Have you ever had something you really wanted to write but you kept putting it off? The issue was so complex, so far reaching and touched on so many other issues that you became frozen by information overload? Well I have, up until now anyway. Let me first apologize right now because No Business Blogging for Money is bound to piss a few a few people off. .. So please accept my apologies in advance if I start to sound like an AM talk radio show.
This topic has been eating at me for a while now.It is one of those issues however that cannot be discussed without at least touching on several other issues. Consequently I kept putting it off. This issue should concern anybody that uses the Internet. The Internet has become increasingly polluted with unethical marketing practices and get rich schemes and or scams. It is being stuffed to the gills with meaningless content. It is quickly being filled with a never ending supply of empty words taken out of context. Articles that have been re-worded and often just plain plagiarized. How-to-articles that offer nothing of value. Has it reached a point where people are starting to wonder whether the good still out-weighs the bad? Yes, for me it has. The alarm finally sounded for me this weekend. I was working on a project using a blog I have set-up for testing purposes. The project came about after reading an article in a marketing forum. This particular forum is dedicated to sharing “black hat marketing techniques”. Black hat marketing techniques for those that don’t know are marketing techniques that are, shall we say less than on-the up & up. (Some of this border on hacking). Anyway the programs (utilities, plug-in’s, widgets) being used for this marketing technique where not in & of themselves inappropriate. However just like the Internet itself is often miss-used these two utilities were also being miss-used. The two utilities where wp-o-matic & twitter poster. The first line of text in the wp-o-matic description says it this way: ”Wp-o-matic enables administrators to create posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds”. Administrators is the operative word in this statement. This plug-in is an extremely neat application. It allows you to easily insert a highlight or excerpt of a post from another blog or newsletter into your blog or newsletter. This is done automatically as per a schedule you have set. Done properly and used ethically it can add useful and timely information to your blog. This helps in keeping your blog current and relevant for your readers. A task that is often difficult for a one-man operation which is most of us. When used correctly it will compliment your current writings and dove tail with the rest of your operation. It adds value to your blog. The Twitter poster plug-in does exactly what it sounds like it would. It generates a twit with a tinyurl (link) automatically every time a new post is published to your blog. It of course makes no distinction between your posts or someone else’s but the way the twit is posted with a tinyurl link it is clear as to where the twit came from. These additional twits can increase your traffic considerably which in turn will increase your ranking with the search engines. Is this cheating? Or smart business? Ultimately that’s your call but I call it the later. So…. What’s the problem? Well, like everything else it can and is being used in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. In addition to that you have many instances where it’s intended use and reasons for use are OK but the execution is terrible. Almost all of these utilities share resources with other components of your blog at some point and they all use the same data base. Consequently if they are set-up wrong they can cause havoc for you, your blog, possibly your service provider and their customers as well. “The experts in their field” types providing this information to the wanna be’s are as clueless as their readers as to what these “latest marketing techniques” actually do or how they do it. These people are not network administrators nor are they even remotely qualified to be. These people have No Business Blogging for Money!
The above mentioned article I was reading was explaining to its readers how to set-up a blog using these two plug-ins and a Google’s Adsence plug-in. The express purpose of this blog was to be a depository for these automated posts that were populated with Google’s Adsence Ads. This allows you (the owner of the blog) to cheat Google out of Adsense Ad dollars by placing ads in posts that no one is actually reading. The article concludes by stating that if you pick high value key-words this blog will net you and easy $5.00 a day.
This is not a lot of money by itself and hardly worth complaining about. The problem becomes a problem however when viewed in this manner: 1) it’s highly unethical. 2) I’m sure it’s a direct violation of Google’s Adsense terms. (I have never read their terms) 3) It gives the government one more reason to jump in & save us by imposing additional laws and restrictions on the Internet. 4) Setting this blog up is far more complicated than the article makes it sound. 5) The target market for these sleazy “get rich quick” & “easy money fast” schemes is the very group of people least likely to have the necessary smarts to set this stuff up. 6) As the economy spirals down the size of this group of unqualified people spirals up proportionally. 7) This one small problem I’m describing is taking place thousands of time a day across the entire Internet. To illustrate some of this here is my week-end project story that rang the bell for me.
To keep this in perspective here are a few facts about me. I’m new to on-line marketing; I’m not new to marketing or computers.In fact I have been deeply and consistently involved with both since the early 1980’s. Yes, I said the “80’s”. Back when surfing the Internet meant logging onto a CompuServe Bulletin Board with a 300 baud Hayes modem hacked into a modified Atari 300 game console using a Techniques brand cassette player for data storage. Smiley faces were considered cool graphics. My first desk-top publishing software was Page Maker 1.0 by Aldus. Based on my observations from reading 100’s of hours worth of blogs, comments, forum posting’s, ezines, tweets, face book walls, etc. My conclusion is? I am far more qualified than the average Internet millionaire wanna-be. Unlike many of the masses I did not just fall off the turnip truck.
I have a blog set up that I use for the express purpose of testing things. Even with this additional layer of protection however I still manage to get myself in trouble. This week end was no exception except that I blew things up worse than usual. My product testing experiment managed to bring all of my sites down for over 2 hours. I created many hours of additional work for myself. I also caused myself a huge amount of anxiety. I more or less caused a “denial of service attack” on my own web-sites. Wp-o-matic like many plug-ins that do any type of scheduling must make or change a line of code in the cron.php file. This takes place in a shared WP data base. Do I even need to go any further? Bottom line, I changed some settings without having a complete understanding of what these settings did. The first line in the wp-o-matic description states: “Wp-o-matic enables administrators to create posts automatically from RSS/Atom feeds”. Unfortunately the majority of the people attempting to make money on the Internet today are NOT administrators. They have little or no technical abilities & even less experience or training. Most of them do not know the difference between writing a script or writing ad copy. Consequently they should not only NOT be polluting the Internet with their junk they certainly have NO BUSINESS trying to sell their expertise to naive & unsuspecting consumers. Many of them can’t edit a form letter.
Perhaps they think the Internet has magical properties. Perhaps they just don’t think. Regardless of the reasons how many times have you read some form of Ad or Email Promotion that begins? “Hey [first-name], I’ll keep this sport as you don’t have to Choose one: much time / little time“. More than you’d care to admit to I’d bet. I’m sorry if I sound like an elitist or some arrogant know it all but I’M NOT! If I refused to let my12 year old nephew drive my car because he lacked driver training am I being arrogant? Of course not. But the comparison is not that far off. The car incident could have tragic consequences & adversely affect a lot people. An Internet incident could also have negative consequences and could adversely affect the millions of people using the Internet every single day.
The Internet as most of you know is much larger than the sum of its parts. Yes it is a fantastic source of information, it’s a powerful communication tool, it’s a huge social network, it is also the largest market place the world has ever known. Put them all together and you have an immense neighborhood where we all have equal opportunities. You have the same chance of being successful in an Internet venture as anyone else does providing you’re putting forth at least the same amount of effort. The Internet opens so many doors for so many people in so many markets that it has become the great equalizer. Yet here we are. Ready to go forward, prepared to reap the rewards. The average hardworking Joe or Jane finally has an equal chance of catching their dreams. But once again the same small segment of the population that has for the entire history of mankind screwed things up for others is at it again. Getting ahead by exploiting anything good is what they have always done. This time though they can spread their garbage much, much faster. The Internet will now transmit their scams and schemes to millions of victims hundreds of times faster than the best methods could have ever done prior to the Internet.
That’s the scary part. The reason for concern if you’re not already concerned. Internet use grows exponentially. The more people getting on-line the faster the numbers increase. The faster the numbers increase the more people get on-line. Unfortunately the number of bad people seems to out number the good people. So that bad segment grows bigger, faster and the good segment grows smaller, faster. I don’t have an answer for this by the way. I just wanted to spread the fear around a little more.
Case in point. This is the title of an article I read just a few days ago. Automated Blog Content Generators – Boost To Blog Marketing: This article was well written and useful. However I couldn’t help but feel the author was giving his OK to build a blog for the express purpose of collecting advertising fees. This is a short excerpt from the article. “The Benefits of Automated Content Generators: The biggest advantage of automated blog content generators is that they provide relevant blog content quickly. In a short span of time, fresh and original blog content is created and posted on the blog. This improves the profile and ranking of the blog, which gives a proportionate lift to blog marketing and revenue dollars”. Similar messages are being broad casted across the Internet every day. We are selling a plan that allows people to make a plan for selling their plan on plan selling to other people looking for a plan to make money from. In addition to building a blog for the purpose of selling this plan to other potential plan sellers they sell advertising spots to other companies that sell to this group of market plan sellers. Now I just said a whole bunch of nothing. And that was my point. That is what “Internet marketing” has become. We sell nothing. Hollow words like hollow men. Nothing, just empty words. I am old school. I know that. But as badly as I need to create an income I need to produce something of value even more. I need to give my readers real value for the time they spent reading my blog. If they buy something while they are there that’s even better. But either way, when they leave I want them to feel they made good use of their time. If they do then I feel good as well.
Please write or post your thoughts and comments. There is more to say but I already wrote twice as much as planned & said less than ½ of what I wanted. It’s an issue that’s tough for me to explain without getting off point.
Have Fun, be Good & Good luck.
Matt Waters
How to Sell on The Internet 
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