hang on…..I’m still thinking.
on a side note, you know, I have had demonstrated to me how important backlinks are. The right backlink from the right blog can do absolute wonders for you.
cave subcanem
Man, you know, I’m jealous of Joe’s continued sponsorship on his vids, so I decided to go one up and get me my own brand of vodka….lookit, all canned up for you and everything. Please note particularly how I have worked very hard with the manufacturer to ensure only web 2.0 colours are used. Now I realise neat vodka in a can isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but it is Friday, so I think we can make allowances. Besides, if you just want to go ahead and make white russians out of it, I ain’t gonna stop you. Just don’t drink on the underground or Boris’ll have your nuts ok? (yeah if you don’t live in london, you won’t get this)
So nobody allerted me to blogactionday despite my post where I promise to donate all my earnings for october and november to charity(and challenge you to do the same). Damn. Shows you how on the ball I am and how new to blogging I am. Oh well – next year, I’m all over it. On the plus side though, Adam, WordVixen and BrialliantJENI have all blogged about my post, which has almost tripled my visitors for the past couple of days, so thank you to all three of them for getting the word out. Clog Money, like batman, is supporting from the shadows and Kouji Haiku is also supporting the idea. Check out the permanent link love for these guys on my page Charity starts online. Looks like SuiteJ is down for an honorary 37 bucks as well ’cause Jeni says so. By the way, Clog Money is hosting a clogpetition (that’s a Clog Money Competition) where you can win a flip camera….all you have to do is profess your love to the Clog Man!
So that’s made us all feel warm and fuzzy and stuff…..what else happened? Damn Upstartblogger lambasted Tim Ferris‘ Four Hour Work Week and Elijah gave us his thoughts on trash talking. Then in an absolutely brazen move, Avon Blake posted that he is giving away pdfs of the Four Hour Work Week. Damn, I have no idea how he is getting around copyright law, but that kid has balls the size of…..I don’t know what, but he has ‘em. Not only that, but this week, I managed to somehow compare washing my bathroom sink to making money online. It is a bit of a wordy post, but the crux of it is to really consider what products and ebooks and advice you need to get money flowing like water into your wallet. Well that’s what I took from the post anyway, but hey, interpretation is in the eye of the beholder. Anyhoo, I realise that given my self-confessed meagre online success, it seems a bit hypocritical to dish out mmo advice to anyone but the newest of noobs, so next week, I’m going to start writing about some things that I actually know something about. What could it be you say? What could the Underdog actually know about? maybe I’ll bark up the wrong tree….maybe I’ll tell you why I don’t like Buddhism…maybe I’ll delve into the depths of the human condition….maybe I’ll just have another Underdog Vodka.
Hope to see you then.
Underdogblogger's Sink
Stick with it……This is my bathroom sink. I hate cleaning it. And I’ll tell you why. See, my bathroom sink has a design floor in it. There is a spot in front of the plughole that seems to pool water. More importantly, when I’m cleaning my bathroom, this spot pools dirt infested water. See, I live in London. We have very hard water here. Limescale is the enemy! And to effectively remove limescale without using industrial strength bleach and other nasty chemicals…..which I really prefer to keep out of my household as much as possible, you have to apply a little elbow grease.
Oh, how you taunt me you debris collecting area
I’m not afraid of mucking in. I’m not afraid of scrubbing a little. I think it builds a bit of character. I mean – I don’t trust anyone who isn’t at least prepared to clean up their own shit. So I use one of those little scourers to clean my bathroom. A nice eco-friendly cleaning solution (take your pick) and a little bit of scrubbing with the scourer takes the limescale right off. Problem is, little bits of limescale and scourer debris form and pool right in front of the plughole. Yep – right there – lookit right where the green arrow is pointing. It’s a pain to wash down the plughole. You have to sort of push it with your hand or sponge to encourage those little devils into the waste pipe. That isn’t how it should be. It’s a sink…by definition, water (well anything liquid really) should just roll downwards into the waste pipe. I know the debris are composed of little bits of solid, but they should be carried by the water…..they aren’t that heavy.
Stick with it, this post gets better….
So, there’s a design floor in my sink. Bad! I don’t like it. I went looking for a new one, ’cause these little things do bug me. But you know what. I couldn’t find anywhere that actually had a working model for me to test. Nowhere in my local bathroom specialist shop (erm ok, Wickes and B&Q) could I test a working bathroom sink. Sure, they look pretty. But they don’t have running water plumbed in. How can I test them? How can I see if they are better than mine? I think this is a fundamental floor in bathroom sales. They should have a few different sinks plumbed in, and give you the option of running your routine on them to test them out. You know, brush your teeth – check the toothpaste is properly propelled down the hole by the force of the water. Do a little cleaning, make sure it scrubs up nice and that the debris are propelled down the plughole. That would be cool. I could get behind that. Heck, I would have bought a new sink if I found one that worked! But no. All I find are various dry, though very sparkly looking bathroom sinks, just waiting to be swapped for cash. Hmph…not impressed.
Now water flow is very difficult to model. And I expect your average budget sink is not designed with complex water flow models on a CAD system. I expect they are made in a roughly pleasing looking shape that basically tapers towards the plughole. So I’m on the lookout for the most sharply contoured sink I can find. That should do it. That should sink the damn debris. Oh-hohohoho. C’mon not even a small chuckle? Geez, lighten up.
Stick with it……
The very notion that you can make money online by purchasing a product which you cannot test out is the same….erm ok, not the same, but take a small leap of faith. All the products look shiny, just like the sinks. They all look like they will help funnel piles of income towards your wallet much like the sink looks like it should funnel whatever is thrown into it down the plughole. But, internet traffic is like water; pretty tricky to model, pretty tricky to predict. So the system cannot be foolproof. Imagine what it would be like if the pros took an about turn and started allowing you to test the methods before you paid up, much like I want to test out some sinks before I hand over my dosh.
Hmmmm.
Stick with it………
There’s an interesting thought. Do you think they would still be wallowing in money? I’m not so sure myself. I suspect, much like my sink, much of what is out there would do nothing more than trap money tantelisingly close to your wallet, but not actually in it, much like my sink traps debris oh-so-close to the plughole, but doesn’t actually deliver the final push. See, the sink is like the search engine….the water represents internet traffic and the tap – erm the tap is the spark of life that makes these people exist and by pure serendipitous circumstance sit on their pc looking for your webpage…nevermind, the tap isn’t important….Let’s consider the golden egg of internet marketing – organic search traffic. You want the tap to open, traffic to flow into the sink of the internet and be funnelled into the plughole that is your webpage. Yes! No! Wait – I’m not saying your webpage is a plughole or in any way shape or form equivalent to a sewage transport mechanism. But yes, you want that traffic like water flowing into your plughole-like webpage. What you don’t want is for the traffic to get stuck, the debris to sit there, next to your plughole-like webpage, but not actually in it (can you be in a webpage?). Now whether we are selling a product ourselves, affiliate marketing a product or relying on adsense, organic search traffic will be our golden egg. Crack that little bugger and you will have golden omelets forever. Social traffic is nice – the community is cool, the people are fun, but they ain’t gonna make you rich. Well I suppose they might if you build up enough trust and rapport with them and then flog them something. But then it would have to be of real value – well it would for me. I wouldn’t want to sell some crap to my friends, even if they are only virtual buddies. I’m not saying all internet marketers would sell their grandmother, but it is the sort of industry where your morals can quickly slide out from under you. If you dabble in selling a weight loss product you don’t believe in, or a method you don’t follow, or some dating site with a webpage that preys on people’s fear of being alone, then your morals are on perched on top of a banana on a tiled floor, and getting heavier by the minute….pretty soon; morals; flat on back. Anyhoo, back to the old sink and plughole. Given that we want organic search traffic, what products or courses should I purchase? The ones that could teach how to get organic search traffic.
Stick with it…..
Consider that piece of software or that ebook you are buying. Is it the most sharply contoured method that will have traffic and money flowing into your pocket almost as quickly as water flows into the plughole? Is it my ideal sink? Or will it simply take your money and leave the traffic sitting in a puddle, much like my sink takes leaves my cleaning debris? So much of this industry is funded by continually placing fear into people’s minds. Making them believe that they are only one more secret away from being an internet millionaire.
Bullshit.
But then, I’m not making millions flogging another ebook you don’t need. So I don’t really know what I’m talking about 
I do know though, that bathroom sink design needs to be re-thought. Maybe I should do away with the sink and just have a big pipe. I don’t really ever run water into my bathroom sink anyway. Its only job is to catch my toothpaste when I spit and get a little dirty every week so that I have to clean it, and go about my struggle of washing down the debris. At what point will the sink of the internet become the plughole? When will the search engine be the internet? Maybe I should be the search engine.
Now while I’m on the subject of water. Here’s something bizarre. I don’t really get modern art. Kind of like I don’t get freeform atonal jazz. I just miss the point. But there is this artist who placed an istallation in a museum shop. The piece? A bucket of water. ” Wow” you say? “Deep” you say? “Symbolic” you say? Here is the bizzare…to get the water into the bucket, he employed a plumber to run a pipe from the nearest bathroom to the shop, filled the bucket from the pipe and then had the plumber remove the piping again so there was no trace of the bucket filling. Hmmmmmm. Much like the relationship of this anecdote to the rest of this post about making money like water, I just don’t get it. I told you, I know some strange stuff.
Now, try not to use the phrase “Stick with it” in conversation today…..
(double aside today – this is a longish post and if you don’t read it far enough down to get to the crux – here it is – Give some money to charity! Now, read the post!)
So, I think most of you reading this are either making money online, or trying to make money online…..for different reasons: Upstart Blogger is putting his earnings away to ensure his families’ financial security, The At Home Couple are sick of working for someone else and don’t want to waste their lives for a “shitty pension and a cheap gold watch” …..ClogMoney just wants the fame, fortune and groupies that come from celebrity blogging. Normal Joe blogs because he want’s to work for himself and ensure his financial freedom….Wordvixen wants to be a professional freelance writer….BrilliantJeni actually makes full time income online. Griz also makes a lot of cash with his make money online for beginners blog (in fact, Griz is my inspiration when it comes to using free resources to make money online). I’m doing it because with rising prices, I need some extra money to help cover the cost of childcare; my day job just doesn’t pay enough after my mortgage, energy bills and food.
Anyway, I know we all want the money; most of us want to be filthy rich. And, of course, the economic crisis is in the forefront of everyone’s minds lately. We are all worried about money. Here’s something to put it in perspective though; I’ve seen various different versions of the stats (some higher, some lower), but they all go something like this:
If you have a roof over your head, keep your clothes in a closet and your food in a refrigerator, you are wealthier than 75% of the world’s population. Furthermore, if you actually have a bank account, then you are in the wealthiest 8% of the world’s population. Re-read that. You are wealthier than 92% of the world.
Christmas is just around the corner and I’m wealthier than 92% of the world…..so are you…..I know I could use every extra penny this year, especially at this time of the year, when our rampant consumerism seems to take over and we are cajoled, coaxed and manipulated into purchasing a shitload of stuff that we probably don’t need.
I’m not making a truckload online yet….currently I make between 50cents and 1 dollar a day online from adsense on a different blog. Not a lot of money – at most, $30 a month. Still that 30 bucks will send my child to nursery for a half a day….hmmm probably less than half a day…..not the point – Here’s the rub (and I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of doing this) – I’m going to donate everything I earn online in October and November to charity (that’s going to come somewhere between 30 and 60 dollars for 2 months). And I’m challenging every blogger who is making money online to match me (or if you earn less than I do, to pledge the 2 months of online income). Think about it – a lot of you make considerably more than 30 dollars a month online….many of you are making in excess of 100 dollars a day from your online ventures, so matching my charity contributions is going to cost some of you less than a day’s worth of income. I know you may be counting on that day’s income, and I feel you – like I said, I need the cash for childcare….this little shindig is going to send me further into debt, but that really is not the point – it will be temporary – it will hurt a little now, but I (and you) will still be wealthier than 92% of the world next year, and we will all make more cash.
If every blogger who makes money online gives the same amount as I do to a charity of their choice, we can make a huge impact. I don’t care who you chose to support, just give a little back, that’s all. My personal charity of choice happens to be Care for the Wild – ’cause I like wildlife, but maybe you want to give to Cancer research, or World Vision. It doesn’t matter.
So what’s the plan? Post something on your blog – challenge all your MMO readers to give it away! I don’t care if you link me up or not – I’m not all that interested in cheap traffic tricks, but the opportunity for this to spread to every MMO blogger virally is huge. Make a post about it. Pledge your cash. I’m going to link up every blog that I find who posts the challenge to their readers. Can’t say fairer than that. Oh, and if you thought of the idea before me – hit me up and I’ll link you up.
Edit……I’ve set up a page for everyone who is involved in some sort of giving it away. Go check them out on Charity starts online.
