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Why People Keep Shoving Cold Hard Cash Into My Hands

Just in October, when I started this blog, I had the intention of cutting down my consultation services and focusing more on my personal projects, such as starting an Internet-based business. I definitely see the tremendous potential of the Internet.

That’s why despite my crazy schedule, I tried to kick start my blog a few months back… in vain. New businesses kept coming in. Which was a good problem to have. However, this severely slowed down my exploring the exciting world of Internet marketing.

But in October I decided enough is enough! I revamped my website and started this blog to share my profit strategies and start creating a brand awareness for myself and my company. I also posted some really valuable case studies.

Things were going well for a while. My blog traffic has kept on doubling. And I’m getting a lot of new overseas readers. I squeezed out time to post on this blog as often as I can. But little did I expect…

The blog actually brought in even more highly qualified prospects who are ready to do business with me! Instead of cutting down, I’m now swamped with prospects shoving their money at me.

For example, last week we received a few deposit checks like the one below.

Someone even gave me a $1,000 cold hard cash for a deposit! (By the way, for non-Singaporean readers, below is how a SGD1,000 note look like. I just love the feel of cold hard cash in my hands)

And I’ve just came back from closing another five-figure consulting deal. All of that in a week. With no advertising, no active promotion, no nothing. If you’re a regular reader of my blog you would know that I’ve not promoted my consultation services here at all. But that didn’t stop qualified prospects to seek me out. In fact, I’ve raised my fees twice this year, and I’m now considering raising them again.

NOPE! It’s NOT my intention to try to impress you. I’m sharing with you this to show you how important creating a strategic positioning is for your business.

When you’ve created a powerful positioning in the minds of your target market, like I did, it’s literally hard to stop them from coming to you.

Recently, in his Attention Age Doctrine 2, Rich Schefren talks about becoming a Maven in your chosen industry. In essence this is the same as creating a strategic positioning in your niche market. This is also what Jay Abraham is talking about when he talks about the strategy of preeminence. Or what Dan Kennedy promotes as your U.S.P.

All of those concepts are very similar and highly related. But if you boil down all these various sophisticated terms and concepts, at the end the core idea is about differentiating yourself.

How are you different from your competitors and the rest of the masses? If your differentiation is perceived as more valuable than the rest of the available offers, the profit floodgates will open up for you.

Don’t dismiss the critical importance of this! Deliberately and conciously take some time to create a strategic positioning for yourself. You will be massively rewarded for it.

The REAL TRUTH About Rich Schefren’s Attention Age Doctrine Nobody Talks About

I’ll probably rile a few people with this post, but I think I owe it to you, my readers, to post a truthful opinion on the latest Rich Schefren buzz. Just last week, Rich Schefren, the guru’s guru of Internet Marketing released his new Attention Age Doctrine 2.

In it he describes the increasing scarcity of attention prospects are willing to give to marketers. He also talks about the overwhelming ‘new wave’ of the Internet that is Web 2.0. He states that the future is in Web 2.0 (interactive websites such as blogs, social networks, forums, etc), and that the ‘old-way marketing’ is going to be dead.

I came across Rich’s work not too long ago. And I’m a fan and I think he provides tremendous value with his reports. More importantly I respect him as a very good marketer. He has strategically and successfully positioned himself as the guru’s guru.

BUT..!

Is what he presented in Attention Age Doctrine 2 really the case? Will Web 2.0 really overtake everything in Internet Marketing? Will traditional online marketing strategies really be left for dead?

Personally I don’t think so. While Rich’s presentation on the scarcity of attention is spot on, I have some reservations about the enthusiasm surrounding the whole Web 2.0 taking over the Internet theme.

And I’m not the only one doubting this. But let’s take a look at a few revealing things…

Rich released his Attention Age Doctrine 2 via his blog and email to his subscribers. He then drives all the traffic to an opt-in page, asking people to subscribe before downloading his doctrine. That is plain-vanilla traditional marketing technique, not some fancy Web 2.0 thing.

Granted that blogging is part of Web 2.0. But how effective is blogging as a marketer’s tool? Now, before you pro-bloggers get all work up about this, let’s listen to a few prominent pro-bloggers:

Andy Beard from Niche Marketing just wrote:

I Am Disappointed

Over the last 10 months I have been quite prominent in my support of Rich, but very few of my readers seem to trust me enough to give Rich an email address to download a free report…

RSS Readers Are Not Responsive

… I am honestly quite disappointed in how poorly responsive my RSS Readers are when offered free information from a source I trust.

Another very prominent pro-blogger I follow, Yaro Starak from Entrepreneurs-Journey commented:

Like you, I’ve been very disappointed by RSS response rates too and frankly, I don’t think RSS will ever replace email as much as I’d like it it.

RSS readers just don’t engage in the content the same way they do to an email in their inbox. That’s why I started building my email list to go with my blog and emails I send out ALWAYS outperform the posts I make to my blog.

You need to have the blog of course, but use all the efforts you are putting in here to attract traffic and get people onto a newsletter.

I’ve also just met up with my friend Alvin Phang of Gather Success and creator of Atomic Blogging: Step-by-step blogging system for newbies. He too mentioned that some of his secret strategies to his rapid rise in the blogging world that he revealed in Atomic Blogging is based on ‘traditional’ strategies as they are more effective.

Isn’t that interesting? This supports my earlier findings that traffic from social networks might not be as good in quality.

Another tell-tale sign: Just take a look at how often successful Internet Marketers blog. In general they (including Rich) blog much lesser in frequency compared to pro-bloggers. If Web 2.0 is really taking over, wouldn’t all of the big names be blogging more regularly?

Now, a sensitive question: Who do you think make more money? (I know the question is not specific and hard to compare etc, but I think you get what I mean)

But that’s not all. At the end of the doctrine, Rich also promotes his products. Doesn’t this sounds like traditional viral e-books? Isn’t what he is doing more like a traditional product launch strategy? By the way, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, it is an excellent strategy.

I think Web 2.0 is definitely an extremely important trend that marketers must pay attention to and leverage on. However, be very careful about just latching on to one idea (in this case that traditional online marketing strategies are going to be replaced fully by Web 2.0) and going to the extreme.

The ‘old’/'traditional’ principles of Internet Marketing are still working very well. This is because they are based on human nature, and human nature changes very VERY slowly, even though technology changes extremely fast. The best is to combine old strategies with new one, like what Rich has done, and not use them exclusively.

Again, I’m a fan of Rich’s work and I have a lot of respect for Rich. Just don’t get caught up with a new, ‘unproven’ idea and take it to the extreme.

Take care.

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