Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams

Recently, the ‘internet marketing’ community was buzz with a huge hoax masterminded by Frank Kern - I won’t go into it in this post, but you can read about it over at - Don Fleece, Traffic Mysteries, Confessions and Reality or on the Frank Kern Shenanigans Facebook Group

Anyway… it got me thinking about a huge hoax that began as a practical joke by late-night radio raconteur Jean Shepherd in the mid-1950s. Shepherd was highly annoyed at the way that the bestseller lists were being compiled at the time.

Unlike today, these lists at the time were not determined only on sales figures, but also on requests for new books at bookstores.

Shepherd urged his listeners to enter bookstores across the USA, and ask for a book that did not exist. He fabricated an author, Frederick R. Ewing, concocted a title, ‘I, Libertine’, and outlined a basic plot for his listeners to use on skeptical or confused bookstore clerks.

Shepherd eventually proved his point, as the ‘fictional book’ became a best seller. (see the play on words I used there - not only was it a ‘fiction book’, but the book itself was fictional by nature - I really should be a comedian)

“It all started when I got into a discussion one day about people who pretend to know everything,” Shepherd wrote later in the Voice. “We thought it would be a good gag to undermine their faith by creating a demand for something that didn’t even exist. We dreamed up the name and the author on the spot.”

I recently came across an interview where the crazy tale is recounted in Jean Shepherd’s own words on Long John Nebel’s radio show from 1968 - it’s well worth a listen; as it has nothing to do with marketing, yet everything to do with marketing.

Download the interview here (MP3)

In the foreword to a new book, Mark Joyner points out that the internet marketing crowd may, on the surface, share some common features with a cult:

“A unique language understood only by those in the cult, “guru” figures of whom many blindly follow, and bizarre rites and rituals.”

Well….

- Unique language: squeeze pages, optin rate, conversion rate, PPC, CPM, CPA
- Guru figures: do I even need to go there?
- Bizarre rites and rituals: launching new websites at the drop of a hat, constantly searching for better tools (which spring up every day), working at all hours of the day or night.

While Joyner’s comparison may in some sense be accurate, there’s another word that better describes this collection of eclectic individuals we know as “internet marketers”.

Family.

Skeptical?

Think about it: in what other business arena do the major players:

- Freely share their biggest “secrets”?
- Promote each others’ products and services?
- Sell to each other, and to each other’s customers?

I can’t think of any other business endeavor where successful business owners are so open and transparent with their colleagues and potential competitors (“newbies”).

And Joel Comm has now taken this transparency to a whole new level.

You may know Joel as the guy who figured out how to make Google’s Adsense a money-pumping hands-free oil well and then turned around and wrote a book about what he learned…

In the New York Times Best Seller The Adsense Code, he pulled back the curtain so others can duplicate what he did.

Joel’s new book –the one with the foreword by Mark Joyner—documents the history of the internet marketing “family”…

Click Here to Order: Stories of the World’s Most Successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs is the most complete background of Internet marketing that exists today.

Joel retells story after story of dozens of today’s internet marketers: how they got started and the paths they took to become successful.

Once you finish reading this book, you will never look at Internet Marketing in the same way. Not only do you get an inside look at marketers including:

- John Resse
- John Carlton
- Michel Fortin
- Willie Crawford
- Armand Morin

Plus many others, often in their own words…

You also get the little “nuggets” of practical and strategic wisdom that Joel has deftly included too.
So the book is part family history, part marketing education, and part inspiration.

You might already be part of the family, if like me you:

- Know what a squeeze page is
- Spend time obsessing over your “opt-in rate”
- Check your Clickbank or Paypal account twenty times a day
- Continually search for better-performing keywords
- Hang out with your online friends more than with your “offline” buddies (did someone say twitter?)

…then congratulations! You are already a member of the “family”.

If not, the fastest way to join this family is to read the book!

Click Here to Order ‘Click Here to Order’ (yes, I wrote that right)

Pete

P.S. Don’t miss your chance to get your exclusive peek into the world of successful Internet Marketing Entrepreneurs, and take a shortcut to joining them.

P.P.S. Looks like the book version of the 30 Day Challenge is getting a lot closer to becoming a reality. We’ve had an offer from a publisher, so i’ll keep you all in the loop on that one.. Stay Tuned.

This is a great quote… I first heard it from a guy who goes by the name Mystery.

Mystery is one of the worlds greatest pick-up artists and teaches the art of seduction through seminars, home study courses and his reality show on VH1.

As a side note, every marketer should study what these guys teach, not so yo can “get laid”, but because it teaches you true social dynamics, how people interact and what make them to do what do.

But with anything, the seduction community wouldn’t have grown to the phenomenon it has if they didn’t ‘market’ their personal development courses with the ‘honey’ that is ‘getting laid’

Anyway….

Mystery was using the quote, when illustrating the ‘situation’ thats faces a lot of PUAs (Pick-Up Artists) when “in the field” - Part of the methodology they teach is to approach a Warm-Up SET (group of girls) before approaching the TARGET (the girl you really want), so you can find your rhythm and more importantly increase your social value by being seen with other women etc etc.

The ‘situation’ that most PUAs find themselves in is that they even up ‘picking-up’ someone from the first group of girls and never making it to the true TARGET.

The PUAs settles, they live the maxim of ‘a bird in the hand is better then two in the bush’ or however it goes… but this maxim still holds true in the world of… well anything.

In business, this statement could not be 1. any more true and 2. anymore prevalent.

The enemy of almost every business (mine included) is the ‘good’… with so much going on, settling seems to be the norm.

I mean, you start out with big goals, grand plans, but the business gets in the way and those goals of ‘being the best’ get compromised and you settle for ‘good’.

See, whether you are an entrepreneur or a PUA, the ‘risk’ that is very rarely discussed is the one that you are faced with when you have ‘the good’ - The risk of losing it.

Most people focus their teachings on getting started and over-coming the problem of wanting something you don’t have… but very few people openly acknowledge (or provide answers) to the fact that the paralysis brought on due to the ‘problem of losing what you have’ is greater that then the initial problem of having nothing.

“What if I leave this SET of girls, go for ‘The Best’ and luck out…. and have to go home alone?”

“What if I push that little bit harder, spend that little bit extra, go for ‘The Best’ and luck out… will the business be worse off then it is now ?

The true test of ‘the best’ entrepreneurs are those who have the self confidence, the self belief, just like ‘the best’ PUAs and trust that ‘The Best’ is possible.