Part of the allure of building a website around topics you are passionate about is the reward factor. Can you really get paid to do what you love? Apparently you can. Seems like there are plenty of success stories out there to inspire those of us who have yet to achieve this dream. People like Darren Rowse, Steve Pavlina, and Yaro Starak have all experienced fantastic success in growing their websites and incomes. I would love to reach the same heights as these gentlemen, and when I’m in need of motivation or encouragement, I visit their sites to refresh my determination to keep reaching higher.
The primary goal of this site has always been to discuss all of the great open source (and commercial) website frameworks I’ve come across over the years. My secondary goal is to figure out how to turn one of my passions into a successful and profitable website. The biggest difference between the success stories and myself right now is that they have already traveled the path. These guys have built their names into brands and are reaping the financial rewards of all their hard work.
That’s the idea I want to exploit. I want to travel that path and follow in their foot steps. I am going to document my journey in a step by step fashion by attempting to contribute something to this site’s success every single day. If I can consistently help the sites visibility in even the smallest way, it will be both interesting and exciting to see how the journey progresses over time. The problem is that I haven’t a clue about how to grow a website to the same level as these one man webmaster powerhouses. I’m sure the people experiencing success right now were once neophytes like myself when it comes to growing traffic and income. I’m not sure if they ever shared these kinds of inadequacies with the world, but I’m not afraid to say it. I don’t know how to turn this site into a decent paying work from home job. I hope one day I can look back at this post and have a good chuckle.
So where does one get this magical road map to success? It seems like everyone has tips on how to build a successful website, but I have no idea where to start and who to listen to for advice. I’m going to begin by firing up the Google machine and performing a basic search to see what I find. There’s also a dozen or so blogs out there that I really enjoy reading from time to time, and that list includes the three bloggers I mentioned earlier in this post. I can’t think of a better list of people to take advice from than the ones actually succeeding at what I’m striving to achieve.
Should be an interesting journey to see if all these helpful resources can turn a regular hack like me into one of those success stories.