The crap fling

A lot of successful blogs don’t offer anything of real value. They’ll take a problem everyone’s trying to solve, say they have a solution, and:

• Write a post that just rehashes all the solutions we’ve already tried that didn’t work.
• Write a post that sounds like it has the solution, if only you could figure out what the hell they’re blathering about, while a crowd of (probably paid, or working on a back-scratching arrangement?) commenters worship at their feet and utter more gobbledygook, making you feel like you’re the only one not smart enough to understand the brilliant solution.
• Offer a solution that creates more problems than it solves, and therefore really isn’t a solution.
• Promising a solution but only telling us what would solve the problem (“The solution to doing X with G is that we need a plugin for G”), like we didn’t already know that a tool to do what we want would solve the problem of being unable to do what we want. Even monkeys understand that one – c’mon!

Another standby is the tactic of taking a non-problem, or a small problem, making it sound like a big important problem, then offering the solution (which everyone already knew) to a crowd of worshipers.

These tactics make money. There’s no getting around that. They generate link bait and discussion, and sometimes result in selling stuff that’s really not all that. It’s really tempting to join them in their bluffing game and rake in the cash.

To speak only when you have something worth saying is limiting. But it’s a limit that improves quality through substance. When you know you need to generate tons of content or try tons of affiliate products, it’s really tempting to churn out crap that sounds good but really doesn’t say anything. And why shouldn’t you, if it makes money?

Because it also costs. I’m convinced the reason people who churn out crap make money is because they’re buying (via cash or favors) their core group of fans, who often also churn out crap of their own. Now, if you have enough money to throw at this, you can probably build yourself into a guru and develop a real core audience with these tactics, too.

But that’s not an option for most of us. If you don’t have trust funds, power income or manic spending habits, the way to build a core audience is to fling something at them other than crap. It takes more time to find real problems and solve them than it does to write copy that makes it look like you fixed something when you really didn’t.

Save the crap flinging for your promotion techniques, where you should feel free to do whatever works within the bounds of the law.

1. Directories overrun with crap
2. Thanks for the crap, Google
3. Lowering standards
4. Content, or building?
5. New blog

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