Dan Kennedy once said, “Speaking is not a profession. It’s media.”

He defined “profession” as something where you pay your dues, develop a reputation, and then make $100,000 plus per year without busting your ass.

That’s what a profession is.

If you agree with that definition (and I do), then speaking isn’t a profession because you have to hop on an airplane and go somewhere every time you want to make a buck. Speaking isn’t a profession. It’s media. It’s merely a means of acquiring customers.

A few years later, when internet marketing was taking off, Dan says,

“The internet is not a business. The internet is media.”

And he was absolutely right. Unless you’re an internet service provider or something like that, the internet it is not a business. It’s media.

Today, Perry sez: Information Marketing is not a business either. Like the Internet, and like professional speaking, it’s media.

It used to be a business, but today, info marketing is less and less a “real” business.

Being media, it’s a means of acquiring customers. If you want it to be a real, long-term-defensible business, then somebody (probably you) has to SHOW up. You gotta get on a webinar. You gotta do a live event. You gotta do coaching calls. You gotta deliver the goods. And those goods can’t just be ones and zeros anymore.

As Bob Dylan once sang, “It ain’t dark yet…but it’s getting there.”

Information marketing as a business unto itself isn’t dead…

but it’s coughing and sputtering.
 

Photo by fruit snacks cc by-sa

About the Author

Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.

He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.