Expert Bloggers
Being 30 years old, at times it seems like I am one of the older adult bloggers online. Blogging seems to attract a crowd of real young entrepreneurs who have the hopes of making money online. In the blogosphere, there is a wide range of ages of people who blog. People have thousands of reasons why they blog and what they blog about. But when it comes to making money online and attempting to make money with a blog, most of the bloggers in this niche are young, very talented entrepreneurs. And to be honest, of the thousands of bloggers who are tied into this niche, only a handful really do make good money online. Additionally, of the few bloggers that really do make money online, this money isn’t generated directly from the blog you visit daily to read about their experiences. In most cases, they have other blogs or sites that are geared strictly for the purpose of making money online.
Successful bloggers who talk about making money online, in most cases use their personal blog to mask what it is they do online to really make money. Their personal blog has tons of traffic and comments but really its a cover and a way to draw attention away from the “real projects” they are involved in.
Unfortunately, with these methods of distraction, it causes thousands of bloggers who want to make money online to copy what successful bloggers do on their personal blogs. These personal blogs are not sites that make money. Most of these blogs are what I call, “bloat blogs”. They bloat and brag about how they are successful and how they make tons of money online. These blogs never really mention “how they make money online“. They never tell you what they do or how they archive their success. And again, the end result is that thousands of wannabe bloggers are lead to believe that their personal blogs are the key to success. Bloggers who want to be successful, copy the personal blogs of bloggers who claim to be successful. This tactic is really ingenious as it totally covers, hides, masks and protects the successful blogger’s golden treasure.
But, the ill effects are terrible. The result is that you have thousands of bloggers who commit their blood, sweat and tears into launching their own wannabe or soon to be successful sites. Most bloggers fail because they believe that if they copy what other successful bloggers are doing, they themselves will also become successful too. This is not the key to success, especially when you copy a wooden duck decoy and not the real deal.
If you are a blogger who wants to make money online, if you are a person who wants to find success with making money using your blog. Don’t launch yet another blog that talks about making money online. Don’t publicly project yourself to be an expert in the field but yet also publicly post that you only made $200 dollars for the month using Google Adsense. In fact, overall its better to work quietly and to not draw attention to yourself about the amount of money you make or lack of. Don’t claim to be an SEO expert while broadcasting your writing on a blog that isn’t optimized for search engines.
The best way to make money online is to blog about things that not many other people blog about, or blog about things that are easy to compete with. My latest site, BlogWheels.com is a perfect example.
Do you think BlogWheels.com will make me money? Who knows? That’s not really the point. The point is, I will have more of a chance making money online using BlogWheels.com than another blogger will have if they decide to launch yet another site about making money online.
All in all, the large point I am trying to bring across to you is that you should take all these wonderful programs that can make you money online (Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher, Amazon.com, Commission Junction, etc.) and build a business that promotes these products and services to people who are willing to buy, click, read and trust what you offer.
Eventually when BlogWheels.com pops the clutch and gets into second gear, who do you think will be the majority of viewers to the site? Do you think a lot of my viewers will even know what Google Adsense is? Do you think that they will know that I make commission off a recommended Amazon.com product?
How does the likelihood of my success rate compared to a newbie blogger who tries to re-invent the wheel by launching yet another wannabe Darren Rowse or John Chow personal blog?
If you want to make money online… and I mean REALLY make money online. You have to think out of the box, you have to be creative and you just have to go out there and do it.
You need a great topic to blog about. You need a healthy and bug free blog. Your blog needs to be optimized for search engines. You need great content. You need traffic and people who are interested in your content, products and services.
That’s really not a lot of “needs” for launching a business. If you are serious about making money online, you need to be serious about being realistic. And launching a blog that tries to sell products and services to people who are also trying to sell the same products and services is not your best option.
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Date/Time: 8-6-2007 13:34:21 Comment #4234
Oh man, if you are the “older blogger” online at 30, what does that make me at 45?
I think you really hit the nail on the head here Garry, of course we both know we have talked about this before. Some of the experts have excellent advice, and they are certainly worth subscribing to. However, you are right, you can not just copy what they are doing, talk about how much money you are making and expect to then make the money. I find it funny to read blogs that claim some sort of expertise in “Online Income” only to find out they barely make $100 a month.
With that said, I also know that to some $100 is a lot, heck, a little over a year ago I struggled to make that and I was reading everything I could. One thing I learned is what you said here, ya gotta think outside the box. If it was as easy as duplicating an experts blog, we would all be rich. But it’s not.
I posted about this today, you can make money on even a static site if you work at it a little, and then build it from there.
A year ago I was struggling to clear the $100 a month mark, but with patience and a little work, I have been able to grow that to over $2000 a month. As I have stated before I work a “day job” 50 hours a week, and until March I was also working a part time weekend job. So I obviously did not have a lot of time to put into it, but, I was still able to get it going.
And I think a big part of that is I never blogged about “how to make money”.
Date/Time: 8-6-2007 15:38:07 Comment #4237
wow Garry that’s a real motivator, reading that makes me want to start up ANOTHER site… oh boy.
Date/Time: 8-6-2007 16:41:11 Comment #4238
Hey Matt,
In general, comments typically illustrate expressions poorly. It’s hard for me to decipher whether your comment was communicating on motivation to start a second site or if your comment was sarcastic? Either way, speak you mind, I am open to discussion further to how you feel and look forward to your response back.
Date/Time: 8-6-2007 17:40:18 Comment #4240
Great post Garry. I agree. I started in the make money online blog world back in 2005, since then it has grown to be unbelievably competitive. If I were to start over, I probably would have chosen a different niche. However, since I started so long ago, at least my domain has some authority.
Good luck with your new blog, I am going to go check it out.
All the best,
George
PS. Good job scaring people away from my niche
Date/Time: 8-6-2007 18:45:56 Comment #4244
Hi Garry!
You’re not old! And as I hear you talk about your business, I know you know that age is irrelevant — almost, except that experience counts. You have that. It shows in what you write.
I wonder though what would happen if you not only choose something different, but slso something that you love.
Date/Time: 8-6-2007 19:41:34 Comment #4246
Old? Please, you’re just a youngun. I’ll be 39 next month. Trust me, when you know you’re staring 40 in the face, that’s when you get to claim to be old.
Great article, hon. A few points kind of hit home, but at the same time, made me think a little. Well done.
Date/Time: 8-7-2007 07:30:45 Comment #4256
Garry sorry if I came off as sarcastic. I didn’t mean to be at all. Your aticle got my mind racing and coming up with new ideas. I was saying “oh boy” as in “dude I have lots to think about!”.
Date/Time: 8-7-2007 08:26:01 Comment #4258
Liz makes a great point!
My love for Internet Marketing is what has lead me to focus more of my time on my “canimakebigmoneyonline” blog, as opposed to some of the other blogs my wife and I started.
Do what you love! Great advice.
Date/Time: 8-7-2007 09:39:38 Comment #4261
Hi Garry,
If there is one bit of good advice that every blogger who hopes to make money online should read and take to heart it is that which you have covered in this post. Great job.
Your Blogwheels.com site is a perfect example of how to make money with a niche site. The niche must be focused yet be in a big enough market so that you can get some decent targeted traffic to the site with SEO. I’m sure that you will do well with it.
I see you are using the Prosense Wordpress theme now for http://www.garryconn.com I’m using it for several financial related blogs and others and am really pleased with my Google rankings. I use it with the All In One SEO Plug-In and am regularity showing up on page one.
Cheers!
Date/Time: 8-7-2007 15:07:27 Comment #4268
Hi George,
If nothing else, it makes it a whole lot more fun!
Date/Time: 8-8-2007 01:40:23 Comment #4285
older blogger? well you are not alone. I am already 30 too.. by the way, I am wondering when will you find the right theme for your blog. it seems that you always change blog’s theme
Date/Time: 8-8-2007 11:10:49 Comment #4295
as they say “young at heart” .. keep on doing what u love
i myself am 28 going on 29 … how time flies
Date/Time: 8-8-2007 13:58:17 Comment #4301
Okay Garry now you are making ME feel old and I’m only two years older than you! lol. To be honest, I was shocked when I found out how old you are. You seriously come across as someone older and wiser than we are “suppose” to be in our early 30s. Kudos to you.
As for making money, I’ve accepted that I’m never going to make much money with blogging no matter how much I want to. Why? Because I’m just not able to focus on one thing for a long time. That’s why I just stick to my blogs about notta lotta. lol
Date/Time: 8-8-2007 14:51:18 Comment #4302
Ok, your all kids. Damn. Where are all the old folks?
It is possible to make money with a “Seinfeld” blog, you know the type, just like the show, a blog about nothing.
It takes a little more work, but if you focus the individual post, build up a good archive of material, a good PR and have good SEO practices, it can make money.
Date/Time: 8-8-2007 14:56:02 Comment #4303
David,
I am 40, so at least I am closer to your age. The demographics for the whole money making market is quite young.
Date/Time: 8-9-2007 05:11:13 Comment #4308
interesting points Gary.
My experience is that my most profitable blogs are those with low RSS readership and you just blog on a profitable niche. It so much harder to monetize a blog about blogging and making money!
I’m curious why on all your blog posts they have a popularity of 1%? it doesn’t look too good
Date/Time: 8-9-2007 08:39:55 Comment #4313
@ Matt,
Good deal man… expressions within comments can be hard to recognize sometimes.
@ Liz,
Thanks for the above compliments about my writing. That’s really cool to say!
@ SELaplana,
I don’t know… what do you think about this current theme? I do change my themes like they were going out of style… wait, maybe they really do go out of style.
All kidding aside, I may add a cool graphic to the top of the site, but pretty much WYSIWYG.
@ Uncle Sha,
Good to see you back and commenting.
@ Jo, David, George,
With how fast paced my life is going (seems like around the area of twice the speed of light LOL) tacking on another ten years will go by just like the last. It seems like yesterday when I met my wife and we had our first son. Almost ten years later we have our youngest daughter and she is now 16 months old. Time flies… it really does!
@ Tejvan,
Thanks for your compliments. I agree with your comment. I have quite a few dot Com sites within different niches. On the question about popularity. The 1% you see are on newly published articles. I think any post I make that has over 10 comments and still holds a 1% popularity indicates that there are some really hard and heavy articles here with true interest. I have a formula used for weighting the articles I write. The formula keeps it real. I don’t bloat, nor do I brag. WYSIWYG… If the article has 1% popularity, you can bank on that being accurate. If you stumbled upon a post I have written that has 25% then you should know what it is competing up against and that it is something that has truly put a ripple within the blogosphere. I keep my stats real.
Date/Time: 8-9-2007 08:42:32 Comment #4314
Gerald, sorry I missed your comment!
Thanks for the compliments about the article. And yes, the ProSense Series Wordpress Themes are very nice. They are clean, professional and I can see that a lot of careful planning went into the development. It’s a very nice and stable theme.