Oh, and another thing, what I meant by fallen heros is old heros. Not that you are not good at what you do.
Oh, and another thing, what I meant by fallen heros is old heros. Not that you are not good at what you do.
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.$16m offer? If you have the contacts, especially in NYC, thats 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.
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.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.
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.Originally Posted by michael_gersitz
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.
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
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).
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, 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.
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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.
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.
Absolutely, same here. This entire forum was critical in steering me in the right direction.
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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.
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
Last edited by mark1; 02-09-2007 at 12:43 PM. Reason: geez, my English sucks !
His previous blog post is pretty damn funny/sad :
http://www.aojon.com/how-to-make-a-m...l-proof-steps/
Whoever still believes that guy after that post is ____ (fill in the blanks)
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?
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.
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You are my new hero. Every post you make has a point.
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