Tuesday 14 October 2014

Potential cash earnings for hucksters, liars and highwaymen.

photo credit: David Mitchell (25%) Time-Life (the rest)


I wonder just how much cash is to be made by writing lies. I guess that depends on the size of your prospective audience.

Take Mike Bara for example. He's been hawking tickets now for a couple of weeks or so for a MUFON gathering in California in early November. Tickets are going at $10, or if you prefer it's a $10 "donation" at the door. It's a three hour job and it would appear that Bara is the only speaker.

So how much would Bara get for this sort of thing. - A percentage of the house takings ? Or would he demand a fixed fee. Let's play with numbers. Bara has written four and a half really shitty books, filled with errors, typos, mis-captions and generally a plethora of other embarrassing boo-boos. He's also appeared on a couple of utterly atrocious TV shows and on woo radio at odd times of the night.

Not exactly a Richard Dolan in the popularity stakes, but he would perhaps pull in a maximum of two hundred people. At $10 per "donation" that's $2000. For an afternoons work. Not too shabby, but then there are the costs of hiring the room and all the other guff that goes with woo conferences. So perhaps Bara might trouser about three or four hundred dollars. Still not too shabby for showing up with blurry photographs and lying like a bastard for three hours.

I doubt Mike gets a gig like this every month, but let's suppose he did. At the upper end ballpark that's about $5k per year in woo-fees. Add to this his book sales. Unfortunately we have no idea what Mike would get for these since we have no way of knowing how many books are sold annually. I doubt it's very many. Especially since there are places to visit on the web that show just how much of a scoundrel this highwayman is. Call it $25,000 a year. Add his woo-fees and that's $30,000 a year. I wonder what else Mike gets up to if that's all he's pulling in ? - After all he does have a massive ego, porn starlets to impress and a 2007 5 series Beamer to maintain.

As for Hoagland. No idea. He writes no books, gets no more woo-conference invites, is never on TV and rarely gets to appear on woo-radio. Perhaps Robin is subsidising poor old Hoagland with her Gulf oil remedy for fifty bucks a pop.

I doubt Bara or Hoagland are in the same earnings league as Richard Dolan or David Wilcock and certainly not in the same league as the bullshitter extraordinaire Dr Steven Greer. Small fish in a pond full of small fish and a few biggies.

Mike will say I am a loser who is  jealous of his success. The type of simple argument that one would expect from him. I'm just happy to be a Father and Grandfather and to have had a successful career as a real engineer. I am pretty sure my children would have disowned me if I lied like a bastard for a living and wrote books full of embarrassing high school physics mistakes.

Just as well Mike is so "successful" he doesn't have a partner and has no children to humiliate.

Way to go Mikey.

6 comments:

  1. The below was posted by Dee.

    Dee has left a new comment on your post "Potential cash earnings for hucksters, liars and h...":

    Two hundred people? Always giving so much credit to the opposition that binaryspellbook bloke.

    "The Red Barn is an indoor facility with a capacity of 90. (11) Tables and (90) chairs are available. Grizzly group picnic area has a seating capacity of 80, one 3’ x 9’ barbeque pit and two serving tables. Water and electricity (7 outlets) are available. "

    The rental is $139.00 but I wonder how many Inflatable Bouncer(s) ($25 fee) will be available (this was on the actual reservation form). Anyway, it really looks like a barn! http://reservations.slocountyparks.com/assets/images/SiteImages/gallery_large/1139_78064.jpg

    Personally I don't think these sessions are much of an income. My guess would be 50 people x 10 = $500 (perhaps they expect only 20 to cover the cost?) Perhaps a dozen books or video's could be sold so the author could get his fee of max $300 and perhaps $100-$200 merchandise? Altogether a gig of $500 at best which is in the end not that different from the estimate in the blog above, despite the different scale of the event. He probably would get closer to $250 on a rainy night. Some petrol, eating, quick stop at the slots and all gone!

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    1. I'd really love to know how much Bara would get paid for something like Ancient Aliens on Mars 2. Is it possible to make a decent living writing gobshite ? - I guess it must be because there is an awful lot of it out there. Perhaps it depends on how prolific you are. Bara can churn out rubbish with the best of them so maybe he does not to bad. I have no idea.

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    2. Thanks B. Not sure why it didn't go through, I did see it there, then it was gone. Perhaps the dollar signs and URL made it spam looking? But to answer your question, my feeling is that the full exchange in these cases is also about perceived status (notoriety?) not available to them in any other way. That can be seductive! And in case they would believe their own stories, there's the added mystery, like playing 007! A life like that with a small income could be still attractive I guess. Not sure about securities though. With RCH I've always suspected some big private donors supplying enough for a pension plan. Most of his appearances and books would then serve mainly as hook for true believers with big money to donate and not as "income". You only need a very few over the many years! It's something I with others started to suspect in the late 90's after witnessing the dynamics on the old forums and radio shows. But impossible to prove although lots of circumstantial clues on where the real focus lied.

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    3. I've seen Hoagland being accused of being a paid dis-info agent in the past but never paid any attention to it. I couldn't imagine anyone accepting money to publicly make an arsehole of themselves. Then I realised that when money is involved people are capable of behaving quite despicably. Hoagland is no exception. Hoagland loves money. He's also not too shy to beg for it. So can I imagine Hoagland being "sponsored" by some sad and lonely yet wealthy Coast to Coast AM listener ? - I certainly can. He has no morals whatsoever

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    4. I do remember having around Y2K some exchanges with retirees from Florida who absolutely LOVED Hoagland. One time some elderly woman actually thought I was Hoagland for a while so I got an "insight" that way until I confessed (and I cured her from being believer but really, they are wowed so easily and crave the attention). So I noticed these supporters loved the possibility of "direct" link or influence (starting with the fax, email was difficult for many of them), the excitement of the story and the whole "mission". Then I started to think all the changes in topics and focus of Hoagland was often just a form of catering to the most generous supporters "du jour". Follow the money, not the data? The world of private "senior" donors is weird, rocky and generally insane (and very interested in the New Whack ideas). One good reason to prefer the conference circuit (and cruises) instead of the book circus?

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  2. Dee,

    I think Hoagland is lazy. Really lazy. He is not prepared to do the hard yards like Bara regarding writing (albeit shitty) books. So you may have something there. He can be charming, occasionally funny and as we all know can speak rather well in public. Fleecing rich old widows would certainly not be outwith his mode of operation.

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