KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays Read Online Free PDF Page A

and blogging software have done for web sites.
     
    And you don’t have to waste brain cells trying to think up ways to monetize your site, either. With Google handing out cash registers, there’s always one very simple way of making money from your users. Once you are used to that method, it’s just a short step to all of the other strategies discussed in this book.
     
    There is another way that the Web has opened up to everyone, though, and it’s no less important.
     
    It’s made us all into experts.
     
    Or rather, it’s enabled all of us to earn from our expertise, which isn’t quite the same thing, because you’ve always been an expert. You might not have a doctorate in cheesecake making or a Nobel Prize for your contributions to world crocheting, but if you know more about those things than most people do, then you’re an expert on that topic.
     
    Note that I don’t say that you have to know more about those topics than everyone else does. You don’t have to be the world’s leading expert to earn from your knowledge on the Internet. You just need to have knowledge that other people don’t have but want.
     
    Everybody has knowledge like that.
     
    If you do origami in your spare time, then you’re an expert on origami. Sure, there are people who can fold paper better than you can. But they don’t have a web site that shares their knowledge. You do. (If they do have a web site, then their site discusses ways of making paper animals, while yours will explain how to fold paper boxes.)
     
    If you like sports, then maybe you’re an expert on your local football team. If you’re into cooking, then perhaps you’re an expert on barbecuing, baking cookies, or making whatever type of food you like to cook the most.
     
    Everybody is an expert in something because everyone has to fill 24 hours of his or her day with something. Even if you spend half that time on the sofa watching television and the other half in bed sleeping, then you’re an expert on sofas, daytime soaps, and a dozen ways to waste your time. As long as people want to know about those things, the Internet will give you an opportunity to make money from that knowledge.
     
    You might not pick up millions of users. It’s certainly possible that if you launch a web site about knitting with yellow wool, you’ll find that only a fraction of the total number of people interested in knitting will stop by to look. But those people will likely be dedicated knitters. They’ll be the ones most likely to click on an ad, buy an affiliate product, or sign up for a paid subscription to your newsletter. It might be a tiny subject, but because it’s on the Web and therefore available to everyone, everywhere, you can land enough users to bring in enough money to start building a profitable online business.
     
    That’s the value of the long tail—the Internet’s ability to build revenue-generating audiences for the most specialized of topics. And it means that any knowledge you have has value and can generate a KaChing online.
     

Choosing Your Niche
     
    The first step is the easiest—and the most enjoyable. In fact, the best way to know you’re doing it right is if you enjoy it.
     
    Yet even at this stage, people still get it wrong.
     
    I’ve lost count of the number of people who have approached me at conferences and workshops and asked me what their web site should be about. I can’t help them there. I have no idea what your web site should be about either. I do know the principle that should underlie the subject of every profitable web site: It must be a topic its publisher enjoys and is interested in.
     
    Forget about the apparent value of the topic for now. Forget about the fact that some topics are more likely to make money than others. Build a web site that’s designed only to make money and you might hear a little KaChing in the beginning, but by the time you’ve built up a large enough knowledge of Internet business to make big