Reading some thing reminds me of why people in my line of work really hate us. Terry Dean's most recent post on internet marketing courses pretty much sums up the love/hate affair of the make money crowd, especially the so called internet marketing courses, most of which don't really offer the solution.
According to him, the big problem isn't in the courses that are promoted...it is the fact that most don't really talk about the big reason why most IMers don't make it- Momentum and Inertia. Michael Masterson has said a thing or two about that, primarily how important it is to make your first dollar because building any business, whether offline or on, is a lot like getting a 10 ton train to first start moving. If you can't build enough momentum, you won't go anywhere fast.
So who is right?
- The "jv" guys say that the importance is in the list. And in fact it is BUT with one twist....no matter what "twist" they put on it, the only points of building any sort of momentum is by...you guessed it, building a list and then partnering with others in your market with lists to spread the message.
- Then you have the social media guys who talk about building "friendships". This is whom I consider to be the blogging crowd. The problem for these guys is that most can build a nice "following" but can't monetize it effectively enough to make any kind of money. Brian Clark and company call them the "2nd tribe". I call them broke and clueless though.
- Finally, you have the SEO crowd. The seo group has figured out that targeting keywords will ultimately serve the searchers. They have no problem ranking organically. Their problem comes with what to sell. After all, they have what I view as marketer's guilt. You want to sell stuff but you don't want to be lumped into the "JV" marketers who have no problems selling shit. Their solution becomes adsense b/c somehow they feel that this doesn't make them part of the problem.
Moving Right Along....
Aaron Wall has a pretty intense post on popularity and why that turns so many people into assholes. It is a long post (one with a good interview by Bob Dylan for those Dylan fans among us) but the crux of it goes into the whole time/value thing.
I dunno. Never been there but I have had my fair share of people that wanted something from me. I did kind of tune them out and stopped answering their emails/phone calls after a bit. Does that make me an asswhole? Read the post and see if you can relate.
I am in the process of writing a fairly long post on scarcity right now. Don't know if it will get published this week or if it will sit in my continuously growing list of "drafts" but I do think that the subject isn't talked about nearly enough...especially considering that in most success hinges on how scarce YOU are, especially if YOU are the brand that you are building.
