A-List Bloggers Will Not Help You Make Money
Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Jason under Daily RamblingReposted after deletion.
The tide is slowly starting to change in the whole online world of blogging, especially in this niche… people are moving more and more away from what the “A-List” crowd and starting to think and feel for themselves.
By listening to the “A-List” school of bloggers, especially those in the Make Money Online niche… you are not going to learn anything. When was the last time you read a post on any big blog that helped you make money online? Let me know, because although I don’t tend to read them, in the few times that I have skimmed through I have not learned anything of any use whatsoever.
Stop wasting your time, and start trying to make money.
This is something I am guilty of - the problem with the major way I make money online (freelancing as a writer) is that it is not consistent. What if one month, I get no clients? Bam, complete loss of income. If you want to make a living off the Internet, you need consistent income, and you are not going to learn how to make that by listening to the A-List.
Most of the blogs in this niche are not make money online blogs because they do not teach anyone how to make money. As aptly described by a blog I’ve recently started reading, most make money online blogs are actually similar to a social blog that makes money selling ads and promoting affiliate sign ups and basically has a readership base but no organic traffic. They don’t teach others how to “make money”.
TUK (this blog) is similar to the above, but the thing is that when I started this, I never expected to make money, nor teach anyone how to make money online (I believe when I started TUK I was making something like a dollar a day
). This is a social blog, and I have no problem with it being that - I’ve been able to personally interact with most of you and made many friendships; yes, they will not make me much money but I hope to earn in other methods.
It is time to start building sustainable income, and for that there are two blogs you need to read.
The two blogs are as far away from the A-List as you can get - they don’t run in the same circles and don’t aim to either; however, they do aim to help you make some money. Something that all of us could do with. I only came across them recently (through a rant on the former, which eventually led to the latter; anyways, the two are below - it’s not often I recommend other blogs on here, but I want my readers to succeed.
). The latter has already made me a little money, the former will do soon enough.
Blogger Unleashed - I posted about this one earlier but I’m just reminding you guys to follow Vic if you haven’t - yes, he is a bit rough, and swears a lot, but he will never lie to you as a reader. Do his tips work? Well, they have for countless people that have tried them, and now that I have something worked out (see later in the post) I have no reason not to try them out at the very least.
I recommend you take a look, as he’s shown live examples what he can do with regards to SEO (now ranks right below “Caroline Middlebrook” for her name) and his advice will help.
Make Money For Beginners - Grizz runs this blog; I found him to the former, and through the advise given on one of his posts, I made my first ever affiliate sale (of a non-hosting digital product). Spend: $2, Return: $17.98 - yes, nothing spectacular but I’ll take that kind of return every single time it is offered to me and I still have to fully launch on the advice; any kind of advice that sounds good and gives you a positive return should be followed. Note, that this is just one post of his and there are plenty more with interesting ideas.
By the way, the post I was referring to was about Making Money with Scratchback - I make a sale for Blogging To The Bank through it. Grizz is also responsible for the quote a couple paragraphs back in this post.
Check them both out; subscribe to their RSS feeds if you do that kind of stuff.
Another slightly cynical series of posts that you should take a look at if you want to make money blogging is the blogging success series by Frank over at Optempo; cracking stuff to say the least.
One of the huge talking points in the blogosphere is the sale of One Man’s Goal to Marc Galeazzi for $10,500 - by looking at his introduction post itself, you can tell that Marc is clueless about everything blogging related.
You cannot learn a lot about blogging by reading what others write about it; some of it, yes, but most of it will be through trial and error. And when you’ve spent $10,500 on a dying blog where more than 50% of the readers will leave (especially after the introduction video), you do not want to have too many errors.
Marc had never used Wordpress before the purchase of OMG… that’s a very expensive learning curve. He’s also (from what I can see) not made any money online and that is not something you want to portray when running an MMO blog. Last but not least, talking about worthless things like videos on how to signup for Twitter… I’m surprised anyone has stuck around, and those that have can only have done so out of sympathy and nothing else. Seeing that it was the last bit of money he had (from what I can tell from the video at least), I wish him all the best but it will not be easy.
Speaking of blog sales, the vastly inflated price of OMG has had me thinking about TUK - for me, there’s no way in hell this blog is worth 10 grand, however with the way the market is you never know. The interesting thing is that another blog similar in size and revenue/month is on sale at the moment - that is Blueverse. With a current bid of only $1,250 at Sitepoint and not much interest otherwise, that’s my hopes quashed though - it should be getting at least mid $X,XXX. I do not think I could sell TUK to someone as clueless as Marc though, unless you guys promised to stick around or something - watching that video made me feel pretty bad for him.
The important thing I mentioned earlier was that I FINALLY GOT MY ADSENSE PIN. Sorry for the shouting, but it’s a damned big relief - with more than five or so months without it, I stood the chance of losing $500 or so; having Adsense also means that I can start marketing my niche websites again, as I want to try getting organic traffic to niche blogs and monetizing them with Adsense, something I was unable to do with them disabling my account. I also might try a little bit of arbitrage and see how it goes.
I would attach a photo of my Adsense PIN but I’ve lost my phone wire (to connect it to the computer) - I promise to scan my cheque and post it up here for all when I get it though. Anyways, I’ve been writing a bit too long blog posts recently, so hope you enjoy the read - make sure you join the forums as there is some interesting debate going on over there at the moment, especially with regards to local niche assault.
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April 24th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Good post. I completly agree, a-list bloggers dont provide good info anymore
April 24th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Congrats on the PIN. Took a damn long time!
Sammy Ashouri’s last blog post..Random AdSense Rant Post
April 24th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Another awesome post glad you had it backed up. A listers are for entertainment to me these days.
Big Ben Patton’s last blog post..News: Incoming Contest Hype!
April 25th, 2008 at 2:14 am
Completely agree Jason. Although you can learn somethings, the majority of stuff you read on these blogs will just tell about what it is they are talking about. They usually never go into detail about how they did it or how you should. They just tell you that it’s there.
Rob’s last blog post..Kontera Code
April 25th, 2008 at 2:24 am
You are right. A few might help you, but not most. I will check those blogs out and probably begin to read them if they are good. (How did I come across and regularly read yours? The writing was good and interesting. It made me stay:mrgreen:.)It is good that this post was saved and republished. Thanks Jason!
Nathaniel,
A.K.A. Green-Flamingo
Nathaniel’s last blog post..Contest At Rob’s!
April 25th, 2008 at 6:23 am
I’ve been heavily studying personal development for over 13 years. Along the way I learned a very important lesson. Most successful people don’t really know what made them successful. Meaning, they did 10,000 different things and they might think that a certain 50 of those things made them successful, but in actuality they could be picking the wrong 50.
What I learned is that you CAN learn how to make money from A-List bloggers, or from anyone else that is successful in whatever field you’re trying to be successful at. The SECRET is not to necessarily listen to what they SAY, but to become an amazing observer of what they DO.
Successful people have success habits. If you carefully observe, it becomes completely obvious what makes them successful. But you can’t dismiss the simple stuff just because it’s simple.
Great post by the way, I totally agree with what you’re saying. Too many people just come for their daily fix of reading and never apply anything they learn.
Paul Piotrowski’s last blog post..Screaming Through RSS Subscriptions
April 25th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Thank you so much for the mention and I look forward to helping in some way in your quest.
Vic
Vic’s last blog post..Keyword Elite and SEO Elite Video Tutorial For BANS
April 25th, 2008 at 7:26 am
I agree that most A-list bloggers do not provide any useful information. Most people just hang around those blogs to get their links on a popular page, as well as network with the large communities that they think they need to be a part of. Don’t know if this is good or bad but it seems to be a popular thing to do.
As for Marc at onemansgoal, I feel bad for him but I am rooting for him to prove the doubters wrong, since I usually like to root for an underdog…
April 25th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I will definitely check all resources you have pointed.
Aleks’s last blog post..Joke - In love with the teacher
April 26th, 2008 at 7:14 am
[...] A-list Bloggers Will Not Help You Make Money - Theuniversitykid.com 5 Ideas to Come up With Blog Content from Daily Life - Problogger.net [...]
May 19th, 2008 at 6:11 am
I take it back I find my self reading problogger a bit these days.
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