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What do you do when you need an answer to some pressing problem? Do you look for the solution yourself, do you ask friends or do you immediately rush off to your favorite webmaster board and ask for their advice?

And if you ask for other webmaster's advice are you getting sound advice based on previous experiences? Are you getting someone's idle speculation based on nothing more concrete than what someone thinks you might like, or not like, to hear? Or are you getting someone's personal opinion based on their religious beliefs or their sensitivities?

What made me ask that was a question I saw pop up on a webmaster board over the weekend. The question related to the sub-title of an e-book the enquirer was writing. The title was ok but the sub-title contained some fairly strong words ... not as strong as you might find on GFY ... but certainly far stronger than the people on this webmaster board were usually confronted with

The writer was wondering whether or not they should water down that sub-title because they thought that such strong language might reduce sales and it was interesting to watch the replies roll in. By the time I gave up watching the replies, the person who had asked the question had received about 100 responses.

One response suggested that they should leave the sub-title as it was because it would definitely resonate with people who might need to buy the book. A second response agreed and the person who wrote that response mentioned that, when they had faced a similar problem to what the book dealt with, the strong language in the sub-title would have definitely resonated with them.

That person also added that if the sub-title had been toned down they would have not bothered to buy the book because it would have appeared to be too weak.

All the other responses told the person who asked the question that the sub-title should be watered down because they would never buy a book with that sort of language on the front cover ... but then how many people see what's on the cover of an e-book?

Of course most of those who responded would never have bought the book anyway because they probably had no need for it ... but they didn't actually say that. Instead they gave their personal opinion based on their sensitivities. One respondent even said that they took strong exception to one of the words that was used.

Sadly no one offered an opinion based on anything more concrete and there was no mention of how other similar e-books were selling or anything relating to data at all.

I mean who needs data when you have a bunch of self-opinionated people who are only too happy to give you their extremely valuable opinion?

So would the e-book have sold with such strong language in the sub-title? I don't know and the writer may never know either because it's hard to go against so much "good" advice. They may not have even realised that so much of that advice was pretty much worthless but when you have 98 people out of 100 telling you that you've made a terrible mistake you're hardly likely to look too deeply at the responses.

But what if those 98 people are wrong? What if that e-book, with the strongly worded sub-title, might have been a best-seller? I guess we will never know and nor will the writer but it should make you question the value of the advice you get when you approach others for guidance.

Do they really know where you're coming from? Do they really understand your target market or are they offering you advice because they want to sound important? How important or knowledgeable does anyone sound when they say, 'I don't know'.

So when was the last time that you let a whole bunch of uninformed opinion change what you were going to do? Did you stop to think that maybe all those people who offered advice may not have had a clue about what you were asking?

Did you dare ask any of those who gave you their opinion or advice to support their statements with hard data? If you did dare ask for some hard data you may have been rather surprised at the response you got because so many people drop straight into a defensive posture when they're are asked to back up their statements with facts.

But don't be afraid to ask people to support their opinions and statements with cold hard facts. Don't be afraid to critically analyze the responses you get because opinions are basically worth nothing but that doesn't stop them from doing a lot of damage to your business.