and start to believe your own hype.
How to become a player online… A story.
Find a niche that is conducive to social traffic, generates passion and controversy and most importantly offers readers a life changing experience. Like “Turtle Migration in the Galapagos”…
or
“How to get rich working online while wearing PJ’s”…
It was a tough decision but I went with the second option. Mostly because everyone else was already in the “turtle” debate and clearly didn’t need another voice. Nobody was talking about how to get rich.
Perfect.
Let’s start a blog.
Write a few posts selling the dream of getting rich and throw in a few links to a product that “made me rich and changed my life and only costs $97 – cheap – and did all that without me actually having to buy it or read it.” Brilliant.
Crap. Nobody showed up to read my post. Nobody bought the “Book”.
Damn. Back to square 1. What’s missing in this niche?
Dissent! Yes. A White Knight. Yes. A Good Guy to warn the masses about all the evil predators lurking out there preying on peoples desires – you know those desires… wealth, power, getting the opposite sex to…
Watch out scammers – your days are numbered.
Enter a popular forum that has all the experts in the niche. Zero in on the resident top dog expert – easy to find as they always have something to say on every topic. They have 15,000 posts in the forum – they know everything – because they have 15,000 posts in the forum. You know they never leave the forum and hence – don’t make a dime online – who has the time? You don’t get 15k posts on the forum if you are away working…
So. Swaddle right on up to the expert and calmly say… “you’re full of shit”. The expert goes ballistic… huffs, puffs, rants… and waits for the sycophants to come to the rescue. Those would be the experts in training – the people with only 10k posts on the forum. You laugh and leave while dropping a link back to your blog. And wait…
Lo and behold… people start showing up. Turns out a good number of non-experts used the forum. They too thought the experts were full of shit. They didn’t say anything… timid, unsure, they know they are beginners. “Boy are we glad someone finally told that windbag to shut the…”
Presto… a following.
Step 2 – find a few like minded individuals. Form a coalition – knights of the round table. Venture forth and slay the overlords of make money online bullshittery.
Bask in the glow of self righteous dogoodiness and welcome the growing masses with open arms. Be humble. Tell people the truth – well your truth – they love it.
Time goes on – you have a few critics – they make a few comments that are actually valid… “hey aren’t you selling shit online too?” Fortunately you have a small army of friends who quickly beat the critics into submission. Critics go away. All is right with the world. You’re a good guy – sure you make a few bucks but your way is legit – the bad guys are scum. You let the criticism drift to the back of your list of things that need fixin’ – you have a world to change first. You start thinking this because your friends are telling you how great you are… wow, you have power, influence… holy shit – YOU are a somebody!
But you aren’t. You know it. You have an inbox full of emails from real people – asking for real help and you know that your methods work for you and those like you but not for all – they don’t have your resources. They don’t live where you live. They don’t speak your language. They don’t play golf with the Captains of their local Industry. The world is a big place and success favours those who were clever enough to be born in the right place, have access to all the necessary accessories, first hand knowledge of the market where the money is… N. America. Life isn’t fair. You can’t make it so. You feel like an ass because you sell people a dream that they really can’t achieve as easily as you did, if at all – you didn’t take their money but this doesn’t mitigate your responsibility or collusion in the dream.
You’re no better than the people you warn others about.
Fraud. Hypocrite. This isn’t coming from the critics anymore. It’s coming from yourself.
You quit.
You go back to what you used to do. A little wiser. Hopefully. You leave the shit behind. Spend your time building a business – not a gimmick. It works. No secret, no magic formula – nothing you can sell a book about. Just plain old fashioned work.
It’s boring as hell. You spend all day with a computer. No discourse with the outside world. You make money. Money is nice. It’s not fulfilling but its nice. You miss your friends – not the boot licking sycophants – just the discussions you had with friends who shared your interests.
You re-emerge, throw out a post or two. And wait. Whew – the sycophants have moved on to a new white knight who is going to save the world. Thankfully your friends are still around – wiser too – still working but they too have dropped the gimmicks and got down to business. And the critics are there as well – good – no need to mount a defense. Criticism is the only thing that keeps you grounded, lets you know where you stand, points out your mistakes, allows you to improve and mostly keeps your head out of your ass. “Is he appeasing Google?”… “What’s this shit he’s talking about?”… “An about face?”… If I said I have moved on I’d only be attempting to manipulate the masses – it would start all over again. Those who want to try something different are welcome to follow along, those who like what they are doing are welcome to keep doing it. There is no one way, right way or wrong way – just whatever works for you.
If you want to make a name for yourself online I just told you one way of doing it and the Salty Droid (the white knight link above and by all means spend some time reading his posts) is the current manifestation of a talented writer borrowing a tried and not so true persona (Vic, The Rich Jerk) to wage a war of limited importance (none) against an evil empire of Internet marketers who will always exist and will always make money off of the weak and gullible who, in turn, will always exist and, like lottery tickets, will continue to buy shit even though they know its crap because they don’t want to work for stuff because its easier to dream about getting lucky.
Just be warned – there is a problem with this kind of fame. In response to those of you who have sent me emails extolling the virtues of the Droid and insisting I jump back on the bandwagon let me say this – it is a doomed enterprise and the internet has a long memory. Once you are known you can’t erase your tracks. If you pursue a crusade – no matter how noble – using inflammatory tactics, sailor language, appealing to base emotions, stifling reasoned debate, banishing your critics and allow your sycophants to massage your ego you will eventually find yourself preaching to the choir and only the choir. The New York Times won’t be asking for your opinion and the silent majority of sensible people who you really need to appeal to will have turned their back. You become a foul mouthed fanatic, entertaining in a freak show way, but unworthy of serious reference or admiration. Your own reputation becomes worse than the people you rail against. Sure you are a good guy – your intentions are noble. It’s just that you’re an asshole about it and the majority of people don’t like assholes.
There is a new direction in Internet marketing – actually it’s not new – just more stable, less prone to sudden destruction. Become an expert. Build an authority site. Become famous in your niche. Let your content (still queen) be your voice and the links (still king) will find you. The thing is – you won’t be dependent on any one source for your traffic so if the links don’t find you, big deal, you will still survive. Build a reputation based on knowledge of the subject matter and keep your personal opinions to yourself – nothing drives off readers and customers like finding out you don’t share their political, religious, ethical or moral views. Unless you are in those niches you might want to keep quiet – I like marketing to everyone – not just those of my ilk.
To some this post is nothing more than a cynical attempt to manipulate my readers or Google. To some it will be the last they see of me. To some it will be my way of apologizing for the past and starting over. For me I just needed to clear the air – my air. I’ve endured the stench of this niche for a long time and need to admit the hypocrisy and bullshitery I engaged in before I can move on. No I didn’t take your money but I let people believe the dream and encouraged it while knowing that it benefited me while not really benefiting others. I talked about tricks and short cuts and manipulation that worked for short term gain and, yes, still works today but I should have said enough – I should have said stop the bullshit and start building a long term business based on marketing fundamentals that will provide a lasting presence and a sustainable income. Fundamentals that don’t rely on tricks or the whims of algorithms or whatever the current social trend is. I talked about A while doing B. It was wrong and I apologize. I don’t have an answer for everyone. I only know what works for me. What I know may help you or it may not. Are you wasting your time in this business? Only you can answer that.
Cheers
Griz
yes, i am writing in lower case, don’t know why i do that… lol
just wanted to say, after reading this post, you seemed a little down and i wanted to give you another perspective of someone looking in from the outside. i have been reading your blog for a long time, waiting for you to post and just to see what you have to say.
because after reading your blog i felt at home, peace with your info and i loved the realness & truth. you may say that you weren’t teaching us what you were doing, but NOT true.
you took us on the journey, and if we read between the lines (which you taught us to do) we could get the REAL info that you were trying out underneath.
one of your post you even take us through a long journey of how we go to where we were with the BIG G and links & spamming and everything,
you told us exactly what was working as it was working. you told us to start to build better sites as it is now better to do. AND IF ANYONE was listening to the cry underneath the jokes, we would know that:
we needed to create better content, build bigger sites better sites, be careful with those authority sites because they are gold (that you mentioned were for linking to other sites)
you taught us that we NEEDED TO DO SOME FREAKIN work and stop trying to make money with adsense if we were not willing to BE content publishers… which means locking yourself away writing and producing good content.
you told us how hard you worked.. by saying that you sometimes would go on only 4-6 hours of sleep. i WAS listening between the lines.
you told us in one of your beginning post that we could do white hat stuff like:
write and submit articles to white hat sites like ezinearticles and goarticles and that the content should be good… that helped us to get good links and (leverage) traffic from these sites.
you told us things (secrets) that we wanted to hear like what the other BIG money makers were doing with links. we wanted to know this. we wanted to know what people out there were really doing.
and we should have had sense to know that we should still have been building a business. you told us about sites that were in different niches (like furniture) that you were in and that we should build good content, long post (the gist of the new xfactor course) that would bring us traffic without having to get links because of ALL of the themed keywords that we would have in the post and the “one off” searches that we could really never optimize for with links.
see griz…. YOU taught us a lot. times change and we adapt. YOU gave us secrets that we would have never known because you had inside access.
you taught us to think. we know that you are an introvert because if you weren’t you wouldn’t have used a pick of a bear for ever, or not let us see what you look like in your “fox” video and you wouldn’t have messed with your wife for posting your pic on FB. or you wouldn’t have lived in a remote place in Canada away from everyone.
we get it. this is why i don’t comment usually… i come here and “get out my cup of coffee”, drink, then move on and get back to work. because in the beginning you were real and said that it could take 2 years to finally reach our BIG goals, but that we could have little successes along the way. you said that you had 7 main sites that you were working on to bring to a $100 dollar adsense level a long while ago (if we were listening we would have paid attention and realized that you were building quality sites also, you then pointed us to TKA were they have been taking care of everyone and giving them the info they needed to put your secrets to work)
so after this, i will leave you alone (comment wise) for a bit, but i will still read.
i AM hear because your stuff works and because EVEN though i don’t know you personally, i like you. i like to see what you have to say.
I DON’T READ ANYONE ELSE’S BLOG ABOUT ANYTHING…. ever, i don’t give a crap about what they have to say.
so, pony up, and tell me some shitznit that i am craving to hear.
thanks griz
Kenney “My Man” Edwards
Amen, Kenny.
Holy Cow ! I should get a life !!
How to fill up your blog with a million comments !!!
The ‘click here’ prize for the best comment goes to ………… Allyn Hane !!!! He made me laugh and got the bear to wake up.
Sorry to the rest of you – you all need to practice some more !!!!!
VicW
You should see the emails Vic… lol
Only one link should be the response to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX7wtNOkuHo
@ VicW – thanks for the props, just wait until you see my video response. Ken Evoy and Griz having a convo in my kitchen. Just need to block some time to shoot it.
Much as I suspected – you’ve pulled off The Great MMO Swindle (with apologies to the late Malcolm McLaren). Except… I and many others have been quietly making good money applying your words of wisdom/hard won experience.
Mind you, I could never quite bring myself to write drivel. The modus operandi at Kat Towers is 1) identify a lucrative looking topic, 2) research the thing to death 3) write better article(s) than what is currently available.
My conscience remains unruffled and of late I too have noticed that I can worm my way into high places pretty much (I presume) on the strength of the material, the trust placed in the site and a mere sprinkle of links – both internal and on well related sites. Works for me and a lot less tedious than mass link building – though that certainly delivered results in the past and I’m sure still does.
Oh, and leave the tears to the crocodiles, it’s most unbecoming in a bear, especially a supposedly grizzly one!
[...] out Griz’s latest post, How To Become A Player Online…A Story. Please share the awesomeness with [...]
Ok Griz, you should be feeling all warm, fuzzy and relieved by now. Lets get to work on the new way. Even though after 4 years of reading you, I never really figured out the old way or at least I never figured out how to be successful with it. I’m sticking with you because I believe you’re the only one in this sewer that truly cares if your readers learn to mmo or not; and like everyone else I enjoy reading your stuff. I’ve invested way too many hours to quit. I’m going to make some money at this or die of old age trying!
Griz,
The problem with the ‘new method’ (which is not all that new) is that most people are not naturally experts in anything. Many are not even passionate about anything except that they hate their jobs and want out.
Its all well and good for all of the gurus (from their lofty perches) to decide they’re changing their minds and going a different direction, but many of us will struggle to become the expert that they are calling for. Don’t get me wrong. I hate link building and don’t do much of it.
I’ll continue to follow you to see what you teach, but I’m disappointed at the change.
Hi MJ,
I can totally understand where you’re coming from and agree with your assessment of most people just wanting out of a job. Been there, done that. However I do want to say that it’s not impossible or even that hard to become a type of expert in something. Been there and done that too. I became knowledgable through time and study on various topics and now I am able to help people in a truly beneficial way. I sincerely think you can pick almost any market which has value and move forward with it.
Is it all about making money? Well although this blog has that title, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Griz has the following he does because he’s become a noted “expert” and has shared that knowledge pretty freely unlike other garbage that comes from so many others. I guess if I would follow anything that he did it would be to model his big picture approach rather than every little nuance.
You and I, as well as anyone else can learn more about anything we set our mind too. Not everyone will get the most out of that knowledge or the sharing of it, but I have to say as I look far, far down the road, that’s going to the be the thing that will end up paying off in a greater way and long term. If the expertise and most importantly the value isn’t there…people simply won’t need or want it.
Just my two cents and hopefully it’s worth more than that:)
Well in those days when I started newly, I was gullible and I swallowed everything the ‘gurus’ claimed worked for them. That was until I stumbled on your old site and my eye was opened that I was just been lied to and used.
Well, I read your post above and I can only say you’ve done well. Many may see you as a fraud, but I still see you as someone that helped me in my time of need. Many of the lessons I learned from your old site still work for me. Maybe because I chose the option of working hard and allowing time to reward my effort.
I still remain your fan. Cheers.
Love what you say about the forums. Too funny! I have seen it time and time again. It’s pukey to say the least. Great technique for getting a following though. Might have to try it.
Been trying to get a hold of you.
Cheers,
Mike
wooow, grizzly, i have been reading your blog sonce 2008/2009, I think it was those years and I remember when you were the first one that I followed that talked about how to make money online, and I feel now that you are blaming yourself, dont! it’s not your fault, you just wanted to survive and to provide better life for your familly, we all do. We who are going through the same (bloggers) know what you are trying to say to us and world, we all see the mistakes we make, and talking about A while doing B, but I guess at the end we all know deep inside of ourselves that we do the same things as the others and that’s why we go over it in hope that everything will be ok and better.
Many of us grow up reading you, I was in my teens, now I’m finishing college and writing new blog too, and its all thanks to you, so even If this criticue on yourself was to straight us up, don’t worry we will do the right thing.
And yes, this blog post is the one that you took from every blogger’s mind.
[...] this is why I think that a lot of folks who read Grizzly’s last post don’t really understand. They view it as an either/or thing; not something that can be used [...]
[...] Note: This post is still listed on his mirror site. [...]