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Online money making ethics

(a little meander through some random thoughts on blogging)

So, back when I started the underdogblog, I was going to explore ways of making money online for free. Sadly, in my exploration into the lucrative world of moonlight blogging for moolah, I got disheartened by the number of scams and MLM crap being sold out there. It’s pretty sad that even supposed honest reviews online are mostly crap put up to try and drive traffic to some sort of money making scam. I don’t like scams. I don’t really like a lot of accepted internet marketing. But that’s just me, the marketers aren’t going away and the only thing left to do is to align my own efforts with my own unique set of ethics.

Let’s start off with the simplest of things. Everyone who is anyone in the royalty of the blogsphere will tell you the first thing you need is a domain name and some hosting to kick off your super cash generating blog. Now the catch. Everyone who is anyone will then proceed to link you up to some of the best hosting and domain registration packages they have ever seen in their lives. Personal reviews are the best aren’t they? Heck, here’s a blogger you don’t know from adam claiming to be making a nice chunk of passive income every month just by writing a blog, and he finds that company x provides great hosting solutions. Go check them out, go get some hosting, start your blog, you’ll have extra money in no time.

(oh by the way did you notice his link to the hosting is an affiliate link? nope? hmmmmm, interesting). Yup, very few people actually admit that they are making money from your dream of blogging for bucks. There are a handful who do admit it. Ashley Morgan at Upstartblogger makes no bones about the fact that you are generating his money by signing up to AN Hosting through his affiliate links. Griz at his various blogs also makes no bones about it, though with Griz’s site you are less likely to read the content and more likely to just click an advert .

The interesting thing is that these two are almost at the opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to blogging. Ashley is a firm believer in wordpress and such like. Griz likes his blogs free, from blogger. Both seem to do well. I also like my blogs free. But I admit to having a few domains of my own. The biggest problem I have with the whole self hosting route and wordpress is wordpress. It has such frequent upgrade cycles that it’s a pain to keep on top of. Also, even though it seems to be the blog platform of choice, I think it’s gotten a little too big. Too many features. Too many plugins. I like my software simple. I like 1 function and if you think about what you really need in a blog platform it’s the ability to post entries and schedule entries. Nothing more. You don’t need fancy plugins to suck up RSS feeds, you don’t need fancy contact forms (because you can simply use the comment feature for that) and you don’t need the whole plethora of fancy Categories, Tags, Excerpts etc etc etc…..

Cash for Bangers

How is this not going to simply make car retailers put their prices up by 2 grand?

My coffee tastes better than yours

(or where I get some caffeine)

My coffee tastes better than yours because I can draw pretty patterns on it when I pour my milk…..

Latte Art

of course, my coffee machine probably costs more than your entire kitchen’s worth of appliances…..

E61 Group Head

gotta love a shiny E61 group head.