Quote:
Originally Posted by Robbie
Are you sure about that? How do you know what their actual business practices are?
For instance, when most folks in this business see me...it's at a webmaster show and I'm having drinks and acting the fool. They have zero idea of what my day to day business is like.
Also, as far as "trend analysis" or A-B testing and other such things...some of us have been doing this online for a looooonnnnngggg time. I have promoted so many programs over so many years and have seen what works and what doesn't work with porn.
I have enough experience to know what I'm doing without doing further testing. I have basically "tested" for 14 years. 99.9 % of the time I know what is going to work and what won't work as far as marketing.
Not saying that doing analysis of stats and testing things isn't important or good business practice. But you get to a point where you master something and you can cut right through all of that and implement stuff quickly and make it happen.
I guess I'm just saying...don't underestimate the people in this business based on posts by some of the folks on here who like to stroke their own egos by claiming that THEY are the ones with all the business acumen.
I can tell you from first hand experience that there are a LOT of smart people who can run circles around most people in this business. No, they aren't successful just because they are "lucky" or some such thing.
If it were so easy back "in the day" to make all that money...then why was it only a handful of us who were successful while THOUSANDS of webmasters failed miserably? Just like now.  |
This is the kind of post that makes me want to stand up and say "Hallelujah, preach on, brother, amen to that!"
Best to over-estimate what everyone else is doing. Accept that they already know how to do it better, smarter, faster, then determine to forget "what you think" and figure out what actually works for you.
Another real life example from the book I call "The Everlasting Pain of Learning the Hard Way" - we decided that we should test cutting our price on titles to match what other companies were sliding to. We ended up selling less numbers at a lesser price, a sure fire recipe for disaster. Fortunately, testing tells those stories quickly. We continue to test everything and I agree that years of experience can sharpen the skills of intuition but one must be prepared to face the counterintuitive things - like how great something like hairy bush niche sells or stuff like that.
Everyone tends to jump on bandwagons of what they think is the next big thing only to find out that it was over before they even got there. No one wants to put in the work of the day to day due diligence required to ward a company through ever shifting market conditions.