Internet marketing : how to make money online. Sort of.

Nearly everyone who has researched making money online has probably run into internet marketers.

These are the guys with websites that look a lot like this.

I’ve never subscribed to one of these sites, preferring to sit back and read what the blogs are saying but over time it’s hard not to become quite cynical.

It’s pretty much one big multi-level marketing scheme, in reality.

Rich Schefren runs coaching programs on how to make money on the internet. The problem is, the people he’s coaching are also running programs on how to make money from the internet. Mike Filsaime is the most famous student of Rich Schefren. He has all sorts of ‘make money from the net’ websites. Reading his testimonials, it looks like all his successful students are selling us programs telling us… how to make money from the internet. One wonders how they would envisage me, as a student, making money online. Perhaps by teaching others how to do so? Hmm…

Do any of their students ever actually sell STUFF? As in, real things? It’s just one big loop! Or even if they’re just selling electronic products, are any of them selling something NOT about making money from the internet (or something closely correlated to it)?

Yaro Starak, another Schefren devotee, owns (or used to own) BetterEdit.com. A legitimate enterprise, editing the work of students around the world. He started the blog Entrepreneurs-Journey.com to talk about this and also other aspects of business. After a while the content started on a downward slide to the point that he was almost continually talking about internet marketing products and the exruciatingly long upcoming launch of his Blog Traffic King program (although I think the name has now been amended to Blog Mastermind.) He’s now a ‘name’ in the internet marketing sphere but at what cost? By far his most interesting posts were the ones talking about the actual progression of his business. I miss them.

As an aside, the best thing Starak ever did was introduce me to the free books of Rich Schefren. Ignore his painful sales babble and just read the books, all of which have a couple of really good nuggets.

Another area is blogging. Darren Rowse is a big leader in the ‘how to blog professionally’ category. John Chow followed in ‘how to make money online’ and has spawned a whole army of followers who are all competing with him on the same ‘make money online’ keyword. They’re competing… ….with the guru. I don’t get it.

Blogs with semi-decent content about blogging can pick up 1000 RSS readers almost overnight. But the competition is growing as everyone is trying to get in on the Rowse and Chow pie. Meanwhile, the readership of both Rowse and Chow keeps on going up, and up, and up (and good on them for it).

Both of them are very credible in their own right: Rowse has a digital photography blog with more than 20,000 readers. Chow has a tech website which is his main source of income (scary, given that his blog generates US$12,500 a month.) The readers of both sets of blogs would do much better striking out on their own.

I honestly believe blogging for money is best left alone. To help promote a product, sure : David Airey does it brilliantly. But specifically to rake in advertising revenue? Even dumblittleman.com has 70,000 RSS subscribers but if you look at the cost of advertising yourself you’ll see he’s barely making anything.

There is money to be made, definitely, but the percentage of people succeeding in any real way is so tiny. A guru with thousands of devoted followers should be making more than $12,500 a month. If that’s what the BEST is making, imagine what’s left for the rest of us.