Will this be the decade everyone became an Internet marketer? I get less calls from telemarketers than I get promotional spam from Internet marketers. Yet, it’s still the telemarketers who get the worst reputation.
When I read blogs about Internet or online marketing I can’t really take any of them seriously. If they really were smart marketers they would have stepped out of the blog world by now. For one thing, it’s flooded. There are far too many bloggers and few readers/ subscribers/ buyers. Now that so many people have a blog it’s getting to be a pretty crowded pond. The only way you can still be a big fish in this pond is to hop out and create a new pond.
The only blogs still interesting enough to notice are those who have real, original content. I don’t include any blog about Internet marketing or related topics in this list. If one does find a new thought it will soon be posted to death through blogs and social networking. Their pond is more like a goldfish bowl so stuffed with fish there are only a few drops of water left in the bowl.
What is the last blog you read and actually liked enough to go back and read again? In my case it was a blog about recycling furniture, clothes and etc. I found it when I was looking for ideas to use buttons. (It had two).
What is the point of this post? Not much really. It’s not going to change anything. Just made me laugh today when I heard someone cursing telemarketers, Avon sales people and all those others when in fact they themselves run a blog promoting themselves as an expert on Internet marketing and offering their services. Funny that the very people most likely to be reading that blog are people who already offer the same services themselves.
I don’t offer a great solution. Just seems to me that as flooded as things are online, it may be time for people to consider going back to door-to-door sales again, local and in person. A live person who lets you sample the wares actually rather than virtually. Someone who will deliver your order or let you pick it up cause, after all, they live just down the next block. Don’t you kind of miss human contact and the feeling of dealing with a local business, someone who really does care about the product they sell?
Word Grrls is my mad science experiment, my adventures with fame and world domination (politely). This is where I inspire people to create: invent mutations, cause change, bring colour into your world. Web writer since 1998. Find me on StumbleUpon , and Tumblr.
There’s a line between spammers and entertainment, I think. I don’t mind that some blogs and websites have ads or marketing info, because they make it entertaining or interesting.
I think the difference between spammers and Internet marketers is that spammers is unsolicited, vehement, and in-your-face. Internet marketer blogs are more conversational, and they don’t hound you; plus, you can just avoid visiting those sites if you don’t like it. On the other hand, spammers hound you. They find you, they pursue you. God forbid they get your phone # or email!
I agree that content, real content, is sorely lacking. But so it is in print as well. You know that magazines run teh same articles over and over again – “Trim Your Abs and Lose the Winter Flab”, “10 Top Ways to Save at the Grocey Store”, “6 Tips to Cut Your Energy Bill”, etc. These articles are just as void of any real content as most websites.
As for using a blog to try and generate some revenue, hosting with Blogger or Wrodpress or any of the other sites actually makes economic sense: they are free, thus eliminating a major cost, they tend to provide good bandwidth, no caps, etc.
As someone who has ads on his site, I have yet to cover even 1 years worth of domain registration and hosting – based on my current earning, I would need to increase my traffic about 20x – not sure if my budget priced hosting service would handle that much traffic (I share the server with 1325 other websites).
You can check out who you are sharing your web hosting with at http://sitedossier.com (you share with 140 other sites).
I tihnk the main problem people have is that they have a lifestlye preference, but not a business plan. Working from home is not a business plan. Running a website is not a busniess plan. A business plan is: what are you going to sell, to whom are you going to sell, and how are you going to sell.
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