Is It Really Easy To Make Money on the Internet?

I’ve been at this for a while now, and I still wonder about how easy it is to make money on the Internet. There are hundreds of companies whose goal in life (as they tell you) is to make you more money. Affiliate networks, ad networks, pay per post networks, and contextual advertising networks just to name a few of the verticals. So why are you not making any money?

My first guess would be a lack of traffic. Well that’s easy… buy some traffic. You can buy from ad networks (paying for the impressions), pay per post networks (paying to be reviewed or posted about), contextual advertising networks (paying for the clicks), or even affiliate networks (paying for the traffic/leads/actions). Gee, that seems funny, spend the money to buy the traffic to make the money that you use to spend on traffic. Sounds a little incestuous doesn’t it?

I have an idea…

1. Create a reasonably nice site
2. Put out compelling content
3. Put out more compelling content
4. Yes you guessed it, put out even more compelling content
5. Slowly build a base of recurring users as well as slowly build your search rankings
6. Make a little money (pay yourself back for the hosting you have been paying out of pocket for)
7. Go back to step 2 and continue

Now I realize that this is information that you can find in lots of places on the net, but I am truly starting to believe it. I’ve tried a bunch of the short cuts, and they do work to some extent. But I really believe that the good content is the safer, more conservative, and possibly more long run winning strategy. I guess it is the true dividend re-investment plan for smaller webmasters — it starts slow and builds on the power of exponential growth.