There are many ways to make money without actually providing anything of value. Most commonly these “business” methods are known as get-rich-quick schemes but even the most reasonable business person will find their heart racing when someone outlines a sure fire way to make a quick buck by cutting corners using trickery of some sort. I know because I’ve been taken in a few times by the latest, greatest way to make a quick buck. (And it was usually when I was feeling the discouragement of the slow growth of more stable ventures.)
I participated in an interesting online scheme a few years ago. I bought a website that came pre-populated with a few thousand flash games. The games were free for anyone to play and consisted of driving games, sports games, and of course, the “rubber girl” game. Also, and I need to point this out to make this all a bit more relevant; there were a number of games that centered around the theme of popping zits, playing doctor, and general health related things. At one point my site was one of the most popular niche gaming sites of this type on the internet.
What I’d do is buy traffic from Google Adwords at an average of 5 to 8 cents per click. These clicks were cheap because I was bidding on terms like “free flash games, play games for free, free video games” etc. Traditionally these terms don’t tend to cost much because there’s not a traditional way to monetize the traffic. (Unless you’re building a mailing list by offering something free in exchange for contact info but that’s pretty difficult for someone who’s just looking to waste time on a free game.)
As people came to my site and subsequently played the games they’d be presented with ads from the Yahoo Publisher Network literally “stuffed” around the games. What made me money – lots of it – was the fact that clicks I bought from Google were so cheap in comparison to the revenue I got from my ad placements with Yahoo. You see, what I’d do is tell Yahoo to optimize the ads I got for the health sector. Inevitably Yahoo ads would serve up acne medication, teeth whitening, and other high cost (to the advertiser) ads around my health related games. Remember, I had a lot of those on the site. Even if I hadn’t optimized for health related ads and their higher payouts I’d probably still have done quite well. Yahoo’s system isn’t as efficient as Google’s Adsense and those inefficiences tended, I believe, to work in the favor of the publisher.
So I’d pay 5 cents for 100 clicks totalling $5 and approximately 5- 10% of my visitors would click on an ad that paid me an average of $1.50-$2. Within 10 days of starting this up I was making $300 to $500 per day in profits and doing almost nothing! I thought I had it made.
But, alas, here’s what happened. Yahoo figured out what I was doing and chose not to pay me any of my commissions. So I was immediately out the cost of all the Google ads I had run with no revenue from Yahoo to reimburse my costs. I had violated the terms of service as a publisher in various ways and they had a legal right to their actions.
The basis of what I was doing was sound – to a degree. I was practicing a certain type of arbitrage, just with clicks instead of stocks. What went wrong was that I was doing something for which there is no future – using a system that was meant to provide advertisers and searchers value and manipulating outside of its approved uses for personal gain.
This wasn’t the first and only time I’ve tried to cut corners. I’m sorry to say I’m probably not the quickest learner. But at this point in my life I’ve finally come to understand that if you want to be truly successful you have to offer real value to your customers and partners; not just trick them in some way that’s profitable for you.
There are unlimited ways to game the system but those methods ultimately fail. Sure, a few of us may know someone who’s making a killing with some scammy business model but I wholeheartedly believe that one day the ride ends. Just look at the recent FTC crackdown on rebill offers and fake blogs. And even if you do get away with it forever do you really want to be a part of something you’re not proud of?
These days I focus on products and services for which I have a degree of passion and that fill real needs with existing demand. I do this because I want to be successful at adding value to people’s lives. By doing so I know I’ll be successful in the long run.
Anyone else have a similar experience you’d like to share or an opinion? Let me hear about it in the comments.
