"Last year I held a special webinar that was invite only and everyone had to sign an NDA before attending. On this webinar I explained the current state of the mobile game industry and my plans to dominate as an independent developer."
For me, that quote about sums up the rest of the article. Too much arrogance in there for me.
Trey Smith is from the "Internet marketing" world and a friend of Frank Kern's. Now, I like these guys (as far as I can learn stuff from them for free - spending $10K for a "mastermind"..? nah ;-)) but they seem to take approaches that.. rub some people up the wrong way (and that's putting it lightly). Nonetheless, I've still found there's a lot to learn from their experiences even if the delivery is a bit.. slick.
While a bit slick/sleazy in their approach their work revolves around using social psychology principles (social proof, scarcity etc), conversion tricks, clever copy, giving away freebies in order to build up their email lists. These guys eventually upsell on their premium products for a ridiculous price whilst offering their digital product for a "limited time only" to convert users who've got a good amount of value from their give-away products.
There's hardly any regulation in this industry and the FTC has come down hard on these guys on more than one occasion.
Yup, that type of "social proof" is really off putting. If he started with an actual achievement like making an app that made a lot of money I would have kept on reading. After I read this I quickly scanned it and decided it's not worth my time. I don't always agree with this, but it seems to fit - people who know do, people who don't know teach.
I'm not surprised, as he probably saw a flood of traffic from HN in Google Analytics and decided to backtrack.
I think we're all onto these guys and for him to think (or any other "internet marketer") they can take advantage of others through information asymmetry will be thwarted.
For me, that quote about sums up the rest of the article. Too much arrogance in there for me.