The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

This post could probably have a subtitle involving the word “Liars”, but the gist of this post is a bit of a jab at some Make Money Online blogs. Note the italics, i’m only talking about some of them, not all. So don’t get offended unless this hits too close to home :-).

I have been seeing a lot of blogs by dropping cards with Entrecard, participating in SocialSpark and just browsing around to various sites to read their content. One thing that everyone can admit is that there are a lot of Make Money Online (MMO) blogs out there. In fact, there are thousands and thousands of them. What always makes me chuckle a little bit is that the premise of a make money online blog is so circular.

The Circle of Life

What I mean by this is that a make money online blog covers ways to generate an income from as little time as possible spent doing various things online. Some of the more common methods covered are affiliate marketing, SEO (search engine optimization), private ad sales, paid reviews or posts and actually selling wholesale products on a website.

Most commonly, however, the make money online blogs aren’t actually making all their money from these various methods. They are trying to make money off of gaining tons of subscribers and readers so that they can sell ads on their site to make money.

Perhaps i’m being cynical, but it seems to me that to make money online you write a make money online blog? Everyone wants to be like the few success cases such as Problogger.Net where Darren is making six-figure incomes each year. However, he got into the game early and wrote a lot of content over the last 6 years to get to where he is now. He makes a lot of his money from talking about making money so that in itself is circular.

Common Hooks

The most common hook of some make money online blogs is to report on their monthly income and earnings and how they achieved that. This is what helps keep readers a little envious and wanting to come back so that they can match those incomes. I’ve seen a wide variety of incomes reported on various blogs, some of which are realistic and others which just seem a little bit off base.

For instance, let us consider the following situation and see how believable you find it:

“I’m a college student trying to get a degree but in my spare time I do affiliate marketing and ad sales online to make money. I’m only 19 years old but this month I cleared $25,000 in profits from my various enterprises, and i’m going to tell you how to do the same thing on this blog!”

Ok, let’s back up a little bit here. First of all you are making $25,000 a month and you feel the need to write a blog to tell others about it? If every great entrepreneur had a brilliant idea and started making lots of money at it then shared with everyone else how to duplicate it, the idea generally will fail due to market saturation. This is why you have secrecy, venture capitalists and patents. I can’t understand what would drive you to make a blog to brag about how much money you are making online unless one of three things is true:

1. You like to help people out of the kindess of your heart.
2. You want to brag about how rich and wealthy you are and how many toys you have.
3. You are completely making it all up in the hopes that you can gain lots of subscribers/readers who will then help you actually make some money online.

For some reason, I tend to believe a lot more in option number three, with the occasional dash of number two. Call me a cynic, but unless I can see their actual filed tax returns like we do of most of the Presidential candidates, then I don’t believe a word that they’re saying.

Now, I’m not saying that all make money online blogs are fake or not actually making any money. I’m sure that some of them are — but most aren’t. The main point i’m trying to make is that there can be very few ProBlogger.Net type success stories, it just doesn’t work that way. Just like the $1 million dollar 1-pixel ad page. The first guy who came up with made his million bucks, all the copycats didn’t. If the idea is unique and making you money, why are you giving up your secrets and diluting the market potential of the idea?

This is how most affiliate marketing schemes try to suck you in and it is why I also wrote this article about how most online money making schemes are scams and also made the point to not trust anyone who has a picture of a fancy car on their money making blog.

The Real Deal

Below is a picture of my actual car taken at a gas station a few days after I got it. The car is fairly nice and definitely too expensive, so how did I earn the money to afford it? It’s called getting a job, going to work 40+ hours a week and working hard. It is also saving money, and borrowing a ton of money from the bank to pay for it. I have a car payment for the next 4.5 years or so that keeps me fairly poor. It’s a choice I made but online money making had nothing to do with it. Set yourself some goals and work hard at it and you can achieve what you want without involving yourself in any get rich quick schemes that are 99% likely to never work except for the people on top.

I love making a few extra bucks online, but I would never count on it to pay the necessary bills such as utilities, groceries or a roof over my head. Like many things, the money you earn online can be fleeting, and it’s best not to count on it.

Feel free to leave me your thoughts about this in the comments!

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