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Stop Digging In The Same Field

Posted by Paul B | May 27, 2008 .

This is a great story, and a completely true one at that.

viking treasureA few years ago one of my neighbours, a lad by the name of Andy Whewell decided to take up metal detecting. He had no experience of what he was doing, in order to get started he bought a few magazines and then made the decision to spend a bit of money on a decent detector. He asked a local expert for some advice just so he wouldn’t be a total newbie. For the first month or two he spent all his time going over the usual spots, the local beaches, hills, all well trodden paths and he found nothing of any real interest. Several months into his new hobby he decided to take a risk and get permission from one of the local farmers to try in one of his fields, some new territory. An hour into this new area and he stumbled across something, something big. What Andy actually unearthed in that field was one of the largest finds of Viking coinage ever found. A find so big as to be life changing. In that little inconspicuous field Andy dug out 464 silver coins, 25 silver ingots and a silver armlet dating from the 11th Century. All in a find valued at between £250,000 and £350,000. Remember he wasn’t an expert in what he was doing and had only taken it up a few months earlier. What he’d done was gain a bit of knowledge and then went of in his own direction. It paid royally. You can read the full story here:-
Viking Treasure

So why write about this? Think of fields as niches. What Andy had discovered was his own niche. The Make Money Online blogging niche was a gold mine for those people that found it early, John Chow, Problogger and several others make large amounts of money every month out of it. Be first or be better. Those that follow including me can make a little bit from it but basically we’re just finding the scraps. I’m sure a dozen or more people have gone over that field and found very little of any value. In the mean time Andy has continued his hobby trying different fields, again he has had some success!
“Astonishingly, Mr Whewell went on to make another startling discovery with his metal detector, uncovering 26 Henry VII and Henry VIII coins in German. That too has been declared Treasure Trove. It is understood that MNH has valued that find at around £20,000.”

Take the advice from the pro’s about how to make your money, but to make it you have to apply that knowledge to your own “field”. Sure you’ll spend plenty of time wandering around where there is nothing but all it takes is to find that one and then who knows.

To this day I’m still genuinely stunned about how many “make money bloggers” there are out there trying to make money from a niche that has already been dug to death. I’ve mentioned several times how I make almost nothing from this blog, it’s certainly the worst niche I’ve ever tried and yet every month there are even more cropping up. John Chow probably says it best, he makes money online by telling people how much money he makes online. That should be enough to tell you that the maths dictate there’s not a whole lot of room in that niche if you want big money. Who knows, maybe it’s time I stopped ploughing this field and concentrated on some new ground?

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2 Comments so far
  1. google web hosting review UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14  May 29, 2008 2:46 am

    yea man, maybe you should turn this into a personal blog. or…..sell………..though i enjoy reading it.

    google web hosting review’s last blog post..By: Web Hosting Plans

  2. Beth UNITED STATES Windows XP Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.14  June 3, 2008 10:31 pm

    Neat story about finding those coins. There sure are a lot of blogs about how to make money online, but if you enjoy writing about it and have consistent readers then I think it is worth continuing.