Why I decided not to take the advice of internet marketing gurus

There are said to be ways of making piles of money publishing information products.

There are ways of getting people to part with large sums of cash for information which if published in the normal way would be a book with a cover price less than £20 or $30.

There are certainly a lot of marketing gurus out there marketing information products about marketing information products, and I suppose at least some of them are making a lot of money.

To make a lot of money marketing an information product, this is what you are supposed to do. You create an internet ‘squeeze page’ with a lot of very long copy that tells you what the product is going to do for you. So for example a squeeze page about dating should have long copy explaining how you can learn to overcome your fear of talking to attractive women, how you will learn to become attractive to women by developing confidence and so on. There may or may not be photographs of scantily-clad temptresses interspersed with testimonials from fellows who got lucky.

The further down the page you read, the more you are imagining overcoming all your fears and being able to get hot dates, in short, becoming a man with choices.

Then the marketer will tell you what they think the product is worth. The principle behind this is trying to get the potential customer into the frame of mind that thinks, “what would I be willing to pay to get this area of my life sorted out?” The marketer wants you to think, “Yes, if I was certain of becoming a babe magnet I’d happily pay $2,000.”

Then the marketer tells you that as it happens there is a special limited time offer so that this information product is marked down to only $300 (or $291, because a number without zeros looks less as though it’s been plucked out of thin air), but only if you buy now. What’s more you can stage your payments into three easy instalments. Not only that but if not truly delighted you can return the materials for a full refund, no questions asked. And you get bonus items just for replying which are yours to keep whether you return the materials or not.

At this point your head is in a whirl, you’re looking at the instalment payment of $100 (or more likely, $97.00 because there is some weird alchemy in the number 97) and you’re thinking, “hey, that’s not much money,” (unless of course you don’t live in the USA and $97.00 is more money than you’ve ever seen in one place at one time) and you click the pay link.

Now, while I should like to be rich, the truth is that doing all this would require a considerable investment of time and energy. I think the people who do this and succeed actually put a lot of effort into it. The time I would spend doing this would be better spent writing more books.

The marketing model I am adopting is pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap. Even so, I believe that the insights that I have packed into ‘Dating – the missing manual’ are as good as you’ll get anywhere, basically because they work.

In order to get a high sales ranking on Amazon I am deliberately pitching the price for the paperback book below its main book rivals. I shall keep the price low at least until sales volumes suggest I should increase it. (There’s my limited time offer right there – to quote Bugs Bunny, “Ain’t I a devil?”) The booksellers’ discount is sufficiently generous for regular bookstores to get it for you, too.

The price at publication will be a mere £5.50 (US$9.50) – that’s less than the price of a coffee and a decent sandwich to learn how to attract and keep the woman of your dreams.

Love and sex

Of course it’s not an either/or question. But which is more important to you, now, love or sex? You need to know.

Being clear what we want at a given moment in our lives will help us to make choices that affect our success in these areas and will also help us to avoid hurting others.

Love and sex are mixed up because, as Plato pointed out in the Phaedrus, beauty on earth reminds us of heavenly beauty, and who we fall in love with we also wish to unite with. We want to connect with beauty.

At the same time sex is a powerful instinctive drive, and it can and often does operate independently of being in love. The sex drive can convince us we are in love because that is the way to get sex. I’m sorry this is a rather cruder point than the one Plato was making, but it is also true.

To be clear, we do not (I assume) want to be the man who vows undying love to a woman only because he wants to get her into bed. There are women who, like many men, want sex without commitment. If you want sex without commitment (see also my blog entry on ‘fuck buddies‘) then you need to hang out at the sorts of place where you are likely to meet such women (and of course learn the signals and techniques of chatting them up).

If on the other hand you are looking for lasting love then of course your strategy will be different (although many of exactly the same techniques will still be useful at times).

Of course, in any real life situation the two desires are likely both to be present at the same time. Therefore it is important to be clear which desire is uppermost right now. Do not be blinded into imagining you love somebody just because she has a sweet face and a sexy body and you’re imagining ripping her clothes off and doing it right now.

There is nothing wrong in having a friend-with-benefits, as long as you don’t fool yourself and don’t fool her. You should both be more-or-less on the same page, as far as possible.

You may think that all this is too obvious to state. But much unnecessary suffering is made out of not being clear what you want.

Falling in love

Here is what Plato wrote:

This then is the fourth type of madness, which befalls when a man, reminded by the sight of beauty on earth of the true beauty, grows his wings and endeavours to fly upwards, but in vain, exposing himself to the reproach of insanity because like a bird he fixes his gaze on the heights… – Phaedrus 249

And here is an extract from my soon-to-be published Dating – the missing manual, from the section towards the end called, ‘Is true love possible?’:

Love at first sight.

Yes, it can happen.

In rare cases it really works out. Lovers sometimes feel that they must have met in a previous life. Whether they really did or not neither they nor anyone else can tell, but sometimes it works out.

But it isn’t the only way and these feelings are not always reliable. I’m not saying they’re never true, but us humans are also very good at fooling ourselves.

It is quite possible to fall in love because of our own unmet need for warmth and affection. No doubt the desire for sex plays a big part in this too. For some, the sex part looms largest, for others sex follows on from love. Either way, a starving man will accept any food.

We must beware our own unmet needs.

Serious mistakes can be made, such as unwanted sticky relationships. Obvious perhaps, but such mistakes are common. Be skeptical of your own falling in love, be cautious, don’t commit too soon.

I have heard it said that falling in love lasts for twelve weeks, or in rare cases if you are exceptionally lucky, thirteen. (I don’t think this is absolutely accurate, but you get the point.)

Sure, it is fine indeed to see everything bathed in unusual light, to know that the world is a dream, to feel the strangeness and the ache of being in love. Trying to avoid this state is either going to fail or turn you into a grey zombie. You can’t and shouldn’t fight it.

But don’t promise anything you may not be able to deliver. You don’t need to make promises to keep a woman. You just need to be yourself, and if she’s right for you, it will work out.

Relationships that are good for the long haul will evolve over time. Falling in love is the match that lights the candle. The candle may or may not be lit by the time the match goes out.

For others, it is a slow burn process – they meet, they kind of like each other but aren’t sure, they hang around each other some more, and gradually like a smoky bonfire of damp wood, steam comes and then the fire.

Dating – the missing manual – you can attract and keep the woman of your dreams (if they had taught this in school alongside algebra and French irregular verbs, my whole life would have been different) is theoretically now available from all good bookstores. In practice it won’t be on their computers yet, but in the very near future it will be available to bookshops from their usual wholesalers: Bertrams, Ingram, Barnes and Noble, Gardners, Blackwell etc. I shall post on here as soon as it is available on Amazon, anticipated in about the next two weeks.

Stop press: it looks as though Dating – the missing manual will be available from Amazon from 1st October.

After the first sex

Excellent advice from the other side. What not to do after a date that ends in bed. Read and learn.

What should we men learn from this?

Don’t overstay your welcome. Leave her wanting more.

To be honest, I have seldom (well only once, to be exact) in my whole life slept with someone I didn’t want to be with the next morning. That’s because I am one of those men whose built-in order of preference is (and was, almost always) (1) love and (2) sex, not the other way around. (If your preference order is currently the other way around, that’s fine, just be clear about it.)

So, whether or not you are one of those people who don’t sleep with a woman unless you’re really in love, try to look your best in the morning.

Top tip: if you are hoping for more sex in the morning, go and freshen up. A quick brush of the teeth will avoid that off-putting mouth smell. If she’s still asleep, use the time to make her a cup of tea or coffee.

Hopeless romantic, or common sense?

Dating – the missing manual

As promised I shall post on the topic of sex tomorrow, and usually once a week on a Thursday. But I am quite excited that my book on dating is finally finished and the digital files are now at the printer. The projected publication date is 1st October, but it may be available a little before or after that date. Watch this space!

The full title is:

Dating – the missing manual:

you can attract and keep the woman of your dreams

(if they had taught this in school alongside algebra and French irregular verbs, my whole life would have been different)

This is from the introduction:

Cornelius Agrippa used to have big problems with dating.

As a teenager he suffered agonies not knowing how to approach girls and not understanding how was it that other boys succeeded where he did not.

Later in life he would admire beautiful women from afar and their smiles destroyed him. He regularly fell in love with women but he had no idea how even to approach them. He wanted a woman with whom he could share both serious moments and fun. Ultimately he wanted a female companion he could share his life with on every level.

Unfortunately he had entirely the wrong approach to solving this problem. This led him to end up with more than one woman who was not suited to him, because he did not know what he knows now.

‘Surely,’ he thought, ‘if I have the good qualities I think I have, the right woman will see this and be attracted to me.’ But this didn’t happen.

Part of him also didn’t really believe that he had what it takes to attract the woman of his dreams.

Eventually he began to believe that the woman of his dreams did not exist.

Now there’s no doubt that a lot of luck is involved in finding your perfect partner, the woman you could happily spend the rest of your life with. Nevertheless there is a great deal that can be done to shorten the odds.

In particular it is vital to know what to do when the right woman does come along, and not to mess up your chances. Indeed you need to know how to have chances in the first place. If you let her walk by and say nothing, what chances do you have? (This book tells you what to say and how to overcome the fear of saying it.)

Eventually a friend saw the author’s predicament and gave him some good advice.

Putting this advice into practice, trying this and that, your author came up with the insights in this book. Insights that got him some fun dates, some very interesting times, some amusing escapades (amusing with the wisdom of hindsight anyway), and some mistakes.

It also got him the woman of his dreams.

This book is the distillation of his experience, and if you take it to heart and put it into practice it will seriously increase your chances of finding the woman who is right for you.

To teenagers: this book will help you, too. When you have the power to attract girls you will learn to be picky, knowing that you don’t have to promise more than you intend to fulfil to get a girl and you don’t have to settle down until you find a real keeper.

As to the mistakes, suffice it to say for now: be wary of your own desire to believe. And if you are not sure of a woman, don’t leave her alone in the same room as your credit card.

Learn from your mistakes. It is fine to make mistakes. Just don’t repeat them.

Don’t settle for the first woman that comes along (unless of course she is actually your dream incarnate and at the same time very real – see my warning to romantics). You are more attractive than you think (this book shows you how) and therefore you have choices. This is very important.

Be clear about what you really want, and don’t think about settling for less. Then do the work.

This blog

As I explain in the About section of this blog, I want to pass on some tips in the areas of dating and sex which I wished I’d known about long ago. Having learned these things my life is altogether different and happier. What better time to pass on what I have learned than when the steps I took are fresh in my mind?

I am working on a book which will be called:

Dating – the missing manual

– you can attract and keep the woman of your dreams –

(if they had taught this in school alongside algebra and French irregular verbs, my whole life would have been different)

I love long old-fashioned titles as you can see. This book will be ready for the printer soon.

Meanwhile my intention is to post at the beginning of the week, usually on a Monday, a thought or tip about dating.

In the middle of the week, usually on a Thursday, I shall post a thought or tip about sex to go with my other book,

Last as long as you want in bed

– five steps to overcoming premature ejaculation and to regaining control –

“It’s not about you”

This book is already available in paperback (US link, UK link). I’m also working on a Kindle version.

To find out when my dating book is published why not click the ‘follow’ button on this blog? You will also receive email updates when there is a new post. WordPress does not forward your email address to me and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Attracting a woman – practicing repartee

What do you say after you say “hi?”

I talked before about repartee – making light conversation. It can be about anything. Just pick up something in the situation that seems natural to talk about. Be creative, but don’t spend too long thinking about it or the moment will have passed.

Example: you go into a wine shop and luckily you are served by an attractive woman. You ask advice about what wines might go with the meal you are planning. You want advice anyway, that’s why you’re in the shop. You might then say, “You seem to know everything. Do they make you taste all the wine in the shop?” Silly conversation opener, but it has the merit of (1) being lighthearted and (2) being about her.

Top tip: people love talking about themselves.

I’m not going to talk you through how to turn that into a date right now. You may not be ready for that yet. The point of this post is to say, practice. Practice even on women you wouldn’t want to ask out on a date. Practice on the till girl in the supermarket, even if she isn’t your type. Even practice on men too.

The point of practicing on people you don’t necessarily fancy is that it removes the fear of rejection. You will find that you are seldom rebuffed and this will build confidence. You are honing your skills for the moment when it will count. You are practicing becoming a fearless master of light conversation.

Don’t imagine the right words will just come into your head when you see that really hot woman you want to talk into a date. Most likely fear will freeze your mind and by the time you’ve worked out the perfect thing to say the moment will have passed. You need to practice. Don’t worry if it’s a bit clunky at first, but keep practicing and give yourself a mental pat on the back every time you do this.

One more thing to make this easier. Stop worrying about yourself. Your aim is to make the other person smile.

Rush hour crush – 4

I think a lot of us live in dreamland.

Do we really want to meet the man or woman of our dreams or do we just want to fantasize about it?

Here are two examples from the ‘Rush hour crush’ section of the Metro newspaper today.

Example 1:

To the gentleman with the gym bag who catches the 08.32 from Penarth to Queen Street every morning. Let me see how many shades you have. Drink? – Brunette

Ooh la la! The reference to ‘shades’ is probably something to do with the recent publication of the ‘shades of grey’ novels, which I understand have lots of references to kinky sex. So if the guy with the gym bag is into that then it’s game on. But (even assuming he reads today’s Metro) how is he to know which brunette is offering? I can imagine a highly amusing farce made out of that (writers of TV comedy take note).

Ok, there is a chance that the target of these entertaining texts will actually read them. And that might just break the ice (or facilitate a very polite refusal) in the event that the two of them ever actually talk to each other. But please, Brunette, consider adding a bit more of a description. Why not wear an unusual brightly coloured shoulder bag or a distinguishing hair ornament? If you weren’t wearing anything eye-catching on the day you could still have said that’s what you’ll be wearing next time. You’ll have to be the one to break the ice unless you do that.

And for the avoidance of doubt, as the lawyers say, the gentleman wasn’t me and I’m not into shades of grey.

Example 2:

To the man with the white dog on the train from Clapham Junction on Saturday, I wish I’d written your number down before you got off at Feltham. Coffee sometime? – Smiley Brunette

Of course this is better. The description of the man is more precise, because fewer men have white dogs than have gym bags. And Smiley Brunette is a little more specific than Brunette.

On the other hand the description could have been improved by stating the time of the train at Clapham Junction. But maybe this isn’t so important, because the text suggests that they actually spoke. I deduce this because she writes “I wish I’d written your number down…” rather than “I wish I’d spoken to you.” So almost full marks here.

Next time, ask for an email or mobile number, or if really shy, at least a Facebook name. “Hey, are you on Facebook?” is a risk-free question. Actually, asking someone if they’d like to meet for coffee sometime is also risk-free. If they’re not interested (or married – check the left hand) they can always find a polite way of declining.

Lessons?

1. If you see someone you fancy, make some harmless remark (the weather, overcrowding on the tube, ‘nice gym bag, where did you get it?,’ ‘what kind of dog is that?,’ whatever) and see if a conversation develops;

2. If a conversation develops in a positive way, ask for a Facebook name/ email/ mobile phone number;

3. If you only think of these things when it’s too late and you text in to the newspaper, you need to be specific enough that the intended recipient has half a chance of knowing who you are. But I can’t help thinking that the ‘Rush hour crush’ column is the repository of lost dreams.

Why don’t we act on our desires? I’ll talk about fear of rejection another time, but it’s all imagination, really. The sky will not fall in.

Vanilla

Credit: B. Navez, licensed under Wikimedia Commons

I once heard the term ‘vanilla sex’ used as a term of mild abuse, as though those of us satisfied with love simply expressed between bodies were somehow missing out compared with those who like encounters involving various types of equipment.

I do not wish to pass a negative judgement on anyone who enjoys anything, no matter how strange, as long as it does not harm or coerce others. Each to his or her own. However I thought I might point out just how sexy vanilla is.

Look at this cross-section of the vanilla flower (this is taken from Wikipedia, and by clicking on the image you should be able to see the original larger version).

Notice how the inner part of the flower resembles a vagina with the labia actually labelled on the picture as labia (the picture label is ‘labellum’ which means ‘little labium,’ the singular form of ‘labia’).

The part labelled ‘stigma’ is the part that receives the pollen. Notice it is in the upper part of the vagina-like opening of the flower, just where the most sensitive part of the vagina is in a woman. Of course this is co-incidence, but it is very poetic.

The flower also has a male part, which is labelled in this diagram as the anther. The anther looks remarkably like a clitoris. This is where the pollen comes from, but the flower does not pollinate itself. Flowers do not exist for solitary joy. There is a membrane separating the male from the female parts.

In order for the flower to be pollinated, to make seeds for the next generation of vanilla plants (or to make vanilla pods to flavour our ice-cream), a Mexican bee has to come into the flower bearing pollen from another vanilla flower somewhere else.

Thus, unlike us, flowers love at a distance, and is the bee that penetrates, carrying their love back and forth.

Pivot – useful dating tip

Here is another useful dating tip. Understand and learn.

You may have heard the term ‘wingman.’ This is a male friend who helps you in approaching potential dates. Apparently there is a new piece of jargon attaching to a female friend who helps you out in a similar way.

The term ‘pivot’ is explained in this women’s blog.

This is essentially very simple. I shall explain with a story.

In the days before I met the woman of my dreams, that is to say, when I was actively searching for her, I made friends with two very attractive young women (that’s another story). The three of us were out at a comedy club night and we were chatting at the bar in the interval. Another young woman (one of the comediennes in the show) saw me from a distance chatting to these two women and later reported to a fellow comedian (whom I happened to know) that she thought I was very sexy.

This came as a bit of a surprise to me, because I was a lot older than any of these women (a fair bit older than the usual age of people who attend comedy clubs, in fact) and didn’t think of myself as having anything like film star qualities (despite my George Clooney haircut, but that’s also a story for another time).

So, my assumption is that women are attracted to men whom other women find attractive. Or whom they think other women find attractive. By associating with attractive women you acquire extra value in other women’s eyes: ‘If they like him there must be something to him.’ Or, ‘hey, I want some of that, too.’ You see where I’m going with this?

It does you no harm to be seen talking to attractive women.

Consider the possible strategies here. You might go straight up to a woman you find attractive and start talking to her. There is nothing at all wrong with that, and you get instant points for confidence, if you can do it. Alternatively, you might start talking to her friends instead. You can make light conversation, and some of the fear is taken out of it  for you because it is not these exact women you are trying to impress.

If the stars are working in your favour then the woman you really fancy will become more attracted to you because you have now acquired a perceived value with her friends. If she’s interested she may start chasing you. At any rate she may start talking to you. Play it cool and let her work for your attention, but be nice. (More on not being too eager another time.)

Am I talking through my hat here? I don’t think so, because I have verified this in other situations, including when I met the love of my life. But that story is also for another time.