Nigerian prince scams updated for LinkedIn

Today's Nigerian prince appears as the one who will teach you the secret to increasing your income.

I understand the need to pitch to try to make sales, and I get that people want to entice customers with concrete numbers. But I'm starting to think that like the classic Nigerian prince scams, they are deliberately aiming for low intelligence people who just swallow the promises of easy riches and hand over their money without question. 

That's because I'm struck by how very unsophisticated they seem to assume their audience is. I got two pitches like that today -- one in my Linked Inbox after a person requested to connect to me and one in my actual email that the person obtained from my having attended one of his presentations.

Flattery only works on people whose egos exceed their intelligence

Don't send an invitation to connect with someone and give them a false compliment leading right into your sales pitch. You're following a playbook and showing that you're trying to manipulate your mark, especially when it is very obvious that you're being so general because you are not, in fact, familiar with the person's work and are just pulling off their current place of work as reference.  

For example, I just responded to an inmail with "What do you think I do at NYC Data Science Academy?" in response to the pitch that said this: 

Hello Ariella, thank you for accepting my invitation.

I love what you are doing at Nyc Data Science Academy

I recently helped Deekron, a client of mine,
make an extra $25k a month without spending anything on ads

And I am sharing the exact process on my upcoming linkeidn [sic] event

If this interests you, here is the registration link:

I'm not sharing her link. I seriously doubt she loves what I'm doing because she can't really see what I'm doing at the school. My name doesn't go on the work I edit. In other words, I'm most invisible there.

Anyone who is so obvious about throwing out flattery because she's too lazy to even try to make herself sound credible is not the type of person I want to work with. It makes me doubt her claims altogether.

Seeing is not believing

The email I opened was from Russ who charges $1500 a course that he hopes will attract up to 60 attendees at a time. He sent along this visualization with completely made-up numbers (notice no footnote for sources of info) to try to convince you that you can easily go from earning $25 an hour to $100 an hour and then to $250 and, ultimately, $500 an hour so long as you can sell yourself as a strategist.

Everyone who is a mechanic can also be a quarterback

That assertion is ridiculous isn't it? Yet that's what's implied by the labels Russ decided to use for his visualization that lies on very level, including deliberate vagueness and poor choice of words to represent the different roles. 

Why call the one who implements the plan a mechanic? Mechanics are not mindless drones who just follow orders. They're highly skilled workers, and they tend to comman salaries way above $25 an hour. 

And then why the shift from a job to a sport roles by choosing the term quarterback? It doesn't fit and again underestimates what real quarterbacks earn. 

In point of fact, even the lowest tier indicated here for  freelance marketers/content producers, there are the ones who earn $25 an hour and the ones who earn $100 an hour for the creation, whether that is writing the blogs and social media posts or posting them. There's no fixed demarcation in terms of earning potential, as people will often have to do both the creation/plan and implementation. 

Now let's move to the top two tiers and the false demarcation between the consultant and strategist. Again, Russ is being very sloppy with terms, which really make me think that he is not just dishonest but not very good at what he claims brings him so much wealth. 

False demarcations

What he calls a strategist could also be called a consultant. A consultant simply means someone who works in a consulting capacity, which can be for anything. Even what he calls a mechanic or a quarterback  could be hired as a consultant. In fact, I do work at all these levels described here under the title of a consultant, and I don't typically get $500 an hour or even $250 an hour. 

I'm not saying no one gets that. I'm sure some people do. 

However, those rates are usually only offered for very brief stints, just to set up the plan that will be executed by others who are charging less. That's why most consultants will not limit themselves to just the upper tier of work and secure maybe 10 hours per client. 

Instead, they would work on the range and accept some in-between range that may be around $200 an hour. Some senior writers end up earning that much, too, when they charge by the piece and work fairly quickly. 

Bottom line: the visualization paints a very false picture about the actual earnings and demarcations associated with different aspects of work in marketing. Anyone who really falls for the implied promise that your earnings will skyrocket to $500 an hour with full time hours as a result of taking a course is so easily duped that he or she would make a very lousy strategist, indeed. 

Remember, as I pointed in The secret to getting rich is selling other on the secret, if these people were really raking in as much as they claimed from their freelancing/consulting, they wouldn't have pivoted to the courses. They obviously make far more by taking in (pun intended) the freelancers seeking to improve their earnings than by hitting up the business managers with their claims of writing/marketing prowess. 

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The secret to getting rich is: sell others on the secret

Everyone is doing it!

I'm on an email list from one of the hundreds maybe even thousands of people currently positioning themselves as experts who offer "masterclasses" on improving one's earnings as an independent marketing professional.

Today's email offers the tantalizing lure of drawing in clients that pay $60K a year. The possibility of getting just two of those pushes one into that highly coveted six-figure income slot.

Definitely worth paying $1500 to learn how to earn nearly 10x that amount this year, right?

Then rational skepticism kicks in, and you think this: "If he really has no problem getting all these clients that put him in what he says is the top 1% of earners for this category, why would he take any time away from that highly lucrative work to produce these classes?

He's not retired, so he's not just passing on what he's learned to the next generation. He'd be passing it on to his competition. Altruism is certainly not the motivation here because the cost of the classes are substantial, particularly for something that wholly virtual and not accredited.

How did we come to this?

Perhaps what happened is that when the economy was in a much better state, some of these consultants did very well. The self-proclaimed masters have, indeed, experienced high earnings.

They had already acquired some key connections when the pandemic hit and create a new surge of demand for digital marketing content. With everyone working remotely anyway, it was a lot easier to be accepted as a consultant who delivered without having to be present in a NYC or LA office while still demanding the rates associated with those high-cost cities.

What a difference a year or two makes!

However, times have changed. Now these people have found that they're not nearly as in-demand at present as they likely were when brands were investing heavily in content marketing, particularly during the pandemic.

Finding that their income has dropped, they are now trying to supplement it with courses and some with other materials you can purchase.

In fact, some are even starting to boast about how much they've made from such sales.

Those who are trying to appeal to the value of exclusivity will like not publicize exactly how much they've made. For example, the "master" behind the course I described earlier claimed he will "restrict" attendance to 60 for his course to allow for "individual attention."

At $1500 a pop that amounts to $90K over mere weeks. But that will only happen if he gets the 60, which I seriously doubt. I'm sure he'll get a handful of people, but I believe he priced something with no guarantees too high to attract the desperate.

Of course, there are techniques one could learn and improve. But it's not really the quality of your work or even the leads it brings in that guarantees you're paid what you're worth. However, my own experience of 18+ years in the biz has taught me that timing and connections count for far more.

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Why you always need the original source

Always, always go to the source cited to judge how relevant it is. That's my rule of thumb -- not just for my journalistic work but even for my content marketing. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people don't bother with that even while positioning themselves as authorities on the subject.

I knew I'd regret it, but I gave into temptation and clicked on an article with the title "How to Write Headlines That Grab Attention and Convert"

It gave the usual advice that most seasoned writers already know, including writing the title only after you've finished writing the article, being specific but not giving everything away, etc.

But it also sought to add insight taken) from "Data Driven Strategies for Writing Effective Titles & Headlines," the 28 page report put out by HubSpot and Outbrain.

Instead of putting in the title and link properly as you should do for anything you cite, it introduced the information this way:

Lessons from a 3-Million Headline Study

HubSpot and Outbrain analyzed more than 3 million paid link headlines from Outbrain’s network of 100,000+ publisher sites to find out what kinds of headlines can increase CTR, reader engagement and conversions, and this is what they found:

It then proceeded to share stats and insights from that study for the next 16 paragraphs. (I'm not exaggerating; I counted them). Despite drawing heavily on the study, the article never puts in a link to it.

In fact, it never even shares the title, which made it a bit more difficult to find. But I am nothing if not persistent when it comes to research and tracking things down.

I located the original source, which says that it was based on headlines in the time period of 2013-2014. That's right, the data is form nearly 10 years ago. In the world of online content, I wouldn't bank on anything more than two years old to still be current.

So why did the writer of an article published in August 2023 not include the link? It's possible that he deliberately intended to obscure that bit of historical context by not linking directly to the source. What's more likely, though, is that he came across another secondary source that cited those figures and takeaways and so didn't even know when the original study came out.

Unfortunately, that is often the case for writers who just go with the first Google result, which is more-often-than-not not the original source. You have to dig more to get the source in context.

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Trying to stand out either by embracing digital or going old-school

Johnny Rose is right, and that's a major problem for marketers.EVERYONE has an online presence, and EVERYONE is using digital ads, emails, and even texts to try to stay top-of-mind for their target customers. 

We're all inundated by ads any time we go online. For brands looking to get attention, what's the best way? Should the up the ante on digital with splashy CGI effects to achieve viral status? Or should they take the opposite track and return to paper images for billboards and catalogs to connect more intimately and concretely with their customers? 

Both approaches are currently in use, and the splashy ones are definitely getting more coverage.

Upping the ante for digital

You must have seen the gargantuan Maybelline mascara wands appearing to brush giant lashes no buses and Tube trains:

A similar tactic was used to show a skyscraper-high Barbie stepping out of her box in Dubai. 

Both the makeup and Barbie movie promo grabbed a lot of attention because they looked like real custom installations on location. Many people first thought that there really were giant lashes attached to a bus or train. In fact, though, these outsized promos only existed in the digital realm. You could only see the CGI-generated mascara, lashes, and towering doll on a video that blended them with a real background. effects with the real world. 

The amount of  buzz generated by  indicating that digital out-of home (DOOH) AKA faux OOH advertising may be the one to opt for to get the most publicity bang for your advertising bucks. While no one has shared exactly what these headline-grabbing stunts cost, it seems that they may be more economical  than traditional OOH advertising setups.

Retreating from digital 

Perhaps when the everyone else is zigging toward digital, the way to zag is to go in the opposite direction. That's seems to be the thinking of some brands that are conspicuously embracing good, old-fashioned paper to connect with customers.

It may not be altogether surprising that a bricks-mortar icon would return to its roots of publishing a paper catalog for its anniversary sale, a practice that it had abandoned only four years ago in the case of Nordstrom reintroducing the paper catalogs that it had abandoned in 2019. 

But even a brand born in the digital age is turning to paper. Zappos put its 2023 back-to-school catalog in paper format to be mailed out, Digiday reports, Perhaps the Amazon-owned shoe retailer is taking a cue from the ultimate online seller, which has mailed out holiday season toy catalogs since 2018. 

Amazon also has found it effective to use mail out paper letters, as I described in Amazon Uses Snail Mail. Amazon invests in the extra cost of printing and postage because when our digital inboxes hold thousands of unread messages, we still tend to open the envelopes that come in the mail. 

Reviving traditional OOH 

Instead of trying to compete with Maybelline to achieve virality from a faux OOH marketing setup, cosmetic brand Murad is investing in traditional billboards in New York and Los Angeles  to promote its products and store.

"The social space has become so competitive, it’s [become more] interesting for us to think about how to advertise differently,” Paul Schiraldi, CEO of Murad told Glossy .“It’s the old-school reach and frequency media advertising strategy, but it works.”


While traditional may resonate more with the viewers who see the actual billboards in strategic locations, including  Times Square, instead of having to view the effect on a screen, it certainly doesn't raise the same level of buzz as the CGI-enabled promotions.

But, at the end of the day, the goal is not just to have people talk about your promotions but to incentivize them to actually buy your products. So this may play out well for the company's revenue goals if it brings in their target market around that location. 

There's good data to back that assumption: The Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) recently reported that its popular has been increasing and accounted for $1.82 billion in spending in just the first quarter of 2023.  Businesses don't usually spend that kind of money unless they expect to achieve substantial ROI.

If you were faced with the choice of investing in paper or digital promotions, which would you choose? 

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