Make Money Online Techniques are Always Changing
The way things are right now is not the way things will always be. Things are always changing.
The way Wealthy Affiliate is right now is not the way it has always been, and it's not the way it will always be. WA was very different when I was briefly first here 8 years ago in 2009, and it will again be very different in another 8 years in 2025.
This is because technology moves forwards, Google develops and refines itself, and the things that used to be effective eventually stop being effective.
Let me give you some examples of things that you used to be able to do but you can't anymore:
Direct linking to affiliate links in Google Adwords
Back in 2008 I bought an ebook that showed how to make easy affiliate commissions by setting up Google Adwords ads that directly linked to Amazon affiliate links. Apparently the trick was to target keywords like "Buy Product Name". I tried it for a bit but didn't have any success with it, but it just shows what you were allowed to do on Adwords that you can't anymore.
People also used to link directly to ClickBank affiliate links in Adwords, but that's been banned for years now.
Page 1 Google rankings with Squidoo or EzineArticles
Google used to love these websites, and it was quite easy to rank on page 1 of Google with them. Back in 2008/2009, the minimum word length on EzineArticles was only 250 words, and yes, sometimes you could rank on page 1 of Google with short articles like that.
I went through a phase of bashing out 10 or more articles per day, then putting in a link to a cheap .info domain name i'd bought which was set up to just redirect to a ClickBank affiliate link (because affilite links weren't allowed in EzineArticles by then). I did actually make a little bit of money doing that, but not loads.
Using low quality backlinks to boost your Google rankings
Here's how it would work: you would have your money site which had your affiliate links on it, then you would create some articles on places like Squidoo, Hubpages and EzineArticles. Then you would take those articles, spin them using an article spinner, then use article blasting software to submit spun variations of this article to hundred of article directories.
This would create lots of backlinks which would increase your ranking. Try it now and see how far you get. Not far at all, I imagine.
Blasting loads of really bad quality backlinks to redirected domains
I really doubt this technique works now, but there was a time in 2012 when it worked shockingly well.
I bought some cheap domains, set them to redirect to my main website, then used blackhat software called Scrapebox to blast an overhwhelmingly large number of low quality backlinks to the domains in a short period. The plan was that the domains would protect the main website by not having the poor uality backlinks sent straight to it, but because they were redirects they would pass the link juice onto the main site.
This worked ridiculously well, but the backlinking strategy I used with Scrapebox was a bit too aggressive and I ended up getting a phone call from my ISP saying they had received complaints from website owners.
The moral of this story is...
...if you are tempted to try any sneaky techniques to try to get ahead of the crowd, just be aware they may not always work. In fact, if the techniques you are using are anything other than just creating great content, being excellent, and using normal tools in their proper way, there's a high chance your sneaky techniques will one day no longer be effective.
The truth is, big companies often change the rules. They do this because they can, because it's in the interests of their business to do so.
Bonus tip: don't rely on websites that aren't yours
There have always been internet marketers that say you can make money without owning your own website. Be very careful whenever you hear anyone say that.
Why?
Because if all your content is on websites owned by other people, you don't own it. That means they can change the rules at any time, or maybe in 10 years they won't even exist.
Squidoo is a classic example. It used to be possible to earn money just by creating free pages on Squidoo. But Squidoo doesn't exist anymore. None of the pages I created on Squidoo exist anymore.
So, if someone says that you can make money without a website just by creating videos on YouTube, don't do that. By all means, create videos on YouTube, but also have content on your own website.
13 years ago YouTube didn't even exist. Will it still exist 13 years from now? Who knows! It might get sold to Facebook, renamed, sold to Twitter, renamed again, sold to Donald Trump's nephew, then run into the ground. You just don't know!
Business is business, and sometimes businesses die. Don't let your own business die with them.
This is also a great reason why you should regularly backup your websites using something like WP Clone. This means that if WA ever goes tits up, you can import your website onto another web host.
Recent Comments
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Great post. I would like to someday, be as knowledgable as you are about the internet ins and outs. I understand what you are saying 100%. Ill remember that Marcus. Thanks. Donna
Great post. I got a chuckle as I was reading going yep I did that, yep I did that.
You mentioned WP Clone and saving your work. I was part of Squidoo and actually made money with them. Somewhere between $500 to $1000 a month. When they shut down I was off doing something else and did not get a back up of most of the post I made. Now they are gone.
A lot of them could have been reused since they are no longer online and would not be duplicate content but because the site belonged to someone else my income was gone and the content was gone.
Hard lesson but a good one.
Not when I remember the work that went into it. Make a lot more now with less work then what that took but it was called learning.
Actually, I just want to ask you a question. Do you still submit your url to any websites to boost your rankings?
Thanks. This was a great help.... especially since I'm just starting out with the niche "making money online"
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I also remember when keyword stuffing got one of my sites on page one and kept it there for years.
What year was that?
First registered in 2006. Back then people were using white text on a white background to stuff the keywords in for the search engines to read but hide them from real people. And, of course, we filled up the "keywords" meta tag.
Yes, I remember in 2008 I listed the same keyword loads of time in white text on an advert on USFreeAds. I was briefly on the #1 spot on Google until the people at USFreeAds pulled my ad down.