What the “online income experts” don’t tell you about how to make money:
So I feel a rant coming. I only have myself to blame because for some reason I can’t stop reading hundreds of different SEO blogs it comes with the territory of being interested in something I guess. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of “interesting” content when it comes to internet marketing, but there is so much fluff too that you have to scour the HTML for days before you find this nugget of useful information.
So anyway, I was reading this post today on seo-theory.com where Michael basically says people are too enthusiastic about link building. I don’t necessarily disagree with this at some point, especially when it comes to some of the useless link building techniques I see on the net today. However, he then drops the bomb that he only spends around 10% to 15% of his time linking, and this uber googlar Matt Cuts says links are only 1% of the algorithm. I mean seriously, go spend 10-15% of your time building links for “auto insurance” with the rest on your “site architecture” and get back to me. I probably won’t see you in the top 1000.
This is by no means the first time I’ve seen an article like this on an SEO blog, but it’s always weird every time I read this content. The only explanation I can find is that people are trying to set up pre-made excuses for clients on the more difficult aspects of SEO.
“Link building is very 2005”
Yet, as I said before, there can only be one guy at No1 who makes money on every search and for the rest there are a million excuses. In the end, there is only one thing that matters and that is whether you make money with your site or not, everything else is just technical nonsense. Part of the problem is of course the inherent nature of internet marketing when it comes to making a living, as not many people really understand the concept of making money online and how much work it actually takes to get started. Indeed, the delay that search engines impose on new sites is probably one of the most off-putting things for new people, who for the most part don’t make it past the first month.
People often ask me what are the keys to a successful website and it really is one of those impossible questions just because every site and more importantly every market is different. For example, if you are an online store selling physical goods, your margins are very different than someone who is blogging and selling advertising to make money. The problem is, even though people develop vastly different sites, the “gurus” distribute this one-size-fits-all advice as a one-size-fits-all solution. I hope I don’t get into any of this nonsense here on the blog and try to be as specific as possible (although I don’t have a clue what I’m talking about sometimes!).
This brings me to another point with internet marketing gurus, all the terrible products and books they sell. Make no mistake, not all of the money that makes ideas that they “sell” are scams, but I’d say about 95% are. However, they are fairly easy to spot, if they promise the world within 24 hours of purchase, you know what to expect and you have only yourself to blame. That being said, I bought 2 really great instant messaging products this year that saved / brought in quite a bit of money, but I must have wasted a lot of money on other unnecessary stuff before. to find them. Now, I’m not really going to say what they are here, first because I don’t promote other people’s products here (yet) and then because if you don’t understand the basics of promoting websites, they really won’t work for you anyway. . This is probably one of the biggest problems with the web industry, they sell these advanced programs to beginners because all advanced users have already bought them (there aren’t a lot of advanced people). I will say, however, that it is exciting when you finally find a program / system that saves you days or even weeks of work. Notice how I define value as time saved and not as direct money, because at the heart of this thing is the work and the time to do it. Work will always be necessary, but processes can be streamlined, improved and sometimes even outsourced.
The question therefore remains:
how do you know if the last money-making program you read is actually working? Well you don’t, but for starters it should never be a diagram and it should always be based on principles that you understand. For example, if you understand how article marketing works in relation to promoting your website, a tool that helps you speed up a few hundred percent will obviously directly increase your income. However, if the “system” is another mysterious promise and is all about how much money you can make, how likely is it to be legitimate?
So anyway this article started out as a rant on one guy’s “SEO theory” and ended up in the more general arena of internet gurus, are they the same people? The slim point is being able to sort the good information from the bad is the basic principle of learning in general and not just this internet business. If I had to give advice to someone new to the online world, I would say start small with different techniques and see what works. You also need to understand the general principles of what goes on in any marketing situation to determine whether a new opportunity is the real deal or not. Blind faith will only get you so far my friends.
So this rant went on for a bit longer than I expected, but it’s still nice to let some steam down in html form. Until next time…