Every one raves about Seth Godin. Personally, I’ve always thought the hype was way out of control, and as much as a lot of what he says makes sense, I’ve always thought most of it was common sense as opposed to anything ground breaking, and perhaps very well articulated, but nothing really more than this.
Seth of course, seems to lap the hype up. Instead of down playing the hype he’s allowed it to bubble, and like any bubble it’s eventually bound to burst. Techchrunch predicts that Squidoo is going to burst the Seth Godin bubble…well at least give it a rather large leak.
Of course the mettle of the man will be surely tested once Squidoo fails (as it seems it’s going to….I mean $30 is your top payment after 6 months? If we were running b5 like that no one would be working for us any more). Lets see how Seth Godin handles failure. If he pulls through and handles it with style and panache, then I might consider joining the fan club.
He faced failure before, Duncan, when his free PDF Manifesto site was taken down. I think he tried to put it up again last year with some interns running the show. I haven’t heard about it since.
As for Squidoo? Zzzzzzzzzzz.
The concept that a failed project means Seth himself is a failure, is purely ridiculous. No one should expect everything he touches to turn to gold – Squidoo may have a future, maybe not. Either way, I don’t believe it detracts from it’s initiator’s credibility. Business isn’t – especially when you’re attemtping to create something viral.
Just to add, I agree that he does talk a lot about common-sense issues. But on the other hand I really don’t doubt he knows what he’s talking about thoroughly, and helps develop revolutionary ideas himself. Again, not everything has to be groundbreaking to make it worthwhile. Sometimes the simplest of things can be the most important.
It seems like much of what the pundits are writing about Squidoo is centered around Godin. That makes me wonder if one man’s personal brand is enough to launch a major website (as seems to be the case with Squidoo).
For all the “depth” of the recent Squidoo criticism the authors of these recent death of Godin notes seem to miss just a few facts. Squidoo has grown dramatically and the lens payments are only a portion of the money lensmasters can earn from their lenses.
Ebay sellers for example have rushed to Squidoo to promote not only their own products but also those of others and receive affiliate payments from Ebay.
Our lens generates 1- Lens payments 2- Ebay affiliate payments 3- Payments from a third party software company 4-Trade credits for free merchandise and last but perhaps most importantly 5- TONS OF LEADS FOR WORK/Consulting.
I do agree too much hype is not good, but the people behind Squidoo are top notch. Seth is more of a guiding influence than someone running the day to day operations.
I cannot tell you how down to earth the people that work on this Squidoo project are and how hard they worked to get it started and rolling along.
I am not saying anyone will get rich here, but its not a get rich scheme. It takes work like anything else, and some creativity.
Marty