Posted: July 11th, 2008 in General »
I haven’t posted here for quite some time now and though few and far between posts are not unusual for me, this time it’s not because I’m just too busy with “real” work to keep up over here; no, this time it’s because I’m simply feeling burned out.
People talk a lot about doing something you’re passionate about or choosing a niche that you have a personal interest in. I heard that on day one of my internet marketing adventure and I’ve seen it repeated hundreds of times since. But somehow, in that process of researching markets and choosing keywords, I always ended up following what I thought would make me the most money. Niches I’m personally interested in tend to have a boatload of competition, so even chasing the longtail is difficult. What I didn’t realize is how difficult it would be to motivate myself to keep working on stuff I don’t *really* care about in order to make money. My surefire keywords? They take a lot of on-going effort to keep on page 1 of the big G. And that means I have to keep posting new articles, leaving comments, socially bookmarking my sites and looking for new linkbacks.
In a nutshell, there is no quick and easy way to keep a steady stream of traffic landing on your pages (no matter what any guru tries to tell you). So if the internet marketing process is going to require an ongoing effort, you’d better either be highly motivated to do really boring work or be really interested in your niche. Looking back, it’s obvious now that if I had just built one site, on a subject I’m passionate about, and had kept at it every single day for the lasy, oh…7 years? Well, I would’ve had one killer site instead of a portfolio of mediocre crap that bores me to tears. I wonder which one would be making the most money today?
So, that’s where I’m at - back to the drawing board. I want to do a new site based on my passions for creativity - painting, art, photography, making stuff with my hands and getting off this damn computer once in a while! This time around, I’m not going to be printing out sheets of carefully researched keyword phrases and will instead let my real interests drive me.
I’m pretty excited about it and an added bonus is that excitement? Is also fueling new interest in fixing up all of my old dinosaurs, giving them a fresh coat of paint. I think this is what they mean when they say “do what you love and the money will follow.” Just wish it hadn’t taken me 7 years in this biz to believe them!
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