I get asked to review or visit a lot of ‘make money online‘ blogs on the internet and it always amazes me that I can generally judge the quality of the site within the first three or four seconds of it loading. Just as many great blogs have similar aspects about them, many of the ‘make money online‘ blogs that suck have a lot in common too. So here are the top 5 instant signs that your ‘make money online‘ blog sucks:

1.Advertising that isn’t relevant to your site. Your site is about making money but your ads are for how Amazon has a sale on organic food?? What?? This makes your blog suck for two reasons: Firstly, you look like you unprofessionally just stick any ad on your site regardless of what it is. Secondly, the ads are so irrelevant to your readership that you’ll never make money through them.

• Solution: Get contextual advertising. The beauty of Google Adsense is not only it’s simplicity but the fact that it provides advertising that is based on the content of your site. Most of the time anyway.

2. You claim to be something that you’re not. Oh, so your ‘About’ bit says you’re a rich internet marketing guru and you’re going to help me make money online? Why are you hosted on a free Blogger domain if you’re so rich? Blogger is for poor people like me. Why are you writing about how you’re a promotions genius but your Alexa ranking is in the millions? Give me a break. You suck.

• Solution: Tell the truth. You’re just a normal person trying their hand at some of the money making programs out there and blogging about it. Real advice from real experiences will help you and others make money more than any lies and undeserved hype.

3. Your advertising doesn’t match you. Ok. So you’ve learned from sign #2 and told the world you’re a normal person. Why are you blogging excitedly about how you made $4.78 from Adsense and then trying to sell me an e-book that will ‘help me make millions’? If the e-book is so good, shouldn’t you be making millions?

• Solution: Promote what actually works. Most people are happy just to get paid a couple of dollars online so why not blog about the programs that made you a couple of dollars? If you’re happy you made $4.78 from Adsense, why not put up a referral button for Adsense instead and make money through that? All e-books suck anyway.

4. You ask for link exchanges on your site. I’ll admit that I used to do this but my site sucked back then (still does?) so it was fitting. Learn from my mistakes! The fact of the matter is that writing one killer post can bring you a gazillion times more traffic than the trickle that comes through from link exchanges. Hence, you don’t see many blogrolls on A-list sites. If you want the exchange to sneakily increase your PageRank, that’s another story - but if you think you’re going to get loads of traffic, you’re wrong. Blogs that don’t suck get requests for link exchanges - not vice versa.

• Solution: Promote your posts, not your site. And make it worthwhile to those who you want to help you. Try e-mailing specific bloggers with, “I’ve written a post on my site entitled ‘Insert Catchy Title’ that I think is relevant to your readers and contains information that they may find useful. I’ve been a dedicated reader of your site since the start and would be deeply honored if you could somehow find a way to link to this post. I’d be forever indebted and give you a permanent link in my blogroll for life“. Writing super-awesome posts and telling people about them are a much better way to promote your site than simply saying, “link to me“.

5. You use this template with these colors.

You shouldn’t judge a blog by it’s template and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with the template or color scheme, it’s just that 95% of ‘make money online‘ blogs that suck seem to use this template. With the plethora of ‘make money online‘ blogs on the internet, how is your site going to stand out and be remembered if it looks like every other one?

• Solution: Get customizing. You don’t even have to change the template. Go into the settings and play around with the color scheme until you’ve created something a little more original. Then spend 30 seconds in a graphics program and make yourself an orginal graphical header to add to the site. It’s amazing how adding a graphic header can help your blog to stick in people’s minds. Remember:

“a blogger’s uniqueness can be a niche unto itself” - John-sama

Honorable mentions that increase suckiness go to spelling errors, using free articles, regurgitating what others have already said, thinking Copyblogger doesn’t contain anything useful and actually believing that you’re going to get rich with your blog.

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