Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
johnathanward.com
Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
1–10 of 173 posts
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#2The 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 interest in specific products, and the next logical step in their personal workflow would be to buy something, go ahead and put in some affiliate links. It makes sense, and everyone gets what they need/desire.
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.
I'm somewhat surprised that anyone would have spent 10 years flailing in this arena and not learned that.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#3Sure, you can do all sorts of scammy things to squeeze a few dollars out of people in quasi-illegitimate ways, but if you want to build a sustainable, long-term business, you need to provide people with something they actually want.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#4Just a friendly note, you may want to do some revisions/proofreading.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#5I really enjoyed this article. I think anyone in direct marketing or sales has experienced highs and lows like the described.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#6I hate these picture gallery clickbaits sites on facebook. If you are visting mobile, almost every "next" click redirects you to some ad site and you "have to go back". And yes, I still click on them because i want to see funny/sexy stuff ;-)
I will never understand though how people manage to just "burn" serveral thousands of dollars after they got them. I like to save and don't need any of this funky stuff. Why would I want to spend 1200$ on some vodka? WTF, seriously!
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#7Just a friendly note, you may want to do some revisions/proofreading.
I think comments like this are OT and misplaced. It adds nothing to our discussion here and assumes that the author will read all of the comments here (though I did note that in this case the author has submitted the post himself). This is direct correspondence to the author, so send him a message.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#8Heya, I have the opposite problem - I keep inventing physical products, and the people who buy them are happy with their quality, but I'm too shy to market them properly. Want to talk?
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#9I hate these picture gallery clickbaits sites on facebook. If you are visting mobile, almost every "next" click redirects you to some ad site and you "have to go back". And yes, I still click on them because i want to see funny/sexy stuff ;-) I will never understand though how people manage to just "burn" serveral thousands of dollars after they got them. I like to save and don't need any of this funky stuff. Why wou…
usually people coming from a non-rich/poor family might have this need for "Status". it's not usually about having value for your money, but most the time is about feeding the ego, feeling the power and sending a signal of success to the world around you.
Re: Make Money Online: Documenting 10 Years of Failure
#10Really great read. What seems to be missing from the author's 10 years is actually building value. Affiliate marketing, arbitrage, finding a cheap ad platform to flip for some clicks - none of this is really building something of value for users to buy. I feel like 10 years spent product building or building up a set of useful services would have had a much greater ROI for this guy.