I have not done a blog income report in a long time. So, I will do one today, and show you an important lesson.

Some days, there will be sunny days. Other days will be stormy. Many days will be cloudy.

Of course, weather patterns vary. It may be sunny where you are, but raining somewhere else.

Business is not much difference, and that means it is very important to diversify. That way, you’ll have a better chance of always having at least one sunny spot where ever you might be.

Here is my blog income chart for January through July of this year:

First, look at the red line. It was quite high in January and February of this year, but then took a nose dive. Had that been my only source of blog income, well, you can see how bad things would be!

Now, look at the green line. It had a fairly steady increase throughout the year. February was slightly higher than January and March, but it’s hard to tell here. But, you can see that it took a slight dip in July.

Now, look at the blue line. It dipped in March, climbed, took a nose-dive in June and came back in July.

Even though the green line went down in July, the blue line going up compensated for it, making July a better month than June. And, though the blue line went down in June, the green line going up in June made June a slightly better month than May.

Of course, with the red line static, the best months of the year were January and February, though July began to inch towards January and February totals.

The bottom line here is that you don’t want to rely on a single source of income for your blog or any other website you might have. And, if multiple streams of income is not a possibility on your site, then you’ll want to have multiple sites so that you can be diversified.

My goal this month is to bring that red line back up!

Last month, I wrote about not quitting too soon. A lot of people fail to make money online because they quit too soon. They don’t allow time enough for people to find them, for backlinks to build and for the search engines to index and rank them. Some bloggers quit after just two or three months.

In June, John Chow made over $40,000 on his blog. Many bloggers say they would be happy with half that. Some would be happy with even a tenth of that. But, people forget that he didn’t always make that much! In his first month blogging, John Chow made under $400. It wasn’t until 21 months later that he made over $40,000 in a month. And, John Chow had previous experience running businesses online, so that gave him advantages the typical new blogger wouldn’t have.

Things take time. Quitting too soon is certainly a mistake.

But, it’s not the only mistake.

Earlier this month, on The Thrifty Entrepreneur dot Com, I wrote how you can increase sales and save money by testing your ads. But, this is something that extends beyond advertising too.

No doubt you know someone who hasn’t been able to make any money online. Perhaps you’ve heard excuses like:

• “Article marketing? That doesn’t work! I submitted three articles. I didn’t get any sales out of it!”
• “AdWords? That doesn’t work! People click on the ads, but they never buy anything.”
• “Affiliate marketing? That doesn’t work! I set up an affiliate site, and no one ever bought anything off it!”

There are two problems at work here: inconsistency and stagnation.

People will try the various things they’ve heard will make them money, but they don’t do it consistently. They’ll start blogging, but, after an initial flurry of regular blogging, they will become less consistent. They’ll post then and now, maybe updating you on why they haven’t been blogging. And, then they’ll just stop, because they can’t figure out why they’re not making money. After all, they have a blog; why isn’t the money rolling in? That’s where inconsistency will hurt you!

Other people will try something like putting together an affiliate site. They’ll put one up, make it look nice, and start promoting it. They’ll get some traffic, but no buyers. They’ll check their links to make sure they have them set up right and wait some more. After a while, they just give up. The problem here is that, if you’re getting traffic and no conversions, you might need to try something different. Many people will just conclude “I did what everyone said! Affiliate marketing just doesn’t work!” This is where stagnation hurts you.

First, you need to be consistent at what you do, and continue to be consistent. If you start to veer off into inconsistency, you’ll undo a lot of the work you’ve done! And, you’ll have to start over. So, if, for example, you start blogging and blog every day for a month and then suddenly stop for a few weeks, you’re going to be starting at nearly square one when you start up again. Many people don’t put this into consideration. “I’ve been blogging for six months…” they cry, but really, they may have been only blogging for less than two months because they dropped off the face of the Earth for a month prior to starting up again!

Realize that, if you stop something online and then start again later, that’s just about equivalent to pressing the “reset” button on a video game.

Second, you have to try new things. For example, if you have an affiliate site and are getting traffic that’s not converting, the solution isn’t to try to drum up more traffic! You need to find out why the traffic isn’t converting. This is where some split testing can come in. Try a different affiliate product to promote. Try rewording some of your text. Look at your headlines–are they drawing attention? Might something else work better? Don’t be afraid to test! Testing can help improve your results. If option A isn’t converting, see if option B does. If option B converts, drop option A and compare option C against option B. Which performs better?

You might also want to try different websites. If blogging isn’t working out for you, try promoting an affiliate website. If affiliate websites aren’t working for you, try blogging. If a one-page sales letter website doesn’t work for you, try building an authority site, or vice versa.

How about your traffic? Maybe you’re just not getting good enough targeted traffic. Look at rewording your ads. Or, look at rewording your page descriptions and keywords. Maybe your traffic generation methods need to change?

And, keep reading! Read marketing blogs and forums. Learn from others. There are no secrets, but there is a lot of knowledge out there! Always be looking for ways to improve!

Look at John Chow again. He’s changed his blog layout at least once to increase his blog income. And, look how he tries new things to see if they will make money for him.

Can you make $100 a month online? Yes. Can you make $1,000 a month online? Yes. Can you make $10,000 a month online? Yes. Can you make even more than that per month online? Yes.

But, you will never make any of that without some hard work and constant evaluation of what you’re doing and how you can do it better!

For today’s Success Saturday, here are several links that will help you save money or make money.

• Save Money by Making Your Own Laundry Detergent plus a Detailed Visual Guide to Making Your Own Detergent.
• While we’re on the subject of soap, here’s how to Use Old Pantyhose to Use Up Old Soap.
• Spend Less Simply by Being Happy!
• Be Narrow-Minded for Profit and Happiness.
• What Haggling Can Teach You About Life.
• Make More Money with 12 CPM Alternatives to AdSense.
• Politicians desperately want your money! How Safe is Your Safe-Deposit Box?

Finally, this one has nothing to do with making money or saving money, but it’s funny: “What if Modern Advertisers Created the Stop Sign?”

I’m a bit busy today, so I’ve not had a chance to put together a full post. On the upside, I’ve already written a good piece on advertising over on The Thrifty Entrepreneur dot Com. So, please hop on over there and check out “Save Money and Increase Sales by Testing Your Advertising.”

Here’s a brief snippet:

“Testing will save you money in the long run. Imagine if your original ad had a 2% conversion rate but an alternative ad had a 4% conversion rate. You would have missed out on doubling your prospective customers! An ad that converts better is more cost-effective! But, without testing, you will never know!”

The buzz this week has been on starting and maintaining a mailing list for your website or blog. At least that’s been the buzz in the circle of sites and blogs I visit; your mileage may vary.

John Chow covered the topic in his post “Why Your Blog Needs a Newsletter.” By the way, if you decide to sign up with Aweber, please go through the link on my blog. John Chow doesn’t need the extra affiliate referral. He’s making over $30,000 per month on his blog already. Here’s my Aweber link again.

You’ll note that many of the big money online gurus all have mailing lists. Maybe you’re even subscribed to some of them. That’s where many of them can make money quickly. Let’s say you have 5,000 subscribers and you send them an offer for your new eBook or program or whatnot for $97. If just 2% of them buy it, you’ve just made $9,700 sending out a single eMail! That’s why list building is so important.

Even if you don’t have a product to sell, if you send, for example, a newsletter to your subscribers, you could sell ads in that newsletter. You could even try ads for affiliate programs where you make some money if any of your subscribers buy.

If you don’t already have a mailing list for your website or blog, it’s definitely something you should look into. I’ve been planning on one for at least a couple weeks now, and finally set it up today. It is for The Thrifty Entrepreneur blog. You can sign up below.

I’m going to see how well that goes, and look into doing more lists on other blogs if things go well.

I wasn’t planning on doing a Triskaidekapalooza for this Success Saturday, but here we are. I have been working on a different post, which I’ve had hanging out in my drafts for a while, but, while doing that, I’ve been browsing too. And, I’ve found some great links to share with you.

So, here they are, in no particular order:

1. SuccessSoul presents “Warren Buffett’s 7 Secrets for Living a Happy and Simple Life.”
2. 7P Productions explains “How to Work on Something You Hate.”
3. You may have seen this on John Chow’s blog, but in case you missed it… Quick Sprout lists the “10 Reasons You Are Not a Successful Entrepreneur.”
4. Avani Mehta posted a “Beginner’s Guide to Being Decisive.”
5. Better Business Blogging identifies the “17 Types of Posts to Strengthen Your Business Blog.”
6. The Thrifty Entrepreneur (which is one of my blogs, in case you missed it when I mentioned it earlier in the week) introduces you to the basics of “Business Licensing” for startups.
7. Making Money Online: A Journey of 100 Sites explains “Where to Publish Your Best Content.” It may not be where you think!
8. Following that, Mr. Javo dot Com tells you how to “Drive Traffic to Your Blog by Promoting Other People’s Content.”
9. Successful and Outstanding Blog(gers) features “Targeting the Offline Customer: Do You Blog For Non-Bloggers?” by Scott McIntyre.
10. Michael Kwan of Beyond the Rhetoric did his own success roundup this week in his “What’s Up Wednesdays: Success Edition.”
11. The WAHM Blog covers “Organizing Your Business for Success.”
12. And, in case you still need a job while you try to build your own business empire, Lillie Ammann details “How to Write an Interview-Winning Resume.”
13. Finally, if you’re ever feeling discouraged, check out Andy Crofford’s “Don’t Give Up” post.

That’ll keep you busy for a while. I may or may not have a second post today, depending on how late it is when I finish the regularly scheduled post!

On the last Success Saturday, Bobby asked how I did my site, which was one of the ones I (shamelessly) offered as an example.

He suggested I do a blog post on it. Well, okay…

Business Licensing

Business licensing is something that varies country to country and, within the United States, from state to state and even county to county. Before starting your business, you’ll want to talk to an accounting professional, your county auditor or other business professional or government representative that can advise you with correct information specific to your locale.

This is also an important part because, with many wholesale merchants, you are going to need a business license number in order to establish that you’re an actually business and not an ordinary consumer looking to save some money.

Choosing a Type of Business

The first thing you have to do is choose the type of eCommerce business you want to be in. Are you just looking for something relatively easy and profitable? Are you looking for something hands-on, or something that will run itself while you vacation around the world? All these are factors that will go into deciding a type of business.

For example, if you are the hands-on type, and you want to be able to handle and inspect the products you send out, you’re going to want to be a direct seller of goods. That means you’re going to stock the products in-house (either literally in your house or you’ll need to rent a storage space or even office space for your products and business).

If you want something with a little less work and inventory, then you’ll want to look into dropshipping or affiliate programs, where you don’t stock anything.

You could also do a combination of the above. You could stock popular products, have less popular products dropshipped to your customers by a dropshipper and sign up for affiliate programs for products that are complimentary to your own.

In my case, I do a combination. Most products I carry in stock. There are other products that I order as needed from a wholesaler (though I don’t have them dropship; they just send direct to me). And, then I have affiliate programs for other related products. (You won’t see all this on the site you see above, but I do that with other sites and this is how it will be when I finish my major overhaul of my eCommerce site.)

Choosing a Niche

Again, this is something I’m not going to explain in detail in this post. The most common advice is to find something that matches your interests, though some people just look for something that’s highly profitable. Be sure to choose something you’re willing to stick with. Is it a niche you feel comfortable staying in if you don’t get rich overnight? In all likelihood, it’s going to take time to build your traffic and sales to the point where you’re making (hopefully!) money, but if you don’t see yourself sticking it out in the niche for at least 3 to 6 months, you’ve chosen the wrong market to be in! Now, I’m not saying that you’ll be successful in 3 to 6 months; only that it generally takes that long before you start seeing any type of results.

Finding Products

Once you’ve chosen your niche, you need to find products that you can sell.

Affiliates - If you’ve decided to be an affiliate, then you need to find some online merchants with affiliate programs you can join. Here’s how:

• Surf the Web: One way is to visit various merchants’ sites and see if they have an affiliate link on their home page. If they don’t, you can always eMail them and ask if they have an affiliate program. Some merchants may have affiliate programs but not advertise that they do!
• Join an Affiliate Network: You can join an affiliate network and browse their business members to see if any of them carry products that fit in your niche. Here are some of the bigger ones:
  • Commission Junction
  • LinkShare
  • Clickbank
  • ShareASale

  Be aware that some networks or individual merchants within a network may have minimum traffic requirements for your web site. In those cases, you’ll have to either concentrate on building traffic early on or use merchants without traffic requirements.

Reseller - If you’ve decided to be a reseller, then you will need to buy products wholesale. Alternatively (or additionally) you can work with merchants who will dropship to your customers.

Consider, too, that there are different levels of wholesalers. Some manufacturers will produce a product and sell it direct to resellers at wholesale prices. Other manufacturers will only sell products to distributors who then resell the products to retailers. Still other manufacturers will sell to anyone who meets their minimum purchase requirements.

For some manufacturers, you may have minimum orders of under $100. Others will require minimums in thousands of dollars. Alternatively, some manufacturers may sell in minimum quantities (rather than dollar value).

Likewise some distributors will have order minimums as well.

All these minimums are things to keep in mind when choosing products. In some cases, the minimums may be more than you want to start out stocking, especially if you don’t know how they might sell. And, bear in mind too that, when you go to reorder, you’re going to have to meet the minimums again. (Some merchants may have a higher initial minimum and lower subsequent minimums to make things a little easier.)

So, if some products move faster than others, are they selling fast enough that you can justify a reorder of just those items? Something might sell out because it was a passing fad, and if you order more, you risk being stuck with a number of them.

These are areas where experience can be a big benefit. You might want to start out using merchants who dropship and then only start stocking products yourself when you have a better idea of what sells and what doesn’t.

Another option, of course, is to try to unload your slow-moving merchandise on eBay to at least (hopefully!) recoup your costs so you can stock faster moving products.

So, how do you find those products?

• Search Google and Other Search Engines: Some wholesale merchants promote themselves better than others. Depending on your niche, you may be able to find many of them in the search engines. Be aware, however, that even in this day and age, some manufacturers don’t even have websites! (Some may not even have eMail!) And, also be aware that there will be many resellers and distributors fighting over “wholesale” searches, who aren’t really wholesalers but just deep discounters.
• Contact the Manufacturer Directly: If you can get a hold of the actual product(s) you want to sell or find it online, you can find out who manufactures that product and contact the manufacturer directly. Ask them if they sell wholesale or, if not, who their distributors are. Many manufacturers will be happy to provide you that information.
• Subscribe or Join a Wholesale Directory: Some people frown on the idea of paying for a list or directory of manufacturers, wholesalers, distributors and dropshippers, but the fact of the matter is that a good directory can save you a lot of time searching through Google and other search engines. Of course, don’t spend the money if you simply cannot afford it and do be careful as there are a lot of low-quality directories out there that oversell and under-deliver. Look for something with a money-back guarantee so you can get a refund if the directory doesn’t prove worthwhile for your needs.

  Here are two that I recommend:

  • Worldwide Brands: I’ve been a member of this directory for a number of years. Lots of different merchants in different categories for you to choose from. Whenever I start researching a new eCommerce site, this is one of the places I go to see what types of products are available in that niche.
  • SaleHoo.com: I’m not a member of this one, but have been an affiliate for a couple years. They also have a large selection of merchants, and I’d join if I wasn’t already a member of Worldwide Brands. I’ve had a good number of referrals to this one, and no returns that I can recall.

Building Your Site

Here again you have many options. I’ll just cover a few.

• Through a Third-Party: You can set up a store and host it with a larger company, such as:
  • eBay Stores
  • ProStores - an eBay Company
  • Mal’s e-commerce
  • Yahoo! Stores
• Through a Webhost’s Tools on Your Own Website: You can add a shopping system to your own website, or integrate your current website with a shopping site that’s hosted separately:
  • Quick Shopping Cart
• Using Third-Party Software Solutions: There are countless solutions out there. Many come with a basic template system that you can modify if you wish while others are more hands-on and customizable. Here are just a few:
  • ClickCartPro
  • Ecommerce Templates
  • LiteCommerce
  • MGI
  • osCommerce
  • ShopSite
  • X-Cart

I went with a “roll your own” type solution, and basically wrote my shopping cart system myself rather than using the templated or built-in version.

Accepting Payments

Finally, you’ll need a way to accept payments. You can allow your customers to mail in a check or money order and, while that is good to have as an option, you’re going to lose a lot of sales if that is your only method of payment.

You’re going to want to be able to accept credit cards in some way. And, with the latest PCI Data Security Standards, doing that online can be difficult and expensive, especially if you’re just starting out. Be sure that your shopping cart solution is compatible with your credit card processor and make sure that it meets the PCI DSS requirements.

If you want to look into getting your own merchant account right at the start and handling credit card transactions directly, rather than through a third party, here are some of the more well-known payment gateway services. Some of them also have resellers, so you might also want to look for those resellers, who may be more familiar with different shopping cart solutions and better aid you in integrating your shopping cart with the payment processing system and making sure it meets PCI DSS requirements:

• Authorize.net
• Cardservice International
• LinkPoint International

You should be aware that there are some hefty fines and penalties if you get caught processing credit cards and not meeting PCI DSS requirements. Last I remember, the penalties were as much as $25,000 or $50,000 plus you could lose your merchant account.

If you don’t want to start out with a merchant account and worrying about PCI DSS requirements, you can use a third party processing service. Two of the most well-known are PayPal and Google Checkout:

• PayPal: PayPal offers Website Payments Standard and Website Payments Pro, which are both affordable options for accepting credit card payments on your eCommerce site. You can also accept PayPal and checks online. They also have a higher end option where they just do the backend processing and no one even knows you’re using PayPal, which is good if you have customers you think don’t trust PayPal. I think that you can either get a merchant account through PayPal or through whichever bank or service you use, and PayPal can function as the payment gateway in either case. It is, I believe, just like using any other payment gateway. In fact, PayPal bought VeriSign’s payment gateway system three years ago.
• Google Checkout: Google also has their own checkout system to compete with PayPal.

You can choose one or the other, but using both would be a good option, as it would give your customers the option to use the one they feel most comfortable with or have an account with.

Note that it is not necessary for your customer to have a PayPal account or to set one up in order to checkout through PayPal.

If you choose one or the other as your sole payment processor, both also have their own shopping cart systems that you can integrate into your website. Or, if you’re using a third party software solution, such as those mentioned above, check to make sure they can work with PayPal and/or Google Checkout before installing and setting up your store! Many of them are, though some may require rolling up your sleeves and getting into the code to do it!

Conclusion

Those are the basics of setting up your own eCommerce store. It’s really not as complicated as it might look, though the level of complication is going to depend upon how you decide to go about doing it!

Don’t let fear stop you from doing something you want to do. Just take things one step at a time and follow through. The most important part is taking that first step. If you just keep putting it off, you’ll never find out if your idea would have paid off or not.

As always,
Believe. Act. Achieve!

Last week, I wrote about having a personality for your website or blog. The focus in that post was on doing things with which you are comfortable. It’s difficult to achieve success doing things you don’t enjoy or that make you uncomfortable. With that out of the way, this time around it’s all about personality.

A lot of blogs fail. A lot of eCommerce websites fail. One reason is that frequently people succumb to the idea (which is often bred by the plethora of TV, internet and even spam ads promising us wealth just by having a website) that all they have to do is put up a website and the money will just magically start coming in.

I do web page design and hosting, and I once had a client that had me do a website for them. They had a single page website and did no advertising of any kind for it. I don’t even think they listed the website address on their letterhead or business cards. After three months, they cancelled it because they weren’t getting any business from it! At that time, it’d be at least three months before the search engines even indexed your website.

The other mistake is doing what everyone else is doing. People will create an eCommerce site, sell some products (either stocking them themselves or using drop-ship), and put up an online catalog. And wait for the orders to come pouring in. Now, there are countless other people doing the exact same thing and selling the same or similar products. Now, when given a choice between product a on one website or product a (the exact same product) on another website, which will you choose?

If your answer was “whichever has the cheapest price,” congratulations. You must be a Wal-Mart shopper. Now go to the back of the class.

People tend to think about price first. And, so if they’re running an eCommerce site selling the same thing as a bunch of other sites, their first thought will often be to lower their prices. Then, their competitors respond in turn. Eventually, the prices get so low that profits are hard to come by. If you can tough it out, it might work out well. Once competition is reduced or eliminated, you can raise your prices again.

The old adage is that you can offer the best of two out of three things: price, quality or service. If you offer quality and service, you must have high prices. Quality products and low prices means poor service. Great service and low prices equates to crummy products. You can probably name some examples of companies that provide all three, but those are rarities. For the most part, you’re only going to be seeing two of the three offered.

Now, personality is your secret weapon. It’s your plus-one option. You can two of three aforementioned plus add your own personality.

Personality is what helps you stand out from the crowd. You see, when most people set up their webstores or whatnot, they frequently just copy and paste the manufacturers’ descriptions. Or they’ll write their own, but they will be generic and boring.

Now, when you visit websites, and you see the same product offered at different sites, are you going to go for the lowest price? Maybe. But, what if the price is the same? And, even if it is lower, do you trust the site with the lower price? More than likely, you’re going to go with the site that grabbed your interest, didn’t have an unreasonable price and inspired some amount of trust. If someone knows a product well enough to write their own custom description, doesn’t that convey more trust than a website with a copied and pasted description that’s the same as dozens of other sites?

And, if you have fun on a site (or at a store), aren’t you more likely to return?

So, how exactly do you give your site a personality? Well, that’s up to you! Sure, that sounds like a cop-out, but, really, that’s something you have to determine yourself.

What you don’t want to do is just copy, verbatim, the descriptions offered by the manufacturer. Look at other sites. In just about any niche, if you view a lot of different sites, you’re going to see a lot of the same stuff. You don’t want to repeat what everyone else is doing. You want to make the site your own! You want to stand out from the crowd.

To better illustrate the idea of having a personality, below is a sampling of sites that have unique personalities. They could have just done a generic description and have essentially a “cookie-cutter” website like everyone else, but instead they opted to put their own spin on things. Mind you that a couple of these sites predate the rise of eCommerce, but, before the world wide web, they established unique personalities in their catalogs.

• American Science and Surplus - If I were to win the lottery, this would be one of the first places I’d be going shopping. They could have just done mundane, boring descriptions of their goods, like other surplus stores, but instead they decided to inject a little fun into them.
• Archie McPhee - Fun stuff, and they also have fun with their descriptions. I’m pretty sure this is where I bought my rubber chicken. And the Martian popping thing. I think MrBaconpants and Michelle will like these. And, they’ll no doubt want to try the bacon jelly beans too.
• The J. Peterman Company - It was originally started in 1987, parodied on Seinfeld, and went bankrupt after Seinfeld went off the air. Then, it was purchased by another company, which in turn went bankrupt, after which, John Peterman bought back the rights to his name and restarted the company with a group of investors that included John O’Hurley, who portrayed the fictional Peterman on Seinfeld. (Read the Wikipedia entry for more.) Now that all that’s out of the way, what made J. Peterman so popular in the first place was its use of stories and product illustrations (rather than photos) to present its catalog (and now website) in a unique way.
• StampandInk.com - Okay, this one falls into the “shameless plug” category, since it is my website. I’ve tried to inject some personality into the site, so it’s not just the same as every other site out there. I’ve been more successful on the art stamps than on the ink pads in that regard. But, with a future update pending, I hope to greatly improve on that! Not to mention other things I’m not going to mention.

If you want to increase your chances of success, give your blog or eCommerce site or even your retail store a unique personality!

Before we get into this week’s Success Saturday, here’s a bit more on Tuesday’s money thoughts. In it, I mentioned how saving just $5 a week starting 10 years ago would give you an extra $2,500.00 in your pocket today. Now, the sooner you start saving, the better off you will be. Unfortunately, most of us don’t stick to such plans until later in life. Then, we advise people younger than us what they should be doing and then they don’t listen and the cycle repeats itself.

Anyway, if you’re like 21 or something, you might want to read this article (found by way of CO-ED Magazine). Never mind “might”–just read it! But, if you’re over the age of 35, you’re just going to want to skip it. It will only make you depressed.

In any case, let’s segue to our main topic today, which is having a personality. And, by personality, I’m referring to your blog or eCommerce site or even your bricks & mortar store; whatever it is you have.

And, the CO-ED Magazine link makes a perfect segue too. If you take a look at the site, which is obviously for the college crowd if you haven’t picked up on that already, you’ll see a fair amount of articles on sports and music and stuff like saving money and then you’ll see a lots of posts of just pictures of barely dressed women. And, the latter is pretty much the dominant feature.

They clearly target a particular audience and that sort of thing is the thing that their audience wants to see. And, really, it not so much a personality that brings the viewers; it’s the scantily-clad women. For example, if you want to bring in the college kids to your site (or young men or dirty old men or whatever), is that something you would feel comfortable doing? Would you feel okay about yourself if you have to post pictures of Kristen Bell in Her Underwear or Sexy Time at the Gym in order to bring in those crowds? (Mind you, don’t click on those links if you are offended by such images.)

If you’re okay with that, then maybe that’s the way for you to go. But, bear in mind, of course, that just posting pictures isn’t going to bring in the crowds. You still have to have quality content, and that includes quality photos. If you can’t get hold of fresh photos of scantily clad women, you’re going to have problems. And, if you resort to “borrowing” (i.e., copyright infringement) from other sites, karma will catch up with you eventually. So, you’ll either have to work hard at finding and getting those kinds of pictures, or you’re going to need something more.

And, if you’re not okay with posting such pictures on your site, or having such “sexy” kinds of content, you’re going to need to find some other way of reaching out to the college crowd or whatever audience you’re trying to grab.

The way in both cases is to have a personality for your site.

And, it has to be a personality you are comfortable with. If posting nearly-naked photos of women isn’t your thing, don’t go that route. If you do, you will quite possibly fail. If you’re not comfortable doing it, you’re going to have a natural resistance to doing it. You won’t find the best pictures because you’re not comfortable looking. You won’t update often because you’ll latch on to any excuse not to work on the site. You won’t take the best shots because (if you’re the photographer) you won’t be comfortable asking the model to pose this way or that. And, you’ll have trouble promoting the site because you’ll be embarrassed to tell your friends and family about it.

So, whatever you do, you have to project a site personality that you can live with and be comfortable with. “Be yourself” is important advice here. You can tweak your voice and online personality, and some can do that to a greater extent than others, but you have to be able to feel comfortable doing it. Otherwise, things just won’t work out for you.

The same goes for the content you write. Don’t write about things you’re not comfortable with. And, if you must write about something you’re not completely comfortable with, do it in such a way that reflects your personality and values.

If you want to appeal to the college kids, you don’t necessarily have to have half-naked girls on your site. Young adults do actually have other interests! Think about your audience and don’t look at what may appear to be the easiest ways to bring eyeballs to your site. It may take more research, but it will be well worth it to you. You’ll be better able to achieve success if you pursue it in such a way that matches your personality and values!

We’ll look at personality more next Saturday!

For this week’s “Success Saturday,” we have a virtual cornucopia of links.

• Looking for a new design for your website or blog? Want to have a cool 3D effect? Here’s the tutorial for you: “Creating a Cool 3D Web Design Effect.”
• Just want to make your people photos look better? Here are “33 Awesome Body Enhancement Photoshop Tutorials.”
• Are you crafty, but would like to make money doing it? Here is “How to Run a Successful Etsy Shop.”
• Think you should be more open-minded? Think again. “Being Narrow-Minded Can Be Key to Success.”
• Tired of blogging? Maybe you should sell your blog.
• Want to keep people on your blog? Here are “7 Ways to Make Your Blog Stickier.”
• While you’re at it, here are the “Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Blog’s Usability.”
• Think you’re running out of article ideas? Maybe you’re not.
• And, now that you’ve got ideas, here are “Killer Writing Strategies to Make Boat Loads of Money Online.” Of course, we don’t know what size the boat is. Is it a toy boat or a cruise liner?
• A lot to do, eh? Maybe you’re thinking about doing it all tomorrow? In that case, you might want to read “6 Habits to Avoiding and Overcoming Procrastination.”
• If you’re paranoid about people stealing your ideas, you might want to look into making invisible ink for your ink jet printer.
• Want to rub virtual elbows with the wealthy? Think they hang out on the same social networking sites you do? Think again. Here’s where the rich network online.
• So, you love to blog but hate typing? Here you go.
• Finally, you want to learn how to profit from the irrational thinking of other people? Here are ten books for you.

That ought to keep you busy until the next Success Saturday!