Strike While The Iron Is Hot

The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who will take a risk to make a profit. Although the image that the description conjures up might give the impression that to be an entrepreneur you need to be somewhat shady, this is not necessarily so. In fact, shady characters tend to become shady so as to avoid the risk created by their initiatives, letting someone else take the fall for their misplaced bet, as it were. An entrepreneur spots the opportunity to make an honest buck and goes for it. If they fail, at least they go down swinging, while if they succeed they have done so on their own terms.

In a majority of cases, then, entrepreneurs become so by striking while the iron is hot. They recognise a trend or a demand and look at how they can supply that demand, how they can tap into that trend. Because so much money is on the Internet these days, a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit of our time is directed there too. A web entrepreneur recognizes that much of the money on the Internet comes from advertising, so to make money on the Internet it is useful to find a way of harnessing that advertising. This is something that takes a bit of knowledge of website building, but not necessarily a great deal of such knowledge. It is all about how to manipulate a situation to your advantage. It relies on the creation of a blog, or a website, that people will want to visit, and the placement of appropriate ad content on the pages of that site.

The most important thing is that the site is something that will carry traffic through it. This relies on it being on a relevant topic. The more “of its time” the topic is, the better – if it can be arranged around the time of a major sporting event, for example, you will be able to bring people in on the basis of that event, and when they click through your advertisements they will earn you money – particularly if they make a purchase as a result of that click. This may sound cynical – cashing in on an event in which you may not have an interest, but the key point is that the medium will reward a good website. The more people who stick around to read your site, the more clicks you will get and the more sales you will generate. Consequently, you will make more money if you write a better website.

If you know something about your subject, it will help. There are countless people who have tried to start websites to cash in on an event, thinking that it was guaranteed money – but aficionados of a topic will be quite discriminating in terms of sites, and if it insults their intelligence they will give yours a miss. You may discover that you have a talent for what you are doing. If that turns out to be the case, so much the better, as there is certainly money to be made from it

First Published: July 19, 2009 EntrepreneurJourney.com