No one said it was easy

So lately I have been reading a lot of peoples blogs for a few reasons. The main reason being so I can obtain knowledge about how people are feeling and learning from established professionals. Every once and a while I will come across a blog that proposes a problem that our product is going to solve.

Most people embrace these comments, and even engage in conversation with me about our product. I am not trying to shamelessly promote myself. I am trying to inform people in what I thought was the most genuine way I could, but I guess nothing is sacred in this world anymore.

A few days ago, I was reading the blog of a well-established blogger who shall remain nameless, and he was discussing one of the main problems that we are aiming to solve. Long story short he was talking about how hard it is for small business to advertise for themselves, and that was the whole reason we made our product and service.

So in an attempt to engage in conversation with business owners that have this very problem, I left a comment on his blog. I think I maybe mentioned the company once, didn't leave a link, and made sure that the comment directly related to what he was saying, and it did.

About an hour later, I get an e-mail from the blogger that what I hope was an automated message, because if it wasn't, this dude has a third person complex. Basically it said that I should take a look at one of his blogs. So I clicked the link and it took me to this post he had that was basically a mockery of someone leaving a comment that is a shameless promotion, and deleted my comment.

At first, I took this 12-year-old immature passive-aggressive approach to communicating with me offensively. Then I started thinking about how he probably gets like 100 comments a day that in deed are shameless promotions. I can't blame him for protecting the integrity of his blog. I'd probably do the same thing (maybe without the third person email though).

That's the world that we live in though. We all have our gaurds up and if we see anything that even looks like a threat we just push it aside. No one said cutting through all this muck would be easy, but it's a job that has to be done.

So after mellowing out for a minute, I decided that I would write him a e-mail conveying my thoughts and it went a little something like this:

"Dear " ",
I apologize if you misconceived that as a shameless promotion. The way I saw it was that your blog proposed a problem that many small businesses are faced with, and I was simply providing a solution to the problem. The whole reason this product was created was so small business owners can focus on providing quality goods and services, and not their marketing budget. If you look at the site, I think you will come to the conclusion that making a profit is secondary to providing the world with the most effective tool for promoting small business in a world of Wal-Marts and Home-Depots.

I have no hidden agenda. My salary isn't going to change if 1 or 1,000,000,000 people participate on our site. All I am trying to do is inform the people of what we got going on here.

I can understand where you are coming from though. I mean at first glance, one might perceive your whole blog as an "embarrassing" attempt to sell your book, but as many people including myself know, you are trying to help small businesses better present and promote themselves through non-conventional methods of marketing.

In essence, that is exactly what we are doing here. If you try to track me, you will find that I am VERY picky as to what blogs I comment on, or even read for that matter, because almost everything on the internet, from blogs to advertisements, is not worth taking a first glance let alone a second one. Our overall vision is to make the Internet a "cleaner" place, so when people leave comments on other peoples blogs offering suggestions they are not instantly perceived as "embarrassing cheap tactics"

In conclusion, I still would like to thank you for writing a article that proposes a problem that we are trying to solve, and I hope you have a good rest of the day. I hope that in due time you will stand corrected. Actually, I know that in due time you will stand corrected.

Jon Escamilla,
WOWzzy.com"

I doubt he even read it, but oh well.