That is where the snowball started. The next question was of course, "Why do you have a website about widgets (my secret niche)?" The obvious answer was because it is a huge arbitrage market for me, but the right answer was simpler. I said, "It makes me a little money (read: $xxx monthly)."
To this my uncle said, (here it comes) "Maybe you can show me how to do that. I have a lot of free time and I want to convert it into money. Time is money right?" To which my answer was a quick, "Time is definitely not money. Skill and hard work is what brings in the money. Sometimes it takes my time, sometimes it just takes money and someone elses time."
He laughed but still wanted to know more about it. Whenever hounded by a good friend of family member about making money online, I never turn them down. First however, they must, MUST, absolutely MUST, read Brett Tabke's 26 Steps to a Successful Website (s). I always recommend them read it a few times. After that I have never, NEVER had someone say they are ready to start.
After reading Brett's wonderful article, they realize that this isn't easy money and the fire dies down. Not with my uncle.
For the entire week we were there he kept hounding me. He had questions about: Acronyms, various niches, combining offline marketing with websites, using his existing knowledge of a particular unprofitable niche, and on and on.
After two full days of talking about sites and making money, he said he wanted to it.
With that I agreed to get his feet wet with one site. A very small niche but he happened to know all about it. It was a perfect fit.
I set him up with a HostGator hosting account, bought a domain at NameCheap, waited for the DNS to resolve, then the next day we installed Wordpress.
I wanted to give him an idea of how to write for the internet since you can't understand it unless you've done it, and so I wrote his first article for him. It was a generic introduction to his niche, something good for the front page of his site.
Then I had to leave, my vacation was over. He was extremely excited about this wonderful opportunity to make money and he got some great tips and advice all at no charge. I held nothing back, literally nothing. Spent 8+ total hours working with him, writing documentation on how to buy a domain, where to buy it, setting up an addon domain, getting a static unique IP for the site, etc.
Now, 2 months later he still has the generic Wordpress template on his site and the article I wrote is nowhere to be seen.
What is the point of the story? I want you to know that what you do every day is difficult. The learning curve is steep. It is a rocky slope that can't be climbed without an experienced guide or a LOT of ambition.
What you do every day is not a game, it is a job. A well paying, respect worthy, difficult job. Not many people can do the job you and I do.
Keep that in mind when you get discouraged, you are a rare breed and deserve to get well compensated for the hard work you do even though you are just "playing on the computer all day"!
