Who are your heroes and role models ?

[s2kinteg916]

Who are your heroes and role models ?

[AmbulanceBlues]

The Incredible Hulk
Batman
Scrooge McDuck

[Cutter]

Used to have a few, not so much any more.

Probably Ludwig von Mises and John Wayne.

[michael_gersitz]

Dumpzilla, Eli from bluehatseo, Jon From AO and WF

Fallen Heros, Chris, Incka

[Chris]

Are you calling me a "fallen" hero or is "Fallen Heroes" like a band I don't know about?

[Farmer77]

Roger Maris and very average people with average abilities who overcame big obstacles to get to where they wanted to be.

[michael_gersitz]

Are you calling me a "fallen" hero or is "Fallen Heroes" like a band I don't know about?


Fallen hero as you are not my hero anymore. I used to really look up to you and read everything you posted everywhere.... Ever since you left sitepoint you have not really did anything.

You do not tell any of your new projects or give any real nice tips in your articles anymore. Its like you don't care anymore. A forum that you do not try to hard to get bigger. Gets spammed a lot. Why not try to get this forum bigger. Why not appoint a moderator to help you out? Why not hold a contest or something? I have been here for 3-4 years and the only thing that has changed is the design.... once. There is not much really encentive for us to post here.

Just my opinion, interested in seeing your response.

[Chris]

What do you mean I don't write anything helpful anymore?

Since I left SP I started the blog, averaging just over 1 post a week. It isn't heavy posting, but I try not to just post little short posts.

This summer I published the longest article (http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/contextual-optimization/) to date on this site, additionally the new article rate on this site hasn't gone down, it was never very high.


I also wrote this article (http://www.websitepublisher.net/article/contextual-optimization/), which I'd not seen anyone write about before, and which is an easy way to pump a site's earnings by $10 a day.


As for not mentioning my new projects. I have never in the past shared project ideas before I was done with them. I'd love to be done with them and share them and talk about them, but unfortunately I've been hit with a plague of slow developers and cannot do so. Once they are done, I'll talk about them.

I don't promote this site much, it is true, I would rather focus on creating content. I do plan to do some promotion when my rewrite is done.

As for spam, forum spam globally has increased drastically the past 6 months, the only time spam gets by is when I'm sleeping, and then it is removed when I wake up. I will probably add a a new vbulletin hack to combat it somewhat soon.

I will never run a contest on this site. Contests attract poor unsuccessful people. The goal with this site has always been to cater to a higher value demographic of serious, successful, full time website publishers.

Compared to SitePoint, I can say atleast this forum loads at a reasonable speed.

Compared to WickedFire, well there you have the contest problem. The quality of posts there is just so much lower. Then if you want to compare to to Mook Jon, the fact is, while he is a nice guy, it is all smoke and mirrors. He doesn't share any specifics about his sites or his business, probably because so much of it is built on spam. He repeatedly posts big plans on his blog, only to have them invariably be changed or cancelled a few months later. If you don't think I'm forthcoming you must consider him the Berlin Wall.

The point being, every single one of my live sites is known, my business is pretty transparent. My in-progress sites aren't shared, but considering no other "guru" comes even close to my level of transparecny I don't see that as a big deal. I've also paid the price for being so forthcoming with numerous copycats ripping off my ideas.

My writing still is, and has always been, practical and anti-fluff. I don't like writing empty posts or empty articles, things with no real information. I could come out every day and write a post about anonymous big plans, how happy I am to be in this industry, or a motivational call to arms about working hard, but that isn't me. I like to write about problems and the solutions to them.

I also do not force myself to write if I do not have anything to write about. I'd rather write less about more meaningful things, then just go for sheer volume.

I guess the main incentive for posting here is my advice. The advice of someone who tells you what sites he runs, and who tells you exactly how he got successful, and who has been consistently successful for quite a few years now. I've also run the entire gamut of site types. Blogs, ecommerce, article, reference, affiliate, review, forums, etc. And oh ya, I don't charge for that advice.

[Chris]

I just read that Jon alleges he was offered 16m for wickedfire... the same day I wrote that Snake Oil blog post... how ironic...

I also noticed something else about Wickedfire, people get banned left and right when they don't drink the kool-aid and believe all the BS that gets posted. I read that ridiculous thread about the "16m offer" (so funny) and almost everyone who rightfully points out how much BS it is ends up banned.

Is that really you're Hero?

[michael_gersitz]

He clears it up in a different post. They offered 16million for his whole company. He laughs opon the offer and says that why would he sell his whole company when he will earn that much in less than a year.

Basically you fell for the linkbait.

I listed him under my heros because he encourages website publishers to think outside the box. Sure, no doubt he is a spammer and a black hatter but he posts interesting topics and stuff on how to make money. Even in the forum, there will be wonderful ideas posted by members on how to generate more revenue.

[michael_gersitz]

I though you and Jon were on the up and up... Didn't think you were on bad terms...

[AmbulanceBlues]

I just recently started noticing subtle but knowledgable references in lots of web publishing blogs. Now there's this. Does this mean that all of the big SEO/Web publishing people know each other personally?

[Chris]

He clears it up in a different post. They offered 16million for his whole company. He laughs opon the offer and says that why would he sell his whole company when he will earn that much in less than a year.

Basically you fell for the linkbait.

I listed him under my heros because he encourages website publishers to think outside the box. Sure, no doubt he is a spammer and a black hatter but he posts interesting topics and stuff on how to make money. Even in the forum, there will be wonderful ideas posted by members on how to generate more revenue.

I didn't fall for linkbait, I didn't link to him.

You're also believing some rather outrageous claims without any shred of proof. I could lie and say someone offered me $10 million and it'd get attention and maybe people would think I'm more successful than I am, but... it wouldn't be true.

Jon is a nice guy, but I've slowly lost any respect for him through these antics.

First he posts this thread at SP about his supposed affiliate earnings, and on face value it looks atruistic, then he convinces me to let him be part of my new blog here. So now he has fingers in at SP, here, and who knows where else. Then he launches his own blog, then his own forum. Do you really think he wasn't planning that from the get go? Honestly?

Then suddenly he posts about being available for consulting at some ridiculous rate like $300 an hour. Again, do you think that wasn't planned?

Then he talks up a radio show, it doesn't last very long. He mentions how he's going to be making $150k a year off his blog with 1 post per month and 120 feedburner subscribers or whatever it was before he took the count down. Uh huh. Now this whole buying wickedfire thing for $16m.

Oh ya, somewhere in there was something about launching 2000 sites... and of course now he is "retiring."

He is definitely a great marketer, but I don't believe a word he says.

Then there is how he gets riled up when people question him, banning people on his forum, threatening violence even at one point I guess. In the words of Shakespeare "thou doth protest too much."

Had he originally posted at SitePoint saying how much he made and that he would be soon offering $300/hr consulting services no one would have bought it. Ditto with his subscription level membership at Wickedfire.

But by simply delaying the cashing in he avoided the prejudice.

In my opinion, he is just continuing to build up a reputation for himself for when he decides to cash in. He'll be laughing all the way to the bank I'm sure, and he should be applauded for how he has been able to capture attention and convince so many people of these outrageous claims he makes. When he does cash in it'll be for far less than $16m too I think.

I really do not care if Jon is your hero, I don't care if I am your hero. I think the word "Hero" should be reserved for people who save lives, either actually physically or by providing spiritual inspiration. However, I do get offended by being referred to as "fallen" just because I'm not getting caught up in a dishonest rat-race against others who have entered this niche, and because I try to be as honest as possible and refuse to artificially inflate my reputation.

Big money was never the reason behind making this site. I was writing articles, for free, for SitePoint, because I liked to. I also found myself writing article-length forum posts, because I liked to. I thought that if I liked to write I might as well make money off of it, so I made this site. That I think is the major difference, you may think Jon didn't make Wickedfire for money (yes yes... he wanted a webmaster forum he could swear at, uh huh), but I think there is an obvious pattern of behavior that shows he's had a cash out plan all along.

[Cutter]

Wow, didn't think this thread would turn controversial! Since I am an admin at WickedFire, I'll respond to a few things. This isn't directed at Chris, but at everyone, because I think these are open issues that have remain unadressed.

I've seen some of Jon's sites, are they spam? Not really. Unique and short term? Perhaps. He has made public his Iraq war videos site before, and that is certainly "legit" although some may find it controversial. As for projects that don't materialize, about half my domain names are empty, and I have countless folders on my hard drive of projects that never went live. The other day I was cleaning out old documents and going through stacks of papers and research I had spent a year on for 2 businesses that never saw a penny of income or a single potential customer.

$16m offer? If you have the contacts, especially in NYC, thats nothing. With the big Myspace and Youtube buyouts the boom is back and the money is flowing. Is it dumb money or smart money? I think its a mix of both. Jon knows just about "everyone" so I find it plenty believable. If you are still valuing your internet properties in monthly earnings I suggest you make attending some conferences a top priority for 2007 -- Adtech, Affiliate Summit, TRAFFIC (the domain conferences) and so on.

As for WickedFire being low quality and having tons of noise, yeah, its pretty bad. Are there lots of people on there making no money? Most likely, but at least they "get" it, unlike Sitepoint where everyone is obsessed with w3c compliance and table-less design. As for people getting banned left and right, all I know of is this chrislingle guy who was re-instated hours later. I've seen plenty of attacks on Jon where nothing happened.

The bigger your forum is, the more trolls and low quality posts its going to attract. SEOBlackhat is about as dead as barn at midnight, but 99% of the posts are top quality. Websitepublisher is really the only forum where the posts are high quality, but things are still active. I think there is a very good reason why Chris has kept it as he has.

If you are sitting around waiting for someone to drop a magical secret where you will suddenly be making thousands of dollars a day, your in the wrong place. The fact is once you've got the basics down, and failed, succeeded, and failed a few more times, you'll start to figure out what works and what doesn't. When you reach that point, you'll be be able to read between the lines rather than reading the same lines over and over again. Thats the sweet spot where everything starts to come together.

I subscribe to this magazine called "Millionaire Blueprints" and the editor, who is pretty old, writes about how he spent much of his life going to all these money making seminars and his dreams just never materialized. There is no god of internet publishing or marketing. Hell, rock stars and pop stars are all pretty normal people, and they all sucked at what they did when they started. But, at the end of the day, it was them and them alone who made things happen.

Let me put it this way, you make things happen for you and no one else. Everyone has different styles, approaches, and goals be it Chris, Jon, Shoemoney, Aaron Wall, and so on. But, what they all have in common is they were willing to do *all* of the work to get in the place they are now. At the end of the day, that is the only thing that matters.

[michael_gersitz]

Chris, I sure hope your not getting heated over this topic beacause that is not what I meant by posting it. I sure didnt mean anything personal by it. Sure you were definitely my hero back in the day in the years I was starting off. Back at sitepoint I would read all your stuff and eventually merged over to here. When I was just devoloping sites, trying to get link exchanges... working on seo... etc.

Now, I am looking at many different ways in order to generate more income for my sties and me in general. However, I come here and I am ussually bored browsing your blog or the forums. Most of the time I do not learn anything new. While I'll be on other blogs/forums I'll be learning new things in each post.

I'll be using my knowledge that I gained from this site though to further all my future endevors for sure.

[michael_gersitz]

Oh, and another thing, what I meant by fallen heros is old heros. Not that you are not good at what you do.

[Chris]

$16m offer? If you have the contacts, especially in NYC, thats nothing.

Its BS. As is 150k a month off his blog. I'm sorry to say Andrew, but you've been bribed with favors and you bought the snake oil. Knowing people doesn't change economics. Look at yourself, you just called 16 million nothing like you're some big shot power broker. Where were you 1 year ago? Do you really think you should be referring to 16 million as nothing? Invested wisely but with no risk $16 million could bring you 1-2 million a year, or more, in annual income purely from interest, for the rest of your life, without you having to lift a finger. It isn't nothing.

Jon is certainly a good marketer, and he can be learned from, but don't get caught up in his fantasy. You end up holding the bag.



As for people getting banned left and right, all I know of is this chrislingle guy who was re-instated hours later. I've seen plenty of attacks on Jon where nothing happened.

I don't visit wickedfire, but I followed a link from a blog to that 16m post and read it, and almost everyone who questions the validity of the claim had a "Banned" under their username.

[Chris]

Oh, and another thing, what I meant by fallen heros is old heros. Not that you are not good at what you do.
Well that certainly is better. I just am tired of being compared to these other people who are relentless self promoters and of questionable ethics.

As for what is new... there isn't much. Things like PPC Arbitrage etc, which seems all the rage now, are temporary. It is spam, and search engines do not like it, so the hand that gives you your traffic, and the hand that pays you for that traffic, both are trying to get rid of you. It will not last too long.

Rather, with search engines increasingly rabid fight against anything "artificial" what is old is new again. So you're right, I haven't been mentioning anything really "new" for awhile. Just solid old fashioned fundamentals. Not because I'm behind the times, but because my larger concern is long term success.

[paul]

As for what is new... there isn't much....
...what is old is new again.

We have been going though old static pages and applying a new, very simple template, cleaning up meta tags, tweaking titles & AdSense, etc. We attempt to make each page look hand crafted (since they are that's not hard). It's boring and takes an unreasonable amount of time. We are seeing 30-40% income increases almost immediately... So, all the clever innovative new ideas are on the back burner :)

[Chris]

Yup, that is what I have been doing too. Going back and having all my older sites redesigned so that they appeal more to humans (more specifically the humans who do the manual rating checks for SEs).

[Cutter]

Its BS. As is 150k a month off his blog. I'm sorry to say Andrew, but you've been bribed with favors and you bought the snake oil. Knowing people doesn't change economics. Look at yourself, you just called 16 million nothing like you're some big shot power broker. Where were you 1 year ago? Do you really think you should be referring to 16 million as nothing? Invested wisely but with no risk $16 million could bring you 1-2 million a year, or more, in annual income purely from interest, for the rest of your life, without you having to lift a finger. It isn't nothing.

I said "If you have the contacts, especially in NYC, thats nothing." Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in companies that don't make a dime -- just like the dot com days, just go over and read paidcontent.org or any of venture capital blogs. I'm sure you heard the story about Wall Street investment banks paying out $21 billion in bonuses last year. That money ends up places, be it homes, cars, art, or speculative buying.

Relative to a retirement fund, or personal savings $16 million is a ton of money. Hell, relative to a factory laborer in a developing country, $10,000 is a fortune. In the US that $10,000, for a single year, would put you well below the poverty line. What I am saying is, relative to the amount of money flowing through the industry -- $16 million is not a very big deal, and most certainly not unbelievable.

Now, that being said, Jon made a statement (http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-****/6795-clarification-16m-offer.html?highlight=million), which you may not have seen, that he misunderstood the offer and it was for his entire company -- not just WickedFire. You made the post on your blog "get it in writing." This was a phone call, someone made an offer, and may be it was a spur of the moment thing, and yeah, had he "accepted" there would be a very high chance that would never materialize. So was it bad judgement in disclosing? May be so.

I have to disagree with you -- knowing people does change economics. Personal contacts are critical for minimizing and diversifying risk. Just from the standpoint of a small web publisher, having contacts with other experienced publishers can help you avoid pitfalls, be it being kicked out of Google, losing your domain name, or even recieving free backlinks to launch a new site -- to me, that makes my business more valuable.

1 year ago I was doing the work to put me where I am today. Today, I am doing work thats going to put me somewhere next year. Of course I am not a power broker, I just am doing what I want to be doing. Nothing more, nothing less.

For the record, I was following Jon's posts well before he made that CJ screenshot post on Sitepoint. I had a list of a couple people who made good posts, and followed what they wrote. I'm not a genius but I do pick up on good ideas. His posts on Sitepoint were consistantly full of good advice. That is how I judge people -- if their ideas work, fair enough. I followed the advice from you and other members here on Websitepublisher, and it worked. I followed the advice of Shoemoney, and it worked. Thats it.

[Chris]

I cannot comment obviously on the validity of 16 million for his entire business, considering he shares almost nothing about it. However, a recanted statement doesn't save his reputation.

For all we know he realized he went too far with his linkbait attempt and decided to save some credibility by modifying the original claim.

It wouldn't be the first time (the 6 figures yearly from the blog claim for instance) that he made a crazy claim.

You also have to stop comparing Wickedfire to YouTube or whatever else. A site with less than 500 active posters, as you yourself said, with most of them not making anything, as you yourself said, is not worth 16 million dollars.

YouTube may not have been making a dime, but it was pulling in millions of eyeballs.

You do not always want to value a site based on how much it currently makes. You want to value it based on how much you could make with it. Google obviously thought YouTube could generate them oodles of cash eventually. However, you also have to consider how much it'd cost you to compete from scratch.

You could spend $100k on promotion and quickly surpass Wickedfire, so why spend $16m to buy it?

And again, it comes down to eyeballs. Ridiculous traffic but no money, there is still potential. Low traffic and no money, not really.

A site will be bought for either earnings, traffic, or intellectual property. WF has no earnings, low traffic, and nothing terribly unique in the IP department.

I do realize he recanted and now says it was not just for the forum, however that doesn't change the fact that the appropriate response to the story of someone offering 16m for WF is incredulity.

On a side note I see in that thread that Jon runs a coupons site, I wonder which one and for how long. Wondering if it is one of the many that cropped up after I announced how much mine made.

[Westech]

I don't know if I'd use the word "hero," but Chris is definitely someone who I look up to and who has had a big impact on my life. He's managed to achieve long-term success as an online entrepreneur without dabbling in spam, spyware or any other questionable practices. He's willing to share his knowledge and give help and advice to others.

Just seeing what he's been able to achieve has definitely had a huge effect in motivating me and helping me realize what's possible. If I hadn't discovered Chris's posts here and on SP years ago I very well might not be where I am today.

[Cutter]

Absolutely, same here. This entire forum was critical in steering me in the right direction.

[polspoel]

Chris, you should just start promoting this forum more. I don't like wickedfire at all since all they talk about is arbitrage and other blackhat stuff, coupled with pictures of naked ladies. Most of them are just a bunch of high school boys I'm sure.

I'd really like for this forum to have more activity, as right now I can check just 1 time a week and still not find that anything interesting has been posted. You also need a way to set this forum apart from the others, right now it's kind of similar to digitalpoint. Wickedfire did a great job setting itself apart by appealing to that "teenage" mentality.

I also know you're against contests, but I think that you could run some short contests, afterwards, most of the members that were just in it for the contest will leave again, but there will be a few left. It's not like this forum is now filled with the most knowledgeable people in the industry either. A hanful, at most.

You need to do something more than just writing your blog posts (btw, blog activity has gone up lately, great!) or maybe you could add a footer under each blog post explaining about the forum since alot of people just read the RSS feed or what not.

About that jon guy, I don't believe very much of it either, he has said that he will spill "some" beans in like a month or so, after he has finally "retired" from the business. So we'll see what happens, I'm thinking nothing.

[mark1]

Ha, I've been away from reading this forum for a while due to lack of time.
I remember exactly reading Jon's posts here and me thinking "..not this sh.t again", and I was quite surprised to see Chris taking Jon aboard, You know through the years I developed a good nose for bullsh.tters.

Glad to see I'm still good.
And for CS if you are reading wickedfire, at least go and read Syndk8, for the real thing, not some "yeah I'm really bad" retarded forum

[polspoel]

His previous blog post is pretty damn funny/sad :

http://www.aojon.com/how-to-make-a-million-dollars-over-and-over-on-any-weekend-in-5-easy-fool-proof-steps/

Whoever still believes that guy after that post is ____ (fill in the blanks)

[cinemaeye]

Interesting thread. Over at wickedfire he's just banned most of his core members. It's kind of hilarious at this point. The site hasn't been around that long, but consistently he has run contests, etc and then cancelled them before he has had to pay out. Then there was the $16 million thing and now the core of his active membership has left to start a private forum of their own.

Cutter - are you still a mod over there?

[Cutter]

Yeah, I'm an admin. I was trying to help Jon salvage things after the involuntary exodus, but now I just don't know. There is a little more to both sides of the story than is public, so take everything you hear with some skepticism. I just really can't make any more comments about this, I'm friends with Jon, his business partner, and many of the people who were kicked out.

Truth is, I am really busy with projects now and all the drama is making me lose interest in the community as a whole very fast. I've got rock solid contacts and business partners now, and it may just be time to move on.

Seriously though, I think this thread should just be closed. It got off to a bad start with the whole fallen heroes comment in the beginning. Just think about yourself guys, it is important to watch people's mistakes and learn from them, but pulling yourself into the situation never has any benefit.

[michael_gersitz]

Yeah, I'm an admin. I was trying to help Jon salvage things after the involuntary exodus, but now I just don't know. There is a little more to both sides of the story than is public, so take everything you hear with some skepticism. I just really can't make any more comments about this, I'm friends with Jon, his business partner, and many of the people who were kicked out.

Truth is, I am really busy with projects now and all the drama is making me lose interest in the community as a whole very fast. I've got rock solid contacts and business partners now, and it may just be time to move on.

Seriously though, I think this thread should just be closed. It got off to a bad start with the whole fallen heroes comment in the beginning. Just think about yourself guys, it is important to watch people's mistakes and learn from them, but pulling yourself into the situation never has any benefit.

You are my new hero. Every post you make has a point.

[Kyle]

michael - You remind me of incka. Perhaps you aren't learning anything new because Chris's latest articles aren't tailoring to your level. What do I mean by this? Well look at the websites in your signature. Nothing about them strikes me as quality. Plus they engage in practices Chris certainly would disagree with, like interlinking completely unrelated projects. You are in it for the money FIRST, which is a bad place to start. Most young people, like myself when I got started in 1996, did it for the fun/passion.

Chris mainly tailors to long term, focused webmasters.

His blog posts are the most valuable. They are often indirectly motivational, and provide unique SPECIFIC publishing ideas. Most webmaster blogs don't release specific topic ideas.

michael - Where's your long term site? Where's the site that shows your passion for creating?

Let's have a look at what Chris has publically shown us...

- Many examples of public domain content manipulated into unique, high quality sites.
- E-commerce sites on something as niche as swords, doing extremely well (if your remember his vague yet specific forum posts regarding cbswords success).
- Affiliate/commission success, although limited and up/down.
- Now, one product ecommerce ideas.

He shares everything with everyone...

I don't know of any other webmasters this successful at producing QUALITY, unique ideas who share this much. It shows his confidence in his established sites, and not afraid of competition from copycats.

Your signature shows me that you have learned nothing from Chris...

[ZigE]

I definitely respect chris for what he has achieved with all his websites. And how he has offered a decent platform & valuable information for anyone looking to get into the web business (I have learned alot over the past few months from this site).

Where he could have easily just pondered along doing his thing, this is a small community, but god, look at forums, like digitalpoint, where there just seems to be mass of absolute degenerates. :p

[Kyle]

I definitely respect chris for what he has achieved with all his websites. And how he has offered a decent platform & valuable information for anyone looking to get into the web business (I have learned alot over the past few months from this site).

Where he could have easily just pondered along doing his thing, this is a small community, but god, look at forums, like digitalpoint, where there just seems to be mass of absolute degenerates. :p

Or webmasterworld... where a thread starts with "anyone noticing fluctuations on Google?" then its followed by 3981982 replies of people saying "YES I AM!". "ME TOO!!!!" "OMG ME TOO!!!!!"

[michael_gersitz]

michael - You remind me of incka. Perhaps you aren't learning anything new because Chris's latest articles aren't tailoring to your level. What do I mean by this? Well look at the websites in your signature. Nothing about them strikes me as quality. Plus they engage in practices Chris certainly would disagree with, like interlinking completely unrelated projects. You are in it for the money FIRST, which is a bad place to start. Most young people, like myself when I got started in 1996, did it for the fun/passion.

Chris mainly tailors to long term, focused webmasters.

His blog posts are the most valuable. They are often indirectly motivational, and provide unique SPECIFIC publishing ideas. Most webmaster blogs don't release specific topic ideas.

michael - Where's your long term site? Where's the site that shows your passion for creating?

Let's have a look at what Chris has publically shown us...

- Many examples of public domain content manipulated into unique, high quality sites.
- E-commerce sites on something as niche as swords, doing extremely well (if your remember his vague yet specific forum posts regarding cbswords success).
- Affiliate/commission success, although limited and up/down.
- Now, one product ecommerce ideas.

He shares everything with everyone...

I don't know of any other webmasters this successful at producing QUALITY, unique ideas who share this much. It shows his confidence in his established sites, and not afraid of competition from copycats.

Your signature shows me that you have learned nothing from Chris...

Good post. The quality of my sites in my sig is not a good representation of my business as a whole. Acctually, they are not a representation of anything, except for 5 hours of free time I had one afternoon when I made them. I have been here for 4 years and know whats on the tizzy. Just bought my second dedicated today for a huge project of mine that will send me into retirement hopefully!

I do not like your line about how he shares everything with everyone. This is not true. And it cannot be. His list of websites has had the same basis for a few years, and I know he has plenty of them in the works and has a few running in the shadows that no one knows about.

[Chris]

My list of sites has been the same because I've instead focused on some big projects that had been cursed with slow developers. I've also spent the last year redoing many of my sites (such as this one).

But really? compared to any any person out there I'm as transparent as a window.

[Kyle]

What difference does it make if Chris doesn't show _everything_? The amount he does show is not only a large complete list, but a varied list on many different topics/project strategies.

I would guess, if Chris were to start online-literature.com in 2007 as a new site, he'd probably keep it quiet until it grew and got established. Once it reaches an 'escape velocity' where competition is not much of a concern, then he'll let everyone know about it.

[Generalissimo]

After reading this thread and being on this site since almost the very beginning I've come to the following conclusions:

- A hell of a lot of people lie about their success in order to gain followers and make money. I think possibly Mook Jon and others mentioned might be doing this. I'd trust Chris on this issue.

- Making sites that you don't put effort into won't make you any money in the long run. Making sites that have potentially a reasonable audience that you put a lot of work into and keep legit (I've been stupid enough to do some tricks with Google Ads that got my site banned from their advertising network, something which will effect long turn profitability) you should make a reasonable amount of money. Making tiny sites as part of a get rich quick scene will leave you vulnerable and in the long run, poor.

- Chris is completely transparent. A few years ago, when Chris would be described as a hero by myself, I did a massive search for extra sites he wasn't telling us about. I found google-watch-watch, which isn't a site designed for making money off, and one other one that wasn't designed for making money.

- And finally, no one, not even Mr Gersitz, should have ever had me as a hero. What I was doing was nothing out of the ordinary, and the money I was making was not very large. My sites were not very original. My posts were largely like his have been in this thread (if not worse), and I generally annoyed everyone. I even fell for the putting images above google ads is legit con and got my major site banned from AdSense. No way am I someone to look up to as a hero.

If your new to website publishing here is my advice: read Chris' articles. Find a topic you are interested in and has a large potential audience. Make one site for it (perhaps making a few smaller ones just to promote the bigger one on the same topic). When that site is making you more than $50 a day, perhaps diversify and make another similar site. Don't do what I spent a lot of time doing and make tens of small sites based on affiliate programs, AWS, tiny amounts of wikipedia content, etc - it will get you no where. The success I had was mainly with one site, that site is still paying my rent and living expenses even if, because of the lack of effort I've put into it because of education, I haven't put much work into it in the last year.

Nice to be back and to see people here haven't changed ;)

[Kyle]

Nice post Sean.

[AshS]

Andy H, reason why i started making my game last year when i was 14 because his game truly made me think i could do it to and well now its kinda getting going it really cool!

If you read this Andy then you've made me release i can do something with myself an be good at something i sucked at everything else! Cheers dude.