Dear “Make Money Online” Blogger
Dear Blogger,
I visited your new site today. You were so enthusiastic about it, posted so many threads asking people to visit and sent me so many direct messages that I thought I should take the time to have a look. I had a look at your old site, too.
I have a few comments about your new blog that I think might help.
Unfortunately, it looks like you’ve fallen prey to the idea that you’ll make a living from a “Making Money Online” blog. I don’t know who suggested you choose this particular niche, but they were apparently born with fewer brain cells than the average cockroach.
You’ve just started a blog about the most crowded, over-subscribed, spam-ridden subject on the Internet.
In case you didn’t know, posting ads for different earning sites – which are obviously links to your referral chain and are just text copied from the sites themselves – will not work. You’ll be incredibly low on the search engines because the original site ranks higher and Google will detect that you copied their content. Even your other blog has the same content, so you’re defeating your own work.
You’re also advertising your site in all the “Make Money Online” forums, discussion groups and social networks you can find. Unfortunately, this means you are promoting your referral links to people who are also trying to get referrals. They won’t click your links. They will sign up with the same programs, then go off to their blog and post exactly the same thing you did. Lather, rinse, repeat.
You’ll also find that your particular brand of enthusiasm for your new project is, for most people, termed “annoying marketing crap” and is more likely to lose you friends than it is to “build your downline” or whatever the current term is.
So while it is possible to make money in this fashion, there are hundreds of thousands of people doing exactly the same thing. This means you’re battling for visitors with tons of other sites. You absolutely have to offer something they don’t. Copied content and buzzwords is not that “something”.
You have two choices: either (a) use social networking or SEO and work really hard at it to bring visitors who might click and sign up or (b) provide useful, original content.
Now, you have to understand one important thing: useful content is not more ads or little, paraphrased descriptions of “Get Rich Quick” programs. It’s not a sidebar crammed so full of widgets and flashing banners that it results in temporary blindness for most visitors. It’s not pseudo-free content that’s actually just sales material to get people to buy something.
Useful content is articles that are at least 150 words long – usually 250, 350, 500 or more – that say something in your own words. It doesn’t have to be a totally original idea: for example, you could describe your experience of starting a pointless, doomed-to-failure blog.
To make money blogging (which is what you’re trying to do, obviously), you need to be in for the long run, too: it’s not going to bring in much cash at the start, if any. We’re talking six to nine months, here. The days of the quick buck are pretty much gone, because everyone’s a blogger now.
If you’re using contextual ads (AdSense or similar), you might also want to avoid the money-making keywords. They bring in awful ads that have very low returns and nobody clicks.You know, the “make $43,000 per day while sitting on the toilet” ones. You’re better off writing other stuff that’s related and more commercial.
Oh, and Google will suspend your account if your page has a ton of PTC links on it, too.
Here’s a quick idea I just had, for example – instead of writing about how to earn money online, write about the gadget that you’d buy if you made some money. That way, the gadget keywords get picked up, you get better ads and a visitor’s more likely to click something, too! How’s that for a neat trick?
Or you could write about the experiences you have while trying to earn. Like today, when I rejected another three surveys because they all wanted to offer me either 10 cents or a chance at winning a gift voucher (among the 150,000 applicants, no doubt) for 30 minutes’ work.
Or you could blog about how all the successful “Make Money Online” bloggers are only successful because they manage to sell people like you their book. Unfortunately, of course, their book just teaches you how to scam money from people who can ill afford to spend it, by selling the same book.
Good luck with your blog,
A. Visitor
Good work here Spike. I’m learning, and I’m blogging because I just love to write. If I chuck a ‘sponsored’ blog post every now and then, and least it’s a post written by me, in my words, and it’s as interesting, entertaining or whatever, as I can make it.
What? Oh Nooooo.
You mean my writing blog is one among millions of other writers blogs.
Damn! Why do writers have to write so much anyway.
Sorry, what’s that? You say they have already clicked on all those “publish with us” Adsense adds.
Damn! Couldn’t they just have waited?
Yeah, I see, no free lunch, no effortless residual income, no celebrity status.
Could you just remind me again why I am doing all this?
Ah ha, but is “help and be helped” worth it?
So you say, but wouldn’t it be easier if I just banged my head against a wall?
(Please send locations of the nearest available hard wall to Shack’s Comings and Goings, England.)
Darn! I was going to start one of those – all the emails I get say it’s really easy to make $55,000,000 before I’ve even buttered my toast in the morning. Are they lying? Oh well, I’ll just revert to Plan B: send my ms off to that company who promise they’ll print it and make it a best-seller for only $999. What could possibly go wrong?
Had to add this.
In post this morning, elaborated envelope from states, with different handwriting in different pen colours all over it, official looking ink stamps (half formed) all PRINTED on out side.
Inside big big certificate/bond thing. Also very elaborate and differently printed hands, stamps, typewriter (impacted) font.
Apparently I have won $4.382.000 in a draw that I never entered or have heard of.
Yahoooooo!!
All I have to do is answer one simple skill question (reason not explained) and send that back with my heavily discounted registration fee of only $10.
Looks like I’m in the money. All I have to do now is wait for the cheque to arrive.
Awww, spoilsport, did you have to TELL ‘em?
I am referring a few Twitterers to this article. One guy, every other twit, is trying to sell followers, blog tips, etc. I would have unfollowed him but every once in a while he makes me laugh–am sucker for wit and comedy!
Being a newbie at blogging, twittering, etc. I find that reading and commenting on interesting blogs has (to my surprise) put me on 5 pages of Google. Is that good? Don’t know yet. Question–what are PTC links? Don’t want to get suspended by Google!!
JR Nuerge
Eco-friendly+Eco-nomical=Eco-fabulous!
http://www.jrnuerge.com
Gardendog: That’s actually the subject of my next post, strangely! You’re a mind reader…
Shack: Writing blogs are almost as common as MMO blogs now. Must be the recession! And I bet you get those really shoddy-looking “Freelance Writers Wanted” ads that try to charge people a subscription fee, right? (Nice to see real-world spam is getting weirder, too – you should scan that and post it up!)
Kate: Oooh, I’ve not seen any of the publishing scams. That sounds even dodgier than Blogging To The Bank and its ilk.
Holly: Welcome! Sorry for telling them. I just couldn’t resist. Someone told me I’d earn $12,639.34 if I did.
JR: I’m sure some Twitter “tool” sites actually use people’s login info to post their own ads and follow people. I found out today that I had somehow become a follower of JesusFeed. Being pagan, I doubt that I did it myself. Changed my Twitter password immediately.
PTC, by the way, is Paid To Click. It’s the most basic form of online earning (have a look in the Free Stuff up top and grab the “Beginner’s Guide” – that covers a lot of the terminology. PTC is low paid and has a massively-high scam rate, which is why Google will drop a site like rancid offal if a site has too many ads for it.
Well now I’m sunk … publishing yet another blog on blogging for money!!!! Six months young and finally a small blessing from Google with a page rank of 1!
I agree with A. Visitor … the market is extremely competitive but then what isn’t? Inch wide mile deep is great for some – and I do have some of those which true to guru’s teachings are bringing in more shekels than my blog on blogging … but gosh, gahl, dangit! Massochist that I am, I want to carve out a niche in the blogging market, maybe even gain a modicum of recognition, gee, maybe get a list going (after all, I did just publish an e.book on blogging, which, yes I know, is out there competing with the big guys), but if you don’t try then you’ve lost.
As I click away on this comment, I am working on a blueprint for winning at this game. I intend to implement some maverick moves … and will be blogging about their efficacy (or not)…
Success to all…………….valentina
Valentina: At least you’ve retained your sense of humour about it all… so many MMO bloggers are terribly serious. They’re even worse when they’re successful. Stay stubborn…!
Spike, they’re as bad as the “poets” who are terribly serious about Poetry.com and the International Library of Poets. I tried to explain the concept of “vanity press” to a woman, once (her eight line poem had at least five spelling errors, but she wasn’t changing them because, by God, she’d actually won an AWARD from Poetry.com). From then on, it’s just best to write humorous articles and open letters – unless you’re just into beating your forehead bloody on a brick wall of stubbornness.
Valentina, good luck – it’s very hard to be a small fish in a big pond. I’m not sure I can think of anything to say about blogging or making money blogging or SEO or whatever that hasn’t already been flogged like a dead horse. I was one of the first people on the Internet to start a site for writers – but when others came along and did it full time, and better, I shut it down and moved on. So long as you never take yourself TOO seriously, and you’re always open to trying new things, you’ve got as good a shot as any and better than most. I’d say “stay determined,” but not necessarily “stubborn.” When it’s no longer working for YOU, try something else.