Advice
What The Entire World Can Learn From Internet Business People
One of the absolute best things about working with people in the field of Internet business is that we, as a group, are success-minded people. There are some things I notice when I follow or meet in person with people in Internet business:
- They enjoy life.
- They don’t sit there and watch the news very much.
- They don’t have a defeatist attitude about life.
- They’re not worried (too much) about the economy. And, trust me, it isn’t because we’re all loaded. It is because we understand, perhaps more than most, just how much our own personal wealth is in OUR hands. Read my post about why the nine to five job isn’t really that secure.
- We’re not waiting for the government to bail us out.
I could go on. And I’m certainly not saying that only people in internet business have this mindset, or that all people in this business do. I’m simply making an observation among my own circle. Click Here To Continue Reading »
Buying Internet Marketing Products – Don’t Make These Mistakes
I am an evangelist for this fact: The TRUE professional blogger needs to know how to market things – and do so – in order to make money.
As I’ve said before, it is one thing to write quality blog posts and hit the Publish button. That is the core of blogging, of course. But, you’re simply not going to make very much money at that. MARKETING is the key. You have to not only know how to market your own blog so as to get traffic to it, but you need to know how to market products in order to turn that blog into a full time income.
Good marketing requires real knowledge. You’ve got to learn that knowledge somewhere. As you’ll quickly find, there are TONS of people out there selling information about internet marketing and making money on the Internet. All claiming to be “gurus”, but few really are.
The market of “making money online” has huge price ranges, ranging from the $27 e-book to $2997 full information and coaching products. Stompernet charges a whopping $800/month as a membership program if I’m not mistaken. I am personally involved in a $97/month membership program.
So, it is easy to throw tons of money around in this space in an effort to learn how to do it. How do you know you really need what they’re offering you? Click Here To Continue Reading »
Bloggers: It’s Important To Be Yourself
I had an interesting conversation with my wife a few days ago. She is starting up a new blog, but she wanted to maintain her anonymity. She wasn’t going to hide her name, but she didn’t want to be herself. She wanted to put forth an image that wasn’t really her.
It got me thinking about this one thing that I believe wholeheartedly:
People follow and do business with PEOPLE, not businesses.
In other words, people want to deal with real people, not a big corporation or something that is fake or artificial.
And taken back to the idea of blogging, people are more likely to want to follow you if (a) they’re interested in what you’re saying and (b) they LIKE you.
That means you gotta be a real person. You want to show personality. You want to let people into your daily life – at least somewhat. You want people to know who you really are. Because it is that person – you – who your readers are going to develop a compassion for.
A lot of people have the instinct of clamming up. They don’t want to share details of their lives. They want to remain super private. They want to hide. If that’s you, fine! But don’t try to be a big-time blogger.
You will see on this site that I do post things about my life. Not everything I do is focused around blogging. I have a family. We do things offline. I bring my Flickr pictures into this website. I participate in Twitter. I even do videos of things that I do while offline. These things let you guys – my readers – into my personal life so you can get to know who I am. I have control over how far things go. There are things you’ll never see me put on the Internet. But, I’m not hiding and I don’t have a problem with people getting to know me like that.
You’ll find that when you, as a blogger, let your personality hang out there that you will get more readers. People can sense whether you’re real or not. And, in the same way that reality TV attracts the audience, your life can also attract an audience. Not in a stalker way, but in a way that people come to admire you and they may identify with you. Sure, you may piss somebody off sometimes for being a little too real for their tastes, but whatever. You probably cannot grow your blog without pissing off somebody.
My wife is a beautiful person and she has literally no reason to want to clam up and be super private about her personality or her life. Obviously, like me, there are things she probably wouldn’t share (and for the sake of my reputation, that’s probably best 
), but I hope that she’ll get over that initial fear about strangers knowing her better and open up.
And you do the same if you want to develop a reader base on the Internet.
The Single Biggest Mistake in an Economic Downturn Is…
Slowing down your marketing.
Period. End of story.
It is a mystery to me why some companies (often the ones who find themselves eventually dying away) will react to a downturn by cutting marketing expenses. Cutting expenses is a super smart thing to do, but you should NOT cut back on your marketing.
Simply put, when the statistics go down, or when you enter a downturn, the thing you should do is INCREASE marketing. Throw some gas on it, man!
Whether that marketing has to cost you anything is dependent on your market. In an Internet business, you can market your brains out online without paying a dime. Strategic use of social media, for example, can work wonders. It builds relationships with your potential clients. Best of all, you can use these sites for free. If you do need to put some money into it, a performance based system like Adwords will probably work a lot better than some other forms of marketing online.
But, you don’t cut back! You increase it. That is the key.
Remember, in any downturn, no matter how bad it gets, the money will continue to flow. It isn’t as if everything shuts down. People will be spending money, they’ll just be doing so smartly. So, offer a lot of value for a reasonable price, and market the hell out of it.
And when everything comes riding back up again, you’ll be the one on top of the food chain.
Screw You, Domain Renewal Group
Anybody who is in this business owns one or more domain names. In many cases our WHOIS records for our domains contain our contact info, including address. This allows companies like the Domain Renewal Group to fetch my information (or your’s) and send you a “renewal notice” for your domain.
The above is a scanned image I recently got for one of my domains. I have gotten MANY such notices from this company. Here is my problem with this:
- They purposely make it look like a bill. This is no doubt designed to get people to accidentally change their domain name to these guys from its current registrar. A lot of people (rather naively) pay bills quickly without truly looking it over. And I bet these guys have gotten a lot of new “customers” because the person thought it was a bill.
- Even seeing through the above, their pricing is ridiculously high. I can renew my domain far cheaper at GoDaddy. When you visit the company’s website, you see that $30/year will get you basic hosting, too. This is not clear on this promotion.
I find this kind of promotion deceiving. It is designed to hopefully fool people into changing their domain to these guys. As a guy who is trying to help others get into this business, people who may not be totally up to speed on how these things work, I hate to see companies like this seemingly trying to take advantage of them.
BTW, according to this blog post, this company also goes by the name of Domain Registry of America and Liberty Names of America. That’s probably correct because I’ve gotten mail pieces from these names as well.
Use a reputable domain registrar guys. I personally recommend GoDaddy.
Ignore The Stock Market – Seriously
It is no mystery to anybody that the economy is going through some turbulent times right now. As I type this post, the headline over on Drudge Report reads “Friday Fear” (see right). On top: “Recession alarm rings around the world”.
This pisses me off to no end.
Pure alarmist bullshit.
Deep down, you already know this, but I think everybody needs a reminder. That fact is: The media’s business is to scare the CRAP out of you. They live and breath based on ratings. The 24 hour news networks pay their bills based on people staying glued to the television sets. Matt Drudge makes more money in advertising the more people visit the Drudge Report. The best way to do that is scare the living crap out of them and make them feel as if they need to stay on top of the situation.
The media are merchants of chaos. They SELL it. And they do it because they know that people will stick to it like glue. The criteria that make up any good news story is:
- It causes fear
- It manufactures controversy
- It serves an agenda
Now, tell me this: If you had a person around you who (1) always spread bad news, (2) lied to you consistently, and (3) tried to create arguments – would you even give that asshole the time of day? No, there is a higher chance you’d buckle down and open a can of whoop-ass. Or, at the very least, write them off as a fruitcake.
Let’s Look Around Here
Ignore the mainstream news. Ignore the Drudge Report and other similar sites. Let’s just, for a moment, concentrate on real life. Has it really changed all that much as of now?
Most likely no.
Speaking for myself, my business has not been impacted at all. In fact, due to some marketing things I’m doing, my business is doing just fine – if not better. When I go to a restaurant, there are still plenty of people there. When I go to the mall, the parking lots are full.
So, where the hell is all this doom and gloom?
It’s on TV! And to the extent it reaches into your own personal life, that’s the extent to which you allow the people on the TV to influence your mindset.
Ignore It All
I know it is hard to ignore the news and to ignore the stock market. Humans are practically hard-wired to stay glued to bad news.
But, just try to step outside of it and realize that, by doing that, you are nothing but a pawn in their marketing game. I’m not saying this economic “crisis” is manufactured by the press. Clearly, it isn’t. But, the press does play a role in affecting perception, and that brings on what people predict.
It is a self-fulfilling prophecy when the news says we’re in a recession, people listen, people react, AND BRING ON THE RECESSION BY THEIR OWN ACTIONS.
So, ignore it. Concentrate on your own success. Be looking at ways to expand your knowledge and your income streams. On this blog, I’m talking about just that. Around here, I’m interested in success, not the doom and gloom that others will promote. If I’m going to make money, I’d rather do it by empowering people, not the other way around.
How To Handle Complainers In Your Blog Audience
My philosophy is that, with any audience, you will have a small percentage who like to complain. As your blog audience grows, it may seem as if the amount of unhappy people has increased. Over on PCMech, I sure get them. A few examples come to mind:
- The person who actually bothers to email me a nastygram because, God forbid, a typo got through without being caught.
- The person who gets offended at the use of a seemingly minor word (such as the word “crap” – seriously, it just happened to me this morning).
- The person who proceeds to rip you apart for daring to try to make any money with your blog.
It happens. What I keep in mind when I get these things is:
- This is part of having a popular blog.
- These people don’t know me and are simply venting.
- I can take these complaints as an opportunity to improve my site.
When I get a nastygram about a typo, my first instinct is to blast them for being petty. But, irregardless of whether they are being petty or not, it was still a typo and that should be taken as a reminder to pay more attention to your spelling and grammar before you hit the “Publish” button. Typically what I do in these instances is fix the typo and delete the email. Sometimes I may reply with a simple “thank you” message, but I always stop short of blasting the person for being petty (even though I feel that way 
). In most cases, whether I reply or not depends on whether the person was being polite or being very rude. I usually don’t bother with the rude ones.
When I get a person who just doesn’t like my content or proceeds to bash me around for my views, I usually take note of the email and delete it. Some bloggers feel the need to reply to every email. I don’t. While I make all effort to produce quality content, I also produce a lot of content for free and I do this full time. At the end of the day, if a person wants to chew me out given all that I put into this, they can go read another blog. Worrying about that single reader just isn’t worth my time.
If they threaten to unsubscribe, let them. No blog is for everybody. Ultimately, you need to do what YOU want to do. It is YOUR site. Some will dig it – others won’t. Stay true to yourself and your audience will fall in place.
So, my guidelines for handling complainers would be:
- If you get a negative comment, by all means let it through. I would never censor or delete a negative blog comment. You can use those comments as an opportunity to clarify yourself, to answer a question, or to provoke another follow-up post. On PCMech, the only time I delete a blog comment is if it contains blatant swearing.
- If you get a negative email, make note of it and make a judgement call on whether it deserves a reply. You may feel it is necessary to reply to every email in order to be accessible to your audience. But, keep in mind that you have the right to be choosy. You don’t OWE anybody an email reply. If you do wish to respond, then consider taking the email and your response public. but, typing a thorough response for one person who is hell-bent on being an ass isn’t really a good use of your time.
At the end of the day, all bloggers are going to eventually piss somebody off. The trick is to use the complaint as a means to improve your blogging and not let it get to your head. Responding in kind usually means you’re only taking the low-road.
10 Tips For Attending Tech Conferences
There are a LOT of tech conferences out there, some of which I attend. Here are some tips for you if you’re attending any:
- DO IT. Seriously, if you can afford the money and time to travel to attend a tech conference I recommend you do so. Of course, this is assuming you’re in a line of business which could benefit from attendance.
- Bring lots of business cards. And a related tip, put info on your biz card that is relevant in today’s world. For example, I’m a pro blogger. Another blogger couldn’t give less of a shit about my snail mail address. What would they rather know? My Twitter ID.
- Schmooze. At least half the benefit of a tech conference takes place outside the conference schedule. Even if you’re not exactly Mr. or Mrs. social, put your discomfort aside and go talk to strangers.
- Check the weather before you go. This thing called the Internet is really handy for checking the weather forecast before flying to your destination. If its going to be cold, bring a jacket.
- Shop around for a room. Realize you’re not going to spend very much time in your room (most likely) so think before spending $300 per night on it. In Seattle, I stayed downtown for about half the nightly cost as the more well known hotels which were only about 2 blocks away. My room was perfectly fine. Just because you make enough money doesn’t mean you should be stupid with it.
- Monitor the back channels. There is a lot of value in following Twitter, FriendFeed and other similar back channel communications during a conference. I found immense value in Twitter while I was attending Gnomedex, from getting people’s opinions to something as simple as trying to find a restaurant which was hidden underneath Pikes Market. Obviously, it helps having a mobile device that can access these things.
- Check up with Meetup.com and Upcoming.org to see if there are any side meetups taking place around the event. Many times, other attendees will get together in separately organized meetups. This is also another reason to monitor the back channels.
- Drink a lot of water. Its good for your health all around.
- Put stuff on your laptop you might need, assuming that you won’t have decent wifi. Many times, the wifi net access at a tech event sucks. It isn’t always because of the network, but it could be because of the building or even the fact that so many geeks are trying to use the same pipe. If you come prepared to not have good wifi at the event, you’ll be better off. Then, if the wifi is good, all the better for you.
- Bring the digital camera. People dig pictures. Upload them to your favorite photo sharing site and tag them for the event you just attended.
Mac Users: The Absolute Best Friendfeed App Is…
Like a lot of people, I dig FriendFeed. I find that it is much easier to have conversations on FriendFeed. And those conversations are based around the actual content we all produce on the Internet. Frickin’ awesome.
The FriendFeed API, of course, allows for the creation of applications that will allow you to monitor FriendFeed from your desktop. One of them is Twhirl. Twhirl is awesome for Twitter. But, for FriendFeed? No. And it is because of FriendFeed’s structure.
FriendFeed has structured conversation grouped around pieces of content. Whenever somebody likes or comments on one of the threads, the entire thread bumps to the top of the interface. This is good for community, but when you’re working with a slender little desktop app like Twhirl, it makes it really hard to participate without a LOT of scrolling. Twhirl makes FriendFeed seem noisier than it needs to be.
The best FriendFeed app is…the FriendFeed website itself. Their interface is clean and easy to use. It is also snappy and it reloads automatically using javascript so you don’t have to refresh it manually.
But, what if you won’t want to use your web browser? Well, take a look at FluidApp for the Mac. FluidApp will take any website and turn it into an application. So, make your own FriendFeed client!
It will even use the website’s Favicon and turn it into the application icon show you can dock it (see above). When you generate the application, you get a tidy little APP file. Just stick it in your Applications folder and run it.
Unfortunately for Windows people, FluidApp is only for the Mac. Hey, there’s a reason I bought one. Besides, you can see from my image above that I’m running VMWare Fusion, too, which has Windows XP running. So, I can use the best of both OSes.
Mac is cool like that.
Tip For Better Blog Writing
Sometimes I find that I get my best work done at a coffee shop. In my case, I hit Panera Bread for the free coffee refills and the free wifi.
Sure, I’ve got a nice home office. I’ve got the big Mac Pro in the office with three nice monitors attached. I’ve got the super fast internet connection at home. I’ve got the LCD television should I want it.
Working from home, though, has its pros and cons. I love that I don’t have to drive so much. Gas prices obviously suck right now. I love that I can see my little girl during the day off and on. But, sometimes focus suffers at home. Even when I’m concentrating, I feel as if I have that extra umph when I grab the MacBook Pro and head out of the office to work.
So, my hot tip to other bloggers for today? From time to time, grab your laptop and head down to your local coffee shop (as long as they have wifi, of course). Dedicate some time to pumping out several good blog posts at once and you can queue them up in your blog for later. This form of batch processing along with the change of environment will probably help you get more done.
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. 
