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Folks, for those of you that haven't seen this sort of stuff a million times before, here's how it works: It's a classic sell-the-dream pitch to inspire you to
by bromley 15y ago
Folks, for those of you that haven't seen this sort of stuff a million times before, here's how it works:
It's a classic sell-the-dream pitch to inspire you to believe that if this guy could do "it", given his difficult situation, even you could do it too.
You read it through, get inspired, and get drawn into his sales funnel. Over time, as you consume more of his content, you start to trust him more, and have more faith in his ability to help people do what he's doing. He must have the secret, after all, otherwise how could he have done what he's done? You just need to keep going until he shares that secret with you.
Eventually, when you notice that he's selling something that promises to help you make money blogging whilst sitting on a beach sipping pinas, you'll consider it much more seriously than you would if he'd hit you over the head with it from the start. You trust him now.
You might notice that his story links to a course. Just a subtle mention so you don't think the whole thing is nothing more than a big sales pitch. But you can watch the videos and subscribe right there and then to accelerate your journey to the point where you're ready to stump up some cash for the secret to success. Some people convert faster than others.
Or maybe you'll convert a year down the line. Perhaps you won't convert at all, but you'll promote/upvote his stuff and introduce more people into his sales funnel. Some of them might convert at some point.
Maybe you'll never buy anything directly from him, but you might end up buying something from one of the other respectable internet marketers that he might point you towards (with affiliate links most likely, so he gets a cut).
Eventually you'll be able to spot this sort of sell-a-dream pitch in a glance. You'll always wonder if there might be good stuff in there, but you won't worry about missing out because the chances are you've seen most of it before. And whatever time you spend wading through fluffy feel good stories to get to the meat is time you could have spent building or promoting something of your own.
Not a problem for him though; there's an endless stream of newbies looking for the secret to making money online. Admittedly I hadn't realized hacker news had so many of them...
- vertr 15y agoI'm not sure why this is getting downvoted because it hits the nail on the head.
- vpdn 15y agoHow can you tell that it's being downvoted? (And yes, I do miss the points next to comments or other, better means to filter for useful comments)
- sunkan 15y agoTotally agree! But this kind of snake oil is being sold all over the internet and I haven't seen this level of critical analysis applied to others doing something similar, but under a slightly respectable garb. Examples: Tim Ferris and his 4-hour work week/body, Gary V with his Crush it, Ramit Sethi and his Earn 1k infomercial http://earn1k.com/ http://earn1k.com/ He should probably right a book about blogging your way to riches by working 2hrs a week and he would be on NYT Best Seller list and an eventual Angel investor and speaker at various startup events.
- johnconroy 15y agoI totally agree. The "make money blogging" formula is akin to a pyramid scheme: a long-tail, vastly heavily skewed space where a few make real money and the vast majority make almost nothing. This doesn't make money blogging per se: he makes money telling other people HOW to make money blogging (assuming he makes any money at all). It's some meta-blogging dodge selling the easy-life dream. Trying to make money as a blogger is a long shot: you'd be a damn sight better off waiting tables imo.
- StavrosK 15y agoI am actually in the process of writing a self-help book called "How to write a best-selling self-help book", containing all the elements such as writing fake success stories people can relate to, selling a general dream, making it seem attainable, intersperse amusing anecdotes that make people more drawn to the idea, etc. The book will actually use all of those hints itself, e.g. "this reminds me of the time I wrote a self-help book in the jungles of Indonesia, where I lived for twenty years as a marine biologist."