You hear the advice for making money online “find your passion and write about it” and you also hear people say “promote offers or products” even though you have no knowledge of them. Which is it?

Passion

The premise: If you follow your passion the money will follow you.

This assumes your passion is marketable.

If you enjoy bottle collecting or making eclectic music or reading books (and not marketing books) then odds are you won’t be able to feed yourself and your family with your income.

If your goal is to make money online then doing “something you love” can help keep your interest but might not feed you.

It could also potentially be bad advice without knowing someones passion first.

In my limited experience making money online all my financial gains have been from going for profit and not passion.

Yes I do make some money from doing something I enjoy like writing this site, however it’s peanuts compared to products or services I promote via other means.

Profit

It doesn’t matter if it’s air purifiers, treadmills, coffee, etc. If a merchant offers a commission to help sell their product, this is what you spend your time doing. The company profits and so do you.

Of course you shouldn’t spam or doing anything shady. Just good old fashioned marketing for real companies.

Internal civil War

I’ve been working on a site many times and thought to myself “is this really what I want to be doing” as I program some site on some tool or sport I’ve never played.

I’ll go back and forth between tackling something I enjoy or something I know will make money.

My wife sometimes laughs when she asks what I’m doing and I’ll say making a website for this goofy niche or starting a ppc campaign for wedding invitations or something random, did you ever think? lol ;)

Profit For The Win

I think any newbie or veteran should be going after profit first and passion second (unless their passion is marketable and has bunches of advertisers already).

Once you get your financial freedom then you can begin to enjoy writing about your passions.

Until I change my mind again - It’s profit for the win.