An Interesting Conversation About Marketing
August 31st, 2007 by 
Thomas
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
Posted in General Internet Marketing | 
Truer words have never been spoken. I can’t tell you how times I have reached out to people to try and help them break free of the daily grind.
Kudos Amit
Cheezy homemade biz cards are a pet peeve of mine…especially now that you can easily order professional cards online for under $20.
This is funny. Just the other day I was Wal-Mart and got into a conversation with one of their employees about the Web. The conversation was kinda cool until I told him I do affiilate marketing. He wouldn’t stop calling me a spammer..even following me through the store so he could continue taking out all the spam he has ever gotten on me. All those advertisers aren’t just handing Google money for nothing. Why don’t people get that?
Yes, in fact I have been called a spammer many times (not just in this case). One guy said, “So your the dude that’s been sending me all those stupid viagra emails!”. I guess it’s hard for me to understand that alot of people are still so green about the net in general.
Amit,
LOVE the story… totally typical.. even someone I employed last year who could see the intricate workings of my business still insisted all the stuff I was doing never works… and it was writing his paycheck!!!
I hired him to do programming… what a bust! He had so much knowledge but no common sense or an open mind… I would have partnered with him.. he had the world in his lap but was too stupid and stubborn to realize it.
He wanted to design content management systems and advertize locally to hotels etc. I was trying to explain to him about google etc. and he thought it was a bunch of garbage.
Lessen learned? I’m working full time from home and have a $50,000 SUV. He has a job as a truck driver making $400 a week and doesn’t work for me anymore. Last I heard he’s still trying to peddle his content management systems to local hotels.
Good luck to you pal.
Peter
PS No dosrespect to truck drivers… just proving working from home can be lucrative.
What’s dumb is the guy is making $300 per month and he thinks he knows it all. He has all the answers but not $$$. What’s worse is the guy didn’t think to ask how you were doing in you biz, to see if he could possibly learn from you, network, etc.
Thomas,
Interesting anecdote.
There are different models of traffic gen though, beyond PPC.
I’ve been doing social-based marketing, and it can be as powerful or more powerful than PPC in some cases.
What this guy did though seems to be wholly offline word of mouth marketing…
Maybe someone should send him a case study on the blair witch project or tim ferris’ 4hour workweek, which were both marketed at no or low cost via word-of-mouth/viral marketing alone…
People are always sceptical, till you start showing some stats…
Thats the quickest way to get people to listen.
Andrew,
Your right. Word of mouth/viral marketing is very effective in certain situtations. The problem with this guy was his overall prejudging attitude towards other ways to market that would REALLY grow his business. You have an online mall but don’t want to market to potential customers online?
The fact that he told me advertisers on Google, etc. are spammers and porn peddlers shows he’s either justifying his lack of understanding (or success) with online marketing, or defending “his” way. Comfort zone anyone?
He didn’t even ask me a single question when I told him what I did. He was too busy shooting down everything I brought up and “schooling” me on how to make $300 a month annoying guests at a party
Hey Thomas,
Better leave him to his $300 a month then…
Great story. I love how he apparently thinks he just needs to have plenty of time to automatically take that $300 a month to full time money.
Hi Tom,
Awesome post! While I was reading the post it occurred to me that the guy you were talking to is in MLM!
Think about it, online mall, word of mouth advertising, going around telling everyone at the party about it, $300/month after a freakin’ year! LOL
I sure he’s in Quitar or something like that, those guys don’t know the first think about online marketing, and their brainwash with all this bullshit that “online marketing really doesn’t work”!
Sincerely,
Amit
I very enjoy reading your article.
Thank you for good content.
I will be back again