Ask Dethroner: Is Steve Pavlina a Smarmy Gasbag Making $40k a Month?
20 Comments Published by Joel November 16th, 2006 in Ask Dethroner, Jobs. Share ThisRobert B. writes, “In this article, the author claims he makes $40,000/month off of his ad-supported blog. I spend my days and nights online and have never heard of the guy. This leads me to believe that there is even bigger money in blogging than I previously imagined — do you think there is any way in hell this guy makes as much as he claims?”
Robert also questioned the veracity of the article author’s claims about “10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job”—a guy named Steve Pavlina, who I first ran into when he blogged about his experiments with polyphasic sleep. So there are really two questions here which I’ll address separately.
First, the blogging for big bucks. Pavlina claims he’s pulling down $40k a month from his blog. It’s possible, for sure—Pavlina runs exactly the sort of self-help website that appeals to people who are willing to give up some cash in the hopes that they’ll be able to buy a little bit of his motivational fortitude. While ad dollars online are still increasing, it looks like Pavlina is mostly using Google Adsense, which isn’t exactly a money milkshake machine. I suspect he’s not making $40k on click-based ads, but perhaps is making that amount of money via other business deals that work in conjunction with the site.
But the dude’s a fruitcake, so who knows if he’s even telling the truth. Look at his Million Dollar Experiment, where participants use the “power of intention” to “manifest” wealth. They’ve raised a million dollars… by willing themselves to winning lottery prizes and the like.
I’m all for the power of positive thinking—even the self-programming part of telling yourself what you want to help quiet the aching doubt of the subconscious—but the dude’s obviously off his rocker if he thinks collecting a bunch of people on a virtual team and tallying their income has somehow manifested it. Or to put it another way: we’re going to manifest $10,000 in a single day. I want you all to think really hard about going to work today. Magickal!
So then you get to Pavlina’s “You Should Never Get a Job” screed, where he offers up dorodango turds like “Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically means master?”
“Boss” means “master”? No shit?
What’s subtle about Pavlina’s advice is that it all is pleasantly, affirmingly true in the absence of external pressure. Pavlina’s one of those people who believes—and wants you to believe—a person should be able to will their way out of any situation. He’s found a way to make a living by avoiding an office job and is now under the delusion that there is something inhuman about working in a hierarchy for wages.
What’s insulting about this proposition is that Pavlina puts working for a wage on par with slavery, which is exactly what working for a wage is not. Pavlina wants the money afforded by the opportunities of capitalism but the humanist pride of socialism.
What is so icky about all this is that I basically agree with a lot of what he’s saying. I don’t like working for someone else, either, so I’m trying to structure my life so that I can minimize my need to. But on the way, I’m also working for other masters. I’m not so prideful to be humbled by the need to occasionally suck it up and work for a wage, nor am I so smugly deluded that I think that “[generating] income through other means” doesn’t come with its share of ass-kissing—at the very least to your customers, about whom Pavlina offers this advice: “If you have a business and one customer says ‘no’ to you, you simply say ‘next.’”
Pavlina even builds in defenses to his perspective, using the sort of reverse psychology kung-fu favored by evangelists and hucksters:
If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction. Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time. Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy. If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage.
If you find anything he says irritating, you see, it’s because you’ve not yet reached the doorstep of courage (just past the sidewalk of doucheflakery.)
The whole god damn article is hinges on one stupid semantic twist: Steve Pavlina works, even if he doesn’t have a “job.” He works at writing articles that insult their audience by downplaying the stresses of everyday living and asking for donations “so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.”
Here’s what I say: You want to work for yourself? Awesome. I support that entirely; we live in a rich country and opportunity for money abounds. Live a little.
Are you fine turning in 40 hours and going home and slamming a beer? Awesome. I support that entirely; we live for a short time and opportunity for pleasure abounds. Live a little.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one pissed off by that blog-fart. Pavlina’s one of those guys that says we can all be rich and not work by selling other people the idea that they can all be rich and not work, which makes it just another pyramid scheme.
Most of the self-employed people I know work *more* than wage-slaves. Not everyone (like myself) is cut out to be self-employed, just like not everyone is cut out to be a smug dick, like Pavlina obviously is…
I actually stumbled on this guy’s web site from a lifehacker link to that same 10-reasons story a few days ago. Seems like a self-promoting, lying douchebag to me. Kind of a new-age blogging version of the motivational speaker looking to sell you common sense. Joel, why aren’t you writing “timeless content”? huh?
It’s personal development for dumb people.
I believe I stopped reading his site when the million dollar thing went down. I then realized that he’s not on my level.
I have read several articles from Steve’s blog. While some I agree with, most I think are bloated. wordy crap that could have been condensed into 1/3 of what he actually writes. I have stopped reading his blog because it is stupid. He goes on and on about enlightenment, and consciousness. Blah, blah, blah. I’m not drinking the kool-aid. His wife, Erin, is even crazier. She sells something called “intuitive readings”. She calls herself psychic. BS!! Know one knows what I’m thinking but me. I imagine she tells people what they want to hear.
Any who…..I’m glad that they are making money by pushing ideas…..but they haven’t made a dime off of me.
By the way…I’m intending to have a new Dodge Viper by the end of the day. I’ll let you know when it happens.
I can’t comment on the veracity of his claims, but I do recognise him as the guy you’d spend all evening avoiding at a party.
I, too, managed to get to his site from Lifehacker. Ironically, I managed to get here via Pavlina’s blog and a few other intermediaries. But I stopped reading that particular link in the chain when he started to try to pawn off astral projection and belief in aliens as normal, or at least on the path to enlightened thinking.
It seems to me that the most enlightened thinkers in history, ever, were a little more grounded.
Smarmy Gasbag who won’t be making money for long! The more people who move to browsers that block adds, such as firefox, the sooner the demise of aformentioned Smarmy Gasbag’s along with all others of his ilk.
Well, Havoc, I am sort of trying to make money off ads, too. Of course, you probably haven’t noticed!
Yup, if he mentioned he is wealthy on his blog, it must be true.
A little over a year ago, a friend sent me Pavlina’s article on polyphasic sleep. For the next three hours, I read his entire sleep-journal.
Pavlina writes great, free articles. I check his site almost daily, and it has helped me to worry about less things, and feel better about pursuing what I truly want to do with my life. I honestly don’t know why people would have problems with someone (Pavlina) trying to encourage them to do better and live better.
He doesn’t make money by selling things/products – all his content is free. He HAS promoted a third-party item every now and then, but that’s it.
I know, to a lot of people, what he writes about sounds like complete BS, but that’s sort of the whole point of his writings – believing in something (such as yourself) has to be accomplished before you get to where you want to be in life.
Plus, of course he’s going to come across as smarmy/smug sometimes…he’s an IT-head/software-developer/nerd like half of the people reading these sites.
You know, without even realizing it, you just made him some more money. And he didn’t have to lift a finger. You linked to his blog, and a bunch of his articles. Which means better Google ranking and more clicks on his ads.
He’s right, and you right. I agree with both of you!
I to found his site off of Lifehacker. I then spent the next hour or so reading some of his various articles. Some of his information I think was useful, for example his story about trying to become a morning person. Something I personally have been trying to correct as well. However most of his writings were full of self-righteous undertones. Maybe he is just over confident. Others were just off the wall. How can you make money by just willing it to be so? Come back to reality on that one.
However his claims about making $40,000 a month from ads on his blog has to be over stated. If there were that kind of income to be made from selling ads on a personal website everyone would be doing it. I admittedly have no personal experience with google and their add programs, but it can’t be as lucrative as he makes it sound.
Keep in mind that his blog is one of the top 100 most visited blogs on the web (1,000,000 page views per month I think – unless you don’t believe that either), which means his income figures probably represent the top .001% of all blogs on the internet (probably even less than that). I don’t know about 40K/month, but I’d definitely believe that he makes enough to feed his family by writing 2 or 3 articles a week (and doing whatever else is necessary to keep up a blog/self help business of that size and nature)
Does anyone have a link to him claiming to make $40,000 a month from adwords? For some reason, I remember him saying that adwords earned him about $9,000 a month.
Incidentally, does anyone know if earning even $9,000/month from adwords is in the realm of possibility?
So Pavlina is blogging for money, saying anything that will attract a crowd. What’s the big deal? We all know that the web is littered. Instead of getting all worked up, how about weeding out the bad stuff and learning from the good.
I picked up one tip from Pavlina. ONE. It’s about getting up early and at the same time every day. Now I get up at five in the morning seven days a week and I’m more efficient than ever. It’s GREAT!
Then I read about the million dollar thing and never went back…
Those who criticized Steve are just envious of the income he makes. He’s a great guy who’s just trying to make money off what he does best, blogging. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
>>>Pavlina’s one of those guys that says we can all be rich and not work by selling other people the idea that they can all be rich and not work, which makes it just another pyramid scheme.
I don’t recall he asked any of his readers to sell the idea of “be rich and not work by selling the idea”. He just asks us to go into business, which can be anything, e.g. from restaurant owner to wall street investors . I myself find his articles very motivating being a businessman myself. Those who can’t get it, are just not cut out for business, just continue being a slave to your boss.
>>>Does anyone have a link to him claiming to make $40,000 a month from adwords? For some reason, I remember him saying that adwords earned him about $9,000 a month.
Yes, is here:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/
He updated his figures recently. It doesn’t matter how much he makes, all it matters is if you like his articles or not. I’m glad that at least he shares his figures, and yet you guys criticized that, WTF?
I have a semi-popular web site that receives about 300,000 page views per month. Every page has GoogleAds on it. My monthly earnings from GoogleAds averages about $300. So it is about $1 per 1000 page views. Assuming Pavlina gets 1 million page views each month, his GoogleAds income would be around $1,000 and not the $40K that he claims.
Pavlina ran a software company from his home for over ten years. The company was called Dexterity and made only games. Pavlina wrote all of the games himself. He had only a couple of employees. The company was strictly online so it practically ran itself. It had no physical presence. For some unknown reason he closed the company abruptly last month. As far as I know the company was very successful. It was probably worth a couple million dollars. The company’s web site now redirects to Pavlina’s web site. Why would Pavlina just throw away a multimillion dollar company? Who knows.
Certainly a person like Pavlina can have his own opinions and do what he wants. He can practice his polyphasic sleep and do whatever other experiments he chooses. However, what is dangerous about Pavlina is that he has a large and loyal following. This flock of sheep are people who are usually not well educated and not well off financially, so they are looking for someone or something to show them a different way. Pavlina comes along and shows them a completely off-the-wall way, but presents it in such a way that is so compelling and convincing that they becoming “believers” and “followers.”
Isn’t it interesting that Pavlina made no mention of what he receives in donations? Is this a “Church of Pavlina?” Maybe so. Some churches receive a lot donations.
Of course, all of these comments are just my opinions.
I just wanted to chime in and stand up for Steve here. I have never personally met Steve, but exchanged some emails with him in 2001 or 2002 (awhile ago). He was at that time the president of the ASP (Association of Shareware Professionals). Even at that time, whenever Steve offered business or software advice, it was dead on. I believe the guy just knows how to succeed at whatever he does. The way he succeeds is not a secret, he is generous enough to post about it in detail on his blog.
I don’t necessarily buy into some of his paranormal style beliefs, but I do know that he is apparently able to reshape himself, adapt and succeed.
It is not far fetched that his website earns him 40k a month. And he did state that it was his website, not just the AdSense. He uses a combination AdSense, donations, affiliates, text ads, sponsors and more to generate income from his site. And, just because somebody else might have a low click-through rate on the ads does not mean you can just project it to the traffic he gets and say he is making $1000 from ads. Steve has stated that he rigourously modifies the placement, and types of ads to optimize.
Bottom line…I think he is a stand-up guy. He supplies a ton of great FREE information. Remember, he is not charging people $149.99 to buy a program on self help. If your not into some of the topics, skip them. There is still a lot of beneficial information. Those are likely the scammers.
My Opinion
I guess that’s how a blog gets famous. Writting an article that’s both controversial and motivating but not silly enough to sink the whole blog to hell. Steve uses his skill well to generate widespread attention (traffic).
Certainly, There are things I dont agree with Steve .
1) Broken sleeping pattern (melatonin secretion is severely disrupted ?)
2) 100% strict vegan ( for kids as well ? )
he has some useful stuff. i like some of his articles. but he is also smug and self-righteous. for instance he is one of those pompous vegans who think they’re morally superior to meat eaters.
but i could never be a vegan because i have an extremely fast metabolism and without meat, i’d wither away to nothing. i’ve always been severely underweight and i have to eat tons of protein, mostly from meat, to stay anywhere near a healthy body weight for my height. yet along comes Pavlina and guilt-trips people like me for not being vegan and respecting the sanctity of animal life. easy for him to say, because he was born with a normal metabolism. if i was vegan, I would be sickly and emaciated. he simply cant accept that for some people, being vegan is not an option. he’s worse than a PETA activist for self-righteousness.
he also promotes stupid messages from movies like The Matrix as if they were fountains of wisdom. it’s just a dumb popcorn movie – i enjoyed it for what it was, but to talk about The Matrix like it has some important life message is idiotic. what’s next – sifting through Jackass: The Movie or a Britney Spears lyric for crucial life lessons? when he’s not arrogant, he says some genuinely insightful and useful stuff, but when he’s in one of his holier-than-thou moods, his writing becomes vacuous, pompous, condescending, and worthless.