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

The Problem Of Being An Organ Grinder…

The problem with being an organ grinder is that the monkey will dance only while the music plays.  So to make the monkey dance you need to be there to turn the handle round and round, over and over again.  You turn, music plays, monkey dances.

As an organ grinder, everyday you get up early in the morning.  Feed the monkey a date, shine the organ, and head to the streets.  You drudge along and push the organ to your allotted spot on the corner – the monkey still tired, sleeps on your shoulder.

At 7:30 you start.  Put the monkey on the organ, place the jar in the curb and step behind your organ.  Seeing the first group of people come around the corner you place your hand on the handle, heavy breath, sign, and spin.  For the next 8 hours the monkey will dance and you will spin the handle.  All day you hear the same melody round and round interrupted only by the sound of quarters clinking as they fall into the jar.

The monkey needs you to be there.  Without you spinning the handle there is no music, without music the monkey does not dance, without a dancing monkey nobody puts money into the jar.

The Problem Of Being An Employee…

The problem with being an employees is that your boss needs to see you dance.  5 days a week 8 hours a day you need to dance in front of your boss.  Your boss only pays if he sees you at the office performing the employee dance.

7:30 you arrive at the office and the music starts.  “Good morning boss”, “Good morning employee”.  You hang your coat in the cloak room, say hi to employee2.  Turn on your computer, go to lunch room, get coffee mug with company logo, pour coffee in cup, say hello to employee3, walk back to desk, check your email, the phone rings, you click some keys on the keyboard, 8 hours to go.  Your boss needs to see you dance for 8 hours a day.

If your boss sees you dancing for a month then at the end of the month he will throw money into your jar.

The major drawback of being an employee is that you only get paid while you are at work.  You only get paid if your boss sees you in the office.  As soon as you leave the office the money stops – you are off the clock.

To get money, you need to be in front of your boss going through the motions of an employee.  It doesn’t matter if you are adding value or not, only that you are there.  As long as you are spinning the handle the monkey dances.

This is a huge waste of your time.  The work that you accomplish in a day could be done in a couple of hours.  You are smart, you know what you are doing, you know the most efficient way to do your job – you could have everything done before noon.  But that does not matter.  You have to be there all day.

Also being an employee means that throughout the working day, regardless of what you are doing, you get paid the same amount.  One hour you are designing a product that will make the company 1000’s of dollars in revenue – you get paid $15.25 for that hour.  The next hour you are painfully relieving yourself from last night’s spicy chili dogs – you get paid $15.25 for that hour.

As an employee there is no way to value your time.  Each hour has the same value to you, every hour you get paid the same amount.  So the obvious thing to do as an employee is to try to do the least amount possible – the amount just above the point of being fired.  And why not?  Why work hard, why try to get things done efficiently, properly and quickly?  Regardless of how it is done you get paid.  Why get it done early?  You have to do the office waltz till 5pm regardless if you are done or not.

Being an employee sucks all creativity, productivity and incentive out of you while while you are there – and when you are not there you do not get paid.

Websites Are the Perfect Dancing Monkeys

In one hour I have to be at work.  The next 9 hours will be a complete waste of time.  So, to cheer myself up I will remind myself of the benefits of having a website:

• Websites work all the time.  You do not need to be there.  You can be clipping your toes, tormenting the cat, or wondering the street aimlessly – does not matter what you do – the website will be working.  You do not have to be always spinning the organ’s handle to make the music play.
• Working on your website you become a productive and optimized superhuman.  You do not look like you are working – You are working.  It is not a dance.  You are actually trying to get the most done in the least amount of time.  And there is a direct relationship between the quality of work and the amount you get paid.  The better your product the more you earn.
• As an employee you only get paid one time for your effort.  If you write a great report you will get paid the hours that where spent writing the report.  Even if that report is used by the company for years after you leave – you still just get paid one time.  But for a website the webpage you write keeps paying over and over again – potentially forever.  You only need to write it once.  Online it will be generating revenue for you 24 hours a days, every day, for years.

Websites are dancing monkeys that never stop and you do not need to always be there turning a handle round and round for it to dance.

So You Want To Be A Webmaster...Get in my Head, 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

Your visitors are strangers. You know almost nothing about them. All you are told is where – where in the world they are located, and where on the internet they came from.

There are occasions when knowing the location of your visitor matters, if you are selling snow tires and your visitor is from Egypt then you will not make a sale. But for the majority of cases geographical location is irrelevant. At most it reveals the local time for your visitor. If it is morning for him then he is grumpy, if it is evening then he is either full of wine or tired – how you can use this information is unknown.

The other where is the important one. From where did the visitor come from? There are three possibilities:

1. Some other site
2. Search Engine
3. Address bar or Bookmark/Favorite

Knowing from where your visitor arrived is vital information. Because when you know from where they came, you know their intent.

Know Their Intent, Predict Their Behavior

Like the father of a beautiful daughter, your main concern is: what is the intent? A boy walks up to the door, rings the doorbell, father opens, “hello…what are your intentions with my daughter?” The coy boy replies, “Nothing much, we are going to play baseball. I like to pitch and your daughter enjoys being catcher. After the game we are going to a BBQ for some hotdogs, which reminds me, your daughter needs to bring some buns – I bring the wieners.” The father smiles and shakes the young boys hand, ‘you kids have fun’.

Unfortunately you cannot ask your visitors about their intentions, the best you can do is infer. And the most useful piece of information about their intent is to know from where they came. Unlike the word of a horny school boy about to take your daughter on a date, knowing how your visitors came to your site is a true description of intent.

Why is intent important? Knowing intent allows you to predict visitor’s behavior on your site.

Obviously you want your visitors to behave a certain way. For this site I want my visitors to do at least one of these four actions:

1. Click an Ad
2. Purchase an affiliate product
3. Purchase my product
4. Backlink to this site

Visitors who do none of the above can be ignored – they do nothing for this site. If you are reading this blog then you probably belong to the ignorable category. You are familiar with this site so you will not click on the ads or buy the products. The only way to turn yourself into a valuable visitor is to backlink to this website. Some of you have done it, but most of you have not and will not.

If I want visitors to behave in one of the four ways above then I need to look at their intentions. Once I know their intentions then I know how they will behave.   So once I know which traffic sources brings me the properly behaving visitors then I can focus all my energy into getting more traffic from those source.

The Intent of the Social Website Visitor

Social website visitors have no intent. They just drift around aimlessly from one website to another. They like funny, shocking, sexy, and strange. If you do not provide one of these then they are gone – looking for the next zap of instant satisfaction.

They are pigeons moving the mouse and pressing the button hoping to land somewhere that dazzles the eye. Click, look, click, look, click, look. If the there are lots of colors, pictures, videos and sounds they will clap their hands ecstatically and stay – otherwise they are gone.

These visitors have no intent. They are aimlessly wondering around the internet killing time. With no intent they are useless for this website. They are not interested in anything I have to offer. They arrive at the website; see all the words, yawn, and leave. That is why I completely ignore social traffic. No need to promote via facebook, digg, twitter. I give visitors the option to do it for me, but I will not do it.

The Intent of the Search Engine Visitor

These are visitors with direction and purpose. These people are not wasting their time walking around randomly hoping that something interesting happens. They arrive at your site with their intent written on their foreheads. Hello, I am here looking to ‘make money online’, can you help me? Yes I can. Click on one of these conveniently placed ads which will show you how to make $5000 a month online. Thank you, thank you too.

Hello, I am here because I want to know ‘how to build a website’, can you help me? Yes I can, buy my starter kit and you will have a money making website in no time. Thank you, thank you too.

See how pleasant it is when you know what the visitor wants. No guess work involved, no trying to find something that the visitor finds interesting. When you know exactly what the visitor wants you can easily direct their behavior into an action that benefits you.

Image you have a website selling a Philips screw driver. What would you rather receive – 10,000 visitors from a social website looking to be entertained, or 100 visitors from a search engine that typed in ‘buy philips screw driver’?

Intent is everything.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, What YOU Should Do

A little birdie told me that I have a guest post on Problogger.  This is great news.  With over 15,000 visitors a day Problogger is the biggest blog for bloggers.  And with a Page Rank of 6 this website will receive a great backlink along with the exposure.

Exposure and a great backlink should give this website a much needed boost.  Unfortunately ’should’ is not good enough.  What if I get a traffic boost for a couple days and then things settle back to normal – back to 60 visitors a day.  I want proof that a guest post on Problogger provides a long term benefit for this website.

Without a bubbling cauldron and a dash of bat wings it is difficult to determine with certainty whether the guest post will help in the long run.  The best I can do is figure out statistically whether sites with a guest post on Problogger are doing better then sites without a guest post on Problogger.

Question: Do people who have done a guest post on Problogger have more success with their sites then those who have not done a guest post?

Most Sites Fail

In a previous post (What Are The Odds Your Site Will Fail) I tried to determine the success rate of sites by taking the URL’s of Problogger commentors 3 years ago and seeing how their sites are doing today.  The current state of the sites where put into three categories:

• Dead (0-500 visitors/day)
• Serious Injury (500-2000 visitors/day)
• Alive and Well (2000+ visitors/day)

The results where humbling but promising.  Popular lore is that 99% of sites fail.  But according to the results things are not that terrible.  Here is the current state of site owners that commented on Problogger 3 years ago:

Instead of 99% failing only 72% are dead three years later.  Grim, but better then expected.   Commenting on Problogger does seem to give you a statistical advantage.

Most Guest Posters Succeed

A commentor on Problogger has a 72% chance their site will be dead in three years.  But now I am guest poster.  I have advanced from commentor to guest poster, what are the odds that my website will fail?

Determining the answer is simple.  Thanks to the great archive on Problogger I can go back in time and gather the URL’s of all the guest posters.  Then run them through a traffic estimator and see how the guest poster’s sites are doing today.

So with Vivaldi blasting out of the speakers I spent the day going through the Problogger archives gathering guest posters URLs.  From January 2007 to June 2009 I collected all the guest posters and put their URLs in a table.  If the post started off with something like “this is a guest post from…” I grabbed the URL.

After a few hours I accumulated 63 distinct guest posters.  Then I ran each one through a traffic estimator (webtraffic24.com) and noted how much daily traffic they currently receive.
With all the data collected I broke the results up into the same three groups – dead, serious injury, alive and well.  Here are the results (download table):

54% of Problogger guest posters have a successful site.  And only 24% ended up dead.  This is a big difference compared with people that only comment on Problogger.  I have drastically increased my odds of success with my guest post.  Now it is a coin toss – heads I win, tails I lose.

Why Does Guest Posting Increase Your Chances Of Success?

Answering this question bumps against the classic problem of causality.  There is no way to tell what causes what.  Do people with guest posts on Problogger end up with successful sites, or do people with sites that become successful guest post on Problogger?  Do people who smoke end up with cancer, or do people with a cancer gene end up smoking?  There is no way to tell.

All that can be argued is that if you belong to the group that smokes then you have a greater chance of having cancer, and if you belong to the group with a guest post on Problogger then you have a greater chance of having a successful site.

How much of the success can be credited to the guest post and how much can be credited to your site?    Again, no way to tell.  Most likely it is a tangled combination of the two.  Here is how it works:

1. You create a site. You think it is good but are uncertain because with little exposure not enough people have seen it to judge it.
2. You write a guest post for Problogger. It gets accepted – this confirms your suspicion that your writing and content is good (at least Problogger thinks it is good enough for his blog).
3. Your guest post goes live and exposes your site to a lot of people. Because your site is good, the visitors stay and tell their friends.
4. Your site becomes a success.

Your site becomes a success for two reasons: it is a good site and exposure.  To get the exposure you need a good site.  You cannot have one without the other.

It is not the guest post by itself that increases your chance of success, it is the fact that you have a good site and you get exposure.  It has been said a million times, in a million different ways – before anything else, before thinking about SEO, social networking, promotion, backlinks etc. make sure you have a good site.  Without a good site you are simply digging a hole to China – you will drown in a pool of hot lava.

Will This Website Become A Success Because Of A Guest Post?

I do not know.  But I have dramatically increased my odds by being a guest poster for Problogger.  Now I am hanging with the right crowd.  Mingling with winners.  Chess club is great for playing chess, but if you want the cheerleaders you need to join the football team.  Of course, there is still a 50% chance of failure – high, but a lot less then 84%.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, What YOU Should Do