavors.me but with more functionality, smarter options and it’s all free (for now).
Why it’s different
About.me focuses on personal branding and analytics, rather than just creating a simple online identity. With a free About.me account you can see how many people see your profile, where they’re coming from (your Twitter bio? your e-mail signature?) and what they are doing on your page.
About.me is FREE. “We don’t believe that people should pay money for a set of front end tools to set up a profile of themselves. We just dont think thats a long term business model nor do we think it’s interesting,” says About.me’s co-founder Tony Conrad.
The URL is better. It’s pretty clear that, particularly for professional cases, About.Me couldn’t be a better URL for its use. For example, let’s say you are making an e-tro. Instead of writing, “This is Courtney, the East Coast Editor of The Next Web who lives in Brooklyn and enjoys reading Russian literature….” You’d just say, “This is Courtney, and here’s her about.me.”
What’s cooking at About.me?
At first About.me limited the number of services you can connect to because “too many confuses users” but due to customer feedback, they’re adding YouTube, Vimeo, Pandora and Formspring soon. In the meantime, users can add any URL they wish to their About.me page.
They are planning to move towards a freemium model. “While we currently have a kickass free version, there’s a whole other class of users out there that will pay money for services that make sense,” says Conrad. For example, they may cater to small companies that need social media behavior analytics. Conrad also believes there’s money to be made in domain name management and providing people with About.me e-mail addresses.
Want a Beta invite? Go to the comments below and follow my instructions. Then please RT this story! :)
Co-founder Tony Conrad says, “Searching for people on Google is like dumpster diving, our site enables you to pull all of that information onto one page and that’s very powerful.”
The company was founded by Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young in January 2010. Their investors include True Ventures, Radar Partners, Freestyle Capital, Scott Kurnit, AOL Ventures, David Mahoney, Founder Collective, & Ron Conway.
bench craft company spread covers
Small Business <b>News</b>: Small Biz Bonanza
On this day after Thanksgiving, we thought we'd create a feast of small business resources ourselves. Please dig in and enjoy every tasty morsel. This bonanza.
openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>
“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company per hole sizing
Small Business <b>News</b>: Small Biz Bonanza
On this day after Thanksgiving, we thought we'd create a feast of small business resources ourselves. Please dig in and enjoy every tasty morsel. This bonanza.
openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>
“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company itliano
Small Business <b>News</b>: Small Biz Bonanza
On this day after Thanksgiving, we thought we'd create a feast of small business resources ourselves. Please dig in and enjoy every tasty morsel. This bonanza.
openSUSE Weekly <b>News</b>, Issue 151 is out - openSUSE <b>News</b>
“After the breaking news of Mike Galbraith's patch of 233 lines of code to the linux kernel and the confirmation it was working by Linus Torvalds, naturally some threads were opened on the forums. This thread is one of them, ...
Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ
Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:
bench craft company itliano
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