Below is an email I got not long ago, along with a screenshot of some traffic stats he pulled up about my Email Players domain, with a rather ironic typo in the subject line.
Enjoy:
Subject line: PROOF: You are a lair
Hey Ben,
I have been following you for the past 4 months and finally found out what you do and say about email marketing is a complete B.S.
You’re sending daily emails to your huge list and directing them to the email players website.
See your websites traffic analysis (in the attachment)
With a huge list and sending daily emails, how can one get such low traffic?
A confession:
I’d rather watch paint dry than stare at my site’s stats & metrics. I’m more a fan of how Henry Ford built his empire according to his autobiography, focusing primarily on my work & service (what I can control) and not on the numbers/stats/metrics/sales (what I cannot control).
But, from what I am seeing, I kinda like them numbers.
And I don’t think the poor schlub is doing this troll thing right.
In fact, when I forwarded it to to my pal, computer scientist, and SEO/AdWords/traffic “puppet master” Jim Yaghi (we’ve been comparing our tales of trollery since 2008, it’s like a game for us), he was just as amused as I was:
“bro your bounce rate is RIDICULOUSLY low and your average visit duration is ridiculously high. This dumbass didn’t notice those, only the number of visits. That’s 5,600 very engaged visitors.”
Yeah, I’m thinking his troll game needs more work…
But, there’s more to this story:
A true “the irony writes itself” phenomenon happening.
Specifically, that typo in his subject line calling me a “lair” instead of “liar.” Because for completely different reasons than he grunted out, I AM both a liar and, in a sense a “lair”, too.
And I figured I might as well come clean about it.
Here’s what I mean:
I am currently hard at work on my next book.
It’s about how I once created the proverbial social media “cult” (not my words, but many of those who were inside it) via my old elBenbo’s Lair Facebook group. And, also, how others can do the same thing I did to potentially get people literally addicted to hearing every word you say and all but frothing-at-the-mouth to buy everything you sell.
And loath as I am to admit it, this makes me a bald-faced liar twice over:
1. As I told Stefania upon completion of my last book (“elBenbo Press”), “I’m done — not writing any more fugking business books for a long while now. Just fiction.”
2. Inside that same book I boldly declared I had no interest in or would ever bother writing a book about social media. I also declared social media “stupid” in the book, too.
Even yesterday’s email condemned social media.
Yet here we are…
Anyway, as far as the above book goes:
I’m having a blast finally assembling all my notes & ideas & antics I plotted out to run and make a lot of loot from that group before I abruptly killed it off and pissed off a whole horde of people in the process. But maybe they’ll forgive me when they see how I’m methodizing the exact same game plan I used, so they can do something similar on most any social media platform they choose — Facebook or otherwise. And especially with the social media platform “Email Players” subscriber & enterprise-class software developer Troy Broussard & I are creating specifically for businesses (which will work in perfect harmony with my old elBenbo’s Lair methods) who are sick of all the incessant de-platformings, surprise bannings, privacy-mining, and anti-business crackdowns imposed by big tech social media platforms.
The only other thing I’ll say about my upcoming book for now is this:
It won’t work nearly as well if you don’t know how to build a relationship with your email list beforehand.
Otherwise, there’s no point in buying it.
So if the upcoming book interests you, I suggest rapidly implementing what I teach in my “Email Players” newsletter starting right away, and well before I launch the book next year.
Here’s the link to subscribe:
Ben Settle
P.S. Not long after sending the above email calling me a lair, troll boy asked:
1. Which of your products will you recommend for a newbie like me?
2. Is there a way I can get access to all the Email Player Newsletter from the beginning?
It’s official.
The guy is the best Christmas present I could ever have asked for…
