Beware the Guru
Posted On: 2007-10-17
I had to laugh when I saw a post on blog that I read quite often that was announcing a new site for those who needed mainstream marketing help. It was called Gooruz and it featured some quite well-known people in search engine marketing.
It made me laugh - not only because of the name - but also because I suddenly started to wonder how these people ever find time to do any real work. They're all over the Net with their blogs and their comments, they seem to appear at or attend all the major search engine marketing shows in America and now they're starting a site where they will dispense information for all those who need it.
How many hours do these guys have in their day? Have they found some secret of time and space that allows them to fit more into every minute than the rest of us can? Or is being a guru their full time job?
Maybe I'm just being a bit snarky but you have to wonder how they can do all those things and still have time left to do any real work. Even though the rest of us might extend our work days to 10, 12 or even more hours every day most of us don't seem to find time to do all those extra things that these guys do. We might work smarter instead of harder but that doesn't seem to mean that we have extra time.
Perhaps being able to fit so many different things into your day and still have time for real work is some sort of sign that you've arrived. If that's the case then perhaps I'll never ‘arrive' because the more I save time by working smarter the more work comes in to fill up those spare hours that my smart work created.
Looking around the Net I wonder whether that's not the case with a lot of very experienced people and that's something that's certainly evident here in adult.
Occasionally I brush shoulders with perhaps the leading adult search engine marketer; I've never met him in person but we occasionally do some work for him. He's not a guy you will know from the boards because he rarely posts on any of them; you won't know him from any of the adult webmaster shows either because he never attends them but the sponsors he promotes sure know him because he's their leading affiliate and sends them bucket loads of signups every day.
There's no doubt that he has a wealth of information inside his head and he could write books, produce podcasts, run newbie boards and even make money from teaching his techniques to others ... but he just doesn't have time. He's too busy with the business of making money to ever have time to do any of those things.
And he's not the only one. There are others out there who are in the same position. They simply don't have time to become a guru because they're too busy making money and isn't that where you would want to be?
In adult you'll find lots of people who claim some form of guru status and who hang out on the boards offering advice and making plenty of noise but when you cut through all their hype and spin you'll see that there's no substance behind them at all. They're not making real money ... they're just making a lot of noise. And I wonder how many mainstream gurus are just like that?
It's far easier when you're working online to play the guru even if you have nothing on which to base that status. A few posts, a few sycophants who act as your backing choir and you can pass yourself off as the real deal. You can even con people out of their money with your guru act and keep at it for years if you don't get too greedy.
So be very careful as you move through this industry. Watch for those who claim to have guru status, be wary of their advice and test it before you stake your future on it. Look for what others have to say about the things the guru is preaching about and if there is a little voice inside you that's whispering a warning then take heed.
There's no doubt, there are real gurus out there but most of them won't be found on message boards so tread warily or you may not survive long enough in adult or mainstream marketing to become a guru yourself.