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Rant of the Day

Today’s missive is by way of a public service announcement. It’s inspired by the many would-be “Internet entrepreneurs” who have contacted me of late, requesting support with their inaugural direct marketing campaigns.

More specifically, I refer here to the procession of wanna-be ‘information marketers’ who have invested £100s – and sometimes even £1.000s –in the myriad ‘systems to success’ espoused by the likes of Simon (“I was a lowly BT engineer – now I own Kent”) Coulson and Andrew (“I was working 29 hours a day, now I hibernate six months a year under a sapphire encrusted duvet”) Reynolds.

Herein, I bring you – in five hype-free bullet points – an exec summary of the business that lies behind the meretricious marketing and hyperbole surrounding “the information marketing opportunity”.

And I use the term “opportunity” advisedly – for such it is.

Information marketing is neither a scam nor a get-rich-quick panacea. Au contraire: like any business opportunity it demands a product, a ready market – and the talent to align the two.

The gentlemen mentioned above – and many more like them – have indeed become multimillionaire info marketers thanks to their acumen, creativity and hard work. And they are to be respected for that.

What troubles me, therefore, is the way in which they now downplay their own capabilities, leading their ‘protégés’ – buyers of their DVDs, books, training courses, and so on – to believe that “if I can do it, you can do it”.

Which, frankly, is unadulterated bilge.

Everyone can NOT be a success in business – be it information marketing or any other.

Given this undeniable truism, I marvel that – in all the marketing material I’ve seen, by and about Messrs Coulson et al – their business concept invariably remains a thinly veiled secret.

In fact, it barely gets a mention.

Instead, the emphasis always is on aspirational imagery and on Dick Whittington style narrative: on “one average chap’s journey from a damp and lonely bedsit in Hull to a multimillion dollar villa In Puerto Andraitx”.

Tugs at the heartstrings doesn’t it? And also the purse strings: appealing, as it does, to the 100,000s of folk who, thanks to a succession of criminally incompetent financial institutions, now find themselves unemployed and on the metaphorical breadline.

To those poor benighted souls I say: hang on to your redundancy cheques (assuming you were lucky enough to get one). And resist the urge to part with £75.00 or more for a poorly shot DVD courtesy of The Entrepreneur Channel (which at best will reveal only the bare bones of “the system” – before enticing you to part with way way more to get the full story).

Instead, put 50p in a collection box (for the charity of your choice) – and permit me to “blow the gaff”; to outline the basic info marketing model – and its shortcomings.

The process goes something like this:

1/ Decide on a topic for a new ebook: a ‘niche’ subject which may not have been tackled elsewhere, yet has a ready audience of paying customers; test your concept using keyword research.

(Err… easier said than done, I think. The web is a big and busy place; and original ideas are at a premium. Still; you never know…)

2/ Create a web page to promote your ‘forthcoming’ ebook and capture prospective customer data (possibly by offering a free report or other incentive); set up and run a pay per click ad campaign to properly gauge demand.

(Uh-oh; do you have the necessary technical, creative and marketing skills to write design and code a web page and write a series of ads – or the cash needed to subcontract those tasks?)

3/ Assuming that demand exists, commission a writer to create your ebook, selecting from the 10,000s of low cost overseas freelancers to be found on Odesk and the array of similar outsourcing web sites; expect to pay between £200 and £500!

(Well, good luck with that, because I’ve yet to find a journo worth her salt who’s willing to write a book for £500 or less – wherever they happen to live.)

4/ Create your Internet sales page; promote that page via pay per click advertising and affiliate marketing.

(See Point Two, above.)

5/ Giggle all the way to your Swiss Bank.

Simple, huh?

Well, as a business model: yes – it’s brilliantly simple.

In practice, however, information marketing is like any other sphere of commercial endeavour. It requires time, cash, hard work and initiative.

If you lack any of those things, it’s not for you – however good an ad campaign I might write on your behalf.