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Omelettes & Obituaries

Easter comes in March this year, so I’m going to riff a little bit on the topics central to Easter. When we think of Easter, there are the religious aspects and the secular aspects. The religious aspects, of course, have to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus. How this pertains to online business, you’ll see in my comments further down the page. The secular aspects have to do with all the things associated with the Easter Bunny such as Easter Eggs, candy and so forth. Whatever has that to do with online marketing? Press on, my friend and you’ll see where I’m going with that.

Omelettes

It’s said that you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. It’s often said when someone has made a clumsy mistake and they don’t want to take ownership of the negative impact of their decision. Let’s dwell on that a moment.

There are a lot of people looking for freebies and shortcuts. There are ways to do this effectively when you have more substantial structures in place, but it should not be the sole structure of your business. To whit, the other egg cliché we need to concentrate on is the idea of putting all your eggs in one basket. More dangerous still is if you put all your eggs in someone else’s basket.

The only time you should put your eggs in someone else’s basket is if they have bought them from you or if you are paying them to carry the eggs for you. If someone has bought your eggs, they’re no longer yours so it doesn’t really matter how carefully they handle them. If you are paying someone to carry your eggs and they mishandle them, you have standing to take action against them for mishandling your eggs. If you put your eggs in someone else’s basket for free, they have no obligation to handle them properly. They have no obligation to handle them at all.

The same can be said of online resources. Free stuff is worth what you pay for it. If you put your sales pages on a free site, there is no guarantee that your sales page will not be arbitrarily deleted as a violation of their terms of service. There are techniques to set up a site temporarily on free services like Wix, Weebly or WordPress.com but there is no guarantee that they won’t just flush your site at some future time.

DON’T DO THAT

Another Easter themed concept to consider is the notion of candy. Candy is great. An Easter Basket full of chocolate, jelly beans and peanut butter eggs is a wonderful treat and so is free stuff. We love free hosting, free ads, free information, free training, free, free, free! When you think of it, trying to base your entire online marketing business on all the free stuff  you can get your hands on is not entirely unlike eating a diet entirely consisting of candy. It sounds like a childhood dream come true, but sooner or later you will seriously regret it. You need to fortify yourself with the four food groups for proper nutrition. You also need to fortify your business with the four core concepts outlined in my Permanent Payday system. Jump through to receive my free eBook and video. Candy is gloriously fun and tasty, but spare yourself the belly ache and focus on the basics.

Obituaries

The next idea associated with Easter is the death and resurrection of Jesus. How can that possibly relate to online marketing? If you’re anything like me, you’re subscribed to tons of email marketers’ lists. Run down the latest batch of emails and see if you can’t find the word dead. Email marketing is dead. Facebook marketing is dead. Article marketing is dead. Dead, dead, dead. Everything has its season. Winter is a season of death and sleep and silent recuperation. Easter is typically near to the threshold of Spring. Spring is a season of rejuvenation, rebirth and fertility. So, just as Jesus rose from the tomb, we can be sure that pretty much anything that our email marketers and favorite blogsters have declared dead will rise again in one way or another. Likewise, anything that they have declared dead is simply an attention-getter for whatever it is they’re trying to sell you as its replacement. Ask any two marketers and one is likely to say this is dead do so that while the other says that is dead so do this.

Every technique has some form or another that is working for somebody somewhere. The problem is that when somebody says “this is working for me, do this“, their followers and competitors jump all over it and strip it bare. When a field is overfarmed, it’s dead…until it isn’t. If you let a field lay fallow for long enough, it will eventually accrue the nutrients required to make it fertile again. Nothing is ever truly dead (unless it’s illegal, then leave it alone).

As a case in point, let’s look at the much-maligned buggy whip. The buggy whip is the very symbol of Luddite backwardness. Who needs a buggy whip? Do they sell buggy whips at BestBuy or the Apple store? Of course not **cue snide, deriding laughter**! Well, not so fast. The average person has about as much use for a buggy whip as they do a chastity belt or a butter churn. About an hour’s drive southwest of me, there are quite a few people who would rather have a buggy whip than an iPhone. Around Lancaster and New Holland, the Amish drive their horse drawn carriages to and fro with the same frequency and reason as we drive around in our cars. They’re going to visit relatives, go shopping, go to church, wherever they want for whatever they need. Also, not far from me, is a nice young couple who hire out their horse drawn carriage for weddings and other special events. It’s a glamorous white carriage suitable for a princess on her birthday or a bride on her wedding day. Do you think they might need a buggy whip? Sure do. Nothing is dead, not even buggy whips.

Don’t let anyone tell you something is dead without wondering what it is they’re trying to sell you to replace it. Even more importantly, if they can sell it so can you. So, when something is declared dead, either see if you can give it CPR or figure out what’s replacing it. Sell the solution, my friend and watch your bank account come back to life.