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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Turning off the ViperChill RSS Feed: What You HAVE to Tell Your Blog Readers'

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Some of the biggest news in the blogging world over the last week was without a doubt Google’s announcement that on June 1st, they’re closing Google Reader. Paraphrasing their own words, the usage of Reader is smaller than ever, and Google want to focus on fewer products. I don’t believe the latter for a second, since new products like Google Keep are being spotted in the wild, and instead think it’s all about, well…money. Reader simply isn’t paying for itself.

Countless news articles have been written by the BBC, New York Times, the Verge and many other huge publications, all highlighting other services that people can be using instead. What people haven’t been writing about though is how this affects us as bloggers and what we can do about it (if anything). Here’s the jist of it: Reader’s closure is going to hit a lot of us very, very hard.

According to their public stats, I have 9,542 subscribers in Google Reader.

Let’s look at some other big blogs:

• SmartPassiveIncome: 8,425
• ProBlogger: 94,647
• Engadget: 6,651,971

I could go on, but you’re starting to see how important Reader really is for the readership of a number of websites. Though niches that have more web savvy audiences like marketing or technology are more likely to be affected, this is going to impact anyone who has built up their RSS readership.

My friend Steve’s health blog Nerd Fitness is sitting on 4,786 subscribers there. Finance blog Get Rich Slowly stands to lose up to 40,388 subscribers and Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich has 13,688 people subscribed via Google Reader.

Here’s What You MUST Do This Week

The first thing that’s clear is that you are going to have to let your readers know about other ways to keep getting your updates. Google are going a terrible job of it. Do you want to see how many notices there are on Google Reader about its closure? Here’s a screenshot from my account:

I’ll let you look around that image for a second to see if you spot it. Don’t look too long though, as there’s no notice there.

I’ll cut them a bit of slack in that there is a pop-up when you come back to Reader for the first time since the announcement, but it’s the most bland unGooglelike pop-up I’ve ever seen. With no graphics, and two lines of text. I wish I had gotten a screenshot.

The reason I’m so adamant about you contacting your readers in the next week or two is because everyone is going to be doing it towards the end of May, just before the service closes down, and your audience is going to be overloaded with updates they get from other people.

Also, doing it now means you can alert them again in the future with enough of a gap to remind them without annoying people who don’t subscribe via RSS.

Step One: Find Another RSS Reader You’re Happy With

Not only for yourself (if you use the services) but also one to recommend to your readers. The other readers are definitely out there, and some of them are making big money thanks to Google’s closure of Reader.

A list of options includes:

• Feedly – highlighted as the best alternative to Google Reader by The Verge mostly due to its speed, minimalist style, and the fact that it’s free. They are now though working on a Pro version, which should stop them ending up with the same fate as Reader.
• NewsBlur – $2/m or has the option to self-host on your own server. To take advantage of the Google Reader downtime they’ve turned off free accounts (which didn’t allow more than 64 feeds) so this may come back in the future.
• Netvibes – they’ve been around for as long as I can remember, so it should give you some hope they’ll be sticking around. Though they’re more focused on expensive social analytics, they’ve recently relaunched free accounts do allow feed tracking.

Though I’ll admit my own usage of Google Reader has subsided dramatically over the years, there are a few blogs that I like to track. RSS monitoring is great for reputation management as well. I’m personally moving everything over to Feedly, due to the fact they have iOS and Android apps.

Step Two: Put More Emphasis on Email

It would be premature to argue the point that we don’t know when other services are going to die so we should give up on RSS altogether, but I genuinely have no doubt that RSS usage is falling. Especially due to time-sinks social media sites like Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, Google+ (I’m joking) and Twitter.

11 months ago (I can’t believe it’s that old) I had this to say on my Future of Blogging post:

“I've been a huge advocate of bloggers using email lists, writing multiple posts on the subject. The benefits of having a list have been well documented, but let me refresh you on the basics:

• You can 'test' different message text, subject lines and subscriber entry points to maximise conversions
• You can create your own tailored follow-up sequence and send messages on set dates and times which can be fully automated
• Subscribers only get the content you want them to see, and not necessarily your blog posts (or all of them)
• You can keep your value for a specific, loyal audience if you want, rather than having to share everything publicly

When I first started writing about this topic over a year ago, I noticed a reader of this site tweet about how everyone is talking about attaching an email list to a blog. I think it was more likely the case that just the people they follow were talking about it, showing a deceiving popularity. Kind of like how if you saw five people tomorrow wearing the same bright green sneakers, you might think there's a huge luminous footwear trend emerging. Unbeknownst to you, there was a shop down the street trying to clear their stock and were selling them for a dollar.

I still think that most bloggers haven't caught on to this, but in time it's going to change.”

I guess this shows at least one of the predictions in that article were right.

If you haven’t already started putting a big emphasis on collecting emails, now would be a good time to start. I’m slightly biased, but OptinSkin was built for exactly this reason.

Step Three: Clean Up Your Social Act

It makes sense that if people are spending more time on all of these other forms of social media where they can receive content, you should look at where you’re optimising your presence.

I’m personally someone who could do a much better job at this, due to my pretty infrequent postings on Twitter (I find it mostly a waste of time), though my Facebook page is updated a few times per week (become a fan).

Youtube is another area where you could be making a big impact, if you have some on-screen presence or know how to make engaging videos that don’t require your face to be on them. Google recently announced that Youtube is being viewed by one billion unique visitors every month so the audience potential is huge. One of my own videos advertising ViperChill has over 120,000 views almost exclusively from Youtube search traffic.

My friend Pat has a great Youtube Marketing guide that takes you through how he’s built a successful channel.

Step Four: Detach Yourself from Feedburner

It’s a shame that the efforts of whoever built Please Don’t Kill Feedburner don’t seem to be paying off, as I really think the service is on its last legs.

One of the biggest aspects of Feedburner for a long time now has been the ability to show off how many subscribers you have. Pretty much every big blog does this, and it is (or has been) a great way to utilise social proof for people who are new to your site. That’s soon going to change though with the huge losses in subscriber counts coming from the closure of Reader.

There’s no reason why the logic of Google closing Reader wont apply to Feedburner. I’m sure it’s usage has also declined, and Google want to focus on fewer products. Let’s be honest though, the real reason will be that the service is not making money. I would happily pay for it, and Phil Hollows, owner of Feedblitz, said he has offered multiple times to take over the service with no promising replies. I can’t see Google adding a monthly fee to Feedburner if they couldn’t add it to their far more popular service, Reader.

One step you can take is to stop directing your RSS feed links to the service. You can keep your chicklet in place but change the URL back to your standard RSS feed. Usually http://yourblog.com/feed/.

It makes me regret not following the advice of Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land back in 2007 using the ‘MyBrand’ feature on the service to redirect the Feedburner feed to your own domain. Of course it’s too late to take advantage of it when thousands of people have subscribed by the feedburner URL, but I guess it’s not too late to start if you actually utilise their service.

I’m having some issues with Feedburner so hopefully someone in the comments can tell me if this is still available at present.

Step Five: Contact Your Audience

I’ve been trying to find a plugin that lets you contact only RSS subscribers but I didn’t have much luck. Maybe I have to make it myself. There was one available, but it hasn’t been updated since 2007 so it’s probably not worth checking out as WordPress has changed so much.

If I wasn’t going to do a blog post like I am now, I would create a specific page on my site that lists the best ways for people to keep in touch with the blog if they currently subscribe via Google Reader. Noticed I said the best ways, and not all of the ways. You don’t want to overwhelm people with too many options.

This would basically include a recommended feed reader (with a guide on how to add your Feed there), an opt-in form, and links to one or two of your social accounts.

When you do get in touch, make sure you say something that’s going to grab people’s attention (like pretending you’re turning off your RSS feed) to really get the point across. The fewer subscribers you lose from these changes, the better.

Step Six: Follow ViperChill ;]

If you want the non-Feedburner RSS feed: use this link. I recommend Feedly as your new RSS home.

You can also follow me on Twitter but I’m more active on Facebook

Or if you prefer email updates, scroll up to the top of the site (temporarily disabled my opt-in form at the bottom of posts) and subscribe in the yellow box on the right hand side. I always send out emails when I publish new posts – which is pretty rare, so you wont be overloaded or hopefully, annoyed.

And don’t forget, this whole change is going to make your audience question what they read, and that isn’t good if they’re not hooked. In other words, make sure you’re continuing to focus on putting out excellent, relevant content people can’t get elsewhere.

PostSkin is Back on the Market

Just to finish this post, I wanted to let you know that PostSkin is now available for sale again, after being closed down for a few days after the launch promotion. Also, we’ve activated our affiliate program, so you can find more information about that here.

This kind of content is not something I want to write very often – it’s more of a ‘nudge’ in the right direction rather than anything mind-blowing – but I promise I have a lot of great things on the way…

Software Mentioned In This Post

Aweber Email Marketing

OptinSkin WordPress Plugin

PostSkin WordPress Plugin

You may view the latest post at http://www.viperchill.com/feed-off/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'How to Make $5k from Skype (and Possibly a Whole Lot More)'

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Note from Glen: This is a post by Ramsay, who was recently introduced as a new member of the ViperChill team. Last month I made an extra $5,000 by jumping on the phone with a long-term email client to close a deal. And at that moment I had an important business realization: I’d forgotten something vital. And I think almost every blogger is making the same mistake that I was. You see, blogging and internet marketing can be a really tiny industry sometimes.

There are a few big players who dictate how things are done and then everyone else follows for a while. But within that narrow spectrum of teaching and following there are vital business practices being overlooked. This is not another “how to make money by following this method” kind of post. By the end of it you won’t have a new gimmick to test and obsess over.

But you might have an idea planted in your head that works for you for the rest of your business life.

And it might make you a lot of cash.

Let’s get started.

How I Made That $5,000

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now you’ll know that my money doesn’t just come from Blog Tyrant. I actually try to get my fingers in as many pies as is reasonably intelligently possible.

The reason for that is simple: if you put all your eggs in one basket you’ll end up getting hurt.

Believe it or not, I learned this lesson from Google when they de-indexed my one and only blog back in University. This blog was my only income – the Adsense clicks were almost 100% of what I earned. So when the blog got turned off I ended up with nothing.

Luckily that blog came back in the SERPs. Not everyone’s does. Since then I’ve tried to keep a sexy mix of affiliate income, premium content writing, blog design and consulting work to help me make a living online.

Here’s how it went down…

Prior to the phone meeting I’d been emailing a long-term client for weeks and weeks about a new project that we were hoping to get started. I had previously built a website for them and we were discussing a new blog that they were desperate to get me on board with.

The problem? It just wasn’t happening.

We’d been emailing back and forth ideas and concepts and I’d told them I was ready to move. I had content plans, product ideas and website design drafts to show them. Excitement was building but no money had changed hands and something always seemed to pop up.

And then we jumped on the phone and met up for a quick coffee.

Within 20 minutes I’d sorted out all their objections and fears and sufficiently assured them that it was time to move. The next day they paid their invoice and the website and copy writing is now all under way. By the end of the year I think they are going to have a pretty cool blog and product ready to go.

And it all happened because of a phone conversation.

What Are We All Doing Wrong?

After I got off the phone to my client it occurred to me that something very important had just happened.

And I realized that it is something that almost every blogger is failing to do: make face-to-face contact.

I was amazed at how quickly the issues had been overcome by simply taking the time to talk to my client in a medium where they could hear my voice and see my face.

It was fast.

It was immediate.

And, most importantly, it was very personal.

I could have kicked myself at all the wasted hours. As I sat there thinking about what had just happened I wondered how many other jobs I’d lost because I was so insistent on being a hermit that only communicates via email. And this problem applies very directly to blogging.

The Problem With the Blogger Mentality

You see the problem with us bloggers is that we are all quite tech-savvy. Maybe it is a Gen-Y thing but given a choice between a phone call and a text message, I’d much rather send a quick SMS. And given a choice between an SMS and an email I’d rather send the email. But in a lot of ways this is a serious mistake.

Image Credit

Sure, it’s nice for us to stay in our pyjamas all day and talk to our clients and potential clients by email instead of meeting up for a coffee. It’s very safe and easy. Your clients might not feel like that though. Nor the people who want to collaborate with you on big new projects. Or the people who might want to buy your expensive product.

Yes we bloggers like to use email and social media to stay in touch. It’s often a lot faster and you don’t have to sit around a boardroom for two hours discussing what, 90% of the time, everyone already knew.

But sometimes you need to show your face. Sometimes people desperately need to see it.

And Skype offers us a way to “have a coffee” with clients and potential clients anywhere in the world and possibly create a whole new revenue stream.

Why is “Face to Face” So Important?

If anyone knows about the difference between being anonymous and showing your face, it’s me. Since unveiling on ViperChill a few months ago a lot of new doors have opened up.

But I’ve also been lucky enough to grow up around some really successful businessmen and women who are constantly closing big deals and impressing their clients on the phone and in face-to-face scenarios.

Some of the simple but extremely important lessons I’ve been told by my family members include:

• Never email a proposal
  My sister told me that she massively increased her sales rates by refusing to ever email a proposal to a potential client. Instead she tells them she has five minutes free and she’ll meet them for a quick coffee to go over it. I’ll tell you why this works later on. Oh, and did I mentioned she was top seller for her firm in the country?
• Never wear sunglasses
  When I was probably around 10 I went to a big meeting with my dad who was wearing transition lenses at the time. As the meeting was outdoors the glasses turned into sunglasses and he took them off and put them in his pocket. When I asked him why he was doing that (he needed them to see), he told me that you should always look clients in the eye to create a bond. Sunglasses prevented that. Computer screens do too.
• Deals that count don’t get closed by email
  Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule but I remember hearing that all the big deals – the ones that count – get closed at lunch meetings, golf games and other face-to-face scenarios. The details might get worked out over email but the real “selling” takes place when you can chat openly. More on this later.

So why wasn’t I applying these things to my work as a blogger or copy writer?

It’s often really tempting to think that just because our services or products are online we can just use email. And in many cases that will be enough.

But what I’ve found recently is that some of the most impressive sales and business relationships have only come about because of a face to face meeting. And Skype gives us a modern version of this. Meeting in person is even better but with Skype we can create personal bonds that were hard to develop before.

So why is it that talking on Skype or meeting a person for lunch can be so much more powerful for selling a product or creating an important alliance? Well, there are a few reasons.

• Humans are social creatures
  By nature, humans are very social creatures. We make families, go out for dinner with friends and play in sporting teams. We are built for that community living – our whole society is set up in that way. Why, then, would we forget to do apply that basic principle to blogging and business?
• Email is still new
  It sounds totally ridiculous for us but for a lot of people email is still considered something new and foreign. Even if they have been using it for ten years, many people from the previous generations don’t feel “at home” using it because they didn’t grow up with it like we did. For them, face to face will always be the default.
• Email causes a physical stress response
  Believe it or not but studies have shown that constantly checking emails causes the body stress. What this means is that for a lot of stressed out people (me included!), emails often represent negative things. Perhaps not a great introduction to a deal?
• People don’t believe you based on what you say
  Strange but true. A lot of the time we don’t trust people because of what they say, we trust them because of how they say it. Facial expressions, tones, etc. This guy has made a career out of reading them. Mix that with the fact that the internet is a scary place for a lot of people and you are much better off showing your face.
• It is an organic and fast process
  As happened to me in the example above, talking face to face can be a much faster process. Emails take time and people put them off (sometimes it takes weeks for Glen to reply to me). But on Skype or at a meeting you can jam and chat and things move really efficiently – if you’re good at it.

One of the most common questions that you guys asked on my unmasking post was about how we can speed up the whole process. So many new bloggers get upset at how long it takes to be successful. And I can’t help but wonder whether part of the missing ingredient for a lot of us is the human connection.

So let’s move on to the fun stuff.

How You Can Use This to Grow Your Online Business

Hopefully by now you’ll be thinking that maybe creating a face to face connection is a good idea. So what’s the best way to go about it?

Let’s take a look.

1. Do the Blog Tyrant — unmask

If you are blogging anonymously I think it might be time to consider getting your face out there.

As you might already know, I blogged anonymously for exactly 99 posts before revealing my identity. It was a huge step for me as I’d built up a lot of brand equity as the Blog Tyrant and was pretty concerned that the “buzz” on my blog would die off after I opened up.

It didn’t. Things got better.

My old friends and loyal readers became more friendly and I seem to be getting lots more personal interactions with people who visit the site. I even got asked out on a few dates!

But if you think it worked well for me, have a look at what happened when James Chartrand from Men with Pens revealed that he was a she! Remember, this was before Twitter was big.

2. Collaboration potential – arrange Skype chats with bloggers whenever possible

This is probably the most important point because by getting on Skype with bigger guys in your industry you often open up a lot of doors to new collaborations. And collaborations are the things that really grow careers.

Blog Tyrant was going really well for me but when Glen asked me to join the ViperChill team I knew that things would really take off. It’s a simple fact of business that you can get a lot more done when you team up with people who believe in and want to achieve the same things as you.

Now, the ironic thing here is that Glen and I never video Skyped before we came to our arrangement. But it did involve me opening up my “secret identity” to him and sharing lots of personal exchanges. I even emailed him pictures of my cat! (Note from Glen: This is true, as well as photos of his GF)

So the next time you get an opportunity to do it, why not drop the phrase, “Hey can you jump on Skype real quick?” You’ll be surprised how many doors open up once a person has seen your face and heard your voice.

So how do you get big bloggers on a Skype chat?

• Start with their needs
  Glen suggests that one of the most powerful ways is to start with their needs and slowly transition to your own. For example, you might hit us up saying you want to promote one of our products or posts and then gradually ask for something in return.
• Be personal and informal
  In my article on how to write successful emails I talk about a similar thing – try to be informal and personal by studying the big blogger and getting to know their favorite TV shows, sporting teams, etc. I love Tweets about tennis!

Remember, the idea here is not to “scam” your way into a phone chat with an A-lister. The idea is to develop real friendships and alliances that you actually value. There are guys like Pat Flynn, Darren Rowse and Brian Clark that I Tweet and email because I genuinely respect and like them. There are also other big bloggers that have similar influence but whom I never email.

3. Emphasize your photo and personality on your site

Since unmasking I’ve made my photo prominent in my sidebar, on my About Me and You page and on my Facebook Page.

I can assure you this wasn’t an easy move for me – propping myself up like that makes me feel like a douche. I’d much rather stay anonymous. But at some point I realized that I had to bring myself in to my brand more. If I want blogging to be a viable long term career for me I need to get myself out there instead of just the website.

By making your photo and story accessible and prominent you can create some distinctiveness even when your content might not be that original.

Neil’s simple but effective sidebar photo and bio.

Neil Patel does this really well as you can see in the shot above.

Adding his photo and story to his sidebar keeps him visible and distinctive no matter which article you click on. Once you see the face and bio a few times you feel a sense of trust and are more likely to stick around when you know it’s something he’s written.

4. Connect with readers and potential clients on Skype

These days a lot of bloggers are talking about loyalty. But something even more important than that is creating distinctiveness. You need to stand out.

Now, I’m sure I wasn’t the first person to do this (Glen: *cough*) but a lot of people have commented on how a number of big bloggers are now replying to every comment after it became well known that I was doing it on Blog Tyrant. And while I’m sure this added to a sense of community and belonging on my site, I think the main thing it did was help me stand out from the crowd.

With Skype you can take this process even further. Sure, it might take a little more time but by jumping on for a quick chat you might close a sale because the person wants to give you the business. You will be surprised at how many people will buy your product or service because they like you more than they like what you are offering.

If you are really good at what you do you can also charge for this time. People will pay for solutions – especially if they come from their favorite blogger. Don’t be afraid to take this relationship/situation to a paid level.

5. Use video whenever possible / reasonable

Videos are getting bigger and bigger every day. As far as I’m concerned, the only drawbacks with video is that people often can’t watch them at work and sometimes they take too long to digest in a world full of “scan readers”.

But if you can do it nicely and at the right moments you can make a big impression.

Someone who does this really well (is there anything he doesn’t do well though?) is Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income. Let’s take a look at the video he made for his “Start Here” page where a lot of newcomers get to meet the man behind the site.

This approach is personal, warming and, above all, gets noticed. People instantly feel connected to Pat and are more open to his ideas and articles. Although it isn’t a live chat in person or on Skype it does produce a very similar affect. A lot of the time I read articles he’s written that I otherwise might not just because I really like Pat.

Tips For Getting the Most out of Skype

I wanted to finish off this article by giving you some practical tips for using Skype.

More importantly, I’d love to draw on the experience of the ViperChill crowd so if you have any of your own tips please leave a comment. Feel free to drop a link as well if you’ve written anything that might help.

• Photo: Make sure your photo is friendly and recognizable such that when people see you on other media like blogs or Twitter they will know who it is straight away.
• Handle: Ensure that your handle is appropriate for all types of conversations. You don’t want to be doing a big business meeting under the name “lazybugger433434″.
• Expectations: Don’t be online all the time unless you are willing to take calls when people see you there. Set up times to be online so people don’t feel ignored.
• Quality sound: There is nothing worse than having an important conversation on Skype with someone that you can’t understand due to bad sound. Make sure you buy a good quality mic like the one I used here.
• Preparation: When I do my consultation calls I try to set aside at least 20 minutes before hand to go over the topic – even if I know it extremely well. This lets me put together any links or resources I might want to share as well as refreshing my memories of the subject.
• Presentation: If you’re jumping on a video chat then you really want to make sure your hair is brushed and you have a nice shirt on. This matters more for big paying clients than it does for friends and contacts.

The most important thing here though is to be yourself and find your own style.

What Do You Think?

Do you think you could increase your conversions, sales or relationships by adding in some more face-to-face time? Have you ever used Skype in this way? Leave a comment and let me know.

You may view the latest post at http://www.viperchill.com/skype-5k/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Please turn on two-factor authentication'

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You should read Mat Honan’s heartbreaking tale of a hack attack and the ensuing discussion on Techmeme. Much of the story is about Amazon or Apple’s security practices, but I would still advise everyone to turn on Google’s two-factor authentication to make your Gmail account safer and less likely to get hacked.

Two-factor authentication means “something you know” (like a password) and “something you have,” which can be an object like a phone. Here’s a simple video about how it works:

I often hear the same questions or objections when I recommend two-factor authentication. Jeff Atwood has done a good job of debunking common misperceptions–check out his post, which even has pictures. But here are some misconceptions that I hear, along with the reality:

Myth #1: But what if my cell phone doesn’t have SMS/signal, or I’m in a foreign country?
Reality: You can install a standalone app called Google Authenticator (it’s also available in the App Store), so your cell phone doesn’t need a signal.

Myth #2: Okay, but what about if my cell phone runs out of power, or my phone is stolen?
Reality: You can print out a small piece of paper with 10 one-time rescue codes and put that in your wallet. Use those one-time codes to log in even without your phone.

Myth #3: Don’t I have to fiddle with an extra PIN every time I log in?
Reality: You can tell Google to trust your computer for 30 days and sometimes even longer.

Myth #4: I heard two-factor authentication doesn’t work with POP and IMAP?
Reality: You can still use two-factor authentication even with POP and IMAP. You create a special “application-specific password” that your mail client can use instead of your regular password. You can revoke application-specific passwords at any time.

Myth #5: Okay, but what if I want to verify how secure Google Authenticator is?
Reality: Google Authenticator is free, open-source, and based on open standards.

Myth #6: So Google Authenticator is a free and open-source, but does anyone else use it?
Reality: Yes! You can use Google Authenticator to do two-factor authentication with LastPass, WordPress, Dropbox, Amazon Web Services, Drupal, Stripe, and DreamHost, or even use a YubiKey device. There’s even a Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM) so you can add two-factor authentication to any PAM-enabled application. That means you can use Google Authenticator to add two-factor authentication to SSH, for example.

One last tip: use a different password on Gmail/Google than on other services. If you reuse a password and a hacker cracks into one company, they can use the same password to crack into your Google account.

Please don’t wait to turn on 2-step verification. It’s not that hard, and it will really protect your account. Why not set up two-step authentication right now?

Added August 26, 2012: Dropbox added support, so I included a link above.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/sv1wBN8iLAk/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, '"Why did our PageRank go down?"'

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Recently a newspaper contacted me. Their PageRank had dropped from 7 to 3, and they wanted to know why. They genuinely didn’t seem know what the issue was, so I took some time to write them an in-depth reply. Part of the motivation for my blog is to provide information in more scalable ways, so I figured I’d strip any identifying information from my email and post it. Here’s what I wrote:

Hi, the usual reason why a site’s PageRank drops by 30-50% like this is because the site violates our quality guidelines by selling links that pass PageRank. Here’s our documentation on that: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 and here’s a video I made about this common case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFcJ7PaLoMw (it’s about 1:30 into the video). http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all is a good recent article about paid reviews. In Google’s world, we take paid links that pass PageRank as seriously as Amazon would take paid reviews without disclosure or as your newspaper would treat a reporter who was paid to link to a website in an article without disclosing the payment.

In particular, earlier this year on [website] we saw links labeled as sponsored that passed PageRank, such as a link like [example link]. That’s a clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and it’s the reason that [website]‘s PageRank as well as our trust in the website has declined.

In fact, we received a outside spam report about your site. The spam report passed on an email from a link seller offering to sell links on multiple pages on [website] based on their PageRank. Some pages mentioned in that email continue to have unusual links to this day. For example [example url] has a section labeled “PARTNER LINKS” which links to [linkbuyer].

So my advice would be to investigate how paid links that pass PageRank ended up on [website]: who put them there, are any still up, and to investigate whether someone at the [newspaper] received money to post paid links that pass PageRank without disclosing that payment, e.g. using ambiguous labeling such as “Partner links.” That’s definitely where I would dig.

After that investigation is complete and any paid links that pass PageRank are removed, the site’s webmaster can do a reconsideration request using Google’s free webmaster tools console at google.com/webmasters. I would include as much detail as you can about what you found out about the paid links. That will help us assess how things look going forward.

Sincerely,
Matt

That’s about it. This case was interesting because we also had an external spam report about the newspaper selling links.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/Z3ZWX7CvtNE/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Submit video topics and webmaster questions'

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I’m planning to record some new webmaster questions next week. I made a Google Moderator page where you can submit topics and vote for different questions.

Please ask your questions in on the Google Moderator page, not in the comments here. When the comments are in Moderator, people can vote them up and down.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/ovZcWmjjsUM/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'My secret 30 day challenge and my new challenge: ukulele!'

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Last month I did a secret 30 day challenge: everyday I did something nice for my wife. It could be surprising her with flowers, doing some chore around the house without her asking, or just trying to be present and focused when she wanted to talk. This challenge turned out really well.

At first, I thought of writing down the nice thing I did each day, like when I tracked my “month of kindness” challenge. But instead, I found myself adopting an attitude of trying to be more supportive throughout the day. My wife noticed the change in my behavior and remarked on it mid-month, so I guess I still had some room to be a better husband.

If you’re married, you should definitely consider this challenge. I was a little worried that when I revealed my challenge, my wife would feel like I’d been deceiving her or holding something back, but she was just happy that I’d been doing thoughtful things for her this month.

Okay, so what’s up for the month of October? I’m going a little more light-hearted. My wife got me a ukulele a couple months ago, and I’m going to try to play the ukulele each day. The ukulele is a great instrument because you can’t take yourself too seriously playing a ukulele. It’s a very low-pressure instrument.

I’ve never had much musical training, so I’m complete beginner. Don’t expect me to upload any YouTube videos or perform in public. I’m just having fun with it, which is exactly what you should do with a ukulele. Here’s a little video to get your day started:

If you want to join me in a 30 day challenge, just pick out something you’ve always wanted to try and give it a go!

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/L2bql2AZK44/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Out for a few days: my grandfather is in the hospital'

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My grandfather has been seriously ill this week, so I’m flying tonight to be with him in Tennessee. If you’re waiting on me for a reply about something, it will probably need to wait.

I still hope to attend PubCon next week but I can’t promise that I’ll be able to make it.

Added: My grandfather passed away just a few days after this post on Friday, October 12, 2012. I was glad that I got to fly out and see him, and to tell him that he was well-loved and appreciated. He lived to be over 100, so the funeral was more of a celebration of his life. May we all live so long and so well.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/O588_mIayoA/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'My Halloween costume for 2012: Matt Romney!'

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My fellow Americans, I’d like to introduce my latest Halloween costume: Matt Romney!

My five-point plan for the Mitt Romney Halloween costume went like this:

1. Start with a suit and tie.
2. Put a little silver in my sideburns. My wife used some silver and white eye shadow.
3. Swoosh the hair up a little bit and lock it in with hairspray.
4. Take off the glasses, and
5. Add a flag. Boom!

This was a fun, easy, comfortable costume. I practiced a few of Mitt Romney’s catchphrases and I think people really enjoyed seeing “Matt Romney” around the Googleplex.

My wife and I are also trying something new for Halloween. I remember as a kid when I got a full-size candy bar for Halloween–it blew me away! I still remember those neighbors as really cool. Recently someone reminded me of that experience.

So this year, the first couple dozen kids who stop by our house are in for a nice treat:

Happy Halloween, everyone! You might also enjoy seeing some of my other Halloween costumes.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/UGzbirwIopY/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'New 30 day challenge: get good sleep'

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For October 2012, I tried to practice the ukulele every day. I ended up doing more traveling than I expected, but I managed to play ukulele most of the days. I’m still a total beginner, but it was a lot of fun! My favorite song to play so far is M.T.A. by the Kingston Trio. My Dad used to play that sometimes as I was growing up.

For November 2012, I mentioned to my wife that I was thinking of trying to get good sleep this month, like eight hours a night. My wife’s reaction could be categorized as skeptical at best. Which just makes me want to do it, of course.

So I’m setting a goal of eight hours of sleep a night for the next 30 days. We’ll see how it goes! If you want more context, here’s what I mean when I talk about 30 day challenges:

Why not think about something that sounds like fun, or that you’ve wanted to start, and give it a shot for the next 30 days?

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/RGscMBPj8qw/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'PubCon 2012 slides: disavow links tool'

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I spoke at PubCon 2012 last month in Las Vegas. A couple people have asked for my slides, so here they are:

Several of the slides have links to additional information, in case you’re interested. We announced the disavow links tool during my session so that’s what a lot of the slides are about.

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/8IurStR5fXw/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Taking a week off from the internet'

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The end of the year is a perfect time to think about goals. Did you get done what you wanted in 2012? What do you want to accomplish in 2013? Instead of setting year-long goals, I’m a big fan of trying out new things for a month at a time:

This month I’m going to try to unplug from Twitter and most news. I’m also going to cut down on replying to email.

I’m going to start out with a week without internet. Harper Reed called it a “reading vacation” and I can’t wait to curl up with a few books.

Is there something you’ve always wanted to learn or try? Why not give it a shot for 30 days and see how it goes?

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/HoF1wOC9vow/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'What I learned from time away from the internet and email'

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Hey folks, I just finished January’s 30 day challenge: no news, no Twitter, fewer emails, and no social media in general. For February, my wife and I are trying a gluten-free, wheat-free month to see what that’s like.

Okay, so how was January? I started with a week completely off the internet, which coincided with a reading vacation. The fact is that I *love* to read. I averaged about a book a day for a week.

In general, when I wanted to hop onto Techmeme or Google News or Hacker News or Twitter/Nuzzel, instead I opened up my to-do list. As a result, I got a ton of stuff done in January. I quickly learned that if something important was happening, I’d hear about it from someone else.

The month off also gave me a chance to think about email dysfunction. I try hard to filter my inbox aggressively: I auto-archive almost all mailing lists, I don’t sign up for newsletters, and I filter out notifications from web services. Despite that, here’s what my inbox looked like when I got back:

- 258 email threads in my inbox (I had 20 when I left). It was a quiet week: the first week in January.
- 153 threads were non-Google email threads
- only 14 threads directly involved members of my team
- 8 threads that involved my manager or someone up my reporting chain
- 6 threads involving PR or legal in some way

As you can see, a huge issue for me is email threads that originate from outside Google–that’s over half the email threads in my inbox! I’m going to keep ramping down on responding to external emails, because replying to a private communication might help that person, but in the same amount of time I could make a webmaster video or write something more general that would help a lot more people. In lots of ways, email just isn’t scalable.

Added: Someone asked how I stay in touch enough to know what topics people care about if I’m not answering email. Sorry if I didn’t explain that clearly. I still see what people are discussing on SEO blogs and on the Google webmaster forum. I know the most recent trends in how blackhats try to spam Google–that’s my primary job, after all. I look through the questions and comments that people send me on Twitter. When I put out a call for webmaster video questions, I use Google Moderator so people can vote up questions that interest them. I keep an eye on what flavors of spam snake oil are being marketing to newbies on various forums (“I know Google pulled apart my last link network, but now try my Social Rank Tout Suite product! It will automate 100% of all of your link building!”). And lots of people at Google keep an eye open themselves and alert me if they see issues. So I feel like I have a pretty good feel for the pulse of what people are talking about; it’s just that I lack the time to have one-on-one conversations with every person that emails me.

Going away for a week is also a great way to spot emails you should have filtered but didn’t. For example, I had 8 automatic emails alerting me to various people taking vacation. People work hard at Google; I usually don’t need to know if you’re taking a day or two off. I found 4 other mailing lists I could auto-archive or unsubscribe to. In general, taking some time off provides a useful perspective on what’s waiting for you when you get back.

Is anyone else doing a 30 day challenge? What are you tackling?

You may view the latest post at http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/0R1D8etDsPo/ You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. Best regards, Build Backlinks Online peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com

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Build Backlinks Online has posted a new item, 'Interview: How a Poker Membership Site Made $100,000 in its First Week'

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On the 27th of March, 2010, I received an email from a guy named Billy Murphy, who basically just wanted to say that he really liked ViperChill and the content I was posting. Three days later I was at a friends house and he got to talking about some of the membership sites he uses for training. Since he’s a professional poker player the site in question was indeed a poker site, named BlueFirePoker. The name sounded very familiar, and after a quick check on my phone, I realised it was the site Billy owned.

Fast-forward to two weeks ago, and Billy let me in on some of the sites details, and also let me know about a new site he’s starting up. I jumped at the chance to ask him some questions, but with his claim of making $100,000 in one week, I was slightly worried the interview wouldn’t be good enough to post. After all, I assumed a huge amount of money must have been spent in order for that to happen, and it’s not exactly something all ViperChill readers can replicate. How wrong I was.

I like to see myself as someone who thinks a little outside of the box, but some of Billy’s answers really had me scribbling down notes and ideas for my own projects. This is a long interview, but I don’t think you’re going to read anything better in the IM space today. This man is very, very smart. You’ll see..

The first thing I guess everyone will want to know is, how did you get so much traffic to a new website, so quickly? How can other people try to achieve similar results?

Great question. In short, value.

The number one thing people fail to realize is you don’t need a lot of internet marketing gimmicks if you truly offer a great product or service. The goal with BlueFirePoker has always been to offer the highest quality poker training videos on the market. We launched with a very small team of pros, but each pro was an extremely good player, and extremely good coach. So, people knew who they were when we launched, and knew they could learn a lot from them.

There was no pre-launch marketing, there were no affiliates, no email lists, no PPC campaigns… nothing.

I spent $0 on marketing, and our first day we received 8,853 hits (and the launch didn’t happen until later in the morning, so this was probably only the first 12-13 hours or so).

How?

We offered more value than anything else that was out there. So, the value of the product worked as its own marketing. People spread the word like crazy because they knew it was something that could help them, and help others.

These are players that you can’t get access to for one on one coaching. They either won’t do it because they spend most of their time playing, or it’s too expensive for players. The players can get coaching by watching videos from our players for a sign up fee ($100), and $30/month. If they were trying to get one on one coaching, it might cost them several hundred dollars per hour, if not over $1,000/hr depending on the player.

For a poker player looking to make more money, paying the substantially lower price for videos is a no brainer. That’s why the product basically markets itself. Because it’s the craziest value ever. Learn from some of the best poker players in the world, for $30/month.

So as soon as the launch happened, people started talking about it. I went out of my way to not say anything about what we were doing before the launch, and asked all of our pros to do the same. This goes against all the internet marketing rules, and I’m not sure if it was optimal. However, because no one heard about it, I think it caused some excitement in the poker community the day of, that might not have happened to the same affect if everyone already knew it was coming out. I think sometimes pre-marketing can take some things away from a launch. By the time it launches, the excitement people had could have died down quite a bit. Sometimes products people were interested in finally come out, and you have to re-sell them to get them excited about it. When we launched, it was more like, “Wait, what!? Holy shit these guys are training people to play!???” Followed by a massive amount of signups.

Besides the word of mouth marketing, a lot of my focus was on viral marketing. One of the things that helped us a lot was a challenge I proposed to President Obama shortly after launch. There was a lot of politics/debate going on about whether poker should be regulated, or whether it should be outlawed. The main argument was around whether poker was a game of luck, or a game of skill.

Amazingly there’s a lot of people who don’t understand that poker is a huge skill game. There’s plenty of short term luck in poker, but in the long run, the good players win the money. The only people who think it’s luck are the people who lose, and don’t understand why they’re losing.

I wanted to help bring attention to the situation. So I offered the President $1,000,000 to play against one of our pros. If he could beat them, the money would go to any charity he wanted. If he lost, he owed us $1. I also extended the offer to any member of Congress. The goal being, to show that it was obviously a game of skill. If not, people would have gladly accepted a 50/50 chance at a million bucks. I got a couple calls from representatives of people in Congress about the possibility of setting up a match, but ultimately nothing happened. I didn’t expect it to, because they were never going to beat our pros.

Fox News aired the story, and that really helped give us a lot of buzz…

After that, everyone was talking about us again. It helped to create a second wave of publicity for us. We had just launched. and now all of the sudden we were on national news, fighting to bring attention to issues that if addressed, could help the poker community a lot. The community really got behind us and saw we were going to be making a lot of noise in the industry.

Because people were enjoying the service so much, all of the marketing kept compounding. It’d be substantially different if we were offering a mediocre product and I was generating publicity just to try and get some quick traffic to the site. That wasn’t the case, so the immediate benefits I’d bring in from viral marketing, also brought a lot of long term benefits. All of the people using the service who heard about us through the promotion, realized the service was good and they kept spreading the word.

Why aren’t others achieving the same results?

Here’s how I would launch a business if I wanted to be like most internet marketers:

Step 1: Offer a shitty product
Step 2: Spam the shit out of everyone I know
Step 3: Contact other spammers to see if they will spam the shit out of everyone they know too so we can both make more money
Step 4: Work on sales pages, PPC, and other shit that is irrelevant long term if you have a shitty product
Step 5: Launch, capture as many sales as possible
Step 6: Watch the traffic die, and close the business down
Step 7: Find a new shitty product to promote, and repeat

Here is how I launch a product:

Step 1: Figure out a way to create ridiculous value in whatever space I’m going into, and offer that
Step 2: Launch, and get people talking about how great your product is
Step 3: Launch viral marketing campaign to continue the growth of your reach, which also multiples the word of mouth marketing

The difference is, my ‘step 1′ might take months. BlueFirePoker actually took probably closer to a year to launch. The first few months I was putting together a team of pros I wanted to have on board. Then, getting our website done took 9 months (yes, seriously… be wary of companies despite their ratings on Elance ).

Someone else’s ‘step 1′ might take 5 minutes. That’s where the difference comes in. They’re focusing on the wrong variables of what’s going to make their business succeed. They’re actually working on the exact opposite of what they should be working on. They spend all of their time convincing people they need to buy their shit, rather than creating a product that no one would need convincing to buy.

So, in much shorter words… put out shit that’s so good people have to buy it. Let people do most of your marketing for you. Then accelerate everything with viral marketing.

Some people assume it’s just luck. It’s not just BlueFirePoker I’ve done this with. For a recent example, I’m using the same approach with Forever Jobless and have gone from ‘guy no one knew’ to extremely fast blog growth with over 500 subscribers in just over a week. It’s not an accident.

If you put all your time around creating something nothing else on the market can match, that IS your marketing. It’s going to be almost all the marketing you need.

Were you a poker fan before launching the site or were you well versed in marketing and decided to enter the poker niche?

I played poker professionally for 3-4 years before I decided to start the poker business. I was tired of playing poker, and wanted a new challenge. That was my first internet business but I had done other small businesses/investments before. I had studied business/marketing for years, and had always been very entrepreneurial minded, but had never done an online business.

$100,000 for your first week is obviously a fantastic result. How did earnings continue to play out? Is the income from the website stable or does it fluctuate a lot…

That was our biggest week ever. We’ve had some other spikes after some of the viral marketing promotions I’ve done, but that was by far our biggest week. Earnings have been good. It’s unlike a lot of the ‘internet marketer’ businesses where they have a big launch, make a bunch of money and then sales fall off a cliff. We’ve had consistent sales the whole time we’ve been in business. I don’t think we’ll ever have a week like we did that first week again though. Overall it’s been relatively stable, although in the last year or two it’s declined because the whole poker economy is in a pretty crappy state right now.

How are the laws regarding the restrictions of US players online affecting your business?

A lot. Basically, a lot of the sites that served US players have stopped allowing US players to play, or have shut down. So, it’s much harder for a lot of people to be able to play. Therefore, a lot of people who were playing poker a lot have moved on to other things, and don’t have the need for poker training anymore.

We cater to a lot of professional poker players, or semi-pro players, so a lot of our subscribers who lived in the US have either moved on to a different line of work, or moved out of the country.

Roughly 1/3rd of our members were from the US, so we took a big hit once the government started getting involved.

How much money did you invest to get the site up and running to its current state?

I put $16,000 into the initial website. I hired a company from India, so if the site had been built here the same way it would have been about 3-4x as much. Although looking back, obviously the opportunity cost of taking so long to launch was a substantial amount of money lost.

I think you can get it built for much cheaper with all the different out of the box solutions out there now. They started working on it in 2008, and there weren’t as many good options. There were some, but they either didn’t have it how I wanted it, or I didn’t know of them.

Which countries do the majority of your user base come from?

We get a huge mix from all over. US is still the number 1 traffic source for us by a large margin even with all of the hurdles for US players.

To give you an idea of how diversified our traffic is: 23 different countries account for at least 1% of our traffic.

The UK, Canada, Germany and France are some of the big ones besides the US.

We talked a few years ago when a friend – who I’ve personally witness make close to $1m from online poker – said your website was the best resource for training videos. The field for membership sites are extremely competitive, especially in poker, so how did you help differentiate your site from the competition?

Quality over quantity. There were a lot of poker training sites out in 2009. There wasn’t one of them specializing in very high quality content. The sites were signing well known players, and would barely have them release any videos. So, their members would sign up to watch these guys, and rarely get to see any of their content. It was easy to see that who people were signing up for, and what the sites were delivering were two totally different things.

Wherever you have people complaining about something, it probably means there’s a gap somewhere in the market. The gap was quality.

I wanted to specialize when we started out, so I put together a very small team of 5-6 pros, who only played one form of poker — cash games. The guys were all extremely high quality players and teachers in their games, and I knew if we launched with the team we had, we would instantly have by far the best cash game training team out of any of the competitors on the market.

I was less focused on having our guys put out a massive amount of videos, and more on them putting out incredibly helpful videos.

So, while our competitors often had 30-50 pros, sometimes more, we only had 5 for a long time, and focused on just making sure our content was better than anyone else.

People wanted extremely high quality videos, and weren’t getting them to the degree they wanted. So, we offered it.

As time went on, we expanded towards other games such as multi-table tournaments, and sit and go’s, which are single table tournaments. We’ve tried to offer the highest quality content in whichever games we’ve expanded to.

That’s been the main way we’ve differentiated from the rest of the market. Quality.

What is one thing most aspiring entrepreneurs are doing wrong that is holding them back?

They view risk incorrectly. They make all of their decisions based on trying not to lose – which is often the suboptimal strategy if your goal is to win. For example, instead of creating a monster business that will help them achieve their goals, they try to create little mini sites so they don’t risk anything.

If they have big goals, they guarantee themselves NOT to hit their goals, because they’re so emotionally caught up in not taking risks. The "risks" are actually less risky for them but because of the emotional response most people have to decision making, they often fail to realize this. Their emotions tell them to fear the downside, as opposed to listening to their logic which would tell them to also factor in the upside.

If they take the “risk” and succeed, they can accomplish a big goal. If they don’t, they may avoid “risk” in their mind, but they also avoid any chance of real success. Avoiding a road that could lead to success, just to avoid risk, is how most people make their decisions.

That’s a lot riskier in my opinion.

You’ve just launched a blog — http://foreverjobless.com/ — how did that come about? Do you have plans to enter other industries with membership sites based on the success you’ve had?

I wouldn’t mind doing a membership site again at some point. I like the membership model, because if done right it can be extremely good for your business, and your customers. For your customers, they don’t have to keep looking for new things that they want/need each month, they’ll already have it. For you and your business, you don’t have to re-sell people each month. They’re already there, and already paying you every month, so sales stay very consistent each month as long as your offering is good. It’s also substantially more passive than other businesses, assuming you’re doing it right.

There’s one niche in particular I’ve thought a lot about going into for a membership site, but haven’t gotten inspired enough to make the time commitment it would take yet.

In the long term, I will probably get involved in another membership site, because I like the model. There are definitely a lot of markets that have unfulfilled needs, that a membership site would work perfect for right now. They’re either not being offered, or they’re being offered, but offering a low quality product. If someone reading this wants to fill one of these markets, just spend a crazy amount of time doing whatever you have to do to put out the best service or product that could possibly be offered. If you do that, it will make it very hard for you to not be successful.

We are actually in the process of experimenting with a subscription-based business with one of our e-commerce stores. We just ran a little test the other day to see if there was interest, and we had some people sign up. So, we’ll do a beta launch and see how it goes. If it’s something we think we can grow into something a lot bigger, we’ll put more of our focus around that than the one-off sale side of the business for that store.

I’ve got my plate pretty full though. Along with BlueFirePoker, I also run a large number of niche e-commerce stores, along with now blogging at Forever Jobless. Right now I’d like to dedicate a decent amount of time to Forever Jobless. I’m really passionate about it.

As to the first part of the question, I started Forever Jobless because I felt there was a huge need in the ‘make money’ blog space –The fact that almost none of the ‘make money’ bloggers know how to make money — That’s a pretty glaring hole in the market.

Most people who know how to make money, don’t blog. Most people who blog, don’t know how to make money.

There’s a few exceptions, but for the most part, people are just regurgitating what they read. Then, they’re selling products to people. The only people that buy from them are people who aren’t aware they’re not learning from someone who knows how to make money. So, all of the people who don’t know any better are learning from people who don’t know how to make money, and then the process is being repeated. Those people are then starting up blogs, regurgitating what they’ve heard, and selling that information. So, there’s just a bunch of people out there who don’t know how to make money making a living teaching people how to make money. Pretty mind boggling.

ViperChill and Forever Jobless might be the only blogs in the ‘make money’ space without a bunch of banners all over the site trying to sell shit.

Why?

We don’t need to make a dime on the blogs to make a living. Most bloggers do.

That’s the flaw in the market.

There’s obviously nothing wrong with people selling things on their blogs. However, a lot of them NEED people to buy their shit to survive. That’s a flawed model if they’re teaching people how to make money, and if people don’t buy the stuff on their blog, they’re broke.

My motivations are different than most ‘make money’ bloggers. I enjoy helping people learn how to make money. It’s extremely fulfilling to have someone say that you’ve had some influence in helping them succeed. So far that’s been limited to a small number of people. I’d like to change that. Also, I’m doing it because I enjoy meeting other entrepreneurs, and it’s probably one of the most efficient ways to meet a huge number of entrepreneurs in a short amount of time. If people see the things you’re doing, and think it’s interesting, they’ll reach out. Without sharing what we’re doing, a lot of those people would never know who we are, and we’d never connect with them.

A lot of people are providing products or services because they want to make money off of them, not because they’re offering something of value. That’s where most people get things confused. Don’t go into blogging, or business, or anything else unless you plan to add value for people. If the reason you’re getting into something is just to try and make money, you’re doing it wrong. If instead, you’re getting into something because you think it can add value to people, you don’t have to worry about trying to make money with it, it will come because it’s something people need/want.

You didn’t launch OptinSkin because you heard other people were making money with plug ins and you wanted to too. You did it because you saw a gap in the market where you could add value. As a result of you adding a ton of value to the market, I’m sure that a lot of people bought it, and it brought you a good amount of money. I use OptiSkin on ForeverJobless.

Why?

Because it adds value to something I’m doing.

That’s how successful entrepreneurs go about things. They focus on what other people want, not what they want. Funny thing is when you focus on what other people want, you get what you want too.

Making money is an easy game if you do it the right way.

I just wanted to personally thank Billy for the awesome value he provided here, and have no doubt he’ll be sharing a lot more of it on his new site, Forever Jobless. I’m sure he’ll be checking out the comments here so feel free to ask some questions if you have any, and I hope you enjoyed the post!

P.S. No more 3 month gaps in posting. The next one is on Thursday

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