I was pretty disappointed today to read a post made on a blog where a rather large list of many people's Thirty Day Challenge niches was on public display. I wont link to the blog as I really don't like it anyway, plus I don't want to give it any publicity it doesn't deserve. I thought about making a comment on the blog too, but again didn't want to give any undue publicity or waste energy.

I also won't go into full detail here, but I'll summarize the content by saying that the author claimed the information was public anyway, as Ed and Dan had made it public, and then went on to debunk everything that has thus far been taught in the 30DC. Which is of course all complete rubbish.

Ed and Dan have put up with crap like this before, and they will do so again in the future, so it's not really them I'm upset for. They both have pretty thick skins. I'm upset on behalf of the many. many people who are doing this whole internet marketing thingy for the first time. They don't know the ropes that well yet, and they have clowns like the aforementioned offering up their niches and throwing out crap that doesn't help anybody.

Which brings me to the title of this post: Monkeys Throwing Poo

I have a simple philosophy, wherever you go in life there are always monkeys (sometimes gorillas), who for reasons only known to themselves, love to wallow in their own poo. You know the type, they're critical of everything, or they always know better. Or they're just miserable with their lives and blame others for it. Or they play the victim game and are continually jealous of the success of others.

I call these people Monkeys Throwing Poo. Because here's the thing, they never keep their poo to themselves, they always get their kicks throwing it at other people. Always. Whether they feel justified by doing it, or whether they want you to wallow in their poo with them, they just always want to share it. You walk past them, or get too close, and splat! You've copped one in the back of the head.

Not me. Not ever. My reticular activation system is a finely tuned crap detector and I just won't allow it into my life. When the poo throwing monkeys have their tantrums I just walk away. Let them drown in it I say, I've got better things, more positive things to do with my life.

The only reason I even wrote this post is because I wanted to empower a few people. Don't listen to the monkeys throwing poo, let them keep it all to themselves. Every time you hear or read the detrimental comments from somebody, just visualize them as monkey in a really bad mood flinging their poo at passersby. It takes their power away real quick. The world is full of people either throwing it or being on the receiving end of it. Don't be either.

Seth Godin's blog is a frequent place on the web that I visit. Whatever commentary he's providing is always insightful, and always right.  He wrote an article recently about the state of personal finance, and where we must fit as marketers and what our own actions should be. Brilliant!

In my very first foray into the internet marketing world, I put down over $30k Australian dollars (which is like a bigillion US dollars) and bought the rights to a piece of software that let me write my own software. Plus have a back catalog of software I had resale rights to. It mostly tanked. What did work for me though was the first bit of software I wrote myself. It was a budget planner that I'd carefully designed so it was incredibly simple to use.

It sold like gangbusters and I thought that this internet marketing game was pretty damn good. After about a year or so, sales really started to go south, so I surveyed my list. I asked a few simple questions, things like how they found the software, had it worked for them, blah blah blah.

Now here's the thing that blew me away, most of them had never actually used it. They knew they had a problem, bought a stop gap measure to fix it (my software), but changed none of their habits and got further into debt. 

I was eventually squeezed out of the market by the big lenders who often gave out free budget planners on their sites, while enticing you to get yet another credit card. Now, that was over 3 years ago and things have gotten so much worse. I won't give you boring figures, but please just look at the graph below from Seth's site.

So please, the next time you get an email from a number of marketers, all telling you about some great exclusive offer, make sure you can actually afford it. Don't look ahead at the dollars you might make from it, look at the dollars you have now. 

You might think, "who's he to talk, he spent 30 grand on something that tanked". Well that might be true, but the difference is that I invested in a business. It was something that could be made into an asset, and as we know assets rule. Plus, if I'd never taken that first plunge I wouldn't be where I am today. So there.