Posts Tagged ‘internet marketing’

Tall Poppy Syndrome

20 June 2008 Nez 0 Comments

In Australia, we have this social effect where anyone who gets too successful eventually gets cut down by everyone else. Effectively, if you get too big for your britches, people feel they have a right to cut you back down. It’s probably the single largest thing about being Australian that I have always hated. For some reason, we get jealous and vindictive about the success of others.

But why? I’ve never understood it. People work hard, make all the right choices, make smart decisions, and reap the rewards. Fair enough to me. I’m not at the point yet myself, but I’m getting there, so why begrudge the succes of others who have gotten there before me.

But I digress….

Today I woke up to find a firestorm of controversy over an article written in Mashable. That can’t right I thought, I like Mashable and read it every day. I better have a look. What I read was really just a personal attack on John Reese. It is unfounded, inaccurate, and quite frankly, just rubbish. Aside from attacking John, the inaccurate prediction that internet marketers are going to ruin Twitter for everybody is just mind boggling.Tall poppy syndrome at its finest

What an utterly rediculous argument. I’ve really enjoyed reading Mashable until today.

This is like saying internet marketers are going to ruin email because they use it. No wait, people can unsubscribe can’t they?

So, obviously for Twitter to survive this massive onslaught of people being marketed to by other Twitter users, there needs to be some sort of way to stop following the people who market to you? Hmm…

Honestly, the personal attack on John Reese without even checking the facts is just gutter journalism, something I thought Mashable would be above. I’d love to do a comparison between the number of times Mashable staff have twittered links to their articles, compared to the number of times John has twittered links to his stuff. Just over the last couple of months.

But I don’t really need to do I, we both know the answer to that already. It’s been quite good though, to see that most of the commenters to the article I’m talking about  don’t agree with it, so at least there’s some common sense out there.

Mashable is a highly, highly monetised site, that uses Twitter to drive traffic. I follow John Reese on Twitter, and I enjoy his tweets. It’s been quite rare to have John link to any of his sites, he’s more likely to offer little nuggets of wisdom or vent about different sports. Who’s the bad guy here?

I want you to make your own mind up, so I’m not going to put in any quotes from either source. Instead, below I’ll link to the Mashable article in question, and then John Reese’s response to the attack on his blog. I know who think shows more ethics but I want you to see it for yourself. Make sure you read the comments section too, that’s very enlightening all by itself.

The Mashable Article

John Reese’s Response

Beechworth 2008 – The Week The Game Changed

04 May 2008 Nez 0 Comments

So, it’s Sunday morning and I’ve just spent the week at Beechworth. I don’t think I could do justice to the experience by trying to detail it all here. And of course, there’s quite a bit I can’t detail here anyway, as people paid a handsome sum to attend and that knowledge needs to stay indoors.

What I can tell you is what I’ve taken away from the event on a personal level. When I break it down, it all really fits into 3 areas: Community, Knowledge, and Savvy

Community

crowdstatus Beechworth 2008 The Week The Game ChangedMore than any other event, internet marketing or otherwise, I met and became friends with so many people this week it’s incredible. And that’s taking into consideration the fact that there was only around 30 people in attendance. I won’t rattle off a list of names here either, as I would no doubt forget someone and that would not be cool. The reason that meeting so many people this time around is doubly important for me though, is that everyone I met is actually doing things online rather than just talking about it.

You go to these conferences (not that this was like ANY conference I’d been to before), and you do meet people. Genuinely nice people most of the time, but the common denominator most of the time is that none of them are taking action. The Beechworth crowd are a group taking action. In some cases massive action. Fantastic to be around. By the way, the link to the Beechworth crowd isn’t everybody I met during the week, there were heaps more people.

Knowledge

Of course you know we had Ed and Dan present during the week. They each have theireddan Beechworth 2008 The Week The Game Changed own style and their own brand of presenting. What they did do the same though, was deliver absolute top shelf content. If you were around for the Ustream show on the first day of the conference you got a taste of what Ed was doing. Just brilliant. Dan on the other hand, wowed us in a completely different way. His content was also nothing short of brilliant, but you won’t be hearing about it on this site. I’m not deliberately trying to build it up either, it’s just a simple case of not being able to share. Just wouldn’t be fair to those that attended.

rob Beechworth 2008 The Week The Game ChangedAnother huge highlight for me was Rob Somerville’s presentation. It was a real gamechanger for me. Rob really did a fantastic job, and has just opened my eyes up to where I’d been going wrong. Well, not wrong exactly, just not as refined as I should have been. So thanks Rob. By the way, if you’re an Immediate Edge member, Rob’s presentation will be available to members in the next week or so. If you’re not a member right now, it might be a very good time to consider it. There are some very big things coming to the Immediate Edge this year, and if you’re an experienced online marketer there are things coming that will rock your socks off.

There were 2 other presenters at Beechworth, Marc Lindsay, who I unfortunately didn’t get to talk to much, and Pete Williams who is just the coolest dude ever.

Marc gave us a presentation on his service PLR Pro . Now, I’ve been a member of a few PLR services in my time, and I ended up quitting my subscription on all of them after a while. They just didn’t deliver the goods. Marc’s service does. I’ve signed up already, and I can’t believe the quality I’m seeing. The service caters to groups with a maximum of 200 people, and delivers articles, keywords, top affiliate programs, graphics, etc across 11 niches! That’s right 11 niches. There’s heaps more I could tell you, but go check it out for yourself, PLR Pro

pete Beechworth 2008 The Week The Game ChangedAnd that leaves us with Pete Williams. His presentation was superb, and has given me a huge insight into the process of publicity and general PR. He’s a terrific guy too, and someone that I’m really glad I connected with. His technique as a poker player is ‘interesting’ but I can’t deny that it seemed to work for him. He took out Ed on our poker night and I think that surprised everybody. If you want to see a bit of fun using some of the techniques from Beechworth, go to Google and do a search for man hunk. You’ll find Pete on the front page of google. Pete runs a terrific blog on marketing too, check it out Preneur Marketing. I should also mention too, that I was one if the winners of Pete’s competition he held while he was overseas. Very cool.

Savvy

Presenters and attendees alike, it was just fantastic to be around so many sharp people.dinner Beechworth 2008 The Week The Game Changed I’m in this game for the long haul, and spending time with people smarter than me is never a bad idea. Chatting to people, whether at the conference itself, over dinner (Rob Somerville blew my mind at dinner on the first night), or while playing poker and talking trash, there were just so many nuggets that were flying around. I feel like the bar has been raised on the way I literally do everything online, and that can only be a good thing.

An Internet Business – Ed Dale style

14 April 2008 Nez 0 Comments

edmap An Internet Business Ed Dale styleI had already written this post once before I realised I’d made an error. Above you’ll see the photo Ed posted of his diagram for running an internet based business. I love it! It’s the way I plan everything. I also mind map constantly, so paper and I are very close. Like Ed, I’m addicted to technology, but I always rely on good old faithful paper and pen to get my ideas down and to brainstorm. The link to Ed’s original post is at the end of this article.

Ed also mentions the book, Back of the Napkin, and introduces us to the concept of visual thinking. He also talks of other big names in the biz like John Reese, Frank Kern and Gary Halbert, and they all use a pad and paper to brainstorm. I know that for many people the concept won’t be new, but to hear Ed’s take on how he approaches things, and the way he maps out things is pretty cool. Now, the above picture gives you an idea of where Ed is coming from, but only an idea. I had rushed on to write a post explaining all of the cool points about the video Ed made. I even did a few screenshots of bits I really liked.

edvideo An Internet Business Ed Dale styleAnd here’s where I hit my problem. The video. I effecttively had written a review of the video Ed created about the various aspects of online businesses. However I had watched this video as a member of the Immediate Edge . Ed had actually created seven pages, which he then (using Screenflow) had gone on to explain in great detail. It was brilliant! But I can’t publish a review like this if most of the people reading it haven’t seen the video. So I’m an idiot.

If you want to see the video for yourself you’ll have to obviously join up. A word of warning though, the Immediate Edge is like trying to drink from a waterfall. There is tons of great content there (including Ed’s video and a brand new service which just blows me away), but nobody is going to hold your hand. It’s not for beginners either. If all of this is brand new, just stick with the Thrity Day Challenge for now. If however, you feel ready, then maybe try out the Immediate Edge and see what you think.

UPDATE: Ed has just released the video to the general public. I still recommend the Immediate Edge, but you can now watch the video I was raving about for free. Check it out here: The Video

Stealth Poo?

24 August 2007 Nez 0 Comments

Now I’m in no way suggesting that the problem I’m about to tell you about is a result ofhanky Stealth Poo? what I wrote the other day. I don’t believe it is. It’s simply an example of how no matter much you prepare yourself, and no matter what your mindest is, the monkeys throwing poo still manage a direct hit. It’s all a question of how you handle it.

Last night my comments system got hit by spammers. It got hit hard. So hard in fact that I’ve had to actually delete my comments system. The site had ground down to halt and it was the only solution. So to all the poeple that have commented on my blog since ever, I sincerely apologize for your comment being removed.

Now, I could throw a hissy fit about it, and rant about the scum sucking spammers and their lowlife tactics, but really, why waste the energy. What I’m taking away from this experience is that the comment system I was using is flawed. It’s a positive that I now know about.

I’m about to launch a new site into a new niche and I expect it to be huge for me. The last thing I would’ve wanted was for my shiny new site to be getting great traffic, bringing in sales, getting great feedback, and then have the whole thing explode in my face because of monkeys throwing poo.

Does it suck because my comments system is currently non-existent? Of course it does. is it the end of the world? No. Can I benefit from having it happen in the first place? Of course I can.

UPDATE: I’ve setup a new comment system, and even managed to import all of your comments. So in the long run, it’s all worked out well. I’m on a great new comment system, and I can use it on my new site too. 

Thirty Day Challenge – Reloaded

20 August 2007 Nez 0 Comments

When I say reloaded I don’t mean completely reloaded though.

I still have my niche(s) to continue working with. My content is growing everyday, the research is not abating, it’s just the actual presence on the web that’s suffering. As you are no doubt aware, Tumblr has freaked out about us and deleted most of our pages.

But here’s the thing. When I first got wind of pages being deleted I started searching. Looking up tumblr in Google coughed up a startingly array of crap. No other word for it, spammy crap. We all have our story about our own pages, and why they should’ve been left alone. But I have to say I’m tempted to side with Tumblr on this. Not the way they went about it necessarily, but at least on principle. Given the number of dodgy pages I came across I can understand the knee jerk reaction in taking us down.

We were all painted with the same brush. Both the good guys with the good content, and the bad guys with the spammy crap. Here’s my simplified version of events.

We were all sheep, and I don’t mean that in a condescending way either, just that we were all doing the same thing at the same time. And all of us sheep were heading in the same direction at the same time. Tumblr (the shepards in this story), were watching us all wander in and mix with the rest of the flock.

But then they noticed a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Then another. Then another. And so it went on. This would have been pretty stressful, and very frustrating. With so many wolves mixed in with the sheep the only solution that made sense and that would have an immediate impact was to euthanise the whole lot. It was done as a way to protect the rest of the flock, and I can understand that.

I can even sum us up in 2 words: Collateral Damage 

It can be argued that they didn’t really care whether you were a wolf or a sheep, but why argue? Move on. Build a bridge. Get over it. Go make some money.

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