You might have seen, if you are visiting my site and not reading in email or feed, that I have one of those pop-over email sign up forms appearing right now.
Yes, it’s because of Darren. Blame him, heh.
Thing is, I don’t actually like these pop-overs much. While I think the way I am doing it with only showing it once per person is not as bad as every visit, I still believe people have popup blockers for a reason, and that reason is people don’t like popups, no matter what the technology used to deliver them.
So why on earth would I inflict on my own readers something I don’t like myself?
The good news it will only be a couple of days and I will be replacing it with an alternative approach. My reason is simple, I try to not make statements about tactics unless I have tried and tested them to my own satisfaction, and if I am going to offer an alternative I will need data to back up my arguments.
Another reason, and the title of this post, is “should you trust or should you test?”.
There is a lot of advice out there, some good, some bad. Some of this advice is based on experience, some is based on gut-feel, some of it pulled out of … thin air.
As I was just saying on my blogging forum, have you spotted how many “make money online” tips blogs there are now started by people with no money? I don’t think the “my diary of trying to make money” type are bad, it’s the “here is how to make a fortune … just ignore the fact I haven’t got one” style that make me cross. Why would someone take money making advice from someone who is broke?
Don’t ever just take someone’s word. Test.
It’s one thing to take the advice of Darren Rowse, problogger and monetization guru to the stars, it’s quite another when advice comes from random folks off the internet. But even so, Darren can and does only give you the benefit of his own experience, and that is all anyone can do. Your own experience will be unique because you attract your own unique audience, for your own unique niche and in your own way.
I talk a lot about authority from the publisher or business-owner point of view, but on the recieving end, as you learn and experiment authority can only go so far, you have to use judgement and your own testing to tell you what works for you.