Freelancers - Follow The Money

With the internet in phase II of online commerce, and google driving the boom, it's time to stop learning and start earning. Enough probing and testing the waters. Grab hold of what you have and start hammering until it starts dripping gold.

I have been through three rounds of making money on the internet and hitting it big. So trust me when I say that it's time now. First round, 1999-2000. Dmoz was just starting and begging for editors. No one had 'links' pages back then. And I made a lot of money, doing exactly what I'm doing now. Writing pages and finding links. Needless to say, I blew all the money I made.

Then I started again. This time, focusing on niche industries and vertical portals, or as we say, vortals. This was before blogs and youtube. When linkbacks were still the in-thing with SEO's. I used my previous experience and helped a lot of online companies make it big. I still can't belive how big some of them have become. Needless to say, again, I didn't save a penny.

We are now in phase three involving local search, web 2.0 and other forms of bringing the internet closer to real business. The web is about to undergo one more round of changing clothes before the curtain rises. You have about 6-8 months, before the whole revenue model of online commerce goes into a tailspin.

Now would be a good time to step back, take a look at what's making you money, and follow it. Drop everything else. Devote all your time to building the successful model. And if this sounds too generic, here's an example. You're making money from a site where you have links to products from sponsors. Start looking into how you can implement local product search and web 2.0 into your web site. Meaning a visitor can click on a product and find the best combination of a store close to him and with the best price. Ask the visitor to enter his location to get directions from his location straight to the store. Ask him if he would like a virtual tour of the store. Ask him if he would like someone from the store to call him right now, while he's online. Zap a visitor with this technology while it's still in it's infancy, and before the big guys make it common-place. Do it properly, and you could end up as one of the big guys.