Internet Riches: The Simple Money-making Secrets of Online Millionaires

If you are creating a niche website or a blog focused on a specific theme, a book called Internet Riches: The Simple Money-making Secrets of Online Millionaires is right for you. It will very well organized and will lead you from idea generation to hosting your website. You may not become a millionaire overnight, but the book will definitely help stay focused and save some money.

The first thing I liked about the book was how it helps choosing a niche theme that is right for you. A series of pragmatic exercises make you select a few topics about which you think you could be an expert. This expertise should be the added-value that will make people want to go to your website and do whatever you want them to do (e.g. buy your e-book, subscribe to your newsletter, etc.).

According to the author, there are three kinds of successful businesses on the internet: those bringing efficiency (e.g. eBay as an improvement on existing flea markets), those selling a product (e.g. toys for parrots ) and those focusing on a niche. Once again, a few exercises make you reflect on whether your business idea is more about efficiency, a product or a niche.
Scott Fox really wants its readers to have an entrepreneurial approach: it may not be about earning millions at once, but it is at least about launching something you are passionate about, while minimizing your investment and generating the most money. Hence, the focus is on generating the highest return on investment (ROI).

One of the keys for the reader to maximize his/her ROI is to keep the initial investment as low as possible. The author recommends choosing free and/or open technologies, such as standard blogging software. This way, you will focus on your business and not on techie problems. Another advantage is that if you find that you have to change direction early, you will have fewer concerns about throwing away something you did not have to pay (too much) for. As somebody who has more than once shelled out money for a piece of software early in a site creation process, only to notice later it was an unneeded purchase, I find Scott Fox’s focus on this problem very relevant and true-to-life.

The biggest flaw to this book is its title: any book promising revelations about “Secrets of Online Millionaires” usually makes me run away. It is a pity that a book with such pragmatic and useful advice gets such a title. Another weak point is the case studies: some are quite interesting, but quite a few are mere interviews with webste owners. In-depth case studies of successful and failed niche sites could have helped more.
Overall, this is a recommended buy if you are serious about starting your own business on the internet.