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“.

Did you enjoy this post? Subscribe to the RSS Feed and follow me on Twitter!

18 Responses to “Make F U Money Online”

on 21 Jan 2008 at 3:52 am Blue57Laser

ROFLMAO!

I take it you are avoiding Sphinn then.

Make Money Online bloggers are worse than the rappers that front on MTV Cribs with their staged homes and cars.

MMO bloggers should STFU.
on 21 Jan 2008 at 5:16 am randfish

Brian - couple things:

#1 - I think Jeremy actually said that 95% of the “SEO Experts,” so he’s more referring to folks like us who blog about it than just the average SEO.

#2 - We’ve started a few internal projects at SEOmoz and realized something very quickly - we’re good at SEO. People always forget that just because you are talented at one part of a business, doesn’t always mean you can do them all. Consultancy is always this way - you’re either an expert consultant OR and expert CEO/businessperson. A couple years ago, Andy Beal gave a great presentation about this - noting how many SEOs thought they could run their own version of a business they were going to help a client with, only to discover there’s a lot more to it than just building a search-friendly website, targeting keywords and getting links

BTW - If we were to clone a client’s business model, you can bet they’d have grounds for a pretty hefty lawsuit, given that the NDAs we sign give us a lot of confidential information. I know you probably weren’t suggesting we actually clone Yelp, but figured it was at least relevant.
on 21 Jan 2008 at 10:11 am Jeremy Luebke

Thank you for reminding me to stick to the big picture ventures. Sometimes I fall into the let’s take the easy cash on things that have no long term future or major payouts. I have to force myself to think bigger at times.
on 21 Jan 2008 at 11:24 am todd g

aaaammmmmmmmeeeeeeennnn brother!!!
on 21 Jan 2008 at 12:01 pm Tropical SEO

Awesome post brother. Couldn’t agree more…
on 21 Jan 2008 at 1:28 pm GP

Think Big - Reason why i left most of my seo/ppc projects in maintainance mode and concentrating on projects with 8 digit exit potential…I have made enough money to retire (6-7 M’s), so no need to work on 2 M/year affiliate projects. It either i make a 100M or nothing
on 21 Jan 2008 at 1:41 pm David Wilson

Great post Brian. This is why your posts are required reading here.

David
on 21 Jan 2008 at 2:14 pm Bill Hartzer

Great post. I couldn’t agree more. I’m getting to get sick and tired of this whole “make money online” meme.
on 21 Jan 2008 at 2:44 pm Yoav

Word!
on 21 Jan 2008 at 4:30 pm Sebastian

I think it was J. Paul Getty who gave us the “If all you want to do with your life is make money, it really isn’t that hard to do.”

Then again, if I had daddy’s oil leases in my portfolio to flip, I’d be making 10 figs today.
on 21 Jan 2008 at 9:12 pm countzero

Right on with the “think bigger” advice, though I’ve seen this severely limit some people, including myself. You wanna go bigger and bigger, start chasing your tail around and end up doing nothing.
on 22 Jan 2008 at 10:00 am Megan Hauer

I think the best takeaway from this post is the idea that SEO is part of a bigger picture. Frequently where I hear seo’s talk it astounds me how seo/sem is thought of a “be-all, end-all tactic”. Don’t get me a wrong, I’m an seo and a huge proponent of search. But I find our clients most appreciate seo strategy as part of an overall marketing mix.
on 22 Jan 2008 at 1:15 pm Garrett

Brian, I agree w/ most of your points, but can’t figure out why you be hatin on Warren G.?

REGULATORS!! MOUNT UP!!
on 23 Jan 2008 at 5:14 pm john andrews

Brian, I wrote this is a private email after tussing with a few “experts” last week:

“Where I come from (health and hospitals) the leadership would chew these guys alive and not even spit them out until there was a suitably entertaining target to hit with the loogie. It usually takes balls to lead where there are real profits. I’m starting to suspect these guys aren’t making real money with their ventures??”

I loved your post. Did you get the celebs.com pitch? It’s telling.
on 25 Jan 2008 at 12:53 am Duncan Longshaw

Is bigger necessarily the way to go though?

Beyond a certain point, I’d personally rather work less time on the business, than try and make billions. If your making more than enough money for your needs, then why not focus on working less, and spending more time with family and friends?

Not many “guru’s” are preaching this, but there are a few (like Tim Ferris, or James Brausch), who focus more on saving time than making money. They don’t seem to be doing to bad out of it either…
on 28 Jan 2008 at 8:33 am Scott Clark

I certainly won’t be blogging about my own successes most times.

People who are good at search/SMM/viral have figured out some things that make the SEO->CEO changeover feasible:

> viral can be engineered.
> interruption is dead
> things worth doing are hard
> commodity avoidance
> conservative is risky

To expand on Rand’s comments, there is a big problem. people to help you.

Even smart people have trouble getting used to these changes. Finding people who already get it is nearly impossible…If they “get it” they’re “doing it” most of the time. Definitely a tough nut to crack.
on 28 Jan 2008 at 3:16 pm Bobby Handzhiev

Damn it, one more blog goes into my RSS reader (I’m a first time visitor). Really good stuff and yes, you are not the only one pissed off by “make money online” and it’s gurus.
on 29 Jan 2008 at 1:00 pm Larry

I would agree, why not make more by doing less?
As JayZ says in one of his songs…”Im not a business man, I’m a business man! Good read.