This series of posts on Cash Quests count down the top 5 essential sites that new bloggers should visit in order to maximize their chances for making money online. Each site in the top 5 provides valuable lessons and techniques that need to be studied and considered in-depth in order to increase your earning potential.

#2 Any site that’s better than yours

Why would someone want to visit your blog if there’s another site out there that does the same thing as you but does it better?The better site was created before yours by someone who knows more about the topic and that site receives more traffic and makes more money than yours. It is the undisputed leader in your niche and doesn’t even know that your blog exists.

Get ready to fight back.

Why new bloggers should visit any site that’s better than their own:

Any site that’s better than yours in your niche is an ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL site to visit once you’ve started (if not before) building your blog.

Let’s start by looking at a real situation. Recently I was asked by a new blogger to review his new tennis site. All he had on the site was a few photos that he copied from elsewhere and some of the latest match scores from the current tournament. And that’s it! I had to put it bluntly and ask, “Why on earth would anybody want to visit your site?“. It would make much more sense for a web surfer to visit a much larger, official tennis site where they could find many more photos, more up-to-date scores and lots of features that his site simply did not offer. The blogger should have visited tennis.com and he would have quickly realized that there was no need for anyone to visit his site at all! And it wasn’t a shock to find that nobody was visiting it either.When you’re visiting the site that’s better than yours, you must ask yourself three essential questions:

1. Why is this site better than mine?

This is exploratory stage where you need to assess ‘what makes a site good’. Is it the site’s unique design or is it the content of the site? Does it offer features that my blog doesn’t offer? Is the ‘personality’ and writing style of the site more interesting than mine? Finding the answers to these questions will not only teach you a lot about blogging, but will give you the groundwork you need to answer the second question.

2. Can my site be better than this site?

If the answer to this question is “yes“, you’re in luck! Get to work and start making your site better. Despite the incredible amount of websites that are on the internet, it still surprises me that only a few of them are actually good or contain quality content. I could name quite a number of topic niches that are severely lacking a decent website and where it would not be hard to quickly rise to the top. If you feel that your site can’t possibly be better than your niche’s leader (Could you really make a tennis information site better than tennis.com?) then it’s time to look at the most important question.

3. Can I offer something different than this site?

Every blogger should be able to answer this question with a resounding “YES!“. Why? Because the very nature of blogging is to offer your own personal insights and your own personal opinions which will lead to your site being unique and completely different from any other site on the internet. The blogger with the tennis site was not offering anything personal or unique. Had he offered his own personal opinions or thoughts on the matches, his site would have been achieving higher levels of success.To illustrate these points, imagine I have a small site about blogging. Which site is better than mine? Problogger. Why is it better than mine? It has more information and Darren Rowse knows more about blogging than I ever will. Can my site be better than Problogger? Not in this lifetime. Can I offer something different than Problogger? Absolutely! Darren Rowse does not blog about my unique thoughts an opinions and that’s what would set my site apart from his. It’s exactly how Dosh Dosh rated above Problogger on this list.

Taking your blog in your own unique direction without copying others will direct your blog to success.

Why any site that’s better than yours isn’t number 1:

It was a close call, but the site that is number one on this list is the BEST of all the sites that are better than yours. Any new blogger that hasn’t been there doesn’t yet know what blogging is.

Lessons to learn from any site that’s better than yours:

• Don’t emulate. Create. Copying a great site will leave your readers labeling you as ‘just of copy of siteX and they’ll head to siteX instead.

• Don’t set your sites too high. You can’t make a news site that’s better than CNN. But you can make one that has your opinions on it. CNN doesn’t have that.

In conclusion:

Sites better than yours are there to provide inspiration, motivation and to give you some ideas to get started. But if you’re just a carbon copy of a better site, you’ll quickly find that your readers will leave your site and head to the better one.Find being original too difficult? Don’t start a blog.

Final in the series: Who will be number 1? A blog that’s only had four posts in the past year……!!

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