KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays

Chapter 2. Your Uniqueness Equals Cash

We've seen that the Internet has democratized opportunities in two ways. The low cost and ease of building a web site now means that anyone can own online real estate. You don't need to know anything about the Internet to put up a blog or create a site. You can buy them almost ready-made, off the shelf. What flat-pack design has done for amateur furniture makers, templates, content management systems, and blogging software have done for web sites.

And you don't have to waste brain cells trying to think up ways to monetize your site, either. With Google handing out cash registers, there's always one very simple way of making money from your users. Once you are used to that method, it's just a short step to all of the other strategies discussed in this book.

There is another way that the Web has opened up to everyone, though, and it's no less important.

It's made us all into experts.

Or rather, it's enabled all of us to earn from our expertise, which isn't quite the same thing, because you've always been an expert. You might not have a doctorate in cheesecake making or a Nobel Prize for your contributions to world crocheting, but if you know more about those things than most people do, then you're an expert on that topic.

Note that I don't say that you have to know more about those topics than everyone else does. You don't have to be the world's leading expert to earn from your knowledge on the Internet. You just need to have knowledge that other ...