Guru products are all out there and I think they are all very basic and non helpful. The reason is they want you to continue to buy their products. It makes sense as a business and a marketing tactic. I was showing one of my friends and now student how to start in the online space. I always tell someone to go ahead and do it and just jump into making a website and sending it traffic.
... a buddy of mine basically jumped in and said...
We are good friends and we are in 2 different space of the online world. So we both have different views on this. He is not wrong, we just have different experiences on how we approach something or in this case teach people online marketing just because of our own backgrounds. I took on a friends and I am showing him how to start to make his first 1$ in the online space. I started off by telling him to 'send traffic' - facebook, twitter, etc. Very generic response to his question on how to promote this particular offer.
This is where my buddy jumped in and stated to do the above strategy. My question becomes - how is a brand new person with no internet background suppose to know what to type in, what keywords to look for, what to really dissect from the results Google shows him? The above is a strategy and is a good simple strategy, it just leaves so many things open for a brand new person to get started which will result in annoying repetitive questions.
I like to teach by failure before success. My way of teaching builds a building block for the student and allows the person to think freely and ask while I guide. Remember riding your first bike, you put on your helmet, have your training wheels on and your parent held your bike and secretly let you go. Once they let you go, you have freedom to turn right and to start figuring out your center of balance on the bike. It allows you to start thinking without someone holding on to you any more. Step by step guides are just that, a hand holding process that doesn't allow free thinking.
A process of how to or a standard workflow of how to gain traffic is just that, a process. It doesn't allow the person to think WHY does this work. With allowing a person to fail before success gives the user creative freedom to think and a sense of encouragement when they figured it on their own.
Learn to Fail also allows the student to take their strategy and move it to any vertical, any niche, any new business they want to do. If someone gives you a profitable campaign and the traffic source as well, you only make money for X amount of months. Can you take that same campaign strategy to another vertical like tomato growing? Most likely not. Different demographics, different time of year, different user base, age groups etc.
By showing someone a process only shows them what works now, but doesn't allow them to thing what is hot, what is trending, how do I take advantage of this niche, etc. Processes are very generic when it comes to teaching. There is a popular saying: "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for the rest of his life."
With teaching it allows the person to be hands on and enhances critical thinking. A process of what to do, is just that this is WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. Doesn't allow free thinking. I am not saying my buddy teachings are wrong, he has his internet business and is successful at it. We both have our own methodology and how we approach a problem to arrive at a solution.
When consulting, this strategy works very well. You give a company a strategy and they dissect it to make it work with their company. You can not tell a company here is my Blueprint 201 guide on increasing your sales 22%. It just doesn't happen that way, you consult and provide guidance to the company because of internal rules, tool limitations, spend limits, etc. If that strategy works for Fortune 500 companies why not brand new users that are trying to earn a living online for the first time?
Teaching is all about free thinking, which allows the student to think because you want your student to be successful and not just be a one time success. Being stuck sucks because it is all you know, with a foundation to go off on you can accomplish and start many campaigns and even new businesses.
... video of basically what I just said above ...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8jXcszFTp0[/youtube]