About the guest blogger: David Fishman is a blogger, SEO strategist and employee at Response Mine Interactive, a mid-size digital marketing agency based in Atlanta, GA that offers services in new customer acquisition. For more information or to request a guest blog post, you can contact him at david.fishman@responsemine.com

Chances are, if you’re involved in the internet marketing arena, you know of an internet guru. He promotes half a dozen products a week, his pages are covered with banner ads to the latest money-snagging SEO tools and of course he’s got a book, promising to reveal all his secrets for the low low price of just $497.97 (The price is going up soon, I promise!)

And as annoying as it all is, you frustratedly acknowledge that it’s probably working. His 200,000 daily visitors ensure that enough people click on those crappy ads or buy those crappy affiliate products so that he probably DOES make 6 figures a year  by sitting around and picking his nose. In between taking pictures of his Clickbank checks and posting them to his blog.

This is all well and good and not harmless in and of itself, until that nagging little voice in the back of your head starts going “hmm I wonder if there really IS something to his strategy”.

Then you shell out 500 bucks for a piece of crap eBook about how to do keyword research and how to start an article marketing business. 200 e-pages later, you realize that that this internet guru has really only taught you one thing: how to make money by telling other people how to make money.

Well, you know all those secrets now, so instead of taking them and applying them to some well-targeted niche and opening a niche product website, you decide “being an internet marketing guru is where it’s at!”.

So you head over to Namecheap and grab yourself a bulls**t domain like “supereasymoneymakinginfo.com” and fill it with the exact same crap you just read in your guru’s eBook. You spend days fervently posting on every guru’s posts, trying to attract some of their 200K visitors to your site. You publish your own eBook about how to make money online, you write long professional articles about how to make money online, and you generally try to convince anyone foolish enough to listen to you that your information is worthy payment.

The only problem is, you haven’t made a cent yet. In fact, by my calculations, your money-making endeavors have put you so far in the red, you might never net A SINGLE CENT from your website. How are you qualified to tell others how to make money?

It’s not entirely your fault, of course. You were tricked by an internet guru who told you about how to make money online. Unfortunately, the only thing he knows about how to make money online is to teach other people how to make money online, and all he’ll tell them is to teach other people about how to make money online.

Eventually, we will run out of suckers. The house of cards will come crumbling down and everyone who was associated with the guru will realize that his successful website is due to a stroke of luck 5-10 years ago when he started blogging for fun. A stroke of luck with such low odds, you’re betting off playing the lottery to make money.

This is right around the point where you realize that the people who are making money online the REAL WAY aren’t charging for their information. Indeed, there are many highly successful bloggers and niche marketers that tell their readers EXACTLY how to make money, exactly as they do, FOR FREE. They’re doing it the same way it’s always been done, by selling a product that has value.

If you want to make money online, find a product that has value, find the customer base that values that product, and bring them together. Supply and demand. Basic economics. There’s no magic program, no silver bullet. It’s always going to be supply and demand.

For me, the gurus have nothing I want. My demand is zero. Their products and their promotions are worthless. The information they purport to have is available for free.

The next time you start to feel the little twinges of idol worship for some internet marketing guru, squash them. Celebrate and acknowledge your own achievements and abilities and you can start making your own money.

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