The Internet Is Such an Easy Industry: Anyone Can Be an Expert
by
on January 18, 2009,
I have often wondered how it happens that everyone is always willing to share a piece of two of advice about everything related to the internet and online industry while people will rarely act as experts in other industries - be it nuclear science or construction - without proper training and real knowledge. At the same time the web looks like it is the only industry that is so unsophisticated everyone thinks it is not difficult to discuss it in an expert-like manner - whatever the real knowledge actually is.
Over this weekend I’ve been thinking about this again when watching the situation around the Federated Media decision to lay off some employees working in the traditional display advertising and focusing on the conversational marketing instead, thus trying to use their real competitive advantage of representing a number of prominent blogs in order to maintain a healthy business during the recession.
The fact that Federated Media’s CEO John Battelle has chosen to share the news on the company’s blog instead of talking to publishers about the decision first made one of the most prominent bloggers in the technology field, Michael Arrington (and one of the Federated Media publishers), publish a post of his own on TechCrunch asking his readership for opinions on Techcrunch switching to a new advertising network.
Of course it is quite obvious Michael hardly wanted to actually hear opinions from readers - he knew he would decide the issue together with Heather but he was unhappy about the manner John Battelle informed (or rather did not inform) him of the changes and wanted to make it clear to the public. And the public just adores it when the big names in the blogosphere engage in various quarrels in the open as it gives the sense of involvement in the big guys’ business and feeling part of it. And what could be better than having an opportunity to offer an advice to one of such big guys? Probably nothing at all.
So it is no wonder that the discussion turned into a very animated one: as of writing this, the post has 148 comments from readers, John Battelle himself, Michael Arrington and other involved parties - like other publishers of Federated Media and various media buyers explaining the value of the network. So Techcrunch founder asked for an opinion and got plenty of responses from everyone. I myself spent quite some time reading many of the comments - simply because the issue of advertising on blogs is something I am quite interested in due to the nature of my own blogging business.
And it was more than amazing for me to see the majority of people actually thinking their advice is needed and offering one to Michael. The suggestions varied from going fully independent, selling ads on his own (I could not help but wonder if people actually saw those sponsorship banners on Techcrunch at all and realized Techcrunch did have sales staff selling such sponsorships directly to advertisers) to even organizing an advertising network and selling ads on both Techcrunch and some other select blogs attracting the advertisers with the name and the reach in the industry.
The most extravagant suggestion in the discussion was to replace everything that comes from Federated Media with Google Adsense as it is a fair network that does not deduct such a huge commission - to me this one looked like coming from a novice blogger who set up a blog yesterday and realized there was such thing like Google Adsense that allows you to place an ad near your content without bothering what your content actually is. Yet to me the funniest thing was that no one seemed to realize that it is more than a strange idea to offer advice on blogging business to Michael Arrington who must be more of an expert in the industry than many of those who think they are (and I do understand that everyone who realized kept silence simply because they did know their advice was not required).
Of course many have reasons to dislike and criticize Michael Arrington - some because of disliking what he actually does, others because of their own grudge and jealousy. But no matter what your own attitude towards him personally or professionally is, it is hard not to admire what he has done with Techcrunch with the level of success and revenues in blogging that many dream of yet only a handful of people actually manage to achieve.
So if there are people who can be considered experts in blogging and making money blogging in particular, Michael Arrington is certainly one of them - this is hard to be argued with. Unlike the vast majority of technology blogs, Michael actually has professional staff - not only editorial employees, including bloggers and analytics producing content - but sales staff and a real CEO managing the financial aspects of the business. And of course I think this is yet another proof that Michael knows more than many of us about turning blogging into business.
Yet everyone somehow thought that it was very wise to offer a piece of advice to Michael about venturing into online advertising business himself and even suggesting professional services from sales people willing to sell ads on Techcrunch for free only to prove that it can be done better than what Federated Media does. Reading all these comments, I could not help but wonder if these people actually ever tried to sell ads on their or someone else’s blog and knew anything beyond selling sponsorship spots for $25 a month.
Everyone seems to talk about how to make money blogging or doing something else online and how easy it is to go fully freelance and forget about employment forever as full-time (and preferably 6-digit) online income is so easy to achieve even a child can do it. But honestly, everyone who has actually tried this will tell you that making money off your blog or other online venture is much more difficult than blogging itself is. Of course there are amazing success stories but these are exceptions, not the general rules, I think. Yet everyone seems to think that after reading a couple of posts on Problogger or Dosh Dosh about how easy it is to make huge money blogging, you can already be considered an expert enough to give your generous advice to people like Michael Arrington.
It looks like everyone considers him- or herself a real expert in this or that aspect of online business - most often in social media. These days everyone seems to be an expert in social media and of all Twitter following notifications I personally receive at least a third is from people having “social media expert” or “social media consultant” in their bios. And it makes me wonder how I manage not to hear about the vast majority of such people at all after working in this very industry for the last few years and how they manage to be experts in social media if they only know how to get a hundred or so of followers on Twitter by following everyone more or less relevant they bump into in the Twitterland.
But out of all the people who position themselves as experts or consultants in social media only a small part actually achieves some sort of success training or offering analysis in the field to companies in need. The vast majority only uses the buzzwords in hopes to find some extra revenue from people bumping into their Twitter or LinkedIn profiles and realize their company actually needs an expert like this. Unfortunately it rarely happens and not everyone actually knows enough to offer some sound advice or training others will be happy to pay for.
But I believe the reason for the huge number of social media experts emerging is quite simple: social media is such an abstract term that it includes just about everything - blogging, user generated content in general, social bookmarking or social voting, microblogging and lifestreaming - and knowing how to handle many of the so-called social media tools does not require any special technical knowledge so everyone can easily learn how to bookmark a site on Delicious or write a blog post. In the past webmasters and SEO experts (the latter is still quite a popular profession) at least needed to know some HTML coding and certain tricks in web design but social media tools don’t even require such basic knowledge.
So anyone can enter this industry - with or without any knowledge, expertise or understanding - and describing oneself as a social media expert is something you can do without any certification or diploma. And even having a name in this industry is not a prerequisite if the target audience for your services does not know where to make sure your name and reputation as a social media expert actually exist - so your major talent should be in selling yourself.
And the situation often looks hilarious to me with people discussing internet business as something very easy to do and make money off without having any relevant experience and offering social media advice without actually understanding the landscape. It is hilarious but it is also kind of disturbing to me personally as someone who takes this business seriously and tries to apply all my efforts and skills when doing what I happen to do online myself. But I somehow hope it won’t last long and eventually people will realize that it takes knowledge to be an expert in the simple thing called internet - or you won’t achieve any success at all same as it is in any other business unless you take it seriously.
