I want you to imagine that you have taken leave of all your senses, and for some unknown reason, you have decided you want to travel to my previous home-town of Rawtenstall, Lancashire, over in not so sunny England. And you have no idea how to get there from Manchester International Airport.

So you flick through your address book, and realise that you only really know 3 people from Rawtenstall… Actor William Roche (Ken Barlow from Coronation Street), actress Jane Horrocks (from the film ‘Little Voice’ or Bubble from ‘Absolutely Fabulous’), and music producer Pete Waterman (from Stock, Aitken & Waterman renown, responsible for Kylie Minogue and dare I say, Rick-rolling Astley (He owns and plays with a couple of the steam engines there))…

How come you know so many celebrities by the way?

Oh, and then there was me who once used to live there too.

Well William isn’t returning your calls (unfortunately he died), Jane is away doing another pantomime season in ‘Welsh Wales now isny? Wasny? Betws-y-Coed’ (or Rhyl), and Pete? Well, I assume he’s busy playing Fat Controller with all his precious trains.

So as a last resort you decide to contact little old me for directions.

Now despite me being a little bit miffed at being your fourth choice behind all them other ‘C List’ celebrities, you nevertheless catch me in a charitable mood, and so I send you step by step instructions on how to get there: M56, M60, M62. M66 and 3 minutes down the A640.

I then think no more about it until the day of your journey when I get an irate phone call from you…

“What the hell have you done to me?

Have you any idea where I’ve ended up?

Burnley… bloody scum of the earth, Burnley!

It’s even worse than Rawtenstall!!”

So, I’m now sat at home scratching my head, amazed to receive your call – not because you say Burnley is worse than Rawtenstall (it is), but because you got lost. I mean, I know my directions were spot on. Google them.

“I don’t understand,” I say, “you should have arrived in Rawtenstall without any problems. Did you follow the directions exactly?”

“Of course I did,” you say somewhat irritated, before adding a little sheepishly, “for some of the way…

You directed me along the motorway. I don’t like driving on motorways, so I went down the A56 which looked like it runs alongside it. And it did for a while, but then it veered off. It took me an hour to get back on track.

Anyway, I got back on your route eventually, and I came to a roundabout. You said take the third exit (did I?), but I didn’t like the look of that at all. It went straight through a scruffy industrial estate. I’d have got my car filthy.

So anyway, I took the second exit which looked to be going in roughly the same direction, but went through some nice countryside instead. I don’t know what happened after that, but the next thing I saw was a ‘Welcome to Burnley’ sign. It’s the last time I ask you for directions!”

Well, I’ll come back to Burnley in a moment, but

I’d like to give you another little scenario first…

I want you to now imagine something almost as strange as the desire to visit Rawtenstall. I’d like you to imagine that you are having a second childhood moment, and have decided that you’d like to make an Airfix model of an old Lancaster Bomber (God, how old am I?).

So anyway, you go into your local model shop, mumble under your breath something about it being a present for your nephew, and take home a box of assorted plastic bits and pieces, some glue, model paints, transfers and some pretty complex instruction manuals.

The shop keeper rings it all up, watches you leave with your latest project and thinks no more about it until he opens his doors the following Saturday morning only to be attacked by you – all red faced and angry, while brandishing something quite indistinguishable in your hand.

“Look at this!” you scream, shaking the object so close to the shopkeeper’s face that he can’t quite make out what it is.

“This is supposed to be a Lancaster Bomber. It looks more like something spawned from a brief liaison between a wheelie bin, a lawnmower, and a Dalek! I can’t believe you sold me this piece of crap.”

“I don’t understand”, says the shopkeeper, after removing what was supposed to be the Lancaster’s wing from his left nostril. “It’s not meant to look like that. Did you not follow the instructions?”

“Of course I followed the instructions”, you reply. “Well, sort of…

I mean you can’t follow them word for word, can you? The big bits looked easy to put together so I did them first. I know the instructions said you had to do some small fiddly bits first, but I wanted to get going with the damned thing.

Anyway, when I’d done the big bits, I was going to do the little bits but I couldn’t get them to fit in – and you needed to have them in place to finish the model. I couldn’t get the tail to go on at all.

It’s the last time I’ll buy a model from you!”

And this is where the puzzle lies…

Why is it that ClickASnap can promote the exact same website to two different people, and one writes back to say that it is literally the best thing since sliced bread, and yet the other writes it’s a steaming pile of doggy doo, and the owners should be locked up for even producing it?

Same product… two completely different reactions.

Could the divergent experience people have with ClickASnap directly correlate with the propensity of the members to follow the freely given instructions it comes with?

In other words (just like the villain in the two stories about getting to Rawtenstall, and building a model) the people who failed, were ultimately unsuccessful because they simply didn’t follow the given instructions properly.

I mean look at it this way…

If you ever had to cross a minefield, it would make perfect sense to follow the instructions of someone who had already done it, walking exactly the same steps, wouldn’t it?

Taking a different route, simply because it looked quicker, or easier, or by-passed some nasty looking mud and the odd cow pat or two, wouldn’t really be a sensible option, would it? You would have absolutely no idea whether your deviation from the pre-prescribed route would result in total disaster or not.

In a minefield, the gap between total success and total destruction may be little more than a hairs breadth, and the corner cutting uninitiated, have no way of knowing where the make-or-break borders are.

So yes, the difference between success and failure on ClickASnap, is all in the application of the given instructions that come along with it, but I can’t really prove it. That’s up to you.

You see, when you either first set up your profile, or post an image, or create a storefront, or products, the number of things you need to do – and the order in which they need to be done – necessitates a relatively complex recording process that closely resembles the given instructions. Yet asking someone to recount the processes they’ve gone through isn’t normally very productive…

They either can’t remember because they went off track somewhere – or they simply don’t want to confess their deviations in remembering!

So now, here’s the whole process involved in becoming a ClickASnap user, which is one of child-like simplicity and it goes like this…

1. If you want us (your audience) to invest our time and energy in you, take a little time to create a full and meaningful profile. Purely because people like to know who they are interacting with. And if you can’t be bothered then why should we be?
2. When posting images, take a little time to tell us about that image. Try and create a little interest in your audience. Or, if you show us you’re not interested, then why should we be?
3. When creating a storefront, take a little time to build a proper presence, it helps build a trust between you and your customers. Else, where there’s no trust, there won’t be any customers. 

And in a nutshell, that’s really all there is to it! There’s absolutely nothing further to do on your part. No decisions to be made, no further actions to be taken, no excessive thinking to be done. Nothing of the sort!!

It has all already been done for you… Just follow and complete all of the given prompts as per the relevant pages.

Just follow the instructions freely provided by the guys who already know the equivalent of the road to Rawtenstall, the right way to build a Lancaster Bomber, and the safest way through a minefield.

If you wish to make any kind of money through the ClickASnap site, this is far from a menu from which you can choose the ‘dishes’ which seem the most palatable. You have to swallow the whole damned meal…

You see given a free choice, as children, we’ll almost always choose the ice cream over the spinach. And even as adults, when we better know what’s good for us. The lure of the palatable, easy to swallow part of the meal still remains an incredibly strong one…

And so it is with ClickASnap, but only if it’s used exactly as it’s served.

You have to swallow the whole meal. Miss something out and you could very well find yourself follower deficient or with a bad case of financial indigestion.

So knuckle down, eat your bloody greens and follow the damned instructions. And you’ll quickly find out that they’re not only good for you; they’re essential for your success on the ClickASnap site.

Contributed by https://www.clickasnap.com/profile/Localadsnaps