Zoom Out

A few days ago I noticed that Wirecutter was having a Union strike and it brought back memories of a conversation I had in early 2020 before quitting online (& affiliate) marketing.

I would like to take to take you on a journey talking about online marketing from a bird-eyes view with a lot of anecdotes from my past and stories that aren’t public to illustrate an idea of zooming out. It’s also might be useful in solving the question, “which battles should I fight?”.

Backtrack, what is wirecutter and how does it make money?

Wirecutter was started in 2011, it makes money off writing reviews like “best Santa hat” etc linking to Amazon and other retailers and earning a commission based on what people buy something after clicking their links.

NYTimes bought Wirecutter in 2016 for $30m. In 2024, Wirecutter added a subscription (yes for product reviews with affiliates links). This will become very relevant in the later part of this article.

Part 1: Diminishing Returns

As most of you are aware I used to work in Affiliate marketing and online marketing but the degree to which is not often known so let me brag and share a few facts for you for the things I’ve been involved in over the years.

• I once made $5000 in 3 days in Airbnb Credit by ranking for “airbnb coupon code” (2018)
• Note: you’ve probably seen the “invite friends to airbnb” link in your airbnb account, well I just used the Internet to get 10,000+ “friends” to click my link🤫🤷‍♂️
• My travel blog was in the top 3 in the world for the phases like “make money traveling”, “how to become a digital nomad”, “best travel backpack” and a lot along those lines. (2017/2018)
• When working at Foundr magazine, I got the site ranking in the top 5 in Google for phases like “Instagram followers”, “how to start an online business” etc etc. Pretty much some of the most competitive online marketing keywords (2017/2018)
• I had my highest affiliate income in March 2020 cause I had articles that were on the top of Google for a lot of online course platforms and all the people who realized they’re selling courses blindly used my affiliate links as Covid hit. (2020)
• I’ve published articles less than 1000 words than probably made me over $20k over a few months.
• I’ve friends and acquaintances who used to works months in advance and make over $100k in just the Black Friday weekend.

Alright enough bragging, what’s my point?

Well now that I’ve impressed you with the level I’ve played this “game” at, let’s me share why it’s a game of diminishing returns on 3 different fronts.

Let’s use the company Nomatic to illustrate this point:

1. I bought the Nomatic travel bag in February 2018 and wrote the review a month later.
2. It was just a simple 800 word article with pictures and I was #1 on Google for “Nomatic travel bag review”. Ezpz medium competition.
3. How much did I make with those 800 words? Around $1000 to $1500 a month. Nice! 🤩

• What happened next? Well six months later they were about 10 more articles each about 2000 words, much more in depth.
• So the person at the top probably made $800 and everyone (including me) had to write more detailed articles and made $500/month.
• Fast forward 12 months and every article also includes a 20 minute in-depth video along with the article. Every new entrant probably makes $300/month on average.
• Fast forward even more time and people will compete with even more detailed articles and not even make money but will do it for likes on their Instagram or subscribers on YouTube.

So more competition? Tough deal with it!

Actually it’s worse than you think. If the playing field is fair and it’s the Internet you are basically competing with every one around the world. I wouldn’t get out of bed for a few hundred bucks but Sanjay from India will write 100 articles for those same 100 bucks.

So if what you’re producing is reproducible and has no network effects it will be competed away. 

Wait, that’s just on the article side.

Let’s take it from the merchant side:

1. When I joined the program I was earning 20% off every backpack sold and I had my own discount code that I could share
2. 6 months later, no discount code that I could share
3. 6 months later, commission dropped to 15%
4. 12 months later, Nomatic paying celebrities to promote the bag thus reducing the number of people who buy it from affiliates like me.

oh damn so more competition from People as well as the merchants? Wait hold on a sec.

I decided to Google these phase just to see how it looks.

Notice how Google shopping is taken over half the screen. Why do you need to click on articles when you can just read the information that Google scraps and clicks Googles links instead of mine.

These are called Zero clicks searches, pretty popular in the seo space but in 2020 over 65% of people that used Google to search something never clicked on an article.

So while you write an article, you’re also training Google who competes against you.

Here’s a snippet from the book the Price of tomorrow that illustrates this point.

All is fair in love and war

This is why every single travel blog or review or whatever blog you read has kept on adding more and more and more ads over the years.

This is why Wirecutter has a subscription, it’s not to earn more money, it’s to earn the money that they used to but can’t earn as easily anymore.

I don’t consider any of this unfair. It’s just the normal way this game works. Rational actors optimizing for their own metrics.

Nomatic doesn’t owe me anything and neither do I believe that just cause I used to make $1500 with my 800 words that “I should be” able to going forward. Neither do I believe it’s Google responsibility to send people to websites.

But I can choose not to play this game when the returns don’t suit me. I can choose not to compete with people who’ll make 20 mins videos for subscribers and instead find the gaps where I still make my high ROI. (eg. course platforms in early 2020)

Well, how does all this relate to Wirecutter?

Well simple, I believe that Wirecutter had its peak in 2016/17 and has been dying since. And the entire fight about the union workers is nothing but arranging chairs on the titanic.

Here’s why.

1. To most of you reading this affiliate marketing might seem new but in reality it’s over 25 years old, it’s an old industry that’s past its peak.
2. When Wirecutter started they were the first website that actually wrote in-depth articles hands on with the product so they immediately grew as an authority.
3. In 2016 when NYT bought it was when Wirecutter had its highest audience that’s weren’t insiders.
4. Note: What do I mean by insiders, well over the years the people who visited Wirecutter started googling “best mattresses Wirecutter” and things like that. It’s similar to the difference between someone typing in “Jeremy Noronha blog” vs search a topic and landing on my site organically.
5. This is also why Wirecutter started a subscription cause the majority of the readers that read Wirecutter are already insiders.
6. Pst…Easy money tip, there’s super low competition right now for keywords like “best laptop Reddit”, kinda similar to above but you can outrank Reddit and probably build a site just around the doing that.😉
7. Why is this relevant, well just as people watch a certain news channel or read a blog those “insiders” tend of be flat but new audiences are hard to attract. So subscribers are a way to milk an existing audience.
8. So basically Wirecutter is having a deaths of a thousand cuts.
9. Around the time NYT bought Wirecutter was when a lot of seo powerful competitors to Wirecutter showed up. Eg, Bestproducts.com which is backed by all the Hearst companies.

Read the article above but here’s an example from the article.

So basically Wirecutter in early 2010s was maybe similar to me with Nomatic in the early months but now it’s basically being kicked around with a ton of competition.

Travel bloggers competing for subscribers on YouTube making zero $0

The largest media companies competing for additional ad clicks to increase their revenue (while reducing their profit margins).

Also on the merchant front, Amazon’s affiliate program was started back in July 1996

Let me repeat that July 1996, I wasn’t even born back then. Fuck.

Back then Amazon had huge upsides paying affiliates to promote them cause they were a nobody. “Buying books on the Internet? Haha!”

In 2024 does Amazon really need to pay affiliates to promote them? Nope, in fact almost all the money Amazon pays its affiliates are people who would’ve bought the product on Amazon either way.

This is why commissions on Amazon on most products have dropped from 10-15% back in the day to like 2% and even 0% for some products. I think every 12 months Amazon has been dropping their commissions further.

Additive vs Non Additive Affiliate

Additive affiliate = an affiliate who adds value to the company while recommending it, introduces it to a new audience. Ie The sale wouldn’t have happen without the additive affiliate.

Non Additive affiliate = an affiliate who doesn’t add value and usually just used their skill and ability to get in the middle of the purchase. Eg, me with “airbnb coupon code”.

For the most part non addictive affiliate are kinda like leeches (I say this as someone who often was more non-additive than additive) who is just trying to find the gap in the system to suck revenue from.

Tbh if I’m being honest over 90% of all the money I made with affiliate marketing over the years have been non additive.

Part 2: Fiat Work

There a department store in the US called Macy’s that was started in 1858.

It’s most known for the thanksgiving parade, which according to Wikipedia is the world’s largest parade.

This is how Macy’s looks inside.

So now here’s a question, how do you think Macy’s make money?

….

Selling clothes? 😂 haha you serious?

Macy’s makes 40% of it’s profit from its credit card business. Another 10% from buying and selling real estate.

Macy’s Is a Real Estate and Credit Card Company Masquerading as a Retailer

So what is Macy’s doing? interest rate arbitrage.

It can borrow money at 6-8% in the junk bond market and lend it to its customers at 25% and pocket the difference.

Imagine if you cared about making clothes and you thought that you would compete against Macy’s by making better clothes😂, Macy’s clothes are a distraction and they have a 50% profit margin from playing the “interest rate arbitrage” game that they will beat you to the ground if you think the smart thing to do is “just make better product”.

This my friends is the corporate fiat world where large companies can borrow money as much as they want while individuals & small businesses struggle to get a loan unless they want to buy a house.

Which is why in a long enough timeline every company basically ends up being a bank.

“With Apple Card, we completely reinvented the credit card.”

“Make your money work better for you, at Uber speed”

Flight companies lose money on most flights because they’re banks.

Starbucks? Come on, I see them selling Coffee. Nah! It’s a bank

So yeah, if you run a business in today’s world and your aren’t doing interest rate arbitrage or selling to people who do interest rate arbitrage. You’ll probably fail because your competition is.

Similarly let’s say you work in online marketing and getting paid a lot for selling services to large SaaS companies, where’s the money coming from?

Selling to customers? Yeah sure the indihackers like Levelsio are doing that and that’s usually value additive cause most indihackers try to solve real problems. But everyone knows if you want to make the big money with less work, you go B2B (business to business) never B2C.

But why does it seem like you can make a lot of money in the SaaS online marketing world without adding any value? Follow the money…

1. Pensions have a return target of 7% (that was placed when 10 year bonds were yielding 14% even a monkey could get 7%)
2. Interest rates in the economy are zero or negative thanks to central bank policy.
3. Pensions have to go higher out the risk curve and invest in venture capital firms more and more.
4. Most stupid venture capitalists have no idea what to invest in and just throwing jelly on the wall and over-investing in stupid startups.
5. Stupid Saas companies got more money than they need to grow so over-invest in marketing. (Eg, pay non additive affiliates like me, Facebook ad managers, marketing agencies etc)
6. Anyone can build a large business making bank being at the end of the spigot.

It’s Malinvestment all the way down.

Why is this important to understand?

Because for the most part, if you start making a lot of money you will likely be at the end of a Malinvestment spigot but you’ll convince yourself that you’re bringing ‘more value cause you’re earning more’ when the reality is that your distance from the money spigot dictates your return.

It’s the Cantillion effect.

Freelance SaaS Writer

• Money printer -> bonds -> Pensions -> Vc firms -> saas company -> you.

Employee at Infosys

• Money printer -> bonds -> Pensions -> Vc firms -> saas company -> outsourcing company shareholders -> you.

-> : gives money to/buys.

Both the employee and the freelance writer probably do the same work, but one gets $500 a month the other makes $5000 a month. It’s not the work that matters. Both are “bullshit”

And as always the easiest trap is it’s easier to convince yourself that you’re creating value than it is to actually create value.

A good example is me and writing, when I write my thoughts here I’ve been getting a lot of incredible feedback and I think it helps people aka “create value”. But I make zero $ from it cause I do it entirely for fun. If I want to make money of articles I can always do that by publishing bullshit affiliate articles under pseudonyms.

See the point, in a world where everyone is playing ‘interest rate arbitrage’ it’s usually smarter to separate the “make money” box from the “creating value” box instead of combining it. Else you just get depressed as hell when your “passion” doesn’t make you money or you get burden with all the “other bullshit” you have to do to actually make money with your passion.

It’s not that you can’t monetize your passion or whatever and create value & make money. But rather it’s just sooooo much more work.

Enjoy writing and think you’ll make money writing? Well in reality, you’ll make money by becoming an online marketer and just as with Macy’s with clothes your writing will be the distraction.

Almost everyone who tells you that you need to “create value” to “make money” isn’t paying attention of the reality of the world and is probably trying to convince themselves of that lie to make what they are doing easier.

If you try to combine both, you’ll succeed less at each since you’ll have to compromise whether in the way of self censorship, joy of passion, or missed opportunity.

Would it be nice to live in a world where you have to create value to make money? Of course but that’s not the world we’re living in. A sound money system where the idea of opportunity cost is brought back into the conscious of society might bring that back but that day is not today.

So…. Wirecutter?

Ask yourself this question, “if I don’t do xyz will the thing not be done/something not be achieved”

If the answer is yes, than the odds are that you’re probably bringing value to the world, Eg. A surgeon who if they choose not to perform surgery will lead to someone dying. That’s valuable. A middle manager? Not so much. A product reviewer? Haha seriously.

David Graeber talks about this a lot with his book Bullshit jobs.

Are Wirecutter writers bringing any value, hmmm not really just like my affiliate websites don’t bring any value. For the insider subscribers, it might help them because they only read Wirecutter but past that it’s not like the Internet needs more reviews of Santa hats. There’s an overabundance of that.

But I’m 100% sure that the writers believe that they’re bringing value to the world, self delusion is a powerful tool.

So much of society is built around the “I am who I am based on how I make money”, that’s one of the stupidest idea I see propagated. Who cares how you make money, what does that have to do with your identity?

Why is it so popular though?

Well, I’ll actually diverge and share an example

If you meet someone who has 5% of their net worth in bitcoin, they’ll often tell you reasons and explanations of why it’ll go up, but if you meet someone who’s has had near 100% of the net worth in bitcoin for years they’ll probably say something like “it could go up or down, no one knows”.

The 5% person isn’t trying to convince you, instead that person is trying to convince themselves hence they use other people as a tool to achieve that.

If I can’t convince myself that I’m adding some value how the fuck am I going to wake up every morning and deal with my bullshit boss, colleagues and job. Let me keep my lies Jeremy. Why do you have to go around ruining everything.

The world is full of ‘5% people’ who aren’t confident in what they believe in cause they haven’t put in the work to understand things so they look to other people especially people they respect to agree with that. An extreme version of this would be The Eternal Husband by Dostoevsky.

Part 3: Jumping Baselines

If 99% of jobs are bullshit, as I consider them to be, isn’t it better to work in the bullshit job that gives you the most “money*freedom”.

Money*freedom: summed by best by this tweet.

I think having a high income to meeting ratio is a better goal than purely a high income.

— Nat Eliason (@nateliason) November 24, 2021

Also summed up well from my “degrees of freedom” in my previous article.

Let me share a funny story that happened last year. As Covid hit I went on a massive hiring spree and worked with over 30-40 freelance writers during March/April.

I just put a request out on Reddit, paid for a test articles and kept the writers who were the best.

There was one writer, for privacy I’ll refer to the writer as S.

In my world things are super simple, you have a PayPal, payoneer, bank account and you write according to my instructions and get paid. That’s literally how the whole online marketing space works.

So I worked with S for about 6 months until June when I stopped publishing. I googled S’s name to get the resume to send over to my friends who might hire s and realized something.

S was a girl and I thought it was a guy.

So I hired someone off Reddit, emailed them maybe 50 times, paid them 1000s of dollars and 6 months later I realized what gender they were.

So what’s was the reality of working as my writer (ps, no I’m not hiring anymore cause I don’t run these biz), well work from any where in the world, message me with the completed work once a week/every other week, no tracking, no time zone, no meetings, no identity, you could identify as a cat never tell me your name and I’d send you money if your articles were good.

I remember when I shared this with a few ‘9/5 people on vacation’ in El Salvador I got the response saying that that’s the exception and we need to fight for diversity/equality!

Well, the reality isn’t that it’s an exception but rather it’s a new normal. Everyone of my friends who run online businesses to some level or the other are the same as this. Some may have zoom meetings, but the ‘baseline’ is sooooo much better.

So while I shared so much negative aspects about online marketing, even given all that it’s 100x better than any normal job where you have an employment contact.

This isn’t the future of work, this is the past. And has been this way for a very long time.

This goes back to something I heard so elegantly on a podcast recently “people who don’t understand the present and the past shouldn’t opine on the future and if they do you probably shouldn’t pay any attention to them.”

Almost everything people are arguing about as the “future of work” are in reality arguments of the past.

So working in the digital online marketing SaaS world is 100x better than working in the traditional office space, cool so that’s a baseline. So fuck the entire degree based corporate world and never look back cause it’ll be completely irrelevant for your entire life. (Ie offices are the new factories, 20% of the world works in factories but they’re irrelevant to most people reading this)

Now is there something even better?

There’s a quote I started sharing with people, “say it’s obvious and go further. Don’t waste time on convincing others of the obvious.”

Whenever you think you’ve arrived at your destination…repeat to yourself “further”.

Yup of course, in crypto the minimum salary for a meme artist/shitposter is $100k.

yes, this is an actual job posting from a 5 year old company that has a treasury of $1.2B (liquid: $200m), and yes it’s probably a more stable job than writing for Wirecutter or even the NYT.

Good solidity developers (a language anyone who already knows JavaScript can pick up in 6 months) earn above $300k a year in this space. And unlike FAANG develops can be anon and work from anywhere in the world without a pay cut.

While the Wirecutter Union is striking for days for an extra $300,000 across all their workers.

@cmsholdings just donated $300,000 in response to a 1 hour debate between Udi and David on uponly.tv which is a waste of everyone’s time.

So what is clear? Well you’re better off working in crypto rather than online marketing. Simple.

so Crypto > online marketing/SaaS b2b  > anything else.

Each baseline adds to the previous one. While in online marketing people like me might hire you to write articles without knowing where in the world you are.

Crypto will do the same and pay you more handsomely than anyone in online marketing will for posting fucking memes on Twitter like @cmsintern.

If you fail at crypto it’s not like you have to jump back to the corporate world, the entire online marketing SaaS world is there, your “worst case scenario” baseline is even different.

But if you’re still stuck in the 9/5 baseline than even jumping to online marketing will give you more freedom. It’s all relative.

The funny example I share with this is “if my friend who I tell to learn solidity and work in crypto Fails, he’ll be a MASSIVE FAILURE as a full time digital nomad able to live anywhere in the world 😭 working in SaaS.’”

Part 4: Out of Touch

damn Jeremy you sound so out of touch, it’s almost like you’re saying that the lives of the people at Wirecutter doesn’t matter. Don’t they deserve a “living wage”, you’re just telling them to eat cake.

Relevant read: Shared reality

Recently for the first time in a couple of years I’ve talked a lot to people from my old world.

Let’s take a sample space of 100 of my friends who I went to high school with.

They basically fall in 3 buckets.

1. Stay in India, graduate from college, get a job in India

Around 65 of the 100 did this. So how do the jobs in India look like?

So the Median Salaries for the college I went to before dropping out was around 350k Inr which is $4500 a year. Or $375 a month.

That’s not a typo, that’s a real salary range after graduation of the people I grew up with.

Most of these people will probably jump to group number two.

2. Move to Canada, US, Uk or EU, get a loan from parents & family or the bank, study and then work in those countries.

Out of 100 lets say around 33 did this. Most of them probably go for their masters or some management courses and then have to work in a job until their 30s to just pay off their loans. Worse in the US, easier in EU cause of prices.

But at the minimum their life is kinda trapped in the study, work in the corporate world and get their feet on the ground until their mid 30s. Maybe making $3000-4000/mo but ‘have to’ live in an expensive place so money doesn’t go far especially consider the loans, responsibility and everything else.

For the most part #2 is still better than #1 cause as they would say “at least I’m not in India anymore”

3. And finally, enter my world 🤷‍♂️. Ie work online as a freelancer, start an online business etc etc.

Only 2 of my childhood friends have done this. One in 2018, the other one just a few months ago in 2024. Both are digital nomads, are traveling the world (have 200 countries to choose from, not 5), were >$1k in less than 6 months of working online (>$5k/month in 2 years) and on the right track to basically be free.

I’m 100% certain both will be financially independent/“retired” before they turn 30.

Why such a big gap? Well, because option 3 is a step function. It’s not an improvement on 1 & 2, it’s not wasting time optimizing a resume to get a better management job.

Could I help some of my #1 & #2 friends get a better corporate job? Of course, but their entire edifice is the problem not the resume.

Similarly do I think the demands of the Wirecutter employees are reasonable, of course.

With so many things in life, it’s not that you has to disagree with people. You can completely agree “Wirecutter union demands are completely reasonable” while at the same time highlighting that they’re in a dying industry and just fighting over colors of chairs on the titanic.

It’s not “you’re wrong, this is why”, it’s “you’re right completely but here’s what you’re missing in your worldview”.

Why would you waste time optimizing the shitty system when you can just jump and pick a better system? In a world when I know (for half the decade) that I could write 800 words and make $1000/month isn’t even thinking about corporate jobs an absolute waste of brain power. (And the fact that 2 high school friends managed to ‘jump’ shows that it isn’t just ‘lucky’ me)

It’s not that I don’t understand the struggle of the writers, I do because I still live in the world where 65/100 of my high school friends and family members make less than $500 a month working 9/5 for the worst outsourcing companies in India.

Every insider started out as an outsider, so become an insider. I actually feel comfortable saying that 3 months of studying seo and content marketing will objectively give most people more freedom than a 3 year MBA & 6 months of studying Solidity will probably give you more than both of those combined.

Let’s even say that all of those things are bullshit jobs, but one gets you more freedom.

Aka You’re not a lottery ticket so stop treating your life like it doesn’t matter and just going with things because that’s what everyone else is doing.

Part 5: Chairs on the titanic

Life is risk and then you die

From the perspective of death or the end of life on earth everything can be viewed as “arranging chairs on the titanic” but if you Zoomed out that far you probably wouldn’t get much information to act on other than killing yourself cause what’s the fucking point.

or as Eric Weinstein said, “bad times create strong men, strong men create good times and nuclear weapons, good times create weak men, weak men + nuclear weapons = end times”.

In a long enough time frame nothing matters.

But zooming out that far all the time isn’t actually useful in optimizing your life, now is it?

So let’s zoom a little out but not too much to a point that we can actually extract something useful.

If you only zoom in to the ladder in your corporate company you’ll never see other corporate companies with better structures.

If you only zoom in to working the corporate world, you’ll never see how easy it is to make money online

If you only zoom in to working in online marketing, you’ll never see how crypto is a better opportunity

If you only zoom in to making more money as the goal, you’ll never shut your computer and live with tribes in the Amazon jungle and the mountains of Nepal to get perspective.

They’re very few people I’ve come across where their struggle is they zoom out too much (maybe a few hippie friends), often it more an issue of zooming in too much. It’s taking things too personally, it’s holding onto beliefs, it’s wrapping your identity around the sunk loss fallacy

“how can I quit this path after I spent so many years, that’s would be admitting defeat”

“how can I just shut down my business (because there’s a better opportunity) when I worked so hard for it”

”who am I without this identity that’s based around what makes me money”

Part 6: How you frame things

Let me share a short story of something in the online marketing space, none of this has been public before because I don’t think anyone outside maybe a few people know about this particular story.

Note:

• I’ve never interacted with the blogger I’m going to highlight, he probably doesn’t know I exist.
• hey @Aayush if you’re reading this feel free to correct me on anything if I’m wrong.
• also don’t worry about me “ratting you out” because no one in the online marketing space reads my blog anymore and its 4500 words deep into an article rant
• My girlfriend often jokes that I’m a fucking psycho when it comes to investigation on the internet, this is one of those situations where I went deep and understood a very complex story to the point that it might creep you out.

So it was mid 2019 and I was googling “blogging income reports” cause I wanted to check out the competition in the space of the “internet marketers” who share their income.

During my time at Foundr I’ve worked with the Og in this space Pat Flynn and also acquaintances with Adam Enfroy

Adam was a good example of someone who grew his income quickly and I knew how he did it, Ie lot of good backlinks and good seo. (Ps. Yes both are accurate about their income reports, to an outsider it might seem like they’re lying or something but the reality of this space is actually so extreme as you’ll see below)

However in my journey of checking out income reports I came across Bforbloggers.com

He was an 18 year old from India and his income report said that he was making $10k/month.

Side Note: This is where most people would say “he is lying” and go back to r/antiwork. Hence why I tell people to use the “go further”.

But he barely had any readers and no backlinks/“authority” and wasn’t selling a course. So what’s up? Something was off.

Anyways, I went and investigated so here’s what I figured out.

In early 2019 he started ranking for the keyword “Unbounce coupon code”

Unbounce basically sell an online landing page builder. The only thing you need to know for this discussion is that the prices start at $100/mo and go all the way up to $250/mo and it’s recurring like Spotify.

The commissions are recurring too, so if you refer someone to Unbounce you earn $ every month when the person pays. INDEFINITELY until they stop using the tool.

So basically by ranking first on Google for that topic (and another keyword as well), Ayush managed to with a new blog (with very low authority) to start making bank $$$$.

By my estimate here are the numbers.

Mid 2019: ~$2000/mo

Mid 2020: ~$5000/mo

Mid 2024: ~$7500/mo

The most interesting part of that income is that it doesn’t necessitate the blog being online for him to make it. Ie he would still make that $ even if he went offline and deleted the website.

Now how long will he be able to make it? We’ll probably couple of years at the least, but it’ll slowly decrease as the people stop renewing. But he basically has a kinda “UBI” passive income to guarantee his business that he can now leverage to grow like crazy.

Now an obvious disclaimer I’m not implying that it was luck because based on my assessment he was working hard too, understood all the fine details of online marketing and blogging since early 2018 when he was 17 or 16 I think. In fact now he’s basically set to become an Indian Adam Enfroy in a couple of years or start a large agency if he wanted to.

So how do your frame this story?

Well, I can see three responses from a mile away

1. This is too good to be true so it can’t be true, things can’t work that way and you’re just lying cause you’re working with this guy to sell a course or something.

Seriously🤨, what’s wrong with you?

2. This is not fair, an 18 year old shouldn’t have a guaranteed income in the 1000s of $ just because he got lucky with a phase back in the day. He should work in the rat race and compete with the rest of us writing articles every month.

Cool story bro, keep on trying to get the government to give you UBI cause that’s the only way you see that you’ll ever be able to pursue your passion.

3. There’s no such thing as passive income, all online business require you to work to maintain or grow them.

Didn’t this example just disprove that?

“Yes but it’s all just lucky, you can’t do it again”

Well, why now? here’s what I did.

In less than a week I had an article up and ranking for the same keyword. Being years later after him they were obviously more competition so I only got a few people to click my links.

End result?

A couple people signed up back in Dec 2019/Jan 2020 and never since but since those people are recurring I had an extra $300-400 every month (even today after I don’t even work in this industry).

That’s literally completely passive income, and while it was still significantly less than the $10k he makes for being 2 years earlier it’s still not bad for 30 mins spent in a cafe in 2019.

Examples like these “the exceptions” is why I spend so much time telling people to “fuck caring about the majority”, we live in a world of extremes… embrace it!

Understand the exceptions so you can take advantage of them. Will you have the same results as them, of course not but instead of just saying “lucky” and dismissing exceptions, pay attention to them and benefit from them.

They is soo much information asymmetry in today’s world, even when most of the information is free.

If you frame things as response #1, you’re usually avoiding reality.

If you frame things as response #2, you’re trying to fight reality.

If you frame things as response #3, you’re not wrong but you do end up missing the point.

I prefer just observing reality for what it is and then taking advantage of reality, it’s just so much simpler.