Make Money Online Sucks

I’ve got to say I’ve become a little annoyed with all the damn make money online websites/blogs out there. There are so many of them. As an aside I considered creating one just because, in spite of what everyone says, that niche ain’t near its saturation point. There are so many people reading this tripe that you just have to write better than a 3rd grader and you should do fine.

Ok, exagerating a little there, but here’s what really annoys me…Some of these blogs are so huge and everyone’s soaking up this information like it’s so great, but do you think those bloggers are telling you what really works? Sure, you get the occasional post after the fact like Shoemoney did on his 10k PPC experiment post, which was pretty good, but most of these bloggers are not telling you anything cutting edge and unique. They’re telling you what they did, not what they’re doing. “Leave comments on other blogs, submit to article directories, blah blah blah blah.” Guess what, there’s a million ways to make money online, but you can be damn sure that if everyone’s talking about it you shouldn’t be doing it. It’s kind of like the Real Estate market. All these idiots were buying up properties left and right when, especially in California, they were so grossly, and obviously overpriced that a bust was inevitable. And you know why all those people kept buying real estate at absolutely ridiculous prices? Because everyone else was telling them to. And you know what my first rule of business is? If everyone’s talking about it, it’s already passed it’s prime.

Why do I talk about this like I know what I’m talking about? Because I do. I used to read all those make money online bloggers every day and never got very far. Once it dawned on me that these guys weren’t going to tell me their secrets, and the secrets are where the money’s at, I quit reading…well, everyday at least. I still read those blogs occasionally, but I used to read John Chow everyday, now I couldn’t give a shit less about doing the stuff I read there and making $1 a day, which is all most bloggers are ever going to make.

So, what do I do now that I’m not drooling over what Yaro Starak has to say? Several things…

1. I write programs to do things for me. I taught myself how to do this because if you can’t do this or afford to pay someone who can, you’re lost. Now I get twice as much done with half the effort, and I haven’t even tapped a fraction of what’s possible with automation.
2. I research other sites. I still visit Problogger occasionally and the others, but it’s mostly to weave my way through the web and find some hints at what someone else is doing that appears to be working for them. Because like I said, no one is going to tell you the best secrets…you have to figure them out for yourself or take them from someone who gets a little careless with covering his/her tracks.
3. I started to focus much more attention on building links. And building links one at a time by leaving comments on other blogs is an absolute waste of time. If it means you take 6 months to build one single link because you’re spending all your time learning to build links like a champ, then you’re better off doing that.
4. And above all, automation is my number one priority. Not writing content, not chatting it up with other website owners. If I have some programming I can do to make my life easier/build links faster, I do it before I write. As a result, my posting frequency has dropped, but in spite of that, traffic is doing quite well. I’ve made more progress on all my sites & business in the 3 months since I quit spending all my time reading that I did in the entire year before that.

So, quit wasting time reading everyone’s blog and start figuring out what nobody’s telling you.

Update: I got a little careless with my wording in an article on another site and that day Google dropped that site to PR 0. I haven’t heard back from Google on that, so I’m still not sure if that article was actually the problem. Anyway, if you’re with the “G”, please keep in mind I’m not spamming! None of what I say about automation above is spamming. It’s about automating the tracking of various sites and implementing some things that my visitors request that I wasn’t able to do before because I couldn’t program, and especially, providing real value with automation, like interactive tools, etc… So, don’t go getting overzealous on me again.