I just received a tweet from a follower asking that I stop spamming him with ads. Do I spam with ads? Well, sort of. I’ve scheduled four tweets in the last week to go out advertising my upcoming Do-It Days™, interspersed with three or four times as many content-laden tweets.
Chapter 1 of my book is about “Living on Purpose.” It basically boils down to: “know why you’re doing something.” Let me be very clear: I’m not producing 1100 words of transcripts, a podcast, two free newsletters (my own and the Get-it-Done Guy), and providing ten years’ worth of blog posts and 12 years’ worth of articles every week because I feel a deep moral obligation to help the human race be more productive. This is my business, and as much as I like providing value for people, if the only rewards are spiritual, then I’m outta here so fast it’ll make your head spin. At some point, I actually need people to spend money with me, or I’ll go broke.
I have busted my butt creating more free, high-quality content in the last 12 years than most people produce in a lifetime. I’ve produced hundreds of podcasts, hundreds of newsletters, two books, and dozens of articles. All free, except the books, which economically haven’t even covered the cost of printing, yet. I’ve also produced a few for-profit products which have gotten great reviews on the free file-sharing sites of stolen content, but haven’t proven to attract the millions of dollars of income that I’d hoped.
If you like what I produce, please consider buying one of my for-profit information products, or attending a Do-It Day™. But for those who write, telling me how pissed you are that I spend too much time writing humor and (gasp) send 3 promotional tweets a week, please consider it from my point of view: I can’t afford to do this for free indefinitely. Either find a way to help me make money or I’ll have to stop. Complaining that my free material doesn’t meet your exacting specifications, however, is not the way to get my attention.
(If you pay for one of my products and it’s not what you want, however, I’ll listen quite closely.)