1091 – Keep followers under your control: Tom talks Dangerous Digital Sharecropping

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Main Idea
Relying heavily on social media platforms to build your business is risky because you do not control them.
Instead, entrepreneurs should focus on building assets they own, such as email lists, websites, and membership communities.
________________________________________
Key Concepts
1. What “Digital Sharecropping” Means
Tom compares social media to historical sharecropping in the U.S.:
• Sharecroppers worked land owned by someone else.
• They provided the labor but the landowner controlled everything.
• Landowners could manipulate accounts or force them into debt.
Social media works the same way:
• Platforms provide tools and audience access.
• You provide the content and labor.
• The platform keeps most of the value (ad revenue, attention).
• They can change algorithms, shadowban, or delete accounts anytime.
________________________________________
2. The Risks of Social Media Dependence
Problems with relying only on social media:
• Algorithms can hide your content (shadow banning)
• Accounts can be suspended or deleted
• Platforms can decline or disappear (example: MySpace)
• Viral views often don’t translate into income
• You have no ownership of the audience
Even large view counts may generate little to no real revenue.
________________________________________
3. The Safer Strategy
Instead of relying on platforms, focus on owned assets:
Best assets to build:
• Email list
• Membership sites
• Your own website
• Private communities
These assets are under your control and cannot be taken away by a platform.
________________________________________
4. How to Use Social Media Correctly
Social media should be used mainly to:
1. Attract attention
2. Move people off the platform
For example, guide followers to:
• Email signups
• Your website
• Courses
• Memberships
Your goal should always be conversion to owned channels.
________________________________________
5. Where the Real Money Comes From
According to Tom and many experienced marketers:
Email marketing generates the majority of online income.
He claims the only people who dispute this are those selling social media training.
________________________________________
Bottom Line
• Social media is useful but dangerous if it’s your only platform.
• Build assets you control, especially an email list.
• Use social media mainly to drive people into your own ecosystem.
________________________________________
✅ Simple takeaway:
Don’t build your business on rented land. Build it on property you own.

===

Episode 1091 – Dangerous Digital Sharecropping
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.
[00:00:24] Hey everyone! It's Tom here with episode 1091 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today I'm going to talk about how dangerous digital sharecropping. Wow. What is that? You'll find out in a minute. Hope you didn't miss episode 1090 that was on evergreen content. That stuff that you create that'll pay off for you for years and years and years. So that's what evergreen content is. Don't forget to download a copy of my automation e-book. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Version 3.0 is the latest, and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org, certified to operate by SCHEV. Okay, let's see here. Uh oh. I forgot to tell you, anytime you want to get to a back episode like evergreen content, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. Evergreen content was 1090 and today is 1091.
[00:01:22] All right. Now upcoming. Today you can start registering for the AI Catalyst Summit coming up next week. But registration opens up today. Registration is free. However, I highly recommend because this is a topic you need to immerse yourself in. You don't have to get real techie about it. In fact, my session at the summit is called AI Hacks simplified because I'm no techie either, but I use these simple hacks with AI that you can absolutely Immediately implement with no technical knowledge whatsoever, but you'll get way better out of ChatGPT and all the other stuff I'll be showing you. You know, cool graphics that I created and you know, for like some of them as low as $0.03, that would cost me hundreds of dollars to have made on the open market. So go over and register at screwthecommute.com/aisummit.
[00:02:29] All right. So why did I title this episode Dangerous Digital Sharecropping? Well, the reason it's dangerous because you are at someone else's mercy for all the things and all the work you put in. So I want to go back a little bit and do a a definition of what sharecropping was in the US prior to the 1940s. So after the Civil War, the American South, the landowners, would get tenants to use the land and make a deal with them that they'd get 50%. I mean, pretty much that was a standard 50% of the crops. And the landlord could provide the tools and the seeds and housing for the people that are working the fields. So the sharecropper provides the labor. That sounds like a fair deal, right? Until you look a little deeper. Until the the deal is that the sharecroppers had to buy their necessities, usually since they had no money on credit, uh, like food and clothes and stuff like that from the landlords store. And they had to sell their crops through the landlord's store. Once they harvested, but the landlords were notorious for cheating on the sales figures to keep people in debt forever. This was after slavery was abolished. It was a way for the landowners to to maintain a cheap and highly dependent workforce.
[00:04:18] So that's what sharecropping is. So the title of this is dangerous digital sharecropping, because all social media sites are like the sharecroppers of old. They provide all the tools for you and you do all the work, right. And at any time they can pull the plug on your deal, just like the landowners of old, if you get too deep in debt and you there's no way to to get out of it and you're sick and you you can't really work the fields, they'll just throw you out. All right. So your social media is like this. They're giving you all these tools, and your labor is bringing in likes and follows and friends and and creating a UGC which is user generated content, which the more people you bring in than the longer they stay on. This is the whole thing with social media is to sell ads. So the longer you can keep people on there and the more people you bring in, they can sell more ads and make more money. That's the bottom line in all of this. But the problem with it is, is if they don't like what you say or there's a bias in the whole operation which has been shown over and over again with, uh, with many of the social media, uh, they could shadowban you. So instead of being overtly accused of being biased, you just kind of disappear off the face of the earth.
[00:06:00] But it's not like they banned you and threw you off. It's just they set the algorithm to put you so far down, you'd need a fire truck ladder to climb out of the hole they put you in. Say, or they could just fool ban you for any reason that they want to. Or they could go under, like, you know, a lot of the ones today, you can't imagine them going under. Although TikTok almost did right in the United States. And I was, you know, a lot of you weren't around to remember Myspace, which was the end all be all of social media stuff. Right? It was it might still be there. Who knows? Nobody's ever gone back to look for 100 years. Right. So that's why this is so dangerous. You put all this work in to put all these people and get all these views and stuff, and I got six, 700,000 views on videos and not one penny I can track to coming in from it. That's another thing. That's why it's dangerous. You put all this work in and you feel like you're a big shot. You get patted on the back, but you're not making any money. Okay, that's the that's the problem with this stuff. But again, all of it, no matter how much work you put into it, you can disappear overnight. And that is too risky for me. So what's the safest route? And and I gotta admit to you, I don't look that great on social media, but I've made a fortune because I used it.
[00:07:28] And, well, even before it was around, I built an email list and I built things that were under my control. And so once social media came around, I could see what was going on. I'd been around since the beginning. I'd see how these companies treat us. And so I didn't kill myself to get lots of followers and likes. I mean, I was well known at the time, and so I automatically got some. But my whole job was to get him the heck off of there, onto an email list or a membership site or some website that I control, say. Where they couldn't disappear from me. And I mean, literally all social media could disappear from the face of the earth right this moment. And I could still make a fortune online because of email and memberships and things like that. See? So that's why I call it dangerous. So I know you get a kick out of having viral views big, you know, big numbers and lots of people. But, you know, I've never had anything super big. I mean, six, 700,000 views on one thing. That's about the biggest I've ever had. But I'll put my bank account up against any of those people that that, uh, you know, typically have millions and millions of views now, not all of them. Some of them break through and make big deals with sponsorship and stuff.
[00:08:57] So more power to them. I'm just saying that's the, uh, that's the exception, not the rule. If you definitely want to be make money, you got to get people on your stuff and under your control. And it's okay if you put part of your time into this other stuff. But I'm begging you, think about all the times when you do something on your social media, how you get them off of there now, they won't reward you for doing that. All right? But the thing is, your reward comes because you can't, you know, it's like an insurance policy. They can't do anything to your email list, but they can wipe out all your followers, you know, just by snapping their fingers. All right. So they don't even have to snap with both fingers. All right. They can just boom, you're gone. All right. So I don't want you to be in that thing. So. So the bottom line here is spend the bulk of your time getting them off of social media into an email list or a membership site, or on your website or somewhere where you can collect these people into a community or something like that, where you have the control and then you can play around with the social media all you want. But the money, I gotta tell you, everybody at my level and above they're big money comes from email. I don't the only people that dispute this are the ones selling social media training.
[00:10:23] Okay, so there you go. All right. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Hey, sign up for the AI summit. Just signing up. You get my podcast, my $500 podcasting masterclass just for signing up. And then the first session is, uh, I have at least 75 AI hacks in about an hour that I lay on you, plus a downloadable, uh, thing that you'll get. That's all my notes with all the prompts that I use and all the advanced prompts and all the cool things. Plus, there's a bonus section on how to optimize your website so that AI sees it. And who cares about Google anymore. We want AI to to to site your website, so that's all. If you just sign up for free at Screwthecommute.com/aisummit and then consider buying the Premium Pass if you do it when as soon as you sign up, it's only 67 bucks. And then I think it goes to 97 if you wait till after you sign up. But for this AI topic, I think it'd be a great investment because my session alone you'll want to repeat over and over because there's so many, so many tips I give you and hacks and then all the other speakers are going to do it too. So there you go. Screwthecommute.com/aisummit and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.