Greetings earthly bimodal gravity slaves. I trust Holy Week finds you in good cheer, wealthy and wise. Spring arrived with snow here in the southern state of my existence. Curious results from a supposed global warming crisis. Too warm. Global warming! Too cold. Global warming! Umm, let’s just call it climate change. Indeed.
A neighbor asked about my supplemental income from the depths of the web sewage. No doubt related from my talkative marital unit sharing tea and crumpets with his better half. I never enjoy these conversations as I have little interest in discussing the myriad of possibilities, tactics, blood, toil and sweat over making a few bucks.
It seems so simple yet we Internet marketing minions know the true story from the fairytale.
But people want to know how I make money. Like they can just replicate my mediocrity and collect extra coin. It used to be easy to say, “Look Warren, you really enjoy wearing women’s hats. You seem to know a great deal about the features of each style and how they look with your daily fashion choices. You should create an affiliate niche site and pimp your favorite hats.”
But now you have to discuss Penguins and Pandas. You have to discuss keywords and the density therein. You have to try to explain backlink SEO whereby 13% is keyword textlink, 37% is random word textlinks, 28% is the URL and so on and so forth. You tell them to use microblogs to create a whole new page simply to link to your niche site. Then you go to Fiverr and have someone like your Facebook page that links to your webpage. And of course you tell them they should go to Name Auctions ‘r’ Us and buy a domain that isn’t tainted with porn links and has a PR of 1 so you can create another website with 4-5 pages of information that links back to your niche site. Oh, and don’t forget about creating a Twitter account. And you’ll need to write up a press release. No one is sure that works anymore, much like article directories, but do it anyway.
Thankfully at this point they are usually ready to talk about the new self-propelled mower in the garage.
How do I get rid of their inclinations? I may go with the shock and awe approach. Instead of schooling a curious web sewage bystander on the whimsy of Google algorithms and Cutt’s Law of Wealth Destruction and Spam Pages I simply suggest they figure out what it is they like and write about it. I show them the Google keyword tool, tell them to click “exact”, click “only show the closely related terms” and search their chosen topic. All those keywords that pop up with over, say, 500 searches a month – use each as a topic page in Squidoo. Write a couple each day. One hour tops.
Wha? Really? No. Can’t do that.
Why not? You lose nothing but time. At the end of 3 months you’ll either have, say, 90-180 Squidoo pages or nothing. Depending, of course on your level of motivation.
But what about this blogging stuff I hear about? Isn’t that easier? If you can’t create a Squidoo page and smile through the experience while looking forward to building the next one, then you probably won’t care for blogging, which sucks way worse. Look at Squidoo as your training. You might get paid a few bucks to determine if you like creating content while spending nothing but time.
Yea, I know. Half of you 8 readers are saying why Squidoo? Look, have you ever explained what you do to the average civilian? Blogs, affiliate program, Adsense, content, article directories, backlinks, etc. You’ll get more glaze than a doughnut in 15 minutes. Explaining Squidoo is far easier to help the chicks get their beaks wet in the putrid flow.
Anyway, I’m not motivated to explain this crap anymore because people are lazy. The reality is far more than their American Idol, beer guzzled, Facebook distracted brains can comprehend.
So when I’m not feeling all that chatty, I simply ask: Do you like to write? Do you have something to sell? Do you have a service to share with the herd? No? Then if you want extra money go cut my grass. The mower’s in the garage. It pays $20.
Photo: Darwin Bell / Foter.com / CC BY-NC
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