Wow, Lisa so very well put. Another point I'd like to make is that people who are succeeding out here are laregely marketers and great copyrighters, not technical folks. My family is always asking me why I'm trying to do this because I have no technical experience. But as Lisa said, it's about building a business and knowing how to market. Anyone can put up content and ads but not everyone is good at communicating and being creative. That's a skill/talent you must have.

Building a business means drafting out a plan, deciding exactly who your target market is. Most people who create sites don't have a clear idea of who they want to target. You should define their age, income, level of experience in your niche, sex, etc. That helps you write for your audience. It helps you develop a voice that is just right for the people you want to reach. Unfortunately people build sites for themselves instead of the people who are reading the content.

I read an article where it said something like a successful internet business is 90% marketing and 10% technical. The point was you can hire someone to do the scripting but you need to understand how to market. They also said that if you want to learn to make money online, take a course in marketing and copywriting, not scripting and programming.

Don't get me wrong. There are a ton of programmers out here doing extremely well but they also have to know how to market and need some degree of creativity. And just for the record I am not coming down hard on programmers because I WISH I was more technical but I still think the myth among people who don't know much about online marketing is that computer geeks are making the money online when it's mostly marketers (or at least computer geeks who also understand marketing)

My point is marketing has to come in somewhere and I disagree that luck has anything to do with it. You have to understand marketing and have some degree of creativity. And I'm learning I'm lacking a bit on the creative side.