Replace your 9-5 with affiliate marketing

In this inaugural episode of the Stupid Marketing Tweets podcast, Ellis and Anthony discuss these two tweets:

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Automated Episode Transcript

Anthony: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Anthony

Ellis: and I'm Ellis. This is the cult of marketing podcast where we point out fortune cookie tweets that undermine the reality of marketing and perpetuate an equity chamber of stupidity.

Anthony: Yeah. We have a couple of tweets today and our general format is I'm going to bring one tweet. Ellis will bring a tweet and we will discuss it and we will try to keep it to under 10 minutes.

So, uh, something small digestible. And hopefully fun and possibly educational. So Ellis, what did you bring today?

Ellis: Today I brought a tweet. It is the first of a thread and the tweet says, "How to find a niche for your business" in parentheses. "Make the most of your marketing efforts, create new categories and rule them. A thread."

Anthony: What's wrong with this?

Ellis: Well, I think that this tweet first off, I think it's a misnomer, but I'll get to that in a minute. I think. He's really playing into romanticizing, the idea of creating new categories. [00:01:00] Like you really don't just create a category and suddenly it takes off, you still have to operate within existing categories and make your audience aware of that.

Aware that a new category exists, right. They don't people don't just suddenly know about a new category, right? So you have to go into your competing categories and do a lot, lay a lot of groundwork in order to make any traction. And then also this whole, the whole thread of tweets is really just him talking about how, how do define your niche and market yourself to that.

So really his entire thread boils down to like, know your audience and market to them.

Anthony: Yeah. But he says it in such a new way,

Ellis: but is it really new? It's not new.

Anthony: No. And that's what irritates me. I mean, that's why we're here because, uh, these stupid marketing tweets are just so cliche. Yeah. Well, what bugs me about it is it's kind of like when people say you could be losing [00:02:00] weight right now, you could be lifting weights right now.

You could, you know, it's like "make the most of your marketing efforts." How is that helpful? You know what, you're just basically telling me I'm not doing enough. I'm not, you know, motivated enough to make this happen for myself. I'm not creating new categories as though these are just things that everyday people can just start doing, you know? I saw a similar tweet that was like, it was pointing to this tick-tock account where there's this guy who makes these silent, uh, Tik TOK videos. He doesn't say anything. He just shows something. And then he, you know, shows how to do it. Right. He shows how people are doing wrong. Then he showed us how to do it.

And then he makes this face, like, you must be an idiot.

Ellis: Right. I know what you're talking about.

Yeah. So he's got like 2 million or something tik TOK followers, and this guy tweets: "he doesn't even have to say anything. All you need to do is hit record. Why aren't you doing this?" Like, oh, I didn't realize that guy had zero creativity and zero, you know, comic [00:03:00] value.

And he just happened to accidentally make this very successful Tik TOK account. So that's what bugs me about these kinds of tweets like you could just go do this. The only reason you're not successful in this is because of you. It's not because of luck. It's not because of timing. It's not because you're doing something that people don't care about.

You know what I mean?

Yep. You could just do it, Anthony. I don't know why you're not. And so now that we are doing this podcast, we are really successful and poor Dax shepard is quaking in his boots.

Anthony: Yeah. So. What else is wrong with this thing?

Ellis: Well, he has two periods after "a thread" instead of three, and he doesn't use the Oxford comma.

So I have a few, I have a few punctuation beefs with him. Um, but I think, you know, that's really, those were really my main thoughts with this and just kind of, to kind of piggyback off of something you said, I, I also dislike the whole, um, to like theory of [00:04:00] maximization. Right? You have to make the most of what you're doing as if what you're doing, isn't already the most.

And there, there has to be another way to game the system and maximize what you're doing. And I think that that can sometimes be true, but. Honestly, if you have a well thought out strategy, be it simple or complicated. It's not really an issue of maximizing. It's an issue of trying and testing and seeing what works and giving things the time to really show their results.

Anthony: So why is this tweet popular? Why do you think people are liking it

Ellis: because it's Twitter?

Anthony: No, that's not—I'm not going to let you get away with that. What is the right answer?

Ellis: People are just looking to affirm things that they already think. And I think that it's also a lot easier to just continue to like things that affirm what you already know about marketing without having to really put a lot of thought [00:05:00] into, "well, what is he really saying? And how can I reflect on his message based on what I'm doing?" Right? I just don't think, I mean, I don't think that this is really a thread for introspection on how you're actually doing things. It's a thread to be a thread and to pop up in the marketing topic and to get people to be aware of you, which, I mean, it's Twitter.

It's not like that's some nefarious thing, but it's also not extraordinarily helpful.

Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Definitely perpetuates an echo chamber and it's kind of like, "Let me create a little cult following for myself of people who agree with these pithy things that I have to say."

Ellis: Well and like I said, that's not inherently bad, but obviously I find it preferable if you can be bringing something new to the conversation or even saying, "hey, this is something that we all know, but I'm going to say it again anyway, because it bears repeating."

Anthony: Yeah. And that kind [00:06:00] of leads to my tweet that I brought my stupid marketing tweet. The tweet says, "are you planning on replacing your nine to five?" And then offers five business opportunities here.

It says " 1.Sell digital products 2. Start affiliate marketing 3. Start a drop shipping store 4. Learn email marketing 5. Learn Amazon FBA" and new line: "start an online business. Build a personal brand. "

Ellis: So, I'm not sure what this person is selling, but I'll bet you anything they're selling courses on how to do these five things.

Anthony: Absolutely. Like what is the point of tweeting this? And that's what bugs me about this stuff like this. There is no insight here. Like he's basically baiting someone and, you know, That well I mean, first of all, he's got a money bag in his Twitter handle, you know, like you can put your name and then emoji.

So he's got a money bag and, uh, you know, this [00:07:00] idea of just starting an online business, build a personal brand. These are just such casual statements as though like, "oh, that's all you need to do. It's, it's nothing, you know, you'll be fine. Just start an online business who cares you could accidentally get successful."

When in reality, to do anything successfully in this vein would require probably 10 hours a day of serious effort, especially if you're new to it, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. You don't know anything about anything yet. You're going to be buying this guy's courses. You know, you're going to be paying a lot of other people money for you to start believing that you're finding freedom.

Ellis: Yeah. And these are saturated spaces. It's not like you're going to come along and suddenly be the solution to someone's problems. You're going to be competing against hundreds of thousands, at least of other people or businesses, right? Like how many people are, have started drop shipping stores. So many.[00:08:00]

So I, myself fell prey to one of those, like, um, course like learn how to, you know, you know, make money on Amazon, whatever. And so I was like, okay, let me see. This course is cheap. Let me see. And it's like, they're like, well, first up you start up Facebook marketplace and then you have to like, create this entire product that you're going to sell on Amazon.

And I was like, okay, so that's fine. But this is not what you were telling me was going to happen. Not what I expected. And I feel like that's kind of what he's selling here

Anthony: in light of your stupid marketing tweet. Uh, the guy said, make the most of your marketing efforts create new categories and rule them.

Selling digital products is not creating a new category, starting affiliate marketing. None of this is new. So I mean, sure. You can do new things within them, but if you're planning on replacing your nine to five and you don't already do these things. How long is it going to take you to figure out what is my niche?

You know, what is the [00:09:00] unique thing that I'm bringing to the market and how much is at stake? It, this guy has all the upside and none of the downside. And so that's, that's another thing. There's no skin in this game, right. So why is this tweet popular Ellis?

Ellis: Well, I mean, this follows a really common format that we've been seeing a lot on Twitter as you know, X things that will make you money.

You'll never go broke. If you do these things, learn these, you know, skills, whatever you'll never be broke. I think it's just kind of the new it's kind of in the zeitgeist. And, uh, I think people are really trying to promote, they're trying to get customers. I mean, that's what they're doing.

Anthony: Yup. Yup. And they're preying upon people. I mean, we see that we've seen this for hundreds of years, but they're preying on people who hate their job. Think I wish I could make all this money online, sitting on my couch, doing nothing, you know, just using my cell phone, just [00:10:00] like this guy does.

Ellis: Just like the four hour, the whole four hour workweek thing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. This is just like the, one of the iterations down the line. Right? If you start a business, you work four hours a week, the products will just sell themselves and you'll be Tim Ferris

Anthony: Absolutely. All right. We've hit about the 10 minute mark. So, uh, let's let our people go

Ellis: Apologies to Tim Ferris

Anthony: It's a cool idea. You know, it's great if you can sell it. Uh, so yeah, if you like what you're hearing, you can follow us on Twitter. Ellis is @ellis_types and I am @atgarone. And you can learn more about our business at edifycontent.com.