The Dangerous Truth About Internet Marketing Culture From Somebody On The "Inside"

Before I post this... it must be made crystal clear that I have nothing to sell you.

This isn't a free report given in the hopes of luring you into a sales funnel.

I don't want your e-mail address.

And the only thing you'll find in my signature are two quotes (as opposed to a link that if you visit will make me money).

The first is from Warren Zevon (RIP) who is a favorite rock artist of mine.

The second is Sanskrit. It's pronounced, roughly, "Tat Tvam Asi". Which translates in English to "thou art that". Or more plainly, "you're it".

More on that in a minute.

For now, there is something I'd like to address that nobody seems to be talking about at all.

I'm probably going to miff a lot of people by writing this post... but that's alright. (At least, I hope I do. If not, that means that more people are sleeping than I realized.)

Here's what is being left out of every sales message being delivered today: if you really believe there is some way to improve yourself, somewhere to go that's better than where you are now as a place to arrive at... whether that be having your own business, or making [x] more amount of dollars per year or month, or what have you... you're a sucker. You've fooled yourself and you're setting yourself up for eternal disappointment. You are what the Zen Buddhists call "a mosquito biting an iron bull".

Obviously there is a sense in which we can measure the goings on of our lives and business. And so because we can measure we can point to marked improvements. In the sense that $20,000.00 per month is indeed more than $10,000.00, it's true that you can improve your sales.

It's not in that sense I'm speaking.

Because basic to that point of view is a level of magnification that misses the forest for the trees.

That is to say, it's narrow minded. If that's where you're at, you've got tunnel vision.

And what I aim to do is take off the blinders and show you the whole picture.

What qualifies me to speak like this?

For starters, I'm a professional working copy writer. I was trained by John Carlton and his simple writing system team. In fact, on the front page of simplewritingsystem.com, you'll notice what look like newspaper clippings scattered throughout the page. Each of these is a case study of some student of theirs who has had enough success that they consider it brag-worthy.

They so enjoyed my unlikely story and go-to guy attitude that they listed it in one of these case studies (#152) and decided to interview me about it (I'm not sure if it's still up but it was on some site at one point.)

I enjoy a client list that calls me. I put zero effort into promoting myself at all.(I have no website, portfolio or even a resume. All my business is spread word of mouth and recently I've even received calls from so far away as New Zealand and Thailand asking me to write. I turned down both of these offers.)

One of my clients is a global company that does tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue (this year they're projected to do much more) and has afforded me the opportunity to attend private, Playboy-mansion style parties with gigantic ice sculptures, open bars, world-class dining, dancers, DJs, "fine art", go-go girls, red carpets and free valet parking.

They even fly me around and pay for my seminar fees to go study with internet marketing legends.

I'm not saying any of this to brag and it should be noted that there are many people on this forum who are more "insiders" than I am. I'm telling you my story though to demonstrate a certain level of success that is enough to illustrate my point.

Recently I found a journal I had written when I was about 16.

I had just begun reading "The Gary Halbert Letter" and so I wrote out a goal, in the style of Psycho Cybernetics or anything Napoleon Hill. It read, "I'm living in San Francisco in my own place as a professional copywriter earning [x] dollars per year."

As I write this Warrior Forum post, I'm 23.

The path wasn't exactly a straight line.

The past four and a half years have been spent as a Marine reservist (deployed last year) and working many blue collar jobs.

But a couple of months ago I woke up and realized, "Holy ****, I've arrived."

I was living the dream I wrote out in that journal years ago.

And the truth is... I don't feel much different from how I always felt.

It's like when you're 17... everyone who knows you knows that soon you'll be an "adult" (whatever the hell that means) and so they ask you after your birthday, how does it feel to be 18?

Maybe you humor them, maybe you don't... but you know as you look inside and search around... you don't feel much different than you did the day before.

And there's a sort of let down because, as Clarence Bass says, "a goal achieved is a goal lost."

You're still here.

There's that feeling of "huh.. this is it?"

Now this has been written about in every culture in every way imaginable. It was the chief concern of philosophers like Alan Watts and Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Arguably, it's the reason we have religion at all. (Other than to dominate, control and exploit the masses.)

But in today's culture those are the sorts of things that are either bad form to talk about in public forums in the case of religion, or in the case of philosophy, either a dry, boring academic workout... or else reserved for conversations when people get completely baked on marijuana or some drug like it.

And so instead of religion or philosophy we've dressed up our anxieties into more conventionally acceptable terms like "self-help" or "passion" or "drive" or "career".

But make no mistake about it...

There's zero difference fundamentally between the salvation being chased by churchgoers and offered by religion on the one hand... and the anxiety we feel as a society to get some place called "the good life" on the other. So instead of joining a church you might throw on yourself the burden of becoming an internet marketer. Or a copy writer. Or something like this.

So in that sense, we create a fantasy of what it'll be like when we "arrive". If only we have this business, everything else will be alright. Or if we can make enough money to buy a house and a car and all these things, maybe make our friends jealous or finally get that one-up on society, we'll be okay. It'll all have been worth it. In this internet marketing culture, the manifestations of this are really ridiculous sometimes. I mean it boils down to increases not just in dollars per milisecond, but things like click through ratios, unique visitors... it's overwhelming really.

You know, we have our heaven or paradise in our minds eye that we're constantly chasing.

The whole world has gone absolutely bat **** with this sort of thing.

You have self-help societies now. People teaching "the secret" or how to think and grow rich or Wallace Wattles' science of growing rich or NLP.

I'm here to tell you that it won't make a lick of difference.

You could make more money than even makes sense to your currently broke mind as early as tomorrow... and you still won't arrive.

Research people who win the lotto.

Most go broke in a shockingly short amount of time.

Or watch VH1 Behind the Music. "Success", the way we define it at large, could easily be seen as more of a curse than a blessing.

Before this post goes on though, let it be known... I'm not preaching. I'm not saying anyone ought to be a certain way. It could just as well be that this particular game... of trying to get somewhere... is your own personal preference. And to get lost in our human dramas is an awfully delightful pleasure I wouldn't dream of denying anybody.

The idea I'm putting forward is simply this: that if red is all you know, you don't know it's red. You only know so when you have other colors to put next to it.

That is to say that opposites arise mutually. For every black, there's a white, for every up a down and for every in an out.

To try to climb up as a way of getting rid of down we immediately recognize as silly. In fact, you only defeat yourself and make things worse because the higher up you climb the more pronounced down becomes (and the further you have to fall.)

And so in the same way... if you really believe that you can climb up the internet marketing ladder and it will improve you somehow and solve all your problems, you're really lost. You've taken the bait in a BIG way and you're in perfect position for a very rude awakening.

You'll have all sorts of new problems and obligations. You'll be scared out of your mind because the life of an entrepreneur is about as insecure as they get. Your schedule will become much different from all your friends in the "real world" who have "real jobs". (Which usually means "real drag".)

So don't believe the smoke and mirrors, friends.

All the people you see putting on seminars, teaching people how to live their version of the "good life"... they're exactly the same quaking little mess you are. (And they've got happy trigger fingers for sending their latest installment of Operation:Moneysuck into your inbox.)

Don't you believe anyone who tells you different. All the good guys will fess up to this. Life doesn't suddenly stop being life once you've "made it".

That's just the point of this post. There is nothing to be made. How do you measure "making it"?

You'll see all these guys teaching will usually have something to say about setting goals. Here's how to set a goal for [x] dollars per month. Here's what you can do to scale it up to this much. And so on. Ad infinitum.

If you can't see how that is a dead-end pattern, then you're probably not ready to read this sort of message anyway. You've got some more bruises to suffer through before you're ready.

Then once you really get into it, after so many years, people will have masterminds for health too. Now, our bodies are starting to fall apart. So it's not just enough to make a gazillion dollars an hour, we've got to stretch this life out as far as we can... we've got to live 100 years!

So now you're on Mercola.com reading about how coconut oil will reduce your blood pressure, improve your skin and in general make you a better person... and you're doing Tai Chi or yoga or some other discipline to improve yourself (which is ironic, because both of these disciplines, especially yoga, have nothing to do whatsoever with improving yourself. In fact, the first of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali reads "Yoga is the cessation of revolutions of the mind." Meaning that efforts toward self-improvement are immediate proof you've missed the point entirely.)

Madness.

I'll tell you the secret to getting rid of all this. Or rather, I'll allude to it. I can't really speak about it explicitly because it is an implicit truth. I've got the problem of the Zen teacher who's really just pointing to the moon. The problem is most people end up staring at the finger, and as Bruce Lee put it, "miss all that heavenly glory."

Or to use a more common analogy, they walk up the sign post instead of following the sign.

Earlier I mentioned in my signature a Sanskrit quote.

Tat Tvam Asi.

"Thou art that."

In modern language, "you're it."

What this means is... when you become awake to this truth... you realize the you that is responsible for taking care of your chores, fulfilling your responsibilities, and who spends your waking hours fantasizing about where you ought to be... isn't the "whole" you.

You begin to get the sensation that the "me" who you call whatever your name is... rather than just being a little ego trapped in a bag of skin... is completely arbitrary as an identity.

That is to say... that in the same way you won't find meridian lines out on the ocean when you're sailing... in the real world, [your name here] doesn't exist.

It's just a reference point. A symbol. A trap of language coupled with, as Alan Watts once put it, "a chronic sense of muscular strain." (He was talking about how we identify with our bodies as a location in space being here and now.)

When you get this... when it really clicks for you... it's plain as day that the same you who answers when someone calls your name is also responsible for growing your hair, regulating your blood pressure, replacing your skin and nails, beating your heart and all of whatever is going on in the place you call here and now.

In common language we say that these things "just happen". Or when asked, how does your hair grow... we don't feel responsible for this as much as we do finishing our homework.

But this is the result of social conditioning. Nothing more. In truth, it is you who is doing all of it.

When you feel that, you understand that the same you who beats your heart is shining the furthest star in a galaxy yet to be discovered. This is what the Hindus mean when they say "Thou Art That."

You're it.

That's the big secret, if it can be said there is such a thing.

If you want a secret, rather than that dreadful DVD that's become so popular, filling everyone's head and hearts with hopes for a nameless genie that will happily (albeit slowly sometimes) fulfill their every whim.... this is the secret.

It's tricky though because it's so damn obvious and fundamental we miss it.

What I'm pointing to is right here and now. It's just... what's going on. There is nowhere else than here and no when else than now. Never has been, never will be. You can't get away from it, and you can't help but be it.

As the Taoists say, "The Tao that can be deviated from is not the Tao."

But we've hypnotized ourselves into thinking there's somewhere else we ought to be.

And if that's the game you want to play... if you'd like to remain sleeping... that's your prerogative.

Like I said, I'm not preaching. I'm not saying you ought to go one way or another. But to make an educated decision it's best you have the facts laid out in front of you. So I'm reporting the state of affairs. Here it is. That really, there is no problem to life and you don't need to join a monthly group charging you $99.00 billed to your Visa to find a solution to a problem that isn't there.

You can choose to keep buying new memberships, new e-books, new money-making courses, new offers... you know you'll never run out? The more you buy the more will be made available to you (if for no other reason than most smart marketers know that the real money is in the back-end). You can keep following this never-ending rabbit hole in pursuit of "the good life".

Or... you can wake up.

You can see what's really going on and get with it.

When you do, you'll see that any journey you could ever take could only ever possibly lead to right here.

It's in this spirit that the Taoist sage Lao Tzu wrote, "To know the whole world without ever leaving home."

This right now is as good and as bad as its ever going to get, because there's nothing else.

And that's liberation, in Buddhist phrasing. For most Westerners, they'll be more at home with a term like "salvation"... but I hesitate to use that because it's a bit muddy with a lot of Christian dogma.

For now though, it'll do the trick.

The real bonus is that once you wake up to this you see that it's not serious. It all becomes a game. And paradoxically, you become much better at it. You get it by giving it up. Because you free up a hell of a lot of energy when you're not constantly grinding your gears trying to help life along.

So this is the trick then... to learn to go with the stream instead of against it. To hoist a sail and ride the wind instead of wearing yourself out.

Maybe delving into Hindu mysticism is a bit heavy for your typical internet marketing forum... but for those that it resonates with it'll be valuable.

And to those who realize that this entrepreneurship thing was suppose to be a way to get liberated from the rat race, not just find a new track to run, this will be an important message.

Peace.