In this chapter, I’ve tried to reveal the value of your uniqueness, and I’ve explained the seven keys that you will need to open the gates of your success. In the course of the next five chapters, you will learn the most powerful, proven methods for turning that uniqueness into money on the Web.
Let’s begin with the foundation of online success: content.
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Content Is Not King ... It Is KaChing!
You might not be able to hear an actual KaChing sound as you’re building an online business, but there is one sound that you’ll come across so often it will remain stuck in your head like a bad pop song.
“Content is king.”
It’s the Internet’s chorus, what everyone says when they give advice to new publishers, and what everyone believes as they build a web site.
And they’re all right, of course. The Internet is made of content. It’s what web sites are built to hold and it’s the reason that people open a browser and type in a URL. Internet users surf to learn and be entertained, and they learn and are entertained by digesting content.
What they see will vary tremendously. Some people are just hoping to learn the latest football scores. Others want to read a report that explains why their team lost that match. And some people want to learn why some football tactics generally work better than others so that they can become football coaches.
Whatever you want to find online, whether it’s information that’s vital and important or trivial and entertaining, and however far you want to take your reading, the Internet is capable of delivering content that tells you what you want to know.
To build an audience online, you have to create content. The better the content, the bigger your audience, and the more influence you’ll have over your readers. The more readers and influence you have, the more advertisers will pay to pitch to them, and the higher your click-through and sales conversion rates.
Your ability to earn online then is limited only by your ability to create content that people want. And that’s not necessarily just content they can read. Although most Internet content is delivered through words, almost from the beginning, the Web has thrived on its ability to deliver content in all sorts of different ways.
However you deliver your content, as long as it’s informative, entertaining, or both, you can build an audience and create value.
In this chapter, I will explain the principles behind profitable content. I’ll first discuss how to create content that can generate income, and then I’ll reveal no fewer than a dozen different ways to turn that content into cash.
You Don’t Have to Be a Writer to Write Valuable Content
This is when people start to get scared. Once they’ve played around with Blogger or a web site template, they realize that actually there’s nothing to creating an Internet site. It’s just a matter of checking a few boxes and playing with menus. At the beginning, it all feels very strange and new, but within a few hours, it’s as simple as using a pocket calculator.
But the web site only provides a structure. It’s as though you’ve been given a store that contains nothing but empty shelves. You still have to fill it with stock. On the Web, that stock means content—and usually, that content means writing.
There are few shortcuts here. There is free content available that you can put on a web site—things like old books that are past their copyright and now in the public domain, and even old photographs and movies. But such content isn’t original, and you’ll be competing with all of the other sites offering exactly the same product. You might be able to make a little money with public domain works, but they’re rarely the foundation of a successful, ongoing Internet business.
That demands original content ... and that, in turn, requires original writing.
For people who have never written anything longer than a shopping list, that can sound terrifying. If the thing you hated most at school was writing essays and compositions, if you never got more than a D any time you had to put words on a page and give them to a teacher, I can understand that you’re not going to like the idea of putting words on a web site for millions of people to read.
The good news is that writing for the Web is not like writing for school. It’s not like writing for college, and it’s not even like writing for work.
It’s like writing for you.
That’s crucial. Obviously, if you’re a great wit and can crack jokes and tell killer stories, then you’ll have it easy. But you don’t have to do any of that. All you have to do is transfer the knowledge that’s in your head to the heads of your readers.
So don’t try to impress anyone with your writing skills. Don’t go flowery or use long words to show that you know how to use a thesaurus. There are no bonus points for pretty writing. There are, however, extra users and additional income available for clear writing—and that comes down to two things: information and style.
Of those two, information is the more important, so know what you’re going to say before you say it. On Twitter, you can write whatever’s going through your head at that particular moment, but when you’re writing an article or a blog post, you need to have a plan. That will ensure that every sentence communicates something important and that every word has a use. You won’t wander all over the page until you stumble over a good point.
The plan doesn’t have to be anything too detailed. It’s unlikely you’re going to be writing more than
