I was listening to Joe Vitale's 4th podcast today.

Joe Vitale, known as Mr Fire, is a brilliant marketer. He has an enormous mailing list and makes lots of money from his mastery of what he calls, "hypnotic marketing".

In the podcast, he mentioned how people were flaming him at PodcastAlley, because last month, he posted his first podcast, and it went #1 in 36 hours. Unbelievable? Not for Joe.

However, reading some of the comments raised some interesting points. Except for show #3 where he podcasted some of his audio content and interviews, the podcasts were useless.

One person wrote, "He's a self absorbed, narcissist who drops names, only here to sell his books." To some degree, I think they're right. He does a lot of name dropping. And he talks a lot about himself.

In fact, I remember emailing him once because I was upset with one product he was pimping. It felt like he was taking advantage of the list for profit. Nevertheless, his mailing list is filled with some outstanding marketing tips, so I let some of the spam like that slide.

But ye know, that is why he is called a hypnotic marketer. Anyone who's read his work would understand that it is your ability to connect with your audience by telling stories in a very personal manner that you will help you to sell stuff. And these flamers proved the point.

Over a year ago, I created a website for my Irish Drinking Songs for Cat Lovers CD. Someone posted it on Fark.com. The next few days were filled with hundreds of comments about my CD. 90% of them said that this was the dumbest idea they'd heard of, and I must be drunk. The other 10% wanted the CD and/or to have my cats' babies. That's when I knew that the CD was a great idea!

You see, people respond to the extraordinary. Check out Seth Godin's book, Purple Cow to find out more about that. It is your ability to be remarkable that polarizes people.

Joe may well be "self-absorbed" and a name-dropper. Yes, he does it to sell more books and make a living for himself. However, he doesn't do it for the flamers. Meaning, they are NOT his target audience. So obviously, they won't "get" his message.

And yes, they are gonna be pissed off when he publishes a podcast with no content, and it rockets it up to #1. Bugged me too, but I voted for him. That doesn't say anything about his content. Rather, it has more to do with Joe Vitale's ability to affect his fans. He is top-notch at inspiring action.

So if you're interested in learning more about marketing, drop by Joe Vitale's blog and analyze what he writes. When you analytically read his writing you understand why he moves people to make him #1.

Now go sign up for his mailing list. Do the same as you do with the blog. Read it with an analytical mind. Even the spam. Read what writes about some marketer's new book that Joe has never read. But don't buy them.

If and when you find something worthwhile, you can be confident that the content you want is just what you are looking for. Because that's what marketing is truly all about.