Slipped in the Web Sewers

True to form, I have added too much shit into my web sewer pipe. Not content with simply building tight and functional niche sites I inexplicably decided I wanted to be a purveyor of email lists and Google News sites. The former is something I have always fought against, obviously to my financial detriment. They say the money is in the list. If you can sign enough people up to receive your daily/weekly/monthly marketing offerings, then you are golden. The latter is the latest gambit in the quest to get to the number one spot in Google listings. It’s a fine technique, one in which will consume every moment of your existence.

I don’t like email lists. I’m not a fan of being on them and I don’t like creating extra shit to service them. Some of the best marketers have asked me time and again why I don’t run email lists. They say Lost Ball has massive potential if only I collected emails. The story goes I should email people that I have updated my blog. Or have something to sell. Basically the goal of every website should be to build an email list. The web site is simply a collection of words that gets in the way of a pop up or landing page or sign up form.

I get the idea. I subscribe to financial and political newsletters that sell the shit out of their offerings. To the point it is incredibly annoying. The value of the newsletters overcome the constant sales pitch, but I feel like I have to swim through a layer of slime to get to the content. Fair enough. They have to make money somehow to provide the information.

But does every 20 page web site need an auto responder series? The true salesman and professional marketer would say hell yes.

I remember the one training day I suffered through in MLM hearing that for every 100 people you come into contact with 5 might have an interest. Out of those 5 you might get to do a follow up pitch to 3. Out of those 3 you might make a sale to 1. I look at the odds as stacked against me. The salesman see the odds stacked in his favor thinking that out of 100 people, one is going to buy his shit. He’s going to find that fucker. There could not be two different people on this planet.

Building a site for Google News is a bitch. Like I have time. I am fairly adept at writing and can take news and spin it around in my own words. Having a website accepted into Google News can be extremely useful and lucrative. It takes a lot of work. You have to report on news in a variety of categories and have lots of reporters listed as working for your news site. Of course the idea is to make up 6-8 writers and go out and re-write other news stories. So I have a news site I am building out with categories on Sports, Travel, Features, Tech, Entertainment and Finance. I have 6 writers “working” for me. I re-write daily news items. At some point in the next month I should have built out the site enough to possibly get accepted to GN.

So what’s the point? Like I think I can compete with New York Times, AP, and Newsweek? Nope. But the idea is to report on stories that have high Adsense or CPM payouts with little competition. If you write a series of reports on 401(k) plans then maybe you will have few news sites to compete with but your listing will land on top of the Google search results no matter how badass those websites are. News trumps bullshit webpages. If you are writing about Obamacare with the other 1,000 news outlets then you won’t get listed or make much money. But reporting on news that are searched for and pay out could make you a bundle. At least that is the theory.

Yes, it’s rather bogus and GN will make getting accepted and staying accepted insanely hard. You can’t fake competence with GN. There are like 20,000 news sites accepted into GN. They can keep an eye on all of them. If you can write the news and provide real reporting then you are golden. But can you do it consistently? Or even want to?

I’m having a hard time forcing myself to do email marketing. It seems like it is something I should do but I hate the idea and execution. Google News is something new. I like the challenge of getting a site accepted but to what end?

Servicing the web sewers bores me. I am guilty of constantly trying to discover something that will keep my interest and fill my PayPal account. The funny thing is that I always come back to building simple XSP niche sites. Fat Cat Blueprint man.

I also feel the need to diversify. If Google turns to crap at least you can flog the shit out of your email list and sell products. Why not build news sites to see if an opportunity exists? But as long as I have been at this I have the best luck with static sites. I can write 10 long pages and slap Adsense on there and make money. I can create a Squidoo page and make a little money. I can build a Hubpage and make a little money. I can build a niche site for a Shareasale or CJ product. As long as I keep it real I make real money. But when I fuck around with tools and tactics and bullshit I lose my way and I start losing money (or losing the opportunity for more money).

But to put a fine point on this sewage, you damn well almost have to outsource, if you are going to chase the latest and newest tactics. There is no way you can write 20 pages of web garbage, a bonus ebook and an autoresponder series in volume. Sure you can knock out one a month or so. And to write shit for your Google News sites will drive you insane. Sure you can rewrite some news stories. It doesn’t take me much times at all. But the juice of this operation is to find a news story that sticks around and that you can write about 10-20 news articles over a period of time that has big Adsense payouts. Of course the rest of the categories have to be serviced at some point too. And lets not forget that you have to do your keyword research. Crazy.

Seems the economy is bringing aboard new riders on the “make money online” express. Good fucking luck people. There are more clueless people diving into the sewers than I have ever seen. Sure everybody has to start somewhere but no one wants to start at the beginning, you know? They are having a hard time simply writing 20 articles and in lieu are having an even more difficult time finding some hut dweller to write for them. So now it seems there is almost desperation among the lumpen to find people to write shit for them. I even succumbed to outsourcing. Got back a nice pack of articles for the effort.

Outsourcing articles is the shit. There are millions of folks in the third world that are educated in English better than most in the United States and are just beginning to pull themselves out of poverty. They can write as well as an 8th grader in the States and that is apparently good enough for the web sewers. $5 an article in the States is nothing. If someone says they can write one for that then figure they are outsourcing your outsourcing to a hut somewhere in the Caribbean. The whole chain is rather humorous where ultimately some joker is writing 400 words for a couple of bucks. Crazy.

I’m not against outsourcing. If you have a lot of projects going on you need help. If you do email marketing you need folks to create auto responder series and bonus reports. If you want to do Google News then you need some folks to re-write your news.  Building niche sites require a lot of articles. Not to mention articles for directories, getting back links, etc. There is not enough time to do it all. But I try and burnout. And finding good people to economically do work for you that you would be happy with is a bitch.

As a web sewer magician I can create more articles in a week than some will create in a lifetime. But I can service only so much in the sewers. I have no business trying to create multiple shitpiles to send into the sewers. Email list building, Google News, Niche sites…it’s all a little much. And as you can tell driving me a bit loony.

I would do much better if I simply stuck with one idea. I get bored and can’t. Understand I have to go through this spastic exercise of discovery and burn out to realize what I need to focus on. I find it useful and interesting but I find I will come back to the same sewers I always serviced. You know, people make a lot of money selling cars, or insurance or vacuum cleaners. Doesn’t mean that I have an interest in doing it. To me the shitty means do not justify the lucrative ends. There are a lot of shitty means  in the web sewers.

So I headed down the wrong sewer pipe. Fuck it. Time to get back in the right sewer and do what I do and stop trying to do everything and shit I don’t like.

This post is ridiculous, long and rambling. I got a bit sidetracked. I feel better when I write about it. I’m going to re-focus my efforts on keyword research, articles writing, and promotion of XSP niche sites. Think FCB. It’s what I do.

And by the way, Wired magazine says the web is dead. That apps is where it’s at. I told you that and pondered what we were going to do to make sales in the age of screen tappers. I’ll yap more about this later.