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Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

johnathanward.com

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Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#91

Post by SonicSoul »

gadders wrote: post #45
josefresco wrote: post #11

Like many, I was tempted into these same areas - driven by success stories and my own technical knowledge which fooled me into thinking it would be "easy". What I found is there's lot of money to be made in... telling people how to make money! Those guys like Shoemaker who have an almost cult following end up making an empire on those in the "pyramid" below them. Not to say this is shady, just that the real "riches"…

Ramit Sethi does this as well. An info product on how to see info products...

He is an amazing speaker and an even better marketer. But every time I get lulled into signing up for his newsletter I have to unsubscribe after a few months because the amount of self promoting fud is unbearable. But even he admitted that a lot of his readers skip straight to the "buy" link because they like him so much, so I guess the ratio of value to promotion can shift noticeably once you have the audience

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#92

Post by kposehn »

codingdave wrote: post #2

The general online audience has matured over the past 10 years, and most people have an excellent filter to avoid clicking ads, which includes affiliate links. You can still monetize a site these days, and make some money while not being sketchy, but it requires approaching it as a service to your users, not as an exploit of your users. What I mean by this is that whatever your site is, if your audience has a legit i…

> The general online audience has matured over the past 10 years, and most people have an excellent filter to avoid clicking ads, which includes affiliate links.

I would disagree. I've found a lot of people - especially in tech - have this mindset. The opposite is true, most notably due to the success of giants like Facebook (for people clicking on ads) and huge affiliates like RetailMeNot (a public company).

The difference is that the most successful affiliates have realized the right call to action is _value_ (for white hat) or that they can use the "magic pill" (for black hat), and as such the market has changed drastically.

> But if you are adding links and talking about products solely because you want those nickels from someone clicking it, you are not helping your audience, and they know it, and they will react accordingly.

Why does wanting the commission also entail not helping your audience? You're making a conclusion that isn't valid here because you assume that 100% of affiliate links (because they are placed to earn money) add no value for the visitor. Smart affiliates know that if you want the commission, you have to make it valuable.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#93

Post by kposehn »

logn wrote: post #62
Retra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm somewhat surprised that anyone would have spent 10 years flailing in this arena and not learned that. "I’ve always had some type of entrepreneur trapped inside me. [...] I decided I’ll start a blog and make money via AdSense ads." This is not the thought process of someone with the competence to know how to learn effectively. It sounds like someone who just wants to be a cog in a money wheel, both learning as li…

The credit limit was about fronting money to grow the business. Overall I think HN is being too harsh. This is a person taking a rather honest look at himself and giving us a glimpse into his life that also happens to capture an interesting history of the Internet.

I agree about the harshness here. I'm surprised and a bit disappointed.

Affiliates are often very secretive because the barrier to entry is extremely low, and as such they don't want to reveal what they do or how. That he took that step, even in retrospect, to post it publicly is to be commended. Why not reveal the workings and the lessons he has learned? Let's value it for what it is.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#95

Post by josefresco »

butwhy wrote: post #14
josefresco wrote: post #11

Like many, I was tempted into these same areas - driven by success stories and my own technical knowledge which fooled me into thinking it would be "easy". What I found is there's lot of money to be made in... telling people how to make money! Those guys like Shoemaker who have an almost cult following end up making an empire on those in the "pyramid" below them. Not to say this is shady, just that the real "riches"…

I disagree. He probably makes a bit of cash on that but he has a lot of case studies that show legitimate success. He's the kind of guy who explains exactly how he did it as well.

Yes Shoemaker does both well - however beyond the superstars, there's a huge network of "how to make money online" websites/people whos income dwarfs those who are actually practicing the concepts.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#96

Post by josefresco »

johnward wrote: post #32
ianlevesque wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, might be running a whole network of blogs by now.

Looking back now I think I would try to not make money via ads on my blogs and instead create some info product that I could have sold to that audience. A complement to the information that they were already coming to the site to get.

Diversifying income would be key - AdSense+Private Ad Sales+Affiliate Promotions with your own "products" sprinkled in. That way if an affiliate cuts you off, or Google decides to nuke your account you still have other income streams.

*You can tell I haven't left this market completely ;)

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#97

Post by pjonesdotca »

logn wrote: post #62
Retra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm somewhat surprised that anyone would have spent 10 years flailing in this arena and not learned that. "I’ve always had some type of entrepreneur trapped inside me. [...] I decided I’ll start a blog and make money via AdSense ads." This is not the thought process of someone with the competence to know how to learn effectively. It sounds like someone who just wants to be a cog in a money wheel, both learning as li…

The credit limit was about fronting money to grow the business. Overall I think HN is being too harsh. This is a person taking a rather honest look at himself and giving us a glimpse into his life that also happens to capture an interesting history of the Internet.

That this captures a little spoken about history of the Internet is my main reason for appreciating the article.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#98

Post by Retra »

logn wrote: post #62
Retra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm somewhat surprised that anyone would have spent 10 years flailing in this arena and not learned that. "I’ve always had some type of entrepreneur trapped inside me. [...] I decided I’ll start a blog and make money via AdSense ads." This is not the thought process of someone with the competence to know how to learn effectively. It sounds like someone who just wants to be a cog in a money wheel, both learning as li…

The credit limit was about fronting money to grow the business. Overall I think HN is being too harsh. This is a person taking a rather honest look at himself and giving us a glimpse into his life that also happens to capture an interesting history of the Internet.

My only concern here is that anyone would be surprised that a thought process of "I want to make money -> Let's do whatever is popular" doesn't result in success or production of lasting value.

(A) Everybody and their mothers will think the same thing and

(B) that equation doesn't have any value production in it, and

(C) what happens when the fad dies?

It is a wholly selfish act, and I think it's worth the harshness. Not every mistake is redeemed by a sob story. Some are just not worth making in the first place. (Especially when they are very old and common mistakes.)

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#99

Post by kposehn »

AdamFernandez wrote: post #55
johnward wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founding a real startup with real products also leads to failure most of the time. We just hear about the successes more often on HN.

I would imagine that online 'get rich quick schemes' have an even higher rate of failure than most startups. Perhaps 99.99% versus 90-95%?

Let's separate get-rich-quick from the actual process of making affiliate campaigns, testing and scaling them.

Here's some stats (top-level, very approximate) from my own experience:

* Number of campaigns created & stage 1 testing: 500+ * % to stage 2: ~25% * % from stage 1 to 2: 20% * % from stage 2 to "success": ~50%

In the end, I'd say that roughly 5% of my affiliate campaigns were successful. Success is defined as eventually returning the test budget * 4.

The key was that if I got a campaign to stage 2 I had a very high likelihood of profit. Literally 50% of the stage 2 campaigns became successes (most stage 2's broke even close to it).

Of those successful campaigns, only 10% of them generated 90% of my profits on average. The end result is that ~1% of all the campaigns I made made 90% of the profits, which is quite accurate.

Over the span of 7 years of being a full-time affiliate (excluding the part-time years) 12 campaigns were the main money drivers.

Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure

#100

Post by pjonesdotca »

timepiece wrote: post #34
josefresco wrote: post #11

Like many, I was tempted into these same areas - driven by success stories and my own technical knowledge which fooled me into thinking it would be "easy". What I found is there's lot of money to be made in... telling people how to make money! Those guys like Shoemaker who have an almost cult following end up making an empire on those in the "pyramid" below them. Not to say this is shady, just that the real "riches"…

This always disturbs me that only a handful people make it big such as Shoemaker while the rest of the population sample barely make ends meet. I don't know if this has anything to do with some obscure physical law like these phenomenons that best described by a normal/Gaussian distribution or just explained by the probability theory (read: sheer luck) and the success ratio of this magnitude in these "games" or life…

Taleb has said before (it could have been in 'Black Swan') that focusing just on the successful massively distorts the reality of the curve. So much so that it would be more important to study as many of the failures than and all but ignore the successes.
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