When that happens, there’s always an opportunity to make money, especially on the Internet.
That’s what this book is all about.
It’s about what happens when you take a passion, place it on a platform that’s open to anyone who wants to climb on to it, and then plug in the pipes that bring in the cash.
The result sounds a lot like KaChing.
So, Just How Easy Is It to Begin Building a Web Site?
To someone whose only experience on the Internet is reading the news, checking the sports scores, or perhaps answering e-mail, the online world can look pretty daunting.
Telling an Internet user that there’s a fortune to be made online is a bit like telling a moviegoer that there are millions to be made in movies. Of course there are ... if you know how to handle a camera, write a script, find the production money, hire actors, edit the footage, and distribute the film. If you know how to do all that—and can make movies that people actually want to see—then, sure, you can make millions.
But creating successful web sites is not like shooting successful movies. Creating movie blockbusters is complicated. Creating Internet content is very, very simple. It was always meant to be simple, and today it’s easier than it’s ever been.
You can now be online with a new web site in less time than it takes to read this page.
And you can do it for free.
You won’t hear your first KaChing right away. You’ll still have to stock the site with content, plug in the systems that will pour in the cash, and let people know you’re around. That will take a little time. But it won’t require any skills more specialized than the ability to press a mouse button or choose an option in a drop-down menu.
It wasn’t always like this. Although the Internet was always meant to be a place that anyone could use and anyone could build on, for a long time that really meant anyone who had the patience to read a programming manual the size of a shoebox.
Today, the Internet really has met its promise of being a truly democratic space. Those with a desire to earn and a willingness to learn as they go can have the beginnings of a profitable online business in minutes.
Usually, that takes one of two forms.
The traditional method has always been to create a web site from scratch. You bought a domain name from a service like GoDaddy.com, rented space on a hosting service, and placed the domain on the host’s server. Then you used a special program to write the code and upload the pages. Whenever users entered the address of one of those pages in their Web browser, your page appeared on their screen.
This is still how most web sites work. It’s how most of mine work. Doing it all manually provides the greatest amount of flexibility. But it’s a little tricky, as it takes time to learn—or money to pay someone who already knows how to do it—and it’s no longer necessary.
Web developers have made complete templates available to anyone who wants to use them. The prices vary. Some companies offer them for free; others charge thousands of dollars for a template that’s unique, easy to customize, and filled with the latest Flash animation.
Whichever option you choose—and both types are no more than a quick search away—once you’ve bought your domain, all you have to do is upload the template and fill it with your content.
Alternatively, you can also use a content management system like Joomla! or Drupal. These are free programs that act as a kind of storage system for web site publishers. They sound frightening, but they’ve actually simplified web publishing enormously. Once you’ve taken the first leap of buying a domain and placing it on a server—a process that will take even the newest of publishers just a few nervous minutes—they’ll allow you to add articles and use modules and extensions to place all sorts of preprogrammed goodies, such as RSS feeds, sidebars, and automated storefronts, on your web pages.
The first steps might feel a little strange. But once you have even a basic web site up and running, you won’t be able to stop. You’ll be experimenting and playing, and in no time at all you’ll have become something of a web development expert simply because you’re enjoying it. It happens. And it happens because it’s now so simple.
Web site templates might have taken the sweat out of design, but there’s an even easier and faster way to get on the Web. When Evan Williams, who would later go on to help create Twitter, launched Blogger in August 1999, he continued a process of simplification that cracked the Internet wide open.
A blog (short for “web log”) is a very simple type of web site. Instead of having multiple static pages, the content on blogs is updated regularly and displayed in chronological order. That keeps readers coming back to see what’s new. Older content gets buried but can be recovered from archives and by using searches based on keywords and subjects.
The benefit of blogs has always been their simplicity. While you can now upload all sorts of content, including video and real-time Twitter streams, writing a blog is not much different from writing in Microsoft Word, then saving it on the Internet so that everyone can see it. The attraction of a blog is always the content. If you can say something interesting—about any topic at all—you can build a successful blog.
Evan Williams certainly made a success of Blogger. Ten years later, Google bought the site for an undisclosed sum, and now Blogger is said to have 300 million active readers who consume the 388 million words uploaded through the service every single day (Figure 1.1).
Blogger, of course, now has plenty of competitors. WordPress.org provides a lot more flexibility. It’s open source, which means that anyone can build on it and create plug-ins that give publishers even more
