On the Internet, there’s little truth to the conventional wisdom, and this is especially true with monetizing a website or a blog. Website monetization can be a great source of income, but it can also be difficult to parse. Here are a few misconceptions about monetizing your website you’ll see far too often.

SEE ALSO: 3 Keys to Monetizing Your Blog

The Only Way to Monetize a Site is with Ads

While it’s true that ads can make your site money, the truth is just the opposite; your site should be the advertising that monetizes another product. Look closely, for example, at popular blogs. Many of them have at least one eBook available, or a paid series of podcasts, or a video series, or any of a number of products for sale. So, yes, advertise… but ask yourself what those who really love your website should be seeing as the next step.

Set It and Forget It with Social Media

There are plenty of powerful tools out there for blogs that allow them to automate their social media content. And truthfully, that has some appeal. But pay attention to the most successful blogs and you’ll notice that instead they carefully curate their content on social media, posting only their best material and writing it up to draw attention and clicks. Similarly, they’ll use social media as a link building tool to share links from other blogs and promote interviews and other articles.

You Have to Update Every Single Day

Many will insist that for a blog to be successful, it needs to have new content every single day. Like most misconceptions, it’s incorrect in the sense that it’s applied too broadly. If you look closely at successfully monetized blogs with enormous numbers of readers, often their content is a mix of smaller, faster posts that touch on SEO topics, but the site itself in anchored on more thought-out pieces that take longer to write and often have more thought to them. The truth is that you can get the news from anywhere; quality matters much more than quantity with content.

It’s All About the Content

Like any misconception, there’s a kernel of truth here; great content is key to building a successful website. But content in of itself is useless if people aren’t reading it, which brings you to the other half of the equation: link building. Don’t be shy about reaching out to other sites for links, giving interviews, or linking to other sites that link to you. The more links out there, the more eyeballs you draw.

Success Strikes Overnight

Would that this were the case, we’d all be on a beach somewhere and somebody else would be writing this. Soon we’d be out of beach space! The simple fact of the matter is that building an audience online can happen, but it takes time, care, and work to build up a blog and build an audience for it. Even if you have advantages like a respected brand or a widely known name, it’s still going to be work to get your blog in front of the right audience. But there’s one thing you’re told that isn’t a misconception: The fruits of that work are richly earned.