Content (the words on your website) may be King, but a good topic is Ace. And we all know the ace beats the king.

Professional web design might not even be Jack. Okay, for all you who make your living as a web designer, yes design is important, but not like you might think.

Can you guess how one blogger (see links at bottom of his page) attracted hundreds of thousands to each of his articles? Articles about how people can steal your passwords, the ten worst drivers ever, how crack cocaine is made, and why celeb photos look so great?

The author explains that since making crack requires possession of cocaine to follow the recipe, there’s no harm done here to law-abiding citizens. Complete with pictures, the article brings up some questions, though. The photo of some dude putting crack in the fridge - where’s he at now?

Topics people are curious about, aren’t they? Sure enough, when I showed my wife the site, she clicked on the celeb photos article. The article has maybe 20 words in it, followed by a YouTube video. Not much content, you say? The page got over 150,000 views. Hard to argue with that. Makes you want to do a little marketing research and find out what topics people are interested in, doesn’t it? Or maybe not. Okay, at least not some of those people. Back on track, here…

How much money do you think the blogger made from that well-placed box just below the article’s headline, advertising Brenda’s Teeth or something? Pick a catchy topic, throw in a little YouTube, then slap an ad on it. Kind of makes you want to catalog all those silly emails your friends send you, doesn’t it? They just might come in really handy on your blog later.

Okay, you say, I get it. Catchy topics. Not a bad marketing strategy. But didn’t this guy’s blog already have a gazillion people coming to it? What if you have zero? How do you get started? After all, the title here is about discovering a website, right?

Remember those multi-level marketing pitches we’ve all heard? The ones where you find 5 friends and get them to sign up for some $500 whatever? And each of them gets 5 friends… Okay, but which is easier to get your friends to do: (1) read a free blog entry or (2) pay $500? Just might be easier to get your friends to read your blog, don’t you think?

If you tell 5 friends about it, and your topic is compelling enough for them to tell 5 of their friends…can you see how this might just work? If you…

1. Set up your blog right (more on that later), and if you
2. Have real content on your site (more later about how you can do this in just minutes a day), and
3. Your web site is optimized so Google can see it (more later about how to do this easily…search Google for “SEO” if you want lots of complex explanation right now)

…if you do these 3 things, you get more famous in Google (and Yahoo and MSN) each time someone new visits your site. The more famous you get with the search engines, the more opportunities people have to discover you.

More than that, if you monetize your blog (yes, I’ll tell you how to do that too), some of those viewers just might make you some real cash. It all adds up, even if it’s a nickel at a time, when people click on your ads. It’s not an overnight path to riches, but you’re definitely rewarded for your creativity. There are websites out there right now that are making their owners a comfortable living only 4 months or so after they were started.

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