Do What The Pundits Say You Can't

Remember the days of yore - the ones before there was an Internet? No, you're not dating yourself - it really wasn't that long ago. But the advent of the 'net has changed how business is done pretty drastically in that short space of time, and if you want to squeeze a living from that massive online marketplace, you need to know something about how the rules have changed.

Pre-web, you could crack open a newspaper, check the business opportunities section and find ads galore, all promising to teach you how to make money from home. You'd pony up with a $10 check, they'd mail you back a package teaching you how to sell their package. That self-serving formula hasn't changed much; you'll still find plenty of those online, but they aren't charging you $10 for it anymore, that's for sure.

But there's another kind of teacher that you can find online that isn't trying to sell you on selling them. They really want to teach you how to make money, and aren't trying to fleece you out of what money you have. But they often have one problem: they promote their way of making a success on the Internet as the only true, genuine, workable way to succeed, and proclaim everybody else's methods to be useless at best, and a scam at worst. They take what worked for them as a universal truth, and really they're not wrong, exactly. They just suffer from tunnel vision. You've probably heard the parable about the blind men and the elephant - each one felt a different part of the beast and made their separate (and incorrect) conclusions about it based only on the part they came into contact with . That's what a lot of these online gurus are doing.

If you're trying to learn what "really works" when it comes to making money on the Internet, you are no doubt completely confused by what your research has brought up so far. Let's dispel some of these myths.

Theory One
In these days of blogs and social media, you need to prove your authority for your site to succeed. build your traffic and your authority first, then monetize later.

Theory One Shot Down
While this method can certainly work, it doesn't take into account what your personal style of blogging might be. Perhaps you don't feel yourself to be an authority on a topic you want to turn into a business. If you prefer to write posts that come across like an online diary - if you have your smiling picture up on your "About" page - then the relationships you're forming with the visitors to your blog is a friendly, cozy, interactive one. Once you have a lot of traffic and want to monetize your blog, you'll find yourself in the uncomfortable position of trying to solicit money from people who have become your "friends." You can either establish yourself from Day One as an authoritative source of information, or you can be a blogging buddy. You can't really do both.

Theory Two
You can't be anonymous. People don't respond to a gravatar...they need to see a face.

Theory Two Shot Down
Have you ever heard of lolcats? The icanhascheezburger.com site launched in January, 2007. By June, they were getting half a million hits per day. Nobody knew who ran the site. In July, the two founders were interviewed by Time Magazine, and told their interviewer that they preferred to remain anonymous. It wasn't until they sold their little hobby site for 2 million dollars that we learned their names: Kari Unebasami and Eric Nakagawa. Anonymity didn't seem to hurt them any, eh?

Theory Three
If you have a blog, you must post often or you'll lose traffic.

Theory Three Shot Down
Ask Frank Warren. His postsecret.com blog gets updated once on Sundays, and he landed a multi book contract with a major publisher not long after it swept the web. It's also in the top 100 sites online.

Theory Four
The fastest way to build a list is to give away freebies.

Theory Four Shot Down
Well, this can work, but you could also be laboring to build a list of freebie hounds that never, ever end up buying anything from you. It's a crapshoot.

Theory Five
Your website, blog posts, or mailing list should be about whatever you're selling.

Theory Five Shot Down
On the surface of it, this makes perfect sense, doesn't it? Problem is, it doesn't necessarily reflect reality. You have a brand of socks that you think are the bee's knees, but do you really want to read a newsletter about them? You wanna join a mailing list and hang out in forums and get updated blog posts about your favorite nose hair trimmer? Ask a few gurus what they'd do about trying to sell a product that nobody really wants to read about, and most of them will tell you not to bother trying to sell it. But people do sell these things online, and make a very nice living for themselves doing it. How do you manage that when you can't stay "topical" or "targeted"? Well, find a way to promote an idea that's related to what you're selling. If you're trying to sell socks, consider talking about the fashion industry in your posts. If you're selling nose hair trimmers, you could write about hygiene, or personal grooming in general. If you are selling your services, for instance home renovation, roofing, decks, etc., how about creating a site with barbecue recipes and kids crafts, with testimonials from your clients telling about how they loved entertaining on their new deck and that the kids are crazy about their new playroom. People will love your cool articles and fun stuff, and return to your site to buy what you're selling them. Just talk about what people want to hear and they'll remember the connection.

Theory Six
Do what you love, and the money will follow. It won't even seem like work.

Theory Six Shot Down
Again, another idea that makes sense on first viewing. What better way to spend your life than getting paid for doing something you love? But think about it. What was a leisure pursuit, a way to relax, a way to express yourself, will soon become a full time job, with pressures, deadlines, expectations, and endless compromise as you cater to each new "boss" that pays you to give them what they want. How long do you think it will take before you have no desire to look another doll, or sewing machine, or kit car, or pile of PC parts in the face again? There's nothing wrong with making your hobby into a business, if that's what you really want. But considering the downside, it's also perfectly possible and often desirable to go into something else altogether, keeping your hobbies and business completely unrelated.

Theory Seven
You can't succeed in a field you know nothing about.

Theory Seven Shot Down
It's not tough to see how having a lot of knowledge in a particular field can help you achieve great success in it. And sometimes it's even a prerequisite: you probably wouldn't take flying lessons from someone who'd never flown a plane.

But do you suppose that every successful marketer, website designer or ghostwriter is an expert in every field they're asked to apply their expertise to? Of course not. So what did they do? They found out What They Needed To Know. If you know how to properly research an industry, you can sell anything to anyone in any field and make a success of it.

So don't take what someone trying to sell you their "Make Millions Online" program says as gospel truth. They may not be trying to mislead you, but they may have a fatally narrow focus and a "can't do" attitude that won't reassure you that there really is an infinite number of ways to make money online. If you keep an open mind about the possibilities, you really can make the dream work for you.