I still haven’t gotten around to my next ‘good guy’ post and the thoughts I am going to post here today are also delayed. I wrote this piece a few days ago and left it to stew for a while, not wanting to add more fuel to a fire that I think should be left to burn out. Then I had to update it according to current events and then I stewed again… Basically, is it right to criticise someone when they are down? And, is it fair to write a piece which may (even in a small way) boost the readership of someone who I suspect? Then I found someone who I think is ‘hinting’ at the very point which was troubling me, so I thought, “Ok, this blog is about my thoughts on the making money on the net industry, so let’s do it anyway!” So here we go with my personal thoughts about someone who works in the make money online niche:

When I came across the name ‘Caroline Middlebrook’ on various sites, mainly linking to Victor Franqui ’s Blogger Unleashed , I thought “that name rings a bell” and then dismissed that thought and read and watched all the criticisms of Caroline and her blog. I had never heard of this blog before (although I guess the name had flitted across my horizon and been promptly dismissed), but now I just had to take a look to see just what all the controversy was about.

What I found was a blog written in a friendly, conversational style by a woman who appeared to me to be a little mixed up emotionally but appealing to read none the less. She struck me as an intelligent woman trying her best and at least writing well about it.

So I looked further to see what all the fairly recent fuss has been about. A lot of this is about what Caroline is offering her readers:

In his video, made on April 1st this year, Victor Franqui was angry with Caroline. He accused her of being a lier and cheating her readers. He explained that he was angry because he hated to see her scamming people with her ebook full of affiliate links designed to make her money when she was unable to make money herself from the methods she was promoting.

Yes, I can see where Vic is coming from. He has been scammed by the ‘make money online gurus’. He hates to see people who cannot afford to be scammed being suckered by the guys Caroline links to in her ‘free ebook’. I haven’t been scammed by these guys, but there again, when I came into this business, I never had the cash (or the credit) to spend in the first place. I don’t think I would have been taken in by the ‘you can make thousands of dollars with this course’ crap, but then I’m a real cynic. I do realise that others may not be as cynical as me and can therefore see why Vic is so angry with guys like these.

Victor Franqui has a mission - to expose the cheaters in the make money online business and to provide good, honest teachings on how you can really make money online. Apart from Griz, whose teachings are mainly on Adsense, I have yet to find a better teacher on the net than Victor Franqui. However, I do think he has chosen the wrong target in picking on Caroline. I say this, not because I think that the guys she is linking to are right, but because, by focusing on Caroline in this way, he has provoked an interest from some of us which wasn’t there before. When Vic made that vlog, Caroline had 1800 RSS readers. She now has nearly 2400 and one of them is me.

And no, I am not some poor sap who follows Caroline’s every word and, although I do think that some of her commentators probably do follow her words as gospel, many others think for themselves. I bet quite a few are, like me, following out of curiosity as to what scheme she is going to fail at next. You can see that just from reading between the lines of some of the comments on her posts. And I think a lot of us are there because we read and heard what Vic said…

No, I do not follow Caroline on StumbleUpon or anywhere else for that matter, just her blog. And as to Caroline’s experiments with the social bookmarking world. Well, at first glance, she’s following some of the ‘gurus’ who say social bookmarking is a good thing, so I guess you could not blame her for that. There again, this practice has brought her readers to her blog but no search engine sales, as this type of traffic is virtually useless for that… unless of course you are selling ‘hopeful Stumblers’ make money online courses in your affiliiate links…

And that’s the problem. Caroline Middlebrook is a bit of an enigma. Is she following advice she learned from the ‘A listers’ and hoping social bookmarking helps her make money, or is she fully aware that the only way this really works is to get money from her loyal fans…?

You see, I am not at all sure about Caroline and what her aims are. Unlike Vic, I do not wish to compare her to Hitler. I also resist his analogy that went kind of: ‘people liked Hitler so they believed what he said’. From my research, Hitler always was a madman and unlikeable in many ways, but he made some powerfully vicious friends and had a great propaganda machine which turned him into a charismatic figure. The main propaganda sources I see as working for Caroline are her own (excellent) self-promotion campaign plus an interest engendered by Vic’s attack on her methods.

I’ve tried to look deeper into what really makes Caroline Middlebrook write the way she does, but there are problems.

The main problem is that I wasn’t ‘in at the beginning’ with Caroline’s blog. For example, I don’t know how many of her headings she has changed. Did her original sub heading just say ‘Making Money Online’? or has it always said ‘Making Money Online - or trying to!’? Her now famous ebook is entitled ‘How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress’, but she admits she hasn’t had much success with this scheme herself. She argues that the purpose of the book is to help people set up their Wordpress blogs this way, but here I definitely agree with Vic - why the ‘Money-Making’ bit in the title if it doesn’t work for her?

I can understand the use of ‘money making’ as a keyword and yes, Caroline does say that she is a beginner in this line and she’s sharing her development with her readers. Fair enough. I cannot argue with the use of the keyword. I use it myself, even though I then say these are my thoughts on the whole niche. Many people do the same thing in different ways. This is, rightly or wrongly, a powerful keyword in many senses.

You could say it isn’t right in either my case or Caroline’s to use this term as search engine bait. But here I write my thoughts about the whole shenanigans that go on among ‘online entrepreneurs’. My affiliate links are to Hostgator (which I use myself and find excellent - so far…) and I have my adsense bar up at the top (which will change when I find a pay per click sponsor who is willing to accept Spanish citizens…) . Is it right if people click on that ad after reading my blog? Well, if they bother to read my posts, they will see my mixed feelings about the whole make money online world and if they still click, or click because they can’t be assed to read my thoughts about working on the net, well, who am I to argue with them?.

As to Caroline - her heading clearly says she is ‘blogging out loud’ while she is ‘delving into the world of internet marketing, social media and software development’. I guess that is also fair enough. The only thing which worries me about this is, did her sub heading always read this way? I don’t know. As I said, I wasn’t there at the start.

In both cases, we are using a particular keyword to bring in search engine traffic. Is that ethical? Depends on your ethics, but I am quite happy with this in terms of my site, so who am I to criticise someone else for using this tactic?

The main problem (or advantage?) with Caroline is that she writes so well. She gets under people’s skin as good writers (copywriters?) do and makes them say “hell yes! I feel just the same way!” or “I faced those same problems myself!”.

Is this genuine or is it fake? Is she simply sharing her experiences with us or spinning us a very good line? Again, I don’t know, but I would love to find out.

What I do know already, however, is that Caroline is no ‘beginner’ when it comes to internet marketing. She tells us this in her own words. Here is a quote from a recent post entitled Thoughts on Forced Continuity and Similar Scams :

Here is something I have not admitted before - I used to make my living from a forced continuity program. Back in 2002 I did Internet marketing in a very different field. I had around 80 websites that were driven purely by pay per click advertising…

She was actually telling her readers that, not only did she have more ‘making money’ experience online than she had admitted to (okay, in ‘in a very different field’, but…), she was also telling them that the deals she had been involved in were pretty shady.

What did the majority of her commentators say? Well, most of them applauded her for ‘being truthful’. I just wonder how much more truth has to come out?

In fact, each time Caroline comes out with a new ‘revelation’ she has failed to tell us before, her comments are full of people saying “well done!” and “I applaud your honesty”. But no one seems to stop and ask themselves “How many more ‘revelations’ have yet to emerge?” Neither do they appear to stop and wonder why a person who says she is so transparent has lied to them in the first place about the very things she is ‘revealing’ now.

I have also noticed this: when her comments are complementary, Caroline waits for a fair while to answer them, but when a comment questions her methods, she is quick to reply. She will not only come back with a ‘thanks for the suggestion’, but will tend to give reasons why she hasn’t used this particular method herself. This may well be genuine, but to my cynical mind it seems like Caroline is not only covering her back, she is also learning as much from her commentators as she is from her own research. Again, fair enough I guess for someone who says she is a beginner… but it makes me more inclined to suspect her intentions.

This next piece is going to sound real mean, but here we go…

Caroline clearly states that her blog is her personal blog, that she is being as open as she can about everything. When she hit a bad patch and her writing and podcasts were ineffective she began to lose readers. She then came out with one of her most commented posts.

It tuned out that her ten year relationship had ended and she was going through a very bad time. She posted about it and the hell she was experiencing as a result. The comments to this post were all supportive. People like to share bad times and to try to console the victims of those bad times. Caroline had hit a nerve. Readers signed right back up for her RSS feed and her readership swelled.

Slowly, Caroline’s writings began to pick up again also, as did the projects she undertook. Now her readers were quite okay with her discussing her failures. They sympathised and wished her better luck next time. Intentional or not (and I don’t think, in this case, it was intentional) Caroline had built herself the niche she wanted - a blog where she could fail at making money online and still build a readership within this niche.

When you stop to think about it, if the intention was to do this from the outset, that would have been a pretty skilled piece of work!

Caroline has recently had another set back with a project and her Stumble Rush project is also proving difficult for her. Her most recent post has been about a second relationship break up.

Again, this is most probably genuine. Shit happens to all of us and often in multiple amounts. Her post certainly rung true with many readers, including me. I actually commented on this post (my first comment ever on her blog) because, love their methods or criticise them, when you relate to what someone is going through it kinda hits a nerve… But even while I was posting that comment, I wondered whether I was being suckered and I also wondered whether I was the only one feeling like that…

Perhaps I am simply being mean. I don’t know. All I do know is that, when I have smelt a rat, it takes a lot to get rid of the smell.

My conclusions so far are this: Caroline Middlebrook writes well. She is transparent about her personal life. The two things go together very well. This has stood her in good stead and has enabled her to grow support where others have failed. However, I personally believe we must not allow ourselves to see this as complete transparency. There are many things she hasn’t revealed in relation to her money making projects on the net and the tactics she has used to achieve results. And, when you stop to think about it, as her blog is within the ‘make money online’ niche, revealing details about her personal life does not really give her the authority to hint that she is ‘truthful and transparent’ in her discussions of her entrepreneurial projects, does it?

But it is this very transparency that Caroline is (intentionally or unintentionally) pushing to the forefront of her campaign to be a successful and popular blogger.

To my mind, that is where her whole line is open to criticism.

As a writer on the make money online niche, I have no authority. My experience in mainstream selling on the net is limited and, while my experience in adult niches has produced good results (and in one of my other blogs I do write about how I go about achieving them), I am no expert here either and frequently say so. To my mind there are no real experts in making money on the net as the goal posts are constantly on the move. There are, however, a few good people willing to share their experiences as they constantly grow and develop themselves. I have yet to see Caroline as one of these. In saying this, the only experience I can vouch for is my own cynicism and a human radar ever alert for picking out the wheat from the chaff.

That said, although I do not follow any of Caroline Middlebrook’s advice and I never have, I will continue to read her blog. Why? Because she fascinates me. She is either extremely good at manipulating people or someone just trying to make a living on the net who writes well and stumbles (lol) through what she feels is a sincere approach.

Perhaps she is actually more a mixture of both manipulator and good person as are many people in normal life or online.

Whatever it is, this ‘money making on the net beginner’ is an enigma. Thanks for pointing her out Vic. I’m following her with cynical fascination. The problem is, I do not really think that was your original intent.

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