Why would anyone NOT want help from me?
I’ve offered on several occasions to take a look at what people are doing in their internet business that isn’t working for them, and on every occasion except for one, I’ve been blanked.
Why is that?
I think it’s FEAR.
I don’t mean fear, although that is part of it, I mean FEAR.
False
Evidence
Appearing
Real
I read about this in Glen Hopkins “Lucrative List Building” quite a while back, and I always bear it in mind just before I do anything.
FEAR used to paralyse me into doing nothing as I was frightened of what people might think or say about me.
But you know what? I’m never going to please everybody, it’s impossible. I realised that as long as I please myself, and “keep it real”, then enough people are going to agree with me to make it worthwhile. And on the upside, those that don’t agree will disappear in time anyway.
(I once sat at a seminar with FEAR stopping me from raising my hand to get my site reviewed by the panel of experts. Someone else got the benefit instead. Madness.)
I’ll just give you three paragraphs from the book, about the draining effects of FEAR. I’m sure Glen won’t mind and after all he’s getting a plug from me and so will make some more sales. 😉
You see, your subconscious mind has a hard time determining whether you’ve actually experienced the failure or just imagined it. Either way, you feel the physiological symptoms of the fear, such as an upset stomach.
Mark Twain explained it best: ‘I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which have actually happened.’
Often we believe our imagined failure will come true, and so we don’t even try to do what we’re afraid of failing at in the first place! That is what makes a failure: a person who is afraid to try because he fears the potential of a negative outcome.
The “POTENTIAL” of a negative outcome.
I choose to believe it’s FEAR that have held people back from accepting my help when I’ve offered it.
Maybe they think I’m going to ridicule them, or make them feel stupid and then tell everyone here on my blog so the whole world can point and laugh – but that’s not the case.
If I choose to offer my help freely, then it comes with no conditions. I’m not by nature a horrible or hard person (unless it’s asked for and required) and I easily empathise with people and often find myself mirroring their behaviour without realising it – I want to be liked, and I guess you do too.
People won’t like me if I’m horrible to them, and I fully sympathise with someone who’s having a hard time in getting things off the ground.
Look.
One of the differences between successful people and failures is the failures give up when they fail.
The successful fail too. But they try again and try again until they succeed. Then everybody says “Ooh! Look how successful she is.”
If you’re going to fail at something, do it early, and do it quickly. Get it over with and learn from the lessons.
Many things you HAVE to do before you can understand them. Learning and theory is great, but it’s only when you put it into practice that it all comes together, and you can then decide which bits of the things you’ve learned are worth keeping.
Let’s face it, most of the theoretical stuff you’ve learned from books or otherwise, you’ve forgotten. But the practical stuff will almost always stay with you for good.
I know people who have spent years learning and never put any of it into practice, and I bet you do too. I’ve done it myself.
Now, if I choose to learn something, I try to put it into practice right away, otherwise what’s the point in learning it?
In closing, if I (or anyone else) offer you some help, or offer to take a look at your sales copy or whatever, DON’T be scared of accepting that help. It may be the one thing that makes a real difference for you.
-Frank Haywood
Hey Frank….Do have a FEAR of releasing AdSpurt ? ..has the SPURT been reduced to a drip 🙂
Any news of this long awaited tool ?
Cheers
Roy
Hi Frank,
I read your email and had to respond. Over the last 3 months I’ve received several offers of the kind you put forward. Offers to help with problems and mentoring etc.
However the net result to filling out their forms was, just complete silence.
I figure 97% of people that try on the internet fail, and that’s probably because 97% of marketers are just selling shovels with absolutely no idea about marketing.
I’m a successful businessman in the real world, you can look up http://www.barghout.me if you like for yourself.
I’ve set up dozens of websites, followed all sorts of plans and got no where.
If you are really serious, then you are welcome to contact me, and I’ll show you what we’ve been up to. Otherwise your question “Why would anyone NOT want help from me?” is just rhetorical.
Incidently, I really did type this comment, and it’s not some spam from a bot.
regards
Brian Barghout FRSA
Hey Frank,
It’s amazing that no one takes you up on that offer. I guess I must have missed it because I would value your feedback.
I do agree though that most people fear having others review their websites.
We put effort into the site and have high hopes for our sites, and we know we need constructive feedback. But, we don’t like to be told what we did wrong and what we need to improve.
Not sure why that is. Maybe it’s the day we live in, maybe it’s just human nature.
Mike
FEAR is like the dust-bunnies under the bed. It just sits there and grows or multiplies until YOU take action. Whether you’re wielding a broom or a keyboard, you will come to a point where only YOUR decision and action will affect and direct YOUR future.
Mark Twain certainly had a way of putting things into perspective, didn’t he?
Fear of failure and losing face is why so many people opt for an easy life rather than taking chances.
Show me someone who has never failed at anything and I will show you someone who has never done anything with their life.
They are afraid to look failure in the eye because they might see themselves looking back.
Roy:
I’ve been fiddling with AdSpurt a lot, and I spotted a new bug today caused by putting an apostrophe into the ad which then kills them all.
Paul has now fixed that, and I’ll soon roll it out to everyone who took my offer with CB Ad Rotator the other week.
Brian:
This is going to sound terrible I know, but I almost always don’t offer help to people who ask for it. Isn’t that perverse of me?
My point was, when I see someone really struggling, I feel I want to help them as I feel it’s usually just a stumbling block that’s stopping them from progressing. I don’t like freeloaders, but I don’t like to think that someone is having a truly hard time of it.
Sometimes the idea and the product are sound but the sales copy and appearance are dreadful, and it all needs a bit of a tweak. Things like: move the text well away from the margins, put plenty of white space in, break the text up with underlines, bolds and italics, change the font, and so on.
But it’s usually down to copy changes and removing any more than a simple yes-no choice from the page. It’s a common mistake to place multiple choices of purchase on a sales page. You should almost always only ever offer ONE choice to a customer, and *after* purchase offer them an upsell to the better version.
Another common mistake is to put distractions on the sales page like AdSense! Unbelievable I know, but I’ve seen it more than once.
And finally, if the sales copy can excite the reader and engage their emotions on a positive level, it will sell.
It’s these simple changes that are well recognised (but not with everybody) that often make the difference between a successful product and a poor selling one.
The figure of 97% you mentioned is often quoted as 99%, and the sad thing is that many of the 1% in the IM niche are living off the 99%…
I’ve taken a look round your web site, and I guess you may have frightened a few people off. You seem to have had an interesting and what most people would call a successful bricks and mortar career.
My next guess is you’re after the same kind of results online with info products maybe?
I admit I’m intrigued. You’re not the typical candidate I’d offer free help to though. A nice touch of psychology with the comment “is just rhetorical” which almost never works on me anymore, but…
Raise a support ticket explaining what it is you want to do and we’ll take it from there.
Mike:
See my comments above to Brian. I don’t make it a public offer, I just make the offer every so often to people who I feel are at their wits end and just need a bit of a push in the right direction.
Actually one of my paid students recently asked for help with their sales page which was converting at something like 0.005% on a *great* product. I wrote a few pages of notes on what changes he needed to make, and I’m just waiting for him to write back and say “it worked”.
Some of it was just a matter of making the kind of changes I mentioned in my reply to Brian.
Al:
I like that analogy.
And all the knowledge in the world is for nothing unless you use it. I do greatly admire Quite Interesting people like Stephen Fry who seems to know something about everything though. A bit scary actually.
And of course he does do quite a lot with his life too…
Terence:
Yep, spot on. Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes, and we all have failures and successes. Most of us dwell on the failures.
I catch myself doing it, and then I have to look back at my own career even before I started doing my own thing at home.
I was successful even when I worked the 9-5, and I’ve done things that I know many people would say “ooh” at, and my career within just Land Rover led me to work in almost every function, starting in sales and marketing and ending in logistics (ha!).
(I met some wonderful people and some real jerks on that journey.)
The thing is though, I still hold tightly all the things I did wrong, when in an ideal world what I would really have is all the memories of what I did right as an overwhelming factor in it all.
Yes I remember the good things, but I can never let myself forget the errors. We learn by our mistakes so we shouldn’t forget them, but ironically I’m very aware they can bring us down sometimes.
-Frank
Very true, Frank.
There is one type of person that you didn’t mention. That’s the one that has put in six months building his/her website but, as they are not a professional website builder, they know it looks like it was made by an amateur but just hope for the best.
They don’t need someone else to tell them their site doesn’t look like a million dollars, they already know it.
They just suffer in silence.
I DO get advice from other people.
Unfortunately, 90% of the time I can’t use it.
‘Install such-and-such a script’. I can’t install scripts, I’m not an IT genius.
‘Get the Big Names to JV with you’ yeah, right, they’re going to fall over themselves to partner with an e-Book seller that’s made $4 in sales this year.
Everyone seems to say “It’s EASY to make money online”. It’s not. It’s damn near impossible to make a single sale if you are not an invited member of that elite club known as gurus.
They are the only ones making sales and the status quo will never change.
I still read everything you write even though I’ll never be able to make any of it work for me.
I don’t know the right people. LOL
Thanks for interesting reading over the last 4 years.
Much more to come, I hope.
Clive:
Here’s some unasked for advice then. Sorry…
Concentrate on the sales copy. I know damn well you can write as you’ve just done an excellent job of it here.
Ignore what you feel you’re supposed to be doing, and just lay out your offer on the table and don’t try to hype it up, at least to begin with. Tell people about yourself to put them at ease, people like to buy from people who are like themselves. When you read your copy and think to yourself “yeah, I like that”, then it’s time to look at the other aspects of the page.
The copy is the most important.
You make good points, if a little negatively, and I can understand where that’s coming from.
o You don’t need a script to run your business and do digital delivery. I know that sounds like heresy coming from me, but I’ve built lists with just a series of static pages and some autoresponder form code. Scripts streamline it all and makes things better, but they’re not necessary.
o Yes, no-one is likely to JV with you if you haven’t already proven yourself. Chicken and egg. You have to sell yourself to potential JV partners just as much as you have to sell your product to your prospects.
o As you’ve found you *can* make money online, even if it’s $4. Isn’t that a kind of magic?
I’ve said what the process is before, and it’s up there at the top of my blog. Make a product. Put it in front of people and some will buy. Build your list. Rinse and repeat.
Clive, I AIN’T a guru, and my income from my online activities would bear me out there.
I consider myself a success. I work from home, and I have very few responsibilities other than to bring in the money to keep a roof over our head and the family fed.
I’m almost always there for my children, which is very important to me. I do the school run in the morning and I’m there for them when they come home. That is *real* treasure.
If you count money as your only measure of success, you’re never going to be successful in your own mind. There will always be someone who has more than you. I count my success as being able to pretty much do what I like when I like, within reason.
o The gurus are not the only ones who are making the sales, they’re the ones who are doing all the showmanship. I’ve met people who you’ve never heard of that are making a killing online.
They’ve built their businesses by trial and error, and learned over time what works for them. Then they repeat it. They keep quiet about what they do as they don’t want competition.
And… there are very few of the gurus who would even consider themselves as such. They just see themselves as having followed a path that’s become easier to tread over time.
o Finally, I can’t believe that anyone who puts their mind to it is unable to make at least a living online.
The first step is to decide *how* you’re going to do it, and then stick with it, and test and tweak it until it works for you. If it’s clear it isn’t working, then (and only then) try something else.
Don’t jump ship to the latest fad as you’re throwing away everything you’ve worked on before for an unknown commodity.
And don’t feel bad when you read about people who struggled for 18 months and then suddenly started making a full time living. It probably wasn’t easy and you have no idea of what they had to do to get there.
I will tell you though, that you need to start networking and meeting people either online or offline. A lot of business is about relationships, and the more you can build the better. If you can help other people to get what they want, it causes a social imbalance – they will feel they owe you. So when you need a promo doing, they’ll be there to do it for you.
So in your case the best advice I could probably give you (unwanted or not) is to stop trying to get other people to do stuff for you, and start looking at what you can do to help them. The sociological need to repay your debts is very strong in society. Think about what people think and say about people who don’t reciprocate.
Help others to help yourself.
-Frank
Thanks, Frank.
Very good sense. Most annoying!
Actually, I don’t expect anyone to help me. I’d never ask for help. That’s an admission of incompetence.
With $4 sales in a year, there is no way I am qualified to help anyone with anything. LOL
Personally I believe that if you don’t have teachers’ formal qualifications, you have no right to teach.
But that’s just me, I’d never give advice because I’m not qualified to.
Up until now, if an e-Book didn’t come with a sales page, I wouldn’t list it.
I don’t think I could ever convince anyone to buy. I’ll keep trying, though.
I’ve waited 4 years for an affiliate sale, another couple won’t matter.
I’ve been promoting smart DD on everything I’ve done for 18 months – I’ve never sold one, though.
I admit that I will go out of my way to avoid meeting people – online or off.
The thought of those seminars makes me quite ill.
How do you get through them???
I have one forum I occasionally visit – very occasionally – and I am not a member of any “social sites”.
Note to all – if you email me to be your friend I will just delete the email. LOL
I neither tweet nor am I/are I/is I tweeted.
Thanks again for the advice. Much appreciated.
A lot to ponder.
I guess I just keep doing my own thing and see what happens. LOL
Clive
Clive:
Asking for help is not a measure of incompetence. Every time I pay someone to do something for me, I’m asking for help.
Without wishing to diss any teachers that read this, they’re not exactly the best paid group in the world are they? They might even agree with me on that.
I’ve always thought the exact opposite to you about teachers (and maybe this is because of the majority of teachers I had as I was growing up), but until they’ve DONE something, I don’t believe they are qualified to teach.
As I said when I made the post, learning and theory are great, but until it’s put to good USE, it’s effectively useless to you.
One of my friends by his own admission didn’t go to school during his teens. I think the system just gave up on him. Yet now he’s causing a storm online and his earnings are sky rocketing. He once said to me he regrets not having paid more attention to maths and English, but I believe he’s already overcome those self-perceived failings.
He’s the kind of person who is more than qualified to teach.
Book learning or street smarts? They both have their good and bad qualities.
Like you I’m not a member of any social sites as I believe them to be a complete waste of time. But Twitter is useful as I see it as a micro-blogging format, and I LIKE blogs.
Forums are okay to market on, but that’s all. Again, just my opinion.
But you can still make friends online via your blog. And make friends and get traffic by commenting on other people’s blogs. It’s good.
Seminars I now only see as useful to network with other like minded business people, and there are always other methods you can choose to do that.
For example, organise an informal lunch for other marketers in your area. It’s relaxed, there’s no agenda, you get to make new friends and network. NOBODY is going to criticise you for that.
-Frank
Wise words, again, Frank.
Especially about teachers. I suppose I must agree with you as I will never give advice to anyone because I can’t sell anything.
I never pay anyone to do anything for me – I can’t afford to. LOL
No point in paying someone to make graphics for an e-Book that’s not going to sell a single copy.
Been there done that.
18 months ago I wrote en e-book on Energy Saving in the Home. Pretty good, or so I was told by the people I sent it to, to review.
So off I go and get graphics made.
Fast forward 18 months – not one copy sold.
About 4 more products written since – zero sold. It’s all luck.
As for the friends online – I don’t think so.
I have a blog but I only copy and paste product reviews, pre-written from affiliate tools, on it.
There’s nothing ‘personal’ as, unlike you, I have no wise words to offer.
Nobody has ever seen it, anyway, because it’s a disaster area. LOL Installed by Fantastico and that’s as far as it goes.
No plugins or widgets because I don’t know what they are and couldn’t do anything technical, anyway.
Marketers in my area? I live in a small country town of 10,000 and, as far as I know, I am the only one with a website.
There are no marketers for hundreds of miles in any direction, that I know of.
Apart from all that I’ve not had a meal with anyone for 25 years or more.
I’ll keep following you (not on twitter) as yours is the only blog I read on a regular basis.
Intelligent stuff, Frank, but all way out of my league.
I’m a village lad from Cornwall stranded in the middle of Aussie.
Thank you again. It is truly appreciated.
I do the school run in the morning and I’m there for them when they come home. That is *real* treasure.
Oh boy, Frank, if only people really understood that. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is for me to be around for my kids – not so sure if they like it much anymore now that they’re growing up!
I wouldn’t swap what I do now for a job if the salary was £5,000,000 a year
Earning a living this way is more than about making money. You can get a J.O.B. and earn a living – most people do that and are miserable.
Working this way gives you freedom and I think that scares a lot of people witless. ‘What, I have to be responsible for my own success????’
Sadly, a large percentage of people don’t want to be taught, or helped. It would mean they would have no excuses anymore and they might have to make a bit of effort.
Then we have the rest who put in effort, but never understand that they’re supposed to *learn* from the results and *modify* what they do as necessary.
Thanks again for the advice. Much appreciated.
I guess I just keep doing my own thing and see what happens.
Clive, you’ve had 4 years of doing your own thing and seeing what happens. Don’t you think a different approach might be worth a try?
You think you’re not qualified to tell someone how to do something, because you made $4??
Tell them what you did that worked so badly, so they can avoid the same mistakes. Who says you have to teach only the right thing to do? It’s at least as useful to teach what not to do.
Frankly, when I first started I’d have valued 4 years worth of experience of what doesn’t work – it could have saved me a lot of wasted effort.
Amin
Thanks Amin,
The trouble is, I don’t know what didn’t work.
I was told to put links in e-Bookls and give them away “to go viral”.
OK, so I’ve given away over 10,000 in 4 years, with NO affiliate sales.
So, what went wrong?
Get a list – OK, got one. They’ve never bought a damn thing, but I have a list.
Write article. Been there, done that. Thousands of readers. Sales = 0 hits to websites = 0.
Offers on download pages = $0
OTOs = $0
JV Giveaways = $0
What went wrong???
If I knew I’d tell the world.
I’ve only done exactly as I’ve been advised to do by the “wise ones”. LOL
Clive
Clive:
Send me your ebook.
Amin:
I already knew you understood where I was coming from.
“Working this way gives you freedom and I think that scares a lot of people witless. ‘What, I have to be responsible for my own success????'”
It *is* scary. We’ve had months where we had no idea how we were going to pay the bills. We’re still here, and all I’ll say about that is “necessity is the mother of invention.”
Okay I’ll say a bit more. If you have something to fall back on, then you will.
And maybe, just maybe, there’s a baptism of enduring you have to go through to succeed. I’m thinking here of all the people who have gone before me who’ve said they lived in poverty or lost everything before things started to change for them. It seems to be a common theme.
-Frank
Frank,
I have an e-Book that I’m ‘quite happy’ with but I’m re-writing it as I want to be ‘very happy with it.
I’ll send it when it’s finished – not long now.
I don’t get dejected any more.
I just get angry sometimes.
Back to work – it’s only 11.15pm. LOL
Thanks, guys.
Clive.