Follow the money? For many of us, there's hardly a trickle. A dry river bed. “If you’re selling something, I’m not interested.”
“If you’re selling something, I’m not interested.” That comment resonates inside me.
What is going on?
Here is what I see:
Most of us, if not all of us, have at least a tiny bit of desire to get something for nothing. At any rate, I certainly do. I love the freebies - like walking in a field and coming upon wild raspberries.
My guess is that the human desire for something for nothing is hugely intensified by the flood of stuff available for the asking: Enter your email address and you will immediately receive …
I have received so much, starting long ago with JihadWatch and what has become The Geller Report. My inbox is full of something for nothing - fantastic information - every kind of update on many truths, including a bunch of amazing publications from Substack. I am so grateful to Substack.
At the same time we know everyone isn’t out to just give. To give may be nobler than to receive. But all giving and no receiving (or not enough receiving) means we can’t pay for groceries.
We all know that. And so we’re often wary.
My experience, in fact, is that there is often more than wariness at even the possibility that something could involve money. In my experience, a common response is recoil, as if from a rattle snake or the sleaziest used car salesman.
My background.
For almost 2 decades I’ve given away ideas, spoken word, songs, plus being group leader. I started my first site in 2006. For a few years, it had up to 60,000 page views a month. That’s three-quarters of a million page views a year. People took, for free, whatever it is they got from those works.
At that time, I also sent out about one newsletter a month to ever more people, finally to over 20,000 people. I got lots of responses, answered, loved the exchanges.
I was happy to give. I wanted people to read my stuff, hear my stuff, think about my ideas, resonate with the poetry.
It was so much better than presenting spoken word pieces at a small cafe late at night to maybe 30 people, with maybe half of them listening. As for the little poetry publications (generally subsidized by the government), I didn’t even try. I looked at the content, so different from my writing. Usually difficult to understand, unlike my stuff.
I was ever so grateful for the online opportunities to reach people. So much satisfaction. A thrill, over and over.
I’m still grateful for that. It’s amazing. I want that to continue.
Something not-so-great.
But even long ago, despite all those amazing page views and exchanges with people, I had the sense that something not-so-great seemed to be going on.
I was earning from being a tenured college prof. In other words, I had a well paid position, funded by the government. So I wasn’t depending on what I was sending out to pay the bills.
A very good thing!
Because there were just about no earnings from all this other stuff, from all the masses of time and energy spent:
- creating all this content,
- learning how to create a site and then doing it,
- finding out how to do search engine optimization so people would find the pages,
- uploading content,
- responding to people, engaging with those who wrote to me.
Those things were pleasures, by the way, as I’ve already said. But so was teaching - where I earned well for doing much less.
While freely giving away ever so much, I did try to sell a few things:
- an ebook on the importance of thinking: Think or Sink: We Think of the West Sinks. I love thinking and find it an enormous pleasure - such a pleasure that I even wrote about the Cogni Sutra, the pleasure of thinking (yes, a play on the Kama Sutra, another kind of pleasure). I very much wanted people to have the book, to take in the message, the ideas. I still deeply believe that the indoctrinated blocks on thinking are fundamental to what is going on. In other words, if we think, we don’t sink. As for the ebook: close to zero sales.
Here are a few other very different ebooks I tried to sell:
- a few ebooks of love poetry. Love poetry - which can be such an amazing way of bringing moments of loving to life.
- an ebook on Buried Love.
- a preteen novel, Caro’s Quest, where the opening page still often gets close to 1000 page views a month. I wanted that as a print book as well.
- The Big But System: The Strategy that Keeps People from Seeing Islam as it is. The Big But System is of course now widely used to keep people from seeing the truth about Black Lives Matter, the injections, and so much else. In essence, information is “butted” away.
- Quick and Easy Guide to Understanding Islam. As the title say, quick and easy. Also quite enlightening.
Over and over the outcome was virtually identical: close to zero sales. A webpage about a book of love poetry might get 3000 views. Sales: virtually (or actually) zero.
Clearly I was not doing a good job selling, though I found and followed all kinds of blueprints.
Right now, I again have something I’m offering - selling - something with a paid as well as a no-cost option. A group - AWAKE in a World Gone Woke.
And I’m undertaking the task of making things work this time - both options.
I could go further with ways in which I’ve been, and still am, less than brilliant at selling.
Instead I’m going back to my starting point:
“If you’re selling something, I’m not interested.”
Well, that’s nice and clear and honest.
Great.
I come to a question, all the same: What’s going on, over and over? Because this kind of response has come from far more than just one person about all kinds of things.
Yes, what’s going on? Good question.
One possibility. Is it that we’re heading back, in some ways, to a society where many people, for pay, do work that needs to be done (like plumbing) or is designated as worth being paid for (like nursing) - and where most other things are done because we’re moved to do them?
There’s a place I enjoy going, with lots of live music. Fabulous musicians. Most of them have “day jobs” - from professor to physiotherapist to construction worker.
So again, that question: what’s doing on?
I will be continuing with this tomorrow. This has been my starting point.
_______________
Below are a couple of the ebooks that did sell a few copies - at .97. Considerably more people were interested in having them as freebies. Something for nothing. And yet, .97!!! You can’t even get a cheap coffee for that.
If either of these books interests you, I will be putting them back for sale: .97. Drop me a line: elsa@awakeworld.net
Posted February 25, 2023