You actually hear it quite frequently in internet marketing circles, that it's harder to make money now than it used to be. Steve's post offers a refreshing alternative view. I do think there are some things that are harder now -specific, shortcut techniques that were once easier before they became well know. For example, it used to be (I'm talking about 5 years ago) easier to start an Adwords campaign and link it to an affiliate program, like on Clickbank. Likewise, when Adsense first came out it was probably easier to make money at it (this is hearsay; I only started using Adsense recently). Apparently, for a while, "blackhat" marketers were making a lot by putting up hundreds of sites and getting Adsense traffic before Google cracked down on that practice.
But in terms of building something that is built on solid content, there are now many more resources available at a lower cost (or free) than ever before. It is important to focus on this and, like Steve pointed out, the need to ignore the "clutter" and persist, and not focus on competition and imagined saturation. Since more people go online every day, saturation does not seem likely.
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