Can you keep a secret?
Maybe you shouldn’t. Telling and selling is where it’s at. In an information economy, secrets are the most valuable currency there is.
Sure, you CAN get by and sell common knowledge through clever packaging, or even handy organization. It used to be you could sell encyclopedias door to door, too.
But those days are dwindling. Some would even say they’re over.
Simple facts are free and freely available on the hunks of plastic and metal we all carry around with us. People don’t want to pay anymore for what they can Google up for free.
If you want to be in the information marketing business (and be able to charge a PREMIUM), you’re going to be have to trade in SECRETS.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. I’ve done it professionally for a long time now.
It’s even kind of cool. Super-spy stuff, right? But secrets can be serious and powerful things. People have killed to discover certain secrets. Still other people have died to their keep secrets safe.
Why is that?
What is it about secrets that make them so powerful and attractive? And what’s any of this got to do with marketing? (I promise I will get to that.)
Like diamonds, secrets are valuable, rare, and mostly hidden away from the world. Unlike diamonds though, you don’t need to bury secrets underground for a bajillion years of earth-crushing geologic pressure to get something shiny to sell.
It’s pretty easy to create secrets on demand, practically out of nothing. A secret is just knowledge that is RARE. So if you do something to create your own knowledge and information, then you automatically have a secret.
Here’s a secret that I just made up: I sometimes sing out loud into my helmet when I’m riding my motor scooter.
(Note, this is actually a terrible example. But I made it on purpose because it proves the point that not all secrets are valuable.)
Who cares about my singing habits, right? First of all, I just told everyone I did it, so it isn’t very rare information anymore.
Second of all, it’s of no consequence to anyone. Knowledge of that formerly secret fact has absolutely zero affect on the actions anyone will take or on the outcomes of those actions.
That is an inconsequential and totally worthless secret.
VALUABLE secrets are what can help you engineer influence and build an audience. You can trade secrets for attention, and the greater the perceived value of your secrets, the greater the number of people who will be interested in paying attention to you.
And if you play your cards right, they’ll pay more than attention further on down the line. 
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
A little later, I’ll follow up this article with Part 2 and I’ll tell you about some of the ways I know that people place value on “secret knowledge”.
And more importantly, I’ll reveal how you can use those unconscious processes to your advantage and position yourself to profit from trading your own secrets.
Until Next Time,
Colin Theriot
P.S. Are you currently using the power of secrets in your marketing? If not, are you interested in learning how to? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.
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I definitely agree. Leveraging the information you have that others do not should be a core concept for any Internet marketer. I see a lot of re-hashed info products out there; most of which create nothing of value, but when I find something that actually provides some useful insight, I’m sold.