Why Bloggers Like Me Are A Waste Of Your Time
Meh, lately your blog has been the only one worth reading. no affiliate drama. No BS of you will make…
You know I’m wasting your time. I know I’m wasting your time.
You know nothing I ever say on this blog is ever going to change your business overnight. And I know I’ll never allow myself to publish anything that might. Affiliate marketing blogging for me has always been a delicate art of giving away just enough inspiration to make you feel that you’ve spent five minutes wisely, while providing enough cheap one liners to make sure you realize I’m not John Chow.
The reality of course is that I’m a waste of your time. And this is one of the surreal businesses where I can say something like that and not worry about losing readership because I know I’ll always be supplied with an endless line of lost spirits chasing the same dream.
“I can has money from the Internets?”
I believe a lot of people buy in to Internet Marketing blogs as a form of escapism from the real working world. Everybody likes to believe they can go from rags to riches without leaving their driveway. If the flog has taught us anything, it’s that people will put their money where their mouth is to chase something that’s too good to be true.
It’s tough to think of another industry that promises so much, delivers so little and looks so pathetic to the non-believers. It’s like we’re the Sons of Scientology. I half expect Tom Cruise’s shining mugshot to pop up on a Bizopp lander anytime now.
There are very few genuine success stories of affiliates who have made this gig work without having a dollar to spend, and yet that’s what so many bloggers would plead with you to believe. You might hear tales of guys who scraped by on $50 and the bare essentials of shared hosting or .info domains, but they all spent money. Maybe not much, but they still spent money.
And for every high profile blogger who creates the illusion that making money online is a springboard of simple steps to success, there are a thousand Johnny No Pockets who you never read about because they never made a dollar and left the biz with their tails trailing between their legs. Of course, many of them refuse to leave the business completely.
So they write about their experience and pass it off as success.
If you try and don’t succeed, pretend you did and write a fucking book about it. That’s pretty much affiliate marketing blogging in a nutshell. Nobody gives any true insight to influence your bottom line, myself included, because it’s just not worth it.
The true value of knowing what works in this industry is worth more than popping $7 per ebook to announce information that subsequently becomes useless thanks to copycats, and even more damagingly, those who are already competent marketers.
I look back at the blogging craze that surrounded the arrival of Plentyoffish as an advertising platform. A prime example of a lucrative market for affiliates that was rapidly swamped after a bunch of “experts” decided to unveil it as a secret traffic source capable of making you millions.
Well listen, if something is capable of making you millions, you’re obviously full of shit because you wouldn’t be selling that information for a millionth of the price in ebook form.
I know most of you are savvy enough to have figured this out for yourselves. I’m blessed with one of the smartest readerships of any affiliate blog out there. And I put that down partly to the fact that we both know I’m only going to reveal so much, allowing me to promise very little, and spend more quality time talking about my balls.
But if you’re new to affiliate marketing, or bemused by the bold promises you keep reading, let me be the first to admit it. Bloggers like myself are a waste of your time. None of us are generous enough to share our businesses with you, and anybody who is, won’t have a business for long.
Happy New Year, Affiliasphere!
Recommended This Week:
If you’re working in the dating market, check out Adsimilis. Definitely one of the better networks with a wide range of dating offers, all on high payouts, including lots of stuff in Europe and South America. I think you’ll like them.
Feel free to add Finch to your Facebook. Yes, this is the right link. My real name is not actually Finch. Also follow me on Twitter
You might be wasting my time but during my “real job” it’s a nice few minutes to read about something else.
“If you try and don’t succeed, pretend you did and write a fucking book about it.” – the code to live by if you got any of the clickbank product that are always released by the same people over and over and over again, some shit, different toilet.
And we know that reading your blog is a waste of time, but I still prefer it to TMZ 🙂
I think the first affiliate blogs I stumbled across were Diorex and AOJon way way back in the day. At the time their usefulness boiled down to their vocabulary- if they wrote about a topic or used a word I didn’t know, it gave me a rabbit hole to go mine to figure it out.
That being said, I shot myself in the foot by far overstaying my welcome on these blogs (like most noobs, I’m sure) and wasting precious time during rebill mania in ‘reading paralysis’ mode.
Once you reach a certain threshold of understanding and knowledge- which, lets be frank- is pretty minimal… the only way to improve is to do it. Create sites, create ads, lose money, analyze, adapt, try again. If there is a better formula, I’d like to know about it.
I know you waste my time! heh It’s refreshing to get away from the mundane things in life and reading about the rags to riches story.
To know someone ordinary has created a sustainable business from a bedroom that can make them life comfortably in another country! (Lucky begger), it’s just something that inspires myself to stick to it.
I rarely spend enough time on affiliate marketing, in the start i was fresh and my motivation was massive, without having to read the blogs i relied on self drive.
Then it got to the point where i started looking around for some inspiration and i found shoemoney.
But i have to be honest, his blog has gone down hill big time with all the guest posts pluggin their own ebooks. And then shoemoney himself pluggin the different systems. I got bored with it. It seems the blog has become more of a money making scheme, which i felt it never used to be.
However reading your blog is refreshing, your down to earth and no nonsense writing will keep me reading, as soon as you realise you can monetise your readership, i’ll be off to the next blog heh!
I also read kirsty’s affiliatestuff for the same reason. If other’s want a blog of similar writing styles.
Be nice for other’s to make some other suggestions for myself as well.
Steve
Finch;
You’re NOT wasting anyone’s time. The people who read these blogs are wasting their own time! It’s not you.
But seriously, you actually give us more than you think. You constantly talk about how you promote the dating niche. As someone who doesn’t do a lot of affiliate marketing I actually would have guessed that this niche is beat to death and dead. While you may not give specifics you do give away some information that’s useful.
Zac Johnson recently had a post about how he goes about creating a niche website that can earn money on autopilots. I have no doubt that the exact niche he’s talking about isn’t worth doing, but seeing how he goes about things is useful and was worth while.
And actually Shoemoney did write a post that changed my life. It was about two years ago he wrote about local marketing. About 6 months ago I really started diving into the local marketing scene and I now have 6 clients. I’m building a nice business and I really never would have if I hadn’t read that one post by Shoemoney.
Ashley
My favorite quote:
“If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”
It’s a good thing there are so many strippers in Vegas, otherwise affiliates wouldn’t have anything to talk about.
Aff #1: “So, what kind of campaigns you running…”
Aff #2: “Uh, well, dating I guess.”
The only ones out there sharing “secrets” are those saying “Learn how I made $100 billion on FB back in 2007.”
The truth is that affiliates will swarm to where the barriers to entry are lowest. Find something that actually takes time to build and adds value and chances are you will make money. Or so I’m hoping…
Step 1: Read every blog about internet marketing and get excited every time a blogger gives you a bone to gnaw.
Step 2: Subscribe to every email *cough* sales *cough* newsletter and get information overload.
Step 3: Auto-archive these newsletter, stop reading every single blog around, and finally get to work!
Extra: read blog posts from time to time for inspiration.
Thanks Finch!
Happy New Year yourself!
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This is why I read finchsells.com, you always keep it real and keep it honest.
Respect.
BLASPHEMY!
Dude… lets grab a burger this weekend.
Dude I’m not here for the internet marketz.
I’m here to read about ballz.
No one could have said this better. Keep up the good work, Finch!
I think you give more value than you think..and this is true with quite a few blogs I read.
Shit you have destroyed my bubble. You mean reading John Chow and Shoemoney won’t make me rich? Crap.
Thanks for the post. Well put my friend.
I can now remove you from my RSS feed and focus on real stuff.
Gotta love the bloody Brits.
You’re kinda sort of right here. It’s easy for people to buy into what you’re saying and if I didn’t know better I’d buy into it myself.
Still, there is tremendous opportunity in this industry and the people making the big money are hiding the real strategy by smoke screens with all the get rich quick strategies.
Best of all, you’re readers will click through and read in my blog because I took the time to make this comment!
I guess it was worth my time to read your post after all, but for most I would agree with your assessment.
[…] Why bloggers like me are a waste of your time (funny shit about affiliate marketing & blogging) […]
Meh, lately your blog has been the only one worth reading. no affiliate drama. No BS of you will make bank tomorrow. Just some nice little tidbits here and there and some good writing to boot.