You hear it all the time – to become a successful blogger takes a lot of hard work. Seems logical enough, like everything else in life, if you want something with big rewards then it will take hard work.

To become the CEO of a large corporation is hard work. To become a movie star is hard work. To write a book that becomes a New York Times bestseller is hard work. And so of course, to become a successful blogger takes hard work.

But what does hard work mean? To dig a six foot hole in the desert sun is hard work. To carry a piano up ten flights of stairs is hard work. To copy the entire dictionary under candle light is hard work.

So when the advice is: to become a successful blogger you need to do a lot of hard work – what does that mean?

What Most People Think Hard Work Means

Some confuse hard work with time. They believe that doing something for many hours a day means that they are working hard. They say, I have been working so hard – I work on my blog from 7pm to 1 am every evening. For them hard work means spending a lot of hours working on the blog.

Then there are those that believe that simply doing something, anything, relating to the blog means they are working hard. They do not specify what they are doing because it is not important. They say: I am always doing something to my blog therefore I work hard.  For them it is important that they are working on the blog and irrelevant what they are doing.  If they are doing something to the blog then they are working hard.

Finally there are those that think working hard means finding the time to work on the blog amongst all the other things that need doing throughout the day.  They have a full time job, 2 kids, and a dog with a broken leg.  Their days are busy at work, feeding the kids, and rehabilitating the dog.  The fact they also manage to work on their blog for 2 hours a days means that they work hard.

Spending lots of time on your blog, doing something to the blog and being a busy person does not mean you are working hard.  Working hard by carrying a heavy rock up a mountain everyday for 6 hours a will not help you become a successful blogger, neither will these forms of working hard.  They seem like hard work, but they are not and so will not increase your chance of having a successful blog.

What Does Hard Work Really Mean?

Working hard has nothing to do with how much time you spend on your blog, or how busy you rehabilitating your crippled dog.

Working hard means doing things that are hard to do. To succeed with your blog you need to do the things that most people do not do because they are hard.  Most people are lazy and gravitate towards the easy road – most people have failing blogs.

Everybody can change the background color, leave comments on other blogs, visit forums, submit low quality articles.  Doing these things might help your blog a little bit but they will not make you success.  Becoming a successful blogger is hard work – if you are doing easy things then you will not succeed.

Think of the thing that you keep putting off.  The thing that you know you should do but always find an excuse to do something else – something easier.  That thing is the hard work.  That’s the thing that will increase your chance of becoming successful.

By doing actual hard work, work that most people do not do, you raise yourself above the masses.  Most people would rather spend the whole day leaving comments on blogs, then spend 2 hours doing concentrated and mind twisting work.

Writing a guest post is an excellent example of real hard work.  Guest posts have to be good or they get rejected.  You have to think, write, rewrite, rethink.  Not everybody can write a post good enough to be accepted.  Its hard work and easy to avoid doing.

Writing comments on other people’s blogs is simple cruise control work.  No thinking required.  Read the post, something pops in the head, spit it out and hit submit.  No risk of rejection.  No stress.  Its so easy anybody can do it.  And that is the problem.  Leave comments on blogs if you enjoy it, but do not consider it as working hard on your blog.

Fortunately differentiating between imagined hard work and real hard work is not difficult.  Just ask yourself, I am doing something that most bloggers do not do because it is difficult?  If the answer is yes then you are really working hard and the rewards will come.

Any Comments?

What YOU Expect vs Reality, What YOU Should Do

The concept is simple.  Buy an empty lot, build a little office,  toss in  a desk and two chairs.   Go through the newspaper classifieds and buy a dozen used cars.  Hose the cars down, put on a fresh layer of wax, buff and shine, vacuum the carpets, Armor-all the interior and kick the tires to make sure the car holds together.  Get a bright shiny red pen and write a price on the windshield – add an exclamation point and circle.  Then wait for the customers to arrive.

Had I been born 30 years ago I would have tried being  a used car salesman.  I understand cars, know how to fix and clean them.  Nothing about the prospect of selling cars would of scared me.  Just like blogging – easy money.

But this website has taught me that I would have been a terrible used car salesman and would not of made any money – just like blogging.

A family walks onto the lot, I approach them.  They tell me what they want and I show them a car.  They like the color, it is clean and it runs.  Does it run well the father asks.  Yes, it runs well I reply with honest smile.  The man takes it for a test run.  Good acceleration, good brakes.  The kids like it too.  Daddy, buy this car.  The man looks at the price, then at the sky, then at his shoes and finally after a short pause at me.  The car is a little out of our price range.  What is your price range?  The man looks at his kids, then at the car and then at me.  He coughs out a price 40% lower then the sticker price.

The family drives off in their old car.  Another sale lost.  Haven’t sold a car in weeks.  I would have been a terrible used car salesman because I cannot convince people to buy at sticker price. That is why I am also not making money with this website.

It Is All About The Dazzle, Lights And Big Signs

Used car salesmen do not work with new content.  They are selling used cars, not making new ones.  Every used car lot has the same bunch of cars.  Being successful is all about how you present the used cars.

Successful  used car salesmen are flashy, fast talking, excited, and they can convince their customers that lemons are chocolate ice creams with rainbow sprinkles on top.  Their lots have blinking lights and neon sings.  Prices are crossed out, slashed and reduced.  They have the best deals in town.  Their deals will not last – limited time offers.  They have grand openings, clear out sales, end of years sale bonanzas.

They will do almost anything to sell you a car.  No restraint – it does not embarrass them to embellish.  The actual condition of the car is irrelevant.  It is everything around the car that matters – the salesman’s slick haircut, the sexy receptionist, the bright lights and exlamation marks.

Successful bloggers would be great used cars salesmen.  Especially the bloggers in my niche – ‘make money online’.  There is no new content in this niche (true for most niches except probably astronomy and Britney Spears)  – it is all used content.  Everything about making money has been said.  There is no new information – it is just repackaged information.

But there are good salesmen on the internet.  They can take used information, put lights on it, wax it, call it a limited offer, and make you feel like you need it.  They can take something that is free and sell it for $99.99.  It is not the information that they provide, it is the packaging they present it in.

Being a used car salesman is a talent.  Not everybody can do it.  Not everybody can get into the roles of adding value to something by making it sparkle and shine.

Becoming a successful blogger is the same as being a successful used car salesman.  It is not enough to just get a lot and put cars on it.  You need to get into character.  Your content is the least valuable part of the blog.  Everybody has content.  It is all about how you present the content.

Have a look at the successful bloggers.  There are some wild characters out there -  successful used car salesmen.  Cowboy hat, chest hair growing out in-between his top shirt buttons, proud father of a new baby boy.  A college football trophy on his desk.  You feel good around him –a friend.  All smiles and good news.  With all the lights and sounds of the lot every day is New Years Eve party.

Compare that with this blog – a parking lot with a bunch of old cars on it.  Someone approaches and asks, can I make money online?  In plain black unbolded text I reply, ‘ya maybe, but it’s a lot of work’.  No wonder nobody is buying cars from me.

Making More Money Online, What YOU Expect vs Reality, What YOU Should Do

Like a green oasis in the desert, a life giving miracle has appeared.  This website is making a profit.  Finally after 320 days this website has incurred $538.23 in costs and made $544.71 in revenue – revenue is a bigger number then the costs number.  That is a cool $6.48 that goes straight into my pocket.  A crisp five dollar bill and some jingling change.

Of course $6.48 is a lot less then the $10,000 I was hoping to have.  But I take is a learning experience.  I have no other choice, the only other thing I can take it as is a total failure; so in this case I am choosing optimism over the truth.  I learned that my expectation was way to high.  I year ago I thought that in 320 days I would be drinking hundred dollar wine and deciding between a red or black corvette.  Instead, I have made just enough money to buy a coffee and ride the bus.

Bitter?  Yep.  Basically I got ripped off.  I have put in 494 hours of work and received a meager $6.48.  This is criminal – a scam.  A rational human being would never accept these terms.  The only way a person could end up in this situation is by force or trickery.   In my case it was not force – nobody made me make a website.  I chose to make a website.  I chose to build a website because I believed that I would get paid fairly for my efforts.   

Who knows how I fell for it.  Or who did it to me.  Or how they benefit.  It is like the Kennedy assassination – the deeper you look the more mysterious it gets.  I have tried to analyze what happened, how I get duped, where did it all start.  My investigations have led nowhere.  Somehow I believed that the internet would be a great source of income.  I have no idea who did this to me.  But to keep my sanity I have stopped asking who and why.  Kennedy is dead and the circumstances around it strange – period.  I spent 494 hours to get $6.48 – period. 

What To Do With The Bitterness?

Being bitter raises an interesting problem for a webmaster.  There is no way to vent or redirect negative feelings.  At the work place it is easy to redirect bitterness. 

Let’s say you do not get the bonus you expected.  No problem.  Do not buy toilet paper, pens, calculators, or coffee – the office will supply you with these.  Take one or two items a day.  It’s not stealing, it is your bonus.  You can come to work a little later, have a longer lunch, leave a little earlier.  Its is not abuse, it is your bonus.  One way or another you will get your bonus.

Boss does not appreciate your work?  You work over the weekend to get the report on the boss’s desk first thing Monday morning and all you get is a ‘great – thanks’.  No problem.   Monday and Tuesday you play solitaire and browse your favorite websites with a clear conscience because you are simply recouping your weekend.

Having a bad day at work:  Co-worker talking in your ear about her stupid domestic issues?  Crappy computer crashes?  Client upsetting you with unrealistic demands?  Phone keeps ringing?  No problem.  Hit the keyboard a few times, open and close the laptop monitor many times and really fast, hang up the phone extra hard, start a dirty rumor about your co-worker and give her real domestic issues.

That’s what so great about the work environment.  You get bitter and upset, but at least there is something you can do to vent.  The workplace offers many ways to redirect that bitterness onto other people and office equipment.

Sadly a webmaster has no such luxury.  A webmaster works alone and with their own equipment.  Nothing to steal, nothing to hit, nobody to bad mouth.  Something goes wrong and all you can do is sit there and stew.  You could hit the keyboard but then you need to buy a new one.  You could have a longer lunch but then you will have to make it up later.  You could yell at the dog but he will just wag his tail and want to play catch.

Like a egg, a webmaster can only boil in their pot and harden.

Raking The Sand

The other day I was browsing Amazon for something to spend my $6.48 on.  I quickly discovered that I have enough money to pay for shipping but not enough for the product.  So I went to the only place where I can spend my website profits – the dollar store.

The pin wheel hat was too tight and the plastic gun did not look real.  But then I saw it.  As soon I as I tried it I knew it was exactly what I needed.  It is a simple thing.  Sand, rock and a rake – a mini zen garden.

Now it sits beside my computer.  Before I check my stats I pick up the rake with my left hand and begin to slide it across the sand.  It has a calming effect.  Little rocks are placed randomly in the sand so I rake around them.  The four little lines in the sand twist and turn around the rocks and relax me as I check my revenue stats.  Monks have zen gardens to bring them closer to nirvana.  I have my little zen garden to avoid destroying my own keyboard.

My zen garden has taught me something else.  Just because I spend lots of time on my website and receive almost nothing in monetary return, does not mean my time is wasted.  Now I know that there are even bigger wastes of time possible – like raking sand around little rocks.  This calms me and the bitterness floats away.

I strongly recommend that you purchase a zen garden.  It will really help you as webmaster and make you gentler and kinder blogger.

If 26 of you buy the zen garden via the Amazon link above then I will earn $6.50 from Amazon – almost doubling my annual profits.  I am raking with my left hand and pecking the keyboard with my right.

Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, What YOU Expect vs Reality, What YOU Should Do

The First Time You Were Surprised By Reality

Around puberty you begin to think about love.  Not the love for your mother or bone fetching friend Rusty.  You think about being in love.  Meeting that special someone to share your life with.  Walks in the park, smiles across a crowed room, tingles in the stomach, kissing as you suck a single strand of spaghetti.  You lay in your bed, stare at the ceiling and daydream about being in love.

Also around puberty you become inundated by the mass media machine.  Movies, music, books, and paintings.  You read books about eternal love, listen to songs about true love, watch movies that end with  ‘and they lived happily every after’,  your favorite picture is of a couple feeding each other grapes under a large oak tree.  The concept of love, how beautiful it is, how perfect it is, how eternal it is, forms in your young mind.

You cannot wait to be in love.  Everything will be perfect.

And then it happens.  You find somebody.  It is exciting – just like your favorite song said it would be.  Always smiling and skipping – everything just like in the movies.

Unfortunately you do not live in Disneyland – things do not end happily ever after.  Reality suddenly  arrives with a kick in the crotch.  Just knocks down the door and storms in, no knock, no ‘can I come in?’.  Love turns out nothing like you though it would be; like they told you it would be.  Instead of butterflies and rainbows there are slaps and flying dishes.  There is jealousy, pain, doubt and sometimes lawyers.  Cupid’s arrow hits the pulmonary artery and causes internal bleeding. 

Fortunately you are older now.  Now you know that mass media simply doles out what people want to hear.  Songs about love eternal sell.  Movies that end with happily ever after sell.  Paintings of couples embracing in the sunset sell.  Perfect love is not real but it sells.

Now you know better.  Your expectations about love are more realistic.  Hearing a song about love eternal causes the eyes to roll instead of the heart to swell.  Teens walk out of the movie theater with tears in their eyes, you are holding your mouth trying not to laugh.

Surprised By Reality Again

One day browsing the internet you come across a website that catches your attention.  A big flashy header, ‘Start your own blog today!’, it is easy, make lots of money, be famous.  You start getting excited.  This is exactly what you have been looking for.  To write and be famous.  To work from home and make lots of money.  To sit on the beach with your laptop and a martini.  You lay in your bed, stare at the ceiling and daydream about being a blogger.

The more you look into it the better it gets.  There are so many successful blogs out there – everybody is doing it.  And the best part is that it is so easy.  All you need to do is write a couple paragraphs everyday.  Visitors will adore your writing, they will tell their friends, your blog will have thousands of visitors in a matter of months.  No more nine to five at the office, goodbye idiot boss, time to get off your knees begging for a bonus.  Everything will be great – you will be a rich blogger.

Like a giddy little school girl on the first day of class, you start blogging.

Six month later you are a bitter old man feeding pigions in the park, cursing the cruel world with an occasional shake of the fist.  Without asking to come in, reality barged through the door again.  Writing everyday is not as easy as you expected.  You only have 50 visitors a day.  Instead of thousands of dollars you have hundreds of pennies.  Most of your time is spent deleting spam.  You dread the boring promotional tasks that need to be done everyday: commenting on blogs, writing articles, adding links to directories.  Being a blogger is nothing like you thought it would be.  It is hard work with little reward.

You were fooled by mass media again.  Stories of people making thousands of dollars a month.  Websites claiming that you can have a successful blog by working only a few hours a week.  Blogs claiming that all you need to do is buy their ebook and in no time you will be making a living from home.  They make these claims because they sell.

Now you know better.  Again.

Real Love, Real Blogger

Real love requires patience, persistence and hard work – so does being a successful blogger.

Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, What YOU Expect vs Reality

When I decided to create this website the first thing I did was open an account with a web host service.  The second thing was to create a few email accounts.

Three email account where created:

1. info@: this is used for the contact page.  When a visitor fills out the contact form and clicks send I get an email from info@.
2. roman@: I use this address when I want to email somebody or when I need to leave a contact address.  For example, on blog comments and on my AdSense account.
3. paj@: When someobody fills out the PAJ order page this email is used.

It is amazing how optimistic and ignorant I was.  The reason I created 3 different accounts was for organizational purposes.  I imagined that emails would be flooding in all day.  By having 3 email address I would be able to quickly determine what the email is about.  Is it a contact page submission, PAJ order, or a response to a blog comment I left?  It was suppose to be a great time saver.

Seven months have gone by since I created the email accounts.  No emails have come in via paj@.  Not a single order for a PAJ.  You are not surprised – I am.  Of course I did not expect 100’s of sales but at least 1 or 2 a month.  Nope – nothing.

I also expected that people would have questions and comments about the website.  Where did you get that number? How did you make that graph? Can you tell me how I can…?  I was actually worried that I would be spending all my time answering email questions and have no time to work on the website.  I have proof of my ignorant optimism – when you fill out the contact form the thank you message states:

Thank you for your comment. I read all emails, and I try to respond to all emails.

TRY to respond to all emails.  Large mail bags arriving everyday and my hand cramped up from writing to all my fans….I will try to respond to all emails.

Reality: the contact page has been up for 227 days.  I have received 12 contact page emails.  Around one contact form email every 20 days.  Wandering around the Sahara desert for 227 days I would certainly stumble upon a oasis more often.  Every time an email comes in from the contact form I think it is a mirage – it has been so long since I have seen one.  I will try to respond to all emails. 

A couple days ago I received one of the precious and rare contact form emails.  For me it is an event – I do not just open the email.  I savor it – somebody took the time to send me an email.  I get an coffee, close the door, turn on some music, and click on the email.  Before responding I read the email over and over again.  What do they need?  What are they asking?  How can I help?  Taking a sip of coffee my brain begins to formulate a response.

But the email I received a few days ago was different then the 12 before it.  I read it over and over again.  I could not believe what I was reading…it had to be a mirage.  An email that cannot exist. 

In essence it called me a liar.  It questioned my honesty.  It stated that the numbers on the website must be fabricated.

The reason the person doubted the numbers was that my AdSense revenues are too high for the first month.  The first month my AdSense revenue was $40 dollars.  That is too high.  The whole website it bullshit.  That was the message of the email.  It was not a mirage, the oasis was real, but the water was poisoned.

Why The AdSense Revenue Was High During First 2 Months

Here are my AdSense Revenue’s for the first 6 months:

As you can see for the first two months AdSense revenue was great.  Much more then the next five months.  How can this be explained?  There are two possibilities:

1. I am a liar – and this entire website is spattered with fabricated information.
2. The numbers are real. There is a rational and logical explanation for the high AdSense revenue.

The first possibility cannot be discounted – I am making the numbers up.  Even though the homepage states: “This website is a no nonsense, no hype, honest account of how it makes money online.”, it is just another lie on a fly infested dung heap of lies.  This website should have been called: How This Website Lies To Make Money (and how much it lies).

Of course there is nothing I can write to persuade you to believe me.  You do not know me and I do not know you.  The safest thing for you to do is not believe me.  The only argument I can give is that there is no reason for me to make up numbers.  How do I benefit by fabricating numbers?  Would this website make more money if I made less during the first month? I have no idea.  I cannot think of any reason to pull numbers from a hat.  It is actually easier for me to give the actual numbers because it requires no thought from me – I simply take numbers from one report and enter them into another.  Monkey work – no thought required.

Fabricating number with an intent to make more money is a level of thought beyond me.  I do not even know where to start.  Should I be claiming that I get more traffic?  Will more people click on Ads if I do?  Will that improve my SEO?  Or maybe it is better to claim that I get very little traffic.  People will come to my website just to see what kind of loser I am.  I do all this work and all I get is 10 visitors a day – would this website make more money if people thought I was an idiot?

Lets assume that you do not think I am an idiot and that the numbers are real.  What could be the logical explanation for the large AdSense revenue the first two months and then the big drop thereafter?

Here is a graph showing the traffic sources for this website for the previous 7 months:

Looking at the graph, what sticks out like a pimple on a super model, is that for the first two months most of the traffic is from referral sites.

The first two months I received almost no traffic from search engines – the website was new and not indexed.  All my traffic came from forums I visited.  Forums in my niche: make money online.  I was leaving comments and the signature was a link back to this website.  People who clicked on my signature where exactly like me – they were looking for ways to make money online.  They come to this website and see ads about making money online.  They clicked them because the ads are specifically targeted to them.

This was great.  I was driving perfectly targeted traffic to my website.  And made money with AdSense.  The problem was that it was a lot of work.  I spent countless hours on the forums reading and making comments.  Roughly an hour a day.  So for the entire month I spent 30 hours driving traffic to this website which earned me $40.14. A little over a dollar an hour.  Pathetic.

Month 2 was more of the same – 30 hours work for $50 dollars.  I needed a new plan.  Driving traffic from forums is too much work with very little gain.

So at the end of month 2 I changed strategy.  Instead of working like a donkey for a measly $1 an hour I changed focus.  Decrease my forum time and spend more time I getting search engine traffic.  Increase backlinks, improve SEO, add more content to the site.  Because of this change my AdSense took a big drop.  Search engine traffic is targeted but not as perfectly as the forum traffic.

The hope is that in the long run it will pay off.  If ever the day comes that search engines start to send me traffic in the 1000’s per day then I will be making a lot more in revenue and doing a lot less work.

And as this is going on I will be diligently updating the website’s tables and graphs.  Monkey see number, monkey copy number.  Of course, when I do become a success there will be lots of people who will not believe the numbers.  But whether that will help or hinder the website I have no idea.  Honest sells, but so does a lot of 0’s.

Actual Stats From The Website Used, Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, So You Want To Be A Webmaster...Get in my Head, What YOU Expect vs Reality