I highly recommend the movie “The Prestige” for a very specific reason: It teaches you about internet marketing.
How can a movie about magic and magicians teach us about business or marketing? Quite easily actually. I won’t spoil the movie for you other than to draw out a couple of points. Then you can “expound on the profound” by watching the movie with those points in mind.
Internet Marketing And Magic Are The Same In More Ways Than One
I come into contact with so many people wanting to start a successful site and possibly make their entire living on the web. This is because I am in the business of showing people how that is done. To the the newbie, I might as well be showing them fire for the first time. Generating an authority presence online and making money from it might as well be, and in some sense is, magic.
The problem for people in my business is the same as in one of the principles taught in “The Prestige.” Namely that once people know how a trick is done, the perception of value plummets and is usually met with “That’s all there is to it?”
Notice I said the “perception of value” plummets. The “tricks” of driving traffic and making money online with that traffic are no less powerful, but the magic of the trick has been lost. Then, for marketers, after all the hype is pulled aside, there’s nothing left to do but work.
The magic of driving traffic on the web is one part secret, one part drive, another part dedication, and two parts willingness to pay your dues and learn. When I show people the “tricks” and how its done, very few actually go on to become “master magicians.”
When a boy buys a top hat and a magic trick book and finds out how tricks are done, 99% of the time he loses interest in magic after a short period of time. Otherwise we’d have hundreds of thousands more magicians in the world than we do today, no?
What I find shocking is that, even when big money is involved, once most people find out what’s behind the curtain in traffic generation and authority site building, they lose interest rather than feel like someone who has just won the lottery. Otherwise my client list would be in the hundreds of thousands instead of the hundreds. You can see the parallels forming here.
In The Prestige it is made clear that no matter how much people beg, bribe, and plead with you to know your secret, you never, ever cave in. Your livelihood is tied directly to the secrets of your craft. What’s more, where magic is concerned, the audience really doesn’t want to know the secret. They want to believe it is magic. They want to believe what they are seeing is supernatural.
Enter the potential big mistake my personal business model makes.
I make a living giving away the secrets. The worst thing I could do for my business is show people how its done rather than do it for them and keep them in awe and wonderment. Once they know how its done, the majority of them not only become disinterested in doing it themselves, despite the money to be made, they become disillusioned (literally!) with web business completely.
Yet I give my secrets away because knowing the secrets alone does not make one a good “traffic magician.” It takes a lot of time to become good at what you do even if you fully understand the principles behind how it works.
Therein lies the biggest plus of my business model:
I show my secrets to find the people who truly want to become proficient in their craft and make a lot of money with their own business. But they can’t do it just by knowing the secrets alone. They still need help. And my business model provides that help in the form of coaching and resources my best prospects cannot afford to be without if they want to be the biggest authority in their niche.
But without that backend, I would just be a magician giving his secrets away and watching as people walk away disappointed that “that’s ‘all there is’ to it.”
How Does This Phenomenon Affect Your Business?
Are you giving too much away without properly providing a backend that completes the “unlocking of the secrets” process? If so, you may be onto something with regard to your lack of sales and low conversion rates for desired actions.
Here’s the worst part: Have you slacked off in promoting and growing your authority presence immediately after finding out a “secret” to online marketing? There’s a better than 90% chance that you are one of the disillusioned who thought making a living online would be “sexier” or truly magical.
Again, the big money is on the internet. Whether it is as fun as going to a water park with your family on Saturday or not is irrelevant if you truly want to whatever it takes to make a lot of money.
This is the tip of the iceberg with The Prestige. You will learn so much about your business and gain valuable insight into how you provide service and products on the web, along with the psychology of selling, by watching this movie.
It so happens that the movie is one of the best I’ve seen, so it’s also very entertaining.
You Have An Assignment!
Your assignment this weekend is to rent The Prestige and keep in mind that, if you are really paying attention, it can actually improve your business from copy to conversion.
What we do online is magic to most people. Buying and selling or getting attention on the internet is foreign territory to the masses to this day. They just don’t know how we do it. When you find out the secrets, don’t blow them off or become disenchanted with your dreams. Even if it is a let down that I am not actually endowed with Harry Potter’s magical powers, that doesn’t change the fact that you can make a lot of money with traffic in a lot of niches, while your competition clings to the idea that marketing online successfully involves real magic.