The Science of the Web

How hard is it to make money on the web?

The best way to approach making money on the internet is not to throw something online and pray that it generates money. This is actually the technique many people use. Not to get into a religious debate but throughout the years, people have tried to change things through prayer, and it quite frankly doesn't work out very well for them.

I mean, do you think we would have went to the moon if rocket scientists had just gathered around their rockets and while holding hands, prayed for the rockets to reach space? I'm getting side-tracked, but my point is that you have to approach it as a science, especially when it comes to search engine optimization.

Science is about formulating a hypothesis and proving or disproving that hypothesis through experimentation. I've found that I don't spend enough time experimenting. I bet most are the same. The truly successful online entrepreneurs are those that have a systematic formula for their success.

They test new ideas and verify whether those ideas make any money. They know what works, and they know how to test their techniques. They don't all share their methods. In fact, it's rare to find someone who actually knows what they are talking about. I've found that a lot of views conflict with one another. It's a dark world where everyone seems to be trying to make money from everyone else, especially other online entrepreneurs. Cutting through the BS and finding the golden nuggets of good information is sometimes difficult.

In order to minimize the amount of BS, one has to experiment and learn from that experimentation. It can then be possible to formulate an idea of who actually know what they are talking about. That's my goal for the coming year. I plan to experiment with various new techniques for generating traffic and creating valuable content.