Have you ever seen a train wreck? It’s not pretty. Actually, it’s downright ugly. For that reason, I tend to try to avoid them at all costs. Oddly, Internet marketers seem to love train wrecks, especially when they’re right smack dab in the middle of one. Oh, I know, you have no idea what I’m talking about do you. Well, I wasn’t expecting you to. See, this is the kind of train wreck that we’ve all come to accept as Internet marketers. The reason is because most of us, especially the guys first starting out, don’t know any better. If they did, they’d get out of that passenger car as fast as possible.
Okay, I’m going to stop talking all cryptic here and try to explain some of what I am talking about…
When most internet marketers break into the online business world, they tend to go to where they think the money is. For the real green newbie, that means heading for the “make money online” niche (I did this MANY years ago, even then it was not pretty, and it’s way worse now). This is the niche where the new marketer writes a book on how to make money on the internet and then tries to sell it or starts a blog about making money online. Now, if you can’t for the life of you see what’s wrong with this and why it’s a train wreck in the waiting, let me explain…
First of all, where does this new marketer get his info from? He’s brand new, so he hasn’t actually ever made any money online, yet he’s going to teach others how to do it. Okay, whatever floats your boat. But still, he has no idea what is actually going to make him any money so how does he write his book?
Well, for most of these newbies, they write their book from information they read from… you guessed it… other books (or blogs). Now, unless they know the person who wrote these books personally and know of their credibility in regard to the subject, they don’t know if this information as any good or not. Still, they take it and put it into their OWN book, passing it off on their own and then hope they can sell it.
Well, this is a train wreck on so many levels that I don’t even know where to begin.
For starters, the info could be erroneous, old, or flat out crap. So the person buying it could be getting something that simply doesn’t work. Then they put it into action and sure enough, they don’t make any real money doing it. So somebody tells them, “Don’t worry, just write a book on how to make money online and sell it, or start a blog.” They say, “Hey, that’s a great idea.” And the cycle of garbage “how to” books continues, each one telling the other to make money online by writing a book or blog on how to do it.
Of course, to sell these crappy books, they have to get testimonials. So what do they do? They go back to the guy who they bought THEIR book from and ask him for a testimonial on his new how to book. Now, not wanting to offend the person, they agree. After all, if they say the book isn’t any good, the person would just say back to them, “But I got this info from what you taught me. If it’s not good then YOUR book isn’t good either.” So the person is locked into giving a testimonial for what he knows is a piece of crap book. Heck, he should know… HE wrote it.
I think you get what I’m trying to say. This train wreck has been going on for so long that it’s a joke. Well, there is a way to avoid this train wreck and that information will be coming in the follow up series to this article. So stay tuned.