Blogging has become one of the most common ways to establish a business and make money. Of course it is!
But not all bloggers are making money as they should.
You know, there are white hat ways to stuff and also black hat ways.
Be it SEO, blogging, doing business, loving people, whatever! And yes, blogging is not an exception.
There are various ways to make money via blogging – both white hat and black hat.
Quoting 1 Corinthians 10:23 –
All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient
In this context there are numerous ways to make money blogging but not all ways are ethical and white hat.
Let me share 3 shady things I happen to see quite commonly these days.
Table of Contents
Faking Stuff
Faking has become a fashion thing these days.
Especially in the blogging world, people fake so many things in order to keep things afloat. Let me give you a few examples of faking:
1. Posting fake income reports – this is one of the most popular ways of faking. They call it “fake it until you make it”. So until the blogger starts to make money they “pretend” as if they are making lots of cash by posting fake income reports, fake earnings screenshots etc.
2. Posting fake “success” stories/case studies – this one is also equally popular. Now that we can play as much as possible with a picture using Photoshop (or other image editing software for that matter), some bloggers use it to write and publish fake success stories. They show traffic rise, income rise, boost in search engine rankings etc. in screen shots and claim that they’ve achieved success.
3. Providing fake information – there are bloggers who put up fake information about themselves and their blog/business on their website. This includes a fake photograph, fake contact information and so on.
So Why Do Bloggers and Online Entrepreneurs Fake Things?
Bloggers and entrepreneurs mostly do this in order to make money.
And I am not only talking about new/emerging entrepreneurs, even the established bloggers and also some of the big companies do this all the time.
“Fake it until you make it” is popular just because a blogger can pretend to have already succeeded or have achieved something while he/she haven’t had a clue yet.
So why do they do that? Let’s see an example. Blogger A starts a blog and blogs for 2 months.
He/She hasn’t yet succeeded in making money (it is OK given that the blog is relatively new). But the blogger writes and publishes posts about how to make money online.
He offers a product or a service that promises to teach other bloggers how to make money.
Now, people are smart these days. Unlike the old times, people won’t believe a promise that is made online; because there are way too many promises that create hype.
And people are quite tired being ripped off by such fake promises.
Now in order to make people believe him/her and in order to boost his own sales, the blogger has to provide some sort of proof! Here are some examples:
- Posting fake pictures of himself living a luxurious life – a picture of a posh car, a really big and posh house and so on.
- Pretending as if he has “achieved” success by posting fake screenshots of Paypal payments.
- Showing fake graphs of traffic, product sales, etc.
These are a few examples.
Now I don’t say that all bloggers who share photos of happy life or screenshots of traffic are faking.
There are genuine bloggers who are living their dream. One good example is Erik.
I follow him on social media and he posts a lot of pictures as I see them in my Facebook feed!
His pictures clearly tell me that he has a great time quite often 😉
Another example is Ryan. He shares everything about him in his blog and he truly does so.
I’m talking about those who fake it in order to trick people into their trap.
Stealing Stuff
This is another major issue in the blogosphere. There are people who steal all kinds of stuff. Images, blog posts, smart ideas, blog design, and so on.
Now, I am not telling that you shouldn’t learn from the pros. Of course you can steal and you should steal some.
That’s part of learning and improvising. You can steal blog post templates, title templates, worksheets for a particular purpose like a planner or a calendar etc.
But there are people who lift content, images and ideas just like that without even giving proper credit to the content owner.
It used to be really worse a while ago before Google released the major algo updates.
At that time there were the so-called “auto blogs” that were simply set up so that the blog owner can rip content off a blog automatically (how comfortable!) using a plugin which retrieves content from the corresponding blog’s RSS feed.
The blog owner doesn’t even have to search for content and he/she doesn’t even have to copy paste it. The whole stealing process was comfortably automated.
Even today, I see some of those auto blogs.
Why Do People Do This?
Mainly because they’re lazy. Lazy to create their own content. Lazy to create anything of their own but still want to make money without doing real work.
They want some piece of code to do the stealing for them so they can cash in money from ads or other programs.
In short, they want to make money without doing any work!
Cheating Customers/Readers
This is another popular shady thing that’s quite common – cheating people. Now, cheating is a quite common term. Let me give you a few examples:
I can go on and on but you get the idea.
So Why Do Bloggers Cheat?
Again it all boils down to making money. Every cheating act is directly or indirectly related to money as I can see.
Not all people will be smart enough to catch these kind of cheaters.
For instance in the feature list of a web hosting package there could be so many promises.
But not all people will go through their account details in the control panel to check if they have been provided with all that was promised.
Apart from the bandwidth and disk space all the other features are mostly over looked.
Similarly not all people will remember about a product’s license or their support feature after 5 years of purchasing.
So a lifetime update can easily cheat this fraction of people.
Why Am I Writing this Post?
Partly a rant.
Also a kind of mourn as you can assume.
While its totally fine to have the desire to make money through blogging, bloggers should not adopt any of these shady techniques to achieve their desire.
Your success should be genuine and should be based on hard work. Hard work certainly pays.
It might seem a lot easier to make money using these shady techniques. And a lot faster too!
But there’s isn’t much value to it, and of course its not ethical to do so.
That’s my little message. Hope I conveyed it correctly. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Wait! Before You Go, Read:
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Hi Jane,
Nice to see you here and I totally agree with you about not using shady blogging techniques. I personally think that you can have success with blogging.
Of course it isn’t easy, otherwise, everyone will do it. Like you said, it takes patience and building trust.
If people trust what you have to say, which comes with time, they will eventually buy the products you recommend or buy the products you offer.
I think it’s important to follow bloggers that you trust and admire. They will tell you the truth about what you can expect. Not just try to impress you with a bunch of lavish pictures that may be fake.
Unfortunately, there will always be people who try to game the system. Thanks for sharing these tips and words of advice.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Hey Susan,
As you say, there will always be people who try to game the system – I guess it has become part of any system.
But if we want to build a solid business that stands long term that has to be built upon trust. That’s what I personally feel.
Thanks for your comment.
Cheers,
Jane.
Very interesting read Erik,
Yes, we are living in a fake world!
Things looks like an original, but if you move little closer you will come to know that it’s a fake one.
The other day an online friend told me that your page is taking lot of time to open and he even suggested a solution too that, he can speed up by joining his resource. When I checked with all my four devices, lap, ipad, mobile and DTp. it’s opening in 2-3 seconds, in all devices, for this he said 15 seconds its taking. He thought that he can sell his product by telling a flattened lie, I said bro. Please check your devices and internet connections. its opening in good speed at my end. immediately he disappeared from the scene by just showing a thumps up symbol.
I experienced, that most of the so called income reports are fakes, the funny side is that, some who are involved in such activities are famous or well-known bloggers, I wonder why they are involved in such fake projections.
Thanks for sharing.
Keep sharing.
Best
Philip Ariel
Hey Ariel,
Yes we all get such emails daily, right. Things like these have become pretty common!
Faking stuff given an impression that it helps business grow. But it can only work for a very short time before people can smell it.
Thanks for your comment.
Cheers,
Jane.
Hello Jane,
Great shout here 🙂
Yeah people are using these days pricks to make some money through their blogging. They find it hard to perform the hard work and they try to steal from the other top bloggers to make some quick money.
Nothing in this world come with an ease, same go as for blogs, we need to hold back and keep on building trust and relations with our clients and top influencer of our fields. This wil take time but it would gradually help us out.
We are all in into a long time investments, its not a one day play i.e. we can come conquer and go back home.
Thanks for the share
Shantanu.
Hey Shantanu,
Well said – nothing comes easy. We have to build trust in a business in order to be able to run it profitably in the long run.
As long as it is a long term thing that you aim for, I can only say trust is a must.
Thanks for sharing your wonderful thoughts!
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Jane Sheeba,
Nice Post!
Personally i don’t believe in “Fake it until you make it”. If anyone knew that they are being fooled, all relations with that person will be ruined. You can fool some people sometimes, but not all the people every time.
Yes, success should be genuine. Shortcuts like stealing and faking stuff may seem fruitful for a while but in long term it will fail for sure.
I will tweet your post.
Thanks a lot for sharing.
Hey Manish – good that you don’t believe in fake it until you make it. That is a very important virtue I believe.
Only if your success is genuine you can celebrate it and can feel worthy about it.
Thanks for the comment and the tweet.
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Jane and Erik,, I am surprised to read about how bloggers can fake these reports and produce stories of how they make money online if they don’t 🙁
I know if they say it can be done overnight and easily that they are wrong and are presenting mis-information to newbie bloggers. Sad!
My dad got fakes like PV Ariel mentioned with his computer. He ended spending money to get his computer fixed when it wasn’t really broken.
I hope this type of stuff really ends and that people really check things out first for themselves. Thanks for bringing this to the forefront Jane.
Hey Lisa,
Yes it came as a surprise to me as well when I first came to know about a few – now not a surprise anymore lol.
Overnight success doesn’t exist, at least in the case of blogging.
Oops – sorry about your dad falling for it. You know some fakes are so perfect one cannot identify!
Thanks for the comment Lisa – the post really started as a rant!
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Jane & Erik.
I’ve faked income reports and things for my own visualization and personal development activities but I would never post them online and say they are real.
I don’t pay too much attention to the cheaters. They usually take care of themselves. Karma, what goes around comes around, etc.
I’ve worked with a few people in my network marketing business who were over concerned about what other people were doing. The problem is that they spent so much time worrying about the other person that they never got their own websites going.
My response to the cheaters is to ignore them and focus my efforts on building my own thing. I believe that integrity and honesty are far more powerful than cheating. It’s a creation/cooperation energy versus a competition energy. Creation and cooperation are much more powerful.
Hey Wayne – as long as you have done it for visualization purpose, it doesn’t hurt. In fact faking things for visualization is a great way to set goals and be motivated about them.
Yes, ignoring the cheaters is the best way to focus all the energy on our own progress.
Thanks for your wonderful comment!
Cheers,
Jane.
Nice article Jane! I’ve wondered about some of those monthly income reports that one sees on various websites!
Your all blogging techniques are easy to understand and helpful for every blog.