I don’t troll through Internet Marketing blogs. There has probably been 10 IM blogs that I have ever read a post from in my lifetime. I had an idea for a website and decided to go check out the popular IM blogs.

Problogger, Copyblogger, Matt Cutts, Entrpeneurs Journey, SEOmoz, Daily Blog Tips, Serarch Engine Land, John Chow, Shoemoney, Search Engine Watch were the top 10 on Winning the Web.

What a load of boring shit. I’m feeling my curmudgeon leanings after wasting my time looking over those sites. Have you ever visited one? What exactly are you supposed to get from all the highbrow blather? The Problogger dude turns over most of his writing to folks writing lightweight shit like “What does treating your blog ‘Like a Business’ really mean?”. Every d-bag in this business talks about making sure you treat IM/blogging as a business. Copyblogger ponders whether SEO copywriting matters. Has anyone in IM ever disregarded SEO? He provides a piechart and fancy research stats to come to the conclusion that backlinks matter. Gasp! I had no idea. Good that they can still get mileage out of the 5 year old knowledge that backlinks matter to Google. Entrepreneur’s Journey has embraced video to tell you how to grow your blog traffic. Oh wait. It was a shill for his video series. SEOmoz publishes useless posts to keep their site fresh in the hopes you will stumble into all their pay for services and products. Smart marketing on their part if you have an interest in all their dubious SEO tools.

The only one that I had any interest in before I dozed off was Dosh Dash…and then I realized the site is hardly ever updated and has php errors, so I disgustedly logged into this piece of shit blog and started bitching.

These top blogs, except Matt Cutts love letter to Google, all apparently make crazy money. They either sell some service or product that their cult can’t stand not to have or they sell ads in their 100×100 sidebar space. They are smart marketers. People are desperate for help making money online. The lemmings are eager buyers. The circle jerk continues to feed itself.

These bloggers circle around the same watering hole when updating their blogs. Like anything has changed in 5 years. It’s the same as it ever was for blogging and niche sites. Keywords, writing and backlinks. I think it’s why folksy bloggers like Griz haven’t blogged in a year. What else is there to say? How many ways can you talk about keywords, writing and backlinks? Not many. So you get fluff pieces on keeping your blog lively. Or how to get visitors to comment on your blog. Or should you Adsense or not Adsense.

New make money bloggers amble over to the same hole for a drink. And around and around we go.

The Alpha bloggers have herded the sheep. It’s amazing how much (apparent) money and visitors these people get for their offerings. I contend there is no magic ebook to help you. No need to open the membership door. No fancy video that will tell you different. I’ve spent money on it all. I’ve been there. And I have done that. It all comes back to keywords, writing and backlinks. All activities you can do yourself or outsource. All boring as shit activities. Why do people continue to go to these sites thinking they have some magic elixir for riches? Well, I know why. I just wish people would get a clue and stop. It took me 2 years or so to get it so I feel their ensuing pain.

Top IM bloggers make a living talking about IM. They invest heavily in their website to make it appear modern and professional. They create videos and write articles using well-funded research. Some are smart guys and have the ability to dig into the guts of this shit and describe things scientifically. Doesn’t mean it is worthwhile.

It reminds me of those flashy TV ads for junk like the Perfect Pushups or something. They spend millions of dollars on the set (website). They have professional scripts drafted (content). People are interviewed and rave about the product (testimonials). They incentive you to buy it (bonuses). The personalities are cheesy pitchmen (guberus). People buy the thing and it sits in the corner after 2 weeks (memberships and software).

Then again you have folks out there simply getting on the floor (keywords), lifting their body in a plank position (writing) and pushing it up and down letting gravity kick their ass (backlinks). Nothing fancy. Do a few sets every other day and the results are the same as if you bought a goofy product to do the same damn thing.

I don’t get the whole IM thing. Why are people drawn into their cult? Why so gullible? These people are making a shitload of money from convincing people this shit is harder than it is. Making money online is hard work. But it is not difficult. At least how I see it. Correction, I submit that PPC is hard and difficult. There are a lot of variables to making money off your paid advertising. But that is not what we do typically.

Somehow these sites have convinced people there is some grand scheme that has to be applied to make money. It is all self serving BS if you ask me. But what do I know? They are successful and I’m not as much. They are successful salesmen and I am just a tool with a negative blog. But I don’t want to be like them. I’ll gladly stand outside the gates and fling rocks in like a bored 13-year old.

Lots of visitors. Social blogging. Traffic diversion. Getting rich? Not directly. But I can get a website or page indexed in about 15 minutes using one of my blogs like this. Pretty cool amount of visitors though. Folks are writing about my sites on blogs, on Twitter and in forums. Posts take about 5 minutes a day. Blah, blah, blah.

What actually interests me is the keywords. I haven’t done any keyword research for any of these type of sites. Just writing about the photo or video I post. You would be amazed (then again maybe not) at the keywords people use to get to the site. Honestly it makes me re-think the whole keyword methodology I have been taught or follow.

People make a career out of teaching keyword theory. There are sites dedicated to the pleasure of finding the perfect keyword. Software programs scoop out keywords from god knows where. And after it’s all said and done after a few months of writing posts or articles I will have more keywords than I ever thought would be used to find my site. None of them show up in keyword tools.

However, if your idea for riches is via Adsense then all those thousands of keywords is mostly shite. You’ll make very little money with them. But then again you endure a lot of pain finding those money makers too, TKA’s new membership green keyword site discovery thingy notwithstanding (No, I’m no longer a member).

But I’m not really focused on Daddy G anymore. Haven’t been for a while. I’m not thrilled with relying on so many effed up variables to make money with Adsense. There are a lot of talented folks out there doing quite well with that type of monetary model. I’m not on their team.

The keyword dance required for Adsense glory is obviously a career model. The perfect keyword is money. Both from guberus and for webmasters. I guess I don’t even try for the green keyword anymore. Too much work. Not enough reward.

So I guess the point is I try to get traffic from as many keywords as possible. The long tail I guess. But I’m not researching for the long tail, or the short tail. I like using photos and/or videos. They are on topics that a large swath of people have an interest. I write about the media. What color is the model’s shoes? Where is the photo taken? How many bones did the tool break? I tag the shit out of it. Amazing how people find the blog from the search engines. Both in general search and images. Then I link out to blogs and Ebay sites that are very niche. The keywords are money. But I pretty much know I won’t rank the blog for that keyword. My blog is in essence the search engine.

I have discovered some keywords that are quite popular that aren’t highly thought of in the search engines. I use them to make Hubpages, Squidoo lens and Tumblr blogs. I can monetize those.

As stupid as all this sounds, I am simply writing on topics that I can get visitors. The graph above of one of my blogs show I can do it. Across a handful of (social) blogs I probably get at least 20K visitors a day. I link to sites of mine (and those that aren’t to try to camouflage my deal). I link to money sites. If I get 5% clicking, that is 1K people trolling over to money sites to possibly click an affiliate offer or Adsense to further their boredom. The sites are well-written original content sites. Nothing that daddy G would get upset over.

That’s my deal. I like to try shit out. Some things fail. Some don’t. I just don’t care to follow the lemmings.

BTW – I’m looking forward to seeing what PLRPro is going to turn out with their new initiative. It looks good. I use AMA. The rest of the offerings look useful as well.

Update – Should have mentioned that the money blogs I link to have to be somewhat related to the blogs that bring in traffic. When I post something I have to be able to link out in a way that makes sense. So I may have a post/photo of a chick playing football and I’ll link out to a site that promotes football jerseys from Ebay. It’s not like I’ll have a video of a speeding boat and link to a landscaping niche site. The trick is try to figure out what might interest people enough to click or buy. As you would imagine it’s difficult to get people to buy when they came to visit for entertainment. That’s why numbers have to be huge and hope for 1% success. It’s probably no easier than trying to find the perfect keyword and build a site around it. Just a bit more fun. I won’t get rich from this “technique” but I will make a few bucks without losing my mind. I still build real niche sites with XSP as the mood strikes. Gotta keep things swirling.