I went for the first major medical check up I think I’ve ever had not so long ago. I seem to remember writing about it in another post too, which shows how much it rattled me.
I went because I’m over 40, and it seemed the right thing to do.
I sat in the chair and the female doctor pointed to a glass jar with a wide neck on the shelf and said ‘I’d like you to fill that with urine please’
I replied ‘What? From here?’
(REALLY sorry – old joke)
A few days later the tests came back and I’m more or less OK – cholesterol a tad higher than it should be and blood pressure similar but losing a few pounds should sort that out. So I’m OK.
So I’ve adapted my lifestyle some and have started to eat a little better…
YOU BORED YET???
Good – I was trying to make a point about boring posts, blogs and other writing…..
Have you ever really thought about how much store we place in other people’s opinions and views?
Probably far too much and what’s even worse is that sometimes we even give them MORE credibility than our own.
I post on the Warrior forum.
I don’t do it for fun – the place is full of nutters and people who take themselves far too seriously, but I still post there because it drives traffic to my blog and other sites.
I also post WSO’S (Warrior Special Offers) there too because I end up with more money in the bank afterwards.
If you’re going to use forum posting as a way of driving traffic to the link in your sig (signature at the bottom of each post you make) then you can’t go at it like an idiot. If you get sussed out as posting just to drive traffic they’ll kick you out.
So this means you should really read the posts and only contribute to relevant ones where you’ve something valuable to say. It’s a bit more fun that way and people soon start to realise you’ve got a brain in your head and (yep) visit your sites to check you out.
And it was while reading through the various posts to decide which ones I wanted to contribute to that I realised there are a HUGE amount of idiots in the Internet Marketing world.
Nowe I’m not talking about the newbies – the people who need help – they’re inexperienced not stupid. No – I’m talking about the halfwits that call themselves marketers yet seem to have no other function in life than to verbally beat down anyone who disagrees with their opinion.
A mate of mine divides the world into ‘human beings’ and ‘non human beings’ (I think this originally came from American Indian ‘speak’ although could be wrong)
His take on it was that he’d only spend his (valuable and limited) time on earth speaking to ‘human beings’.
The rest could bugger off.
Of course he didn’t mean ‘non human beings’ were animals or anything, just people who were so far up their own backsides they couldn’t see much daylight.
The defining character of a human being was being able to see other people’s point of view, be unbigoted and able to empathise with their fellow man.
The other lot talked without listening, ridiculed anyone with a different opinion, viewpoint or taste.
And intelligence has nothing to do with it either. One of the senior lecturers in my department at University, Dr P*** was a seriously intelligent chap. he was also an intellectual and emotional bully, a sarcastic mocker and a sexist womaniser (two out of three isn’t bad 🙂 )
And some of the posts on the warrior forum reminded me of that.
Go read ’em – you’ll find some newbies coming into IM with a very basic knowledge but full of passion and ideas only to be told in mocking tones ‘well THAT won’t work for a start’
So they never get off the ground. Simply because some bitter and twisted ‘guru’ or failed marketer has a flawed opinion, these fresh new minds that are still unfettered by all the crap flying around IM will probably never EVER launch the wonderful idea the were madly excited about just a few moments before.
And that’s not just sad, it’s damn near criminal in my book.
Who are these people to steal away the dreams and ideas of newbies eh?
Think about the ideas you had for your IM business before some ‘experienced’ moron told you it wasn’t possible.
Do you still feel an excited ‘buzz’ even though you’re scared to try them because of what ‘real’ marketers might say?
Don’t give more weight to other people’s opinions no matter how much money they make or how long they’ve been in the biz.
Because if you do, you’ll end up being a clone of them, and if they’re bitter and unhappy you’ll end up the same way. Even worse if they’re spouting a load of crap about being a millionaire when in reality they can’t afford their rent, then you could end up the same way as THAT too.
So try your craziest, daftest ideas out. At best they’ll work, at worst you’ll learn something on the way.
You ever noticed how most ‘IM type’ websites look the same. Most of ours do – banner, red, bold headline etc?
I noticed this when I first got into IM and told myself that mine would be different.
And now?
Nup – all our sites are (while not as bad as most) certainly ‘in the style’ of IM type websites.
And why is that?
Not sure really – if we’re honest it’s because when people first saw them they said ‘ohhhh your site doesn’t look very professional’ (meaning IM stlye) so we changed them.
But now we’re starting to think……
We recently did an experiment and changed one site so it had no banner, and no background – it was just a plain white page.
Sales increased by 25% from day 1.
(If you want to see results and methods just like this that I use in my business CLICK HERE when you’ve finished reading this post)
It always sold well, but now we changed the layout AWAY from IM-type design and it’s gone crazy. Is it because newbies are tired of the same old website design or because fancy graphics often make people think ‘he’s trying to SELL me something!’?
I don’t know – do you?
Exactly – and neither do any of the bloody ‘experts’ in the Warrior forum althoug I’ll bet you fifty quid that if you posted the question more than a dozen would have an opinion!
So where do we go from here?
I think we’ll change another website and see what happens.
Yep – I think so.
We’ll let you know. And in the meantime, why not run with your own ideas and plans, no matter how crazy they are? Because if you don’t you’ll just end up as a second class passenger on the ‘IM Opinions and Beliefs’ train. Your ideas are unique, why would you want to swap them for anyone else’s?
Cheers
Tony
PS Your comments are always welcome on this blog.
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Great post Tony – I agree and do worry for complete newbies on the Warrior Forum. If you took everything to heart that’s said on there you would go round and round in circles. In some ways it pays to invest a little money (not $1000’s but maybe get a few good ebooks from respected marketers) and not just suck in every free bit of “advice” out there (as a lot of it is unhelpful, to put it kindly).
Thanks for this post Tony. It’s “right on!”
The Warrior Forum is mainly designed for the guru’s to WOW newbies with their superior knowledge but, when one asks for specifics, they either can’t deliver or they will happily sell the specifics to you.
Frankly, the way you use it is the only way to use it. Newbies get minimal help there. I should know. I wasted tons of time there over a two year period.
My gripe with that particular forum is they allow one certain guru to remain active even when he couldn’t honor his 100% money back guarantee for $17.00 just 48 hours after the purchase. He pleaded poverty – “I only have $2.46 in my xxxxx account. Let me give you another product instead.” This was reported to the moderators with email proof yet they took no action. I checked today. He’s still there selling and pontificating.
My rant is over. Thanks for the chance to vent.
Tony, I’m fairly new to your list and am sorry I didn’t know about you sooner. Newbies need to know that there are “human beings” like you to learn from. There is a group of marketers out there and that I have ran into that are rude and evidently are making a lot of money doing that. (I’ve even had a few tell me to get off their list if I don’t buy a certain thing. And this is AFTER I had already bought something else from them. I unsubscribed from their list.) Please keep posting, Tony, so people getting into this will see a good example and will know that it is not the norm to be rude. Thanks!
Hi John,
You’re spot on – info overload is just as much of a problem as lack of knowledge.
Tony
Hi Jim,
It’s always been one rule for one lot and a different one for the rest of us, especially on the warrior forum (they’re going to be kicking me off any second I’m sure).
The main thing is to use it as a marketing tool and don’t get sucked into any of the crap. It IS an excellent resource for finding out about software, sites, processes etc.
If you just go with the factual stuff – the black and white stuff – and ignore the opinions it’s a good place.
Hi Donna,
Nice to hear from you – welcome aboard.
Getting kicked off a list for not buying is just a disgrace – there’s not even the slightest pretence of offering info in that case. Horrible.
You’re probably well rid.
Thanks for posting 🙂
Tony
Great postTony,
Even for us Newbies, it doesn’t take long to figure out who is trying to wow!! us and grab our money or who is actually trying to assist us and make a living at the same time.
It’s not just in the forums but also in the so-called newsletters and blogs.
It really says a lot for some of them when you try to ask a question which is important to you but you never get the time of day from them. Just send your money.
Thanks for the opportunity to say my piece.
Hi Tony,
I can always count on you to tell it like it is. I appreciate that about you. Part of what separates you from the non-humans, I think. 🙂
But you know what? My feeling is that the more us humans stick together, the harder it will be for the non-humans and they’ll eventually come around. Maybe not in this lifetime, but they will come around. And for those of us who have been victimized by them, the best thing to do is chalk it up to experience and move on. Yep. The non-humans are out there. And it’s up to us humans to keep going no matter what.
Thanks for a great post.
Here’s a book idea for you, Tony: Permission to Fail. Kind of goes with your Licensed to Quit. The idea being that people fear failure and so they never act. Why not give them permission to fail by telling them to create one crappy site, the crappier the better, make it outrageously crappy, and then they can move on. The only way we can learn is though error. Get it done and over with! Learn a few things and improve. It’s like what Edison meant when he said he hadn’t failed 10,000 times, he’d learned 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb.
Permission to Fail – coming soon to a blog near you.
Hi Tony,
I wish I’d found your blog when I started marketing online…it might have saved me a lot of wasted time and expense. Nowadays I have a rule in my thunderbird email client to put all the emails from marketers into one folder which I check once a day at most. And I’m signed up to far fewer lists these days. But yours is one of them. I try to concentrate on ‘doing’ rather than reading/learning instead etc.
Cheers…Graham
Hey Tony,
You seem to have a knack for saying things that many people who pander to the “big name marketers” probably wouldn’t dream of saying – even though they’d probably agree with you.
It’s refreshing, and I dare say, takes a certain amount of balls!
I think many of the posts you’ve outlined above originate from people who feel the need to boost their own ego and self asteem by throwing their “intellectual weight” around – regardless of whether their actually right or wrong. Helping people is probably last on their list of priorities.
Obviously there are many people out there who genuinely want to help others. Instead of criticising, these people tend to compliment you on what you ARE doing right first… and then tactfully offer suggestions as to where you can make improvements.
It’s a big difference to outright ridiculing.
James
P.S. Loved the glass jar joke! Honestly haven’t head that one before. I must’ve missed it, somehow 😉
What can I add?
Not a lot I don’t think – Enjoyed the post, and agree with what you’ve said Tony and with comments already made.
(Do keep an eye on that cholesterol though — that reminds me, oh – another day…lol)
Strangely enough….. Being open is great marketing!
I caught myself buying one of your products yesterday and then suddenly remembered I should maybe read the salespage ….DOH!
hehe
So really you might just be more evil than those who just tell us to spend money on their sites ……. Secretly hypnotising my mind to buy first and ask questions later …. (Mwah har har – evil laugh) !!!
Keeping a sense of humour does help too….
If we can’t keep making money a fun thing to do – it may well turn into a JOB — dread the thought!!
Warm Regards as ever (and I hope you can make Northallerton on the 2nd June??)
Randy
http://www.7KeyElements.com
Tony thanks for not going further with your doctor’s visit. We don’t want to hear about your colon…. etc.
Thanks for another great post. I have spent the last two months buying ebooks off the warrior forum and I am in total overload. I am going back to building pages on my two semi successful websites (they are making between $2000 and $3000 per month total) with a new focus.
I have read the viral sneakiness, worn paper and other of your publications, they are good.
I am going back to SBI and just focus on building good content. My goal is in the next two years to get over $10,000 per month from affiliate programs and adsense. Back to building….
Another interesting post, Tony. And I’m guessing that 99.9% of the readers will agree with you. With that said, the question then becomes “if not him/her/them, then who?”.
Some of the best advice I’ve heard is pick a person who knows what they’re doing, who you can trust, and follow their advice and guidance until you’re successful. But who is ‘that person’?
I’ve tried following this advice a few times only to be disappointed when the person ended up hawking every new product that came out and sending out useless emails a few times a week. It’s frustrating.
So, do you have a list of people you’d recommend? (And it’s okay to say ‘Tony Shepard’! 😉
Thanks, Tony.
Warriors is an amusing sideshow. The trick is to realise that it isn’t the entire play.
People there are often rude and abrasive. That can be amusing to watch at times, because most of the time they are arguing against something they’ve completely misread, know nothing about anyway and wouldn’t understand if they did.
The only sane people there are Tony and me. Occasioanally John Taylor and once in a while Andy Henry.
Warriors indeed! More like chocolate soldiers.
Martin
Hi Tony..My first post, but I am a subscriber to yours and whatserfaces newsletters.. Sara’s.. (sorry..whatserface is a generic term for “I forget” with me..) and by the way…the links you both left today in your newsletters are 404’s. At first I thought it was just me, but both at the same time?? Hmm..
Anyway, You mention newbies vs plain idiots vs people who just seem to miss the boat forever.. I fall into that later choir.. The hell of it is I’ve been tinkering with all this stuff since way back in the day when everything was snailmail and I had 4 shoe boxes of nothing but chain letters and nothing more.. (remember those ads with 900 ads all crammed onto one 9X14 sheet? 1/2 of them written in crayon…Then came computers..first winblows 95, then 98 and upward to Vista and I settled for Mandriva (Linux) only because I like having all that free software put in there without having to go to 9 million sites first..
Anyway, my point is that I have been tinkering with all of this stuff for years and I would venture to guess i have read several thousand encyclopedia sets worth of utterly useless trash about marketing and humbley I admit that I know no more now than i did when it was a 18 cent stamp (I’m in the US if you hadn’t guessed yet) But I have been reading yours and Sara’s materials the past few days and so much information has flooded back into my mind and I wonder…Does all this have worth somehow? Maybe a book on how to sit and get absolutely nothing accomplished? Is there a market for that? …Probably..
Well, I really enjoy reading both your newsletters, etc and will keep reading them both and who knows? maybe I’ll actually make a buck on some idea..
Marty
And Sara.. my humble appolijesus’s.. I hope you didn’t mind whatserface just this once.. I will remember your name from hence forth and all that.. I’ve made a living out of forgetting how to do things..even make money.
M
Hi Tony,
Great post. You are one of a very, very, small few who actually answer emails and are prepared to give a considered response. I have a simple rule when viewing web sites. I look at the size of the slide on the right side of the page to determine how much crap there is likely to be. I’m never disappointed. I just skip the rubbish, go to the bottom and see what they’re really saying. My point – Don’t change your content size and quality. In all ways it passes the test. And dare to be different. If it’s good enough it will always be read. As an aside I have just purchased “The Secret” and it is liteally changing my life and my thinking, daily. It has helped conceptualize my thinking and consolidate what I discovered when I first came across you guys. Do it simple, do it thoroughly and do it credibly. As a long suffering, information over burdened newbie you, “do it” for me.
Tony, I love your brain. I do agree with your thoughts. I depend on you and Sara to guide me. I love your books and highly recommend them. I no longer even pretend to be interested in what other people have to say. Except for a very few, they are all sheisters just out to get your money. No way are they interested in actually helping a new one. I have learned so much about Internet marketing and ideas of how and what to do from you and Sara that I am hopeful of soon being able to do it for my living. Thank you so much for being there for us. We need you.
Susan
Thank you, Tony!
Just got back from an out-of-towner and was hoping you would have a post. Was delighted to read what you had to say. So very true. The very same thing applies to any creative profession — and make no mistake about it — one must be somewhat of a “creative” at heart to become an IMer. You always seem to take the time to encourage those of us who are just sticking our toes into the Internet waters with some real world viewpoint. That is why I chose to learn from you and Sara. As for changing the site, wonderful idea. Am personally so very sick of going to a site and encountering the traditional 5,000 words of hype written in six types of fonts in red, blue, green and yellow with various grainy photographs and flash when just simply cutting to the point would undoubtedly get the marketer so much further. Seeing all the hype makes me think these marketers are card-carrying lifetime members of the “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” Club, when in fact, many times they are just following what worked eight years ago. So much valuable information is lost this way.
Glad you are healthy. Write on!
Louie
Thank you Tony,
You’ve just given me the push I needed to continue with an idea. We have to realise that our ideas are as good (or bad) as anybody else’s so we should run with them.
On the internet we can try things out and it doesn’t cost us very much. If we try something offline it can costs tens of thousands, which most of us don’t have. Online though we can get things moving by putting in the effort and having the passion to push on through.
Regards, Jean
Charles – thanks for posting. We get a lot of emails – a LOT – each day and it’s hard to reply to them all. There’s no doubt that some do ‘drop down the back of the photocopier’ but that’s genuine error. We try to get back to everyone.
I just can’t believe that these gurus don’t see that one of the main ways to keep subscribers happy is just to reply to a simple email now and again. It’s rude and arrogant not to.
Hiya Sandra – thanks for posting. You’re dead right.
Joe – stick me on your mailing list when your book is out!
Hi Graham – Thanks for posting. I think a lot of people are hitting the unsubscribe button these days. There must be some very worried gurus out there.
HI James – thanks for posting. I don’t give a flying one about speaking my mind mate – that’s the beauty of not needing JV’s or having to keep anyone sweet. You’re right about there being genuine people who want to help too.
Hi Randy – thanks for posting. Please keep buying our stuff without checking the sales pages – best possible customer 🙂
Again I’d love to make the meet but it’s rounf about my daughters birthday time and we’ve got plans for the whole week. Please keep the invite open tho cos I will make it up.
Hiya Rick – my colon is a perfect specimen of health I’ll have you know! Thanks for posting and nice about the sites – impressive stuff.
Hi Martin – thanks for posting. I always imagine people on the warrior forum as sitting in front of their PC’s aged 50, in their underpants still living with their parents, playing guitar.
….and that’s just the women.
Hi Marty – come and write a book on my blog why don’t you – your bloody post was almost long enough!
Thanks for posting though – you’re welcome any time. I was also involved in the ‘old’ direct mail scene before the internet came along and it took a bit of a mindshift to make the change.
It’s also true that sometimes you just need the smallest of info to trigger some long-discarded idea and it all falls into place.
HI Cyril – thanks for some great feedback.
I don’t read long sales pages any more unless they REALLY grab me and I can’t remember the last time that happened.
I figured if I don’t (and you’ve just confirmed my thoughts) then a lot of other people don’t either, so why the hell do guru types insist on 20,000 word sales pages?
Again this is valuable feedback for us so thaks.
Susan – thanks for posting – you love my brain eh? Should see my colon 🙂 (PS that’s a reference to an earlier comment – I’m not really scarily odd!)
I agree with you about ‘no longer pretending to be interested’ in other marketers. I still read comments that say that certain marketers have great newsletters, so I subscribe. Then it seems that all I get is sales email after sales email.
Am I missing something or did these gurus have good newsletters in the past that have turned to crap and now they just operate on nostalgia?
Linda – thanks for posting – more valuable feedback about ‘hypey’ sales pages. We get flak form other marketers about giving away freebies to subscribers but when the feedback that results is worth it’s weight in gold, I just can’t get my head round any other way of marketing.
Completely agree about sales pages and what’s more, the stats back it up.
Hi Jean – thanks for posting. There was a little gem in your comment that is one of my own main beliefs about the net – it’s cheap enough to be able to TRY even the carziest ideas without incurring much cost at all. It’s a wonderful thing. Imagine trying that with direct mail where just ‘trying’ out an idea could cost you thousands.
>>>My gripe with that particular forum is they allow one certain guru to remain active even when he couldn’t honor his 100% money back guarantee for $17.00 just 48 hours after the purchase. He pleaded poverty – “I only have $2.46 in my xxxxx account. Let me give you another product instead.”<<<
I knew about Tony right at the start. His articles in offline
magazines were a breath of fresh air.
Some months ago Tony mentioned about ‘gurus’….
Anyone who spends days and days pontificating in that forum is either not making any money – or ripping people off.
Those who are REALLY making money are rarely seen there.
You happen to prosperity, prosperity
doesn’t happen to you – R. Gage
Hi –
Does anyone have an easy way of telling a newbie how
links work with affiliate marketing?
And whether cloaking is a good idea?
Thanks
Hi Tony,
The advice you give in your books about the ‘Gurus’ is sound. I understand it to be simply this – read/listen to what they have to say and do what YOU have to do anyway.
Anyone (newbie or otherwise) who follows this advice can’t really go far wrong.
If you want to listen to all what the gurus have to say before you do anything you will end up very very confused.
The choice is yours. Follow the sound advice above and do what YOU have to do!
You really need to be bold enough to take action on the information you have at your disposal. I mean practical step by step information in books like ‘Licensed to Quit’ for instance. It is from here that you will know for yourself What Works & What Doesn’t!
Hi Tony,
Thanks for other good post, when I first started with IM , one of the first sites that I came across, was the laycock squeeze page, it was so long ago I cannot even remember what it was. But ever since that day I have been ahuge fan of both you and Sara, and have brought most of the products that you have recomended.
Because I know that these products are excellent and worth 10 times more than the information that I get in the WF and other IM forums. If you have a look at the WF and CYN posts these days, most of the information is pretty useless and people just blowing their own self esteem – do not get me wrong there are a few guys and gals that are very helpful. But if you do not know who they are you will really battle with getting good advice.
So Tony keep up the good work and the excellent products.
Hi Tony,
Really enjoyed your post – and as per usual you talk absolute sense.
I’m actually a bit of a fan of the Warrior Forum myself – but the key thing is to not take what people say too seriously. There are some very helpful people on there, and as you point out there are also others’ who take every opportunity to put other people down. If someone gives me advice I make up my own mind to decide whether to take it on board or not.
The point you made about your WornPaper site moving away from the IM style and seeing increased sales as a result is most interesting. I’d love to hear how this develops over time because I’ve always had this sneaking suspicion myself that if you’re ‘different’ then you’ll succeed.
Anyway keep up the great blog mate – I’m looking forward to your next post!
Dan
Gi Guys,
I got a bitch as well. An early reply here mentioned new people on the WF and how they have their pockets lightned while being led in circles.
I am on 2 lists only now and one of course is Tony’s. I have exoerienced one of the most humiliating events of my years on the net this week.
I bought a WSO from a high profile marketer on a recommendation, no problem, until I got to a site recommended in the product.
I went to join the site and found a number of membership levels, including the one in the report. Now the trouble began when I tried to join that level. There were 2 OTO’s neither led to the level I wanted. SO of course I opened a ticket and enquired how I joined the level. The reply made me look like an idiot.
I was told that the OTO had the level I required. But I’m not that stupid, I keep the OTO pages open, simple thing, and went back, sure enough no offer found.
I again asked how to join the level and to date no reply, several days have passed. The free membership level has crap products on it but there are 4 more levels of membership above that.
This is one of 4 examples over the last 8 days. One even became insulting in his PM replies. If I was to tell you who the “Gurus” were you would be shocked as I was.
The very small number of followers I have now know who NOT to follow and I don’t want to see them fleeced as many have been by doing what they think is right on the WF. I am considering dropping the WF because of the many sharks lurking there now. Shame really but that’s the reallity of IM today.