About a year ago, I went to Thailand for just shy of 3 months. It was a really cool experience, and despite my best efforts, I think I actually learned something from it.

I’m going to be synthesizing all of that here, in the Benefiting from Bangkok Manifesto.

But first, a little bit of background…

I started having all of these dangerous ideas sometime around the spring and summer of 2011, after doing affiliate marketing for over a year. For the longest time I thought there were 2 separate ways to make money online. Either by becoming a charismatic blogger or by selling stuff hardcore with aggressive marketing.

Awesome Bloggers – Those who do not market

Soulless Marketers – Those who do not remember that their visitors are actual people

Somehow I tried to reconcile this false duality after meeting some people that actually managed to straddle both sides of the fence. I wrote this post, which most readers ignored (because it had nothing to do with getting backlinks).

The Marketing Divide

Then later on, I wrote about some things that I observed in my trip to Thailand in 2010 about marketing and getting people to buy stuff

5 Marketing Lessons from Thailand

From here it was a short jump to realize that there actually are 2 different types of businesses, but it wasn’t between the Awesome Bloggers and between the Soulless Marketers. There was a very different dynamic going on.

This dynamic is the key to long-term success online, which has become what I’m calling the Benefiting from Bangkok Manifesto

Introduction

Benefiting from Bangkok 01 – The 2 Types of Businesses – Introducing Food Carts and Elephants

How to Create the Elephant Effect

Benefiting from Bangkok 02 – The Power of Stories – Creating an addictive business

Benefiting from Bangkok 03 – The Decision Economy – Being the fork in the road