I have been working online for the past few years now. Nothing extraordinary, but a nice enough income to work as little or as much as I want and more importantly where ever I want.

I started blogging at the end of 2004, using blogger.com and eventually moved the site to my own domain. I can still remember doing a Google search on something like "make money online blogging" and I found the Problogger site. I was surprised to see a fellow Australian running the site. I became a regular reader and commentator on the site.

I remember when Darren wrote how he made $15,000 on his site with Google Adsense, several years ago. It was a large sum of money at the time for a blogger and people really started to take notice of Problogger.

Darren since helped start a network blogging company b5media and launched an extremely successful Digital Photography blog and forum. As Darren became more successful on his blog, he rightfully became more cautious of what he linked to. He provides good advice for building a solid blog, but it's not necessarily going to make you money, which most people want to do online.

I recently started reading the blog Making money online for beginners. A lot of the author's, (Griz), advice goes against what A-listers teach. The blog for example is hosted on Google's free blogging site and yet it ranks for the highly searched phrase "Making money online".

The problem with following A-lister's advice is that the things that they do for traffic and to make money are not going to work for the average Joe, who just wants to make enough money to pay off his credit card.

It was this post by Griz that really got my attention:

My real point however, and it has always been the same, is that if you are a beginner trying to make money online you will be wasting your time reading any advice given out by the A-List bloggers. They are bloggers and while they make money due to their popularity they do not give advice on how to make money online if you are not a popular blogger. Telling people to become a popular blogger is not a recipe for success. Spend your time learning SEO, Internet marketing and how to build sites that can convert search traffic into buyers and you will be miles ahead of the Bloggers.

The point is that yes there is increased competition, but there are also so many new and different ways to make money online. Because the A-listers are established and making a good income selling their "mate's" products, they don't have to rely on trying to build backlinks on sites like Infobarrel and Hubpages.

It was tough at first, but I decided to unsubcribe to a few of the so called A-list making money online bloggers.  Not that they don't have good blogs, but Griz's blog made me realize that perhaps their advice was actually holding me back.

A good example is Twitter.  Of course the A-list bloggers are all over Twitter and if you are already a little bit famous, I think it can work to help build your profile.  But for most of us, I think Twitter is a huge waste of time.  It won't bring in a dime.  If you spent the same amount of time on twitter as say writing an article on Ezine to get a good backlink, I guarantee you will see better results with the ezine article.

I have been following a range of Internet Marketers for a while now and some product launches are really getting out of control. If you are on a few email lists, your inbox will be full of emails about the launch and promises of extra bonuses. The prices for these "products" has also been going up and up.

Another sneaky way they have caught people out is by offering $1 trials of the product. Once the trial is over you will then be rebilled the full rate of the course. This is often referred to as "forced continuity".

Liz has gotten some attention with her recent blog post "Does Teaching Sells really work". Some people have questioned whether she can write a somewhat negative review without having seen the actual course. But this doesn't stop people promoting the course either!

One of the problems with these "super launches" is that it is difficult to find real honest reviews of the product. From what I have read Teaching Sells has a huge amount of material to get through. As Caroline wrote on her blog:

One warning I must give you is this – do not by Teaching Sells unless you have some serious time on your hands to not only work through the content, but to apply it as well. There’s homework to do! This is by no means a get-rich-quick program and you’ll have to put in a ton of time and effort before you’ll reap the benefits.

This is a good, honest review I think, but you won't find that in the promo materials. The products are generally over-hyped. There will be lots of free goodies to get you to sign up to the mailing list and then you will be hit with a barrage of emails about the launch.

The emails will say any average Joe or Jane can benefit from the program. There will be only x number of "spots" available and the "doors" close on a specific date. The reality is it is just good marketing. You can have a bit of fun emailing these people after the "doors have closed" and ask them if you can still join. What do you think their answer will be :)

So after unsubscribing to all of the A-list blogs, I have gone back and tried to find blogs written by people who write about real ways you can make money online.  I have included a list of some my favorite ones here on the right.  If you know of any similar ones, please leave a link to them in the comments.

I liken A-list bloggers to A-list actors. If you can imagine an A-lister giving advice to an actor just starting out, what kind of advice do you think they would give them? Do you think they would suggest working as an extra or doing commercials? If you want to earn just a few extra hundred dollars every week from the internet, listen to people working in the trenches, burning the midnight oil, trying to make a buck or two online.