Monetizing is still a mystery

[edacsac]

I'll never understand I guess. I hear from folk that content is king. I'm reading about all kinds of folks, many who aren't even out of high school, who are experts in all kinds of things and making a fortune on content sites.

New interesting content is all it takes. Write everyday. Well, I can't write everyday. Actually I can, but it's not good writing. It's equal to the other 98% of the internet waste. I'm getting an article out about 4 times a year. with each of my 3 sites.

My other thought is, that by the time I "get" something, it's too late and that boat has sank. So how long is good content going to hold up the monetization of web sites?

I need to stop coding. Coding doesn't monetize. It only eats up your time. I need to be an author. Maybe an author about coding or db administration. But there are enough webdev tutorial sites out there. Seems like stiff competition.

Humbug...

[londrum]

it's all about giving it enough time these days, i reckon. you can make money as long as you give it enough time. unless you get in on something big that goes viral, its unrealistic expecting to make money from a few new articles. you've got to grow the website over months. keep on putting out quality stuff over a period of months and you'll attract the repeat traffic. and with the traffic comes the money.

coding is pretty important too. content is all well and good, but if the page takes five seconds to load then nobody will see it.
you can also create a load of new pages with coding alone. put 10 pages worth of quality content into a database and you might be able to spin 100 pages out of it.

[rocknbil]

I'm going to offer up something I shouldn't. :-) I am not an "idea person." I am an "enabler" (but not in the psycho babble description of the word.) People come to me with ideas, I make them happen. But when I come up with an idea, it either sucks when I thought it didn't, or it just doesn't happen. The ones I help seem to be very successful.

I'll give you one example, I worked at an ISP as "webmaster" (in spite of how much I detest the term) and there was a guy in tech support, answering phones for minimum wage, who I became friends with. This guy was a genius IMO, tech savvy . . . and had this idea. I won't reveal the idea, but it had to do with something everyone wants.

He puts up this web site with manuals for equipment related to this idea. I always rag him about how his site sucks, invalid doctype, tables for layout, just about everything technically wrong you could think of. But he kept hammering out manuals.

A year later . . . the man is a millionaire and five years later there is no change in his income, even in this economy. His money was made with adSense, but it wasn't a spectacular site, it wasn't breaking technology like Facebook, it is just a free content site with thousands and thousands of manuals, and as the technology changes, he adds more. Without getting into details, he is having discussions with Google and Microsoft, not generic emails . . . phone conversations.

The moral of this anecdote is that some of us are just not idea people. I'm one of them. But what I do enables many people to lead prosperous lives, and that is good enough for me, it is my "place." So you just need to find out what your place is.

[chicagohh]

@rocknbil - I think your post represents the real state of things for many of us. I had not quite put it in your words before, but I have made many people a lot of money and while I do well, I am not wealthy. Thanks for my new word - 'enabler'.

[httpwebwitch]

The path from enabler to earner can be hard to discern.
That path exists - for a coder just as much as for an author.

Oh, I've done my share of enabling. I'm a little conflicted when I think of the multi-millions that have been earned using tools I've created. rocknbil says "it is my place", but can't I upgrade my place?

You *can* be successful as a coder. I think FarmVille is a decent example. Etsy. Kijiji. PlentyOfFish. Scrabulous. Google. Ravelry. Twitter. The list is huge. These aren't content producers, these are content enablers - coders. Coders who created something remarkable, useful, fun, practical, popular.

Social media is your playground. There are lots of people willing to create content, if you give them an engaging tool to do it.

build the next killer app!

[Syzygy]

Based solely on this conversation, I think most of you seem to have the perspective of being 'web enablers' who want to earn a generous armchair buck rather than that of business people with good ideas who utilise 'the web', ideally with other channels, as sales or revenue streams.

"I code therefore I must earn" is not a mantra for all. Neither is "build it and they will come".

Have you been outdoors recently? :-)

[Jane_Doe]

. I need to be an author. Maybe an author about coding or db administration. But there are enough webdev tutorial sites out there. Seems like stiff competition.

I just put up sites on everything that interests me. Some sites never go anywhere but several have really taken off. Sometimes the weirdest stuff ends up making decent money.

Neither is "build it and they will come".

I guess for me it is build it and sometimes they will come and sometimes they won't. But if you make enough sites the ones that do develop a following can be enough to make a decent living.

[IanCP]

So how long is good content going to hold up the monetization of web sites?

In my case twelve years and I haven't written anything new for nearly ten years.

The theory that you "must" continually add new content is a total fallacy in my case.

Yes, I have earned very considerable sums of money over those twelve years.

The biggest mistake newcomers make is getting hung up on monetising a site. Forget about that for twelve months IMHO.

When I first started out it was to help people with answers to questions asked on a technical forum where it wasn't exactly easy to fully explain in emails. I used free web space which was part of my ISP package.

Then as I added more lectures and topics people started linking. Mr. Yahoo made me "the featured site of the week". Educational and government institutions began linking.

Then my ISP started sending me large bills for increased bandwidth usage and I had to upgrade my package and as a consequence I literally had to find a way to make it pay or take it down.

Friends pointed out I made sensible recommendations for technical books on my site so why not join the "new" Amazon programme. This was in the days Jeff Bezos actually sent you a personalised welcome email.

That took care of my costs. I still earn good money from Amazon although since AdSense, it doesn't get as much real estate.

Then Google came along and things [traffic] sky rocketed for me and I built a dedicated site with my own domain name. Still have the old original site which from time to time I think about taking down but it continues to earn many, many times its annual costs.

Everything went along nicely and I was quite content, even started my own forum so I didn't have to answer a 100 questions a day.

Then came AdSense which I thought would be a flash in the pan. Heh! thanks to real time reporting I sat up real quick when I discovered in the first four hours I was earning more than weeks of Amazon income. Each day then exceeded more than a month of Amazon income.

Now the other big mistake newcomers make is writing useless content.

You seriously need to write sensibly, competently and fully about?

INFORMATION PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY SEARCHING FOR

Not what you might imagine would be of interest to the wife, kids, dog and cat.

FWIW YMMV

[rocknbil]

I think FarmVille is a decent example. Etsy. Kijiji. PlentyOfFish. Scrabulous. Google. Ravelry. Twitter.

There's only one problem with this.

These killer apps are the realization of what was once an idea. No idea, no killer app. :-)

And one of the first things I learned about FaceBook was how to make FARMVILLE invisible. :-) More annoying than pop ups, able to drain hours of poeople who are supposed to be working in a single bound . . .

[incrediBILL]

I hear from folk that content is king.

Yes it is.

However, content doesn't mean you have to sit and write articles.

Content is king on forums but it's all member supplied content which some are more successful at monetizing that others, depends on the type of forum and it's content.

Content is king in directories as well, which can either be member or owner supplied, and much easier to monetize.

Review sites are another example of content being king and easy to monetize.

Once you open your mind to the various types of content, which don't all require being an expert or even writing it yourself, you can find a path to easy monetizing.

[blend27]

-- Coding doesn't monetize --

oooooooo CASCADE that at 200+ an hour part time() and you don't realy need to be an author, make your self known, period. There will be times when there is a code monkey comes along at 1.50 an hour, but the point is the more that CMS code evolves the more people want to mod it. Yes it is there, yes its open source, but as IANCP mentioned: newcomers are writing useless content, and that is so true, at least where I seat.

-- outdoors recently --

Walked my cat about 2.3 minutes ago, she said Miau('Hi in CAT');

[wheel]

I suspect that most of the 'coding' examples given here, they were succesful due to business acumen + good idea. Not just some random coder with a good idea. That's the first mistake of coders, assuming that writing the code has much value. It doesn't. Coders are a dime a dozen. Excellent coders are only slightly more expensive than that. And a well coded good idea is still worth practically nothing.

There's lots of ways to make money. Most of them involve some combination of marketing/sales Coding and content are way down the scale of things needed to make money from a website (or anything). They're both hourly rate functions. No disrespect to coders, I started my career as one and really don't have any disrespect for folks that do it. It is not, however, a way to make money.

You want to make money, which of the following search terms do you want to do on google:
1) sales
2) marketing
3) php coding
4) html web design
5) article writing.

hint: it's not the last three.

[celgins]

I need to stop coding. Coding doesn't monetize.

It is not, however, a way to make money.

I've made plenty of money over the years with coding. Everything from HTML/Javascript, classic ASP, ASP.NET, PHP/MySQL, Perl, and SQL, to Java, C# and C++.

Of course the term "plenty" is relative, but monetizing coding is not always about being the best--it's often about the opportunities you have.

My advice is to continue believing that content is king; it is. You can be the best marketer in the world, but if you don't have content people want, you will not retain your audience.

[Petrogold]

"You want to make money, which of the following search terms do you want to do on google:"

INFO

[httpwebwitch]

you said it wheel. Without acumen, a great idea and its flawless execution will flop. It's such an unromantic POV.

[anand84]

I need to stop coding. Coding doesn't monetize. It only eats up your time.

I agree. Coding can save you money, but not always make you money..Mark Zuckerberg built Facebook without outsourcing the coding part. Kevin Rose spent $300 to build his first Digg.com site..Both have made it big.

Maybe an author about coding or db administration. But there are enough webdev tutorial sites out there. Seems like stiff competition.

One of the interesting things I have learnt is that internet is old enough that anything interesting or valuable you want to do on the web has a lot of stiff competition. BUT, you can differentiate yourself by adding a perspective to it..

There are a lot of tech-news websites. How about a new site that covers only startup websites? How about one that talks about the growth in social network websites alone?

PS: Sites with such perspectives already exist..You have to find out another perspective from which you can cover the same content and still make it interesting to the visitor.

[IanCP]

Walked my cat about 2.3 minutes ago, she said Miau('Hi in CAT');

My two cats one year old the other 19 say "Miau" in return.

[IanCP]

Back to serious issues, why in so many posts here do I see references to this coder jazz?

Coding is totally worthless, zero, hopeless nothing.

The most brilliant, stunning, worthwhile lectures I ever saw on the net were plain .txt files posted by a most esteemed, scientific friend.

He simply posted around 40+ years of utterly brilliant lectures which at some point in time had been converted brilliantly by his Phd students to disk as .txt files in the 1980's.

Technologically, he blew all of us away. He flatly refused my efforts in 1999 to make his erudite files more friendly and available in a genuine SEO [white hat] sense.

At some point around those days, he had something like 100,000+ incoming links.

That may well have been a record for its time.

Taught me coding, even basic CSS was largely BS. Can people see your contribution to humanity in most browsers? That is the most important issue.

Even IE6, which many choose to hate?

Gee, I'm old and stupid enough to believe the visitor is "KING".

Agree or disagree? I don't care.

Mr.AdSense puts money in my bank account every month, not the big four figures from yonks ago, just small four figures. Add Amazon, Kontera cuppla other programmes and what do you have?

An idiot I might be BUT I have never misled people here or on any other forum.

I've had the money in the bank and I must know something. Only Brett Tabke the owner of this list has produced a better resume than I have. O.K. thousands differ.

Tickle me and I'll produce the definitive Brett link. Others no doubt will do it beforehand.

Forget monetisation, forget coding build "real pages with content people actually search for"

Call me stupid, call me a fool but the majority of you will never earn as much as I have in the last twelve years.

So...

Who is stupid?

Every person, I personally known over these years, who are successful, substantially followed my approach.

Your choice...

a) a five minute wonder

OR

b) a person who has consistently for nearly seven years earned a five figure income each year.

What choice would you make?

[lammert]

One of the interesting things I have learnt is that internet is old enough that anything interesting or valuable you want to do on the web has a lot of stiff competition.

There is a lot of competition if you don't want to look further than what is currently on the web.

• The web started with static content sites. The web is now full of content sites and it is difficult to compete with a new static content site.
  
• Then came the sites to find those static content sites. Search engines and directories. That path is also beaten to death now. It is very difficult to compete with a new directory or search engine nowadays.
  
• Then came the sites to link people. Dating sites, all kind of social networking sites. The area has been filled and is difficult to compete in with a new site.

So what's next? Think, think, think and look at yourself. Don't look at others, but look at yourself. What are you using a computer for locally and why shouldn't that be interesting for others? 20 years ago I made a small computer program to assist my mom with something. The program source was just somewhere in a corner of my hard disk until I stumbled upon it a few months ago. I then thought, "Wouldn't this program be nice for other people in the world?". The conversion to a web based application took a few weeks and it is now already taking off with almost no competition in that area.

The near future is not content, search/link or social. The near future is on-line services where people can do what they used to do locally, but now with their smartphones, netbooks and other small computer devices where they don't want or can install software locally anymore. Open your mind, look at yourself and jump into services. Monetizing will come.

[Whitey]

I believe content is king and there are huge gaps out there with opportunities. What's holding the folks back in the verticals i observe is the cost of doing it in both a quality and sustainable way.

Some of the biggest sites i observe , just churn out quality advice to people and it certainly producess a lot of traffic.

The key is to be creative in the way it's built, and how it's useful to users. If you can find a cheap way to do it , even better.

[JS_Harris]

The near future is not content, search/link or social.

I have to disagree with 1/3 of that.

- I agree that social is not the future, people inclined to be social online use the latest and brightest shiny new services, they move along when something new comes. If you plan on competing with social you're fighting facebook and twitter, how deep are your pockets? A better service isn't enough to make people move from these but when the herd moves in mass, its not easily stopped.

- I agree that search/link is not the future, we have major search engines and we have many other ways of linking similar sites together already. Search/link is also monetized the same way as content sites.

- I disagree with "content is not the future". In my opinion it is THE future. Keep in mind that the top 3 results in search command a majority of the traffic for each keyword/term. You CAN create better content and in time, if it is truly better content on a well designed site, it gets recognized as such. USER GENERATED CONTENT sites however just don't hold a flame to subject dedicated sites when fighting for top spot, massive user generated and/or content aggregating sites see their value erode as competition stiffens (or when someone decides they want a specific keyword and are capable of producing better than wikipedia content on a dedicated site).

Moving forward site authority is becoming extremely important, when starting a new site are you ready to compete for it and stick it out for the long haul?

[gpilling]

I think FarmVille is a decent example. Etsy. Kijiji. PlentyOfFish. Scrabulous. Google. Ravelry. Twitter.


There's only one problem with this.

These killer apps are the realization of what was once an idea. No idea, no killer app. :-)

And one of the first things I learned about FaceBook was how to make FARMVILLE invisible. :-) More annoying than pop ups, able to drain hours of poeople who are supposed to be working in a single bound . . .

Then your IDEA is "software to kill annoying facebook features" and you make a firefox extension. With the popularity of Facebook you will be a millionaire next year.

To all of you people with no ideas. Please sticky me, I have dozens of web based ideas. I have books of general ideas. In my view, ideas are easy. Execution is hard, and picking the right idea is hard. If I have a new idea each day, and can only do one every year or so, which idea gets picked?

I wish I had more coding skills, then I would be set. Oh, well......

[aspdaddy]

New interesting content is all it takes. Write everyday. Well, I can't write everyday. Actually I can, but it's not good writing.

Maybe authoring is not for you.

My other thought is, that by the time I "get" something, it's too late and that boat has sank.

Busines is for sure not your thing.

I need to stop coding. Coding doesn't monetize.

I disagree.

What about a J.O.B ? You can actually make good money as a programmer if you stay skilled and up to date and work hard. You probably wont make £ six figure salaries for some time but you can earn a very good living. A good M$ developer can easily make £600 per day in the SE of England, if you have .NET & Dynamics exams you can earn in excess of £1000 per day

[Seb7]

I think its about finding a niche small enough as not to attract too much competition, but big enough to be able monetize from it. It doesnt necessary be a niche by subject, but can be a niche in a perticular technical web skill. (eg. Putting desktop software in to online apps.)

[Petrogold]

Seb7- I loved your post. Could you please suggest more such Niches with less comp. but high demand as examples? Thanks.

for aspdaddy-
"if you have .NET &..." How? I got one person expert in .NET, how to utilize her?Thanks.

[CainIV]

Write everyday. Well, I can't write everyday. Actually I can, but it's not good writing

Then perhaps you can partner with someone who can and can provide real value.

Unfortunately, and this is pure honesty, not every website is made to make money, and not everyone is destined to make money on the Internet.

[Petrogold]

Content is king? We see many contents are copied contents. Do not know who copied whom & which one is the original.How do you rate this Folks ? Valuable insights are appreciated. Thanks. regards,

[lammert]

The large amount of copied content is one of the main reasons why I think content is not the way to go in the near future. It is to easy to duplicate by just taking the static contents of one site and pasting it to another.

Sites which rely on software or technology which is hidden from the web surface don't have this problem. There hasn't been a new successful search engine since Google for example.

[SEOtop10]

@Petrogold: Original, quality content that solves a real problem that many people have, *is* king - not the copied content or articles that were spun from an existing one by a robot.

[lammert]

You should visit the freelance sites more often and look at all the "write 500 articles for peanuts" and "rewrite 100 copyscape proof articles" projects. Copied and recreated content has nothing to do anymore with scraping robots. It is a large professional industry with cheap manpower from low-wages countries.

Content for new sites is dead because search engines can't decide anymore if the writers are legitimate authors or just smart copiers. Established content sites still fly because of their track record. "Content is King" is the mantra for sites which have been on the net for several years, not for the newbies.