Why I'm betting against the algorithm

I dislike the algorithm. I believe it is broken. 

Why do I believe it’s broken and it doesn’t work? Simply because, I believe we’ve fed the A.I with the parts of us that isn’t our “best self”.

Which, in turn, then helps us pay attention to more of the “not best self” version of us. Essentially, we’ve reinforced our addictive parts of who we are, instead of reinforcing what we really want to pay attention too.

Overtime, my belief is that people will realize this and will continue to “disconnect” themselves from this experience.

I’m not saying it’ll happen anytime soon. I simply know, that it’s likely to happen.

When each day you log onto whichever social media network, or media platform and all you get is a feedback loop that makes you anxious, fearful, scared and depressed. There will come a time when “no” is the answer.

What will come next, has already emerged…

In truth, we’re going backwards. Much like every pattern and cycle in history, new things come, then we take what we want and go back to what has worked.

My belief, as we go into the future, is that we will ditch the A.I driven newsfeed and build our own newsfeed.

The placement of that newsfeed? Our inbox.

Now, that might mean email, or slack, or iMesssage, or perhaps even a website that is targeted specifically to you.

What I believe is that as more people “wake up” from the potential (and proven) harms of the algorithm, that we will become intentional on our own.

One of my main bets and sectors of my investments is based on this belief.

For many groups of people, this has already happened.

They’ll watch their 6 channels on YouTube, or just a few groups of Facebook. They may subscribe to a handful of newsletters and completely disengage from mass media and Instagram or TikTok scrolling.

This trend, will take time to pick up steam, however, it’s why I’m investing time, energy and resources in acquiring and building a network of attention properties.

Email Lists, Facebook Groups, Content Sites, YouTube Channels and everything in-between. The ability to have niched attention of specific groups of people that are looking for something.

I believe this will go on top of another major trend

Which is the usage of large format online advertising like Facebook Ads. More and more, the trend to do advertising that is niche specific, where you can target the audience through sponsorship or partnership, will continue to be greater and greater.

For example, in a few weeks, I’m running a 3 day free live event, for that event, I’ve tested simply sponsoring some email lists in the Entrepreneurial niche.

My ad budget across the major platforms was about $60,000, however, just one simple sponsorship (for $3,500) will put me in front of an email list 7 times that have 140,000 Entrepreneurs signed up.

How it will go, I’m not sure, however, I do know that transferred trust is powerful.

The businesses I grow and scale require targeted people that want to buy those services…

My final point and why I’m betting against the newsfeed and alogrithm is this. If you own the attention, not only can you profit from the attention, you can direct that attention anywhere, at anytime.

I’m currently in due diligence, for example, with a website in the spirituality niche that has 4,300,000 (yes million) unique visitors a year, almost all from America. Currently, the owners have never sold anything to the audience and it’s purely a revenue generator from ads.

Each month, on average, this website makes $22,000 in advertising revenue, with expenses of about $6,000.

It’s for sale, for about $700,000.

Now, it would take a while to get back the money if it was simply advertising, however, this website is 99% search engine traffic AND it has almost 100,000 email subscribers.

By acquiring this, if I do, I can do multiple things that will grow my portfolio.

1. I can double down on SEO and social media to increase traffic and ad revenue.

2. I can add on things to the property such as membership, courses, podcast, physical products, etc.

3. As I have multiple businesses (and will continue in the future) to have businesses that target those “into” spirituality and the law of attraction, we can promote and cross promote this audience to those offers.

This, in one swoop, allows me to build an asset that has cashflow and profit, that will grow by itself AND help me grow the rest of the businesses in that segment, while allowing me to own the attention of that group of people.

That’s a pretty good R.O.I and risk reversal if you ask me.

In short, this is my strategy for all “media” (aka. attention) properties, they allow you to easily build an attention business and because of the business types I’m in (Software and Education), allows me to easily utilize that attention to both help the people listening AND help the businesses that need new customers to help.

That’s all for today, wish me luck on my due diligence :)

-Scott