If you went to Affiliate Summit West, you must have noticed the tote bag they give you when you register. Well, you had to have noticed it as your arms tired from carrying a 30 pound bag of shit.
Not to get off topic, but what the fuck are they thinking putting all this crap in the bag? There is so much fucking waste that goes on and it provides no value. You think someone is going to sign up to your stupid network because you gave them a non-functioning orange clock or a rubber ball with your name on it?
(I would have more jokes here about the shwag but I threw the bag out. I didn’t want to go over 50lb weight limit for checked bags on my flight home. Take that, environment!)
I threw that fucking rubber ball at John Chow’s iron-flattop and it bounced off and hit Shoemoney in the crotch. That’s all its fucking good for.
Branding = dead. (At least in this industry … your reputation is what matters.)
Anyways, within that tote bag was Shawn Collins book. This book is called Internet Marketing from the Real Experts. If you haven’t skimmed through this book on the shitter by now, let me give you my short book report:
Internet Marketing for Real Experts is a collection of republished articles from Feedfront magazine. Not only does Shawn Collins not really write even a minority of the book, all this book really contains is other peoples content.
That will be all, teacher.
During ASW I caught Shawn Collins at the Rio. The conversation was just random bullshit about how I am the best blog ever, until I called him out on his book. I was in a daze from drinking of course, so I will try to reproduce the conversation as best as possible.
Me: “So dude, you didn’t really write this book.”
Shawn: “Yes I did, my name is on the cover!”
Me: “I know, but it’s just republished garbage from Feedfront.”
Shawn: “Yeah, but I’m in the book.”
Me: “But you didn’t write it. You’re more of an editor.”
Shawn: “It doesn’t matter. Do you know how impressed clients get when you bring in a book with your name on it? No one ever reads the book, but they see the cover and my name is on it.”
Me: ” … ”
Shawn: “Clients eat that shit up. Usually it’s way over their heads so they don’t read it. All that matters is that I’m the author and I have a book.”
Me: “Genius, Collins. Genius.”
So what’s the lesson here? Leverage other peoples shit and republish content with your own spin on it. It works on the web and apparently, works in print. Now Collins has a book selling like hot-cakes on Amazon so he can walk around slapping potential clients with the softcover. Learn from this.
