State of The Internet (Part Two)

Continuing my barely coherent ramblings on the State of The Internet from yesterday, the other thing I don't see so much of on the web these days are the so-called 'pro-bloggers'.  It might be that I just don't visit the neighbourhoods where they hang out nowadays, but they thankfully seem to have died a death.  These 'pro-bloggers' were the literal personification of all those internet get rich quick schemes which proliferated a few years ago.  These were the people who claimed to make their entire income from blogging.  Now, I'm not saying that it is impossible for an individual to make a living from writing online, but to do so they would have to be producing some very compelling content or providing some unique service in order to generate sufficient traffic to generate the kind of ad revenues required to make that kind of money.  Believe me, none of the self-proclaimed 'pro-bloggers' I ever encountered ever produced anything like that.  Their blogs were full of fluff about how much money they were making, interspersed with recycled Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) 'tips', (all received wisdom rather than anything original based on their own experiences), and 'reviesw' of various of those online money-making schemes with affiliate links to them.  That's right, they were nothing more than a variation on the affiliate sites I was on about yesterday, although the 'pro-bloggers' would undoubtedly describe themselves as 'internet marketers'.  It's just that they're marketing shit.

The most interesting thing about these 'pro-bloggers' was that many of them were allegedly non-existent.  Apparently, many of the get rich quick merchants, desperate to push their dodgy products, (which were usually a form of spamming), they invented 'pro-bloggers', creating false identities and setting up blogs for them to then push the product, posting about how much money they were making with this particular product.  Twitter seems to have become the focus of this sort of activity in recent years, with a plethora of fake personalities pushing shit through their feeds.  Obviously, it's easier to set up and automate a Twitter feed than it is a blog.  That said, I was once horrified to come across a Wordpress theme which automated blogging.  Basically, you set up a blog as an affiliate site, then applied this theme, which would pull in (ie steal) material from RSS feeds and article directories, which were vaguely related to the blog's supposed subject matter.  Why bother creating high quality content when you can steal it, eh?  But getting back to the fake 'pro-bloggers', there was one high profile blog which got a lot of publicity a couple of years ago when its then owner picked a very public fight on Twitter with Lily Allen over the whole business of illegal music downloads.  To me it was obvious he was just trying to generate traffic for his own (ostensibly legitimate) site, where, as it turned out, he was pushing a highly dodgy Twitter-based get rich quick scheme.  (To reassure everyone he was legit, this guy spent a lot of time 'debunking' other people's schemes.  Of course, all he was doing was trying to eliminate the opposition). 

Anyway, he had a whole network of other 'pro-bloggers' endorsing the product.  They frequently commented on his own blog, bigging him and his product up.  I've long suspected that most, if not all, of them were fakes.  He eventually 'sold' the blog, (although I strongly suspect the current listed owner is another front for him), when the wheels came off of his schemes big time.  Interestingly, whilst many of his legion of supporters stayed online for while, with still active sites, there postings gradually dwindled.  I recently decided to see what had happened to some of the most prominent of this group.  Whilst most seemed to have vanished completely, I did track a couple down who might actually have been real people!  One, who used to claim to be a web designer appears, from his Facebook profile, to now be working in retail (ie a shop), whilst another, who claimed to be a top content provider who made thousands from his work, has closed down his site, let his domains expire and, on his Twitter feed at least, nowadays just identifies himself as an IT student, with no vast web incomes.  So there you have it: 'pro-bloggers', either fantasies or fantasists.  Oh, and before I forget, what happened to the original blogger in this case?  Well, ironically, after championing the file-sharers and free music downloaders against Lilly Allen, he is currently running a 'record label' devoted to producing only analogue recordings and uses his Twitter feed to denounce file-sharers and others who want to download music for free...