Addressing one of the questions I seem to get all the time – “Is there any money left to be made on the net?” “It seems that all the good money making ideas are already being done”

This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Statements like these are just excuses the lazy use to justify not doing anything or not acting on ideas for fear of failure. The Internet is always evolving and always changing. A website idea that seems only so-so now, could in six or eight months, turn into something really, really, good.

For example. I have developed a very unsophisticated system that I use religiously to bounce website ideas of myself. Lets say I’m taking a shower and then wham, an idea strikes me. From that point on I actually try and convince myself that website idea will fail. I run through all the reasons in my head why that particular website will not work.

I usually spend a day doing this. The next day if I think the idea still has a 50/50 shot of being successful and marketable on the Internet, I buy the domain to match the website idea I still have in my head.

Once I purchase the domain I spend no more then 4 days of my spare time developing the back end portion of that idea. Stuff like the programming, initial look, initial functions, etc. Then I drop the idea and forget about it.

At any time I have approximately ten to fifteen sites that are just sitting on the server with only the back end portion finished. Now that I have abandoned that website idea I go back to whatever project I am supposed to be working on and don’t think twice about it.

Now for example; lets fast-forward six months. I’m sitting at home bored to death and watching the television series “Monk” and again Wham! I think to myself “You know, if I did this, this way, and changed this, to that, that site idea I had six months ago would rock!

Now guess what? I get back to that site, change some things, SEO it a little, and release it.

I have used this little system since around 2001 and it has the been the starting point for many, many, sites that I have ended up making a great deal of money on. For example NTFU was started this way and I was making somewhere in the ballpark of $**,***.00 per week.

Let me try and get your creative juices going.

Back in the 90’s content used to be king. This was more true in the adult industry then the mainstream industry but it still did apply in mainstream as well. It’s different now. Traffic is king and and unique content is pretty much everywhere. Blogs used to thrive in part because they were the place to go when you wanted to see that crazy video you heard about at work. Now mega sites like Youtube have drawn in all that unique content and left bloggers falling all over themselves to find ways to attract visitors.

It’s true the Internet is different now and Internet marketing is different. Yet that doesn’t mean it’s dead as far as making money goes. In fact, it doesn’t even mean it’s essentially harder either. The worst thing you can do to yourself though is not try something for fear of failure. I have seen that ruin very talented people.

Case and point - I was speaking to a venture capitalist a week or so ago. He had hit a wall at developing site ideas that he thought would make money. I thought about it for roughly thirty seconds and asked him if he ever went online to research anything government related. He said “sure, quite a bit actually.” I then reminded him that most government records are a matter of public record. That to obtain them, even in large quantities, someone was only required to fill out an FOIA form and pay a nominal fee. I then explained how relatively simple it was to scan and search PDF documents server side.

His face lit up. He was grinning from ear-to-ear. He thanked me and told me he owed me one and left. You see though, I didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. I merely pointed him in a direction that he had not thought of yet.