Me Too! (or The Death of Creativity)

 

Being on a multiple ezine lists one starts to wonder what ever happened to originality amongst marketers, in particular Internet Marketers. I get over 30 emails a day from these lists, and it is amazing how many times not only are the subjects are the same but the texts are as well. Yes I know I can just unsubscribe from these lists, and I do regularly but they make such excellent examples of what not to do and let's me see what the sheep are chasing these days.

I know the “latest greatest thing” is Affiliate Marketing, and that the person one buys the product from generally provides the marketing material (squeeze page, email and source files) but it is up to the individual to change it up so that their message stands out.

The ones that get me is where the Subject line reads “Don't buy XXXX until...” . Well I see the words “Don't Buy” and I immediately delete that message. I know they are each trying to say they have the best ad-on product or “special report” they are trying to hawk, but I (and I am sure a lot others) are just not buying from this negative message. Besides most of the so called “bonuses” are retreads that have been around for years or some other worthless thing like a “membership” to their site of duplicate and obsolete information.

Another one is where they all are best friends with “A 25 year old millionaire”, or “The Rich Jerk” etc. It is amazing how these show up every 6 months or so and again the message is lost.

I am surprised at the lack of originality from these self proclaimed “Creatives”. I guess they are living in Utopia, you remember how the people made their living by taking each other's laundry. That seems to be how these people are making money by buying the same stuff off of each other and sharing the lack of wealth between them.

Yes they are blindly following each and every fad and are just filling up the net with more and more useless junk. The sad part is each one of them think they are impressing me (and others on their lists) with their “amazing discoveries”, but I am just not buying into it. Occasionally a new idea pops up from one or two of the leaders( yes there are a couple who come out first, but soon the rest follow), and these do show what the new fads are, but soon they are buried in the hype and copycats.

I do admit I do love reading these emails as a source of amusement. However I don't think that the majority of the senders have that as their main reason for sending them out. Some do try to find out by sending emails that ask for opinions about what they should be sending out, but these are just tricks to have the readers write the emails for them. Let's face it, we signed up for your newsletter because we were interested in what you were advertising as the topics, not to be deluged by offers of old and overly abused information. Surprisingly I have never heard back personally from these people, but do keep getting their emails, including the occasional “reader survey”. In which I answer again as above.

I do believe that there are people making a living in this manner, but regretfully they are being lost in the shuffle of the lazy incompetent that are filling our email boxes daily.

Good creative people will survive, and the bad impostors and copycats will fall by the wayside, but regretfully they will be replaced by more copycat zombies. We just need to accept that this is true in all endeavors, offline as well as online, and just a fact of life and move on.

Mahalo.