This is my honest opinion - People don't care anymore

I'm writing this and it's almost three in the morning, so please bare with me if this doesn't make any sense, it's just something I feel that if I don't get out of my system now, it won't be in my mind when I get up later today.

I've been looking around the internet in the past couple of years, and today have finally realized how much of a waste dump it is. You go to any webmaster related forums and everyone's going on about how to cheat the system, get to the top with their little niche/affiliate sites, and how to basically make unlawful profit. Yes, I said that, I think the tactics people use to make a quick buck on the internet these days are unlawful.

Personally, when I want to find a site about "acne treatment", I want to find a place that tells me different methods, advice for avoiding them, and a support forum. But what I do get is a site with affiliate links, Google Adsense ads, and filled with links to other related sites that have the same content. Do you think people really want to read this? Do you think they're going to get results with the crappy products you're trying to sell just to get a huge commission? No, they're going to feel scammed and not wanting to buy from the internet ever again!

Another thing is with YouTube, we seem to think that it's okay to buy links on videos that have a huge amount of views because we then know that it's going to get a lot more hits. It's not really reasonable really, people aren't looking for sites to visit when they go and watch videos on YouTube. You gotta remember that people have iPhones and Apple TVs now, so your links aren't going to be viewed most likely anyway. I personally am not looking for affiliate/make money videos either.

Yet people seem to think that if they continue to buy links, their site will become more valuable. What's the point of buying and selling links with these sites if they're worthless aswell? It's not like any of these sites are getting hits to begin with anyway. The acne treatment site I saw was ranked #1 and only had less than 70 sites linking to them. Guess what? They were all health related sites and directories. What is the point, really?!

It's like people crave to have so much money that they forget about looking at what they're really doing. There is so much spam on the search engines, and it's getting to the point that it looks like those old adware inclusions that would replace Google searches with their keyword ads. People are looking for tips on how to blog, and they are given a plethora of links to ebooks, scripts that do everything for you, and keyword blogging. They aren't getting real information on how to really grab the reader's attention, giving them reasons to comment, or a reason even to come back.

I'm also sick of people trying to get away with hiring cheap writers. I've been told many times that I'm a good writer, but even if I post 100 various samples of my work, some idiot is still only going to pay me $10 for an essay. No, I am trying to do this as a profession that I'd like to put on my resume (I'm sure a lot of the people here don't have one as they seem to go from various niche websites each year that flop) and actually gain experience so I can get a real job in journalism. I want to be a respectable freelancer and not someone that looks like they're trying to make a quick buck. I mean, what's the point of only charging $10 for 1,000 words? It's not like you can do 10 a day to make $100, they take like three to five hours to research, and the same to actually write. You CANNOT make a living charging only $10-$50 for these types of jobs. You'd make more working at a fast food place instead, and I'm not joking! If I were to charge my usual price, I'd be making a salary pretty close to a physician. That's with weeks of vacation and weekends excluded too!

The whole 2.0 "look" thing is getting sick aswell. I can make a pretty good design in photoshop, but people demand for it to look a certain way which is boring! People would rather see a site that looks good and has good content, that's a fact. They don't want the same old look that says you're using WordPress or some other CMS platform. I know the term 2.0 is supposed to be used to express web development creativity, but all I get is slick looking headers and menus that look like something Apple/Microsoft/Digg/Facebook/Myspace/YouTube and everyone else has. We need to remember that we are in theory trying to be "creative" by saying we're 2.0 designers. Who cares if the menu is at an angle? Who cares if it's not XML/CSS valid? You're always going to have issues with it anyway, so why not just make sure your layout works in the latest web browsers people are using? Google, YouTube, Digg, MySpace, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Yahoo, CNN, NY Times, none of them are valid XHTML, why are we forced to comply with it as entrepreneur web designers when big time designers that get paid a lot more don't even bother with it? It doesn't automatically mean they'll work on al browsers anyway.

In the near future, I want people to come up with startup sites that are original. The webmaster community need to think in reality, think in terms of what would make a good site that could be nominated for a Webby Award. Working on just ONE site and putting your all into it will get you somewhere. I know some guy who started a blog about video games with his friends, you know where he is now? Well, lets just say that he's been on G4, Sky News, and done editorial work for various magazines and newspapers. You might not get a lot of traffic on your blog, but I'm pretty sure that you'll be getting the right people reading it. I myself know some PR people who often Google their respected company's name to see what they're saying about them. I had a little blog where I talked about my dreams to be in the music industry and I often spoke about 7Digital (competition to iTunes, their sales reflect the music charts). This guy from there saw my blog one day and asked if I wanted to be put on their mailing list of insider information. With my new blog, I've been attracting a lot of people in that industry aswell, and I'm not really doing any promotion, I'm just posting my daily thoughts.

So in closing this, since it's almost five in the morning now (see, 1,463 words do take awhile to think of!), I think we should all start to help in cleaning the internet. We need to be thinking about profiting in the long run, we don't need to be feeding off each other only to be profiting among ourselves. We need to look at the internet community as a whole. How did YouTube manage to get millions of videos on its servers? How did MySpace get that deal with all the record labels to make an online music store? How did Facebook manage to get Microsoft to invest into them? It's not like we couldn't manage it ourselves, you have to realize that the people who started those sites are like you and me - They're ordinary people who are just trying to make a living on the internet aswell as working on something they enjoy.

The internet should be used to spread knowledge and meet people's demands. We are inflating it with our duplicate content, junk products and scripts, and stuff that the common internet user has no interest in. If you're going to sell a domain, it needs to grab the attention of everyone, not just the person who wants it for its PR which won't matter if there's no content included in the sale; if you're going to buy and sell a link, put it on a place that people can see it and make sure it's something they'll have an interest in. It's no good making a site that gets loads of visitors but no one coming back. If everyone on the internet went to go see it, what's the point of it afterwards? You made the money that you could get out of all that, are you just going to chunk it out?

That's all for now, thanks for reading.

 

very true...i appreciate your sentiments but it has become the way of life my friend. if you want to get recognized and earn good money unfortunately you will have to go with the wind or else people don't give a damn.

 

I have to say that Falling Down's post is one of the best I've ever read on DP.

Thank you.

 

The internet has turned into the cesspool it is today because most webmasters have stopped caring about what people want and need, rather choosing to focus on how they can get the next check into their pocket. Everyone is asking, "how can I make $x online in x months/days", if you have been reading this forum for 2 seconds you would understand that, readers. The Internet has turned into a money train, and there is no room left. The community is so hungry to work from home on the internet instead of getting a real world job that they will do anything to make a buck; write articles for $3 each, steal content, even click on ads for $1.20 an hour. People, I agree with Falling Down, and we should do everything within our power to bring the Internet back to it's status as a useful tool for finding information instead of a web of lies and deceit.

 

Like I've said already, I don't write anything unless they agree to my price. I didn't go to school and study to get nothing out of it. The thing that's messed up with the school system is that we have this wide range of knowledge, we write hundreds of papers per year, and yet, we get out of there only to have to get a job at Subway or Wendy's to afford our college tuition and apartment.

And you know, it's really the people cheating the system that's stopping us from getting decent jobs. They think that if they use big language, sweet talk the secretary, and look like they know what they're talking about, then they'll get the job. However, most employers then learn from their mistakes and require more information and sufficient evidence before any contracts are discussed. I've told people the story about the girl who had great pictures, got noticed by a designer company, only to start working and wasting their supplies because she didn't know the ins and outs of shooting photography. People now want to know what they're getting themselves into when they hire someone.

 

People seem to forget that many of the most popular and profitable sites are the simplest ones!

(like Google and Craigslist)

It's "funny" that Google won't put image ads on their own sites, but they'll help spread them across the rest of the Internet via Adsense...

 

I didn't read all that, but I know where your going. Yes a cesspool the internet has become. I think were guilty of attributing to it, even yourself you have appear to have some garbage site in your sig, something about IP speed test. That site is prime example of something you might find in serps while looking for something, say a speed test and get pissed off and have to hit the back button once they ifnd out it just some wordpress install! so you no innocent then anyone else, You should watch this video called Leb Web 3 with the speaker Jason Calacanis from the mahalo search engine talking about internet Pollution it really opened my eyes and I agree with everything he has to say. my garbage sites I took them off my server a few months ago and parked them on sedo to die. Sure they made a dollar here or there with adsense, but I do not want to attribute to it anymore, I only make sites now that I am capable of managing and writing content for.

Also internet pollution just doesn't go for webmasters it goes for everything, even on Flikr, where you would have quality photographs, the site got filled with amateur garbage, same on deviantart, youtube, technorati, Digg, all the same Being filled with low quality crap by people particpating in something they should do not have the expertise to do...whatever that may be, writing,photography, or photo/video/manipulation..

 

Well, yes, Craigslist is a good example. It's also an other site that has suffered from the making money online craze, people are always buying and selling verified accounts, there are posting services, and it's just been so abused.

I think Google is doing the right thing though, and I don't think any of us would really benefit from a Google advert on their main page. You know, your site bandwidth would go down, and then so would your host. It'd actually be a pretty big disaster. Their AdWords is more relevant and only shows up when it's something someone's actually looking for. In the search engines, you're wanting to have your site clicked on because that person is thinking that it's what they might need to read to find their answer.

 

What a wonderful post. Please continue to ramble here, you're a breath of fresh air!

As a fellow writer I too am sad that it seems impossible to hire myself out at a decent rate. Instead, I've finally learned how to profit from my own writing, through publishing my affiliate sites and also publishing some ebooks.

But quality is a huge issue on the Net and it is demoralizing to always see spam sites or even just badass ugly looking blogs dominating the search engines.

I'm a huge proponent of beauty for beauty's sake - I think if we forget about quality completely in the Web world, we're headed down a slippery slope of yuck.

Dan

 

Wow, you are a good writer if you post that long of a essay on a forum

 

It's nice that you posted your opinion. It's all true. However, you'd be surprised that the way this web thing works is the way most things work. Including politics, business, etc. People don't do things for the "good of other people", instead they perform actions because they get something in return.

A good example is people wouldn't spend the time cooking food if our bodies didn't require fuel.

A good business person would not say "Web 2.0 is awful, everyone has the same look." Instead he/she would say "This web 2.0 thing is overplayed, here is how I'm going to go ahead of the curve. By doing this: ....".

Complaining gets you no where, actions are what start change. And change, my friend, is good.

 

It doesn't help that people like Perez Hilton are ruining our chances to make a big break either. Having known people who have dealt with him in the past year, he is one of the most rudest "wannabe journalists." He cannot take the fact that maybe he's just not that good, and if you do say something about him, he doesn't even want to bother talking to you. He craves all the attention and wants to be famous for his work when it's not the greatest writing in the world, it looks like something a middle school student would write. I guess people in that age range are most likely to stumble upon that site, but he's trying to look as serious as the other journalists who look at the entertainment industry on a daily basis. It's like, who would they rather give the editor slot to? Joe Nobody or Perez Hilton?

Yes, but when are people going to get the message that we need change on the internet? The other day I went on this site that showcased sites that are in the "2.0 criteria" and it was just amazing just how many there were. I'm not saying that we need to start thinking for 3.0, I'm not saying we should even be going there, but I think we should be designing differently and more expressive.

We can think of it as file sharing, how many people still use LimeWire? As soon as torrents came out, people started using those instead because it was faster and you know what's actually in them. A lot of people are just going to blogs that links to files now because it's a lot faster and doesn't require seeders. What's going to happen next? I remember when you had to go in IRC channels and ask if anyone had something.

And I know people don't just do things for the good of people, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be doing good work for low pay. I don't think we should be doing cheaply made articles either, nor should we be buying them. I think if you can make a thread like this that gets everyone's attention, gets them responding, and opens their eyes, then it's something that is of big value. To all the people charging $1 for an article: Why not enjoy a little bonus and charge more? I know some are in a different economy and don't need the money as much, but realize that it's not what you'd get in a real profession in countries like the UK and US. Why work for low pay when you could have a lot more?

 

Unfortunately you had to have a forum to vent out your feelings... That is life man...you need to change with times..

 

Can I just say (and I'm saying this because the recent reputation points I've gotten all prove this) that there are probably a lot more people that agree with my statements than you think. I'm getting from "you need to write more", "brilliant", to "you are cool!" Actually, those were the only three, and then some guy who is starting up a brand new blog wants to feature the above comments, I never knew I had that much power over people at three in the morning!

And no, I don't just need a forum to vent out, I could have probably nailed every interview with this discussion, but I decided to pst it here because the right people would see it and react to it. There are people that survey these forums, we don't know who they are, they could be Google themselves (have you never thought about that?) or editors from news publications. When I first posted this thread there were at least twelve guests, that's pretty unusual for most things I post. We don't know if they were just bots, people coming from searching on Google, or people that wander around here on a daily basis to see what's being discussed between internet marketing wannabe moguls.

 

It's the single big post that I kept on reading in my DP life.

I'd like to back you up on each word you say still we have to conclude with a solution.

 

I think the best solution to all of this is to stick by our own views, and maybe some of our positivity will rub off on the people who do the wrong thing, that's my philosophy anyway.

 

Ahmen! Yes, people just don't care anymore; but From my opinion, I think that there won't be a solution to this until search engines are completely flooded with these kind of sites and then thats when search engines (Google) will have to act to remove these sites and make it against their rules to post those kind of sites. But I've bookmarked this thread to see where it goes

Edit: Wrote a blog post on this over at http://abdulkawi.com/?p=64

 

I think what it all comes down to is we live in the age of greed. Greed is spilling over on to the Internet as it has been for awhile. From Black Hats to Junk products and Corporate crime, most don't care anymore. The Internet truly reflects reality and every day life like a huge mirror. People's motives today, well most at least, are zeroed in on $, not creativity or informative content. There are some exceptions and I do still find myself surprised at what some people have to offer. But for the most part I would have to agree. The internet is full of garbage. I find that DP is full of low ballers and who in their right mind writes for a penny a word besides outsourced freelancers that can barely speak, read or write English? What I'm noticing is poor quality at the lowest bidder to save a buck. I'm especially sick of all the stupid ebooks and systems that promise to teach you to learn how to make a lot of money online. All you see all over the internet is "SCUMMY" landing pages. The Internet seems to be like when you drive up to a car dealership and you have like 4 or 5 sales men running up to you before you even get out of the car. And that's when you keep driving by and let them run after you. Driving to the next dealership doing the same thing to get a laugh at how fast they come out after you. But seriously, what your saying makes total sense and I feel sorry for the ones who are victimized by garbage products because they don't see whats really going on here. Very Good POST btw....

 

True ! Web business is getting corrupted every single day with meaningless concepts !

 

Agree with you with all words, web business is also being afected with the economic crisys, but it will be better soon...