How do we make money? This is one of the most frequently asked questions to us by our fans, and of course, our network of friends, business associates, and partners. So here are a few important facts about MYNIPPON before we give you our money-making secrets. We also suggest that you keep reading till the end even if you do not understand certain things. There are plenty of other helpful links on this page.
- MYNIPPON is not a hobby (though it used to be at some point when it stared in 1999).
- We are now part of the eCreativa network that includes other very successful websites like Lindisima, LuvCube, and iProceed. All these websites combined together attract over half-a-million visitors each month.
- We derive over 90% of our income from advertising (that includes PPC, affiliate programs, advertorials, etc.).
Why are we so successful when many online content businesses are struggling?
- We happen to be in the right place at the right time and our costs are under control (unlike the folks at Boo.com, we fly coach, only if we have to; otherwise, we love doing business by email/ phone, online chat, etc.).
- While MYNIPPON was started in 1999, it never really was intended as a big business and that is why we did not sign up even with Amazon until late 2003. However, active content management on the website throughout its existence allowed the website to occupy
enormous real estate on the web (lots of inbound links, crawled by almost all search engines on the planet, listing in all kinds of directories, added to favorites by thousands of visitors all over the world, etc.). - For dozens of keywords we are now on page one of Google (and other leading search engines) search results. We have never spent a penny on advertising and search results and word-of-mouth is what brings traffic to our website.
- When we publish new content, it gets crawled within 24 hours by search engines and starts showing up in search results within a matter of days. This premium position on the web allows us to launch new channels on existing and new websites and push them at a higher speed as we have successfully done with LuvCube and iProceed.
- Another reason that we now are in a sweet spot is that most of the websites that were launched during the tech boom basically disappeared leaving only a few websites like ours. By having a steady presence and regular updates, we became favorites of search engines and directories. As we are now learning from our efforts with LuvCube and iProceed, it is not easy to make a new website popular without spending a lot of money on advertising. Fortunately we have two highly popular websites to drive traffic to our new websites in the portfolio but for a new website it is going to be difficult in the beginning.
So how can you make money like we do?
You can actually make money by doing what we do, that is, creating high-quality content, that is fun, useful, and is directly related to products/services available for purchase online (we will provide more on the subject of how to pick topics and how to write content that people like later on). It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You will need to work hard for it but will have fun doing it since for all practical purposes we run our business from the beach. Here is how the system works:
- Content is king. We use the music analogy for content. No matter how many songs are out there, there is always someone out there who is waiting to listen to a new song. The appetite for new content is insatiable, and if you write great content, you can go very far. People are always looking for new perspectives and ideas. Even more interesting are stories of real people (that we get in plenty from our readers). Everyone knows that to lose weight you have to eat less and exercise regularly, but millions of websites talk about losing weight in a million different ways and someone, somewhere is reading it saying, "Wow, this is really neat!" So if you can write, just get started.
- There are two options for you to do so. You can do what we do, that is, have both a website and a blog. They both have their pluses and minuses, and in our case, we have them both because we need both for different strategic reasons. Plus, we have the resources to manage both. You can pick either one or both. A blog is good for those starting out since you can start blogging if you know how to type and a few other basic aspects of computers/Internet (to add a few bells and whistles that we will mention later on in our blog). A website can be slightly more difficult to manage for newbies.
- You will need to sign up with a advertisement consolidator like Google with its AdSense program. Google is reportedly recruiting high-quality publishers very aggressively and traffic and page views are not part of their criteria for approval. There are many other companies that have AdSense like programs but some have difficult approval criteria, others do not pay on time or do not have enough advertisement inventory. We strongly recommend Google. Google AdSense is the largest and the best.
Helpful articles:
A how-to guide to blogging to develop into a business
What is a blog? How does it work?