This series of posts on Kumiko's Cash Quest count down the top 5 essential sites that new bloggers should visit in order to maximize their chances for making money online.
#2 Any site that's better than yours
Why would someone want to visit your blog if there's another site out there that does the same thing as you but does it better?
The
better site was created before yours by someone who knows more about
the topic and that site receives more traffic and makes more money than
yours. It is the undisputed leader in your niche and doesn't even know
that your blog exists.
Get ready to fight back.
Why new bloggers should visit any site that's better than their own:
Any site that's better than yours in your niche is an
ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL site to visit once you've started (if not before) building your blog.
Let's
start by looking at a real situation. Recently I was asked by a new
blogger to review his new tennis site. All he had on the site was a few
photos that he copied from elsewhere and some of the latest match
scores from the current tournament. And that's it! I had to put it
bluntly and ask, "
Why on earth would anybody want to visit your site?".
It would make much more sense for a web surfer to visit a much larger,
official tennis site where they could find many more photos, more
up-to-date scores and lots of features that his site simply did not
offer. The blogger should have visited
tennis.com
and he would have quickly realized that there was no need for anyone to
visit his site at all! And it wasn't a shock to find that
nobody was visiting it either.
When you're visiting the site that's better than yours, you must ask yourself three essential questions:
1.
Why is this site better than mine?
This
is exploratory stage where you need to assess 'what makes a site good'.
Is it the site's unique design or is it the content of the site? Does
it offer features that my blog doesn't offer? Is the 'personality' and
writing style of the site more interesting than mine? Finding the
answers to these questions will not only teach you a lot about
blogging, but will give you the groundwork you need to answer the
second question.
2. Can my site be better than this site?
If the answer to this question is "
yes",
you're in luck! Get to work and start making your site better. Despite
the incredible amount of websites that are on the internet, it still
surprises me that only a few of them are actually good or contain
quality content. I could name quite a number of topic niches that are
severely lacking a decent website and where it would not be hard to
quickly rise to the top. If you feel that your site can't possibly be
better than your niche's leader (
Could you really make a tennis information site better than tennis.com?) then it's time to look at the most important question.
3. Can I offer something different than this site?
Every blogger should be able to answer this question with a resounding "
YES!".
Why? Because the very nature of blogging is to offer your own personal
insights and your own personal opinions which will lead to your site
being unique and completely different from any other site on the
internet. The blogger with the tennis site was not offering anything
personal or unique. Had he offered his own personal opinions or
thoughts on the matches, his site would have been achieving higher
levels of success.
To illustrate these points, imagine I have a small site about blogging. Which site is better than mine?
Problogger.
Why is it better than mine? It has more information and Darren Rowse
knows more about blogging than I ever will. Can my site be better than
Problogger? Not in this lifetime. Can I offer something different than
Problogger?
Absolutely! Darren Rowse does not blog about my unique thoughts an
opinions and that's what would set my site apart from his. It's exactly
how
Dosh Dosh rated above
Problogger on this list.
Taking your blog in your own unique direction without copying others will direct your blog to success.
Why any site that's better than yours isn't number 1:
It
was a close call, but the site that is number one on this list is the
BEST of all the sites that are better than yours. Any new blogger that
hasn't been there doesn't yet know what blogging is.
Lessons to learn from any site that's better than yours:
-
Don't emulate. Create.
Copying a great site will leave your readers labeling you as 'just of copy of siteX and they'll head to siteX instead.
-
Don't set your sites too high. You can't make a news site that's better than CNN. But you can make one that has your opinions on it. CNN doesn't have that.
In conclusion:
Sites
better than yours are there to provide inspiration, motivation and to
give you some ideas to get started. But if you're just a carbon copy of
a better site, you'll quickly find that your readers will leave your
site and head to the better one.
Find being original too difficult? Don't start a blog.
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