I mentioned to a few people that I was invited to appear on the Let’s Chat…with Mel TV show and people have been asking me what’s going on.
Quite simply – I am no longer going to appear on the show; let me tell you why:
They wanted me to talk about a topic which is on a very beginner level and I was worried that it would not reflect what I do in the right light to the audience and not only that, but that I might not be able to explain it all in such simple terms, believe you me, the topic is very involved. The Weekend Argus, several weeks ago, did a story on me, more specifically about my blogging and how I make money online. This was fantastic exposure, however, it lead to around 150 emails from people asking me to help them start a blog; now you might ask what’s the problem with that? Well, the problem is that all these people are not willing to pay for the service/help and anyone who knows anything about blogging, and more importantly, setting one up and teaching someone how to use it, takes a huge amount of time. The problem with this is that I just don’t have the time to assist so many people – This would result in hours of work in the evenings when I should be relaxing and not sitting on my computer.
I guess what I’m getting at here is that sometimes we have to put the pride aside, I would have loved to get this ugly mug of mine on tele, but at the end of the day, I don’t think it would have been the right move for me and instead I recommended someone else who I felt could benefit from the exposure more than I could.
Look, I’m a little sad, I’ve been in magazines a few times and have been in the paper a couple times, television has been something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time, so I am hoping that the opportunity will come again, just more in-line with the way I was to be perceived.
Thanks to Let’s Chat…with Mel for offering me the opportunity, I am truly honoured and I hope that your show is a huge success!
With all this being said, I’d love to hear what your thoughts are, did I make a good decision or should I have just done it for the hell of it?
I think its a good move. Could be damaging as credibility in this industry is everything.
You mentioned that people wasnt willing to pay for the service.
Mail me the price list, I wanna run some ideas by you.
Hi Shad,
Ye, that’s exactly what I was thinking, I’m pretty happy with my decision and I hooked them up anyway. Price list, for what, creating and setting up blogs?
Yip – if you are keen to consult on monetising our blog network then we can probably spare a few bucks…
Drop me a mail if you want some more details
Hi Marc,
“few bucks” worries me immediately :)
Yip we pay the big bucks to the celebs who have been on TV ;-)… PS I’ll try and slip you in a mention on my morning slot next week.
You’re blogging about not getting on TV and I’m trying to find anybody to take over my morning slots so I can catch a bit of zzzzz (fat chance with the kids though)
In all seriousness though if you’re keen to kick around some opportunities and make a bit of annuity revenue then you know where to find me.
Hehe!
Shame man, ZZZ is important, although I’m a firm believer in sleeping when you’re dead ;)
I’m definitely keen to chat further, perhaps pop me an email with your ideas or what you’re thinking..
I think you made a good choice. I find it very tough to explain technical things to many people in such a way that they understand what I’ve done, but it doesn’t sound like I’ve done nothing special or complex.
Just tonight I was demo-ing a system and found that I couldn’t show people all of the cool behind-the-scenes stuff I had done because to them the site was largely the front-end – the looks. Given this, how could I possibly explain how I’ve thought ahead and added functionality that stores historical information that will be interesting to look at it five, 10, 15 years? Even this description sounds trivial!
Thanks MarQ, glad to hear that everyone is agreeing with me :)
Ye, that’s the thing, the basics get really boring and it’s hardly exciting, but it requires knowledge to look at the fancy bits and that’s out of the scope :/
Quite a ballsy move, I could imagine it would have given you a nice surge in traffic at the least and even a few opportunities to market yourself as a blog consultant of sorts (for cash obviously). Secondly… to quote an old cliched saying “No publicity is bad publicity”.
Traffic is nothing unless it’s targeted, and this traffic wouldn’t be targetted, that’s the problem. “No publicity is bad publicity”, fortunately that doesn’t apply to me, I can afford to turn the odd thing down..
See where I’m coming from?
Hi.Chris
I think maybe you should have taken the opertuninity to be on TV. Im sure you would have recived a lot of public interest, but I know exactly what you mean about people always wanting things for free.
I often get clients asking me if I could teach them how to design a website, or the can pay the monthly fee, but cant afford the setup fee. I have had people wanting me to design websites like facebook and gumtree, but only prepaired to pay under a thousand rand.
Anyway. Nice job on your blog. It really looks great. I wish you well.
Kind regards
Wayne Mc
Hi Wayne,
Ye, I mean, I’ve done the newspaper thing and the magazine thing and TV would have topped it off, but in this instance I think that I made the right choice. There will be other opportunities though, should I wish to make them happen :)
I know what you mean about MASSIVE projects and TINY budgets, in most cases it’s only because people don’t understand..
Don’t be such a douche. Share what you’ve learnt instead of trying to act like you’re some g0d of the internets.
@geek – Clearly we have an intelligence issue here, did you not understand my reasoning behind not appearing on the show? Secondly, if you did some research, you would quickly see that I very rarely don’t share what I have learnt.
Good move. Wish it was me though. Just starting out and could do with some publicity. How long have you been going?