Adventures in Lifestyle Design from a Path Less Traveled
The Myth of the Soulless Marketer
Note: This is a continuation of a discussion about Awesome Bloggers (people who believe that marketing is beneath them or that quality content should naturally do all the work for them without any marketing effort involved)
I meant to put this out last week, but I got completely snowed under with a deadline that has basically taken over my life for the past three weeks. Well, it’s all done now, so I feel like I can finally get my life back to normal.
Today, I’d like to talk about the second kind of marketer I see online these days. For the sake of this blog post, I’ll call them the Soulless Marketer.
The Soulless Marketer is the opposite of the Awesome Blogger.
To the Soulless Marketer, it is all just about numbers. They completely lose touch with the fact that actual human beings use the internet and that real people will ultimately make the decision to buy stuff.
The Soulless Marketer might try to outsource a bunch of work to build a website. They may hire someone to write articles for them. But when looking at how much it costs, they might think “why should I pay a native English speaker to write these articles for $10 each when I can get someone in Bangladesh to write for $1 per article?”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with hiring someone to write content for you, and there is nothing inherently wrong with outsourcing work to Bangladesh (or anywhere else for that matter).
The problem comes from the fact that they are choosing an option simply because it is the cheapest without regard for quality.
I was on a forum a while ago and I saw someone posting about how they submitted an article to an article directory. The directory declined their article for an “unknown reason.” The person then contacted the directory owner and asked why the article was declined. Their response: “Oh sorry about that. Your article is fine. It’s just that our editor is absolutely horrible. He’s the worst. But, hey, he lives in Pakistan so we don’t have to pay him much.”
As if that somehow makes it all worthwhile.
“Well, gee, he was the lowest bidder out we could find, so of course we hired him.”
The Soulless Marketer doesn’t see anything wrong with this statement. Why pay $10 for a well-thought article written by someone who can write English and may even have a passion for the subject when you can pay someone $1 to string together a series of words that may or may not make sense and only vaguely resembles the English language?
Another example of the Soulless Marketer: I was researching weight loss quite some time ago for something I was writing. I found an article on Ezine Articles that advocated spinning in circles to re-balance your endocrine system so that your body can burn fat. Now, I have no medical credentials, but that is some of the dumbest advice I’ve ever heard of.
It didn’t stop there though. The next cutting edge tip from this Pulitzer Prize winner was to drink cold beverages instead of warm beverages. The theory was that your body would have to burn more calories in order to bring the cold liquid up to the same temperature as your body. Now, this might work, technically, but I would be surprised if you burnt more than 1 calorie because of this.
“But, hey, that article was probably dirt cheap, right, so it’s all good, bro. Right? After all I just need backlinks and I’m set for life.”
Let’s not forget that actual people read our websites.
Even if you did get your “creative” article on weight loss ranked on the front page of Google through some miracle, how many people do you think will be so moved by that brilliant bit of copy that they will whip out their credit cards and buy your guide on spinning in circles and drinking cold beverages for weight loss?
Some people argue that if you give away the “real” advice on your free content, then no one will click on your links, buy your stuff, or otherwise shove wads of cash in your pockets. They argue that you should give zero value in your articles so that the reader will be no closer to solving their problem and move on to buy something.
I think this is a huge mistake and it will only leave your content as worthless and superficial as my thoughts were in high school.
Don’t be afraid to give out your best content. On one hand, people will think “Whoa, this is pretty bomb! Gimme more! I want a hit of the premium stuff.”
On the other hand, the jaded and cynical part of me also believes that people tend to discount free advice even if it is the exact same stuff they would later on pay for. I believe that people don’t really pay attention to what you’re saying in most cases until they put down some cash on the table. The act of paying money somehow makes people pay attention.
And if you’re going to hire someone to write your content for you, please don’t just go with the cheapest option simply because it is the cheapest. Take a lesson from the Awesome Blogger and make sure your content is awesome enough for actual humans to read.
Teaser Alert – How is someone supposed to make money online with these two flawed options? Like most dichotomies, is it possible that there is a third option?
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Haha, I like the humor in this post. Waiting for the third option :)
On another note, my rankings aren’t going up even with daily well spuned article submissions to directories. Do you think link juice from article directories have been massively cut back since the panda update?
@Frank, Thanks! I think what is most likely is that your site is just in the SandBox. Unfortunately there really isn’t much you can do except continue building links. I’ve heard that buying a listing in the Yahoo directory can get you out of the SandBox, but that can be pricey. I say just keep building links and eventually you’ll pop back out.
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