Now some folks are upset at them because they say these three (and other “gurus” like them) are taking your money and not giving you the real goods. Take Griz over at make money online who has a new long rant about the Cool Aid these guys are selling and calls it blogging nonsense. Griz thinks these guys intentionally target new bloggers and fleece them of their money one month at a time through their useless membership sites. It’s all done under the guise of teaching them how to make money online but the methods they teach won’t work for 999 out of 1000 people.

These membership sites, Griz says, teach you how to Blog and that won’t make you money. Bloggers don’t make money because they have all the wrong kind of traffic. Internet marketers on the other hand, will make money because they understand how to rank their sites in the search engines and traffic that is specifically interested in what they are selling.

Splork over at his ways to make money online blog is saying similar things and he is upset as well. He clearly has a lot of disdain for these “A-List” bloggers who rehash the same thing over and over and charge clueless noobs for the privilege of reading it. These membership sites all preach the same “load of boring shit” according to Splork and the beginners don’t know enough to know that it is all a load of crap and they will never learn how to make money online.

Well, I must apologise for these harsh words of criticism from Griz and Splork and want to make sure Darren, Yaro, and Shoemoney know that I am very grateful for what they are doing. If it weren’t for them and their fantastic “How To Blog” membership sites, think of how much more competition there would be out there for all of us?

These three fine gentlemen are making sure that all the people they sign up for their sites will never learn how to compete with me and even if they do, they will probably be broke before they ever get the chance. I am extremely grateful that they are taking so many IM wannabe noobs right out of the gate and making sure they never learn the real ways to succeed online. 

Problogger, Yaro, and Shoemoney have been around for years cutting down the competition for the rest of us and I want to give a big “THANK YOU” to them for that. With the launch of their new membership sites, I can only hope they have spectacular success for many years to come. Lets hope they make a lot of money and are a big success at confusing and cutting down any potential competition that might be coming our way.

As for Griz, well that guy might have taught me much of what I know but he just won’t shut up. He keeps telling people how to really make money online which can only be hurting my business. The Internet is a big sandbox and there is room for everyone but still….shut up already. At least he only posts about once a month.

The second you land on her blog you know that the blog owner really cares about it (and likes pink). The main reason I chose her blog is that it has the makings of a real flagship blog that she can use down the line to join affiliate networks and make money. It is better than 99% of the other CashCrate “blogs” which people slap up on Blogger.

This blog looks pretty and it looks coordinated and you can tell that someone has spent a lot of time putting it together. Most of all, the pink color helps to give it a personality and that is a good thing. The blog looks alive, it is updated regularly, and through it you get to know a little bit about the person called TriNi.

 What Is The Goal Of The Blog?

The real question though, is what is her goal with the blog. Many people like to blog and just like having a place where they can record their thoughts and maybe have someone read them. They don’t care about making money. Other people blog because they want to make money and that is the only reason they do it. A third group might fall somewhere in between those two. In other words, they like blogging and would probably blog for free but they would like to make some money too.

I am going to assume the one and only goal of this blog is to make money in which case I have a few suggestions. The first is to do away with as much of the “clutter” as possible. If you have a blog that you want to make money with, you need to do away with as many of the distractions as you can. Your sole purpose with the blog is to get targeted traffic to it, have them sign up for an offer, and then leave. That’s it. Come, sign up, leave.

Get Rid Of The Clutter

In my opinion, the PayPal piggy on the right sidebar needs to be taken out because I bet not one person has ever donated a dime. It looks great but it is a waste of space and a distraction that will never make any money. Same thing for the Associated Content widget as that makes no money either and it a way people can leave or get distracted before they sign up.

I also do not like Twitter (I might be in the minority about this) and would take out the “Follow Me On Twitter” and the Twitter updates at the bottom. This is purely my opinion but I just don’t see how Twitter will ever make any money for a blog owner. An argument can be made that it does help legitimize the blog as a “social” blog but then again if you want to make money you are not going to do it with social traffic. I understand the reason for leaving it in but I just wanted to make the point that the more things you have like Twitter that distracts the viewer from signing up for offers, the less money you might make.

I would also try to consolidate the categories in the middle widget that goes way down the page. Holy cow, I have never seen so many categories on a blog and all the bottom ones only have one entry! Again, all those categories serve as a distraction. You want things simple so that they arrive on your blog, sign up for something, and leave.

Too Many Choices Are Bad

One thing you learn in advertising class if you have ever taken one is that you don’t want to give the viewer, listener, or reader too many choices. Many people make the mistake of covering their blogs with banner ads, text link ads, and any other kind of ad they can think of.  The mentality is “well, I just want to give my readers lots of choices and lots of variety of choices” and “maybe they will sign up for everything”.

In actuality, too many choices is a bad thing. When presented with a lot of choices, most people usually just move on because it is hard to make decisions. Making a choice between A, B, C, D and maybe more is hard because it requires you to evaluate things and that is more than most people want to do. Also, almost no one is ever going to sign up for several or more offers so putting lots of offers up hoping that people will sign up for them all is a dream.

I rarely have more than 2 or 3 choices on any one of my blogs that I hope to make money with. Again, you want someone to land on your blog, concentrate on the one or two things you have to offer, and then either sign up and leave or just leave. If you present only one or two options for them and they don’t like either one, they will leave and there is nothing you can do about it. But you want to make it easy for them by saying “this is what I am offering you: A or B and hopefully you will try one of them”.

All this being said, TriNi’s Make Money Online Fast  has 7 GPT sites that she hopes you sign up to but THAT IS NOT ALL BAD. In this case she is displaying the sites she belongs to and that is what her blog is about so it might be OK. I think the offers kind of run together too much and are a bit hard to tell what is what but that is just a layout issue. Again, make things as simple and clear as possible. I would maybe have less offers but that is a personal choice. I would for sure have the best performing offer on top and the second best one below it etc (which she probably does).

This Can Be Her Money Making Flagship Blog

One of the really good things about this blog is that she can write about anything money related and it will fit in. If she wants to change focus to some other way of making money or write posts about something else related to money it will look pretty natural. The blog looks great, as I mentioned before, and she can proudly point people to it and say “that is my blog” and get accepted into affiliate networks if she wants to. It is also something that she can continue to grow over time and hopefully be able to make into a money making machine.

In order to make it into that money maker though, TriNi will have to continue to get links, links, and more links. She needs to write articles and submit them to EzineArticles as well as a few other article directories. She needs to always leave comments on other blogs with keyword anchor text and not her name when possible (some bloggers will delete your comment if it is not your name).

Most importantly if I were she, I would try to do link exchanges with other bloggers. The problem here is that her blog is such a good blog that she doesn’t want to be linking out to many of the crappy CashCrate blogs that she might come across. 3 way link exchanges are best anyway and if I were TriNi, I would develop one of her other make money blogs  a little more, and then she can offer a link from one of her other blogs in exchange for a link to this blog.  If she has multiple blogs that are all decent, then she will be able to facilitate 3 way link exchanges more often.

It is too bad more CashCrate bloggers don’t have well thought out blogs they take pride in like TriNi does. If she works hard, she will be able to make it into a solid money maker and all her efforts will be rewarded. But in order for that to happen she needs a lot more anchored backlinks.