O`Bannon's Leap

Time for a mea culpa minute

June 20th, 2008 | by Scott

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It seems that with some recent postings I’ve given the impression to at-least one person who emailed me that I may feel negatively towards all marketers in the “make money online” market, or achieve such titles as super-affiliate and guru among their followers.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Without going back and rereading all of my postings I’m pretty sure that any time I’ve used a negative tone it was directed specifically at those who have never earned an honest paycheck with Internet Marketing themselves, yet try to carve out a niche teaching others how to do it. These are the “blind leading the blind” so-to-speak that I have no use or respect for.

I do know that I specifically mentioned Frank Kern and Yaro Starak in a recent posting, but that wasn’t with a negative tone or comment towards either of them in any way. I was saying in that post that people new to Internet Marketing shouldn’t be trying to become one of those guys without first learning how to make money for themselves in other markets. It’s like someone with 1 day of medical school calling themselves a Brain Surgeon.

To be clear, I don’t know Frank or Yaro personally, but I’ve seen a lot of what they’ve done in the past… I’ve even learned some things by watching what they’ve done, and I absolutely respect their abilities to build profitable projects. Heck, I’ve even linked to Yaro’s blog in the past here as a resource for others to check out.

My own resume includes a wide variety of markets that I’ve had great success in, ranging from fish breeding to clothing. From web services to ski equipment to software development and numerous other markets in between. I’ve had software applications that I created purchased outright and rebranded by larger distribution companies, and I’ve created custom applications for businesses as far back as 1998 that companies are still using today. I’ve filled the underwear drawers and wardrobes of over 10,000 customers since 1995 with everything from hosiery to custom printed T-shirts to suit coats.

But I think that’s part of the problem that allows for noobs to easily enter and often screw up and give a bad rap to the honest folks in the make money online industry. Looking at some of my background which I’ve just posted I can tell you that only a handful of people know my name is associated with any of those things.

The majority of people who have seen or heard my name associate it with “the guy who wrote that book on minisites”, or maybe with article marketing and the Content Caboodle project, or they think of me as some guy with a blog about online marketing…

And the same is true for most of those well-known online marketers too. They (most of them) didn’t start out teaching other people how to make money online–they started out by making money themselves and then later realized the knowledge they had acquired was of value to newcomers.

Some of them freely share what they know, some of them create products to sell from what they know, and most–like myself–tend to combine a healthy mixture of freely sharing some of their experience and knowledge with earning profits from selling some of their experience and knowledge.

I think that’s absolutely reasonable as the knowledge of folks who’ve actually “done it” themselves certainly has value and their time for putting that knowledge into a written form or videos or whatever is worth something too.

So, how do you tell the difference between people who know what they’re talking about and the fakers?

It can be hard, like I said there’s very few people who know of my involvement in my most lucrative markets and sites. And it isn’t because I’m sneaky or malicious, it’s because I don’t need to be in the way of my customers and the products they want. I’m selling products and services in those markets, not myself; so customers don’t want or need to know my name out there. It doesn’t improve their experience or life, and it doesn’t help me make a sale…so of course I stay completely out of the way.

In fact, Heather (who has a retail background like me) often refers to this as “playing stockboy”. Customers enter your store and want to find the item they’re looking for on the shelf, they want a fast checkout and they want to leave. They don’t want to know the name of the stockboy who filled the shelves, and they certainly don’t want to hold a conversation with the stockboy before, during or after their visit to the store.

There’s also the competition factor. When you find a good market and learn the ins-and-outs of that customer base, the last thing you want to do is advertise openly to other marketers who know you where you’re focusing your attentions right now. That would be like a football team giving their playbook to the opponents before every game.

I don’t even mention what general markets I’m in most of the time until after I’ve either secured my project at the top of that market or I’ve made my money and already left the market.

Still, if you pay attention it shouldn’t be too hard to determine who is straight-shooting with you and who is bull-crapping their way through it.

First, there’s a bit of a personal connection that happens online when you spend time interacting and reading the writings of anyone long enough. And if you feel like there isn’t something right about somebody, then there probably isn’t and you should be suspicious of what they’re feeding you.

But even more telling, in my opinion, is what methods and advice someone is dishing out. The fakers who haven’t done it for themselves always reach a wall where they no longer know what to say next to the people following them.

They’ll begin to wing it and start contradicting things they’ve said before, or worse they’ll move into pushing black-hat methods because they just don’t know where else to go. My advice is when you notice these things, run away and keep running…

The mea culpa

So, while I will try to make my comments more clear in the future I just wanted to post this and say that when I’ve spoken–or do speak–with disregard of so-called gurus and make money online marketers, it is the Joe Blows who have never earned an honest dollar for themselves online that I’m referring to.

And there are far too many of these goofs out there already, which is why I often try to steer the readers here on my blog away from the “make money online” niche when they’re just starting out.

If you haven’t proven yourself in other markets, you shouldn’t be dispensing advice to others on how to do it. That’s my position.

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