It makes me laugh when I read endless blogs about how to ‘do’ Internet Marketing and the ‘right’ ways to do this and do that and how the ‘experts’ get top-ranking within hours for their clients and how the got 47,000 number one ranked phrases – oh yeah; and how they raked in million$ in a matter of weeks with a sprinkling of ‘black hat’ SEO.
Give me a break and get a life.
Do you think Sony tells Panasonic how they build their amazing Plasma and LCD screens so that their competitor can copy-cat their high definition pixel perfection? I doubt it.
Do you think Nissan exchanges industry secrets with Toyota, or Ferrari tells Mercedes how to get more down-force and achieve higher cornering speeds on their Formula One cars?
Nope!
Hence there is competition. Competition is good. It keeps people on their toes. It forces businesses to constantly be working on developing something better than they already had.
Do you really believe an SEO dude would divulge all the real ‘secrets’ of SEO to all and sundry? Would you?
Whatever business you are in the last thing you would do is distribute a leaflet to all your competitors telling them how to develop, how to sell, how to install, how to manufacture, how to be as good as you. How to be YOU.
I wouldn’t. I don’t divulge what I do for any of my clients because:
A) They don’t want me to.
B) I don’t want to. It wouldn’t be right.
C) That would be suicide.
Why would I encourage my clients to be the same as their competitors?
If I was to tell all about what my clients do; how their manufacturing works; how they get remarkable results form their online marketing; etc., that would enable everyone (their competitors) to do the same. The result would be every company doing the same thing.
I believe in a level playing field but everyone plays a few cards close to their chest.
While I’m a big advocate of ‘sharing’ and being helpful, sometimes it makes sense and is often an obligation to ‘keep schtum’.
Shut up and drive! Just get on with being the best and enjoy the complimentary envy as your competitors try to keep up.
SEO, Internet Marketing, Blogging, Link Building (Link Baiting), Blog Commenting, Forum Signatures, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., etc., etc., there’s a book on everything. Some of them are actually an okay read but loads are complete waffle that should have stayed as a blog (isn’t that a con when you pay good money for a book only to find it’s a compilation of blog posts?). Ya know that really winds me up. Not only is everyone a freakin’ expert at telling everyone else how to run their business (just ‘cos they know how to write a damn blog) but anyone with a Twitter following can publish a bloody book about anything.
Everyone’s a fffing expert.
Grrrrr! There – a few ounces of frustration vented. I remember the days when you had to have written some bloody good stuff before a publisher would entertain the thought of sending it to the editor then the printers and then shelling out on distribution etc., Now it don’t matter.
Side note: Just the other week, while in an exchange with a rather well known author (I rarely name and shame), I questioned the logic and accuracy of a statement they had made and almost instantly without even a whimper they backed out of the discussion. I was just getting started but they couldn’t even be bothered to stick up for their work. Typical. Lame. Pathetic. Expert at writing but sod all else.
What I’d like to know is: where’s the book written by Apple that shows all PC manufacturers how to make a better computer? Where’s the book by Adobe that tells all wannabe Photo Editing Software developers how to build a better Photo Shop?
Duh? ‘Shooting oneself in the foot’ comes to mind…
Ask a top athlete how s/he runs so darn fast. Ask how s/he gets out of the blocks so fast and up to speed quicker than the other runners.
Ask a Baseball player how he manages to hit the ball out of the park and maintains an enviable hit average…
Ask an F1 driver how he gets his car around the circuit a full second faster than his team-mate in an identical car.
Ask a baker why his cakes are always the best in town. Why customers queue up every day.
Then ask a leader in any industry how they became the most envied brand. How they got to be so bloomin’ good at what they do.
They’ll all tell you the same thing: Practice, baby – practice.
They didn’t find the answers in a $20 book from Amazon. They didn’t have 73 million ‘experts’ telling them how to bake the perfect cupcake, how to tweak the front wing a few degrees up or down or if you put your hands a certain way you’ll get out of the blocks 1,000th of a second faster.
There’s no magic formula. There’s no ‘hidden’ secret. It’s about practice – trial and error – ‘old school’. A tweak here and a tweak there and monitor the results. You can’t find the answers in a $20 book. You can’t find the true ‘how tos’ in a free newsletter. Come on. If someone has spent half their life becoming the best at something do you really think, in between being paid $20,000 a day to apply what they know for top-paying clients they will tell you and I how to do the same?
Nope. They’ll happily tell you a lot of what they do but they sure ain’t gonna divulge the most valuable bits. The stuff that takes their results from ‘average’ to ‘remarkable’. The stuff that takes them from a few hundred bucks a day to tens of thousands a day in earnings?
Would you?
You’d most likely put a nice smile on your face – bounce around with oodles of confidence and keep schtum.
Many times it’s confidential information, anyway, so a lot of what these ‘experts’ do for their clients is (and rightly should be) kept under wraps.
Oh yeah, the “how they raked in millions in a matter of weeks with a sprinkling of ‘black hat’ SEO” is most likely BS so keep your $97 in the bank and start practicing.
Here’s a couple more thoughts:
Your local plumber might tell you how to fix a dripping tap but he’s not going to pop round and show you how to install a full central heating system. Is he?
Your electrician might tell you how to change a fuse but he is highly unlikely to describe in fine detail how to wire up you entire house.
Well, perhaps. On a nice lucrative daily rate he would.
Why would a true expert spend years of their life being in college, university, apprenticeships or just the world of hard knocks – just to tell everyone else how to do what they now know how to do?
Read between the lines, folks. There’s a reason some newspapers are free and similarly there’s a reason why there’s a gazzilion bits of free info out there in web land…
