this is where the rubber hits the road...
Actually, you have done a lot of the time consuming ground work. But there is obviously more to do.
I am not speaking as one who has made money online because I have not to date. All my work to date has been for nonprofits and for educational purposes. However, I have been more than a little successful in business in general and have a good feeling for internet work.
Lisa has put it well. She focuses on writing and marketing. It is not enough to develop good content. That is essential, but then you must do the marketing. That is a whole different skill and where most people fail in all lines of business.
For a website to be financially successful it is essential to draw traffic as has been noted in some of the previous posts. You also have to know what kind of monetization will work for your site. That is critical. Adsense can work well for some but not others. Certain kinds of paid ads can work well for some and not others.
Learning how this will work for you as an individual is not easy, but it is what it takes.
In my primary business offline I do only three kinds of marketing and it provides all the business I can manage. Only one of these three is a common means of advertising, the yellow pages. One is what might be described as a specialized trade magazine and one is cultivating on a personal basis contacts in the specialized area I work with. I learned to follow this strategy by watching (testing) the market. Others spend inordinate amounts of money advertising less effectively and often end up closing down. I really spend relatively little. This is off line but I believe it is the same online or with any business. Marketing takes study and observation, in any business.
Online I can clearly see what others are doing when they are successful and it is different with each site. But it can be done. Even when people fail with their sites, I think more often it is not as impossible for the site to succeed as much as for shaping up the content and finding the right approach.
Don't give up.
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