Money Online

Last week I have written an article about how many bloggers are failing. Initially I wanted this follow-up to be named “why you should NOT consider blogging if you want to make money online” but I realized that it wasn’t entirely correct, and a better way of putting it would be “why bloggers that do it for the money will never make it”

As I said in the article that I was talking about, it seems like more and more people are tempted to think that “this blogging stuff” must be a really easy thing to do, and they can get rich because of it.

A bad start
Usually this type of “bloggers” chose their niche depending either on how profitable it is in terms of high paying keywords, or on how low the level of competition is in that specific area. If someone dares to make this decision without even analyzing his strengths and weaknesses (remember Swot analysis of a blogger?) it is most likely that he will quit a lot sooner than he would have originally expected.

Here are the most common reasons why people that venture into blogging driven only by the hope of finding a treasure along the way, will eventually fail:

1) They don’t have any kind of expertise in that domain
Without knowing that niche inside-out, they will find themself in a position where either they have nothing to talk about, blog about things that don’t interest anybody, or even worse, say stupid things that make them look like fools in front of their audience (if there will be any). Needless to say that they will not last long, and they will not be making any money.

2) They lack passion
I am not talking only about passion for that specific subject that they have chosen. I am talking about passion for sharing the knowledge with everybody else. One has to feel the “vibe” when he sees the traffic going larger and larger everyday and number of rss subscribers increasing. The motivation must come from there and not from the number of contextual clicked. If money is the first motivational factor, nobody will stick around too long in this “business”.

3) They are not prepared for the hard work
In order to become a successful blogger a lot of sacrifices must be made, especially at the beginning. People must put a lot of time and effort into it, and forget about lots of other social activities. Again, if they do it for the money, they will realize that it’s not worthy.

4) They have unrealistic expectations
When people see John Chow’s monthly income or heard about how much Darren Rose is making, it’s pretty hard not to get the wrong idea. There are actually very few bloggers that got rich because of this (compared to the total number of blogs out there). When these people realize that a job at McDonald’s is payed 6-7 dollars per hour, while it would take months or even years to make that amount of money from a blog, they will quit…

5) They don’t realize soon enough that blogging is not for them
Once the enthusiasm is over, most of them find themselfs starring at the computer not knowing how to start a post and realizing they don’t have the abilities to do it, and that no money will fall from the sky.

But have no fear, several others will come to take their place.

The story
Let me tell you a little story about an experiment conducted in the last century on a group of cimps. The experiment consisted in placing 4 cimps in a cage, a ladder in the middle and a banana hanging above the ladder. Every time a chimp tried to climb the ladder to get the banana, cold water was thrown on all of them. After several experiences like this, no monkey was trying to grab the banana anymore. Now comes the funny part… In the next stage, the conductors of the experiment replaced one of the chimps with another one (that obviously did not know about the cold water shower). When the new guy tried to climb the ladder, the others started beating him up.
One by one, all 3 remaining monkeys of the initial group were replaced with new ones. The result was a little surprising; even if all the subjects that knew about the cold water that was thrown on them if they tried to grab “the forbidden fruit” were gone, the others kept on beating any new guy that was trying to climb the ladder. However, the explanation for this behavior, is obvious: the monkeys have got the idea that climbing the ladder was wrong, even if they didn’t know why.

You have to “walk the walk” before you can “talk the talk”
Now how does all that monkey business relate to blogging? Well it seems like there are some bloggers that do nothing but replicate what some famous bloggers say. For example, if an A-list blogger says that a 120 x 90 adsense link unit will give you a low ctr, several others “smaller” bloggers will repeat this “advice” without actually experimenting to see if that could work for them or not. Another category of people would put it like this: “AAAA said …. I did not try it yet, but I will and let you know if it works for me”. Wrong again! If you just repeat what “AAAA” said, and have really nothing more to say about it, nobody wants to hear the same story again. However, if you have something more to add to the initial “story”, or better yet, if you don’t agree to it and bring arguments in favor of your statement, it becomes interesting. Further more, what did not work for them, may actually work for you. You never know unless you try it yourself, or at least giving it a serious thought.

A real example of “monkey blogging”
The first thing that comes in my mind as an eloquent example for what I am trying to say, is the controversy that was generated by the appearance on the market of the PayPerPost service. I remember that when it was launched a few well known bloggers where totally against it. This triggered an army of less popular bloggers that just kept repeating how evil PayPerPost was and how it “poluted” the blogosphere, without even brining their personal thoughts and obviously without actually trying the service themselfs. The funny thing is a lot of them nowadays use it a stream of income. Needless to say that their initial statement was worthless. It’s perfectly understandable that many of the A-list bloggers can’t benefit much from a service like the one mentioned above, but for others it may prove to be a considerable source of revenue (compared to what they are making overall).

The conclusion(s)

1)Filter every information that you read, no matter if it comes from Darren Rose, John Chow or any others. If something doesn’t work for them, it does not necessarily mean that it can’t work for you (especially if you don’t fit in the same category).

2)You don’t have to blindly agree with someone, no matter how famous he is. If you do agree with a certain statement, but don’t have nothing to add to it does not make an interesting post. Unless you have reasons to believe that your audience hasn’t already heard about it, it is better not to mention it again because it does not bring value to your blog. Remember that personal opions and solid arguments are the keys to content driven blogs. Be careful not to fall on the other side and disagree with everybody just for the fun of it.

3)If you have the chance, TRY IT YOURSELF, before talking about it.

As you may already know (if you are frequent visitor to this blog), last week, I started a new category to thank some people that in one way or another have shown appreciation for the “Money Online” blog. This includes bloggers that have linked to me, joined my community at MyBlogLog, added me as a friend at Stumble Upon, favorited this blog in technorati, or bookmarked it at delicious.
Here is the post that I am talking about, if you want to read more.

Having this said, here is the second batch:

Designers-who-blog - as I have said before, the “looks” of a blog can be an important factor for it’s success. This particular one is not only a very good example of how a blog should look, but also it covers a lot of design-related subjects that (in my opinion) every blogger should be interested in.

SmartWealthyRich - covering a variety of subjects, from making money online to self improvement. Although it’s been “on air” only for 2 months, the number of articles published by Jonathan-C. Phillips (the author) is quite impressive and worth a visit.

Financial Podcast - an old timer that started back in 2004, focused mainly on financial topics (student loans, tax advices, banking etc). There are plenty of useful information here.

The Barrister Blog - if you are interested in law, than you should definitely check out this blog

how to tell if a guy is a jerk - something different than I would normally recommend, but very interesting for women readers (and I know there are some women reading this blog)

I enjoyed reading them and I hope you will enjoy them too.