Have you see this? Here you are, browsing Facebook, when someone posts a screenshot of how much money they made online. To each his or her own, however let me share with you the 5 solid reasons why I won’t reveal how much I make online.
Why I don’t reveal How much I make online
1. It invites troubles
The number one reason to never reveal how much you make is simple: It needlessly invites trouble. Let me tell you a story…
I was born and raised in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the Americas. It is somewhere where you REALLY didn’t want to signal that you had monies in your pocket. Everyday you would hear of someone being kidnapped or sometimes, killed.
I’ll always remember being in the car with my dad, going to school and hearing on the radio the heart-wrenching testimony of a woman who’s daughter was kidnapped and then killed. The only reason why she was targeted was because she was of mixed race and the kidnappers assumed that her family was wealthy. The mother wasn’t wealthy. She was poor, she had a mixed race kid because she was raped by her employer.
If that doesn’t tell you the dangers of signaling wealth I don’t know what will. But I hear ya. This happened in Haiti. A long way from the States. Granted. Here’s another example that will hot closer to home. Enter Gary Halbert. A must-know name in copywriting/advertizing circles. He reveals his story in the letter called “The dark side of success”.
Here’s what happened in a nutshell: High from his mail order success, he made absolutely NO effort to hide his wealth, and not only his house was broken in, he had inspectors come to his house due to bad business partners. And the way he recounts the story, you can FEEL how when inspectors came to his house, they wanted to bring him down.
Telling the world how much you make is a recipe for trouble. Not because it’s wrong to show what you’ve got, but because of vultures and other smart people.
How can smart people screw you, you ask? If you keep showing how much you make, you’ll invariably attract the attention of people much better and smarter than you to take your lunch. I remember reading of this guy barely scraping by online, when he finally started to get results, he shared it. The next day his site was de-indexed by a competitor that also ripped off his website. I can tell you there are 2 people online who kept parading how much they were making, they slipped and revealed their markets, anyone who really wanted to find them, could.
Showcasing your income + slipping is a wonderful way to screw yourself up. And it’s hard NOT to slip. Kim Kardashian was held at gunpoint in Paris. She slipped by revealing her location on her social media accounts.
But even if you don’t slip. Even if you take all the precautions, there’s still vultures hovering around you. That was Gary Halbert’s situation, where the inspectors came to his house and just couldn’t wait to bring his castle down on his butt.
There’s only two ways to have the bigggest building in town, either build the tallest building, or destroy everything around yours. This is the biggest reason to keep quiet about your money making activities: you might invite someone that ends up taking your lunch, that tries to steal what you have or is simply content with destroying what you’ve made. It’s just inviting trouble.
2. It invites the wrong kind of crowd
I sell products that help people make a living online. If I keep revealing my income, most of the people I would attract would be low quality people. Why? Because the majority of people that feed off income claims expect things to magically fall on their lap, and somehow imagine that they won’t need to work.
Income claims play on the greed gland. And the greed gland being greedy only focuses on the money that can be made and not the amount of work that needs to happen before the money CAN be made. If you look at the numbers behind certain products, some have refund rates up to 30%! That invited way too many people who expected to do nothing and get everything. It’s partly not their fault either, that’s the message that was put out to them.
Consider this: Do you REALLY think someone like Bill Gates fall for income claims like the ones you see online?
3. It is way too easily faked
Some people just claim they made a certain amount. Some people provide screenshots to prove their claims. As a Graphic Designer, I know photoshop. I can fake documents if I wanted to, but the easiest to fake is screenshots. So many of the income claims you see are often FAKED.
One seller of a course on Amazon was caught RED HANDED because he forgot to put a coma after the thousands. The more fakery there is, and the more it is revealed to be fakery, the less an income claim will be proof that something works, but more evidence that something is a scam. My very first impression if I hear income claims is SCAM, and more and more people are starting to feel that way.
I remember buying my first car in my late teens. The used car salesman said he would have it completely checked by a mechanic. I found out later that the brakes were pretty much useless. I could have died if I didn’t do my own check. There’s scammers out there, and if you think some won’t fake some screenshots in order to make you believe that they made it, you are ripe for the picking.
It will never completely go away however, just like there are still people falling for Nigerian prince scams, there are people falling for faked screenshots. But that is not all, even IF the numbers are not faked, they don’t give you the whole picture because income amount is…
4. It’s often a vanity number
What? What do I mean that income numbers are a vanity number? What I mean by this is, there is WAY more than meets the eye than a number. How so? Well…I could claim I made “A million dollars online” and for it to be completely true. The story behind it could be that I LOST 3 million dollars in order to make 1 million.
Making a million isn’t so great anymore, right? I just sold a product right now on Amazon. I could claim I made $9.99, but the real number is actually $2. The rest goes to Amazon and Product Fulfillment.
See how this goes? Most of the numbers you see don’t really paint the complete picture. It’s usually gross numbers, if you factor in the ads you had to pay, affiliates, refunds and processing fees, that number is often much smaller.
5. Focuses on the wrong thing
Lastly, and this is the most personal reason, it makes people focus on the wrong thing. Look, making money is great, but money is a means to an end, and that end is whatever you want it to be.
My goal is to help people make a living online, and revealing the amount of money I make online really misses the whole point. What is the point, you ask? This: That the greatest thing about this online income shabang is the lifestyle, not the income. I eat out most of the time, I get to visit new countries with my homeschool kids, I study martial arts at a local gym, my products and blog keep me fulfilled…I have a pretty great lifestyle, and the money is there to support it, not the other way around.
As the late, great Dan Kennedy said, Nothing is worse than a success you hate. There’s lots of wisdom in this. That’s why I preach lifestyle, money comes after.
Conclusion
There you have it. My 5 reasons why I don’t reveal how much I make online. To be honest, this costs me money. People want to know you’ve made a niche chunk of cash online. But when the bull is out for blood, I’ll be the one standing in the corner, watching the other guys who made themselves targets get ripped to shreds. Fly under the radar, don’t give others a reason to go after you, to try to get what you have or simply be content to destroying it.
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