Writing for Your Wealth

When I made my first site, it was a total flop as far as making money goes. Oh, I’d made a decent resource on a particular aspect of history, but it wasn’t something I could monetize well, and at that point in my life I was broke, in debt, dealing with repetitive stress injuries, and living in my parents’ basement (yup, I was one of those 20-somethings who moves back home).

For my second site, I really worked at choosing a niche that had the potential to make me money. I learned about SEO and Adsense from the webmaster forums, and I found keyword analysis tools online that let me know just how much advertisers were bidding for certain terms. I then wrote articles around those high-money terms.

If you’ve been trying to make money blogging for any amount of time, this probably sounds very familiar.

The thing is… it’s a backwards approach to building wealth.

I was focusing completely on myself, on my wants and needs. I wasn’t thinking about helping other people–I wasn’t thinking of others at all beyond hoping they would land on my sites and click on my ads, so I could make money.

Honestly, I think the only reason I succeeded is because I was a writer at heart and couldn’t conceive of putting out crappy content. Most of the articles I wrote ended up being helpful even if I was focusing more on myself than other people.

Essentially I made money in spite of my strategy rather than because of it.

So why do I recommend you put solving other people’s problems above making money?

Because succeeding for the long-term, whether at growing a business or writing your way to assets that pay you again and again, isn’t just about making money any way you can. It’s about making money the only way that promises you long-term success. It’s about being an entrepreneur

The Definition of an Entrepreneur

If you look at the online dictionaries, you’ll find definitions of “entrepreneur” to the tune of someone who starts new businesses and pursues new ventures. I prefer the definition from T. Harv Eker’s Secrets of the Millionaire Mind (one of the few self-help books I’ve read that actually… helped):

The definition of an entrepreneur is “a person who solves problems for people at a profit.”

He emphasizes that being an entrepreneur isn’t just about trying to make money; successful entrepreneurs help people. “The more people you help, the richer you become.”

Creating Content to Help People First and to Make Money Second

As I said, in the beginning, I lucked into writing articles that were designed to help people make purchasing decisions, solve problems, etc., but today I’m working at doing it a little more purposefully. I believe I’m writing better content because I’m trying to think of people–and the problems they have–instead of thinking how much certain keywords go for.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to be solving the greatest problems in people’s lives. Sure, the folks who can teach millions how to lose weight, make big money, and get out of debt are doubtlessly doing well for themselves, but you can definitely succeed in other niches. Just find your own way to answer people’s problems on whatever level makes sense for you.

As an example, I wrote a post on cat litter boxes a couple weeks ago.

Cat Litter Boxes? Really?

Yes, cat litter boxes. You might not think of cat sanitation as a big money maker (and I didn’t either), but I know from personal experience how joyless it is to scoop out the litter box every day. So I wrote about self-cleaning litter boxes that make the chore easier.

Generally, I don’t do a lot with affiliate links, but since the boxes I was talking about were available on Amazon, I went ahead and put in an affiliate link. The next day, when I checked the stats, several folks had ordered self-cleaning litter boxes. The post hadn’t even been up long enough to start showing up in the search engines. These were just regular readers of my blog who decided a self-cleaning litter box would help make their lives a little easier.

That post has since made about $50, and I grin whenever I see a litter box listed amongst the other sales in my Amazon reports, because I can easily track it back to that post. $50 in a couple weeks is hardly retirement money, but when you consider it was a simple post that took me 15 minutes to write, it’s not bad. And I’m sure more litter boxes will be ordered in the future.

I didn’t go out and look up keywords related to cat boxes or see how much advertisers were bidding for those terms… In my research, I simply happened across self-cleaning litter boxes and realized they could be a nice solution for people with a cat-clean-up task they don’t particularly enjoy.

Solving Problems Helps You Create Fans

Quite a few years ago, I saw the movie Patch Adams. I’ve long since forgotten most of the details, but one line from it always stuck in my head:

“You treat a disease; you win, you lose. You treat a person; I’ll guarantee you’ll win.”

I think that’s true in most walks of life, including entrepreneurship. If you focus on making money, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. But if you focus on helping people, you always win.

Now, lest you think I’ve gone too altruistic for your tastes, there’s another reason to focus on solving problems first.

If you genuinely help people, they’ll remember it.

If they land on an article that’s awkward, optimized for keywords, and only vaguely helpful (at best), and then click on a link and purchase a product, they’ll have forgotten your site before they’ve even completed the purchase.

But if they land on an article that is well-researched and clearly explains why such-and-such product can help their specific grievance, they’ll remember that it was through your advice that they were able to find a solution to their problem. They might just come back again. They might just tell friends.

When you write with the intent of helping people with their problems, you’re more likely to create long-term fans, as opposed to people who just click an advertisement, never to return.

Does That Mean Ignoring SEO and Keyword Research?

If you’re at all like me, you’re probably addicted to those keyword research tools. I still use them, especially if I’m looking for ideas on new products to cover. And I’m not telling you never to look at them again or to stop thinking about SEO completely.

The only thing I’m suggesting is that we all try to genuinely help people when we write. Instead of putting ourselves first and thinking of the best way to make a dollar, we need to realize that the system only works in the long run when we help people solve their problems.

Whether you’re selling products or running advertising on a blog, you’ll grow and build passive income not simply by the number of hits the search engines send you but by the number of people who become your fans and visit again and again.

The more people you help, the more money you’ll make.