The Media Pro

Do you dream of making money while you sleep?

That’s exactly what I do. Every night while I’m dreaming, I make all these dollars that flow into my bank account, thousands every month. Believe me, there’s no better feeling!

And my business cost me next to nothing to create and run. In fact it began as a hobby – and now it’s become a well paying, thoroughly enjoyable job.

My wife’s brother, who owns an environmental consultancy company, takes great pleasure in telling business friends and clients he meets: “My brother-in-law makes money while he is asleep.”

He then takes huge sadistic delight in watching their amazed, tortured reactions.

Doubters and Dodgy Schemes

Make money while you sleep? It’s hard to believe, I know. And I can hear the doubters and detractors say – yea, dream on!

You may have heard the wise saying and warning – if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

That’s sound advice, when you are bombarded by dodgy schemes, business scams and unscrupulous operators attempting to prey on your weakness and greed.

But believe me, this is the real thing. This is no scam. It is no exaggeration. I’m not engaged in any marketing hype to lure you into buying into some useless get-rich-quick scheme.

Being a professional journalist, who spent years reporting on crime and exposing fraudsters, I just give readers the facts. The truth is my currency.

And the truth is, there’s no great mystery about earning while you sleep, like I do. In fact it’s something that anybody with a good idea and a passion can do.

Harness Web’s Incredible Power

I simply harnessed the incredible power of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

It’s hard to believe it, but the Internet is 41 years young this year. The first computer-to-computer messages were sent by Professor Leonard Kleinrock and his team at UCLA on October 29, 1969.

The World Wide Web is even younger – it was invented by British engineer Tim Berners-Lee and Belgian engineer Robert Cailliau in 1990.

It was while I was full-time Editor of a regional newspaper, that I developed a fascination with the unlimited potential and worldwide reach of websites.

I decided to create my own. To me it was a challenge, an experiment, a newspaper guy’s hobby.

You never forget your first website. It’s the first time you make love, or your first kiss. It was a humor site, and featured humorous pictures, jokes, and funny quotes from Homer Simpson.

After dipping my toe in the water of web publishing with that first venture nine years ago, I got hooked. I loved it – the freedom and expressiveness of the Internet, the power and global reach of a simple website.

My funny business was successful and lucrative. Humor sites rode high in the early 2000s. Mine began to earn advertising revenue after online advertising networks accepted me as a web publisher.

It was a nice sideline income. But that’s all it was. It was not enough to quit a full-time job or retire. So stay with the day job, I told myself.

However it proved an important first step in cutting my teeth at website creation and monetization. I was learning my trade – and the best was yet to come!

Choose a Niche

My next web initiative allowed me quit my newspaper job two years ago and be a full-time internet entrepreneur.

Relying on a general humor site seemed like bad business. Especially when it was faced with killer competition from countless funny sites popping up all over the Web.

So I set about carving out a niche for myself. Selecting your niche is one of the first crucial steps to creating a successful online business.

I remembered the advice of marketing gurus Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman in their international bestselling book, ‘In Search of Excellence’ – Stick To The Knitting.

So I targeted an area I already had good knowledge of.  One that was already my life’s hobby – reading and enjoying quotes from the great and the good. I turned that into a website.

Seven years ago www.allgreatquotes.com was launched, starting off with quotes from all the Shakespeare plays and every book of the bible.

My soon to be full-time business was born.

In the first month it earned me a mere $50 in online advertising, and attracted modest visitor numbers.

Give Visitors High Quality Content

As high quality quotes sites soared in popularity and demand, my visitor numbers  and advertising revenue went up. And up. And up!

I made sure my site had high quality content to capitalize on this!

Today my small network of websites, with my quotes site top money-maker and pride of the fleet, earns me thousands every month.

This year my web publishing is on target to bring me in more than my newspaper Editor’s job paid me, with all its stresses and headaches – since I quit that job in August 2008 I have never looked back.

From just a handful of visitors my quotes site has grown to nearly 1 million visitors a month!

With a little foresight, creativity and perseverance on my part – useful assets if you desire success in any business – I used the Internet and the Web to turn my hobby into a livelihood.

Now it pays my bills. It puts food on the table, cat food in the cat dish. It fills my car with petrol whenever it needs it. And it pays for our holidays to Italy and California.

Earning money while you sleep – anyone can do it if they go about it the smart way – doesn’t come without some effort.

Apply Easy to Learn Skills

To achieve that level of success, you need, as I did, to learn and apply a whole new set of skills. But they’re easy enough to learn. They include:

•    Knowing the value of original and fresh content
•    Using social media
•    Internet marketing
•    Optimizing web pages for search engines
•    Acquiring backlinks
•    Getting on Page 1 of Google for important search terms.

But that’s another chapter in the story on how I earn while I’m asleep – and how you can too.

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