4 ms·

I agree completely, $1 a day times 400 sites is simply not feasible. This article is terrible advice, the kind that will probably lead you to failure. I have a

by il 17y ago

I agree completely, $1 a day times 400 sites is simply not feasible. This article is terrible advice, the kind that will probably lead you to failure. I have a fairly successful affiliate marketing business (I make more than I would if I had a day job), and it seems like every day I talk to people who are taking this approach and making $1-$2 a day. The article's logic is flawed- if it were that easy to make projects that do $1 a day on autopilot, your competitors(and big corporations) would already be scaling that model. The truth of the matter is that nothing runs on autopilot for long. Even with SEO, you constantly need to be producing fresh content, building links, and keeping abreast of ranking changes. And most of the time, these kinds of small-time efforts will still fail and lead to making $0 a day. On the other hand, every millionaire Internet marketer I've ever talked to (and I've connected with many of the big ones) has succeeded by focusing on a single market/product and scaling it up instead of running around from one failed project to the next like a chicken with its head cut off. Oh, and most of these people are "normals"- they don't have popular blogs or lots of Twitter followers, they're quietly grinding every day and making a killing online. Trust me, taking one project and not giving up until you MAKE IT WORK will be much more profitable in the long run. Oh, and I've just gotten into AdWords a couple months ago( most of my previous experience has been with social traffic like Facebook) and am doing very well with it, so anyone who tells you it's too late to get in is either a competitor who doesn't want more competition on a traffic source, or doesn't know what he's talking about. Talk to people who are actually succeeding online about their strategy, and you'll quickly see a pattern emerge. I bet very few of them got rich by making 400 AdSense sites.

richcollins 17y ago
Trust me, taking one project and not giving up until you MAKE IT WORK will be much more profitable in the long run. This sounds like it could be recipe for burnout and a waste of your life. Some businesses won't work no matter how hard you try. It seems like the best strategy would be one that is good at finding a reasonably scalable business model. If you don't find one after a few iterations, it might be a good idea to try something new.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  That's absolutely true, which is why the 'throw it at a wall and see what sticks' method is really good to find out what works and what doesn't. Making 400 sites that all work is undoable. But making say 10 sites that work and that all contribute a bit is definitely a workable scheme (see above), but it still won't make the kind of money that it potentially could because monetization is really hard. Solve the monetization issues and the thing looks a whole lot better right away. But reliable ad networks (both in not serving malware and in paying out on time (or at all)) are few and far between. Sticking to one thing and doing it well has made me lots, trying the '400 different projects' (ok, a bit less, but still) worked to some extent but definitely not on the level that Max makes it seem should be trivial to achieve. And that's with me being free to dedicate 100% of my time to this stuff.
- il 17y ago
  Maybe I should have added a corollary. I'm assuming you already have a solid business model, or at least a well-defined market. "Adsense" is not a business model. Also, monetization is NOT hard if you're selling something people want. Getting traffic is hard. Monetizing is trivial if you're running an actual business and not a hobby.
  - lsc 17y ago
    And what, pray tell, is the difference between a business and a hobby? I became an entrepreneur precisely because that allows me to focus on doing what I like doing and doing those things in a way that I can feel good about myself. To me, that means my business /is/ a hobby, even though I'm full time on it now.
ellyagg 17y ago
Hmmmm. As it happens, you're wrong and to the extent your parent supports your thesis, he's wrong, too. I work for an SEO marketing firm and one of my coworkers built up a portfolio of $1/day projects exactly in the mold of this article over the course of 2 or 3 years, and once he got to about $6000/month, he quit to do it full time. And he was no genius and had very little technical skill--he hired out all his programming. I would do it myself, but I have no desire to work on projects like that full time, even for only 2 years.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Interesting! So, what's the state now, has he been able to continue that trend? Does he have maintenance issues yet? Or does it seem like his model will scale forever? My 'little projects' make about 800 euros or 1200 dollars per month, so that's about 1/5th of what your friend is doing, or rather was doing when he quit to start working full time. I'm not saying it's a total failure, but it's not the success I'd hoped for either. And, to be honest at $6,000 per month I'd probably still not be too happy about it, but that's simply because I figured I'd be doing much better when I started out. (I already had a $10,000 per month project with 0 maintenance to tide me over while doing this, if it weren't for that I wouldn't have made it this far). If he's managed to take $1 / day with 0 input from now forward then he's done very well, but from a business point of view investing 2 to 3 years and getting to $6000 (or $1200 as in my case) still does not count as time well spent. For instance, if I had spent that time consulting it would have brought a multiple of that (but I'd have to continue to consult, which is of course the whole point of this exercise).
  - prawn 17y ago
    This is a standard guy with no real experience and no programming experience getting to $72k/yr after investing some time. Not quite living the dream, but it's not awful either given that he may not have had some outrageous education or experience and is now getting passive income that he can gradually build on. I think anyone here with some general startup knowledge/ability (e.g., can buy a domain, set up hosting, write HTML, write content, etc) could probably build up a passive $50/day source to give them a bit of a buffer to create bigger projects. Or they should at least be trying it to see if they can pull it off.
Alex3917 17y ago
"Every millionaire Internet marketer I've ever talked to has succeeded by focusing on a single market/product" My freshman year of college our rowing coach took us out to the salmon dam on the edge of the lake. He turned to the boat and asked, "How many times do you guys think the salmon try to jump over the dam before they give up?" I can't remember everyone's guesses, but the punchline was basically "They keep trying until either they make it or they fucking die." This seems to be the ideal strategy for startups. The person who wins isn't the one with the biggest shovel or the one who digs the most holes, it's the person with enough discipline to keep digging in one place with the shovel they have.

by il 17y ago

richcollins 17y ago

Trust me, taking one project and not giving up until you MAKE IT WORK will be much more profitable in the long run. This sounds like it could be recipe for burnout and a waste of your life. Some businesses won't work no matter how hard you try. It seems like the best strategy would be one that is good at finding a reasonably scalable business model. If you don't find one after a few iterations, it might be a good idea to try something new.

jacquesm 17y ago
That's absolutely true, which is why the 'throw it at a wall and see what sticks' method is really good to find out what works and what doesn't. Making 400 sites that all work is undoable. But making say 10 sites that work and that all contribute a bit is definitely a workable scheme (see above), but it still won't make the kind of money that it potentially could because monetization is really hard. Solve the monetization issues and the thing looks a whole lot better right away. But reliable ad networks (both in not serving malware and in paying out on time (or at all)) are few and far between. Sticking to one thing and doing it well has made me lots, trying the '400 different projects' (ok, a bit less, but still) worked to some extent but definitely not on the level that Max makes it seem should be trivial to achieve. And that's with me being free to dedicate 100% of my time to this stuff.
il 17y ago
Maybe I should have added a corollary. I'm assuming you already have a solid business model, or at least a well-defined market. "Adsense" is not a business model. Also, monetization is NOT hard if you're selling something people want. Getting traffic is hard. Monetizing is trivial if you're running an actual business and not a hobby.
- lsc 17y ago
  And what, pray tell, is the difference between a business and a hobby? I became an entrepreneur precisely because that allows me to focus on doing what I like doing and doing those things in a way that I can feel good about myself. To me, that means my business /is/ a hobby, even though I'm full time on it now.

ellyagg 17y ago

Hmmmm. As it happens, you're wrong and to the extent your parent supports your thesis, he's wrong, too. I work for an SEO marketing firm and one of my coworkers built up a portfolio of $1/day projects exactly in the mold of this article over the course of 2 or 3 years, and once he got to about $6000/month, he quit to do it full time. And he was no genius and had very little technical skill--he hired out all his programming. I would do it myself, but I have no desire to work on projects like that full time, even for only 2 years.

jacquesm 17y ago
Interesting! So, what's the state now, has he been able to continue that trend? Does he have maintenance issues yet? Or does it seem like his model will scale forever? My 'little projects' make about 800 euros or 1200 dollars per month, so that's about 1/5th of what your friend is doing, or rather was doing when he quit to start working full time. I'm not saying it's a total failure, but it's not the success I'd hoped for either. And, to be honest at $6,000 per month I'd probably still not be too happy about it, but that's simply because I figured I'd be doing much better when I started out. (I already had a $10,000 per month project with 0 maintenance to tide me over while doing this, if it weren't for that I wouldn't have made it this far). If he's managed to take $1 / day with 0 input from now forward then he's done very well, but from a business point of view investing 2 to 3 years and getting to $6000 (or $1200 as in my case) still does not count as time well spent. For instance, if I had spent that time consulting it would have brought a multiple of that (but I'd have to continue to consult, which is of course the whole point of this exercise).
- prawn 17y ago
  This is a standard guy with no real experience and no programming experience getting to $72k/yr after investing some time. Not quite living the dream, but it's not awful either given that he may not have had some outrageous education or experience and is now getting passive income that he can gradually build on. I think anyone here with some general startup knowledge/ability (e.g., can buy a domain, set up hosting, write HTML, write content, etc) could probably build up a passive $50/day source to give them a bit of a buffer to create bigger projects. Or they should at least be trying it to see if they can pull it off.

Alex3917 17y ago

"Every millionaire Internet marketer I've ever talked to has succeeded by focusing on a single market/product" My freshman year of college our rowing coach took us out to the salmon dam on the edge of the lake. He turned to the boat and asked, "How many times do you guys think the salmon try to jump over the dam before they give up?" I can't remember everyone's guesses, but the punchline was basically "They keep trying until either they make it or they fucking die." This seems to be the ideal strategy for startups. The person who wins isn't the one with the biggest shovel or the one who digs the most holes, it's the person with enough discipline to keep digging in one place with the shovel they have.