Win Friends and Clients for Joint Ventures – Don't Be A Brown-Noser!
Author: Jim | Filed under: Observations
One of my favorite reads in the “make money online” niche has been JohnCow.com, and yesterday he published an interesting post about winning friends online. Essentially, the post recommended that up and coming bloggers “brown nose” to so-called superiors in order to gain traffic and popularity (among other things). I feel that you should never admit to your lower-class status, and that brown-nosing should be avoided at all costs. So here’s a friendly rant where I am going to demonstrate why I believe “sucking up” isn’t the right way to gain traffic. 
“We are going to let you in on a little secret here… this was a huge part of how we were able to get some pretty influential contacts when we initially started in our online business.
You have to be a brown noser!” -John Cow
Starting things off, I believe that John was correct in his post by outlining the fact that relationships are never truly 50/50 win-win situations. There is always going to be someone doing/giving more or getting more out of a particular trade off. While this is true, I don’t think that it merits brown-nosing in order to get what you want.
First off, I am all for flattery. I enjoy the “I love your blog” comments as much as the next guy. However, if 
you are going to do what John recommends and completely bombard me with “I just wrote you an article,” “I just made you a Squidoo lens” and “I just made a fan site devoted to you“… I am more likely to be turned off than amused. Why? There is a fine line between friendship and completely stalking someone. 
To put this in the nicest way possible, just talk with me on Instant Messenger or start up an email conversation… you don’t need to create a shrine in my honor (because that would need to be one BIG shrine). If you are going to go that far, call it what it is… begging.
If you are trying to market yourself as a legitimate blogger, you should never resort to begging the industry’s big players for a small amount of attention.
In John’s post about brown-nosing, he outlines a story that he equates to the power of kissing up to your superiors. This story is essentially about how he managed to get a door hinge fixed after he paid his rent to the landlord. The story is used to demonstrate how you can accomplish something you want by brown nosing. The only problem here is that I have a hard time understanding how paying your rent is equivalent to brown-nosing your landlord… to me, that’s doing what is on a contract.
Why brown-nosing doesn’t work
Many people think that simply showering someone with affection merits some special attention. But I feel that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. People who have made it big aren’t fools, and they can smell your foolish efforts coming a mile away. If you are going to go through the motions at the expense of your own time to kiss up to someone you consider higher up on the authority ladder, there is no way you should be writing to someone telling them a laundry list of what you have done. Quite frankly, they don’t want to hear it.
As the superior member of the deal, nobody wants to be pressured into a joint venture by some hot shot amateur who thinks they can steal your heart just by satisfying your ego problem. It’s not going to happen. Sure, there might be a few desperate situations where getting on your knees to beg for some attention might play out, but in the end 
you are further eroding your authority on the web and it probably won’t get you anywhere.
So if brown-nosing doesn’t work, how do you get attention from the big dogs? Be a proactive go-getter.
Being a “proactive go-getter” means being in the business for yourself. I’m all for linking up with a bigger website to show them you are supporting their efforts, but going out won’t get you anywhere. In the business world, people laugh at the fools that lower themselves for a cheap meal. The same thing will happen to you if you stoop to the level of the subordinate on your own behalf. You may be the lesser-half in a deal, but you shouldn’t be broadcasting this unspoken fact with flagrant acts of brown-nosing.
How to land that joint venture without brown-nosing
It’s important for everyone to leech off of the big guys by creating leverage in the marketplace. Remember that leverage is key, and it is something you miss out on when you brown-nose your way to success.
Here is John Cow’s recommendation:
“We are such fans of your blog and we know that a link trade is not really a equal fair trade and if you are interested and since we are such a big fan of your blog, we would be more then happy to write a great review of your blog, submit an article that is a review of your blog to EzineArticles.com plus put a link in exchange for just a link from you”
And here’s what it says to me:
“Hello there. I am an active reader of your blog and I really like your website a lot. I’m going to tell you right now though that the blog I run isn’t very good, and you shouldn’t take me too seriously. But luckily for you, I’m willing to do everything necessary to score a link. Thanks!”
This is not the right approach. It may be nice to get some free stuff, but you are unfairly pressuring them into a deal that they probably don’t want to make, while telling them that their blog is worth 10 times more than yours, thus lowering the value of your own website. Time intensive on your part, and not very effective in my opinion. 
Here is Jimvesting’s recommendation:
“Hey there, this is Joe from Website.com. I just wanted to write to let you know that I have been a big fan of your blog for a while now and really enjoy reading your material. I’ve been able to pick up a lot of solid information from Blog.com and wanted to encourage you to keep up the great work. If you have the chance, I’d really enjoy it if you took a look at my blog sometime and let me know what you like or don’t like. Again, keep up the high-quality work. I’ve been supporting your blog by sharing your URL with my readers, and I feel like you are on the fast track to success. Have a great week! -Joe”
Why does my method work better? Instead of bragging about exactly what I am doing to drive traffic to XYZ.com, I casually mention off the cuff that I’ve posted a link here and there. This is nothing binding, and they’ll appreciate the subtle “visit if you get the chance” suggestion a lot more than a guilt trip into visiting and supporting your blog. At the same time, you aren’t admitting that you are inferior to them or even hinting at this… though it may be true. Essentially, it is a backend way to get some support by simply making things more casual and legitimate sounding.
Bottom Line: It’s definitely an important thing to attract the more popular bloggers from the get-go. This can basically help you leech off of their traffic and grow behind the scenes until you have enough influence to separate from the pack. I personally frown upon brown-nosers. While you may have to ask a favor every now and then… you shouldn’t sell your soul to get a link exchange.
-Jimvesting
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First of all I do not know what brown noser means. I like your recommendations though. But there are many more different ways too. You can just ask others to have a visit to your blog and give a review or comment to your blog. It works most of the time. Only the most selfish blogger ignore these type of requests.
Agent 001s last blog post..Tutorial: Using Favicon and its Importance
Great post, glad we could inspire you to write a great article like this
As for the example you gave, as soon as you said…
“Good afternoon! This is Joe from Website.com.
I hit delete.. pretty much that is how every other link exchange in the world starts out.
The other thing is how can you compare what you wrote to what we did… the intentions are completely different. The example we gave was to get a link… yours was to get a visitor?
Anyway good post you got here none the less.
JohnCows last blog post..How to Win Friends and Get Around Their Pride – Day 16 of COWpetition
Twitter: @jimvesting
June 13, 2008 at 7:15 pm #
Alright John, well the problem with this was I had to write it twice because I somehow managed to delete my entire work the first time! I changed good afternoon to something more off-the-cuff, which was my intention. It’s nice to have a greeting than just launch right into it as you have.
I don’t want to start a petty argument, but what I am doing and what you are doing is the exact same thing. You are trying to get a link, and I am accomplishing that by establishing a sound relationship. What you didn’t realize is that this is a start up post. If you go looking for a link right off the bat, I doubt you are going to get it from anyone with a brain. Once the relationship is set, the link is yours, and the traffic begins without brown nosing.
Just trying to be a bit confidential Cow. I hate the face that you suck up for links, but I still like you.. don’t worry
There is no petty argument here, we simply commented with a question, if you do not want us to comment in response to your posts then do let us know.
We do not think you understood our post though, the term brown noser was to get a reaction and we see it did. That is part of making the reading interesting for the reader
As for you saying…
“I doubt you are going to get it”
…well the purpose of our posts are to share how we are building our gamrezreviewz blog and the strategies we used. You might not agree with what you think is being done, but how about the fact that we got someone to mail to a list of 50 000 plus video gamers because of our request. Or the other dozen of high quality links we got. We now also have a very good relationship with those people.
The example we gave in the post was a short example… not the actual message we gave people… like the example you gave and edited.. it was just an example. We will be sharing in our next post real actual messages and you will see why it gets a good response. It is not about sucking up but about giving the respect to the person and that often appears to be “brown nosing” but the fact is that if you want results you have to work for them and that means often doing more then the person who you want something from has to do in return. We thought we mentioned this is the post but might not have made it clear.
Take the word brown noser out and then read our post… you will see it for what it is.
A challenge for you in regards to…
“I doubt you are going to get it from anyone with a brain”
Do not let what you “think” rule your world compared to what has been proven, everything we share on our blog is proven because we have done it and we believe in teaching theory…. we challenge you to look at the example we give tomorrow and test that against what you think will work and then make up your mind because it has given gamrezreviewz and every other site we build, fantastic results.
One last thing, this is a question for clarification, with the example we gave about the landlord, what would you have done in that situation?
JohnCows last blog post..How to Win Friends and Get Around Their Pride – Day 16 of COWpetition
Jim, although you have some good argument points I’ll have to agree with John, sometimes sucking up does take you places.
I have never NOT EVEN ONCE Studied this year and I keep a 3.8 average in schools, I have an excellent relationship with my teachers and I never do my homework because they NEVER check it… why? Cause I sucked up the first week of school.
So yeah in some ways sucking up does work while in others it’s just a waste of time.
I guess it all depends on how well you are at sucking up, it’s just like lying some people crumble under pressure while others like myself are great liers and do it all the time, even so that we live in our own reality.
Germzs last blog post..Page Rank Backlinks Generator
Twitter: @jimvesting
June 14, 2008 at 12:43 am #
Haha wow… I’m trying not to have John Cow blow this out of proportion. You know, he says he uses the terms brown noser for shock value, but then doesn’t consider that this post might be doing the exact same thing.
John: I would pay my landlord on the normal pay cycles. I was just noting that paying what was due really shouldn’t be attributed toward the sort of psychological manipulation you were describing. Which it still doesn’t do in my opinion.
I say clearly in the post that I agree with a lot of what Mr. Cow says. I really don’t understand the essay-responses as I feel it’s being blown out of proportion. I just like to play devils advocate and show the OTHER side of the argument to keep our readers in check
lol… Jim we just love to write and talk and comment and debate about this online business strategies… we love it when this happens on our blog, sorry we thought maybe you would have appreciated the interaction.
JohnCows last blog post..How to Win Friends and Get Around Their Pride – Day 16 of COWpetition
That was a pretty interesting discussion
My Humorous Response:
Wait for them to email you
My Serious Response:
Both of you are right and wrong in a way. I believe that sucking up does produce results (who wouldn’t mind being admired) but I don’t think that it is the right way to do it. Jim, I agree with your way, but just because I agree doesn’t make it work every single time, it really depends on the personality of the person.
All in all, this is why blogs were created, so each person could show his point of view. Not everyone will always agree on the same thing (unless they have no personality). So I don’t see any reason why it should be called an argument, it’s just a discussion