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The Internet is filled with so many good articles on how to make money online from home, side hustles for teens, etc.. but the truth is some of these information on how to make money online have become outdated and oversaturated sometimes making it hard to make $50 within a short time that’s why in this short piece, I’ll tell you what i really think based on my experiences.
In the coming years it might become harder to make money online…and I’ll tell you why as you read on.
In some of these other blogs, we’re being told to start a website, sell stuff online, affiliate marketing, start a YouTube channel, sell your Services on Fiverr, paid surveys, Join Amazon kdp, etc.. so it’s no use repeating the same things again here.
The thing with these articles is that everybody is doing or trying to do these same things to make money online.. i.e following the same steps on how to monetize websites, so many people copying and editing books, writing books with AI and spamming amazon, how to do affiliate marketing, how to start a YouTube channel, videos, etc and at the end of the day, It’s going to look like we just wasted our time. Like what’s the use repeating already created content or creating content when at the end it’s those with a good number of subscribers, views and likes that gets all the attention…
There’s something called Search engine optimization (SEO) and anytime we hear people mention SEO, our focus goes to building and optimizing a website to rank on google when in reality SEO is more than that.
Google’s march 2024 algorithm core update crippled many businesses, entrepreneurs, even hidden and outspoken SEO’s.. almost everybody felt the heat.. why?.. due to this update many websites lost over 90% of their Organic traffic (.i.e 90% of revenue or income), others got de-indexed, some others lost all of their traffic overnight coupled with the fact that most of these websites were yet to recover from the helpful content update of 2023…. Imagine having a website with 10,000 visitors per month bringing in between $1000 and $5000 and you woke up next morning to see that 90 percent of this traffic has disappeared.. . Or traffic dropped 50% during an algorithm update and then dropped 50% again to zero during the next update (which can be a year after)… the feeling is more than losing a regular job.
As far as I’m concerned the only crazy thing with Google is their core updates… when your website gets hit with an algorithm update even when you’re doing everything correctly, there’s this general notion that it’ll bounce back or recover during the next update which can be a year later and sometimes most websites in this state never bounce back or recover meaning the money invested in keeping the website running, etc was in vain. The question now is.. should I keep running this website or should I just shut it down… ??
Time and time again we hear two things; Diversify your traffic sources. Secondly, get an expired domain, or a domain that has existed before. The first option is viable in some niches but the second, not so much. I’ll explain why.
Nowadays, we ask ourselves if SEO is still as relevant as it was years ago why? Because it’s harder to rank on Google these days. Secondly, unless you’re running ads, doing local seo, or an online store, it seems nothing else is working.
Is SEO still relevant?
SEO is still relevant as long as people are looking for answers, solutions to problems, ideas, recommendations and people like you and I providing the solutions, making us money in the process…
SEO may become irrelevant soon because all major social media platforms are now adding AI search engine or research functionalities to keep their users hooked on their respective platforms and cut the need to reach out to independent publishers and creators like you and I. Don’t forget…. Google has started rolling out SGE. (…i.e Getting fed with Google powered AI generated results instead of the regular blue links to independent publisher websites when you search for something on Google).
Back in the day we all could easily make a couple of $$ with survey sites but right now, not so much… have you bothered to ask yourself why? Everyone knew about the opportunity and right now everyone is trying to make money doing surveys pushing the competition up. Something similar is going to happen when everybody finds out that articles can be written with AI and can also get paid for it. Which already happened leading to the Google spam update.
Small websites that are solely Informational, transactional, product reviews, may never rank on Google anymore. Why?.. AI is there to answer nearly 80% of these informational queries, AI can write articles, translate and edit content too so it’s just a matter of time before these “get paid to write sites’ ‘ figure this out and maybe decide to shut the doors to human writers. The beginning of the end for sites like “Fiverr for freelancing”. Secondly, Google is giving preference to big websites and forums for informational and transactional keywords. Why?… According to them Websites with high authority have more EEAT. But is this entirely true?… Not at all… many legitimate sites and businesses lost a major portion of their traffic just because of this recent Google update.
Most of these guys teaching SEO have also openly said they’re investing heavily in AI companies having some form of shares, etc..What does this all mean? I’m sure the answers are starting to come together in your head…. Does this mean the beginning of the end?…. Who knows..
According to experts like Neil Patel, backlinko, Matt Diggity, SEO Jesus, Nathan Gotch, Ahrefs, Wes McDowell, etc you’ll need to wait between 6 and 12 months to see results with SEO that’s if you’re targeting low competition keywords and you’re on a new domain with 0 backlinks and 0 authority…. This information itself has become outdated and somewhat non useful because right now Google will end up ranking websites with high authority. Does this mean there’s no need creating websites? No… It simply means that Google should not be factored in as a major traffic source when you’re creating your website.
Google recently removed backlinks from the top 3 ranking factors so we can now breathe down a bit right? Nope.. Not at all. Infact.. backlinks increases your authority. Does this mean I should buy backlinks?.. Not at all.. which is why you should Diversify your traffic sources. In trying other traffic sources, you will get backlinks from people sharing your content and linking out to you But if you really wish to buy backlinks, do so moderately…i.e make it look more natural and don’t buy cheap backlinks.
blackhatworld.com… a site known to teach black hat tactics, etc appears to triple its traffic and they’re ranking for some good keywords there even with the core update. But the site totally goes against Google’s rules hence the name right?
I’ll assume two things: Either Google doesn’t really give a fuck about things like this anymore or the website itself didn’t get their backlinks and authority by buying backlinks as they teach you to.. i.e.. they have a natural backlink profile… More like teaching you to do what they say but not what they do.
If you’re building your website today solely to depend on Google for traffic on a new domain even with low competition keywords then you may not get it because Google has started giving preference to bigger well established sites and forums with a lot of authority.
With expired domains, you get to rank a website and get traffic fast in less than the general average waiting period. The advantage you’ll get with an expired domain or domains that has existed before is the fact that they already have backlinks that are already known by Google and these domains may have even ranked for a keyword or certain keywords in the past meaning you can easily rank on Google within 1 to 6 months with these domains.
I luckily randomly got this domain (abgist.com) by typing in random names.com on my browser. This domain already had 400 backlinks with Domain ratings of 35 and above but was returning a 404 not found error on my browser so I quickly registered it.The original idea behind this site was to design a multi site to help people publish their articles, share content online, connect and chat with each other, create groups, etc.. We were having over 2000 articles published on this site in various categories from different people and we were doing well… then Google’s update crashed us too and we ended up ranking for zero keywords except for those searching for the site to publish articles. But why did we get hit? Honestly we don’t know.. most of us don’t know. Maybe a low Domain rating I guess… or… backlinks are irrelevant to the content on the site which is kinda equal to no backlink at all. Right now I actually quit blogging and you’ll know why as you read on.
Have you ever come across YouTube videos teaching you how to make money on YouTube? Have you ever taken your time to look at the views these videos have gotten and will get? Tens of thousands of views..
If over 500,000 people already created a youtube channel after watching that particular video following every rule as outlined tell me how you’ll make money with your YouTube channel following that same rule… This same thing applies to every other YouTube video on how to make money online.. if everyone is doing or trying to do a particular thing to make money online, it’ll become harder for you to make money online doing exactly that same thing.
I watched another video on YouTube on how to start dropshipping using ads from our Facebook (Instagram) feeds as a product research tool.. .i.e to find popular or trending products to promote.. and these videos have nearly a million views..
The point here is nobody has ever talked about using the likes, shares and comments on the ads we see on Facebook as a guide to determine what products to drop ship so it’s new and hence the views it’s getting.
So you and I who decide to jump in too, will be competing with over 1 million people running the same ads on the same dropshipping products as shown to us from Facebook ads shown to us on our feeds… and at the end of the day, it’s those with a better ad quality and higher budget that makes money dropshipping and this same thing apply in every niche.
I also found out that I could make money on Pinterest by taking the url and checking for the keywords that Pinterest is currently ranking for on Google and then create pins and content around those keywords, also checking out what is trending on Pinterest by visiting trends.pinterest.com and also creating content and pins based on that and if I don’t want to create a website with content i can promote affiliate links directly or my youtube channel on Pinterest using canva.
But if a large number of people start doing this then very few people will actually make money doing it..
I kept thinking about what the future holds.. right now there’s just too many similar content on the web and so many peeps trying to make money doing the same thing and only God knows what the next 5 – 10 years will look like with AI… people are actually tired of signing up to newsletters these days especially when AI can answer basic questions and even give recommendations.. plus the fact that information is widely available so based on your website content people already have an idea of what you’re going to be sending to them through email newsletters and instead of getting bombarded with weekly or monthly mails, they can easily get their questions answered by simply doing a search on places like YouTube.. or using AI … making money with ads is another thing but you still have to deal with user experience.. so what’s the use? Having a website with just informational content with 100 impressions per day on ads translates to 3000 impressions per month.. on adcash that translates to $2.1… a website that never recovered from any of the recent Google updates relying on social media for traffic.. and for reasons I don’t know of, bing just refused to index my website even though I passed all SEO tests… So what’s the use?? If my content wasn’t really good at all I wouldn’t have been getting any visitors at all spending 57 seconds on a page with 36% bounce rate.. I needed something I can set and forget and won’t need to worry too much about creating Facebook Posts everyday, etc..….so I tried Pinterest.. last month I got 4.2k monthly views on my pins on Pinterest but just around 6 outbound clicks to my website… I’d have actually made money if I was actually selling something, a product or service or an affiliate product maybe.
I didn’t want to delete my Pinterest account because I knew even though I never made any money with display ads from 6 people, spending a long time on my blog was enough signal that what I wrote there was helpful.
I wasn’t interested in blogging anymore so I decided to get a cheap domain name, sign up for an account on one of these sites offering free hosting and create a one page website and then redirect all the urls of those pins already on pinterest (@abgist.com) to (@moneyland.com.ng). So technically, this website is not even built to rank on Google because no sitemap and no seo plugin is installed and even the title of this post is not a keyword someone out there would type on Google trying to search for something. Just did this so that any new clicks on my pins on Pinterest and clicks on old posts on Facebook won’t send people to a website that no longer exist. Secondly, I embedded a forum on the site for you all to publicly and privately connect with each other, share ideas, etc.
I quit blogging for now because it may not be worth writing about a handful of certain topics in the long run anymore trying to make money from ads.. in short so long some niches are not going to be profitable long term then no need to continue.
So what did I learn from all of these?… People will not really sign up to my newsletters because my content is not what one can classify as new, different or spectacular even though they spend a good time on the page.
I’ve also learned that one way to easily get over an algorithm update is by buying a new domain and moving all your content from the one that was hit to the new domain and then submit for indexing but for how long are you going to be doing this?
I was told that if I want to really make money online generally in today’s competitive space, I must be ready to take advantage of all the ways to make money online using them all at once.. like for example, I have a website about pets, I should also create a youtube channel and tiktok account that talks about all things pets.
Even adding that it’s not compulsory to show your face on your YouTube channel as it can be a faceless channel straight to the point.
Creating facebook groups and pages and reels about pets, a pinterest account and pins about pets, write or copy and edit books about pets and submit to Amazon kdp and alternatives including your website url on your books as a relevant resource, taking advantage of linkedin, medium, tiktok, Instagram, etc and link all of them together.
What about people who are not good with tiktok and Instagram and even YouTube.. people who are introverts like me does it mean we won’t be able to make money online at all?
soon, writing on sites like medium may not even be worth it anymore because there’s just too many similar content on these platforms… Imagine someone going through one of your posts on medium and they be like;.. “seems I’ve read something like this before”… and I bet you too have had this experience.. everybody copying each other to make money online, etc… Secondly, right now I prefer to use what I know to build an empire for myself than writing on some site to enrich that site with content.
From experience, if you’re not bringing in anything new or different, more interesting, funny, updated and even emotional you’re just another person making noise unless maybe you can mass produce more content than what’s already out there.. which may not also be safe because with a website Google will think you’re a spam site.
You can actually make money buying branded domain names and selling on flippa with the idea that these domains will be worth something later… e.g chainsaw.com, carwashtexas.com, dubaitour.com, gamerhive.com, etc.. companies and businesses will be willing to pay over $100 for these type of domains.. a domain you registered for $11… next question is… for how long will you be able to make money doing this?
Anyways, why did I say Diversifying your traffic is not worth it for some niches?… If a visitor can get the contents of your website, your YouTube channel or whatever you’re trying to make money with somewhere else then it’s no use thinking about looking for alternative traffic sources or even creating that content at all because you’re bringing in nothing new or spectacular and you might end up not making any money…. Secondly, like I said, tools like ChatGPT is there to answer almost any question. So tell me why people would want to read through a long piece of content when ChatGPT can give a one or two sentence answer…
But can you really make money online long term? Yes you can if you can solve problems AI won’t be able to solve.. start a real business no matter how small and then take it online with a website, an online store or E-commerce website, etc..
All of what you’re reading here is the summary of 10 articles written @abgist.com but Google said it’s not useful enough so instead of going all crazy and frustrated, I decided to shut that site down for now, redirecting everything to this page.
So what can you do to make money online?
why not create helpful apps and submit on the play store and app store, why not turn that website into an ebook and publish on Amazon kdp, depending on the type of website you have you can as well turn that website into a mobile application, why not create a youtube channel and create your own rule for people to follow?? Why not create online tools.. if you have expertise on something why not take it online… you know how to build crafts, you know how to cook, you know maths, you know physics, you know chemistry, why not create a youtube channel and start explaining certain topics? From there you can even funnel your subscribers to subscribe to you on Patreon or onlyfans and make even more money. Or if you don’t want to make videos, Amazon kdp select pays $0.45 per 100 ebook pages read so why not turn what you know into an ebook and enroll it on kdp select… The story of your life can also be the title of an interesting ebook, a video, etc… instead of using AI like the 99% of others to generate motivational YouTube videos why not tell a story about yourself facing the camera. Even Forex trading is another option. Sign up for a pionex, binance or kucoin account and start dual trading with nearly zero risks. Earn more APY on your money with crypto than you would keeping your money in the bank.
Due to greed on my part I started copying other people’s books and submitting on Amazon and it didn’t take a while before Amazon suspended my account and right now I can’t create a new kdp account. So be careful and only submit books or content owned and written by you.
Even though the Internet is tilting towards a time where most niche websites will become obsolete and making money online harder, people still want to see something that will lighten their mood, make them laugh and give them something to think about.
It’s high time we stopped copying what people are doing but start creating our own rules for people to copy only then will you be able to build a successful income stream.
One thing that is constant is change… Things may get better tomorrow, might also get worse but whatever happens don’t stop doing or thinking about new ways to make your life better.