Hoehn’s Musings

I always stay up really late.  I like to work until awful hours of the night, and then watch a recorded episode of ‘Jersey Shore’ or ‘The Office’ to wind down before I go to sleep (watching guidos has a calming effect on me).  At 3:15am last night, my blood pressure instantly skyrocketed because right as I turned on the TV, this quote rattled out of Anthony Morrison during his infomercial:

A lot of people say to me… ‘What if I don’t want to spend any money to get started?  Is there any way I can get started and not spend money?’  And the answer to that is yes.  I have some techniques in this book that can show you how to advertise, drive traffic and customers to your website so you can make money without spending a single penny.

And one of those things is Twitter.  We hear about Twitter all the time, it’s everywhere you go, you see something about Twitter, right?  You can turn your Twitter account into an automatic machine that’s just driving traffic and customers to your website all day long.  Because there are millions of people on Twitter, right?  So it’s real easy to reach those people if you know the techniques.  And that’s exactly what I teach in this book.  Same thing with Facebook, Myspace, and everything else.

Anthony Morrison is lying.  Whatever positive takeaways his book might contain are negated by the statement in bold.  Anyone who has spent a decent chunk of time on Twitter can assure you that he is wrong.

Let’s set aside the ridiculous notion that it’s “easy” to reach millions of people on Twitter, and just focus on the assertion that you can make money through the site.  I know a few people who have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter.  I know one person who has almost a million followers.  None of them have ever claimed that Twitter is a good way to make money.  Why?  Because people do not use Twitter to help decide on what purchases to make.  They are not in a buyer’s state of mind, unlike when they’re using Google to find a solution to their problem and are much more likely to make a purchase.  Even if you’re posting affiliate links, the click-thru rate is going to be 10% at the very high end.  Conversion to sales?  Way lower.  Do the math, and you’ll find that it’s a waste of your time.

Not surprisingly, Anthony has just a little over a thousand followers… With that kind of following, it’s no wonder he’s rolling in profitable traffic!  Let’s follow his lead!  But first, let’s see if we can read some of his meaningless tweets without having a cerebral hemorrhage.

Look, I know there are always going to be con artists in every industry.  It’s a fact of life.  I try not to get mad about this stuff, but I can’t help it.  I hate seeing these jerks duping people into handing over three easy payments of $19.95 based on promises that I empirically know to be false.  Anthony is not the only guilty party; this has become a golden age for anyone with cursory knowledge of the internet to take advantage of the uninformed.

What’s most aggravating is that the internet truly has the potential to be something wonderful for so many individuals and companies.  With a lot of hard work, it can be a potent tool for earning trust, permission, love, and respect from all over the world…

But why nurture that potential when you can be making some fast and easy $$$?!!!

I’ve told several smaller companies that Twitter is little more than a fun distraction.  I’ve told them to shut down their Facebook accounts.  To focus on the few things that will help them accomplish their goals, and to ignore all the hype.  For many of them, social networks just don’t make much sense for their business.  But the temptation is too great, so they usually do all this stuff anyway.

If you really want to make $$$ on Twitter, follow this guy’s formula.  I guarantee you’ll get instant results.