How to Increase Your Credibility with Deceptive Tactics
Framing things the way they suit you, without ever lying
Bag more followers and convert them into buyers. Gotta make Gumroad dashboard nice. Passive income++.
The other day I came across a tweet featuring a screenshot of a diagram.
It was something like this:
X tips to be better than the average in <niche>:
- tip 1
- tip 2
I love tips if they’re meaningful and not too generic.
This time the chart got my attention because I knew I had seen this somewhere…
It was the number of Substack subscribers.
If you ever moved to Substack and happened to have a newsletter elsewhere, you probably imported the email addresses you already had.
If you bulk import a bunch of addresses in Substack, it looks something like this:
I collected these email addresses on Revue over almost 1,5 years.
It’s not stellar growth, and it’s not even outstanding. It’s your average (or slightly below) growth you can get if you run a newsletter and you’re active on social media.
Your actual growth is what comes after the import.
Yep, that straight line with a slight increase.
I could frame this in numerous ways to make people think I’m doing better than all right, only to incur followers who are about to figure out they have been tricked.
But imagine this: I write a book, market it well, and use deceptive tactics to turn you into a buyer.
You’re someone with super low self-confidence, trying to change their life but struggling. In the hope of a better tomorrow, you buy my book.
You read through it, implement all the tactics, hacks, and frameworks, and… nothing changes.
How? You bought the Blueprint!
A step-by-step guide on how to go from A to B, and you failed.
Someone laid out all the steps that made him successful, yet you couldn’t achieve the same.
You blame yourself for not being good enough, for sucking at everything, and eventually, you end up where you started, minus that sweet promo deal you got on the book, so about -$25. - I experienced this when I wanted to escape a job I didn’t like and bought books I thought would help me do that. Writing this down makes it sound incredibly stupid.
But the truth is, the book was all that good.
The author didn’t have stellar growth either.
He’s still trading his time for money hourly or per-contract basis.
But on the side, his Digital Product business is catching up, thanks to you.
That is undoubtedly capable of transforming one’s life: the authors.
But does it turn the world into a better place? - And not on a grand scheme like eradicating hunger or carbon emissions, but more like, did I do my best to make a positive change in someone’s life?
If so, why use deceptive tactics?
If you’re that good, why frame things differently than they are?
If skewing the reality to suit my business goals is the way to the passive income wet dream, I’m out.
Last year the crypto collapse was a disaster for many.
This year with all the layoffs, is no different.
I truly hope that if there’s one key takeaway, we must be more critical about the alternative truths social media throws at us.
Because the chart in the tweet wasn’t a lie, but your conclusion wasn’t the truth either.
See you in the next one.
- Akos
PS.: Here’s a great read that further dives into the other highly questionable profitable ways of maintaining a Creator Economy: