How to Spot a Blogging Snake Oil Salesman

Some people give blogging a bad name.

Yesterday I spent the better part of the afternoon listening to a podcast by a “blogging expert”. I was working on other stuff, so the show was playing in the background. The podcast promised to deliver:

• How to land guest posts on the “big blogs.”
• How to make a lot of dough blogging.
• E-book compilation and release strategy.
• Et cetera, et cetera.

I felt like when I was done listening to this podcast, I would be able to blog my way to the moon and back. YEEHAW!

However, one consistent theme popped up over and over again: This particular blogger could not stop talking about himself. His successes. How much money he made. All of the people who asked him to guest post on their site. “That’s awesome!” I thought, “but when do we get to learn?” Blech.

On one hand, I opted-in to listening to the podcast. No one forced me to do it. It was of my own free will. Further, if one is successful in a field that you have interest in, it makes sense to see what worked for them and try to distill that success into replicable principles.

• Jon Acuff works humor better than anyone I’ve ever seen. It’s what carries Stuff Christians Like and keeps people coming back.
• Darren Rowse has a quiet authority on blogging. When you read his posts, he’s teaching you things without you even knowing it.
• Chris Brogan gets the humanness of the social web. I feel like I’m having a face-to-face conversation with him every time I read a post.

That being said, I felt like I’d been rooked. Here’s why: At no point was I empowered to apply what he was teaching. It was all about him. He called it a “free blogging workshop”. I called it an ego-boosting soapbox. To top that off, the whole thing was a giant sales pitch for his “blogging academy,” or whatever the crap he called it.

Yeah, like I’m going to pay you to tell me about yourself.

The guys I mentioned above share their successes, certainly. But the reason I go back to them time and time again is because they give me the tools to implement what they’re teaching in my own life. They set me up for success. They give blogging and bloggers a good name.

The gentleman on the podcast yesterday, and people like him, give blogging a bad name. They’re the ones we think of when hear the word “professional blogger”: Broke. Sitting in tighty-whities. In parents basement. Never building value, just figuring out ways to cheat people out of their money.

If you blog and you teach others how to blog, please don’t be a snake oil salesman (or woman). Bloggers have enough hurdles to jump over. If you’re going to teach people how to blog, don’t just say you’re going to give them value. Actually give them something of value. Not just a list of your achievements.