In a previous life I was a fisherman who spent many days gutting cod and other delicacies of the sea. When I decided to try my hand at making money online one of the first thing I did was trying to bring my experience from the old workplace to the new one.

I may be stretching it a bit but I thought up these metaphors:

The Internet is like the ocean. Not just the hardware and software that supports it but mostly the activities of humans. All human behaviour originates from a need, whatever that may be and the same applies to the Internet. So the internet is an ocean made up from human needs as expressed by their actions online. To put it more romantically; human emotions make up the salty sea of the Internet.

You, the person who are trying to earn money from your website, are like the fisherman who goes fishing.

Money is the fish. Not the people who surf. As explained before the people online make up the ocean. It’s their money who are the fishes. Just like some people have money some of the time, there are sometimes fishes in some parts of the ocean and sometimes not. Sometimes the fishes may be present but not biting just as people who come across your website may sometimes be buying and sometimes not.

Your website on the server is your boat. There are many different kinds but they all have in common that if a boat is not at sea it is not fishing, if a website is not online it is not …

Your content is your bait. There are some universal truths that apply to both content and bait, f.eks; fresh bait is the only thing fishes will bite on. Fishes can smell and avoid rotten bait. If you have one rotten page of content it might make all the fishes in that area avoid all the other (i.e. the surfer quickly hits the back button).

Search engines are the ocean currents. Underwater it’s the currents who bring the “smell” of the bait to the fishes. Online its the search engines who bring the keywords to the searchers. More and more I’m leaning towards the conclusion that SE are a force of nature and trying to game the forces of nature will only get you so far if not bring you disaster. However it pays to know what way the currents are flowing at any given time.

After a storm there is often good catch. After a search engine update there is often good traffic.

If you get seasick go get some fresh air above deck or go lie face down in your bunker with your hands on your stomach (really works I’ve tried it a few times). If your eyes hurt from looking at the screen for too long you might try the same thing.

Never drink from another crew-members coffee cup, it is considered grossly impolite. I’ve never worked with anyone on a online venture but I think it holds true there as well.

I could liken web-mastering or website publishing to different thing like gardening or herdsmanship or any other old-world type of work but I’ve no experience with those.

Stay profound.

TFH

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• Blog Revenue (Or, my Impossible adventure in Making Money Online)
• Search Engine Study - part 4: Making Your Site Search-Engine Friendly
• Search Engines - a look under the hood
• Search Engine Study - part 3: The Great Search Engine Era
• 8 Ways for Searching the Dark Web - Beyond Google!