Join Me (And Everybody Else) At BlogWorld
Unless you’ve been under a rock as a blogger, you most likely know about the Blogworld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas. If you haven’t been there before, I highly suggest you go.
This will be my third year at Blogworld. I’m looking forward to going for more reasons than one. Obviously, the networking is the biggest motivator for me. However, since my wife and I just had our second child in February, let’s just say I don’t get out as much as I used to. 
I used to attend more conferences than I have this year, so Blogworld in October is going to be my first trip out of Florida since March. Looking forward to it.
Why You Should Be There, Too
Networking. For me, this is the primary reason I go. Once you’ve met somebody offline, the online relationship is so much stronger because you then have an actual reality with the person.
Sure, first you have to deal with the whole, “Well, this person is kinda different than I was picturing” thing. I’m sure some of you who meet me may think the same. 
But, it is far more REAL. The people I have the most dealings with online are people I met offline. And it just so happens I met many of them at Blogworld.
The content of the event is great as well. Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett will be doing a full-day “Problogger” track (and you know I’ll be there hanging out, too). Brian Clark and Sonia Simone (from Copyblogger) are talking about Remarkable Communication. Yaro Starak tells me he will be flying in (which will be cool because we’ve never met in person). There’s even talk of a milk crate talk by Jordan Cooper.
But also…
I’m Speaking This Year
Last year, I had several people ask me if I was going to be speaking. Last year, that answer was no. Honestly, last year, by the time it even dawned on me that it might be a good idea, the speaker deadline had long since passed. Oops.
This year, however, I will be speaking. I’ll be conducting a panel with my pals Nathan Hangen, Mike Cliff-Jones and Lisa Morosky. Our panel is going to be about treating your blog like a business. And if you know me from my writing here on my blog, you know that that subject is pretty much my motto.
I’m going to give it my usual direct approach and tell it like it is. Nathan, Mike and Lisa are going to crush it with their contributions, then we’re all going to be available for questions.
Last year, way too much of the monetization stuff focused on the same boring crap – ads. The questions from the audience clearly showed they weren’t thinking about their blogs as businesses, yet were trying to make money. Well, come talk to Nathan, Mike, Lisa and myself and we’ll get you on the right footing.
Reader Appreciation Party?
I had an off-the-cuff idea. What about a little evening get-together for me and my readers and customers? I bet I could get some others to come, too.
Knowing me, its going to be pretty informal. Honestly, I’m just too lazy to set up some big organized affair. However, I’d love to just meet up at a bar, share some drinks, and meet as many of you as possible. If you’re a customer of mine, chances are pretty good that drinks will be on me.
If you’re coming, would you be in on that?
The Excuse Killer
For me, Blogworld is the one event of the year that I have to get to, no matter what. I do attend some others, but Blogworld is a must-do. The relationships built at Blogworld go so far online. I can sit here and honestly tell you that I have made THOUSANDS of dollars from attending Blogworld, simply by some of the joint venture arrangements I did since the event. Yes, it is a lot easier to get somebody onto a JV deal after you’ve met and hung out in Vegas together.
So, let me wittle down the typical excuses not to go:
- It is too expensive. In my view, it is more expensive NOT to go. Plus, Vegas hotels can be had pretty cheaply (especially now since the economic downturn has hit the place). Flights to Vegas are usually not bad at all. Perhaps you can use flight miles on your credit card. However, if you only do one event, perhaps you can then afford to do this one. Hanging out with a bunch of bloggers and networking with people who do it all the time will serve as such a kick in the ass that I’m sure you’ll quickly see just how worth it this event is.
- Can’t get off of work. Really? I think you can…. you’re just not giving this any priority. If you want to eventually look at life’s cage from the outside, then you’re going to have to bend the rules a little bit. And that means learning that a J-O-B can be molded to what you need. I’m quite sure you can get off of work for a long weekend. Take Thursday and Friday off work, fly to Vegas late on Wednesday, and head home on Sunday. You’ll be back in the cage by Monday, but this time fresh after some kick-ass networking and excited about what you can pull off online.
- Too far away. Some of my readers are International, and that does surely make it a tougher trip. However, keep in mind that many do make the trip because they see the value in it. Mike CJ is coming over from the Canary Islands. Many people are coming over from Australia and England. You know a lot of Canadians are coming down.
As I said last year, the people at Blogworld are the upper crust of blogging, even if they’re not making money yet or seeing a lot of traffic. Why? Because they had the drive enough to get on a plane and travel to Vegas for something they’re working toward. That’s huge and worthy of respect. And, in my view, if you’re not willing to do something like that for what you want, then you just don’t want it bad enough.
Yeah, I’m blunt. Sorry.
Hope to see you all at BlogWorld Expo.
5 Reasons You Might Fail As A Blogger
Blogging is cool. Obviously, it is a big part of my business. However, it isn’t for everyone.
Not everybody should be a blogger. Some people aren’t a good fit for it. Others just end up doing it for all the wrong reasons.
I compiled what I believe are the big 5 reasons why blogging might not be your thing.
#1 – You’re just in it for the money.
I’m hoping that all of my readers understand this by now, but blogging is sure as hell no easy meal ticket. It is not a fast way to make a buck in any stretch of the imagination.
With a header like this one, you might think I’m going to go down the road of saying “follow your passion”, yada yada. But, I’m not. Instead, I’m going to hit you over the head with the fact that blogging alone for money is a dumb idea.
I feel compelled to remind everyone that blogging is not a business. Blogging is a way to bring attention to a business, but in and of itself, it isn’t a business model. One has to ask the question: What am I selling?
Most bloggers don’t ask this question, so they end up blindly starting a blog because they think that is all people like me do – write. Not true. Writing is actually a minority activity for me. Besides, blog posts aren’t a product. You don’t sell them. They make you no money. Unless, that is, they are written and published with a strategy in mind. That strategy has to be aimed toward answering that question – What do you sell?
So, blogging alone is a SLOW way to make money. Most fail at it, if you must know the truth. The alternative is to develop a real business, backed with something to offer and decent marketing. Then, the blog is just one of many tools in your marketing arsenal.
That’s the difference between being a blogger and being an entrepreneur with a blog.
#2 – You don’t really like people all that much.
To be a blogger, you’ve got to be willing and able to deal with people. This is a people business.
If you don’t really care about other people’s problems or their happiness, don’t engage in blogging. If you feel that interacting in comments or engaging on Twitter is a waste of your time, then don’t blog.
Obviously, you CAN blog regardless, but this is going to affect your success at it. People don’t like to engage in one way flows for too long. They want to know the blogger. Besides, it is open communication with others which is going to put your blog on the map. Even though anybody can blog, the successful blogs have people behind them who are generally willing to talk.
#3 – You expect short term gratification.
Even if you’re doing everything right, it still takes time to build up a successful online empire. These things don’t happen overnight.
If you come from a time-for-money mentality, where you expect a good day’s pay from a good day’s work on your blog, then don’t go into this business. If you cannot shed that mindset, you are destined to be somebody’s employee for the rest of your life and you’ll never be any different. Because an entrepreneur has to understand the concept of time investment. The payoff comes later – IF you make the right moves. There is no guarantee of success anyway. If you are risk averse, just don’t try to start an online business.
When I get emails from people who tell me they need a new income stream in 2 or 3 months and ask me what blogging niche they should go into, I just want to pound my head on the desk. This stuff just doesn’t work that way. With that mentality, go be somebody’s employee. Because you won’t make a good entrepreneur.
Or just blog for fun and don’t worry about the returns.
#4 – You’re blogging just because you see other people do it.
Blogging is not a necessity. There are numerous ways to make money on the Internet without a blog.
There are times when running a blog does nothing but get in the way. For example, building a list is usually the #1 priority of any online entrepreneur. Blogs usually hurt opt-in conversion rates. Squeeze pages perform far better. Now, it is true that a blog can serve to attract new eyeballs which you can then get onto your list (this is what I do). But, it doesn’t mean you HAVE to blog.
It could be that your site will perform much better with just a simple list-building squeeze page and no blog attached to it. Or perhaps you run an offline business and lead generation is your biggest priority. You need a page which is designed solely to get somebody to call you on the phone. A blog might just be a huge distraction.
You have to blog with a STRATEGY in mind, not just because you see other people do it and decide to follow the mob. It is far too easy to assume other people know what they’re doing out there, while the reality is often that they’re grasping at straws like a lot of other people.
#5 – You Don’t Like To Write.
Even though a blog isn’t necessarily a requirement for a business, the truth is that you have to write for it if you do decide to start one. If you’re one who finds writing to be a laborious nightmare, then perhaps you need to find something else to do which is more suitable to your style. Perhaps podcasting or video blogging is more up your alley.
In my view, this comes down to a few things: (1) You have to like writing, (2) You have to be reasonably quick at it, and (3) You need to truly care about what you’re saying. All these things make up good writing.
Much of this comes with practice. However, I have to invite people to rethink their approach when they tell me after many months that it still takes them multiple hours to produce a single blog post. That’s just not a workable formula. Once again, blog posts don’t get you paid, so why dump multiple hours into something with no payoff? If writing is so slow for you that it leaves you no time to engage in the other important aspects of this endeavor (like marketing and product creation), then you need to re-think some things.
My Thoughts on Blogging For Money
I sure hope that nobody reads this post and thinks I’m down on the income potential of blogging. I’m definitely not. I think that this business model is truly equal opportunity. The potential is huge. That said, the only barriers there are come from within.
Not everybody makes a suitable blogger. That’s just the truth of it.
It has to be a match for what you want and how you want to get there. If it isn’t, there are other ways to go. And they have income potential, too.
Remember, Blogging Is A People Business
People make things too complicated.
I see it all the time in the world of blogging. A lot of bloggers out there trying to build up traffic, get recognition and make some money. They read blogs about blogging, which are (hopefully) written by people who have actually done that. Too often, however, I find that they get mired down in minutia.
Perhaps you know the type of minutia I’m referring to. Stuff like:
- “I’m going to keep tinkering with this theme until it is just right.”
- “I’ll launch my blog in 3 months, when I’ve got everything perfect.”
- “What little tid-bits of secret tactics are those successful bloggers doing that I’m not?”
- “I wonder if I have my meta tags right.”
The list goes on.
If one looks at blogging like that, it seems really complicated. It seems impossible to get off the ground.
I’m a big fan of simplicity. It isn’t that I can’t deal with complexity, but it is that I believe that complexity often means we failed somewhere along the line. When things seem really complicated, it means that too many arbitrary things have come onto the scene, which only invites more of it. Pretty soon you have wheel spinning, but little to no results. I think blogging sees this sometimes. There are a bunch of people out there teaching others how to blog. We’re under the gun to keep publishing things, so we find new, creative ways to essentially say the same things. Underlying all of that is actually a simplicity.
A Simplicity
So, let’s iron this down to basics. And that simplicity, I believe, comes in two related facts:
- Blogging is a form of communication between real people.
- Those are real, living, breathing, thinking people. They’re out there interacting. They have needs and wants. Your job is to interact back and serve those needs and wants.
If you’re not comfortable dealing with people, you’re going to have a harder time blogging at any higher level than a personal hobby blog. This is a people business.
At this point, you might be thinking, “OK, Dave, seems right, but how the hell can I use this information?” I’m glad you asked.
Applying That Simplicity
Instead of looking at this blogging thing as a bunch of comments, trackbacks, meta tags and themes, let’s just look at the people. You want to form a solid line of communication with readers. You want them to have a certain mindset when they look at your stuff. So, the purpose of all that you do should be to form that line.
Does screwing with your meta tags help you communicate with people? Likely not at all. It can have a minute effect on your search ranking, but you’ll get more bang for your time by just authoring a guest post and submitting it to another blog. Those are PEOPLE reading that blog. And you can TALK to them. So much more effective than “talking” with Google’s spider.
If we look at the topic of traffic generation, it simplifies if we look at it as people. There are people out there and you want them to check out your blog. So, what would you do in real life? Well, if you walked into a party and didn’t want to stand there and look awkward by yourself, you’d need to go where the existing conversations are and get in on it. That’s what we do at parties and it just makes sense. If you don’t, then you just have no friends – that’s all.
In the world of blogging, this would translate into guest posting (tapping into the existing conversations) and a lot of networking with other people, including other players in your niche. It doesn’t really matter how you do it, just do it. Twitter, Facebook, instant messenger, comments, forums – hell, use snail mail if you want. But, connecting with ACTUAL PEOPLE is your ticket to getting a blog going.
I mean, look at what most new bloggers do and you’ll see why it doesn’t work. They launch the blog and start posting. Then they post again. And again. And again. Check Analytics and see essentially no traffic. So, you keep posting. What?!?! You’re just talking to yourself! You’re the awkward little person in the corner at the party. You’re not connecting with people. You’re just talking in a loop to yourself and hoping people come by. Well, that’s a recipe for failure. You’re not thinking about people.
How I’ve Done It
When I launched this blog, I went into it with authority. I came out swinging with good content and I held nothing back. But, if I had stopped there, it wouldn’t have turned into anything. So, I started connecting with people. I would get into Twitter conversations with others in the blogging niche. I took those conversations into private and offline settings. I did guest posting on blogs like ProBlogger, John Chow and many others. I went to BlogWorld and met a bunch of these guys in person. I quickly went into product creation mode, created Blog Masters Club which then gave me potential fuel for JV relationships with these others bloggers. So, now many of these other bloggers have made a bunch of money off me. And I’ve promoted THEIR stuff.
It all happened because I didn’t just sit here on my Wordpress admin panel and talk to myself. I reached out. I hopped on planes to go meet people.
I connected, then I served. With my audience, I serve. I write stuff all the time and just give it away. And when people buy things from me, they get served even more. And on the JV level, I connected with others in my niche. I promoted their stuff. I interacted. And, as I said, many have made money off me, too. And they like that.
I’ve talked about this kind of thing before, and here is some further reading for you to check out:
So, take a moment and ask. Are you spending more time messing with the minutia rather than connecting with actual people?
Keep your eye on the bigger game.
The Simple Ingredient Which Creates Die-Hard Fans Of Your Blog
As I’ve talked about before, I am in the midst of a re-making over on PCMech.com. I am putting the finishing touches on the new design, and I’m laying the groundwork for a re-making in how we talk about technology. All this is designed to make PCMech an interesting destination in a very crowded niche.
It is an interesting issue, and one that I think many bloggers deal with. PCMech is in a very saturated niche – tech. There are LOTS of tech blogs out there, and all of them are acting like little “me too” reporters. They talk about the same things incessantly. To a degree, that goes with the territory. After all, when you have that many sites talking about the same topics, there’s bound to be lots of overlap.
So, from a strategic perspective, I’m faced with a task of making PCMech relevant again in a niche where it is all too easy to merely blend in.
It comes down to a simple ingredient: EMOTION.
If you’ve read the Six Figure Blogger Blueprint, you see how I talked about the facets of a good market to blog in. I talk about the importance of picking a market with a unifying goal or fear. I’ve talked before about the scale between optimum survival and ultimate succumb, how people are in a constant effort to move away from succumb and more toward survival… and how our jobs, as marketers, is simply to tap into that basic human drive with our blogs and products. Help people LIVE better and you’re off to the races.
When you think about it that way, then certain niches are going to bewilder us. Some niches lend themselves just to news and entertainment, not toward particular goals or fears. These types of niches are usually the hardest to monetize.
So, we look at the tech niche and see it has this problem. It is essentially a NEWS niche. So there are two problems:
- The monetization option, usually, is to rack up a lot of traffic and throw ads all over the place.
- It is much harder to stand out because other tech sites with large editorial teams (like Techcrunch) are always going to be more on top of things than we are. From a pure news standpoint, I’m at an automatic disadvantage. I risk becoming just another “me too” armchair tech reporter. Meh.
The answer is to put GLUE on the blog, and that glue comes in the form of emotion. We need to tap into the emotions of our readers. We need to cater a sense of emotion around what we talk about on the site.
I’ve seen other tech blogs try this, but too often they go toward the negative. They’ll try to incite flame wars between Apple and PC, for instance. Admittedly, it is easy to do and we’ve done it before. However, markets based around complaints don’t form good businesses. It does me no good to get 20 comments bashing Apple. Those people will never buy anything from PCMech. They’ll just act like little fanboys. Instead, we need to cater a positive emotion that suits the type of audience I want.
For PCMech, that emotion is going to be excitement and enthusiasm. I want to foster an audience of enthusiasts for what we can accomplish with technology. I don’t want to pigeon-hole the site into building PCs (which is how it has been). I don’t want to be about tinkering with the insides of our computers because that market is dying. It needs to be about getting things done using technology – ALL technology. And with the “get things done” idea, we are tapping into GOALS of the niche by enabling them using technology. It comes right out of the Blueprint report.
If we see a cool new web app that can help our readers do something, we’ll talk about it. New hardware that does something interesting, we’ll talk about. A cool how-to to show our readers how to do cool things in ways they might not have known, we’ll do it. But, another motherboard being released? Boring! Quite frankly, nobody gives a shit.
By doing this, it makes the site more valuable.
- I will have an audience with an underlying emotional motivation, and that’s POWERFUL because it creates fans and, potentially, customers.
- With the right topics and the right tone in covering it, it now makes PCMech stand out against the typical news sites. Instead of reporting, we’ll aggregate, filter, and make it usable.
It’ll be interesting pulling this off. There are other writers on the site and I have to get them on the same page, too. They aren’t marketers and might not understand why I want things done certain ways. But, we’ll get there.
How can you apply this to YOUR blog?
Emotion is the glue. If your blog doesn’t cater to something with an emotional center to it, the blog is going to have a tough time in today’s internet. How can you adjust your writing to tap into an emotion or generate one?
How I Got a 250% Opt-In Rate Increase With No Work… With Popup Domination
Some of you may have noticed that I silently launched a new lightbox opt-in form on this blog late on Friday afternoon. I’ve already had emails asking me how I did it. The design is really professional and it also resulted in about a 250% increase in opt-ins from what I was getting using Aweber’s lightbox form. And the best thing is…. I didn’t have to design it myself or hire anybody to do it.
How cool is that?
I did it using a brand new Wordpress plug-in called Popup Domination, being released by my far-flung blogging buddy from England, Michael Dunlop.
Using Popup Domination
You install it just like any other Wordpress plug-in. You then visit the configuration screens under the Settings menu in Wordpress.
First thing you will do is select your design. The plug-in now includes 4 different styles of templates. Here are a couple of them:
With each of the 4 styles, you have 8 different color options for the button and 14 different color themes. Then, you set up your opt-in form HTML. The plug-in works with Aweber, iContact, GetResponse and Mailchimp right out of the box, however it will actually work with ANY provider because you can map your own form fields to the plug-in quite easily.
From there, you simply copy/paste your default opt-in form HTML as given to you by your provider. Nice and easy. I recommend you set up a separate opt-in form for tracking purposes – this way you can easily compare the performance of this form to your prior ones. (You’ll see a great result, trust me. )
Next, you’ll define the text and image to use inside your lightbox form. Here you can see the current setup for mine:
Set up your bullet point text and define your schedule. You can specify how quickly to show your opt-in to new arrivals, and how often to repeat. I’m currently testing mine with a 3 second-delay and a 7-day repeat. However, you can easily alter these (and I likely will be). Even if you don’t want it to repeat ever again, just define your repeat interval to some super long delay, like 999 days.
Now, if you’re a techie-type and want to modify some things, they’ve got that taken care of, too. From inside the plug-in, you can click on “Advanced” and get direct access to the CSS and PHP files. You can actually modify the plug-in itself if you so choose.
My Take On This
If you read Dunlop’s blog, you know that he recently launched a total redesign of IncomeDiary. One of the things he did was change the way he collected email addresses. Now, he has some things going on on-site, but this lightbox is definitely a big part of his strategy and he has been getting great results from it.
Even me… it has been on my to-do list for a little while now to beautify my lightbox opt-in. I was using Aweber’s built-in forms for awhile, but you can only customize so much with their setup. Some of the nice effects (like wrap-around borders, etc) just cannot be done using Aweber’s current lightbox forms. Which leaves me to either hire somebody to do it or attempt it myself.
For a little while, I even tried a customized opt-in form which was triggered when a person scrolled to the bottom of one of my posts. I thought it was pretty slick and I saw my friend, Erica Douglass, trying it. So, I contacted the person who did it for her and paid him to do it here. While the design and functionality was nice, it actually resulted in about a 0.5% DROP in conversion rate as compared to Aweber’s lightbox. So, I ended up reverting back to the lightbox.
As of this writing, I’ve only been running Popup Domination for a couple days, but it is resulting (so far) in about a 250% INCREASE in opt-ins as compared to the Aweber lightbox. Mind you, this is without even trying. I literally put my old copy into this form and installed it in a matter of minutes. I haven’t spent ANY time yet trying to fine-tune the copy or do much of anything new. So, just the design itself is getting me a 250% increase, with no additional work at all.
There are a couple things that I asked Michael to add to Popup Domination and he tells me he’s doing it. One is the ability to split-test multiple lightbox forms. That will be an AWESOME feature. Second is that the Aweber tracking image is being stripped out of the form HTML, meaning I cannot tell how many times the form loaded from inside of Aweber. He is fixing that, and as of the time I’m writing this post, I believe he is waiting for me to test his fix. So, I expect that issue won’t be the for long.
Let me Show You – In Video
I Absolutely Recommend This To You
It isn’t very often I see a Wordpress plug-in with the word “popup” in it and feel compelled to recommend it to anybody. But, I do highly recommend this plug-in to you if you want to build a list (and you should be).
Lightboxes work and they work like crazy. WELL-DESIGNED opt-in forms work even better, as this plug-in will prove to you. Here is why I think you should get this plug-in:
- Paying somebody to design forms like this will cost you FAR, FAR more than this plug-in. Trust me, I know.
- These forms are built with both aesthetics and PERFORMANCE in mind. They work, they don’t just look pretty.
- These forms are much better than any of the email list services can provide built-in. This is the kind of thing you would normally have to pay a person to customize for you.
- As I’ve covered a million times now, email list building is the #1 activity of your blog. Without a list, you have very little.
- Sitting there and hoping somebody notices your boring little opt-in form in your blog’s sidebar isn’t going to cut it. They WILL notice this form.
As of this post being written, this plug-in is only $37. It is an absolute, no-brainer, total steal at that price. So, get on over there and grab it. BTW, as you watch his video, you’re going to see somebody you recognize.
The Power Of Minimalism And How You Can Apply It
Have you ever felt really confused? Not sure what to do next? Overwhelmed? Things taking too long?
Of course you have. Me, too. We all have.
Today, I want to talk a little bit about my view on this, and how it ties into minimalism, and what it has to do with a well known internet marketer, John Reese. I’m about to get rather philosophical on you, but I hope you’ll see how this stuff affects everything, including how effective we are as bloggers.
Your Mind As Energy
OK, I’m about to get a bit deep on you. Bear with me.
I personally believe that we are all a composite of spirit, mind and body. Our body is not us, but just a physical manifestation. A vehicle so people can, you know, recognize us and stuff. Convenient in many ways. Our mind is a computational tool, consisting mostly of pictures and concepts. And then there is us – actual spiritual energy. We are, in actuality, separate from mind and body. This is my view.
Now, energy can be free flowing, it can be held in suspense, and it can be dispersed. Free flowing energy would be like a free flowing river. It is on the move. If that energy were held in suspense, it would be disturbed but stationary. For example, if you point two hoses at each other in opposite directions, the point where the water streams meet would be a stationary energy. Now, when energy is dispersing, it is shooting off in other directions. For example, you throw a rock into a pond and the water around it disperses quickly.
Being that we are energy, we manifest these three characteristics of energy. When flowing, things are moving for us. When held in suspense, we feel the need to slow down or we feel stuck and we tend to try to make others around us do the same. When dispersed, we “just need to get out of here” or your mind is going a billion directions at once.
Our energy is affected by outside energy if we let it. If you’re in a room with a lot of dispersed people, you tend to begin feeling dispersed. The world around us consists of a lot of energy of various forms. Even matter (or “stuff”) is simply energy held in suspense.
But, let’s think about that. Matter is energy held in suspense. Not free flowing. And we’re constantly surrounding ourselves with it. And the more and more of it you have around, you can feel rather dispersed or rigid, right? So, it seems to me that there might be a correlation between how much stuff we have around and how free flowing we can be.
Now, I’m certainly not advocating getting rid of all your stuff. I’m not saying to disown the world and go sit on a mountain somewhere, because I think that is exactly the wrong way to go. Life isn’t about sitting still. It is about flowing.
But, it starts to make you think about your own space and what you have in it. And are these things affecting your mind and energy? Are you able to flow when you have so much rigid and dispersed energy around you?
I know I just got all “weird” on you, but I believe that this is the foundation of why people endorse minimalism. And while I think some people go a little too far with it, I think there is definite ligitimacy to the idea.
John Reese Gets Rid Of His Stuff – All Of It
I am on John’s mailing list. I’m also a customer of his. So, I’ve known this was coming. But, yesterday, he sent out an email essentially saying he had sold all of his stuff and he intended to practice minimalism in earnest. His goal was pretty much exactly what I spelled out above, but in different words. By getting rid of all that stuff and just traveling, he’d be more “free flowing” and be able to come up with some killer ideas for his business.
You can read John’s email over on John Chow’s blog, where it was published as a guest post.
Everything John owns now fits into a backpack. He isn’t getting rid of his money or his investments – just his stuff.
This is such a far cry from the John of just a couple years ago. When I first met John Reese, it was at Izeafest in Orlando, FL. He drove to the bar in a Lamborghini. Parked it right out in front (surely a mix of protecting the car as well as the show-off factor). The dude was into stuff – I could tell.
John is a big believer in reducing distraction. He deleted his Twitter and Facebook accounts, for instance, because they were distracting and gave next to nothing useful to his life.
Coming Back To Reality
Not everybody can (nor would want to) do what John Reese did. For one, John isn’t married and has no children. Once you have kids, you can’t really do something like that (at least not as drastically).
I am married. I have 2 kids. I have a house, a mortgage, 2 cars in the garage, 2 animals, and – yes – my collection of stuff. I own several computers. My computer has 4 monitors attached to it. My office is rather cluttered. When I go out into the rest of the house, I have to step over the kids’ toys.
How is somebody like me supposed to practice minimalism? Or somebody like you?
The benefits are there, but doing it Reese-style just isn’t practical for most of us.
I think the answer is by doing it on a lighter level. In other words, minimizing things, but not going to an extreme. Some ways we can do that:
#1 – Get rid of excess stuff in our workspace.
I don’t know about you, but when I look around my office, there is a lot of unconfronted crap in it. I’ve got a bunch of internet marketing courses sitting around, for instance. They consist of a huge pile of DVDs that I’ll probably never watch again. I have a pile of magazines on my desk hutch. My drawers have stuff I’ll never use. Oh, and don’t get me started on my closet! The closet has become the wasteland of “shit I’ll use someday maybe”.
I think the clutter of our surrounding space is very much a reflection of what’s going on inside our heads. Remember, it is all about the energy and the outside world affects the inside world. If our spaces are cluttered, so are our minds. Clean the space and you allow the mental energy to free flow again.
There’s a REASON you do a “spring cleaning” and feel mentally clearer when you’re done. And, with that in mind, I think taking the time to clean out our space will do SO MUCH for our mental clarity.
Keep in mind that hiding the stuff from view isn’t the same as getting rid of it. Real freedom will come from getting rid of it. Where you draw the line is up to you.
#2 – Complete or Trash All Undone Things
Once again, looking around your office or home, you probably have things sitting around because you need to do something with them.
The pile of magazines you intend to read, the notes you intend to think about, the bills you need to file, the books you need to read. The list goes on and on. And on. Every little thing like this is a piece of mental energy held static.
So, what you need to do is get rid of it. Whatever action you assigned to that thing, either do it or decide you don’t need to do it. You’ll probably find that a lot of those little “someday” tasks don’t need to be done. They’ll add nothing to your life and if you never do it at all, it won’t affect a thing. So, why worry about it? Why hang on to the thing which represents that task? Just trash it.
#3 – Brain Dump
This isn’t so much about tending toward minimalism as much as it is about mental clarity. Because the thoughts we keep in our heads, held there, become a bit like matter. When you try to keep a thought in your head and remember, you’re holding that energy stationary. And remember, we want flow.
So, get it out of your head. If you’ve been hanging onto some ideas or to-do items, get them out of your head. Put them on paper, into Evernote – whatever works for you. And as time goes on, get into the habit of moving these things out of your head and into another form. I’m personally a big fan of Evernote for this kind of thing.
#4 – Re-Evaluate
Sometimes, you just need to sit down and re-evaluate some of your basic assumptions. Most of the rules we abide by in life are not actual rules, but ideas we created for ourselves, follow rather blindly and forgot we’re the ones who came up with it in the first place.
Life and the world around us is EXTREMELY moldable when you realize that it responds to us, and not us to it. Regardless of what some losers teach, about how we are just animals who need to adapt to our environment (bah!), the truth is that we very much build our own cages in life.
So, sometimes, you just need to question some of your basic assumptions. Do you think it was easy for John Reese to sell his house? I mean, the dude now has no home! That goes right against what many of us would see as a basic fact of life – the fact that you need a place to live. But, do you? It is just an assumption that we’ve all agreed with.
So, learn to write your own rules. Do you HAVE to check your email every day? I doubt it, yet most of us religiously do it out of perceived necessity. As bloggers, do you HAVE to be active on Twitter and Facebook? I doubt it, but most assume you need to be. Do you have to pick up the phone when it rings? No. Do you have to blog every day even when you have nothing to say? No. Do you have to read other blogs as much as you do? Probably not.
Re-evaluate your actions and possessions. You’re the boss and you make the rules.
Action Steps
Lots of stuff adds time to our lives. Time to deal with it, maintain it, think about it. It holds energy, and being that we all consist of energy, it begins to hold us.
I think there is a definite truth in the idea of minimalism. How people take it from there and interpret it for themselves is up to them. John Reese did it his way and I look forward to hearing more from him on how its going. For most of us, going that drastic just isn’t in the cards. If I sold all my stuff, my wife would be pretty pissed.
I encourage you to practice the 4 points above and see how it impacts your life and your mental clarity.
For me, I’m going to be reducing stuff in my office. These internet marketing courses are going to be digitized and then thrown away or given away. The magazines are going in the trash can. Anything that sits in my office as an incomplete action is going to be trashed. I might end up with some empty storage space.
What about you?
Is Wordpress Getting Hostile With Developers?
We love Wordpress. And, yes, we love the fact that it is free.
Wordpress is also GPL. Thesis (the popular premium theme) is not GPL. Matt Mullenweg thinks it should be. The argument is that, because Thesis is a “derivative work” from Wordpress, it is required to also use the GPL. There is a counter-argument, too, which says GPL doesn’t apply.
But, the debate got louder today and now there is even talk of Mullenweg suing over the issue.
Here’s my take…
Oh, GPL. Oh, How Confusing You Can Be.
Simply put, the Wordpress platform and community benefits from a community of developers creating add-ons, whether they be free or commercial. The community benefits from having that option. I believe that trying to shame or force a developer to give their work away for free is not only wrong, but will harm Wordpress.
There are a number of premium plug-ins that are quite good. I’ve also paid for Wordpress themes. I am not a customer of Thesis, but I recognize why so many want to use it. Same goes for Headway. Do we actually want to use a platform where that kind of innovation is met with scorn by people who think everything should be free?
Or is “free” even the issue? I gotta say, it is rather confusing. Is it because Thesis contains some encrypted code? Plus, there is the whole debate about whether a theme is even a derivative work. A theme doesn’t modify anything with Wordpress – it simply makes function calls that Wordpress put there specifically for themes. If a theme developer extends the capability, using their OWN code, does the whole thing come under GPL just because he may have used these function calls?
Perhaps, ultimately, the GPL itself needs some sort of clarification. That whole “derivative works” clause seems to lead itself to problems. I don’t want to get into the arcane details of open source licensing, but GPL is, in my view, too restrictive. The “copyleft” restrictions are just too much. This is the very reason that PHP itself changed its license away from GPL starting with version 4. Otherwise, development on the PHP platform would be stifled because everything developed with PHP would be subject to these same issues. A BSD-style license just makes so much more sense.
I applaud people who develop on the GPL license. The Internet would be a very different (and worse) place without them. However, this whole idea of using it to force their will on others – that bothers me.
Getting Hostile With Developers?
Here’s what I see, though. I see a guy who put a lot of work into a product (Thesis) and decided he wanted to charge people to use it. To me, that seems like his right. Nobody has to get it if they don’t want to. Wordpress provides plenty of hooks for such things. Thesis uses them to meet a strong demand in the marketplace.
And I see Mullenweg (at least judging from his Twitter account) essentially being a passive-aggressive snob, retweeting other people’s attacks on Thesis. What I see is Mullenweg trying to use a mob mentality to shame Chris Pearson into making Thesis GPL. This is not the way a professional acts, IMO.
Mullenweg is making Wordpress development look like a pretty bad bet right now. And if this mentality goes so far as to stifle development of commercial add-ons for Wordpress, that will be the beginning of the end of the “major platform” status of Wordpress. Mark my words.
For people who will claim the GPL promotes freedom of choice, I think trying to shove the GPL down somebody’s throat is about everything BUT choice.
I love Wordpress because of its flexibility. I LOVE the fact that there are so many plug-ins and themes available for it. I LOVE the fact that I have options to BUY more premium-level add-ons if I so choose. THAT’S choice.
I want to love Wordpress for years to come. Please don’t screw it up.
If you’d like to chime in, I’d love to hear from you. The open source license scene is anything but easy to interpret.
UPDATE:
Not that I’m following this whole thing closely, but I happened upon another post written today by Jane (she works for Automattic) who gives another viewpoint on this, plus some backstory. Worth a read, for sure. I’ve never met Chris Pearson nor Matt Mullenweg. I can only judge what I saw Matt doing on Twitter today, and I thought it was pretty messed up. But, it usually takes two to tango, and apparently Chris is doing the jig, too, at times.
One thing is for sure, this debate comes down to a philosophy difference. Very fundamental. I’m not sure anything except a court case will truly resolve it. That said, I won’t hold my breath on that actually happening. But, if you’re at all thinking about doing non-GPL stuff on Wordpress, realize Matt might gang up on you.
One thing seems clear: Wordpress isn’t all that inviting to develop for anymore. I learned something about Wordpress today, and as of today, I no longer look at the product the same way. Still a fan, but it smells.
Make Money Blogging: Income Breakdown for June 2010
Well, I figured I’d share another internal look at my own income streams for last month. What we’re looking at here is June 2010.
The breakdown here is pretty much showing a business which is coasting. I haven’t had any major new releases, and most of my work has been behind the scenes. It also goes to show which areas need some attention on my part.
Here is the breakdown:
The biggest segment for June was banner advertising running over on PCMech. That said, it was only 27% of total revenue. Once again, this shows my overall emphasis on internal products and not ads.
Blog Masters Club just went through it’s last renewal with existing members, so that stream will dry up next month. Of course, that also means I’m going to be relaunching soon. I’ve got a big mindmap for the launch itself, as well as some changes to the actual product. So, it is going to be pretty exciting and, even if you end up passing it over and not enrolling, I’m sure you’ll get a lot of value from the prelaunch.
Things always vary month-to-month, and some months see big spikes in some areas and others don’t. June was a pretty “normal” month. No launches. No big promotions.
This month, I’m going to be “relaunching” PCMech.com and am very likely going to run some type of promotional campaign over there. I’m also going to begin prepping for the Blog Masters relaunch (as I mentioned). I’m also going to be promoting 3DayMoney a bit more (forewarning ). And I’ve got other mini-products in the mental pipeline.
July is shaping up to be a bit of a transitional month. PCMech is “in flux” right now, with some Google algorithm changes affecting traffic in a negative way. Hence, ad revenue will be less in July. I’m not overly concerned about it because I’m actively working on PCMech right now, and the membership program is going to be getting a lot more attention (and that’s what I want, because I don’t like ads anyway).
So, stay tuned.
Filing For Bankruptcy (From Email)
Yep. I changed my email address. The one I’ve had for over a decade now. And it feels good. Damn good.
So, the questions here are: why and how?
I mean, is it worth it? Because, after all, it is a lot of work making the change, and it is sure to inconvenience a lot of people I’ve had past contact with. So, let’s cover it.
Why Declare Email Bankruptcy
It is really simple. Spam. Lots of spam. On the order of thousands per DAY.
Now, I have been using Gmail for some time, so my POP3 account would just get checked by Gmail. The Gmail filters did a heroic job of filtering out all the usual spam.
However, it goes further than this. My email address has been spread all over the place to the point where I get emails from people I don’t even know or never heard of. I had hordes of people who got my email on a personal basis then felt it was OK to add me to a mailing list (what a douche thing to do, BTW).
Another thing – I had poor delineation between emails. Personal and business all went into the same box. It ended up being a huge catch-all address.
Why might YOU want to consider this? Well, are you in the same situation? Have you had the same email for many years? Do you get tons of email from people you don’t even know and lists you never signed up for? Is it getting to a point where it is starting to suck up too much valuable time?
Then, it might be time to declare bankruptcy – from email.
How To Declare Email Bankruptcy
I’ll just tell you how I did it. I’m sure there a lot of different ways to go about it.
For me, it revolves around using Gmail. I have a Gmail account that I have a lot of history with, yet hardly anybody emails me directly there. Like I said, I have been using Gmail to download emails from my on-domain POP3 accounts, and when I reply back it doesn’t use my Gmail account.
Gmail, though, is FANTASTIC at organization. The filters are amazing. The spam detection and forwarding is stellar. I don’t care what people say about Yahoo/Hotmail – Gmail wipes the floor with them. Period. If you deal with a lot of email, Gmail is tops.
Here are some tips that will really help you when doing this:
- Use a support desk. For both pcmech.com and davidrisley.com, I use support desk software and the lovely Lisa fields everything that goes there. She only forwards on matters which specifically need my attention, and she deals with the rest.
- Use sub-email addresses for better organization. With Gmail, you can make one account look like different accounts using the plus sign. For example, if your Gmail account were joeblow@gmail.com, you can get emails at joeblow+yada@gmail.com and you’ll still get them. Then, you can use labels and filters to organize different incoming emails. So, you can do this for your different social media accounts, or even different blogger/marketer email lists you might subscribe to. Separate them out into labels. Another thing…. if you start getting weird emails at these sub-addresses, you know who just sold your email. Shame on them, but you can filter it out easily.
- Use labels and filters. Some might not realize the power of these features. I have a number of different types of emails which I don’t really need to read right away. So, I set up a filter to auto-archive them into a label, thereby hiding them from my inbox.
- Use a different incoming email address for your mailing list. Your mass emails require a reply email address. Well, use something OTHER than your main email address. This gives you better future control over that source of email, because some of your subscribers may end up sharing your email or adding you to THEIR list without asking. Plus, there’s the bounces to deal with. It is important that replies to your mass emails actually go somewhere, though. You don’t want your subscribers talking to a wall (that’s rude).
- Use a different incoming email address for friends/family. Once again, this allows you to filter them differently. In my case, I use the “multiple inboxes” feature, along with filter/label, to ensure that emails from my family get listed separately from my business emails – even though it all goes to the same Gmail account.
- Control your accounts. We all sign up for a lot of accounts (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, etc). Well, have these services send emails to sub-addresses for better filtering. Next, turn off all the notifications you don’t need. For example, why get notified when somebody follows you on Twitter? It is pointless. I have turned off everything but just the essentials.
- Set up an auto-reply on your old email address. After doing a bunch of account changes and “change of address” notifications, you have to figure out what to do with your old spam-fest email account. Set up an auto-reply message which gets sent to anybody who emails it. In that message, direct them to the proper places. In my case, I do not include my new email address in the auto-reply because I figure spammers will just scan the email out and redirect their crap. So, I have links to my support desks, a contact form, and my social media. That’s it. If somebody wants to contact me, they can. Spammers? They hit the brick wall. From there, all emails get dumped.
I’m expecting this move to cut down on my junk email immensely. And thus save time and ensure that people I want to get emails from can get through.
Can you do this for yourself?
Some people are afraid to do it. Almost as if you’re going to piss off the world by changing your email address. Keep this in mind:
- You are not a slave to your email account.
- You have no obligation to communicate to people you don’t want messages from.
- You have no obligation to be contactable by just anybody. You have the right to control your own incoming messages.
So, if its bad, change it. If it is a huge drain on your time, change it. The world will adjust. And the spammers – screw ‘em.
7 Proven Tactics To Get More Blog Comments [That Actually Work]
You write that fantastic blog post. You spend a lot of time on it. You stare at it in all it’s glory. You think, “Damn! That’s a hot post!”. So, you publish it. Sit back and wait for the limelight and praise of your audience. But…
Crickets. Deafening silence.
Quiet enough where you also just want to make your next blog post one single word: “WTF!”.
The Real Scoop on Comments
In my recent informal survey about your frustrations, one of the big ones had to do with a lack of commentary on your blog posts.
Now, before I begin talking to you about some ways to get more comments, let me remind you of something…
Very often, it isn’t your fault at all. In fact, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with your blog.
It is VERY common in other niches to not get much blog commentary. In our little bubble of “blogging about blogging”, we usually see more comments. If that’s all you look at, it is natural to feel pretty down because you don’t get as many comments.
Bloggers just happen to comment on other blogs a lot. Regular readers (who don’t blog) are USED to the one-way flow of the Internet. To them, it just feels weird to post a comment.
Case in point: My own tech site, PCMech. That site gets a lot of daily traffic, yet you’ll notice that the posts don’t get nearly as much commentary as this blog. The big difference is that the audience over there are not bloggers and are used to simply reading and moving on, whereas you guys are MUCH more likely to comment because you’re bloggers. Those guys are more into things like forums.
That isn’t to say that one of my goals there isn’t to increase comments. It is. That said, it is also VERY likely that PCMech will never get the came comment ratio as this blog. The audiences are very different.
So, don’t be down on yourself, guys! Is traffic increasing on your site? Are people spending time on your site and reading what you have to say? That’s a much more important measurement than your number of comments.
Yeah, But I Still Want Comments!
I don’t blame you. After all, blogging without any feedback is like talking to a wall.
So, here are some ways to get blog comments that I have found work…
1. Ask For Them. – Pretty simple. At the end of your blog posts, ask people to comment. Better yet, ask them a direct question related to your post, and ask them to answer it. Give them a REASON to comment. Give them some direction. Because if you leave it to them to come up with something to say, they probably won’t bother.
2. Use Question Posts. – Case in point, my question about frustrations posted a couple days ago. The post was short and sweet and had only one purpose – to ask you a question. I also backed it up with a quick email to my mailing list to drive people into that post. The key here is being brief. Don’t wander all over the place in a question post. Just lay the groundwork, ask the question, then shut up and let them answer it. When you email your list about it, don’t tell them the question directly. Incite them to click into your blog to discover what it is.
3. Don’t Lecture Them All The Time. In other words, straight-up instructional posts don’t always warrant a comment. What can they say, “Thanks”? Well, most people won’t bother with that (especially in non-blogger niches). Try posting opinion pieces some times and ask your audience if they agree or disagree. Provoke them.
4. Interact. When you are building up your blog, it is important that you try to reply to every comment. This way, people feel like they’re getting recognized and noticed for their input on your blog. As time goes on, your community will begin to interact with each other. It will still be important that you interact in your comments, but perhaps not to EVERY one. There is a balancing act involved here as the blog grows, but in those early days you should make acknowledgement of your blog comments a priority.
5. Use email notifications. When your blog is sending out emails for new comments (especially replies to comments), this brings people back to see what the reply was. This, in turn, sparks actual conversation. If you are using Wordpress’s internal comment system, then Subscribe to Comments is a pretty popular way to go. Personally, I use Disqus for my comments and like the fact that those emails are now outsourced. Sending emails from your own server can sometimes prove a bad idea.
6. Make it easy and obvious. Another reason I like Disqus is that, once you have a profile, you can comment on any blog which uses Disqus without entering any information. It just knows who I am. Whatever you can do to grease the line and make it super-easy to post, it will help. Also, you can test out different visual ways to draw people in to post a comment. For example, most blogs have the form for posting a comment way down at the bottom. Try putting it at the top. You could even couple it with a call to action and an arrow which points right to the comment form. This will make it much easier and more obvious, rather than hoping they know to scroll down the page to find your comment form. You can also test different colors on the comment form to draw the eyes in. Different submit buttons for the comment, perhaps different background colors on the form fields, etc.
7. Draw out the conversation. This is a bit of a mix of other things I’ve mentioned, but the idea is to continue the conversation between blog posts. In other words, instead of each blog post being a self-contained island, you can make the blog a constant stream of on-going conversation. One way to do that is to make your next post a direct reaction to your own commenters. You could even highlight one of your commenters in a blog post and make a post out of it. In other words, make your blog’s content part of the conversation itself, rather than a top/down approach where the comments are merely a reaction.
Ending The Silence
Keeping in mind what I said before (that most niches don’t see as much commentary), realize that there ARE things you can to do draw out more comments. Just see the 7 points above.
But, realize it is a process and one which builds inertia over time. Don’t get frustrated when you try one of the 7 points above and don’t immediately see an influx of comments. These things have to take time. Commenters are, by nature, the people who are more mentally dedicated to your blog. These are people typically with a stronger bond to what you’re doing. If you’re just starting out, it takes time to develop that (along with some creativity).
Lastly, just keep in mind that this is very much an issue of mindset – THEIR mindset. So, you need to figure out what’s going on in THEIR head and use that to motivate them to post a comment. Just because you think a post is worth a comment doesn’t mean they do. They might be bored. Plus, not everybody understands blog comments. Perhaps, if they are more old-school, they understand forums, but not blogs. Perhaps using a forum rather than comments might be worth a shot.
Many people surf blogs like hypnotized, ADD-riddled addicts. Their eyes are darting around and they don’t fully focus on anything. Your job, as much as possible, is to have your blog reach out and wake them up. This will take a combination of quality content, personality, creativity, and blog design which points them at the things you want them to notice.
Time For You To Chime In. Yes, You.
So, what do you think? You think you can use some of these tips?
And, have you experienced this problem on your own blog? Judging from the frustrations I’ve seen with many of you, this is a pretty common issue. What have you tried to combat the silence? Has it worked?
NOTE: Notice how I’ve got a call to action here, with questions. And it is based on a conversation I started with my last post? Also, note the added emphasis by saying, “Yes, you.”. Used correctly, that’s a little pattern interrupt that is designed to wake a person up from their boredom just a bit. Did it work?
I'm David Risley. I've been making my living as a blogger for over a decade. Blogging is my business and how I support my family. With this blog, I'm just gettin' REAL and telling you how this business works. 
