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The problem with all the "make money online" hoopla these days is that people are actually believing that all they need to make money online is to download a website template, tweak it a bit to add your flava, stick some content in it and wait for the money to roll in.
"That's what the ad on the Internet said", they say. "I just have to follow this formula and pretty soon, I'll be sipping pina coladas on a beach in Hawah-ee. Seems like a steal doncha think? 99 bucks for lifetime membership to get money rolling into my bank account!".
People often ask me if it's that easy, and I tell them that building a website and making money with it is pretty much like playing with Lego Blocks. Say what? You heard me right - Lego Blocks.
If you've every played with Lego Blocks, you know that it takes lots of patience to put those little pieces of plastic together to form any semblance of anything. It’s a tedious process. Whatever the size of the project, the process is still the same. You stick small Lego block together to form one part of that project. Then you repeat the process until you have all the parts ready and you finally put it all together to form your masterpiece.
And so it is with building a website. You CAN build a one-page website that contains a little bit of text and pictures - pretty much like building a Lego Blocks cube. Or you can build a 15-foot tall replica of the Chewbacca (from Star Wars) which is going to take lots more blocks, lots more patience and lots more know-how. As you put those tiny pieces together, you've got to keep the BIG picture in mind.
A successful website is a culmination of many, many skills and processes. There are so many aspects to building a popular and successful website :
- Planning your website
- Actual design of the website
- Building the content
- Testing the functionality of your site
- Getting people to link to your site
- Getting it to rank high on the Search Engine Pages
- Online and offline marketing
- Regular maintenance
- Ongoing development
The problem today is that when people ask "How do I make money online?", what they really mean to ask is "How do I get rich overnight?".
I don’t like to give them a long lecture and tell them all the technicalities involved in making a website popular or successful. So I end up telling them “Lego Blocks”.
You build a website piece by piece, module by module, section by section, page by page. It takes time, it takes patience and it takes skill. As you keep building your website, you’ll find the time, develop the patience and learn the skills. Then you begin to appreciate what Lego Blocks and your website have in common.