Seth Godin says we are taking the "low road"...

Points well taken!

LOL! A bit cruel...

Some hair, some hair, my kingdom for some hair!

This is another of those "ne'er the twain shall meet" threads.

The high roaders are overethical business dummies who will never make a penny while the low roaders are soulless scumbags with no real friends.

Martin

I don't disagree Seth Godin isn't a pioneer. I'm just saying he's one of those guys who puts out more philosophy than practical and tactical techniques in what I've seen and read from him.

I'm not knockin him.

I don't agree with his high road low road theory... because look at Frank Kern, Matt Bacak, Tim Godfrey, the ClickBank gurus... all "low roaders" swimming in cash.

And I'm going to go ahead and put this out there and get stoned...

To do what Godin preaches, you need a MASSIVE AMOUNT OF TRAFFIC. While you can make as much or money money on the "low road" with a lot less traffic. ...And with the amount of traffic people like Godin generate, I believe they could turn that into a whole lot more traffic by using some "low road" tactics.

"People who build pages that are generous, filled with useful information and generally focused on teaching people do extremely well. They get a lot of traffic, a ton of clickthroughs and earn money every day."

This is a crock. Just because a page has useful info doesn't mean anything. It's a ton of work first of all to create enough content to get enough massive traffic to make any kind of good money on the "high road."

Just writing some content on Squidoo doesn't cut it... it doesn't mean you're attracting buyers with your keywords in your content, it works slower than paying for traffic, you need a heck of a lot of incoming links or your lens needs to go viral, it's a slower process, and again... you need MASSIVE traffic to make good money with Squidoo.

Correct. Seth did not make a factual presentation. He simply gave his elitist opinion about tactics that people have been using successfully for years. And, as you see, without facts to back it up, his minions "give credit where it's due."

Even if there were some facts to make the case, to call them "low-brow"?

Thanks, that's good to know.

With enough experience, there comes a point where you understand a given marketer's philosophy -- their way of "doing business." Your philosophy of giving credit where it's due is alright but, to me, it's dangerously close to the realm of referring to guys who pull of huge art heists as "masterminds." They're not. They're criminals. But the people who call them "masterminds" think they're giving credit where it's due.

Now, if you think I'm suggesting Seth is a criminal, you'll be even further away from the point than I could have anticipated. The point, however, is that you were manipulated... and it wasn't via some excellent presentation of facts -- it was due to one guy's "elitist opinion" about things that were once considered perfectly normal and appropriate, and which he probably used to get where he is.

Imagine that... he gets to the top of the mountain using mountain shoes and then tells you mountain shoes are now lowbrow. It would be less snotty if he told you they were simply "obsolete", but here you are, as I stated, "infecting" with his elitist opinion about things that helped a good many people move forward to success.

That is correct; you failed to see... because, in my experience of it, you seemed to think you were conveying some witty, experienced commentary when, in fact, it was simply one man's fallible opinion about things which people have used for years to achieve success. It would be one thing if he simply made the case for their being obsolete, but to suggest they are low-brow sows an "elitist" mentality in his readers with him as the king.

And, then, as you see, the minions do his preaching for him....


This is a good reply to the original poster. It is also important to note that it is a good marketing strategy to "duplicate THEN innovate".... start with something that is do-able at one's level and then make it remarkable as time goes on. But, for Seth to suggest certain tactics and strategies that have been regularly used for years to be LOW-BROW is somewhat elitist.

Actually when it comes to Return On Investment the remarkable products usually outperform the average products.

Put another way you might invest $500,000 to start a McDonald's franchise and make $200,000 a year.

But the guy who sets up his own deluxe steakhouse might only put out $30,000 and make $150,000 a year.

In the second model the return on investment is many times higher.

That's pretty common in the business world.

Generally speaking you get a much bigger return on dollar invested selling a product or service with huge profit margins and very little competition than you are selling a commodity with tight margins and high competition.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

I get his point and see what he's saying but he's lumping everyone together. There are legit online marketers that don't use the low road tricks.

[ lol - those tricks of the past continue to work, 10 years after everyone claimed they hate them and that they wold never respond to one.

If you are talking about BM, he did do a pretty good job of dragging that back from the grave.

lol! I loved that!
Does anybody remember Tommy Wu and all the bikini girls on his yacht? "you need to be rich like me my friend, with all these beautiful women!" lol.. my favorite infomercial guru of all time

Hi Johnny,

I wouldn't say "hype" was the defining characteristic of the low-road but even then it begs further defining because there's nothing wrong with EXUBERANCE and sharing potential earnings, or real example earnings. I said it before that we've been told, ad infinitum, that people buy on emotion and rationalize it later. As long as you give them the info product that you say you will, most of them will put it on their hard drive and let it collect dust for the next 50 years. Why is this so hard to get?

So, the question I have, is, could the guys you mentioned above have gotten where they are otherwise? They STARTED with the low-road approach. Even now, Ryan Deiss just promoted "Forced Continuity" - FORCED... whereas Seth's high-road is about PERMISSION.

The discrepency I'm seeing is that people seem to be presenting Seth's statement as an EITHER/OR... as in,

"You can either use high-road tactics and have long-term success... OR... you can use low-road tactics and have limited, short-term success"

Why can't it be both? Did all those "gurus" you mention suddenly "see the light" or did they just transition their low-road strategies at a time when they no longer would work for THEM? It is not an EITHER/OR situation, where one has to choose between high and low... they are not mutually exclusive and can (and, in my opinion, should) be combined.

Ok, this is one very good example of where you are missing the point... people use PEN NAMES. What I've been trying to say, all the while, is that, perhaps, (and this is only just a suggestion), you are caught up in the high-brow mindset where low-brow seems dirty, or potentially damaging. Yet, there's nothing LOW-BROW about it. People are pumping out PLR and can easily change their pen names on the box, or the sales letter, so reputation is a non-issue.

(note: by the way, that "crappy, warmed over PLR" is not only VERY useful, but it serves a very important purpose marketers can't live without. I'm going to start another thread on this titled something like, "Are You Out of Your Mind?")

You have to remember, those guys you mentioned all used low-brow tactics to get where they are. One was taken to task by the government for over-inflated claims and one, not mentioned, is a confessed spammer. They got where they are using low-brow tactics and they are doing just fine. They were even doing fine before they switched to these high-road tactics... it was just the right time for them to switch...

...but not to the exclusion of low-road tactics.

Personally, I wish you wouldn't keep saying that because I don't even know what the guy looks or sounds like. I know what I know from online endeavors, forums and real conversations with people who know what's going on behind the scenes. So, don't worry that I'll be fooled by his nonchalance.

The point still stands that they ALL used low-road tactics to get where they are. Can you ever get one of them to say, "Boy, I wish I never used those low-road tactics. They really destroyed my reputation." Can you get any of them to honestly admit that the majority of people can do well online with ONLY high-road tactics?

The two do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Of course, when people disagree with you, just tell them they're not bright enough to get it.

No, but what high-road means will change, and some of the tactics used by high-road marketers will become obsolete.

- Cherilyn

This is the point I was trying to make in my first contribution to this thread. At this stage of his career, Godin wants to be seen as a "thought leader" among his peers. One of his main venues for accomplishing this is through his blog.

Just the fact that we're still talking about it 3 days later is a feather in his cap. He's accomplished his objective. He's thrown something out there and created conversation and stirred up controversy.

If that is all you gathered from that statement, then you really missed the point. Of course there are other factors involved - but you don't think that providing quality products backed by quality service is at least partially contributing?

- Cherilyn