After all of the advances in Internet technology, and the sheer number of useful and creative web sites that have been developed since then, one single thing continues to drive visitors to sites, and in turn make money for some, lose it for others who don’t understand it – content.

What is this mysterious word they call content? Like many things, content means different things to different people. But one thing is for certain: Those who know how to produce it, benefit from it. Those that do not are harmed by not having it.

Content.

Your own content, other people’s content, computer generated content, user generated content, it’s different but yet all the same. Someone, somewhere, has to create it. And someone, somewhere has to put it together and present it to the rest of us.

Back when Yahoo started its rise to power on the Internet, it’s content was generated through one of the very first “web spiders” that would go out, collect information, which would then be categorized, and presented in the Yahoo directory. The content was collected and presented, but technically the creators weren’t writing the content themselves, their robot was collecting the data. Then came user submissions. Suddenly you have millions of people all submitting – not content – but merely links to content, in essence generating UN-content which was then turned into content.

I am about to save you a lot of money. If you look at ClickBank, or search the Internet on how to make money online, you will eventually be enticed to buy a $197 package that has “detailed case studies” and today’s hottest thing – online videos for you to watch.

They all come down to the same basic principles:

#1 – Find a product to market

#2 – Write content

There you have it. Now fork over the $197. I have read countless numbers of eBooks on how to quit your day job, retire early, get rich on the Internet, and even Tim Ferris’s book on the Four Hour Work Week… it all, unfortunately, comes down to finding a product/service and writing content.

NOT sales content. REAL content.

One good, 300 word post a day on a blog, or one article a day on a regular web site can be good content. But you have to keep it up. If you knew that a 300 word article a day would someday be worth $1000-$2000/day… wouldn’t you do it?

With real content comes real community. With real community comes user-generated content, which should complement, not replace, your own original content otherwise your community will get bored.

If you want to attract a community, you have to keep generating content. Otherwise they can, and will, find another web site whose owners WILL write that 300 word article a day.

Filed under: content, content