The only luck I've ever had in the market was with short-term shorts, but the biggest problem I ran in to was the day-trading limitations they put on small-time investors. It's been a while, but it was something like you complete a transaction (buy and sell) within 4 business days more than twice a week, you need at least $25,000 in your account as collateral. Not sure of the details or if the rules have changed since then.

They claimed it was to help the little guy and prevent him from getting burned in day trading, but it actually just ended up hurting my ability to be quick and flexible.
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Great post, just found it through MyBlogGuest. I guess I always assumed that Google would use all of the information it had available, but if they went out of their way to update their terms it could be a good indication of why the sudden shifts are happening. I'd also seen some of the blog networks and sort of assumed there's no way they would actually help people rank, but now I'm thinking I just gave Google too much credit all this time.
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Here's what I see: a lot of really good information is available for free or really low prices, and a lot of really bad information has a huge price tag on it. The latter is usually attached to unrealistic promises about overnight riches and automated systems, and the former is a reminder to get busy and get to work crafting your own killer content. This generalization is far from a universal truth, but it is the impression I've got from wading around the swamps of self-proclaimed gurus.

Now, all paid content isn't dead. $10 for an oldschool or digital book is very fair, but when someone tries to get subscribers for a "premium content" section of their website, and wants to charge hundreds a month, it sets off every red flag and alarm & it's a good sign to run! Even worse if someone is selling pre-fabricated "systems."

Basically, if you want to make money online, you only need a few services: hosting, content production, promotion, and advertisers. Content is the lure that draws people in and helps them evaluate which services they need, and in this way free or cheap information is quite a viable business model in its own right.

Then again, I'm not sitting on the beach sipping martinis either. But, I do plan to have a steady job in a year or two when the latest fad guru has been long exposed (and possibly sued back to the poorhouse).