Sunday Ramblings – A Contest and A Lesson from Jerks
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Well today I am taking an opportunity to vent about something that drives me absolutely insane… but before that I want to take an opportunity to let you know about a fantastic “Give Away” that is starting tomorrow and is being 100% sponsored by the guys behind StoreStacker.
You may recognize this as the store I put into the back-end of the GamerzReviewz blog I did for the COWPetition. Well the owner, Scott, came in contact with me a few months ago and asked about holding a contest here at JohnCow and since we were already booked up for contest, I had to wait and schedule it for August. Well when you see the prizes, you will agree with me that this is worth the wait. Scott has put together a fantastic list of prizes and I am going to make this very easy for everyone to get involved.
Here is what Scott is offering…
I will have all the details of the contest posted tomorrow so stay tuned!
I also want to thank http://www.storestacker.com for putting such a fantastic package together for us.
Now it is time for me to do a little venting!!
I have been in this business for a while now and if there is one thing that i absolutely know, it is there are some people who just thrive on being complete and “udder” A-Holes! (Yes I am sure you know what the A stands for there).
Well I am used to this, I have had thousands of customers and out of that you will always get the people that think everyone is out to screw them and take advantage of them. These people tend to never become successful because they are always blaming everyone else for their situation in life.
There are also the other people that just have too much time on their hands and make a point of researching and putting together bullcrap in order to make someone look bad and make themselves feel somehow like a better person.
In the internet marketing world, we have a bad reputation. People that do not understand our business immediately categorize us as spammers and or scammers. One of the wonderful things about owning this blog is it is free to come here and I am free to post and comment as I wish and this is often a great stress relief. Overall however I am pretty good at taking things with a grain of salt, I have come to realize that there are just jerks in this world who will always be out to blame and or hurt others to justify their existence.
What I can not take however and frankly pisses me off to no extent is when someone makes outlandish accusations without any justification at all.
OK, so now you are probably wondering… what the heck are you talking about here?
Well, as you know, I am helping my wife with a blog on Arthritis and the reason she picked this topic is because she has suffered from the condition for over 3 years now and is something she is very passionate about. Well one of the things I mentioned for her to do when she started this was to get involved in a couple forums and the reason is because she really should get involved in the community to understand it. Well over the past month, she has gotten very attached to two particular forums and absolutely loves them. She has been able to share things and learn things and it is a fantastic experience for her… or I should say it was.
Yesterday I saw a link from one of the forums that my wife is involved with and this individual started spouting off that my wife was the worst kind of spammer and scammer and should be put in jail, he started venting about using the forum for the wrong purpose and how she does not belong there. Now, he came to this conclusion not from anything my wife posted about, he could not use those since the 50 some odd posts she has made have all been sincere and heartfelt. Where he came to this conclusion was because he came to this blog and saw me mention forums for traffic and immediately ASSumed that this meant spamming.
The comments he made were completely ridiculous and it was in my opinion the most immature and outlandish reaction i have yet seen… and I honestly thought I have saw it all.
The individual is claiming because I am teaching my wife on how to get traffic that this must somehow mean she is scamming or spamming, which goes back to people not understanding what we do.
BUT then I need to ask myself…
Can You Blame Them???
I have never once condoned or suggested that anyone spam or scam anyone and in fact I say that if you want to build a long term business, doing such a thing is suicide. This however is not what lots of people that are in this business are doing. As I started looking at this, a lot of supporters started coming out in the forum saying that the guy that made the accusations is an idiot and has done this before, which then made my wife and I think… he is not really trying to be an ass (even though he is very good at it) but he is reacting to a situation that from his experience has been very negative.
Now do not get me wrong, I have no patience for these type of ignorant people, that no matter what anyone else says, will always feel that they are right and are advocates of “Guilty until you prove me your innocent”. But what I do understand from this and what we all need to learn from this, is these communities are passionate about their topics and extremely protective. The reason they are protective is because they are constantly having people sign-up for them and do nothing but spam the living crap out of them. This causes for some to be extremely paranoid and it reality many black hatters have given justification to this.
Now, I do not get into the topic of forums and communities for another few days but I want to take this opportunity now to set the record straight. If you are looking for a shortcut to traffic and want to learn how to take “negative advantage” of places like forums, this is not the place to learn. What I am going to teach you is the absolute importance of being open and honest in these communities and how you use them to learn, share and grow. If you goal is to “market” in these forums, you WILL fail.
Forums are only effective if you truly want to become a part of the community and be a resource to others. If your only goal is to make a buck, then do not waste one second of your time with forums.
When I showed Audrey the concept of forums, she had no idea these places even existed to the degree that they do and now she is addicted. She is learning more then ever before and is making friendships and is also feeling that she is helping others.
If you are in a community with nothing but the intention of marketing, then you really need to reevaluate what you are doing. Not everyone in this business is in this to ruin it for others, some of us actually want to offer value and help make places like forums better.
Now for the biggest lesson in all of this: Do not let people stop you from what you are doing. There will always be A-holes like Levlarry, in the world who think that they know you, that everyone is trying to scam them. These are people that do this to justify some inner sense of importance and what you and I need to understand is that there is nothing we can do about these type of people. We can not make them go away, we can not make them stop BUT what we can do is not give them the justification they are looking for. These people will not listen to what you say and you could spend hours wasting your valuable time trying to defend yourself when in fact there is nothing to prove because there is nothing to back up their accusations.
In summary however, I just want to say that “levlarry”, you are in fact an idiot, just like the others in that forum say about you and you are way of line with your retarded claims. bobotheASS (aka bobothegeek), you are simply just an ass (I am addressing bobo from a comment he made on this blog).
Me, this is my blog and so I can say what ever I please and this is what I wanted to talk about 
PS – blogging is great therapy
So, you got any opinions on this extremely far too long ramble or about the up and coming giveaway?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
John Cow dot ComSunday Ramblings – A Contest and A Lesson from JerksPosted: 10 Aug 2008 01:35 PM CDT
can’t make everybody happy… there will always be your nay sayers.
I’ve gotten some horrible emails, comments, etc. It ALMOST got me down but HELL NO! I ain’t gonna let people stop me from pursuing my dreams!! You can’t please everyone and there’s always gonna be idiots.
Move on keep doing what you love!
P.S. The giveaway looks awesome. I must admit, I haven’t entered one of yours in a looooong time.
thanks for the comment and yes there are always going to me idiots
I’ve been looking for a chance to purchase Store Stacker for a LONG TIME! cant wait to hear the additional details
That’s just ludicrous. Ppl need to get their heads out of their you know what. Being active in communities in order to gain traffic is what keeps sites alive. I don’t understand ppl sometimes.
ludicrous is a good word for it
Well said Jason …. I have participated in many fora and am quite proud of the fact that my name has always been consistently associated with fair play, respect and total honesty in my dealings with others.
I can honestly say that I respect all that you say here on John Cow …. and am amazed at the amount of knowledge you possess. If I could learn 10% of what you know I would be able to give up the day job and happily make a living from the net.
You have provided excellent guidance … and you have convinced me to sign up with Yaro! If you were to offer a simliar mentoring programme I’d have no hesitation signing up.
The world is full of fools, idiots, morons …. it is also full of genuine and honest people …. stick at it Jason and Audrey …. your time is appreciated.
Paddy Bloggits last blog post..A change of direction
Wow, that is a huge compliment and I am very thankful to your for it
Thank you so much for your comment! Very much appreciated.
Auds last blog post..Being Active with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Honesty will take you a long way
WebTrafficROIs last blog post..Killer Contest at BlogSmartly.com
Right on Jason. Every sucessful marketing type has it’s haters. We just have to use their comments to push us to achieve more. Keep it going!
Spot on there Jason. I have had a similar experience recently, i have a Flash Tutorial site and someone in a flash forum asked how to do something. Because the exact answer was on my site I referred them there. Result, got slammed as a spammer by one ****. I did not have to do anything in response though as by the time i saw his comment, ALOT of people had already told him where to go and thanked me for my help.
There’s always one!
The Dudes last blog post..Easing Explained for AS2 and AS3.
Yeah, usually I would love to post my URL but am scared what I am about to say would get me booted from some Affiliate Programs.
I love your thought on how we as internet marketers, we have to understand its our industry to blame. May I suggest this extends a bit further. The Affiliate Programs can be to blame (as are we, the conduits of said programs), and we all seem to be part of that racket. We get our programs with high payouts and then offer the world a scam. Really, has anyone made money filling-out surveys? I have made money telling people they would make money filling-out surveys, and they sign-up to only then be shoved 30 other make money offers, magazine buys, credit card offers, etc. I just scammed them for what- a $1.40 CPA?
Yesterday, I started taking down my offers which were not legitimate. Included was an airline offer and a Blockbuster offer that had nothing to do with either the airline or Blockbuster (I visited blockbuster.com and found who was their Affiliate Program of choice, signed up). Another was a children’s book offer (Dr, Suesss), which I distributed throughout my web site. I thought it had the elements which my audience would want, after clicking I found the offer was not “valid” in my area so I was redirected to a Vegas travel offer. As a matter of fact for this particular Affiliate Program I have only three remaining offers- a travel offer (I figure everyone should know there is a sales pitch when you get there), steaks, and dating. Sad thing is, this program offers the highest payouts and best promotions of the three affiliate programs I utilize. In good conscience I should not do their offers if I want to be honest with my site’s visitors, but the high payouts are hard to give-up. I should want to take care of them (my visitors) as they are taking care of me by visiting and being loyal in visiting again.
The two remaining programs are CJ and Linkshare, and I feel good using their programs because there are no scams. Just honest merchants promoting their wares. Sadly, they also pay a lot less. I have pushed I-Tunes hard but 5% for a $.099 download? And I am not even getting volume or high conversions.
So, when people not in affiliate marketing get their hackles up, we should be understanding as we are often the one’s who brought the wolf to hen house.
Often you are right. It makes me think about Google Analytics, I see people promoting these paid split testing services and I have tried them and nothing has been able to prove to me they are better then Google Analytics. I honestly feel because Google Analytics is free many marketers will instead promote a paid product that they get an affiliate share for. Now, I do not want to sound like a hypocrite here because I obviously promote affiliate products but I only promote products I truly believe in and have used.
Hi da_man,
I am pretty much on par with you. You try to sell products from CJ and Linkshare and the commissions are so low. It’s like to make money online you have to promote a friend’s product, which I do not. I mainly promote from these affiliate companies, because I want to be different, as oppose to a majority of others who sell and promote Internet marketing products.
I was turned off with Internet marketing a few years ago, when the gurus I followed, would always promote some “friend’s” or “mentor’s” product and most of them were crap or a rehash of other products I purchased before. It was like enough already! These days I just look elsewhere for other resources. I will also glance at some Internet marketers blog for info, but I am 99.9% sure I will never buy the “latest” and “greatest” product based off an Internet marketer’s recommendation. This does not mean I am slamming him or her, it is just I have been burned too many times. When “search thoroughly”, free information from the Internet works for me to build my business. If this means I miss out on not paying $100+ dollars to join a guru’s membership group because that guru has “already gone through the trenches” and “I will take forever in finding the right information” for my Internet business, so be it.
By the way, Mr JohnCow, I have always heard of you, but I never visited your web site, up until a few days ago. You have some good articles here. Well that is all. Take care everyone.
Well said – and really those people make it harder for honest people to try to get involved because they did not sign up for taking shit from people.
Two years ago my daughter (then eight) started a business. Sure I helped her with the design of a website but she was writing it and doing nearly everything else. Then people started bashing her and saying it was a gimmick I was doing. (Yes, I needed to exploit my daughter to make an extra $50 a month)
I was actually relieved when it kind of faded as an interest of hers. I wanted to teach her entrepreneurship, but ended up taking too much crap for it and it was really bad for me to see people attacking an 8 year old trying to start her own business.
Buzzoodle Rons last blog post..Personal Email in Business
Wow, I know how hard i had to fight being really pissed because it was my wife… i could only imagine how you must of felt about your eight year old daughter.
Some people in forums I met also complained the same things …some even think to sue the haters.
I think the best policy is to keep cool
. You cannot please anyone, yes. It’s a big world out there and people’s opinion are so diverse.
But I understand your feelings, personal attacks on your wife should not be tolerated, no forum will tolerate personal attacks on its member, after all.
I might do the same thing to defend my wife.
Freelocales last blog post..100 Ways to Help You Succeed Make Money
Yes forums can be a problem because of unethical marketers but also having been admin for a similar type of forum (a different arthritis related disease that I have) you will always have some that strike out.
Part of that comes from people that are in chronic pain and do have a habit of striking out sometimes just because they hurt and want to spread the pain.
Just something else to consider especially when dealing in any of the forums where people suffer from chronic pain.
Mike Paetzolds last blog post..Make a sale in 15 days with only $100 budget
Yeah, I was actually really shocked. She was selling some toys directly and doing some amazon affiliate links – nothing scammy or improper.
Your heart just sinks for people when you know their intentions are good but other people are reading into it too much.
In some ways, that is probably why only the thick skinned internet marketers are left and the “nice” non internet marketers get out after someone attacks them. It is not fun and there is no good way to defend yourself.
Hi Jason,
Firstly, a big thank you for the info and advice we get from you. My wife and I have a number of online businesses and we get so much great material from you that it amazes me that people can be so short sited and downright stupid.
We have had our share of nastiness, who would have thought my wife’s blog about homeschooling could bring out the scumbags who leave rude, derogatory comments about us and our reasons for homeschooling. I had a fellow call me all sorts of things on my recruitment site because I made reference to medical transcriptionists jobs and the opportunities in this field.
I know we are all big boys and girls and should just accept it and move on but it really does hurt sometimes. If these morons had any idea about the 18 hour days and months of hard work it takes to learn how to do business online they would perhaps think twice about making their hurtful allegations and comments.
I hope that you and Audrey have your BS filters turned way up and don’t let these maggots get to you. I think I can quite rightly say that you guys are greatly appreciated for who you are and we appreciate all your efforts. Keep up your outstanding work. (Couldn’t work out how to insert a round of applause
)
Johns last blog post..ROR Sitemap for http://www.hunterrecruitment.co.za/
I’ve run into that same problem teaching my fourteen year old brother how to create his website. He doesn’t have it up yet, we’re still brainstorming for a match between his actual interests and a decent niche market, but he’s already gotten flack from his friends over it.
I do believe that a significant part of the problem are these websites that are basically nothing more than a tableau of junk ads. I can’t tell you how many problems I have as a professional copywriter with these. It starts with a potential client who wants a simple sales letter or banner ad. When I start doing the research, I can tell that there’s no substance behind the website and nothing that will really produce customer loyalty or a good conversion rate. I tell the client “Ok, I can write this thing for you at the price you want to pay me, but it’s not going to do you any good. You need a better website, you need more content, and you need to establish an actual relationship with your customers.” Said client immediately accuses me of being a scammer and trying to get more money out of him or her. I shrug, tell them it’s not going to perform as desired, do what they want at the price we agreed upon, and wait for the inevitable shriek of “You’re a terrible marketer! Your ad (sales letter, what have you) doesn’t work!” It gets old fast, but I do have bills to pay and I can’t always afford to turn them down. Yet.
I suppose the upshot of this little rant of mine is that if people don’t have a quality product, a quality business plan, a genuine belief in their product and a willingness to actually participate in life and communities, the best copywriter, webdesigner, SEO expert or blogger in the world isn’t going to help.
And, while the scammers and spammers may be idiots, and may give us a bad name, I’ll take weak competition any day of the week.
Hey John!
I just wanted to say that I think you handled that well. I know if someone were to attack my wife like that I would be irate. I think it’s great that you looked at it from both perspectives. I would have been a little more narrow minded, not to mention furious.
Jerrys last blog post..NicheFree July 2008 Ebay Affiliate Income
Hey,
I just can’t wait for Store Stacker updates..:)
Yachikas last blog post..The Little Green Deeds
I want to point out that these giveaways are what drives traffic to your blog. You notice that John Cow has a lot of these and get the a lot of blog traffic. and we all want to get traffic to our blog.
Ultimate Blogging Experiments last blog post..Quality or Quantity of Blog Posts
It’s great to vent but naming names kinda is tit for tat and thats a waste of energy. I had my first unsuscribe to my list and his reason was he is tired of getting bombarded by offers…..I had not made any yet! So I had typed up a personal email letting him know I understood how he felt and I hoped he enjoyed my free guide then I said to myself….who cares. I give great value and I should not waste a minute of energy on the people who do not see that.
These kind of a-holes just do not understand how the Internet works, and the techniques that are necessary to bring people to a site, they think you build a site and magically you get traffic, yeah, maybe 10 years ago. It is too bad that often these people are the ones that do not know how to address their ignorance and instead shoot from the belt and attack those of us who are just trying to build and online presence.
JR’s Internet Marketing Strategiess last blog post..Don’t Let Negativity Kill Your Online Business!
This is something that chaps my ass as well.
When I started my own series of websites and started making money online, I would often try to help others do so as well.
I think internet business is one of the keys to freedom in the coming century as more and more go to work online and become their own boss.
Anyway, I found quite a lot of what you are talking about John. People don’t understand internet marketing so they think you must be one of those viagra spammers. I actually had one brick and mortar marketing guy tell me I was promoting a “pyramid scheme” when I proposed that my client allow his customers to earn money by affiliate commissions. It’s a solid online marketing model, but people in the offline world have never heard of affiliate commissions.
Beyond that, I find a lot of people have a governmentally induced (via our “education” establishment) socialist pathology syndrome that makes them averse to business in general. Go on any college campus these days and you will find most references to “business,” or “corporate” being used in a negative fashion.
Telling these people you are running a business is like confessing to a crime in their eyes.
-Ken
“Freedom Through Technology”
http://www.kenstech.com
Hi Jason,
I can’t believe it! After reading your blog I decided to run a contest in my blog. It’s about IM, but in spanish. I decided to do something similar to your contests, like giving tickets for twitting me, etc.
Today I sent the email to my list announcing the contest and… the very first comment in my blog is from a guy saying “that’s spam, because you are going to get a lot of false friends just to promote your blog”.
What should I tell this guy? I never sent an spam email in my whole life!
Anyway, luckily now the first contestants are starting to show up…
Alexs last blog post..Gran concurso !
Spam is if it is unwanted and unwarranted. For example people on twitter subscribe to you to hear what you got to say, so if you tell them in twitter about a contest you joined, i do not see how that is spam. If creating an account in twitter is spam.. that is going to need to be explained because it is not.
There are people like this everywhere and as long as you are not asking them to post in a forum (not good), email friends (not good) or something like that… then it is all good.
Yes, I agree, thank you. I already answered this guy in the blog and as you said, it really is a great stress relief!
Alexs last blog post..Gran concurso !
One of the new definitions out there is that if you create an account at a social bookmarking or blog site for the sole purpose of getting inbound links or RSS pings or bookmarks, it’s called linkspamming and is against search engine policy everywhere.
However, the moment you contribute anything that could qualify as real content, you’re no longer committing linkspamming but participating as an entrepreneur in an online community. Which isn’t illegal or even undesirable.
LadyCopywriters last blog post..Jul 9, Go Into Business As A Freelance Copywriter: Find Out How At CopywriterInfo.Com
Some comments are not worthy of a response…so many people feel empowered hiding behind their computers. People get “cocky” as if they’ve had one to many beers and lash out at decent, respectable people that are participating in the free enterprise system.
Thanks for running one of if not the best membership sites online…Portal Feeder rocks.
Best wishes,
Todd
Sweet… thanks Todd
Looks like the cow has become a raging bull
Seriously though, you are always going to find jerks in every area of life and the Internet just seems to amplify this and you just have to make sure you don’t lower yourself to their level (or else you’ll come off looking just as bad as them).
Jerks are just nature’s way of making nice people stand out.
John Cow, you are the greatest! I have given up on all the other marketers that offer much and charge a lot for nothing. Arthritis is a horrible disease and I pray your wife does well with it. Also, good luck to your daughter. B
With knowledge fear dissipates, and anger becomes understanding. News media plays on the fear of people not tuned into the Net, telling them the net is evil and it can’t be trusted for commerce. They warn us about our credit being stolen over the net, but neglect to tell us most cases happen in local stores, by store clerks that can see your pin number, and dumpster divers.
The new net user has to overcome the fear instilled by media and stores that look at us as a threat. Once net commerce has the biggest slice of the pie, and more “find anything” suppliers, The fear of being molested on the way to the store, will be greater than buying online.
But until that plays out, we will be accused of many things. As we grow out of the mindset of “the information super highway” into the mindset of “worlds major supply line”, the persistent, and thick skinned, will lead the way, dispelling lies and misunderstandings that lead to these off the wall attacks.
Kpems last blog post..ArizonaCameras
I felt your relief as I was reading your last few sentences. Good for you. I think you deserve some type of medal, for addressing the fellow who made such mean comments, but, more importantly, for defending your wife.
I am rather new to the blogoshpere and only yesterday found, and subscribed to, johncow.com. I’m glad I did.
Karens last blog post..5 Reasons Why Poor People Don’t Vote & Why They Might Vote In The Upcoming Election