The genesis of this blog came about when Darren at Problogger.com decided to set up a new Noob forum for his legion of followers to give advice to each other.  Now, on the surface this might not be a bad idea, but really who needs another group of Noobs telling other Noobs how to do Noobie stuff?  Griz and other have pointed out the futility of the Problogger.com forum as it is based on the faulty assumption that social blogging can make you money.  (It can’t.)

Others have jumped into the fray, throwing in a few gratuitous kicks and punches.   One of the better posts was by SEO Ignitor.  His take on the whole sorted affair is titled Make Money Online Reading Forums and is a really funny read on how many people get sucked into reading forums thinking that they are going to make money by doing so.

For that matter, even great forums like the one at TKA have their share of readers for money – willing to read every word that is posted there, commenting often, but unable to demonstrate that they are able to make money online themselves.

I’m no psychologist, but I suspect that these people do self-defeating things like this because they are afraid of failure.  What if…  What happens when… What am I going to do?!?  That sort of inner dialog is really dangerous and hurts any chance you have of making money online.  I don’t know who said this (and I’m to lazy to Google it), but someone once said ‘better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all’ or something like that.  The best way to conquer this fear is to just do something … anything (except read forums) to break out of this behaviour pattern.  Pick a simple strategy and run with it for a while.  Make 100 Hubs – that’s what I did and now those Hubs bring in several hundred dollars a month.  Do anything you can to silence the little voices  in your head.  Just do it!

No Comments » Posted by Strathy / Forums

So I realize that the name of this blog is not exactly intuitive.  What does it mean?  I will here reprint, in very small part, a comment that was posted by Griz at his How To Make Money Online for Beginners blog.

Speaking about a new scheme that Darren over at Problogger.com was working on, Griz said,

Mike – I can’t wait to see what the price jumps up too – just how much can a noob be milked for anyway. Of course the forum might end up being free…

And that is what gave me the idea for the name.

Noobs, like so many moths to a light, are attracted to the idea of easy money. No matter how badly they get burned, they keep coming back for more and there is always someone out there ready to baffle them with B.S. while relieving them of their wallets.  Noobs are easy prey for bloggers and marketers offering them the promise of riches in exchange for a few dollars (but the price is going up soon, so you better buy today!)  Noobs, because they are beginners, and because they are blinded by carrot of easy money, will give up almost anything to get what they think will be the answer to all their problems.  They jump from blogger to blogger, from scheme to scheme, each time shelling out their hard earned money 0r worse yet, loading up their credit cards.  I’ve purchased a few of those ebooks in my time … I still have most of them in a file on my hard drive.  They were read once, and then, like the socks given by great aunt so-and-so to a 4 year old for Christmas, were discarded for the next bright bauble.  I still can’t believe I bought some of that crap!  Bugs me actually.

I’m hoping here to comment on some of the stuff I see people doing that is crazy – as well, point out the IM stuff that works … or, at least, is working for me.

My very 1st piece of advice is to not buy another thing until you’ve read Griz’s blog from start to finish.  I guarantee that if you put in the time to read it, what you will learn will serve you better than any crummy ebook being touted by some A-list blogger.  Read it with a notebook beside you, marking down what you find interesting AND where to find it again.  I still refer back to the notes I took during my 1st reading.

That should keep you busy for a while!

No Comments » Posted by Strathy / About Noobs