Work Boxers

16 opinions for Another “New” Free Blogging Book

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 6, 2008 at 1:56 am

  Dear Mark,

  If you have had some trouble accessing the course, I hope you will avail yourself of our 24 hour live helpdesk: http://www.simpleology.com/support

  There were a few isolated cases of people who were not given access to the course after verifying the link, but I believe that issue has been resolved. If this is still not the case for you, please contact our Customer Care immediately and they will resolve the issue for you immediately.

  Yes, we collect your name and email address, and that is so you can be granted a simpleology account - without that, we can’t give you access to the free course as it is delivered through simpleology.

  All the best,

  Mark Joyner

• mark
  Jan 6, 2008 at 7:00 am

  Mark,

  Funny, but I appreciate you not “going off” after what I’ve said…

  Yet, I seriously dislike, and am extremely angry over, having to jump through the hoops that you put up! Relatively speaking, you, I’ll be nice, mislead enormously with your offer of a free blogging book and I’ll still not recommend anyone download it. Hell, I don’t have to read your experience with Blogging. I know you’re a late comer and I’ve been a follower of others who’ve left you in their dust long ago as far as blogging goes. But you resort to old marketing tactics that no longer have their place in this new “world” and they’re truly beyond irritating…

  All the best to you also,

  Mark

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 6, 2008 at 12:11 pm

  Hi Mark,

  I’ll just avoid responding to the personal attacks and try to keep up some civility.

  If you could outline how we’re being misleading I’d really appreciate that. Right up front we say it’s free if you post about it - and that’s exactly what we give.

  Asking someone to register to gain access to something is not so unusual in today’s Internet.

  MJ

• Mark
  Jan 6, 2008 at 6:44 pm

  Oh my gosh Mark… come on, please. Are you running for office? That is not exactly what you give - stop it, will you?

  Why not simply give someone the book - free, like you said - without all the other fluff? (Why force widgets on someone?) You could have stuffed it with anything you wanted to market whatever you wanted.

  I’m done, how about that? I’m still not recommending anyone jump through all those hoops you mislead them into and you might want to remember that your credibility, not mine, has been called in to question before…

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 6, 2008 at 7:15 pm

  Hi Mark,

  As we see it, we tell people that we’ll give them the course for free if they post about it. It’s very clear and very up front. Of the 1,500 people who have done that so far, a few people were confused about the process, or where to find the course, and once we sorted them out they were fine.

  You’re saying that we misled people, and I’m not at all clear on why you say that. We make it clear that you have to blog about it. If you’re not cool with those “hoops” then why bite at all? And you not approving of the act of putting someone through hoops doesn’t make the process misleading.

  To me, if I see something someone is doing that I don’t agree with and they are willing to listen, I’ll open a friendly dialog. I guess you have to choose whether slamming me or helping me to see your point of view is more important to you.

  If you want to help me see your point of view and help us serve people better, I’m all ears. If it’s the former, then let’s be “done” :-)

  MJ

• Mark
  Jan 6, 2008 at 8:38 pm

  Step Two - “the two drug-free “body hacks” we promised to teach you are on this page.”

  Say What???

  “P.S. If you’re looking for an expensive miracle potion to boost your energy, burn fat, and give your skin that rosy glow, this probably isn’t for you.

  (See Lesson 14 to see why that can be fatally dangerous.)

  But if you’re looking for the real scientifically-proven low-cost ways to achieve these things quickly and naturally (without the financial burden or the risk), then the 30 day free trial is for you.”

  I didn’t want any of that stuff!!! I wanted a damn free book on blogging. Why does that become rocket science to folks like you?

  I wanted a free book on blogging and I followed the instructions to embed your code. I entered the URL in your form and then I’m directed to what? Two drug-free body hacks? That you promised somewhere? No, you didn’t promise them anywhere.

  Then you ask me to make the webcockpit my homepage - can I just have the damn book? Please? But even that isn’t good enough…

  Next I am asked to install some free tools - tools I haven’t asked for. No, thank you. Can I please have the free book you did promise?

  Oh, but wait, there’s more. No, not for me. Forget the free book. I have hundreds of them and from people much more qualified at blogging than you. I was willing to see what you had to offer and might have placed you “up there” but not now! Forget it.

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 6, 2008 at 9:06 pm

  Hi Mark,

  OK, you didn’t like the other offers we included. If you had your druthers, we would have simply had you sign up and take you straight to the course without offering you anything else.

  OK, got it. I understand your preference.

  Just so you know, what we do there is a common marketing practice to monetize the contacts we have with people (the paid offer you saw is something you can simply so no to - just like the free stuff), and to let people know what else we are offering. All of which you can say no to.

  We don’t run our sites on an advertising model, so our business makes money by selling our own products. If we were running on an advertising model we could avoid offering other things to people quite easily. (A business is the business of making money after all. Otherwise it’s charity. Would be nice if we could all do that all day long and not have to make money to survive.)

  As for “misleading” people I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. If you didn’t like the extra offers you can simply skip them and go right to the course. I don’t see that as misleading.

  Either way, I’ll take your perspective into consideration.

  We are actually considering revamping our model so we are more direct with the free offerings and only sell things later on in the relationship when it’s not so hard-sell in the beginning.

  Some people don’t mind the selling in the beginning (us having over 250,000 happy members can attest to that), but to others its annoying (your blog post clear evidence of that). In the end we’ll probably move more in a direction that will please everyone. And that’s business - you do what you can to please the greatest number of people.

  Peace,

  MJ

• Mark
  Jan 7, 2008 at 7:28 am

  Mark… Mark… Mark… no, you still don’t get it.

  Oh, you’re correct, I didn’t like all those hoops which I think I made clear. The point is you never mentioned the hoops from the beginning.

  Had I known I’d have to accept or decline all of them, I wouldn’t have begun the process at all then be forced to move through each choice just to obtain a simple blogging book. Yes, simple.

  Mark, you know I’ve said this - you’re a latecomer to this arena. You were the “king” years ago but now you’re a latecomer. I wanted your “free” book for the purpose of seeing how far you’ve come in the blogosphere and to perhaps give you some shout outs for it but noooooo, you resort to old, archaic, marketing methods I’m fully aware of btw, (oh, and 250,000? Over what period of time did you accumulate them and how many in the last year or so?).

  Yes, I would rather have had you take me straight to the “course.” No, I doubt you’ll take my perspective into consideration. As for pleasing the greatest number of people, yeah, I’m glad you finally learned that one…

  Peace Backatcha,

  Mark

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 7, 2008 at 2:08 pm

  Hi Mark,

  It’s actually not a “book” but a many-faceted multi-media course with animated lessons, quizzes, etc.

  Those 250,000 are all from the last 2 years - almost all of which were through organic word of mouth. We also have 80,000 people who have elected to get email updates to my personal blog I started two years ago as well.

  All of that was from scratch since I sold off my old companies about 5 years ago and started these new initiatives totally anew.

  Yet I still has a few things to learn - goodness, I hope I always do.

  As for whether or not I’ll take your perspective into consideration you might want to re-think the logic of that assumption given that I’m here spending time asking you. Believe me, it’s not for the warm and friendly reception ;-)

  MJ

• Mark
  Jan 7, 2008 at 2:53 pm

  Ooooh, so now you have a challenge with the warm reception you got here eh? J/K :)

  Okay - truce… I’m gonna take a look at it anyway and I’ll tell ya’ Mark, it better be good!!! I’ll get over the hoops and move on.

  What’s the URL for your Blog?

• Mark
  Jan 7, 2008 at 3:59 pm

  Locked… locked, I tell ya’! Mistake? geesh…

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 7, 2008 at 3:59 pm

  Truces I like ;-)

  Blog is at http://www.markjoyner.name - keep in mind the content has varied a helluva lot. I think the best things were the cartoons earlier on - which we will be bringing back. Might be interesting to you to watch the evolution of it. An interesting post for you to check out is about the campaign we used to make one of my books a best-seller. Good grassroots marketing lessons there.

  Listen - we’re actually listening to this kind of feedback about the hoops and so on. We were aware from the beginning that it was incongruent - we just used our normal sign up process which makes more sense from the context of the main site. All of this is in the middle of being revised now. I think giving people the *option* to jump through the hoops in the beginning will be less annoying and will make more sense from an interface design perspective.

  The blogging course probably won’t have anything “new” per se - but our endeavor with such “elective” courses is to deliver the juice as densely as possible - in a way that helps someone actually integrate the knowledge into action. The blogging is probably my least favorite of our courseware so far - probably because of my lack of unique input on it. Our staff put it together based on consultations with blogging experts. I think it perhaps also needs more emphasis on pure how-to as well.

  Something else interesting you might want to check out:

  http://www.kachingtank.com

  … and …

  http://www.kachingtank.com/blog

  I’m sitting in the newly launched KaChing Tank right now on a bean bag chair while the “Tankers” update the kachingtank.com site (we’re moving the blog front and center and I think even you might enjoy the content forthcoming) and edit a video of what they did during their first day yesterday.

  MJ

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 7, 2008 at 4:14 pm

  Locked? Doh! What’s the email you used to sign up? (you can email that to me if you don’t want to write it here)

• Mark
  Jan 7, 2008 at 5:13 pm

  Not a problem…

  admin at freeadcentral dot com

• Mark Joyner
  Jan 8, 2008 at 1:25 am

  Hey Mark, sorry for the late reply - was afk for a while working with the Tankers. I went in and checked and indeed it was still locked for you. I’m wondering if you signed up the same time Kristen did as there was an issue with the course not unlocking automatically (that was subsequently fixed that day).

  I’ve also unlocked some other cool stuff for you as well. The Jacque Fresco course on drawing is particularly cool (www.simpleology.com/training/drawing). Jacque is a 91 year old mega genius and he has a unique technique for teaching people to draw quite quickly.

  Enjoy,

  MJ

• Mark
  Jan 8, 2008 at 6:13 am

  Good deal Mark… yes, I think Kristen and I signed up about the same time.

  I have a feeling you’ll be hearing from me :)

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