"Articles," "content" and potentially making $1,000s per week

[shinmenx]

Hi guys me again,

I feel like I could launch a campaign that would bring in $100s if not $1000s per week (eventually), but I'm not feeling *good* about it.

I'm new to this whole industry, so let me explain, and hopefully someone here can set me straight because I'm literally this close to absolute success, but I'm almost disgusted at the same time.

My main issue: I do not feel like quality content is required to make money.

A little background about me: I used to be a competitive weightlifter, and before that I was a personal trainer. For anyone who isn't familiar with the industry, the world of personal training is filled with more bull**** than you could possibly imagine. Without wasting your time ranting, just know that the vast majority of trainers don't know wtf they are talking about and would be laughed out of a physiology class. When I began to instruct clients, I was super enthusiastic; getting to teach people in an area that I loved was the greatest thing ever, but my enthusiasm soon turned to disgust as I realized a few truths: 1) people don't want to know the truth; they want to be fed bull**** that makes them feel good. A few clients I had who were motivated became great successes: One of them won a marathon, and another took 2nd place in a national bodybuilding competition, for example. But the vast majority of my clients didn't want to hear that doing 1000 crunches a day wouldn't take away their fat stomach, and they didn't want to hear that you cannot spot reduce fat. You see, I thought that by giving them a quick 30 second explanation of how your body actually works, and then showing them how to incorporate that into their training, they would be excited to get the results they've always wanted: but they weren't. I even had one girl ask me "so doing 1000 crunches a day won't reduce my belly fat... what if I do 2000 crunches a day, then?" I was like "are you serious?"

Anyway, I left that industry after a few years because I got tired of all the bull****. The things that sell are retarded crap like balancing on one leg on a bosu ball and other "new" ideas that don't actually do anything for you.

The other reason I left is because I am a terrible salesman. I am very analytical and logical but I'm horrible at schmoozing, and personal training isn't about how much knowledge you have; it's about how well you can sell. So even tho I had a book of clients who had achieved elite-level results, I wasn't making much money compared to the charismatic schmoozers who helped their clients waste their time by counting 1,000 crunches every day.

It was a shock to my world view, as well; I thought it was simple: if I showed people how to get the results they want, my business should be booming.

But it didn't work that way. The vast majority of personal training clients would rather work with someone who tells them what they want to hear and makes them feel good.

It blows my logical mind. I take someone from beginner status to competing (and sometimes even placing!) in regional and/or national shows in two years, yet I hurt for business, and Joe Schmoe the douchebag personal trainer has the same fat clients for 5 years and all they do is count 1,000 crunches a day and the clients never make any progress, yet they keep coming back and recommending him to their friends, too!

That's bolded and in red because it's the thing that I still struggle with the most.

I have busted ass to become an expert in a couple fields (fitness being one of them), and for the most part I'm unable to make it work financially for me (the exception being that I get paid $150+ per page to write articles for a large fitness ezine, because they only deal with experts in the fitness arena, but that's not the norm).

So this leads me to believe that people do NOT want quality.

I've been doing a lot of research about Internet Marketing, SEO techniques, Affiliate Marketing, etc. recently, and it seems that everything is all about "articles" and "content." That initially made me feel good... there are a couple other areas (besides fitness) where I could churn out better content than 99% of people in the world could.

But then I find these article farms where people sell articles for $5 each. I saw some samples once and they were literally like this:

ARTICLE ABOUT CARS
-----------------------
Cars have four wheels and people drive in them to get around. There are sedans, with 4 doors, and coupes, with 2 doors. All cars have an engine which powers the wheels. The car is controlled by a gas pedal and a brake pedal, etc.

(except imagine there were typos and their/they're/there errors and your/you're errors, etc.)

I was in complete shock. Like this

First of all, who the hell would pay for that? It was like a 5 year old wrote it.

Second of all, what reader would actually keep reading? When I see a site full of bull**** I close the window or tab. Are there seriously idiots out there would read that, actually be interested, and think "gee, I'm gonna go see what this guy is selling???" Seriously?! I am literally dumbfounded by this.

It's funny; prior to learning about all this stuff, I always thought that most of the articles I saw on ezinearticles were ****; they're always laden with typos, errors, and sound like they were written by average-IQ 6th graders. But I've since found out that most of them were probably written as SEO tactics and pre-landing pages for online marketers.

So not only do I think the people who wrote them are idiots, but the people who actually follow them are idiots. Probably the same idiots who pay personal trainers to count 1,000 crunches for them every week for 5 years.

So here's where I'm having inner issues, WF:

I don't think that I can actually bring myself to do that kind of stuff. I write about things which I am passionate and knowledgeable about; I don't have the ability to write 50 ****ty articles about the same thing (durr, cars have 4 wheels durrrrrr) to promote some ****ty website (pay me only $37 and i'll show you how to convert your car to run on water ZOMG SAVE MONEY ON GAS!!!11!!) that I KNOW is bull**** right from the beginning.

Yet the people who do that make $1000s per week.

So, should I just say "f it! If idiots are willing to pay for it, then they deserve to give me their money?"

Or should I try to maintain some sort of inner integrity (but suffer financially as a result) because people do not want high quality products???

Like I said, I'm horrible at sales because I can't schmooze with idiots. I'm very analytical. In fact, that's why I am a professional trader. I wanted to be a stockbroker until I found out that stock brokers are just salesmen that sell commodities instead of cars or whatever. As a trader I don't have to talk to people, I don't have to put up with bull****, it's just me and my method and the market.

And for the record here, don't ever buy any training product or indicator or anything from any webpage no matter how good it looks, because they are ALL bull****. All of them. I'm just saying, save your money; you'll lose enough money trading. I just read a thread on here where some guy was asked to lie for a Forex product testimonial. That seller can **** himself.

Back to my point tho, you're probably asking "if you're a trader, why do you want to get into IM? You've gotta be banking already!" Trading is insanely stressful and even tho I've made more in one day than I did in a month at my last job, I already realize that mentally and psychologically I cannot do it for much longer. For people who haven't done it, you do not realize the psychological implication of watching $1,000s of your own money vanish in seconds. I have had the occasional day where I lost over $20k. Do you know what that feels like? That's enough money to live off of (frugally) for a year. Gone in a day. Fortunately that's a super rare event for me and overall I am profitable.

But I'm getting off track here.

For those of you that aren't idiots and aren't scumbags, how do you deal with the bull**** that is seemingly required to make money online? The writing of stupid articles (because people don't want intelligent articles). The promoting ****ty products (because people buy them). Etc. etc.


Or am I waaaay off base here and the cynic in me is blinding me?

Thanks if you read all of this.

Cheers.

PS. to the guy who PMed me about my reply in another post, "thanks!" I can't PM you back cuz I don't have 15 posts yet

[Matt Maiden]

shinmenx

Why don't you write articles and content that will make you feel that you are giving your best.

Most of the "junk" content that you are talking about was written for search engines and a lot of folks feel like this is enough. Eventually though, I believe that the search engines are going to get good enough at recognizing good quality content from bad in the minds of live readers not just bot software.

So I think the best approach is to give it you best shot and practice writing good quality content so that when you get the readers to your blog, opt-in, or sales page it appeals to them.

[Derek Pankaew]

Hahaha ... Wow, Shinmenx, that was a hilarious and very enjoyable read.

Here's the thing Shinmenx ... The guys you're talking about don't make much money. It's generally the small time marketers that play in the "crap articles" domain. Big marketers either don't play that game at all, or do it with high quality articles.

For example, David DeAngelo has articles all over the internet. They're high quality articles and they add towards his name recognition. It's part of his strategy for marketing a $20 million/year business.

Also add this: You're targeting the wrong market. The people you're selling to don't want what you're selling.

If someone's looking to "lose weight quick," chances are they're not actually your market. You're targeting people who're really willing to put in the work. It's a different mindset and different type of person. Find out how to reach this person and you're good to go.

Best wishes,

- Derek

[Daret]

I agree with Derek Pankaew. IMO quality content is what separates the best from the rest. Also, as Derek suggested, you need to be able to connect to your market, that's really important.

[Derek Pankaew]

Hey Shinmenx,

Check out this blog: Personal Development for Smart People - Steve Pavlina

He's been going for over a year now. Perhaps the #1 blogger in the personal development industry. He got there by providing really good content consistently. He's the only blogger I have on my RSS feed.

If you do something similar and don't compromise your values, the right kind of people will resonate and read your blog.

[shinmenx]

Originally Posted by Matthew Maiden

shinmenx

Why don't you write articles and content that will make you feel that you are giving your best.

Because that's not profitable.

It's like when I was a personal trainer. My clients had phenomenal results yet not many people wanted to work with me (and it wasn't cuz I was mean or anything, lol; i'm the nicest person you'll ever meet).

So I think the best approach is to give it you best shot and practice writing good quality content so that when you get the readers to your blog, opt-in, or sales page it appeals to them.

I do have one sales page that honestly probably needs some work. I don't want to give too much away, but I sold an ebook on eBay for years and made decent side money with it. But now, with eBay forcing sellers to only accept paypal AND jacking up their fees, I've been done with ebay for about 6 months. I made a website that is basically the opposite of:

Are you a STUPID IDIOT with NO FRIENDS???
Are you POOR and UGLY???

ORDER IN THE NEXT 38 minutes and learn how to [insert ______]

Indeed, my site is basically like "look, here's what I'm selling, here's why it's awesome, here are pics, I'm not gonna throw flashy **** in your face." It's about as opposite from a landing strip page as you can get, and I designed it to attract intelligent people who don't watch infomercials and scroll through pages that are 500px wide by 11ty billion px tall and think "free trial of Enzyte?! how can I lose!!!"

But honestly, even tho I'm SEO'ed (google page 1 or page 2 depending on the keyword used to search), my sales from my website aren't that good. I tend to only sell to the people who are hardcore into this niche, rather than the casual people (read: I have a ****ty conversion rate, about 1 sale per 400 visits). On eBay I sold at a rate of about 1 sale per 50 auction views.

Oh and my niche isn't trading/investing nor is it personal training fitness type stuff (i figured people might think it was based on my first post in this thread).

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

Hahaha ... Wow, Shinmenx, that was a hilarious and very enjoyable read.

Here's the thing Shinmenx ... The guys you're talking about don't make much money. It's generally the small time marketers that play in the "crap articles" domain. Big marketers either don't play that game at all, or do it with high quality articles.

Really? Seems like most of the IM ballers I've heard of follow this protocol.

For example, David DeAngelo has articles all over the internet. They're high quality articles and they add towards his name recognition. It's part of his strategy for marketing a $20 million/year business.

I know of him. I used to be part of the seduction community (I still follow it but I don't actively participate too much anymore... plus I'm in a serious LTR now, anyway ). He was like the first guy (or one of the first) to set up "how to get chicks" mailing lists that actually contained good info. Double Your Dating!

Also add this: You're targeting the wrong market. The people you're selling to don't want what you're selling.

Well when I was a trainer clients did want what I was selling... just not from me; they'd rather work with the guy who will count 1,000 crunches for them but they end up still being fat in 5 years than work with me and make awesome progress. So I tend to think it's how I'm selling (I'm bad at schmoozing and building raport because I'm logical and analytical to a fault... actually part of the reason I joined the seduction community, because socially I was only connecting with 20% of the population (the minority who was just like me, lol)). And it's funny, even tho now, thanks to what I learned in the seduction community (mainly Real Social Dynamics), I can go to a party full of people I don't even know and completely work the room like a movie star... but you know what? I feel like the fakest douchebag the entire time; I find most people boring and unoriginal and I can't stand to talk to them... and when they respond favorably to me (when I'm using PUA stuff) on the outside I like it (attention, yay!) but on the inside I'm usually thinking "geez you're such a tool". The only difference between before and now is now I can fake it enough to seem like an extrovert.

That's actually kind of analgous to the issue I'm having with Internet Marketing, isn't it? Low quality fluff gets more results than efficient and logical material.

The difference is, with people I can be picky. Now that I've been on both sides, I really don't give a crap if 80% of people don't like me because they bring nothing to the table anyway. The 20% of people that I click with (naturally, without using seduction community stuff) are awesome and high quality friends.

But in sales, you NEED that 80%. I can sell to the intelligent 20% minority just fine... but that's not enough money to call it an income. That's like beer money, or rainy day money.

If someone's looking to "lose weight quick," chances are they're not actually your market. You're targeting people who're really willing to put in the work. It's a different mindset and different type of person. Find out how to reach this person and you're good to go.

There's not enough people to make money with quality products. The intelligent people who actually seek out quality products are the minority of the population.

Best wishes,

- Derek

Cheers, thanks for the reply.

Originally Posted by Derek Pankaew

Hey Shinmenx,

Check out this blog [Steve Pavlina's website (I can't post URLs yet lol)]

He's been going for over a year now. Perhaps the #1 blogger in the personal development industry. He got there by providing really good content consistently. He's the only blogger I have on my RSS feed.

If you do something similar and don't compromise your values, the right kind of people will resonate and read your blog.

That guy is awesome. And he makes like $1000/day from adsense. lol.

I would say his content is some of the least "fluffy" I've ever seen. Him, Maddox, and Tucker Max are good writers and I usually enjoy reading their stuff.

[Habitat]

Originally Posted by shinmenx

But then I find these article farms where people sell articles for $5 each. I saw some samples once and they were literally like this:

ARTICLE ABOUT CARS
-----------------------
Cars have four wheels and people drive in them to get around. There are sedans, with 4 doors, and coupes, with 2 doors. All cars have an engine which powers the wheels. The car is controlled by a gas pedal and a brake pedal, etc.

(except imagine there were typos and their/they're/there errors and your/you're errors, etc.)

I was in complete shock. Like this

Lol being an article writer myself I know exactly how you feel. I had to lower my prices a lot to even try to compete...My quality is a lot higher than a lot of the competition but they get most of the business because they work for pennies.

I guess it's about how you make people feel. People feel good when they get a deal and get so-so articles. Rather than paying a few more bucks and getting quality. Oh well

[Matt Maiden]

Originally Posted by shinmenx

It's like when I was a personal trainer. My clients had phenomenal results yet not many people wanted to work with me (and it wasn't cuz I was mean or anything, lol; i'm the nicest person you'll ever meet).

I do have one sales page that honestly probably needs some work.

Not being able to sell is a sales copy problem. This is why copywriters make as much as they do.

Sales pages don't have to have any "quality" other than selling.

If I have a sales page that says: " You ok buy one this" and it has a 100% conversion rate I don't care what the "writing quality" is.

On the other hand, if I expect people to continue coming back to my blog I would want it to be a higher quality of writing.

[tscott_87]

Originally Posted by Mari_Quint

I've seen crappy articles myself. What a headache. I had one project wherein I have to rewrite articles written similarly to the car write-up above, even worst.

Dare I say... it should be "worse" ?

[ShaunAllen]

I am sure all of these Acai Berry Journal sites we see are doing pretty well. I am sure the weight loss pill will always make more money than ebooks. And yes you're right, crunches don't do anything to remove belly fat. Although I love doing weighted decline sit-ups for a good exercise.

Anyway, the point is that people still buy the burnthefatfeedthemuscle and the truthaboutabs ebooks. I truthaboutabs made over $4 million laster year. So while it might not do as well as pills or some crazy diet like fatloss4idiots, there is still hope for the honest guys.

[robd1302]

Originally Posted by shinmenx

Well when I was a trainer clients did want what I was selling... just not from me; they'd rather work with the guy who will count 1,000 crunches for them but they end up still being fat in 5 years than work with me and make awesome progress.

My guess is that they claimed to want what you were selling, and probably even though they really wanted it. Deep down, I think they really just wanted to pretend to 'get fit' so they could feel good about themselves. The fact that their trainer built up a good rapport with them made it even easier. The trainer tells them what they want to hear, and they feel good about themselves.

Anyway, "crap articles", as someone called them above, are very popular, but they're not something that pulls in a lot of money. If you're creative, you can make some money, and it's not a terrible place to get started in IM, but I wouldn't recommend using those types of articles as a primary method of marketing.

Anyway, if you're a professional trader, you can make good money by either writing a selling a high-quality trading book, or if you can't "package" your system (or don't want to), you could setup a trading-related blog, post to it several times a day, and build a list. As I'm sure you know, there's big money in investment-type affiliate programs, so if you build a relationship with a few hundred or few thousands would-be traders, you could make some serious money.

If you're looking for an audience that appreciates quality, that type of site is probably the way to go.

[Doctor Article]

As a content writer myself, I know exactly where you're coming from. Almost daily I get asked to write articles for silly money and by that I don't mean big. The way I see it, if you want to pay $1 per article, go get your articles on GAF and make sure they are written by "nateeve egilish riters"

Content is King

[precious007]

Hi,

And Welcome to IM World.

You'd be amazed to see that such articles are published all across "most popular" article directories, and not only that but they even get picked up by tens and hundreds of publishers.

Here's a trick I've learned. Simple articles do convert better. I'm not saying the "cars article" would do great. That is a total mess and waste of time. But writing simple,quality and short articles is the way to go.

Alex

[esr]

A couple of different things popped into my head while reading your original post;

As far as how people can sell something that they know is crap, I think it's a mindset that basically is "you gotta give the people what they want." Just depends on what is more important to each person, their integrity or paying the bills.

I also kept thinking that you should create your own product to sell. Just because the bull**** artists in the training genre are making the big bucks, that doesn't mean it'll happen that way with every product you try to sell, be it your trader skills or anything else you may be an expert on.

[ExRat]

Hi Shinmenx,

I don't have the answer to any of your questions - but if you find them, would you please let me know?

Your post resonated with me, on many levels.

When I think about this subject, I end up at the Dan Kennedy quote (which used to be in my sig) which is along the lines of -

'Most people are wandering around, with their umbilical cord in their hand, looking for somewhere to plug it in.'

Sadly, I will probably end my days knowing that I could have had all of the riches in the world if I had just been able to bring myself to go to market with my 'one-pin umbilical mains adaptor' - but my umbilical cord is permanently attached to a heavy millstone with the words 'conscience, reason and an overwhelming aversion to bull****' written on it.

C'est la vie...