There is always a lot of chatter in our industry about black hat and white hat techniques. There seems to be a certain fascination with the black hat side of things. Maybe it’s the whole “bad boy” image that some people like to display. Kind of like in the movies, the bad guy dressed in black is always the interesting character as opposed to the boring good guy. People seem to associate black hat as the “cool guys”. But the ultimate question to me is, what is your goal? To be cool or to make money? If your object is to make money, white hat is the better business model. Here’s my reasoning.

• White hat or black hat both take a lot of time and work. Anyone making money online, whether WH or BH, have most likely spent countless hours building out their systems. Wouldn’t you rather spend time building something sustainable over the long term, rather that going after a quick buck on an exploit that will always be shut down eventually? I would rather spend time building something that will make money over years, and increase in value as it grows.

• When you are doing BH techniques, almost always there is a whole army of people out working against you, and trying to shut you down. Usually they are well very funded and smart (like Google), and they have a vested financial interest in shutting you down. On the other hand, when you are doing WH, you have a whole team of people working with you who want you to make money. Account managers, PPC reps, search engine techs, all have want you to succeed if you are following the rules because it makes them more money. I like those odds better.

• Most of the big success stories are WH. Guys that have built hundred million or billion dollar websites, weren’t spending time on BH techniques. There may be a few BH success stories, but most of them are short term and end up with the people getting busted, banned, and giving back their profits.

• Lastly, I like to sleep at night. I don’t want to lie in bed worrying about complying with Can-Spam legislation or having all my accounts banned every night. Spammers have been fined millions of dollars and even ended up in prison for their online activities. It’s just money, definitely not something worth losing your freedom for.

I don’t use black hat techniques and by most people’s standards I do OK. Sure I know about most of these methods white and black, but BH just isn’t what I want to spend my limited time working on. If you are into BH more power to you, but its just not for me. In business I try to make every decision on a risk/reward basis, and to me the risk doesn’t justify the reward. So don’t believe it when you hear all “super affiliates” have secret sketchy methods to make their money. Its just plain false that to do volume and make a lot of money you have to break the rules. I make money using the same boring methods that most everyone knows about. I just try to work harder and smarter than my competitors to get ahead. Does that make me uncool? Maybe to some, but that’s fine by me.

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