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I had originally started this post with a spiel about the Make Money Online niche being over crowded. Since this posts first draft, I’ve read countless posts over the last few weeks that cover all the same points I’d written, most a lot more eloquently, so I’m going to bypass all that.
The Make Money Online niche is not my area of expertise; neither is SEO, Affiliate Marketing, everything most of you come here to read about. What I do know, is what I like, and that is to read from an educated source regardless of the topic I’m reading about.
Assessing Your Own Success
Success is relevant and everyone has a different opinion on what constitutes success based on their own situation in life. For ME, if I had a blog, more 12 months old, and I answered yes to anyone of the following I’d be re-thinking my strategy;
• It generates less than $1000 per month
• It has fewer than 500 RSS subscribers
• It was still hosted on a blogspot account
Remember, we’re talking about the Make Money Online niche here, If you are writing within that niche and you are not able to do so yourself, why would I be interested in reading what you had to say? Harsh but blatantly true.
Reference Site
I want to use Danny Choo as an example, a blogger from Japan, who earns a very tidy sum of money from his blog each month.
Who’s Danny Choo you ask? Danny’s about page reads as follows;
- A mix of Gundam, figures, anime, otaku and Japanese culture brought to you by Danny Choo (me) who resides in Tokyo Japan.
- The contents of this site seems to be popular based on the average of 10 million page views per month generated by an average of 50,000 daily unique users.
- This site is also occasionally featured in the Japanese press such as on TV and in magazines/newspapers.
- I also write tips on living in Japan (buying a house, working etc) and blogging tips (how to earn money through affiliating, discoverability, SEO etc).
- Occasionally write posts on how important it is to have a destination in life and remain focused.
All that might mean nothing to you and the Japan / Anime flavour may also be of no interest whatsoever, what it does mean though is Danny gets a whole lot of traffic through the door.
As far as turning all that traffic into cash goes, back in March 07 Danny wrote, “The most I have ever made through all my affiliate programs is just over USD$1000 per day last December - my next goal is to keep it a steady USD$1000 by Q4 of this year - nearly there” You can read the full article here
That was written about a year ago, I’m not sure whether Danny achieved his goal of constant USD$1000 per day, his blogs finances are rarely posted about. Judging by the continued growth of his site, I’m confident in saying he did.
As many of you are inspired by John Chow and specifically his monthly Blog Income Report I get inspired by Danny Choo. His ability to, and I’ll quote the figures conservatively, earn over $20K per month, writing about something he knows a lot about and enjoys from both a professional and personal level is a great achievement.
My Suggestion To You
Blog about something you know more about, something you are passionate about, something unique to you and your experiences surrounding it, your chance of success will be much greater.
This could be anything from sports you play or watch, hobbies and recreational activities or maybe you or someone in your family has an illness you are extremely knowledgeable about , the possibilities are endless and becoming an authority on any of these is so much easier. See Kens Blog as another example, he launched the site after being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes, 6 months ago he was earning over $40K per annum.
As long as you’re not crossing any moral boundaries there’s no reason why you can’t provide the knowledge you have, on these topics to others, and make a few bucks along the way. If you’re not Making Money Online now then you have nothing to lose in trying something different, literally.
This post was written by Neil Duckett. Neil writes a blog based on his life as a Gaijin in Japan and the adventures, challenges and satisfaction that comes with it.
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Very Nice Post Niel.
As you know, I have just started a blog in the ‘make money online’ niche, but that is because I DO make money online and online business is something I am passionate about.
My goal with my blog is to make it more of a brand builder and focus on providing quality content. If/when the income comes on the blog, that will be very good, but I have other income streams and using the blog to connect with my community.
Great post Neil. Thinking out of the box.
Chow, Cow and now Choo? Great post!
Dannychoo is my second favorite blog, I love it’s design, the best one I’ve seen, I think. My favorite is Kirai net.
Wow! This is my read of the day
Keep up the good work!
-Mike
Well said! So many bloggers start a blog just to make money, what they need is a passion for the topic as well. That is why I have branched out and created a another blog - but choosing a topic I am passionate about!
I definitely agree Neil, good post. Being passionate about a topic is definitely a key aspect of determining success!
Nice read, I have to agree about blogging about something you are interested in I started a new blog a couple of weeks ago (well its a video blog really) and the amount of effort that is required to make the episodes is alot no way you could undertake it if you had no interest in the topic at hand.
A great post to those who are blogging on make money online out there. Some of them just fail the going concern test right from the start when they feel that they are becoming lazy in blogging, link and traffic building.
What I can conclude is that we might be seeing more of such blogs coming out but at the end of the day, only a few that prevail.
Great post…I personally love the styles of John Chow and Danny Choo, they just write about what they know! Its all in the marketing and promotion and ability to execute on your business plan and ideas. 99% of bloggers who fail, fail because they are lazy and don’t have a plan! I love these kinds of posts! I am going to print this off and read it on the Subway again!
Good stuff. Need to keep people grounded.
Are you really exagerating. Can we make this much money from one blog. I dont think. I think that you people are multiplying the real income with some number of times.
I was actually expecting some negative feedback ….. maybe it will come.
I’ve just had an update from Danny Choo for anyone interested ….
“January served just over 11 million page views (11,376,356) to an average of 62,996 unique daily users (up from 57,842 last month). The monthly unique users amounted to an accumulative total of 1.9 million visitors (1,952,901).”
Like i said above, it might not be your cup of tea but numbers like that are pretty impressive.
11 million page views that is indeed very impressive.
Great Post. Just wanted to say, isn’t the 1st 2 or 3 comments for post aggregator sites?
Inspiring stuff. I keep feeling dragged towards the ‘make money’ niche, but to be honest that isn’t what drives me. I’m going to go away and rethink my content’s direction.
Thanks for the inspiration
Very well written, structured, and easy to follow Neil! I really liked your overall message to people thinking about making money online but perhaps not ready to jump in yet. I think for them this is a very inspiring post.
I found the sites you made reference to very interesting and also good examples of making money going something you love.
Now there’s a win-win!