Twitter On Your Business Card – Duh!
As might be expected, I picked up a lot of business cards from folks at BlogWorld Expo. When I get these cards, the idea is that I can check these people out after the show is over and see if they might be of any interest to me.
Nothing personal, but many times I end up with a card for somebody I barely remember.
So, as a person designing your business card, put yourself into my shoes. I don’t really remember you. And all you’ve given me is some phone numbers, a snail mail address, your name, your email.
Well, I’m not going to call you if I don’t even know who you are. Likewise, I’m not going to email you unless I have something to say.
So, it is your job to build the relationship. Let me form a little line between you and I which doesn’t have a commitment to it and doesn’t put me in the awkward spot of asking “I know I’m emailing you but who are you again?”
In other words, PUT TWITTER ON YOUR DAMN BUSINESS CARD!
How can you show up to a blogging conference without this stuff?
Even worse, some of the people I’ve got cards from are “PR professionals” (or so they say). Yet, they’re not using Twitter? What gives?
Some people did put AIM or Skype on their business card, but that is pure interruption. Am I going to chat you up just to ask you who you are again? That’s a douche maneuver.
Twitter isn’t a toy, guys. It is a powerful tool for relationship marketing. It is important. If you don’t have Twitter on your business card, throw it away and make a new one.
Without Twitter, you’re just future trash can liner. With Twitter, I’ll be able to get exposed to your tweets for the next year. And guess what? Next time we meet, I’ll recognize you and I might even approach YOU and say hi.
Here, if you need some help, check out some of the things that went through my mind when I did my latest biz card. Check out these 5 tips for your business card.
Blog + Membership Site = More Than Beer Money
There were two sessions at BlogWorld which really stood out to me as the most useful. One of them had to do with membership sites.
Now, listen to me very carefully when I say this…
Membership sites are THE BEST way to make money as a blogger.
Period. End of story. Thanks for playing.
A membership site combined with a nice blog is practically a magic pill for income. That isn’t marketing hype. It is real.
But, you’ve got to do it RIGHT.
In the above-mentioned session, the guy talked about how he built a site up from zero to over $100K PER MONTH in about 3 months.
Now, even I’m not up to that point yet, however I can tell you that one of my sites brought in $8,639.86 while I was at BlogWorld. In about 6 days. While I was in Vegas. It might not be $100K, but it is more than beer money.
This stuff WORKS.
So, it is with 100% trust and pride that I tell you about Yaro’s free report on the subject that is pretty much the best free report I have ever read about membership sites and what makes them tick.
His report is called the Membership Site Masterplan and as you would guess, it is a step-by-step guide for launching a profitable online membership site.
You can download the report from here:
http://www.davidrisley.com/recommends/masterplan
Trust me. It’s good.
Now, we’re all smart people. You might guess that Yaro is leading up to something. And he is. He’s launching a training program next week and this report is designed to introduce you to his teachings. But, take my word for it. This Masterplan report is complete. It stands alone. It is not a gimmicky sales tactic. It is one of the best free reports I’ve read. He gives a lot of actionable steps.
Most bloggers dislike the idea of selling. Well, a membership site means you only have to sell once, but you get paid over and over again. And essentially, you’re getting paid to do what you already do – make good content.
His report is free.
http://www.davidrisley.com/recommends/masterplan
So, go grab it. 
Review of Mystere, From Cirque Du Soleil
Mr. FTC dude: Yes, I was given this show ticket for free. Because Cirque Du Soleil is smart to use a bunch of bloggers coming to Vegas for show promotion. I’m about to say good things about them. If you don’t like it, fine me.
OK, now that that is out of the way, yes, I was provided a great opportunity to check out Mystere while I was in Las Vegas for Blogworld. This show is performed inside Treasure Island.
Here is my review: “WOW!”
Simply put, there are things done in this show that I’m pretty sure God never intended the human body to do.
First, when the show began, it was unofficial. The spotlights came on and moved around the audience a little. It was almost as if they were just setting up the lights. Soon, I realized they were focusing on this man with spiked white hair and a black suit. He acts like an usher. He’ll take your tickets and act like he’s walking you to your seat, then he’ll just walk off with them. He does other things throughout the show to mess with the audience. It is quite funny, actually.
The show starts with a baby carriage and a dance which represents the birth of a baby (or so it appeared). Then, this small woman plays the part of the baby. Complete with baby sounds. She is a constant source of comic relief throughout the show.
In fact, that is one of the things I like about this show. There are elements of comedy throughout, mixed in with the art and the gymnastics. The show takes you from moments of wow to laughter, back and forth until the end. The audience participation built into the show keeps you on your toes.
The set is incredible. This is one of the amazing things about a Cirque Du Soleil show which is stationary. The theater is essentially built for their show. In this case, the stage moves all over the place, up and down. The roof of the theater is customized to allow the high-wire acts that occur high above the stage. It is really quite impressive.
Ticket pricing starts at $69 and goes up from there, depending on your seat. My seat was pretty awesome, however it didn’t look like there would be a bad seat. The theater really wasn’t that large, so no matter where you are, you’re not too far from the stage. A word of warning, however: If you sit in the seats near the stage, you stand a risk of being part of the show.
Mystere was like a moving Salvador Dali painting. It is pure art mixed with gymnastics that will amaze you, combined with pure entertainment. These guys know how to put on a show.
What a Vegas Pimp Can Teach You About Sales
So, you’re walking down the Strip in Vegas. You’re minding your own business. You’ve already dodged a couple sets of Mexicans handing out hooker business cards. Then, you find somebody with a more aggressive sales process.
Two women intercept you and ask you if you want a good time. No, you’re happily married and that would be a mistake of biblical proportions. You politely say no. You smile. You don’t want to be rude, but you most definitely don’t want those services.
Out of the darkness comes a guy. He says, “What are you, a f-g?”. I’m sure you know what he said. He wants you to say no. Of course, that opens up a communication with him which will inevitably lead to being asked to defend yourself. It is a classic play on the idea of commitment and consistency. Get a person to make a small commitment then just keep playing on his sense of needing to follow through.
His job is to make a sale. And, to do that, he is being very aggressive (he thinks). And the two women launched immediately into a sales pitch. The “sales letter” consisted of her body and the call to action was, “Buy this!”.
Another evening, I’m on my way to a club. A guy comes out of nowhere and shoves tickets in my hand. The tickets are for a reduced rate to the club. I tell him, “I don’t need this.”. He says, “Listen, stud, this will get you in at a reduced rate”. He is walking with me, almost yelling. I like getting called a stud and everything, but I’m not enjoying him trying to force crap I don’t need onto me. This is interruption marketing at it’s finest.
Don’t be that guy.
So, one day, you’re traveling the banks of the Twitter river. Minding your own business. All of a sudden, this dude tweets you and says, “Make 300 followers in a day! Get this now! [link]”.
You don’t like this. You don’t even know his name yet. Get the name before you jump in bed, right?
Don’t be that guy.
Another day, you’re browsing the halls of BlogWorld Expo. A bald man walks up, grabs the conference badge, and sticks his damn sticker logo onto it. Not cool. Later, in a session where they are taking questions, he never hesitates to promote his company, give his URL, and ask some dumb question related to his product. Yep, I call this conference spam. I’ll leave the company name out of this to protect the stupid, but plenty of people probably know who I’m talking about at Blogworld.
Don’t be that guy.
Don’t be the dude who runs up to you and spams you with their business card. A business card is not a sales lead. Just because you put a card in my hand doesn’t mean you have a chance to get my money some day. Unless I reached for the card, I didn’t want it. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
Don’t be that guy.
Spam exists in the real world. Whether we’re talking about my email box, Twitter, or the Vegas Strip, it exists.
And that feeling of annoyance you get when people do that should be proof enough that it doesn’t work . It doesn’t make sales. It is a brute force approach to marketing. Any money you do make pales in proportion to the wake of bad vibes you leave behind you.
Get to know me before hitting on me. Kthxbye.
BlogWorld Expo 2009 Report
As I type up this post, I’m sitting in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my flight home to Tampa. I thought I would jot down my thoughts about this year’s BlogWorld Expo.
- Huge Growth. I was really impressed with how much Blogworld has grown. My first year was 2008 and it was pretty big then. For 2009, it was truly huge. Signs of a growing industry. I expect next year will be even bigger.
- It is a Can’t Miss. If you are a blogger, I consider Blogworld to be the can’t-miss conference of the year. There were a LOT of newbies at Blogworld, however at least they took the time to hop on a plane and come to Vegas. That shows a level of commitment that is a step toward success as a blogger. For the bloggers too lazy or cheap to come to Vegas, well, you’re missing out. I’ll just leave it at that.
- Better Monetization Track. Sure, there were those people who talk about ads, ads, ads. But, it seems there were more ACTUAL probloggers there who were talking REAL BUSINESS. Things like products, marketing. There were even a few outright internet marketers at Blogworld this year. Props to Jim Kukral for putting together the monetization track. With a few exceptions, good lineup.
- Great networking. This is the #1 reason why I come to Vegas every year for this. It is great to get that “face time” with folks. If you come to a conference like this and act shy, it is to your detriment. I had dinner with Warren Whitlock a few weeks ago and he told me the only reason he goes to conferences is to meet YOU, so he doesn’t like it when people are afraid to walk up to him. I had a reader of this blog say she was nervous to walk up to me. Me?! She did, though, and gave me a really sweet gift that I can take home to my daughter. Thanks, Coree. Oh, Coree wrote a post about this, too.
- We’re Adults, But Come On. The closing keynote was a bit of a train wreck. Kevin Pollack is absolutely hilarious. The Chad Vader guys and the Bloggess were a stretch. The keynote was dirty. I heard words come out of Guy Kawasaki’s mouth that I would have never expected (dude, you’ve got a brand to uphold – don’t blow it!). All in all, this was gutter-level humor I would have expected from a late night comedy special from crappy comedians on HBO. This is Blogworld and it is worthy of respect. Let’s act like it. I’m not opposed to a little foul language. I use it myself sometimes on this blog to get the point across. But, there are limits.
- Evolution. Leo Laporte ended his keynote by saying to everybody, “Pretty soon, you will be THE media”. Right now, it is called “new media”. But, “old media” is dying. Kevin Pollack talked about his new show which is completely internet based. Leo, of course, has his own media brand (Twit) which is completely online. Bloggers are now gaining plenty of respect as media personalities, even despite the protests of the old guard trying to call bloggers untrained. I’m beginning to see the monetization stuff move into the realm of actual business rather than “beer money” crap like banners. All in all, it is evolution. I like it. I hope it evolves into next year’s Blogworld and I think the schedule needs to be designed around that.
I’ve got some follow-up post ideas from the conference which you’ll see soon. And, if you were at Blogworld, I’d like to hear your thoughts about the conference. Please comment below and let me know.
Direct Sales: The Forgotten Revenue Stream For Bloggers?
I’m over here at BlogWorld Expo 2009 in Las Vegas. As usual, there is a monetization track for bloggers and it always proves popular. Sometimes the sessions are standing room only.
Every session, I hear the standard fare. Banner ads. Affiliate programs.
Every session, a huge line forms up at the mic for questions. Most of the bloggers aren’t making any money. They are there to learn the “secrets” of the gurus. Guys like Darren Rowse, John Chow, Brian Clark, etc.
Most sessions, it seems they completely gloss over the most lucrative form of blog monetization: direct sales.
Brian Clark gets it. His philosophy to monetization is very similar to my own. He launched Teaching Sells, for example. And Thesis. Darren is only now getting into some direct sales. John doesn’t do it, however that is by choice on his part. Most of the other panelists on the monetization track just completely miss the boat.
Advertising is NOT the key to making money as a blogger. It takes a lot of traffic to make it work. Trying to make money with banner ads is like running full speed on a treadmill and wondering why you’re not getting to the carrot on the end of the stick. Those who run fast enough can get the carrot. The rest just keep trying and never get there.
The key to making money as a blogger is thinking like a business. That means having things to sell and engaging in marketing to build a relationship with the audience and ultimately sell them your wares. You can make six-figure level income with relatively small traffic numbers when you do this.
This year alone, due to Blog Masters Club and 3DayMoney, this blog is earning a five-figure income which would rival many people’s full-time jobs for the year. This blog’s traffic is such that I wouldn’t make even a fraction of that if I were littering this blog up with ads. This blog might make me $10-$20 per day if I were using network ads (if I’m lucky). Instead, it is making me several thousand dollars per month.
And that doesn’t even include income from PCMech.com, where I use a combination of ads, affiliate stuff and direct sales.
So, bloggers! Don’t forget direct sales. It should be the FIRST thing people think of when it comes to blog monetization.
Even so, a number of the panelists fail to communicate that fact.
Hello From Las Vegas
Just getting started here in Las Vegas for BlogWorld. This video would have been up sooner, but wifi issues delayed it. So, I went to a tweetup and talked to a lot of great folks. More on that later.
The 3 Different Approaches To Blogging
A blog is a pretty flexible medium. What you choose to do with your blog is completely up to you. Obviously, my approach to blogging is as a business. However, there are others.
Let me get right to the point and outline what I see as the three main sub-divisions of blogging.
Hobby Blogging
The vast majority of blogs out there are hobby blogs. A hobby blog is one where the blogger simply blogs about whatever is most interesting to him/her.
The thing to understand is that hobby blogs don’t necessarily make good businesses. The entire step of market evaluation is left out, instead going with what the blogger finds interesting. For this reason, most hobby blogs don’t make any money.
Promotional Blogging
A promotional blog is one where the blog is designed primarily as a promotional or informational device for a business.
For example, if you are a consultant, you might want to operate a promotional blog in order to provide information relevant to your expertise. The blog is not monetized directly, but you do so indirectly by using the blog to refer new clients into your consulting business.
Perhaps you make money as a paid speaker. In this case, your blog is, again, designed to promote yourself and your expertise. You monetize the blog by making it abundantly clear how people can contact you and hire you as a speaker.
Even offline businesses should explore a promotional blog.
Professional Blogging
When you blog as a professional blogger, then you are running an online business where the blog forms the crux of your lead generation strategy. You monetize through ads, affiliate marketing, and/or selling your own products.
In this case, the blog is the face of the business. The blog forms the hub of an online empire.
This is the approach that I take.
As a pro blogger, we are not interested in promoting an offline business. Secondly, a pro blogger specifically targets a market and does not blog about anything he finds interesting. A pro blogger has to stay on topic. A pro blogger often releases content in a strategic fashion so as to promote a particular product, and the methods of doing so is an entire subject otherwise known as marketing.
Being a problogger is demanding. It requires a combination of writing skills and marketing skills. It can also be very lucrative if you are in the right market and are adept at the two above skills.
So, there you have it. That’s a bird’s eye view of the different approaches to blogging.
Which do you fall in? And do you wish to make a change? What are your goals with your blog?
Fighting The Wordpress Dragons
What follows is a quick tale into the technical details of Wordpress that I’d rather not think about, but was forced to…
Over on PCMech, I have been having a cyclical and perplexing issue with server load. The end result was that PCMech disappeared from the Internet for a few minutes at a time, several times per day.
Extremely frustrating to say the least. Especially when you pay your web host about $700 per month to keep these sites online.
A few weeks ago, I started host shopping. I am with Pair Networks now, but I started talking with the guys at Rackspace. Both great companies. Rackspace is certainly more proficient with their marketing, but they also back it up. I’m not even a customer and I can tell that their “fanatical support” is indeed what it says. That said, Pair is no slouch either. Pair is always spot on with their email replies and they get the job done.
At the end of the day, I’ve got a business to run, however. As good as Pair is, if they can’t get it done for me, I switch. The prospect of moving all of my sites to Rackspace wasn’t exactly one I wanted to confront. At the last minute, fortunately Pair came through for me and offered to throw a lot more hardware in my direction. Essentially, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
As I had left it, Wordpress was still proving to be a beast, but we threw so much hardware at it that it was acceptable. Still, PCMech was slower than other sites.
Fast forward to this morning. PCMech is gone. Buh bye. Wordpress is delivering nothing but blank pages.
It’s a Boy
Many of my Twitter followers probably saw already. My wife and I went in for an ultrasound to determine the gender of our second child. And yes….
I’m going to have a son.
My wife will be putting a scan of the ultrasound on her blog, and I’m not going to steal her thunder on that one.
I’m excited. I was actually 100% fine either way. Had no preferences. For a father, there is something special about “daddy’s little girl”. Yet, there is also something that a father and son share that is unique. Either way, I’m good.
It is exciting to have one of each, however. Best (and worse) of both worlds. It is the full spectrum of child ups and downs. It will, no doubt, be an adventure.
As my brother said:
Most couples want one of each – you guys are very lucky in the kid department. So easy, so quick, and good results.
He also said…
It’s a Risley, must have been easy to tell.
Hey, that’s just how we roll. 
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. 
