Get POOR Fast

How NOT to Monetize Your Cat: a Case Study.

Down the street lives Purrty Petey. He has a human named Anton he keeps with him, who's jumps from job to job, scheme to scheme.

The human tries to make money every which way. Rather than get DVDs from the library, he buys them, burns them for his collection, and then resells them used on eBay. Rather than invest in bonds or an index fund, he speculates on collectibles and eBay. (Mouldering Beanie Babies infest his rented storage unit.)

Worst of all, rather than invest in learning new skills for higher pay, he spends tons of time and money on Get Rich Quick schemes. You know them-- promising huge returns on real estate, Forex trading, options, or some "foolproof" product, they have infomercials and hotel conferences. Anton's been to a dozen of these things. He goes for the $1995! $995! $500! "free" seminar, but then they upsell books, CDs, home training courses and networking.

Dozens of these courses litter his apartment. Purry Petey uses them for litter. He has to. Anton's too busy chasing some other fake dream.

Worst of all, Purry Petey tries to tell him. He tears up the couch, he pukes in the undies drawer. (Once he was asleep in it, and Anton closed it on him. For a week after, he was a guilty "commando.") Anton won't sit down with himself long enough to see how he's wasting his time-- his life-- on some other empty promise. He could be monetizing his cat, building side streams of income, taking small steps to financial & feline freedom, but he doesn't read this blog.

Alas!

Seth Godin's Cat Builds No Wealth

Kind of cloudy and overcast today, so I was snooping around in Seth Godin's blog. (I reviewed his book Meatball Sundae yesterday.) I found this post, which has some cobwebs on it, but raised some issues pertinent to my CATpitalsm plan.

Briefly-- read the post, though, it has some good points. In sum, Godin destroys my hopes, my dreams, Zooey's plans for gold-dust litter and braised rat pate. He refuses to monetize his blog.

He outlines good reasons for not doing so. Among them, the fact that one of his favorite blogs changed from being a nice place to hang out and read good ideas, into the e-version of the Vegas Strip. Ads, blaring out, carnival barkers touting the dude's new book, his bloated resume (this is the blog Godin describes, not Godin himself-- his blog is elegant and clean, and ad-free), so forth, dogs & cats living together. Just awful.

So yeah, I can see his point. But-- he's also a bestselling author with fourteen-odd books out. (I don't mean his books are odd! It's just English, for pity's sake!) So he doesn't seem to need to monetize his blog-- it's a loss leader, serving as an ad for his books, his speaking, his consulting.

Zooey & I don't yet have a catsulting service together. Or a speaking/meowing tour. Perhaps we will, after doing Zooey's skills assessment. But until that day, we'll have some ads. Maybe when we're raking in more money than Mr MacMuffin ever DREAMED of we'll demonetize the blog. And the cat. But until then...

And I want to reassure you (and myself, shamefaced after reading the post) we never changed! We were all about the boodle from Day 1! Cat-Daddy, Zooey-Monetization, so never mind that we have ads! Don't forgive us, enjoy our catpitalist path! Imitate it! Golden Land of Opportunity! My cat makes money! Your cat can too!