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I just read this article by Darren Rowes, and that made me think of how big a similitude there is between the following 3 characters:

Yeah, right: Darren Rowse, Steve Pavlina and… Dr. Phil. There is, of course, something to admit: the three of them have big success in their fields of interest. Darren is a great blogger and a guide to bloggers. He writes very well and gets to the point; furthermore, he generates income, so, in the end, he’s a winner. Steve professes personal development and defines him self as follows:

a blue-eyed, colorblind, left-handed, well educated, vegan, lucid dreaming, purpose driven, happily jobless, reality manipulating, meditation practicing, Reiki healing, risk taking, goal seeking, problem solving, early rising, passive income generating, highly motivated, energetic, disciplined, persistent, optimistic, fearless, and proactive… writer, speaker, blogger, podcaster, computer programmer, game designer, entrepreneur, husband, father, and archetypal Aries.

Here’s a comparison of Darren’s and Steve’s web traffic.

I’ll assume everybody knows Dr. Phil. Now, what the hell is the big deal with them? They’re indeed charismatic people that have something to say, and do it well, but after reading they’re blogs (and watching Dr Phil’s show) pretty extensively, I came to the conclusion that they just keep repeating the same thing over and over again.

Let’s talk about Darren and Steve. Let’s me honest and face it: they found their niche into a very well paying one: they talk about making money. Who wants to make money? Basically almost everyone. Repeating more or less the same things day in and day out, they ensure themselves a good Google rank, they keep the RSS subscribers and fanboys happy, and, above all, they increase the material in their websites. What does that mean? Passive income, as they call it (of course not so passive, since they do a pretty much huge job). More material, more frequent material, equals better Google ranking, which equals more people ending up to their websites looking for how to make money. Of course, then, most of their ads will be related to making money (thanks to Adsense), and their user will be particularly up to click those ads. It’s a very important key: high “click through rate”. Obviously these guys are smart, and do the right thing in trying to take advantage from the situation, but, unfortunately, it turns out that most their stuff is no news.

Most of Steve’s posts involve motivation and success. Same old information, just shaped each time in a slightly different form. And we all know that what really matters, in those case, are not the regular visitors (which will eventually get the ads-blindness syndrome), but the fresh new ones, especially since it seems that their stories make it to Digg quite often.

So, what is this post about? I would like to tell a couple of things to as much readers as possible.

1. Your way to success is YOUR way to success. If you really really mean to get reach, you’re not going to make it by listening to them. They’re not you, they don’t know you, and their advice is really not worth much, even though they often have good things to say. I tell you what, you will have to find your way through your life, and do with it what you really like, and not what somebody else thinks is the easiest way to success.
2. When you read their posts, remember that they were written for the primary purpose of increasing their revenue. At some point, Darren says that he’s written 20000 posts in 4 years, which is 13 posts a day. And he says he has slowed down lately. Writing a good story, and with some valuable content, which I assume to be a bit more than a few lines of text, will probably take from 20 to 40 minutes, just to take an optimistic expectation. Of course I don’t want to dig into Darren’s personal business, but that seems to me like a full time occupation. Ergo, Darren might’ve had his own good stack of money on which to live, before getting blog revenue.
3. If you are a slow starter in the mornings, you’re not going to become an early riser just because Steve tells you to bring in the autopilot. It might work for a while, and you might mistake this for a hate-post, but the truth is that you are what you are, and you will have your own, very personal, way to become an early riser, if any.

Again, I don’t want this post to be mistaken as an hate mail, that’s way I sad the positive things I think about Darren and Steve first. In their own niche, they’re like Dr. Phil. Charismatic characters, no doubt, but, in the very end, say nothing but things we all know. I don’t know about you guys, but I use to think with my own brain, and usually I know what to do and how to do it. And advice is not meant to be given by total strangers.

So, back to the point, there is a lot of fuss about passive income and personal development. I think that this fuss, although I just contributed to it, shouldn’t have any reason to exist. Before leaving you, I would like to invite you to check the home page for the ads selling campaign which will also be used to fund and help cancer research.

Thank you.