Ben over at the Blogging Experiment writes Learn from the Gold Rush: SHUT UP!. His article suggests that if you happen upon some successful idea, don’t go running to tell everyone about it, or you’ll find yourself with a bunch of prospectors trying to stake a claim to your find. It’s actually good advice and I’m about to disregard it and tell you how to make money like they did during the gold rush.

Ben left out a little bit of history when describing what happened during the gold rush. Most prospectors didn’t get rich from finding gold. These people often sold everything they had to move out to California to prospect. Nearly 300,000 people rushed into the area in search of riches promised by large veins of gold discovered there. But the smart money wasn’t on the gold at all, it was on the prospectors themselves. The people who cleaned up and made the real money are those forward thinking folks who sold the prospectors their gear. They sold them pans, picks and all the tackle they would need to go out and prospect. Most of which they’d have to buy more than once as they broke, lost or had theirs stolen. As more prospectors showed up, so did more merchants, ready to peddle their wares to the new settlers of California. Between the rising cost of living, equipment and goods offered, the people mining the gold were just handing it over to the people who saw the opportunity to market to a captive market. In short, the people mining gold did all the work while merchants simply sold their wares from the comfort of their shops. There were exceptions, of course. There are always a handful of savvy business people in any group, and the prospectors had their share as well. Eventually, though, only large groups with money and equipment would be able to get at the valuable ore.

In terms of blogging or doing business online, that gold rush is still happening. The people making the most money aren’t those building sites, but the people catering to them. Offering them advice, hosting, programs, ebooks, seo, consulting… the list goes on and on. Like with the gold rush, there are obviously people creating web sites and making money, but like so many other industries, it’s the feeders, as I like to call them, who are really raking in the cash. One great example is the ‘writing’ industry. There is no shortage of business that cater just to writers, everything from professional copy editors (a good thing) to people who will be happy to charge you to publish your book (a very bad thing). There are even scams, like poetry.com, who will publish every single poem submitted and sell you an author copy for a nice sum of money. They know that the writer is going to buy a handful to pass around to friends. They aren’t targeting readers, they are going directly after the writer!

My point, before I get too lost, is that if you can find a way to service a niche you may be able to make more money than if you were publishing in that niche. Something to think about when you’re cooking up ways to make more money online. Anyone out there with a site need a consultant? I’m kidding. Unless you do need someone.

Technorati Tags: Making Money, Consulting, Gold Rush, Marketing

After the recent fiasco with buying and selling text links, I wanted to make sure it was still allowed to sell banner ads. I was suprised to find out it’s not. You don’t have to worry about putting “nofollow” on your banner ads though, Google will do that automatically for you. Pretty cool, right?

I think anyone would agree that webmasters bring Google ungodly amounts of money, yet it seems like Google has grown to hate us. Google, the search engine, lives on links. They even say so and warn against a site that hordes there on traffic without linking out. They encourage you to link out. But they don’t want you to get links in!

Here is some of the shenanigans Google has pulled lately:

• Link exchanges are bad
• Directories that link directly to you are bad
• Buying links is bad
• Selling links is bad
• Selling ads that directly link to the buyer’s site is bad
• Giving away a program, plugin, theme or software that requires a “link” is bad

And the list goes on and on. I’m not the only one that feels this way. I work hard on my sites and I try to stay within the rules. The one on the list that probably bugs me the most is “linkware”. If I put my hard work into a software package (a forum, community site, whatever) or a theme, I should get some sort of reward. If I decide to release it as “linkware”, that’s my right. They are currently cracking down on sponsored themes, which I do get to an extent. But as a theme creator, that’s my design and in exchange for using it, I ask for a link. That’s a small token of support and helps me continue doing those kinds of things for free. I’m giving something of value and getting something of value back.

I don’t know how far they are going to take their vendetta against links, but I’m starting to lose faith in a company I used to have huge respect for, who’s motto is “don’t be evil”, who’s products I truly enjoy and tell everyone to use. I’m feeling burned and as more webmasters look for alternative sources of traffic we will influence our readers to use that source. Google is creating the tool of their own undoing. Sure, it’ll take a while, but their sewing the wrong kind of seeds. They won’t like the crop come harvest.

Technorati Tags: Google, Big Brother, Text Links, Banner Ads, Making Money, Webmasters