Want to be a Rich Jerk
An English pal of mine told me about the Rich Jerk. This guy the Rich Jerk has supposedly made a lot of money through web marketing and now wants to make even more money sharing his wisdom with us.
The first thing you notice is his sales strategy. He is blunt, controversial and pretty obnoxious:
I don’t know about you but I’m lazy. I want definitive answers without all of the BS and filler. I want “here is how to make money”, and that’s it. The mere thought of reading 1,000 pages of marketing mumbo jumbo turns my stomach. Honestly, do you think these people are going to tell you anything useful? Unless you are a complete idiot, you’re going to get the SAME info you already know. We all know you need a website. I don’t need an 87 minute DVD to tell me that, or a 100 page chapter in a book. We all know it’s important to get traffic to your website. I don’t need another 120 minute audio tape and a 278 page supplemental guide to tell me that. The bottom line is that having thousands of pages, and dozens of hours of video and audio doesn’t make a product worthwhile.
In some respects it’s the antithesis of what I’m doing with WideWord, but then again is it? He’s a hard core sales guy and I’m not. But he’s also cutting the regular bullshXt to a minimum (while of course inventing a whole new paradigm in bullshXt himself).
I have always been fascinated with the psychology of get rich quick schemes, but have never actually paid for one before as I’m more than sceptical. However my pal said that there was actually some pretty useful stuff in this one. So I thought, I have bought more than my fair share of Pragmatic Ebooks why not give it a shot.
What did I get for my $47? Well a 62 page PDF file with the following chapters:
Creating an Affiliate Website that Sells like Crazy
Unique Search Engine PPC Strategies that Kill the Competition
Search Engine Optimization Strategies (SEO)
Selling Your Own Informational Product
Buying Wholesale and Selling on eBay
Websites you can Make Profitable Right Now
Other Online Ventures to Consider
Suplemental Info for Beginners
Quality Products/Services I Highly Recommend
The most useful for me right now was the section on writing effective AdWords ads. Since I implemented some of his suggestions my new ads have tripled their CTR over the old ones. There are also some potentially interesting ways of using arbitrage to make money from AdSense. This could potentially improve the value of our archives as active bloggers. He doesn’t specifically mention blogs, but I think it makes a lot of sense.
Some of the stuff he writes is questionable in it’s morality like cloaking, which I had never even heard of before. Use your own moral judgement. I have a feeling though that he throws some of those things in there to be controversial.
So is it worth it for a bootstrapper? I will report back on how successful it is for me. My feeling is that it could easily be a profitable purchase if you are trying to build up enough cashflow to quit your day job. If you already have done so and haven’t got any other revenue stream, you should consider if you can afford it. So, if you want to be a Rich jerk go check out the Rich Jerk site if for nothing else a free laugh and lesson in marketing.
Anonymous
