Monster Energy Drink (aka Camel Piss – thanks RT – lol) decided in their infinite corporate wisdom to squash a small family run micro-brewery for daring to produce a big time beer and naming it Vermonster Beer.  On September 14, 2009 Rock Art Brewery received a cease and desist order from attorneys representing Hansen Natural Corp the owner of Camel Pis … I mean Monster Energy Drink.  It appears that Hanson/Camel/Monster want to expand into the alcoholic beverage industry and wants the name Vermonster for themselves … and for free no less.

I doubt that Monster Energy Drink lawyers really thought through this plan when they sent out their cease and desist order.  When you are a multi-billion dollar corporation, you get the idea that you are invincible - it becomes really hard to see the risk involved in taking on a puny little brewery.  The Monster lawyers look like a bunch of IM noobs!  lol.  I doubt that they ever envisioned an online revolution against their product seeing how different the products actually are.  I mean Vermonster is made with a pile of hops, lots of alcohol and just a touch of Vermont, while Monster Energy Drink is made of 100% monster monkey ass.  Other than they are both liquids, they have nothing in common!

I became aware of this story first from Griz on his Make Money Online blog but the original IM marketer that broke this story was Allyn Hane, vblogger extraordinaire at Blogger Illustrated.  The power of the internet and internet marketers in particular is increasing.  The idea that single bloggers located all around the world could come together and take on a multi-billion dollar corporation was unknown even 10 years ago.  It will be interesting to see where this takes us and we will watch this story as it develops.

Other Bloggers Talking about this story:

Monster Energy Drink vs Vermonster Beer – Griz

F You Monster Energy Drink – May You Go Bank-Fing-Rupt – Allyn

Monster Energy Drink Side Effects

Monster Energy Drink Sucks the Life Out of Small Business

ROCK ART BREWERY vs Corporate America – The Biggest Scam of All! – Liz

Monster Energy Drink – Corporate America Gone Bad

When is a Monster a Bully?

Monster Energy Drink Attacks Vermont Beer

Poll: Monster Energy vs Vermonster Beer

Others have jumped into the fray, throwing in a few gratuitous kicks and punches.   One of the better posts was by SEO Ignitor.  His take on the whole sorted affair is titled Make Money Online Reading Forums and is a really funny read on how many people get sucked into reading forums thinking that they are going to make money by doing so.

For that matter, even great forums like the one at TKA have their share of readers for money – willing to read every word that is posted there, commenting often, but unable to demonstrate that they are able to make money online themselves.

I’m no psychologist, but I suspect that these people do self-defeating things like this because they are afraid of failure.  What if…  What happens when… What am I going to do?!?  That sort of inner dialog is really dangerous and hurts any chance you have of making money online.  I don’t know who said this (and I’m to lazy to Google it), but someone once said ‘better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all’ or something like that.  The best way to conquer this fear is to just do something … anything (except read forums) to break out of this behaviour pattern.  Pick a simple strategy and run with it for a while.  Make 100 Hubs – that’s what I did and now those Hubs bring in several hundred dollars a month.  Do anything you can to silence the little voices  in your head.  Just do it!

Speaking about a new scheme that Darren over at Problogger.com was working on, Griz said,

Mike – I can’t wait to see what the price jumps up too – just how much can a noob be milked for anyway. Of course the forum might end up being free…

And that is what gave me the idea for the name.

Noobs, like so many moths to a light, are attracted to the idea of easy money. No matter how badly they get burned, they keep coming back for more and there is always someone out there ready to baffle them with B.S. while relieving them of their wallets.  Noobs are easy prey for bloggers and marketers offering them the promise of riches in exchange for a few dollars (but the price is going up soon, so you better buy today!)  Noobs, because they are beginners, and because they are blinded by carrot of easy money, will give up almost anything to get what they think will be the answer to all their problems.  They jump from blogger to blogger, from scheme to scheme, each time shelling out their hard earned money 0r worse yet, loading up their credit cards.  I’ve purchased a few of those ebooks in my time … I still have most of them in a file on my hard drive.  They were read once, and then, like the socks given by great aunt so-and-so to a 4 year old for Christmas, were discarded for the next bright bauble.  I still can’t believe I bought some of that crap!  Bugs me actually.

I’m hoping here to comment on some of the stuff I see people doing that is crazy – as well, point out the IM stuff that works … or, at least, is working for me.

My very 1st piece of advice is to not buy another thing until you’ve read Griz’s blog from start to finish.  I guarantee that if you put in the time to read it, what you will learn will serve you better than any crummy ebook being touted by some A-list blogger.  Read it with a notebook beside you, marking down what you find interesting AND where to find it again.  I still refer back to the notes I took during my 1st reading.

That should keep you busy for a while!