What other forums do you find valuable?
- Thread starter Callum Short
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bernard
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Yes, it's shit now, at least for Google Ads / Bing Ads.
eliquid
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Agree on STM.
I bought the Ad World Conference ticket for myself happening in Nov and got a free month to check out STM again.
To say I was disappointed, again, would be an understatement. I had checked it out about a year ago as well and thought it was downhill too.
BTW, Im comparing it to info on networks I know... such as Google, Bing, Facebook and a couple 3rd parties. For networks I don't know well it might be decent. But if I don't know it well, it's prob not a big well known network that delivers traffic and quality...
I bought the Ad World Conference ticket for myself happening in Nov and got a free month to check out STM again.
To say I was disappointed, again, would be an understatement. I had checked it out about a year ago as well and thought it was downhill too.
BTW, Im comparing it to info on networks I know... such as Google, Bing, Facebook and a couple 3rd parties. For networks I don't know well it might be decent. But if I don't know it well, it's prob not a big well known network that delivers traffic and quality...
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This right here, unless you're going to buy media on some obscure platform or POF it's awful.
Facebook and Google have pretty much everything an advertiser needs to know on their site for free.
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Here's my reddit tier theory.
OPs banking drives OPS posting.
A lot of the money in the eco system used to be driven by people using auction ad platforms to get rich basically over night.
Everything's dead cuz independent ops were making bank due to a temporary hole in the playing field where traffic could be bought with suitable transparency. Now that big tech has taken over enough media to be "the media". We're not seeing new blood outing things for network clout cuz rebates, account credits, special big boi only discounts and priority access to novel ad platforms that haven't been saturated has strangled the flow of cash to the small guys and raised significant barriers to entry for new players in the industry.
Most of the big successes I see now days are from organic meta positioning with mass content marketing or finding a hole in the moderation / circle jerk clubs and growing a following via social platforms. (anything that works promptly saturates and gets nuked)
This kind of delayed gratification type of success doesn't really align with the prone to outting personalities.
OPs banking drives OPS posting.
A lot of the money in the eco system used to be driven by people using auction ad platforms to get rich basically over night.
Everything's dead cuz independent ops were making bank due to a temporary hole in the playing field where traffic could be bought with suitable transparency. Now that big tech has taken over enough media to be "the media". We're not seeing new blood outing things for network clout cuz rebates, account credits, special big boi only discounts and priority access to novel ad platforms that haven't been saturated has strangled the flow of cash to the small guys and raised significant barriers to entry for new players in the industry.
Most of the big successes I see now days are from organic meta positioning with mass content marketing or finding a hole in the moderation / circle jerk clubs and growing a following via social platforms. (anything that works promptly saturates and gets nuked)
This kind of delayed gratification type of success doesn't really align with the prone to outting personalities.
Last edited:
eliquid
Digital Strategist
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I have a couple of ideas on this.
If you ever watched Shriek, in one part of the movie Shriek tells Donkey Ogres are like Onion...
No, watch it... really.
The onion and layers thought applies to all of my thinking and strategy and lifestyle.
If you get it, you get it.
I've been lucky enough to come up in digital marketing since it's infancy.
Many of us were young and wanted the fame as we came up and hit on gems and gold no one else had yet, so we blabbed about it. The industry was young too and nothing was really preventing us on the other side as well.
If you have no roadblocks ahead of you, why not go full-speed balls to the wall? You can always "outdrive" the ones following behind you... ( take a long thought on that with the statement above too )
But as things matured ( the marketers, the platforms ), we realized a lot of errors with that thinking.
Personally, I lost out on billions I helped generate in the affiliate marketing world because I outed someone that stole my method I invented for landing pages and bidding on Facebook. That caused a huge shit storm in the industry.
I've also watched people steal ideas from me in other forums and chat groups for their SaaS in real time too.
I've sat back in other groups and watched other people get stolen from and cheated as well.
There are layers, like an onion to this game. It's in all games. You just learn the REAL rules as you go and mature.
I remember a long time ago people telling me "I needed an abundance mindset", that there is enough for everyone all the time.. to share and let others succeed. Fuck that shit, there isn't.
I've known this for decades, but COVID should have really opened everyone else's eyes to this.
Those are the same people that shared too many secrets and advice on forums. Those are the people that let the cat out of the bag and led to others abusing platforms and methods that are now shut off.
Those are the same people that threaten steady incomes for me and my family and many others out here that hustled for years to get to this spot, only to have to recreate themselves again when the outers come and ruin it all.
Personally, I'm tired of having to reinvent myself. To reinvent new LPs, ads, bidding methods, backends, offers, etc every 12 months because someone on Reddit or another forum outed it with an "abundance mindset".
So you end up with people like me, deep in the trenches, who don't share gems and gold anymore. As I matured and seen what was more important ( not the fame ), you learn these lessons. Others learn them too and it's a network impact.
The platforms evolve too in the same way ( see above ).
And what happens is, the old hats and really smart people learn this. And this is like a lot of things in life, that everything is temporary and finicky. Delicate even. Hanging on by a thread most times. Disrupting that could mean having to start all over and who wants that? There is no real growth in that, having to start over many times.
Growth is keeping what you have, and then adding on to it. Having to reinvent yourself and your methods is the opposite of that.
So you don't out. You don't talk. You don't share anymore.
The platforms change, you find the new "it" and you keep it close to yourself.
The other guys, they fall to the waste side if they can't hack it. You aren't bringing them out of the dumpster though to take dollars from you and your retirement and tell the rest of the world so they can abuse it and end up costing you.
All those people bragging about how great selling on Amazon was years ago are now wishing they shut the fuck up now with everyone and their mom selling on it, the Chinese manufactures stealing designs left and right, and Amazon taking your product and making it and shutting you down at the same time.
The only ones that end up outing and sharing is those too young and immature to know what's going on, those that really didn't do shit and faking it, or those who haven't been stolen from yet enough times to see what they are actually missing out on.
Knowing this now, why try to find more forums and hangouts?
The really experienced people aren't going to share anything with you there really. At least not anything of substance and direct action. They might share generalities with you that you will have to end up thinking on, deep digging, and massive action taking on.. but you could have done that on your own to begin with.
Spend the time looking, searching, reading, and wasting time on... actually doing.
Anything you read on a forum, 90% of the time you are way late to the game to.
If you ever watched Shriek, in one part of the movie Shriek tells Donkey Ogres are like Onion...
No, watch it... really.
The onion and layers thought applies to all of my thinking and strategy and lifestyle.
If you get it, you get it.
I've been lucky enough to come up in digital marketing since it's infancy.
Many of us were young and wanted the fame as we came up and hit on gems and gold no one else had yet, so we blabbed about it. The industry was young too and nothing was really preventing us on the other side as well.
If you have no roadblocks ahead of you, why not go full-speed balls to the wall? You can always "outdrive" the ones following behind you... ( take a long thought on that with the statement above too )
But as things matured ( the marketers, the platforms ), we realized a lot of errors with that thinking.
Personally, I lost out on billions I helped generate in the affiliate marketing world because I outed someone that stole my method I invented for landing pages and bidding on Facebook. That caused a huge shit storm in the industry.
I've also watched people steal ideas from me in other forums and chat groups for their SaaS in real time too.
I've sat back in other groups and watched other people get stolen from and cheated as well.
There are layers, like an onion to this game. It's in all games. You just learn the REAL rules as you go and mature.
I remember a long time ago people telling me "I needed an abundance mindset", that there is enough for everyone all the time.. to share and let others succeed. Fuck that shit, there isn't.
I've known this for decades, but COVID should have really opened everyone else's eyes to this.
Those are the same people that shared too many secrets and advice on forums. Those are the people that let the cat out of the bag and led to others abusing platforms and methods that are now shut off.
Those are the same people that threaten steady incomes for me and my family and many others out here that hustled for years to get to this spot, only to have to recreate themselves again when the outers come and ruin it all.
Personally, I'm tired of having to reinvent myself. To reinvent new LPs, ads, bidding methods, backends, offers, etc every 12 months because someone on Reddit or another forum outed it with an "abundance mindset".
So you end up with people like me, deep in the trenches, who don't share gems and gold anymore. As I matured and seen what was more important ( not the fame ), you learn these lessons. Others learn them too and it's a network impact.
The platforms evolve too in the same way ( see above ).
And what happens is, the old hats and really smart people learn this. And this is like a lot of things in life, that everything is temporary and finicky. Delicate even. Hanging on by a thread most times. Disrupting that could mean having to start all over and who wants that? There is no real growth in that, having to start over many times.
Growth is keeping what you have, and then adding on to it. Having to reinvent yourself and your methods is the opposite of that.
So you don't out. You don't talk. You don't share anymore.
The platforms change, you find the new "it" and you keep it close to yourself.
The other guys, they fall to the waste side if they can't hack it. You aren't bringing them out of the dumpster though to take dollars from you and your retirement and tell the rest of the world so they can abuse it and end up costing you.
All those people bragging about how great selling on Amazon was years ago are now wishing they shut the fuck up now with everyone and their mom selling on it, the Chinese manufactures stealing designs left and right, and Amazon taking your product and making it and shutting you down at the same time.
The only ones that end up outing and sharing is those too young and immature to know what's going on, those that really didn't do shit and faking it, or those who haven't been stolen from yet enough times to see what they are actually missing out on.
Knowing this now, why try to find more forums and hangouts?
The really experienced people aren't going to share anything with you there really. At least not anything of substance and direct action. They might share generalities with you that you will have to end up thinking on, deep digging, and massive action taking on.. but you could have done that on your own to begin with.
Spend the time looking, searching, reading, and wasting time on... actually doing.
Anything you read on a forum, 90% of the time you are way late to the game to.
bernard
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All is forgiven if you make others rich.
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There's quite a few places I frequent but honestly I don't like them because I end up spending all my time reading and not doing. And whilst I have learned theoretical knowledge from forums, when actually spending time doing, I've not found that theoretical translates to "in my case" doing if that makes sense.
For example in another format; long copy, they tell you to read about 12 books and read them twice to get good at long form copy for direct response landers. Which takes about 3 months. So 3 months later you "know" all there is about long form copy but you haven't written a single word of long form copy!! Whereas if you just buy Gary Halberts book, find his copy, and write it out for a month, then write your own, you've spent a whole month writing long form copy!!
The other problem with forums is it leads to analysis paralysis. Which is the worst syndrome ever!!! It's nice and comfortable to sit down with a hot choc and read different ways of doing different things but none of that is getting stuff done!
For example in another format; long copy, they tell you to read about 12 books and read them twice to get good at long form copy for direct response landers. Which takes about 3 months. So 3 months later you "know" all there is about long form copy but you haven't written a single word of long form copy!! Whereas if you just buy Gary Halberts book, find his copy, and write it out for a month, then write your own, you've spent a whole month writing long form copy!!
The other problem with forums is it leads to analysis paralysis. Which is the worst syndrome ever!!! It's nice and comfortable to sit down with a hot choc and read different ways of doing different things but none of that is getting stuff done!