An Interesting Conversation About Marketing

A couple of weeks ago, My wife and I were invited to a backyard BBQ that one of her co-workers put together. It was a friday night, so my wife rushed home from work and we shot across town in time not to miss the party.

When we showed up there was about 30 people eating, drinking and having a good time. About half way through the night, I noticed a couple of guys across the yard who looked like they were having a heated conversation.

I’m nosey,  so I decided to go over and find out what the convo was all about

When I first approached them, one of the guys instantly stopped talking and scuttled away. The other guy just stood there with a puzzling look on his face, staring down at the lawn.

I said, “Hey, how’s it going? I’m Thomas.”

He introduced himself and asked me what I did for a living. I said “I work out of my house, I’m an affiliate marketer, what do you do?” After a long pause, he said “I’m a corporate bitch. I sit around making people I don’t really like money. Like that guy that just walked away over there.”

I said, “That sucks, is he your boss?”

He replied, “Yeah, one of them. But probably not on monday, I just told him I was sick of my job and I’m quitting soon to focus on my online mall full-time!”

“That’s cool.” I said, “So how long have you been running your site?”

“About a year now. it’s up to $300 bucks a month,  all from word of mouth.”

Now I don’t know about you, but $300 dollars a month for a years worth of work doesn’t seem like a lot to me, or enough to quit your job, but ok.

I thought about it for a second and said, “Do you advertise online, like on Google, Yahoo, etc.?”

He replied, “No, that stuff doesn’t work. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising there is.”

I said, “You really believe that advertising online doesn’t work? How do you think Google makes most of their money?”

“Ripping people off who don’t know anything about marketing.” he said.

“Do you know people make millions per year with contextual advertsing, etc.? You should really look into it” I replied.

“Yeah, but it’s mostly spammer stuff and porn peddlers, not legitimate businesses like mine. I don’t want to be a affiliate marketer like that.”

Still a little frustrated, he excused himself and walked away to “spread the word” about his online mall to the other guests and pass out his cheesy homemade business cards he printed out on the old colored inkjet that obviously needed a good head cleaning . Ok bro.

Lesson for the day? Prejudging opportunity is why people stay broke.

Whatever. 

More money for all of us spammers I guess