I went to a webinar yesterday. Actually, I sat on my butt in front of the computer for free information that was going to help me win an audience of 100,000 and earn $150,000 in six months just by writing. How could I pass that up? Oh, my wife can quit her job too.
At least that was what happened to Maxwell Gravis, the purveyor of the webcast called “How to Make a Living as a Writer.” He’d transitioned from being a drone at some unnamed non-profit to a best-selling author––he reminds us often––who has so many followers and makes so much money writing that, besides lighting cigars with $50 bills, he was able to quit his job, write full-time, and allow his wife to be a stay-at-home mom.
I would like all of those things too, except the stay-at-home mom part because if that were to happen at our age, someone would have some explaining to do.
The webinar was free so I thought, what the hell. Even if I get nothing out of it, the worst thing to happen is that I will have wasted an hour and a half of my precious time. Max probably could write the first two chapters of his next best-selling book in that amount of time, but I’m not as successful as he is.
So there I sat in my boxers and bathrobe, pen in hand, waiting for some pearls of wisdom, most of which consisted of telling me that I was about to get material poured into my brain that people have paid thousands of dollars for and that I was getting for free. He asked rhetorically, “Why are you here?” I thought it was pretty evident since the title of the webinar was “How to Make a Living as a Writer.” There was a sidebar on the screen that allowed for live chatting, but I didn’t want to be that smart ass who points out the obvious and annoys the rest of the would-be writers who are hanging on every word coming from the mountaintop.
Before getting into the meat of the thing, he told us about the free prize we were getting for just sitting in front of the screen. It was a download of something he’d written that apparently has a street value of Walter White’s crystal meth. He also stressed that he was “going to help” me. To which I responded, “Then get on with it!” I said this aloud, not in the live chat. Again, I didn’t want to rock the virtual boat.
Eleven minutes into the webinar, it looked as if we were about to actually start. That’s when Max reminded me again of how successful he was, which made me reflect on how I was the opposite or I wouldn’t be sitting in front of my computer, unshaven, listening to a kid half my age tell me how to make it big. But I’m nothing if not teachable.
Finally at 11:19 he launched into the myriad ways I can get as rich as he is by writing. I can boil it down for you so you don’t have to sit through the next webinar. You need a clear message, you need a platform, you need a tribe––that is, people who read your stuff and share it with others––and you need a product.
To distill it even further: you need a blog, an e-mail list, and content. He could have said that right off the bat and opened it up to Q & A at 11:05. Turns out, the main thrust of the webinar is how to make money blogging. Well, crap; I don’t read blogs. Why would I subject others to one? I’d read my blog if I had one, but if my past experience is worth anything, I doubt anyone beyond my mother and a couple of acquaintances would read mine. I only say this because that’s literally what happened when I tried my hand at blogging a few Januarys back. I obviously was going about it the wrong way because when I failed to offer a product, even my mother stopped reading.
Before––and after––taking questions from the great unwashed, Max pitched his new seminar called “Blogging by the Numbers.” (He has product.) It normally sells for $299 but for a limited time only––that is until he signed off the webinar––this treasure trove of wisdom was going for $99. It sounded like a pretty good deal––if I were interested in really throwing my everything into being a blogger. I’m not. So that was that.
This morning, as I was pouring a bowl of cereal, my cell phone dinged. It was an email from Maxwell Gravis. He noticed that I hadn’t signed up for the “Blogging by the Numbers” course, and was wondering why. I’m sure he was writing this to me at 8:02 am because he had spent a fitful, sleepless night wondering why I hadn’t signed up. He then asked me how my blog was coming along. I felt he was being a little snarky, asking a question he already knew the answer to.
He stressed that he didn’t want to be rude but what was I waiting for? Maybe I wasn’t aware that the special webinar price for the “Blogging by the Numbers” course was going away in two days. Wait a minute. I thought it was going away when the webinar ended. No matter, I wasn’t going to nibble on Max’s lure. Even after he told me that he meant it when he said I have something important to share and that there are people out there who need to hear what I have to say.
Maybe, he said, I have hours of free time to research and study strategies of the most successful bloggers and can afford to work through the trial and error. Maybe I have thousands of readers already and I just don’t want to commit the time to become the blogger I could be. Maybe “Blogging by the Numbers” isn’t right for me. Now he was just being passive-aggressive. “But,” he added––and then there was a hyper link that read: “What if is exactly what you need?” I’m sure Max was in such a frenzied hurry to get through to me that he just forgot to include the word “it” in his question.
I guess I should have felt a sense of shame for not following through but I don’t want to be a blogger; too much work. Besides, I wouldn’t want my wife to quit her job. We’re having a ball with that extra $400 a month and we’re only $24,600 short of our monthly goal. So I guess I’ll just follow Max’s final advice to me in his sign off. I’ll just “keep being awesome.”