I’m a fan of Jeff Walker’s work and thought highly of his book Launch. (Read my review of Launch by Jeff Walker.) His recent video resonated with me, as I’ve been thinking of a way to handle an issue at Danger & Play.
How do you reward your core guys while getting rid of the freeloaders and mooches?
I am happy that Danger & Play is a free site, as it’s helped a lot of men (and a growing number of women) change their lives. What does bother me is the bitching and moaning men do.
And yes, it is men. No woman reader or podcast listener has ever complained about what I write.
You’d be surprised by the volume of complaints I receive. To me, this makes zero sense.
Danger & Play is a website that costs nothing to read. Yet I constantly hear that people don’t like my posts on Twitter (unfollow me) or that they don’t like how I am marketing my juicing ebooks.
I even had two young men backstab me. After helping them with their sites, they have become haters.
It’s tiresome, and it’s why a lot of people burn out from helping men.
One reason I don’t deal with as much hate as many is because of my aggressive style. In a way, my attitude prices out the people most likely to complain.
On the other hand, there are a lot of core guys who are supportive.
They review my podcast and many bought my juicing ebooks (even though they don’t juice) as a way to support my work.
I have been thinking of a way to take care of the core guys who take care of me while getting rid of the complainers.
One way to accomplish this is by raising your prices. It seems counter-intuitive, but people who pay are less likely to complain than people who ride for free.
Check out this video and let me know what you think.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the interesting perspective on maintaining the standards of an online resource/community.
I agree there has to be some mechanism to separate the wheat from the chaff. Pricing, or attaching an actual cost in terms of something of value is a great way to do this.
The question is do you want to use this wholly as a discriminator to keep the garbage out or will aspects of D&P, or all of it, become “premium” content (which it already is to me). I personally wouldn’t mind paying for either.
You could charge a symbolic membership fee per month or year and turn the whole site premium (leaving the archive free or vice versa), post-premium only content that goes with the “free” content or charge for community rights (e.g. ability to comment, interact and contribute to the site).
One of Roosh’s friends (Virgil Kent) did this with his site NexxtLevelUp for a bit, maybe he has some input that could help?
I’ll probably do something private for Gorilla Mindset. Mindset podcasts, workbooks/worksheets, and maybe even a forum.
Wow can’t wait, would be cool to have parallel/private sister-site without the (occasional) vandals and trolls 🙂
Can’t wait for GM to come out, is there any way to pre-order?
No way to pre-order. I thought about doing a Kickstarter for the PR boost.
The whiners are a product of the current narcissistic age – it’s all about them so you need to change what you do to serve them. The little reward centers in their brains are tickled when they complain online, doubly so if there’s further ‘you go girl’ backup from the small brained feedback loop.
As a man, if I don’t like something then my choice is to not partake. If I felt strongly about Mike’s stuff, then I wouldn’t consume any of his output (twitter, youtube etc) and maybe I’d send him a quiet email saying why if I felt there was value.
What I DO need to do, personally, is drop some positive feedback more often.
Thanks for the feedback, Peter; much appreciated.
Thanks Mike! I believe this approach is going to work much better than what I currently do to get rid of whiners and complainers, like using template emails to divert them, or trying to convince them to actually use what they invest in, or even having to block a few on social media. I made many of my courses very affordable so that nearly anybody in the world would be able to get the help they needed, however I didn’t realize that by doing so I was also attracting a certain segment of people that would hinder rather than help my business. One thing that never fails to surprise and annoy me is how often some people complain about things that are free and high quality. I’m going to follow this approach and continue to raise the quality of everything I do so that I attract the segment of my audience that are the doers, implementers and winners.