Month: August 2014

If you are skeptical about long copy, hype-filled promotions for “get rich quick” info-products…well, you should be.

Subscriber JE, recently complained to me, “One thing that bugs me is when people have one or two successes and then go out and sell their ‘system’.”

He says the reason these systems often don’t work for others who follow them is that “you can’t package up luck.”

What JE is talking about is perhaps the biggest flaw in the entire business of information marketing in general…and business success/self-help/personal improvement info-publishing in particular, namely, that just because certain steps worked for the author, that does not mean others following those steps will get the same results, and in fact, more often than not, they don’t.

One of the problems, as JE has accurately identified, is that the only test of the system is often the author’s personal success.

If you are a consumer of info-products on business and success topics, does the author have students who, following his system, achieved some levels of results, even if not equal to his?

If he has no successful followers, then I would pass on buying the course or program.

Why do so many info-product promoters teach systems based on their own personal success, only to have so many buyers fail to achieve anything close to their results?

Again, one reason, as JE notes, is luck. Luck plays a huge role in success and as JE says it cannot be packaged and sold, unfortunately. The info-product seller may have had luck, and he has no way to confer that luck on you.

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For instance, my wife is a home decorator, and in her field there are info-product promoters selling all kinds of courses on how to succeed in the home decorating business.

But if you have no taste, no eye for design (and I don’t), your chances of succeeding in the home decorating business are slim to none.

And it may sound elitist to say this, but intelligence is also a prerequisite for success in many fields and it too cannot be packaged.

My youngest son is a computer science major at Carnegie Mellon, and despite my own degree in chemical engineering, I could not complete his course of study; I simply don’t have the aptitude or the mathematical ability required (and I was pretty good at differential equations, but I sucked at Fortran).

So as a consumer of info-products, how do you make wise purchases, and by that I mean buy courses that actually succeed in teaching you the skill or business covered?

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Go to the websites of the big players in your niche of interest and mine the free content there. You can often get quite an education without shelling out a dime. For example, see the library of free marketing and copywriting articles on my site.

2. Start with their traditionally published books sold on Amazon. Often these books are a much better value and are more clearly written than their package systems courses and they contain 5X more info often at 1/5 the price or lower

Subscriber WK writes: “I don’t see how content marketing works, given there is already so much free content readily available all over the Internet.”

“A marketing consultant we hired to help us promote our business suggested we write and offer a free special report. I objected, pointing out a Google search on X yields over a million results because so much content on X is posted free online for the taking.

“I concluded that producing yet another piece of content on X is unlikely to make us stand out and is therefore a waste of money. The consultant admitted that a glut of content on X exists and had no comeback to my justification.

“So I say the online information explosion has sounded the death knell for content marketing which no longer works. What say you, Bob?”

Despite WK’s sound logic, his conclusion about content marketing losing its effectiveness is wrong…fortunately for you and me.

Content marketing was a sound tactic when I entered marketing in the late 1970s. It works well today. And it will work well decades from now.

There are 5 reasons why content marketing is so effective despite the seeming glut of content on just about every topic under the sun.
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First, human beings are inefficient learners.

Proof: by the time she has completed her undergraduate education and is finally considered ready to enter the workforce on a professional level, the average college graduate has spent 16 years going to school full-time.

Life is an unending education, and successful people are proactive lifelong learners. Therefore, they eagerly consume quality content that is relevant to their interests.

Second, human beings are slow learners.

As the old joke notes, if we were quick learners, there would be only one self-help book in print.

The fact that each year thousands of new books are published on subjects for which there are already thousands of books in print is proof that we need repetition

In a recent essay I rallied against the slacker mentality on the Internet that “information should be free”.

I noted, “Dry cleaning is not free. Automobile repair is not free. Gasoline is not free. Dental work is not free. You pay your doctor for a check-up. And the grocery store wants money before you walk out with your milk and eggs.”

I then asked the question: “Why should writers and other content creators alone be expected to work for free and vilified if they ask to be paid?”

And the response from subscribers was overwhelming in support of my argument that information is a product that can and should have a price tag like any other, and that the Internet notion that “all information should be free” is absurd.

For instance, JL writes, “The people who spout the ‘all information should be free’ philosophy are people who never created anything but opinions, which they are, of course, willing to give away to anyone who will listen.”

“People’s perception of help comes in the form of, ‘My hand is out, now you must give me something and I don’t have to pay for it,'” says WQ. “It’s the nature of sheep.”

JR weighs in: “The problem with the Internet has become too many people looking for the free answer. These people are not professionals nor are they serious about business. The basic rule of business (including information producers) is to earn a profit to continue to operate and thus continue to offer goods and services.”

MC points out, correctly in my experience, that “people who want free information rarely do anything with it anyway. Even if they do read it, they discount the value of it because they got it for free.

“In regards to your information, Bob, you paid a price, in either education or experience, to learn it. Why should someone else expect to get that same information from you for free without paying some price for it? Colleges are still charging for tuition and books, aren’t they?

“I think this all ties into this entitlement, Socialist mentality where some people feel that those who have (you, in this case) should be willing to share (for free) with those who have not, for the good of the collective.”
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GB chimes in: “Though our entitlement-based culture works assiduously to preserve and enhance the myth that there is free stuff and all its attendant superstitions, nobody should work for free unless he freely chooses to do so.

“But even with such a voluntary disposition, one’s compensation then typically takes a form other than immediate monetary remuneration. Nobody works for no compensation, immediate or residual. And nobody is ‘entitled’ to the product of another.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I could fill another couple of pages with the replies, overwhelmingly supporting the notion that writers and other content creators should be paid for their work.

“It seems the millennial generation expects everything for free,” complains CD. “I have a son who is a composer of very fine instrumental music. He has hundreds of fans who rave about his music, but has yet to see anybody buy his albums. He gets .00001% of a penny when anyone listens to his music on the radio.”

And subscriber AS wisely makes the distinction that while free information is plentiful online, knowledge is in short supply and must be paid for:

“The problem is that most people confuse information with knowledge. In reality, information alone has little value. Everyone in the world can have all the information in the world for free, but it won’t have any real value to most of them. That’s because they don’t have a clue as to how to turn that information into knowledge, which does have value.”

AS continues, “Experience and wisdom are what you need to take information and use it to create knowledge. And knowledge is what has real value. And that’s what content creators really do. They take information and apply experience and wisdom to turn it into knowledge. And knowledge is worth something.”

Yes, the Internet has created, in the words of Harlan Ellison, a “slacker mentality” where people believe information should be free. But I was happy to discover that you, my subscribers, do not share that belief.

Bob Bly is the author of “World’s Best Copywriting Secrets” and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him “America’s top copywriter”.

If you are self-publishing your book as an e-book, Outskirts Press advises you also offer it as a paperbound book for these 4 reasons.

First, readers still love an old-fashioned read. For die-hard book enthusiasts, there’s still nothing like a paperbound book.

Second, signed copies add value. An autographed hardcopy not only makes a great keepsake for friends and family but it may also be that extra push a stranger needs to make a purchase.

Third, you may not convince a news editor or a bookstore owner to get on the computer to enter a promo code and download a promotional copy, but you can usually get them to take a free hardcopy from you.

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Fourth, a paperbound book makes a better keepsake than a digital edition. You probably would like your own archival copies, right? Something in print is a nice, tangible backup to your electronic book.

Tip: If you self-publish a Kindle e-book, use Amazon’s Create Space feature to make it available as a print-on-demand (POD) paperback.

Source: Outskirts Press Newsletter, 4/15/14