Make F U Money Online
I don’t know about y’all, but I’m sick and tired of this “make money online” ecosystem that is monopolizing the online marketing blogosphere. I spent some time this weekend catching up on my feed reader and it felt like I was stuck in infomercial hell. I took three showers afterwards, but I still feel dirty.
Listen, if we are to believe that 95% of all SEO’s are incompetent (a figure I don’t think I disagree with and I absolutely love Shoe baiting everyone with it), we also have to ask ourselves why so many of these “make money online” bloggers are making such short money. People look at these guys like they are Warren Buffett and they probably aren’t even earning as much as Warren G. Y’all need to think bigger.
What’s wrong with you people? If a couple hundy grizzos a year makes you lose your damn mind, go sell insurance. I have friends selling cars that make that. I forget which tycoon said it, but I will paraphrase it, “If all you want to do with your life is make money, it really isn’t that hard to do.” And if all you care about is the loot, then y’all need some bigger heroes than folks that make less than downmarket Realtors.
But, BP, they are doing it online. Freaking online, yo! Ok. Just because something is happening online doesn’t mean it’s revolutionary. It’s not 1995 anymore. Just about everything has Internet touch. There is nothing cool or revolutionary about online. Well, except for porn.
If you are a truly disruptive online marketer or audience builder, you are adding seven figures a year to your net worth…and you aren’t blogging about it like a Sunday morning TV evangelist on crack. You are thinking a lot bigger than distributing other businesses’ offers…you are buying your way into their game and adding another layer of margin. You aren’t chasing the highest paying tiered affiliate scheme, you are looking at how money moves globally and positioning your audience and marketing skills ahead of it. Find a $100 billion problem and solve that. Build something with enterprise value and your liquidity event will have 2-3 more zeroes than the most famous of Adsense or affiliate checks.
For all the fun I have at his expense, Jason Calacanis is one of the few people that has figured this out. I have no doubt that Mahalo will deliver liquidity to him. With tens of thousands of hand-crafted landing pages (err, search results) and his ability to deliver audience, that business will work out. Furthermore, because he understands the financial markets as well as he does whoring himself on the Internet, his exit on “making money online” will smoke the biggest e-book pimp. All while the e-book pimp might be the stronger marketer and audience builder. JC thinks big.
I’m going to say it for about the thousandth time…as it’s really the reason I started this blog…think bigger, people. Don’t be afraid to go from SEO to CEO. If you can deliver value to clients, you can deliver more to yourself. I’m sure SEOmoz bills Yelp for some nice jack, but you can’t tell me that the talented folks at SEOmoz couldn’t build Yelp for themselves and make 100x or 1000x more (I really hope their VC’s bring this up at every board meeting or said VC’s limited partners need to find a new fund).
This is truly the Era of F U Money, my friends. Stop wasting your time putting some of these hacks on a pedestal and think bigger. I’m in the M&A trenches every day and I assure you that each one of you in that 5% of SEO’s or affiliate marketers that isn’t incompent…you guys have what it takes to take it to the house.
Think bigger or one day your grandkids will ask you why you didn’t. Think “f*ck you money“.
Ok, readers (and I’m assuming
It’s the end of an era. A very profitable era. Congratulations to the Google team who finally made it completely unworthwhile for me to buy cheap Adwords traffic and arbitrage it with lucrative Adsense inventory. My strategy had weathered many a Quality Score and Smart Pricing update but now it’s about as dry as an 80 year old hooker.