Web Wolves, Whores, Vagabonds, and Fools
Posted on 13. Apr, 2011 by Daniel Levis in Articles, authenticity, benefit, Blog, employer, evolution, guru, market, myth, scam, selling, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, trend, tweet, Twitter
The world is changing today so fast it’s really hard to keep up. Just a few years ago pretty much everybody worked for someone else. For most, it was the smart thing to do.
Safe, secure, benefits — the whole bit.
How things change. Today, manufacturing in the developed world is dead, toast, gone.
And so called "knowledge work" is now carried on by independent consultants, freelancers, and other entrepreneurs who come together virtually from the four corners of the earth. It’s cheaper, more efficient, and involves far less risk than the traditional everything-under-one-roof business model.
In this brave new world, only idiots still believe employment equals security. The average tenure in a J.O.B. is now, what… eighteen minutes?
The big, lumbering, vertically-integrated companies are failing like the dinosaurs they are, spitting out long-suffering employees like so much mulch. Since the vast majority of these employees were educated for a business world that no longer exists, they are now left twisting in the wind, clutching at straws.
And sooner or later — with the help of web wolves in sheep’s clothing — it dawns on these poor souls: Make Money on the Internet. It’s a fabulous idea. You absolutely can make money on the Internet, though most people who try don’t make a red cent.
Why?
It all boils down to a mindset that buys into these three big myths…
Myth #1:
Push Button, Make Money
From what I can tell, most newbies approach online business with the exact same mindset they bring to their jobs. They give no thought to the purposes of their labor, save a paycheck at the end of the week.
And this flawed thinking makes them prime suckers for every add-nothing-of-value-get-rich-quick scam that comes down the pike.
Multi-level schemes… auto-blogging… PPC arbitrage… software that automates some almost-useless function to such a degree that it squirts a little money… the exploitation of temporary loopholes that allow you to inject yourself into somebody else’s value chain, but without bringing anything useful to the equation.
These are the kinds of things that attract the employee mindset. Just give me some mindless activity — I don’t want to know the motivations or interests of anybody else — the less thinking I have to put into this the better.
The flimflam artists who dream up these schemes know that the less they explain about what it is they are actually selling, the more suckers they’ll enlist. No thinking person would buy from their sales copy because it fails to answer the fundamental business question: What value does this bring to anybody but me?
Contrary to popular opinion, the purpose of business is NOT to make money. The purpose of business is to fulfill unmet needs and desires — to add value to other people’s lives in some way. Making money is a byproduct of that process.
Myth #2
You Need a System, Blueprint, Roadmap, Formula, Method to "Duplicate"
Now don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with modeling. The problem is mindless modeling. The kind of modeling where Joe Newbie takes said model and applies it out of context and without adaptation.
In today’s world, there is no such thing as context. Things change much too quickly to expect that by the time a particular system, blueprint, or roadmap comes to market it’s still entirely optimal — even to the exact same situation it was originally developed for.
Let alone the inevitable differences of situation that exist between where it was developed and where it will be applied.
Yet this is exactly the expectation. The average employee expects his or her employer to show them step-by-step how the job is to be done. If the output is less than ideal, it’s the employer’s fault. And this idea gets carried over into the entrepreneurial world. If it doesn’t work, it’s the guru’s fault.
And so yet another disillusioned newbie begins wandering aimlessly through the Internet marketing streets like a hapless vagabond in search of something that actually works. There is no such thing as a plug and play business. Doesn’t exist, never will.
It’s up to YOU come up with your own system, blueprint, or roadmap that solves the specific problem that defines your business.
Myth #3
You Don’t Have to Sell, Just Make "Friends", "Followers", and "Connections"
The promise of social media marketing is this: Make fans, they’ll do your selling for you.
It’s all about authenticity and connection and interacting with your public on the same stage, where everybody gets an equal voice. While it’s certainly true that liking is important to persuasion, it’s just part of the equation.
The social media marketing game is at best foreplay that can never succeed without getting down the "ugliness" of direct marketing and actually asking people to buy stuff. It is this fear of selling that causes newbies to flock to social media marketing in the first place.
At its worst, social media marketing is prostitution. What was supposed to be a pristine oasis of authenticity and a sanctuary from blatant commercialism is turning into a cesspool of disingenuous opinion and endorsement — a media that is inherently unreliable, and therefore destined to devolve in value.
Case in point: Twitter now offers a revolutionary new suite of pay per click advertising services. With Promoted Tweets you can now buy celebrity endorsements at the push of a button.
The service is only available to large advertisers at present, but pretty soon the little people should be able to log on and use their plastic money to get plastic people to tweet about them.
It’s incredibly genuine. They’re keepin’ it real.
Or how about Promoted Trends? Yes, you can actually buy your own trend. Who’d have thunk it?
Or the ultimate in pimposity, Promoted Accounts. This is where Twitter will help you turn a quick trick by soliciting followers on your behalf.
The wonders money can buy. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned, honest direct marketing?
Until next time, Good Selling!
Web Wolves, Whores, Vagabonds, and Fools originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
Get in Touch With The Future
Posted on 07. Apr, 2010 by Michel Fortin in Blog, computer, engaging, john naisbitt, kinesthetic, market, Marshall McLuhan, Megatrends, message, Opinions, prediction, salesletter, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, statistic, trend, video, Wii
An interesting thing is happening lately, and it’s giving me a lot of fodder. I wanted to share a few opinions with you.
First off, as you know I love predictions and making some of my own. For example, I wrote a controversial white paper several years ago, called “The Death of The Salesletter.”
In it, I predicted that more and more salesletters will become shorter, more dynamic, more targeted, and more engaging. The explosion in video salesletters being one of them.
And that was over three years ago!
Recently, I wrote about another big upcoming trend, and that’s the explosion in cloud computing and how it will change the future of online business. I even blogged about it here in a post entitled “The Future of The Internet is Cloudy.”
For example, I downloaded Xmarks, a nifty online-based bookmark synchronizer that also synchronizes my native bookmarks on IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari using the cloud. It even synchronizes passwords and form fills, although I use LastPass for that.
But recently, a new product hit the market that reminded me of something…
We’re seeing a huge change in the way we work with computers. In my white paper, I talked about “multisensorial salesletters” where salesletters will increasingly engage all three modalities of communication (i.e., visual, auditory, and kinesthetic).
For instance, print media is a tactile medium. It’s mostly kinesthetic. The radio is auditory, while the TV, which may be both auditory and visual, is predominantly visual.
The computer, on the other hand, with the help of your keyboard and mouse, are all three. They help engage more senses. They’re visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.
Therefore, it makes perfect sense that sales messages online should be multisensorial. Significant statistics prove that, the more senses you engage, the more sales you will make. Which is why I predicted that video salesletters would explode — as it has.
But one thing struck me.
While we use a mouse and a keyboard, the kinesthetic component is somewhat indirect. These tools enable some tactile interaction, but they are more or less guides. (The Wii video console is a better example of having a bit more direct tactile engagement.)
Now, enter the new iPad.
iPhone and iPad are definitely more direct forms of kinesthetic communication. Sure, touchscreens have been around for years. But Apple helped touchscreens to penetrate the mass-market by making them easy, practical, and of course cool.
When I first heard of the iPad, I thought to myself, “This is the future!” I thought that more and more computers will become like that — direct contact with the message.
(Marshall McLuhan was dead-on, if not pretty darn close.)
iPad is not just a larger iPhone. It’s much, much more than that. Better said, its introduction means a lot more than what most people care to give it credit for. Some people don’t like it. A lot of people say it’s just a bunch of hype. But I say it’s the future.
And now, I see this article in Mashable, which underlines exactly what I thought — in that research shows that all computers will be eventually touchscreen-based.
By the way, as I’m sure you have guessed, I love visionaries, futurists, and predictions. John Naisbitt’s “Megatrends” is one of my favorite books. I often mention “high-tech, high-touch” in my work. Faith Popcorn is another visionary I admire a lot.
Speaking of Marshall McLuhan, other than his most famous quote (i.e., “The medium is the message”) he is mostly known for, here are a few more of his fascinating quotes. Read them, and you’ll see how ahead of his time this guy was.
Anyway, ’tis all food for thought. 
The important thing in all of this, is this: how do we mold our businesses, products, and services to fit these upcoming trends? More important, how can we monetize them?
Bottom line, keep your eyes peeled. Just sayin’.
Get in Touch With The Future originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
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