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However Tempting, Don’t Burn Your Bridge
Posted by Scott on 4th July, 2008 | 29 commentsBuilding a new business into a success takes time, effort, and dedication. Those words, by themselves, don’t begin do justice to the level of hardship that nearly all successful entrepreneurs must endure along the way (including myself). There are setbacks, people do say “no”, and you run into a lot of roadblocks along the way, all of which can leave you frustrated. But what you definitely don’t want to ever do is to vent those frustrations onto your peers or onto those people who could end up being business allies and partners some day.
I received an email tonight from James Wilcox of portfolio.wilcox-studios.com, asking me to donate a prize for a contest on his blog. Being the open minded guy that I am, I thought I’d check out his blog and consider sponsoring his contest. Lo and behold, the first post on his blog talks about how he wrote the “biggest bloggers on the planet” asking them to donate prizes which “amounts to little more than peanuts in their pocketbook”.
He goes on to say, “In short, these Mega Bloggers both said they didn’t have it in their budget to donate anything. I mean nothing. Not an ad spot on their blog…nada…zip. I guess the 14,000 visits from 4230 unique visitors isn’t worth the time of day for these guys (one who’s real name I still don’t know, even though he sent me $400 paypal for my iPod Touch, which Incidentally wasn’t Free…I had to pay $99 USD for.) I never mentioned that to him, but since he is now apparently too cheap to donate any kind of prize, I felt obliged to mention.”
And my favorite, “I don’t think there is any credence to what either of these blogging juggernauts has to say anymore because, unless I am serving their interest, they could care less about me or any other fledgling blogger. They do what they do because it continues to make them money. For the most part it’s the same tired song and dance every day and I just don’t buy it anymore.”
I’m not sure if he didn’t think “these blogging juggernauts” would bother to read his post or what, but I did, and I think I’ll pass. First off, James, your concept of wealth is warped and you have an inflated sense of self importance. If someone like John Chow who earns six figures from their blog declines to sponsor you, thank them for their time and walk away. Don’t (publicly or otherwise) blast them as being cheap, or as being too dumb to see what a great opportunity sponsoring your blog would have been. They’re not dumb, or they wouldn’t be earning six figures, so clearly they had the good sense to analyze the opportunity and decided to pass. As for the donation “amounting to little more than peanuts in their pocketbook”, that’s not a call for you to make. Every entrepreneur, successful or not, has to decide where to spend money and how much to spend. If they spent all their money, they’d have nothing left. If they gave money to every guy like yourself who asked for it 24/7, they’d have nothing left. They have to make choices.
This may be a bold example, but I see this kind of thing all the time where someone will be angry, they’ll blast someone out of frustration, and then end up burning their bridge with that person forever! Some day, John Chow might read an interesting post on James’ blog and consider linking to it, but then he’ll think back, “oh that was the guy that called me cheap - forget him”. The key to success is to bite your tongue and don’t assume that you won’t ever need anything from that person again in the future.
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Friday, July 4th, 2008 at 2:28 am and is filed under Web Business. If you like this post why not subscribe to my full text RSS feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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I second each and every word you have written Scott… on one of my famous blogs related to my area of expertise…something similar but not so drastic has happened earlier
…oh I missed this…I wish you could write more often
Do what I did, subscribe to the posts with google reader.
This James Wilcox is a lucky guy. First he rambles around and then he gets a First-class article with a Link from you. I am sure he will not recognize this as the real present it is.
I must admit a visited his blog. But i found nothing interesting, he mostly talks about food although it should be a blog about making money online. Funny.
Na, I do not think so. First of all the guy didn’t get a link, he just got some text with his URL. So no SEO juice.
He is also being exposed as some junkie, who hasn’t been in this business for very long. It makes his website look very unprofessional and unappealing.
warren, I mostly talk about food? I guess you only looked at the first page where I have 2 posts about lunch and that’s not what my blog is about but you didn’t really dig any deeper than that.
Also, John Chow isn’t who I was talking about. I’ve had nothing but positive experiences with John and I have the utmost respect for what he does.
What I was miffed about was the tone of the email I had recieved from the blogger I emailed. I was quite polite in my email and the response I got was basically saying I wasn’t worth the time. Instead of this person simply saying “thanks, but i’m not interested” they had this to say:
“Sorry but i am not really seeing the traffic to your site to justify it being worth the investment for such a large prize… or am i missing something?”
I’m happy to burn this bridge that never existed to begin with.
I also never asked for specific dollar amounts, I simply asked if they would like to contribute to the contest in any way…which can be a physical product or or ad space or entrecard credits…
At any rate, thanks for responding and maybe someday we can work together.
Since when is it rude to say, “Sorry but I am not really seeing the traffic to your site to justify it being worth the investment for such a large prize… or am i missing something?”
Quite the contrary, that sounds very polite and honest. By responding to you and saying, “am I missing something?”, he was extending the courtesy to you to explain your value proposition. He could have just ignored your email instead.
Maybe I was being too harsh, but it upset me because I have always been a big supporter of this person’s site from the start and I think I get plenty of traffic, so I felt insulted that my blog isn’t “big enough” to justify his involvement.
I have other donations coming in now so it doesn’t really matter.
That’s my point. You got angry. Don’t let your emotions derail your future success. By publicly blasting that guy, you can be assured that that’s 1 door that is closed, one bridge burned. But really, it’s more than that, because now you’ve shown yourself to be a spiteful/bitter person who publicly lashes out at people when you don’t get your way, which is not great for anyone to associate with — so, it’s not just one bridge, lots of potential partners will avoid associating with that.
Your blog said that you were creating web businesses in ‘91 but honestly you come across as young, defensive, and inexperienced.
agreed. it’s easy to overreact which is what I did…we all make mistakes sometimes. lesson learned and really, thanks to you I will take that 10 seconds to think about what I’m going to say before I say it.
You are right, i only visited your first page. Two articles about food just seemed too much for my small attention span. I think it is OK to write about private themes from time to time, but not too often.
Your first page is always your most important page and if you get too far aways from your main topic you will not gain new readers. Maybe some food enthusiasts but they may get bored when you write about your main topic
But i just visited some other pages of your blog and you are right: they are more interesting.
After considerable thought, I’ve removed those “rant” portions from my blog post…I was hasty and should have been more diplomatic…we live and we learn.
Nice post, this could easy be used in real life “don’t burn your bridge”
it is good not to burn your bridges, but sometimes when there’s infectious zombies running over them it can be good to burn your bridges - I guess ultimately its all about knowing which bridges to leave standing and which to loose? Never burning any bridges is unrealistic!
@underworld: I see your point. There can be differences of opinions. In those situations I prefer to stop conversation/emails etc rather than indulging in fight which ultimately steals away your precious time and fills you with “negative energy”.
In the end, it’s all about making progress keeping distractions and distractors away.
my $0.02…
yeah agreed they are important, was just adding my $0.02 too
Yep having tons of bridges can be very helpful
“What goes around, comes around” — so be careful
Scott
It must be nice to be considered a blogging juggernaut!
P.S. Why give this guy soo much link juice? He must be getting loads more visitors through you now and he has taken down the offending words.
Just my 2c
Jim
Good point.
I must have caught this late, but a great post with a great example. In any field it is best not to burn bridges.
I guess that falls into that adage bad press is better than no press at all.
Scott, I’ve gotta agree with you 100% I’m not seeing that “the blogger” was wrong, rude or otherwise insensitive in anyway.
lol so his burnt bridge this time has helped him? potentially not as much as it could of but still!
Obv it is better to have more bridges in tact!
Very good advice. You never know when you may need someone
There’s a saying that goes ‘what you resist persists.’ It’s interesting that some of the longest lasting and highest commented blogs are those that strike a cord of emotion in the audience, where someone takes exception to someone or something. Glad to see this one end with no one hurt:)
I agree with you. I’d never “burn my bridge” as who knows when I’ll be forced to cross it back.
There is no reason for big bloggers not to look at the idea of donating as an investment, and I don’t think the blogger you mentioned it right for criticizing them.
If the bloggers think there will be a good return on there investment, then they’ll probably go ahead and donate something, if not then they wont, I see nothing wrong with that.
Yes exactly, but that should be up to the blogger to decide, whether there is a good ROI or not, and they shouldn’t get blasted publicly as being cheap for not donating.
I must have stumbled upon this late, but no information is obsolete. Thanks for the example used.Whatever field your in, it is best not to burn bridges.