Not All Internet Marketers Are Filthy Scam Artists

While I was away from mainstream blogging (again) I built a few sites intended to give me a better potential for creating some online income. I suppose you could call it Internet Marketing if you wanted to, or you could just call it Niche Blogging.

I’m not talking about becoming some sort of sleazebag Internet Marketer who would sell his own granny* to turn a quick buck,  but I am talking about the deliberate use of keywords and search engine optimisation to draw in search traffic i.e. regular members of the public. After all, these are the people spending money online.

As I’ve found to my cost, it’s not the bloggers who are spending the money. Many bloggers are often in it to sell the stuff in their sidebars, whether that be a subscription link of some sort, or an adsense banner. That’s right, they too are internet marketers whether they know it not,  and there’s nothing wrong with it. But, my experience has been that bloggers just don’t buy from other bloggers (very often).

I guess I came to the internet wanting to be an Internet Marketer, except I didn’t know such a thing existed or how to make it work. I honestly believed that it was a case of sticking some good content on the page with an adsense block in the sidebar and waiting to be stumbled.

This is pretty much what the A-listers advocated, and who was I to argue?

Well, my content was only good enough to get one Stumble and that drew some massive traffic (massive by my humble standards) around 10,000 page views, but the Stumblers came and went, and never came back again. Over the two days that all that traffic was filing through, I think I had 3 clicks on the adsense. Three!

One year later and twenty dollars richer (lauging out loud at the idea I made a profit of any sort (my losses ran into the hundreds)) I’ve come to realise that I can’t make this model of blogging work for me. I can’t be the guy who writes fresh material for content hungry readers every single day without fail. It’s too much of a burden. With the way my life runs at the moment, I certainly can’t continually recreate the quality of content required to get Stumbled.

So to cut a long story short, I’ve abandoned the A-listers and I’m cutting loose with the Internet Marketers! I feel like such a renegade!

Just over a month ago I took a gamble and signed up for an online program designed to teach me how to build sites and get traffic – the sort of traffic that buys, not the social traffic that comes and goes.

It’s great. I love the program and I like the way they do it.

Before I signed up I was worried that it was yet another one of these scam sites promising the world and delivering nothing, but it’s not. On the contrary it’s opened my eyes to the real possibility of making a living online.

It’s definitely not a get rich quick scheme and you do have to put in some real effort.

It’s early days yet, but I’m quite pleased with the results. The sites are bringing in pennies but that’s largely because I decided to target the low hanging fruit, you know, the fruit that is low enough for the dog to cock his leg and piss on. But nevertheless, I’ve been able to harvest some fruit and prove the methodology works.

The next stage will be developing sites with a higher potential, and naturally this will mean having to work harder and perhaps wait longer for the return. But I don’t mind that, because I get to do it on my terms.

I’m happy to share the details of the course with anyone who wants to know, and I dare say I’ll be writing about this again failry soon anyway.

As far as blogging is concerned I feel a bizarre freedom that I haven’t felt before. Knowing that my future doesn’t hinge on a personal blog I feel less concerned about what I write and what I say.

It’s very liberating.

BTW, did I mention I’m an Internet Marketer?

See, I told you.

Bwaaaahahahahahahahaha

Dave

* I already sold my granny back in the eighties to buy a subcription to PlayBoy magazine (for the informative articles).

Photo: Richard0