Make Money with a Personal Challenge Blog

If you are serious about making money online, it won't take you long to figure out you need your own Website or blog. The next step is figuring out what your site is going to be about. And that's where it gets tricky. Name an idea and there's a good chance that at a thousand people have put one up already.

So what's a would-be blogger to do? While, you could go head and start your site with the idea that building a reputation that can compete with the top sites in your niche is going to be a long hard slog without much monetary payout in the beginning. On the other hand, you can come up with an original idea with little or any competition.

But what, in this age of hundreds-of-millions of websites could possibly be original enough to draw hordes of visitors to your site and make you rich, or, at least able to afford a movie and popcorn on the weekend? The answer -- a quest, your own personal quest. Your journey doesn't need to be epic to attract a huge following.

In 2004, Julie Powell, decided to work out her frustrations with life's disappointments by making every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. Her blog about the undertaking quickly developed a huge cult following.

Eventually she turned it into the best selling book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. Powell doubled-dipped on her success in 2006 when the paperback version titled Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously hit the racks.

Also in 2006, Powell won a Blooker, a prize for bloggers who have turned their blogs into books. So far, her books have sold over a 100,000 copies. Build a popular quest blog, and it can translate into a built in readership for a book farther on down the road.

Powell didn't take on anything of epic proportions; she wasn't climbing Mount Everest, swimming the English Channel or sailing around the world. And you don't need to either. Maybe your quest is to break 90 at golf, write a screenplay, or lose 50 pounds while getting in the best shape of your life.

People are fascinated by other people's attempt to accomplish something. Blog about your quest a regular basis and who knows, you might just win the next Blooker prize.