The Golden Age of Internet Marketing is Over! (What's next..?)

splishsplash

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Hey guys,

First off, I'm sorry (Not really), for the clickbait title!

If I used something more plain this thread would get very little views, and these sort of posts are hard to do titles that will get attention on.

However..

The golden age of internet marketing REALLY is over!

10 years ago you could come online and if you had at least a tiny bit of focus and brains you could be making $100/day within 3-6 months with ease. Within a year you'd be hitting the $500/day and mark, and after 2 years if you weren't making $1k/day something was wrong.

seo was a piece of cake back then.. Now, don't even bother getting into SEO unless you can invest 4 figures per month or you like pain.

Who remembers the old micro niche sites? Ahhh those were days. A 1000 word homepage article with 5x500 word support articles on an emd. Blast it with some web 2's, comments, profiles and other garbage using exact match anchors every month and 6 months later you were making $1k-$2k/mo with it.

Then you had all the bots. You could find a method here on bhw, run a bot and make $100/day with a few tweaks.

Then penguin came along in 2012 and the emd update shortly after that and killed the easy seo fun.

Then around 2015-16 things started to change online. The masses flocked online looking for riches and youtube started to get big. Make money online went mainstream.

Long gone are the days of the wild west where you could promote pretty much anything you wanted, get paid and there were no repercussions. Now, even SMM panels will land you in jail, and bots are fast becoming a thing of the past with current laws and the bigger platforms having more sophisticated technology.

So is it over? Is it too late to get in on the game?

Yes it is. It's too late to get into that game.

The game of wanting to make easy passive income and just "tap into" some money stream. That was possible before, but it's just not going to happen in 2020.

But, we're actually entering an entirely new era where the opportunities are EVEN BIGGER than before, but only for the few who are willing to do what it takes to succeed in the new marketplace.

We're probably entering an era beyond anything we've ever seen in human history. There are countless new technologies being produced right now that open up a world of possibilities for entrepreneurs. AI is playing a pretty central role, but technology is advancing so fast right now and we have access to an incredible array of tools. Just one example is https://bubble.io/. You can create your own SaaS with zero programming knowledge.

What's changed?

Well, in 2016, 2017, 2018 what was making money was aggressive marketing. There were so many low quality products that were being pushed with good marketing.

This is where you need to identify that shift in mindset that's going to allow you to crush 95% of entrepreneurs..

Most people think like this :-

"I want to make money. I will start a business. Ok, what's profitable in 2020? What can I make money with? What are people buying?"

This is how you need to think to dominate the marketplace.

"I want to build cool shit. I will start a business. Ok, what problems are people having in 2020? What tools are people using to solve those problems, and can I do it better? What do people want to do, but currently can't do?"

You can see the consumer wave shifting on youtube with all the people outing "fake gurus". Tai Lopez channel is dying. Look at his views recently. People want higher quality products. Higher quality information. They're getting fed up with the bullshit.

And that, combined with all the technology we, as entrepreneurs have at our fingertips has produced an opportunity to create amazing companies that will solve real problems and generate real wealth.

And it doesn't have to be something huge. It could be a problem that hairdressers have and you could build a little SaaS tool with bubble for them, make it amazing by focusing on your product and actually communicating with your customers to find out what they want.

It involves A) Looking for problems people are having or types of businesses are having. Go specific. Don't go broad. Then B) Looking at how you can use all the existing technologies to build something to solve that problem for them. Think more glue, less invent. You want to piece things together, not create new technologies. That's all uber did. They took new technologies, smartphones, gps and 4g and solved a problem people were having (Get a taxi easily, anywhere, any time at the click of a button, without needing to find a cash machine and even if you've lost your wallet)

So in summary. If you want to succeed this decade and beyond, forget "make money online". It's dead. It's been dead for a whille and it's only getting worse. Focus on solving problems, creating products/solutions and utilizing existing technologies out there rather than fighting against them trying to squeeze a buck out of them. This applies to every aspect of business. No matter what you're doing, think "What problems do my customers have, and how can I solve those problems". If you want to be an entrepreneur, then that is what an entrepreneur is. Even if you want to be a consultant. Don't think "What kind of service makes money, what are companies buying", because alll you're doing then is what everyone else is doing and try to take a piece of an existing pie. Create your own pie and you will crush everyone else. Want to be an email marketing consultant? Don't just be an "email marketing consultant". Specialise in 1 type of business. Learn that business. Talk to the business owners to see what problems they have and use email marketing to solve problems specific to that business. Email marketing is one tool of many to solve problems a business has. It's not some magic thing that you need to convince businesses they need. It's like saying to me "Buy this shovel. You can dig big holes really easily." -- Great, but you don't know what my problem is and you're trying to sell me a great shovel, instead of finding out "Hey, I've got back problems, I'm getting old but I want to keep gardening. I love working in my garden, digging holes, but I always end up with an achy back.".. "Oh really? Well, we have something perfect for you! Our new super light, super strong shovel will make it easier for you to keep doing what you love without the pain. Try it, it's so light your hands will feel empty!"
 
Success rate of solving a problem "business" or "job" is very low. For example :
An estimated 92% of SaaS companies fail within 3 years despite growth and funding.
What do you say to that?

By the way good to know about bubble. I am moving towards design from coding and bubble seems interesting.
 
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https://bubble.io/. You can create your own SaaS with zero programming knowledge
Try it. That this exists does not mean it is possible. In theory - yes. Can you build a prototype that you can find a few clients to charge them? Yes. Is it pain in ass to use and does not support any kind of custom stuff any self-sustainable SaaS need? Oh yes. I honestly think that its easier to learn basics of any programming language and to build your saas ground up than to use those kinds of services.


The golden age of internet marketing REALLY is over!
Perhaps, easy days are over. But I wouldn't say that it's hard either.

It's dead.
It's different. You sound like my stepdad. When I was younger I had to listen to how his graphic design skills were great and how companies do not hire him because he is too experienced. Overqualified is the word that I had to hear a lot. In really this old fuck was using old-style graphic methods that no one wanted to see on their magazine covers and so on. Till this day he thinks he is a great, unevaluated artist.

Are you great unevaluated marketer who thinks he's methods are dead because they do not work anymore?

Good. Free the market for the younger generation.

*opens tiktok and starts sending DMs*
 
I enjoyed reading every bit. We really need to focus on solving problems, that is the quickest way to attain wealth as an entrepreneur. Steve Jobs, Walmart, Bill Gates and the likes attained high level of success because they were able to profer solutions to some of our everyday problems. There are tons of problems around us, but one needs to think outside the box to be able to recognize them.
 
great post, I enjoyed reading it,

I think making money online will never be dead, even in the near future, focusing only on making money online the traditional way, will not be enough these days, maybe you can bank for 3 months or even 6, but after that, you cant keep with the same level, sooner or later the method or whatever it is will die,

so the solution to that as you said, is mainly on shifting the mind to build a business, a structured online business, that why many technologies will emerge like NO-CODE. when we can build tools without touching the code, bubble , zapier...are just the beginning.

.
 
I'm somewhat agreeing with your philosophy of the "mentality change" (in respect to the customers), however a big problem is the consumption spirale nowadays. It's all about getting information 24/7, no matter the quality - it's all about quantity. It's perfectly depicted on Social Medias: Just scroll half a thumb down and you got a new picture, text, video, whatever. Breaking the chain and getting customer who actually give a sh't and are willing to invest time in a purchase is only possible if a.) the product differs extremely from merchant to merchant or b.) it's a high-valued product, such as real estate.
It's still about better marketing, not better quality. More than ever.

-> So the process of making money hasn't changed, as long as you're solving a problem (to which extent doesn't matter) - and advertise properly, you're able to make money on this mysterious medium "Internet".
 
10 years ago the same post would have been written saying how easy it was in the early 2000s to make splash blogs and rank just by KW stuffing.

10 years ago was just as easy or as difficult as today, depending on your perspective.
 
Until people are online there will be always many ways to funnel down into sales. Not dead but saturated if your competitor can make sales then you too.

Sure, if you're happy with the dregs and constantly grinding to make sales and competing with everyone else at the bottom of the pile, then yes, this is true.


Success rate of solving a problem "business" or "job" is very low. For example :
An estimated 92% of SaaS companies fail within 3 years despite growth and funding.
What do you say to that?

By the way good to know about bubble. I am moving towards design from coding and bubble seems interesting.

Business is hard. SaaS companies are very hard. I never said any of this easy. Being an entrepreneur is one of the hardest things you can do. Money is not easy to make. If people want an easy life they're better off working on their skills and getting a job. Who do you think all those competitors I'm talking about crushing are? :-) If 92% wasn't failing, then there wouldn't be any opportunities and everything would be spread pretty equally. Nothing in the universe is like that. The entire universe adheres to the 80/20 rule, and usually more like 99/1.

I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm just telling it like it is.

Try it. That this exists does not mean it is possible. In theory - yes. Can you build a prototype that you can find a few clients to charge them? Yes. Is it pain in ass to use and does not support any kind of custom stuff any self-sustainable SaaS need? Oh yes. I honestly think that its easier to learn basics of any programming language and to build your saas ground up than to use those kinds of services.



Perhaps, easy days are over. But I wouldn't say that it's hard either.


It's different. You sound like my stepdad. When I was younger I had to listen to how his graphic design skills were great and how companies do not hire him because he is too experienced. Overqualified is the word that I had to hear a lot. In really this old fuck was using old-style graphic methods that no one wanted to see on their magazine covers and so on. Till this day he thinks he is a great, unevaluated artist.

Are you great unevaluated marketer who thinks he's methods are dead because they do not work anymore?

Good. Free the market for the younger generation.

*opens tiktok and starts sending DMs*

This is a fairly immature response and I don't appreciate the underhanded way saying I am like an "old fuck". Learn to respect other people around you regardless of whether they have a different opinion.

If you're happy making a few hundred bucks a day on tiktok sending DMs with a bot then go for it. Why are you here? This thread is aimed at people who want to build 7 and 8 figure companies. In a couple of years when you realize that crap won't lead anywhere then you might come back and understand what I was talking about.

https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/made-my-first-50-online.1222109/page-2#post-13096233
Gratz! Genuinely interested, what niche are you in?

Need more be said?

Happy DMing.



Let's close BHW then?

You can either learn what works and how to be successful, or you can cling to old ideas and dreams of easy money. Your choice. I have nothing to sell you. I don't really care whether you succeed or fail. I'm not here to convince you to do something that'll get you results.
 
It's a good read, but the "make money online" isn't dead. People need to think outside the box that's how growth hacking was born alongside traditional marketing strategy. Techniques, method needs to evolve.
 
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