You know, I often wonder if people really read. And moreover, if they really grasp and understand what they read. Let me explain what I mean, because there are different aspects to it and different phenomena I want to highlight.
So, sometimes website visitors download ALL our free eBooks in one go. What does it mean? Are they going to read all, which would involve reading about 3,000 pages, more or less? I don’t think so. I think they hit on our website, find it interesting, and knowing that they will forget, just take all … for some day when they have time to read … whenever that is.
Others, buy ten paid eBooks together in the shopping cart, counting for at least 2,000 pages. Again, they do that because they’re interested, and buy for the day they have time to read, or something. Or maybe they read one or two of the books they bought. You sometimes think: what a waste. Why don’t you just buy one or two, and then come back to us for more. Then again, of course, it means income for us, so we don’t complain. Sure.
With our Guest Posts situation it’s the same, but yet a bit different. Companies — SEO marketers — want to place Guest Articles on our site to get “link juice.” Nevertheless, when we send them our publishing conditions it’s clear that only a very few really read them. As a result they want to place Guest Posts that don’t comply with our conditions and then we need to again communicate over and over again, because the communication and response of ours on their requests — well, they don’t really read those.
As people don’t really read what you write or really understand it (because they don’t read thoroughly), and basically just assume from out there own mental or whatever world, we are obliged to state our sales pitch for eBooks, Video Workshops, and our Guest Posts very clearly and in detail as not to leave anything left for a skewed imagination. That again means lots of lines and phrases to explain things, but as people don’t take the time to read or absorb, it means actually even more misunderstanding. It’s a crazy world out there. Really.
It’s not a secret that people’s attention spans has dropped significantly in the past decades. It’s because of too much (genuine and fake) information being around there (and pushed on people), combined with societal pressure to “perform,” while having a very busy life needing to do so much for their work and private lives in a single day or week that they just cannot keep up. I understand. I see it.
Yet, that doesn’t make things any better. I’m happy to once a month receive an intelligent feedback on our eBooks or Video Workshops, or a thought-through question about our advertising options. Honestly, sometimes it takes several months before I receive any decent interaction.
But, whatever. You slowly but surely get so weary of all this. You just need to accept that it is like this, if you want some peace of mind. I cannot change things. On our website we can just try to be as clear, honest, and informative as possible. We’re open to questions, feedback, and suggestions — and we state that very clearly — but hey … in the end it’s not up to us but up to our website visitors.
