Even through it’s not day 30, I’ve decided to launch into some of the learning’s from the challenge.
The biggest problem I’ve experienced in this challenge is dealing with my own expectations. I “expected” to be able to launch 10 websites, get to onto page one for at least a few and place some advertising on at least 2 or 3 and make some money all within 30 days. Clearly, I need to reset my expectations. That being said, I blame the industry for my false expectations. Let me explain why.
The golden days
I’m told of stories where once upon a time you could whack up a webpage overnight, cheaply drive visitors to the site using pay per click advertising and web development skills. Let’s say this was around 2004. Traffic was super easy to get, skills mattered and money was flowing like a river as people purchased “information” that simply was not previously available. This was fast money and easy entry into the market. Wow, I wish I wasn’t into computer games back then.
Changes
Like all things in life, change and big business happened. Around 2007 big changes came to internet. Information that was once valued and hard to get was now openly free, pay per click advertising was gamed so massively that Google changed the rules making it more expensive. Now you needed a much bigger budget to play. Manipulation of the search engine results was common knowledge so competition was starting to skyrocket. Those who got a foot hold in the early days were able to adapt, those trying to break in were in trouble. Money was not so easy, and the barrier to entry was raised. Damn.
Tough times
Based on my personal challenge, I now believe fast money is GONE and the easy entry into the market is GONE. This means the so called gurus who sell “how to make money on the internet” or the “make $1232 a day in less than 2 weeks” are forgetting some very critical components. Most of the people I have been sucked into buying products from appear to be teaching methods that don’t work because they are based on 2004 or 2007 approaches.
The information forgets to mention you need 12 – 18 months of time, a way to overcome the incredible amount of competition and lots of money if you want to have a serious play.
My complaint here is the false expectations that have become part of the make money online (MMOL) industry. Sadly, the only way to realise they are false is to buy the products, test them and then get upset because you didn’t make a cent. Then you feel cheated and pissed off. This gives you the impression that the only people making money are the ones you just purchased from.
This in turn creates a bizarre culture of people trying to sell make money online systems that they don’t really understand. Why do they do this? because they are trying to make money online quickly because that’s what they realised others are doing.
I completely understand the point of marketing is to make something attractive to buyers, and I understand the information is technically correct, however to me it makes for a bad experience.
Dealing with the problem
It all boils down to resetting my own expectations. For me, with my current skills (none) making even a dollar in less than 30 days is extremely difficult. Sure it might be possible to “make $1232 a day in less than 2 weeks”, however the next bit should be, “if you’ve got 5 years of experience behind you“.
First big lesson
I think my first big lesson is to set realistic expectations. For me, based on my production and capacity, it looks like it takes about 5 days to setup and populate a site, 15 days to setup a reasonable link network and 10 days to incrementally build links and improve the site. While this is 30 days it’s 30 days on the one site, not 10. Thats my first lesson….
