New old memeber

It's an art, a science and a really fun game all rolled into one.

You tried listening to the "gurus", how much have you made?

People who buy into the "passion" rhetoric are suckers. That's why "gurus" spout that nonsense at them. It's about extracting money from people like you.

As with many other things, marketing can be learned but if you don't have the underlying talent it won't be effective. You can teach a computer to play the piano but will it play with feeling?

Based solely on your post I think you should create a service or write a blog with your knowledge.

Brent

TLDR: You need both. I don't think it's an either or. Internet Marketing, or really any business endeavour, should be thought of more like a woven piece of cloth than just a couple independent strings of cotton. There is definitely an art to business. There are things that a textbook or a manual just can't teach you. You have to learn your market and pull things out of them that is more of an art than anything. There are also things that are just fundamental that must be in place, and a variety of models and methods to achieving success, if ignored you won't win (science).

Let me explain a couple of things using examples in the business I'm in.

Copywriting Example:
In copywriting, it's arguable you have to wear a variety of hats throughout the copy process. One of the common metaphors is the Artist, Warrior and Judge.

As the Artist, you have to understand that the copy process is a "living" thing, whereas that it may take a while to really formulate exactly what you're saying or the best hook or angle to use. You have to understand your market, mostly what drives them to take action. Often times, it boils down to pain vs pleasure. Make $5,000 a Month while Relaxing on the Beach with My ABC Program vs Stop Dodging Those Collections Calls and Make the Change You Need in Your Life Today. These two ideas could really be selling the same product, but one of them is trying to get people to move towards something, where the other is trying to get them to move away from something. Just in this paragraph, I may have been able to teach someone reading this some basic/core copywriting principles (+Science) Being able to not only understand your market but to relate to how they feel inside is something that just can't be taught (+Artist)

As the Warrior you have to be able to defend your copy from scrutiny and stand your ground sometimes in order to test things. Conversely, as the Judge, you have to be able to take off those rose-tinted glasses and stop being "in-love" with your idea enough to understand that it could have flaws and look objectively at the copy you've written. A good model we use in my organization is the "CUBB" model. This allows us to quickly judge a piece of copy, despite what kind of copy it is. We ask four questions in the CUBB model: Is it Confusing? Is it Unbelievable? Is it Boring? Is it just Bad? Once again, maybe I was able to enlighten someone on this forum with this model, and this can carry you a long way if you really start asking these questions (+Science). But once again, understanding the difference between good and bad, congruent and incongruent and how the reader will respond to this and what should and shouldn't be passed through the gauntlet is primarily developed (in my opinion) by experience and just writing copy (+Artist)

Data Analytics / Business Analytics:
So this is something that many people don't really consider much. Math. This should all be science-based right? How can this possibly be in any shape or form artsy?

Let's use a pretty normal example to explain my thought process:

You spend the time to develop 5 ads, 3 lead magnets, 5 sets of 5 follow up emails (see what I did there? lol) and then ran it through Facebook Ads with a testing budget. You ended up with 80 opt-ins, and NO SALES! Let's break this down into what an analytical/numbers person would see. (Now I'm going to start just plugging in numbers for the example) Let's say you spend about $500 on Facebook. From my perspective, it looks like you had about 75 probable outcomes (5 Ads x 3 LMs x 5 Sets of Emails). That puts us at about $6.75/outcome, which probably isn't big enough to get any meaningful data from it (+Science - Using Statistic Knowledge). So we should continue testing, or should we? Were we hitting the right angle? Was there something broken? Was their something wrong with a message? Was the targetting off? (+Artist). Another perspective: Our product/course's projected cart value is $100. We are projecting a 1% conversion rate from the sales page immediately after the optin and then another 1% converting on our autoresponder. That's a 2% Total Conversion Rate over a 15 Day Spread. So that's 1 sale out of 50 optins. From our math, we really can't afford to spend more than $2/optin. We're currently paying $3.25/optin. We're just not profitable mathematical-wise (+Science - as the formula and the way I came to that conclusion is just using basic numbers and understanding metrics). So what's the solution? It could be that you add another product in the mix and get an additional 1% Conversion Rate overall, or improving the ad-to-optin conversion rate, or maybe even implement a FB Chat Bot to increase consumption of your material (+Artist)

See where this is going? Just knowing the science or the methodology pails in comparison to actually understanding your business in a more intimate level. Conversely, not knowing how to calculate metrics, and slowly losing money on failing campaigns is horrible as well. Same as sticking to some shenanigan-based doctrine and not really taking your business seriously (specifically talking about the "If you build it, believe in it, everything will work out in the end crowd").


I have a couple of points I'd like to mention here.

First, no one will ever really buy a course about the "flow state". "Flow state" in of itself isn't something to build a business around. No one (speaking mass-market here, I'm sure you search for this stuff lol) searches in Google with buyer's intent or a big pain point about how they are just yearning for experiential experiments to produce immediate feedback. BUT...

You are absolutely right that your USP is deeply related into this flow state stuff. That can be your entire mechanism behind an entire series of products in the future. You just have to understand that your USP =/= what you're actually trying to sell. So, let's start to figure out what people are actually interested in achieving in life:

Making Money/Being Successful
Relationships / Intimacy
Health / Weight Loss

I'm sure you've been exposed to these "common" niches that just are over saturated. That's why the idea of the USP exists. How can your product deliver where others have failed.

Are You Running Your Business or is Your Business Running You? My Flow Growth Protocol is Guaranteed to Skyrocket Your Profits while Freeing Up More of Your Time without Having to Hire Anyone!

Tired of Being the Beta Male? My Alpha Flow Protocol Turns Your into a Desirable Male and Gets Girls to Ask You Out even if You're Not Into the Bar Scene

Tired of Jumping from Diet to Diet or Workout Plan to Workout Plan? My Adonis-Flow Protocol turns you into a Chiseled Greek God without touching Weights or Following a Strict Diet

Notice in these examples (probably poorly written examples, but they just came to me) they are positioning your expertise, which in this case is the behavioural psychology stuff so that you can teach your expertise and allow your students/clients/customers to get success in areas of their life that are pain-driven and intense areas of their lives.

You then market your USP even further by promising simple life hacks that create immediate feedback loops so you know within hours if you're on the right track. By utilizing my FBL Accountability System (they don't need to know what FBL stands for) you'll see instant results or your money back!

See my point? Your expertise is spot on, but your expertise is the mechanism. People buy the car, they don't go to dealership trying to buy the engine. You don't sell them the mechanism (flow state), you sell them the promise (wealth, health, romance, etc).

Lemme know if you have questions!

Charles, I don't get it. Read all those words, still don't know the real question. The OPINIONS on Passion vs Money focus will be given to you by those believers, who have their own anecdotal "proof" that one is better than the other. You can count on their opinions, because they KNOW. Well, they know what worked for them.

As a behavioral scientist, you know to write these off for what they are. You'll see shortly what I'm talking about.

The skill set, from a scientific point, which means repeatable, and when applied by anyone, may or may not exist. I know of one "formula", which has been applied by several companies and have resulted in multi-billions of dollars of verifiable business.

It isn't complicated. Four parts: Prospect + Product + Promotion + Media = Success, giving each the weight it needs.

Each of the four need to be TENS, on a scale of 1 to 10. There is a scientific way to rank them, if any are less than 10's you won't achieve maximum results.

You could have, 10+10+10+9 and NOT get good results. Ratings are done on known data, or buyer history.

A prospect, and since we're being long winded today, I'll take my time.

Dating. A 10 prospect in the dating arena would be someone who has bought products, and hopefully several of them. If he has never bought a product, but just searched for free info, he might be a 9. You want a 10. A known buyer (that is, if speed is your concern).

So, maybe a 29 year old guy who wants what? To get laid? True love? Marriage? All of the demographic info would go toward the clear vision of what HE WANTS. A 10 has to be hungry for what he wants, and demonstrate that hunger with his wallet.

A 10 PRODUCT, might be an eBook or a course on how to get laid, if that is the TARGET, your demographics, knowledge of your TARGET will inform you as to what a 10 product might be. Maybe this guy, at 29, just needs some action.

And he is on a list of buyers for a PU (Pick-Up) ebook. So something like Approach Game: The Secrets of Getting Laid, available at Amazon, might be a 10 product

You are half way home. You have a TARGET, a prospect, and a PRODUCT, both weighted at 10. Now you need a PROMOTION. Clickbank has a promotion for INSIDER INTERNET DATING, a Playboy publication.

Sites like themodernman dot com specialize in this sort of thing. And a place like this or a Facebook site, like pickupartist academy, would be the 10 INTERSECTION of your promotion, and media.

Today, your media choice is probably INTERNET, but which way, email, video (youtube), social media, facebook et al, web site, affiliate site???

If you are able to put all 10's into your process, your success is "almost" guaranteed, albeit, the human factor as a behaviorist knows, can skew and screw up anything.

You would identify all four parts of ANY choice, be it a choice of passion, because you love something, like golf, then you know there are others who love it too, so you go through the same process, OR,

if you choose golf as a niche because you know people BUY stuff, spend money and it is an evergreen market, it really doesn't matter. As long as you come up with a 40 in your evaluation, you are off to a good start.

IF your so-called experiential experiments really work, as you say they do, in business...then I would think you have your perfect product already in hand. How many people want success in business (making money?) and you have tools which give them the feedback to adjust their movement, well, what is your real question?

GordonJ

PS. NOT my formula, used by 3 100 million dollar a year direct marketing companies to sell billions of dollars of products. Also, what would Arathorn do?