(La Jolla, CA) Frank Kern quit Internet Marketing today in an email announcement sent to his list of loyal subscribers. I had my suspicions that he was leaving our band-of-brothers when I read an article written by him in Success Magazine along with an audio interview conducted with CEO Darren Hardy.

‘Has the rogue marketer turned corporate‘ I thought?

It seems that ‘the Dude’ of info-marketing no longer abides in our space. Frank has transitioned from the carnival barker of IM to adviser to such luminaries as Anthony Robbins.

He’s no longer making amusing videos of punking his marketing syndicate buddies like John Reese or detailing the finer virtuous of getting drunk by chasing the green fairy (absinthe).

Frank Kern Quits Info-Marketing

According to his email, Frank may have quit for some of the following reasons:

1. It (IM) works, but it’s a pain in the ass and it’s not that cool.

2. You have little control over who becomes your customer
and therefore you can quickly end up with the wrong people.

3. Your marketplace will eventually become sick of this and
they’ll quit buying your stuff.

4. It’s dangerous. If your affiliates do or say anything stupid while
promoting you, you could be liable.

Plus, it’s kind of lame. I mean really, aren’t you tired of it?

So what is the the wizard La Jolla doing in place of info-marketing? Frank is placing his ‘entire focus to providing coaching
and consulting to people who are in the professional services world.’

He explains his new simplified strategy as:

Part 1: An ad. As in “advertisement” ….for a free live training.

Part 2: A registration page for the live training itself.

Part 3: A live webinar (which is the live training).

The end.

As I look at his ‘new’ strategy I began to ponder ‘is this the direction I should be going.’ After all, like a lot of us marketers I have been chasing Kern’s shadow. Like his mentor, Anthony Robbins, I wanted to model my marketing off someone who is having million dollar days while having fun and living the California dream of surfing, sun and margaritas.

But now my model has vanished into the consulting world. We’ve seen others in our markeing space take a simalr path (Jay Kubassek, Michael Force). We’ve also seen people like John Reese take sabitacals overseas in search of enlightenment, reflection and renewal.

Is this the natural result of success in affiliate/network/info marketing? Does our success naturally spit us out onto some new shore of existential angst? Do these marketers know something we don’t about the future of marketing? Leave your comments below.

~ Rich O’Brien

Friend Rich on FB: http://www.facebook.com/itsrichobrien

Partner with Rich and make all your dreams come true