Why Are All of the Gurus Sending Out Retirement Emails Right Before 2010?
Have you heard the one about the guru who said he was retiring? Yes, it’s starting to sound like a joke to many marketers who learn from those who have paved the way for our success.
It seems like it’s the trending thing to do – send out an email that says you’re leaving Internet Marketing, followed by an email that gives a last chance to buy sale, ending with a “let me clarify” email.
Why is this happening? For some, who follow in the footsteps of their competitors, it’s just a case of mimicking others to be part of the same crowd. For the rest, it’s an opportunity to make a large sum of sales right before switching gears into something else.
Growth of your business means you’ll frequently be reassessing your opportunities and pursing things that make you more money, with less effort. Some marketers have speculated that these retiring gurus are just burned out, or have made enough money already.
Make no mistake about it – they don’t believe they can ever make enough money. That’s why they run these last ditch sales and make widespread announcements that they’re going to now be doing something else.
It’s the start of a new phase of branding for them. Some of the gurus are moving away from instructional teaching because the expectations have risen by consumers and they now have to work harder to keep refund rates low and meet the needs of those who purchase their products.
When you have more marketers entering this niche to teach, it cuts away at their income – and more people expect freebies and hand holding than they did five years ago. So if a marketer finds a way to outsource the development of technical tools that help marketers, like a keyword research tool they can sell, it makes sense to cash in on something like that where they retain their reputation as a leader in the IM niche, but not as much is required of them to succeed.
If a favorite guru of yours has announced that he or she is retiring, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It’s highly unlikely that their leave of absence will be as final as you might believe from the wording of the last email they sent out.
It’s also highly probable that the next trend you’ll see in 2010 is the “I’m coming out of retirement just for this one quick guide because it’s something you must see” trend. And you can laugh when it happens because you’ll have known it was coming all along.
