When you’re looking to make money online, you want to be looking to create a stable source of income. This is because you want your online income to function as a source of wealth for you. In my opinion, this requires a lot of traffic. You see, we live in a winner take all world nowadays. Whoever is able to drive the most eyeballs, wins. The rest work hard and fight for scraps. This means that in order to get the real gains online, you have to master your craft and perform at the highest level for years. The best way to do this when you’re running a content business, is to get a ton of traffic. Being at the top creates a level of stability. Don’t let the people who claim to be millionaires saying “traffic doesn’t matter” fool you. Real businesses are large and get a lot of eyeballs. Here’s how you win in today’s competitive landscape.
Google has been messing with search
This means that while there are a lot of articles vying for traffic, none of them get as much as they used to, because Google is messing around. I think this was intentional on Google’s behalf, but who knows. To me, it seems unlikely that they didn’t consider the fact that by changing search results, they were choking off the traffic of millions of small websites. The simple fact of the matter is that Google is also a website. If they can steal traffic from you, they will. The war for the internet is getting hot. If you want to succeed, you have to compete at a higher level.
Blogging still works
It’s just that everyone is getting less traffic. This means that the global underclass of bloggers has expanded. You need to treat blogging like a serious job nowadays. You have to be quite skilled in order to make $70,000/ year. But you can do it if you put in the time. You just have to do the work. Blogging is really easy, but most people don’t want to do the work. It does take a lot of work to set up a large blog, but if you run the numbers, a blog can put you in a great position if you’re willing to dedicate the time to driving organic traffic. Despite all the shifting chaos, you don’t want to jump ship to something new. You want to do more of the same in the hopes of becoming too big to fail.
People are moving away from Google
This trend will continue and accelerate. People around the world are moving away from Google, and they’re moving fast. Lots of countries around the world are coming online, and life is getting cheaper and cheaper for prospective software developers. This will allow them to work on side projects and startups. Google’s stranglehold on search is already being threatened by companies like Perplexity and Open AI. This trend will likely only continue.
Translation technology is improving
This means that your audience is going to grow a lot over time. If you can position yourself in such a manner that you end up at the top, you’re going to end up being able to get a really, really big audience. This is why it’s key to participate in the digital gold rush. It’s only going to get easier and easier to make money online. Once you have translation t
People are getting wealthier
This is the most important point. People across the globe are becoming incredibly wealthy. It’s truly amazing what’s been happening. If you’ve been living in a “3rd world” country since Covid, you’ve probably noticed it. The world is getting a lot nicer. People are becoming wealthier, and less and less traffic is going to mean more and more money. This means that you can get ahead of things by creating a lot of content in the short term. The more traffic you get in the short term, the more traffic you will get in the future. Digital ads are a great hedge against inflation. Do the work that it takes to put yourself in the global top 1% online. It’s only going to get easier from here on out, even though it doesn’t feel like it.
The bigger you are, the more likely people are to look for you
And this is pretty much the only way that you can expect your online business to survive in a consistently increasing unpredictable world. 2024 was the year that a lot of smaller bloggers got crushed. Bloggers who didn’t have social media presences, digital products, or a lot of articles ended up getting minimal traffic and earned a lot less money as a result. In spite of this reality, there were a ton of people who were able to make lots of money as more and more people got online. These were the big guys, along with those living in poor countries.
Online assets should have long term value
Otherwise, it’s just not worth it. You want to make sure you do what it takes to create a business that has longevity. This usually means making it known enough so that people are willing and able to support it. A unique feature of the internet is that you can use it to beg for things. This isn’t ideal, it’s better to sell products and services, but having a large audience definitely makes you more stable than having a small one.
New Search is coming
I’m counting on it. Someone is going to come up with a better way of searching the web than Google, and that model will likely gain a decent amount of market share. This will make blog content easier to find. Google won’t monopolize forever. People are already getting tired. They will happily overthrow the incumbent, even if it’s out of spite. Also, coders will be wealthier, and life will be cheaper for them. New search competitors are coming, and with the rise of AI, they’re coming faster than people think.
Create lots of content
You want to outwork everyone. The reality of the situation is that there are a lot of new blogs. You don’t know what’s going to happen to search rankings in the future. There’s little to no competition at the top, but there are also a lot of poor people around the world looking to make their way to the top. You’re going to want to do a lot of writing in order to hedge against the groundswell of “poors” looking to make money online. As far as I’m concerned, you’re going to want to write about 500 articles in order to have a good-sized blog. Right now, there are influencers with fewer posts who are able to drive real traffic. You should try and get to at least 50 articles before you start doing any promo for your blog. Commit to writing 500 articles for ideal results. You’ll end up writing more as time goes on.
Leverage AI
You’re going to want to use AI to make content faster. This article was written by hand. But a few articles on this blog were written with AI. I expect more articles to be written with AI in the future. I also use AI to generate images which I use to promote my blog on other platforms.
Build an email list
You don’t want to limit yourself and how much you can produce. But take the time to build an email list rather than writing more than 500 articles. It takes a lot of content to build a site, sure. But a good site requires a system. You want to set up an email system so that you can reach your visitors and turn them into repeat customers. I know that it’s taken me forever to do this, but I make up for it with content creation. If you’re not an extremely speedy writer, then you should be figuring out how to do email marketing.
Wild card: games
If you can find games that people actually want to play, you can get a lot of repeat customers to your site. You see, search engines don’t want to piss users off. If users are looking for you specifically, rather than making a query, you’re going to show up at or near the top, and you’re going to get traffic. If you can make the right games, you can get a lot of attention. Be careful though, it’s a tough game.
Short form is quick, but it must go viral
I might end up combining short form video with blogging in the long run. Generally speaking, it’s a great way to get a lot of traction very quickly. Outside of platform-specific bans and throttling, short form video is incredibly meritocratic in the digital world. The more engaging your content is, the more attention and money you make. Unfortunately, people watch a lot of short form content. When they scroll, they go through a massive amount of content. This means that short-form content has little to no value.
Forums, social networks, and mobile apps enable businesses to get traffic in the modern world
If your small (<$100/M) online business includes a forum or mobile app, you are going to be able to get a lot of repeat visitors. This is because people will either be checking in with you themselves as engaged forum users. Creating a lot of content that can’t be taken down is the first step to creating a solid online business. Creating a community is how you propel yourself straight to the top.
The urge to try and get “targeted” online traffic can be tempting. But don’t allow yourself to fall into a false sense of security. Web traffic matters. Web traffic that you own matters. If you don’t have the visitors coming to your business, you simply aren’t going to last as long as the person who’s getting more traffic. Sure, companies in certain industries get more attention than others. People usually want to watch YouTube videos more than they want to learn about generalized finance. But every good online business is able to drive lots of traffic. Make sure you do your best to grow big, in a reliable manner. That’s what it really takes to succeed in online business without using paid traffic.
Thanks for paying attention.
