If I build it will anyone show up?

Not if you use those tools ;)

The age old question. For some reason, every summer season it seems, there is a HUGE spike in blog's and website's being designed and popping up all over the internet. People are naturally hoping to get away from the 9 - 5 grind and lifestyle.

It's actually quite amazing when you look at statistics. The statistics so of March 31, 2009 for internet user's is a staggering 1,596,270,108 according to Internet World Stats and there are over 186,727,854 websites as of the Internet in December 2008 with 31.5 million websites added during 2008.

The numbers seem to be almost unbelievable but they are in fact very real. It is also the main reason people build sites and blogs. Everyone is hoping to get a piece of the internet pie. There are however huge learning curves to overcome.

As I have mentioned before you need a niche, you need articles, you need traffic etc, etc.

All of a sudden people realize that although blogging is great fun, if you are going to make it a business you must treat it like one. I really hate it when I see sites that are purely M.F.A.'s. (Made for ASdsense) they offer no value and they show that the blogger is not serious at all.

Back in the good old days of internet marketing and blogging (2004-2005) you really could build a few blogs and ramp them up with ads and make some decent money. The game my friends has changed.

A very guarded secret I have online is that I have several blogs and websites. Sure they can be challenging at times to maintain, sure it takes time to do everything involved to get traffic and yes they are a thorn in my side at times. But I love the challenge.

I find in forums and message boards quite often that people don't realize the one simple trick to success online is to have a lot of sites and maintain them, the logic being is that if just one blog is making you $50 - $100 a month (which is the average earning for most blogs) then make that blog well rounded and then every month create two more. Take it slow and do all of the steps properly and after roughly 8 or 10 months you now have at least 20 blogs pulling in a very conservative $75 bucks. Not much each but times it by 20 and you are making an extra $1500 bucks per month. Keep in mind this is just an example to illustrate my point. There is no limit and how much you make is entirely up to you!

Always think outside the main stream. Believe me when I tell you that the Big Guru's, the ones trying to sell you something ALL have several blogs and websites. It is all mathematics. The more you diversify and expand the more money you can and will make.

Building a website should always be clean and not jumbled. I could show you some ugly blogs that I used to have when I first started out....Oh Boy...flashy, music, colors galore and I had a "huge" fan base. ME.

With the internet always changing there are always things to learn and watch out for. So the next time you hear about "The Next Internet Craze" wait and research it before you spend your hard earned money. Check out forums, ask people you trust for their opinion's and then decide. The Buy Now sales page is just that a Sales Page. Always remember when someone says they only have "X" amount left that they are selling a digital product, unless it is C.D.'s. They may say they only have so many left but how is that possible? Are they going to wipe it off their hard drive?

If they say they are taking it offline then you might want to consider buying it because when someone is upfront and honest that way, it's more than likely worth much more than the purchase price.

So, when you build a website or blog (and I highly recommend you do) just make sure to build it clean, easy to navigate and above all else content worthy.

If you can afford it get a press release for about 80 bucks and then you have a much better chance of repeat visitors. A well crafted PR release can hit Google News in a matter of hours. I personally know of someone who did this and wasn't ready for the traffic. He received so much that his server went down, so that is also something you need to be aware of, your bandwidth.

We'll cover that another time.

Best

Garret