So why are there a ton of ‘make money’ blogs by people who are happy to break $1000 a month?

Case in point: the 45n5 top 100 - a compilation of the top 100 money making blogs.

Just looking at the last few posts on most of those blogs, you can tell it is nothing more than a pool of the same ideas being restated in whatever new fashion. Not to mention the fact that most of them don’t really make much money online.

Yes there are a few intelligent blogs. Darren Rowse has built up quite a few blogs into a decent sum of money. Shoe Money has proven he can make money offline. But people like John Chow? Are you kidding me. His entire revenue stream is stuffing affiliate programs down the the gullet of his readership (I still remember when he was new and got a dozen or so frontpage Diggs and I thought - this smells fishy).

Then again - at least he has the readership that supports his claim of making money. What about those bloggers with 50-500 subscribers that are happy to make $1000? I’m not belittling $1000. I’m not belittling the drive of these bloggers. What I am questioning is how much advice someone who doesn’t make much money online can give to others?

Let me pick on a post - ‘The Best Blogging Tip no one will ever mention’ - whew, what an amazing headline. What is the great tip? “Don’t overcomplicate things.” Great - thanks. He then goes on to list the most mundane basic steps in setting up a blog. He then links to an article about web hosting. Web hosting is a big keyword. It makes sense to include ‘web hosting’ in the link text - but instead it is just ‘hosting.’ I’m nitpicking here - but a professional should know that SEO is important, that link text matters, and that ‘web hosting’ puts the link into more context (as hosting itself can include other things such as a party).

Furthermore, as these people have little real experience in generating real amounts of money online, the topics become rather incestuous (ie - the root point is the same). ‘Write unique content.’ ‘Think about your user.’ ‘Make it easy to subscribe (don’t forget email!)’ ‘Have fun.’ It is the same ‘top X ways of Y’ - where X is 6, 10, 5, or some other oblique number and Y are the same 5-15 different topics.

And a few links to round out my thoughts.

Points out that few of the blogs actually focus on making money. Yep. Just a lot of noise.

A poll on what you would do with $25 and use it to make money online. Huh? $25?

I do want to add - I’m not saying go for it. I started 10 years ago with $0. It’s tough. It’s exhausting. But if you do it right its amazing. And yes the first $100 was thrilling. But - I never thought of myself as a money making expert. Don’t claim to be something you aren’t (and I still am not a money making expert).

And now you can Digg it