whydowork.com

The make money online industry is full of crazy ideas and momentum swings. I see trends pop-up and die down on a regular basis. Last year it was high yield investment programs; this year it’s make money online blogs. The entire premise of this niche has never made sense to me and I am happy to report the fad is collapsing on itself; here’s why:

Most Make Money Online bloggers only actually knew how to make money online in one way….blogging. What their advice and ramblings have created is an army of clones and a subscriber base made up of make money online blogger wannabees. It’s one giant mess that is displaying the same negative qualities of a pyramid scheme.

In a pyramid scheme, existing members can only continue to profit when new members are recruited. This is because the top members of the pyramid cannot sustainably make money off the bottom of the pyramid forever; thus, a new bottom is needed. Eventually the pyramid grows large enough that no amount of new recruits can support the existing pyramid.

In the make money online blog world, the entire industry is funded by newbie make money bloggers who are now realizing there is way too much competition to gain subscribers or make money. As these bloggers quit and an increasing number of blogs are put up for sale with steadily decreasing sale prices, the pyramid begins to destruct.

Need an Example?

(The example below is purely fictional)

John Chow - (23k RSS) - Top of the Pyramid

John Cow - (1.5k RSS), Blogging Mix (500 RSS) - Mid Pyramid

Newbie1 (0 RSS), Newbie 2 (6 RSS), Newbie 3 (9 RSS), Newbie 4 (29 RSS) - Bottom of the Pyramid

1. John Chow charges $500 for John Cow to Advertise on his blog.
2. John Cow then charges Newbie 1 and Newbie 2 $300 each to advertise on his blog
3. Newbie 1 and 2, eventually find their blog isn’t growing and quit the make money online blogging niche and unsubscribe from John Chow and John Cow.
4. John Cow can no longer afford to advertise on John Chow, and sells his site.

As many of you know John Cow actually has put his blog up for sale, along with a slew of others recently (including bloggingmix.com also included in my example). It’s unfortunate, but there are some laggards who continue to overpay for established sites, only to find out quickly that their newly acquired blog is worthless. If you are still in the game, my advice is to sell before the well completely dries up.

Who Will Survive:

Survivors will be blogs with a greater purpose then just to service the make money online niche. If you look at someone like Andy Beard who is often grouped into this category, he has a focus on search engine optimization and other technical tips useful for any webmaster which will allow him to be fairly immune to the fallout. We at WhyDoWork are simply using the blog to compliment the main content. The creation of our blog was used to highlight the collective thoughts and exceptional ideas from our 30,000 members. We will continue to utilize the blog for this purpose.

Others will survive as well. I know some of the top tier bloggers have advertisers that aren’t targeted to blogs but the level of dependency of the make money online blogger remains to be seen.

What’s next?

I predict forum discussion will pick up again and users will rediscover a better way of making money online. That process involves researching the actions of many people, weighing the pros and cons of each program, product, and service and finding the niche that suits you best. When it comes to making money online, whether it be blogging, or doing surveys, one person can’t provide you with all the answers.

- Joe

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Welcome to the second entry in the soon to be world famous ‘Cho’s Corner’ Blog, where I uncover all my secrets to developing an idea into a successful online business.  Today I’m going to start the long journey of taking an idea through the challenging process of analyzing, developing, promoting it and making it successful.

First of all you are going to actually need an idea to start with.  Well http://www.whydowork.com/ is a great place to start!  See what is making people money and what has been causing a stir.  The Internet is full of trends, and a work at home discussion board is a great place to stay in tune with these swings.  Outside of that, take something that interests you and see what is out there to serve that market.  Identify any gaps that you can offer the demographic.  The mainstay of new Internet ideas today involves filling niches.  With millions of potential eyes there are many untapped little corners of the Internet waiting to be served.

Once you have a couple of ideas bouncing around its time to see if they stack up in the quest for your online business.  Before you get all excited about your new idea and want to start coding and promoting it there is a lot more work to do.  The process of taking an idea and committing to it is the most difficult step in the entire process and one that will ultimately determine whether your initiative will succeed or not.  I personally have only launched a few different websites, but they all have been successful.  The reason being is the exhaustive screening procedure I put every idea through before I say it’s a go.  You need to measure every brainstorm that you have against a plethora of potential success factors, weigh the pros and cons, and determine your potential passion in turning this idea into a working, breathing machine.

When I come up with, or someone approaches me with a new idea the thing I do is to think of every reason in the world why this idea sucks!  Playing the devils advocate is extremely important.  The last thing you want to do is to let your emotions, and excitement allow you to get carried away.  On the other hand, every idea will have its negatives, and you can’t live life nay saying everything.  Eventually you have to commit to something; it’s just a matter of ensuring you pick the best idea for you.  Here is a list of criteria that will help you question the viability of your new initiative:

Competition – Where will this site fit into the competitive landscape that already exists?  Are there sites out there that already fill this niche?  What can I offer that will differentiate and allow me to sell this idea?  If your plan is to copycat an existing idea you are headed gravely down the wrong path.  However, leveraging an existing product and tweaking into your own specialized niche is a great way to achieve success.

Ethics – Is this something you are going to feel comfortable promoting?  In the end offering a service that exploits people, and serves only to line your pocket books won’t make you happy.  As attractive as the return some of the shadier areas of the Internet can bring, a bag full of money isn’t worth much without any real sense of achievement.

Feasibility – How exhaustive of a project is this?  Do you have the time, money, resources, and knowledge to make this happen in a reasonable amount of time?  If the project is beyond your resource capabilities it will end up being a frustrating endeavor.

Interest – Is this idea something you are interested in?  Are you going to be compelled to build and maintain this idea on a daily basis or is it going to be a chore?  If your motivations are purely financial your site will suffer, you need at least a rudimentary level of product knowledge with a desire to learn more.

Earnings Potential – Are you going to be making money promoting this idea?  While this criterion seems obvious, I assure you it’s not.  You can have a thousand people a day visiting your website but if there isn’t a quality product to sell and your target market cannot be successfully marketed to then you may have little success.  How to design your site around revenue channels will be something I will fully devote a Blog to in the future.

Now that you’ve taken your idea through the ringer, are you still excited about it?  If not, then you should consider passing on it and looking for something else.  If you are excited then its time to count the days till my next Blog to find out what to do next!

Joe Ross

WhyDoWork.com

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Hey Everyone!

Since you are reading this I’d like to say thanks for helping our new Blogging service from WhyDoWork (WDW) become a success.  I’m really excited about the quality of blogs that are available here at the site.  We have some of the most knowledgeable work at home experts and I know that reading their blogs will be one of the greatest learning tools you will ever encounter.

So that begs the question what do I have to offer?  Well as co-founder of WDW I know a little something about creating a successful site and it didn’t take a pile of money to do it.  In fact I’ve created a few different sites now; all generating thousands in revenue and I’ve done it with literarily no initial investment.  All that was ever spent to start off on any of my sites including WDW has been $7.95 for a domain name  (http://www.godaddy.com/) and $12.00 for a year of web hosting (http://www.ucvhost.com/).

Of course now that this site is successful we pay a lot more for web hosting and our advertising budget is a substantial portion of our expenses but to start things off it doesn’t take much. That’s the beautiful thing with the Internet. If you wanted to start your own business outside of the Internet you would generally require thousands of startup capital to get your business of the ground. With the Internet every site that has been successful for me has required no borrowing, or taking chances. Besides the initial $20 I have never spent more money on developing or promoting the site then the site has already earned me. This type of safe, controlled growth will allow you to make money without taking any chances. It does take hard work and patience but results are achievable. Besides earning an income it has been very rewarding creating a site like WDW which thousands of people use and rely on. Now I want to help you create your own little WDW.

Hopefully now I have grabbed your attention.  My blog is going to give you some insight as to how you can come up with a successful website idea, chose the right business model, get your site search engine optimized, advertising, and more.  In this very blog some of the WDW secrets will be revealed.  Stay tuned and within the week and I’ll post my first topic.

Thanks.

Joe

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