Unfortunately, in my business, I get called in a lot when web design projects aren’t going like they are supposed to. People who have jumped onto the internet bandwagon, bought a site, or had one built, and aren’t getting what they wanted from it.
These are the things that I’ve experienced with my clients, and you ought to run screaming (well maybe just run) in the opposite direction if you hear these words spoken. And for sure, you should put your checkbook away and save your money.
Your blog is the most personal thing you will ever show the world.
Present anyway you want, most of the people who see it will never see you. If your blog’s job is to promote you and generate revenue, then you are going to meet people. Via phone, email, or in person.
James Hibberd reports in The Hollywood Reporter that CBS is now producing a second television show based on a twitter feed. This one is Shhdontellsteve, and is purportedly a guy tweeting his roommate’s comments on everything.
And, it is funny.
Steve’s Mom “friend-requested” him after seeing The Social Network. Steve: “Should I deny her? Or can I let her sit in friend request limbo?”
10:41 AM Oct 4th via web
CBS TV Studios and Katalyst will produce the project. Andrew Waller and Mike Gagerman are the writer-supervising producers. Ashton Kutcher, who has an astounding 5.8 million followers on the popular social media site, and his producing partner Jason Goldberg, along with Karey Burke are executive producers.
The first “from twitter feed” show “$#*! My Dad Says”, was launched last week.
Perhaps, in the 90′s, when I first published (June 21, 1998, Laloba Press went live) it didn’t take much to be found in the search engines and to get traffic. And to make money on the world-wide web. (Our favorite fantasy!)
In those early years, I had a couple of gigs that went to really impressive numbers of hits in a hurry; Aerosmith.Mu being the highest trafficked website I’ve ever built (1,000,000 hits a week when I pulled it down – long story, different post; but I’ll tell you, those Aerosmith people didn’t buy a thing. NO income from that site even with all that traffic. I did have great seats at concerts in Boston and Atlanta for years though.)
My GeorgiaMortgageMoney.Com website got a lot of attention, good traffic, and supported my family for about ten years. At one time it got the attention of a mortgage lead generation website conglomerate who considered buying it for their use. (Great gig if you can get it, selling websites to the big guys.)
But back to my point, that whole “Field of Dreams” philosophy is a pipedream. Even in the nineties we had to do SEO, we had to get listed in those places that people looked, and we had to have something people were actually looking for.
The number of websites listed on Google grew from 26 million in 1998 to one trillion in 2008; now, in 2010, the number of pages estimated on the web is infinite* (and growing by the day).
For about a year I made good money – $500 to $1000 bucks a month just selling for Match.com. Don’t try this at home. They changed their affiliate payout and my income went to zero. I killed that site. I should have revamped it for another personals site, but, honestly, I was sick of the whole personals thing.
The entire time GeorgiaMortgageMoney.Com was live (10 or 12 years) I made about a grand a month off one advertiser – a guy selling information on personal lines of credit. He changed his payment plan too, so he’s not getting any press here. It was my only ad – I was making money from the mortgage applications the site brought in, but that one ad paid all my expenses.
And there are authors who are pulling in $100K a year off their blogs. But it isn’t like the money rolls in while they sleep.
In the movie Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean is asked, “What are you rebelling against?” To which he answers, “Whattya got?”
So, I’m asking you, “Whattya got?”
Pretty pictures? Great flash?
No-one will discover a flash site without a name like Versace or Chanel and even those sites will make you nuts with their introductory movie and inability to really get information. Click on a link for information on the Versace Unique mobile phone, and you get a form to fill out, not information. And then they’ve got your phone number and email address . . . I’d expect more from Versace, and they have that dreadful techno music that is going to blare over anything you might have chosen to listen to on your own.
How about a cookie-cutter website for real estate agents, mortgage people, or even dog-sitters?
Those “website-in-a-box” themes that let you add your name, address and phone number aren’t going to bring you business unless you work them, and if you leave the text they came with, Google is going to consider your site spam for using the same text as the other 10,000 sites that look just like yours in different colors.
You have content.
Please tell me you have content. I don’t care if it is your personal Gay Pride rant, or your answer to Arianna Huffington, you have content and it is yours. It isn’t some other article you’ve seen and rehashed, it isn’t one you’ve plagiarized with some tricky software to steal other people’s work, and it isn’t one that is blatantly the RSS feed of someone else’s website.
You have to work at being found: you have to work the SEO, the social media angle (Facebook, Twitter, et al) and create a community with which you interact. And while you work to get your twitter followers above the number ten, and the people who get your feed in the thousands, you wonder if it is worth the struggle.
May I remind you of just a couple of bloggers who have gone on to other successes. The two that come to mind are:
Julie & Julia
A woman decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s cookbook, and blogs about it daily. Goes to a book. Book? Book, movie, I’m surprised she’s not on a walking tour!
And then, a movie, by Jove. I’ll admit, I had NO interest in the blog or the multitude of books. I watched the movie, and while the Julia portion was wonderful(!) the Julie part could have been left on the cutting room floor.
But, do you think Julie Powell minds? I certainly would not. I’d take a book deal or a movie deal on any of the blogs I write on, and laugh all the way to the bank bad reviews or no.
Jen Lancaster
Our gal Jen wrote a blog (www.jennsylvania. com) which someone decided should be a book. I read it, “Bitter is the New Black” , and while some of it was funny, most of it was just plain mean. Evidently that works for NAL, which is part of PenguinGroup. And apparently she has arranged and rearranged her blog several times over, producing a new book every now and then . . . or taken snarky things she’s written since the first one was published to create the new ones. She’s turned into a veritable industry of . . . bitchiness.
Interestingly, jennsylvania isn’t so bitchy lately. I don’t really believe what she says, in that I don’t believe she means it after having read her first book, but maybe it is a good thing for her karma to be putting nicer words out in the cosmos.
With those two success stories, you should realize that YOU can do anything.
Lady GaGa and Tom Peters in the same post? It seems like the perfect match to me.
I’ve just finished Tom Peter’s book, “Brand You” and if anyone has taken his advice and made it her mantra, it would be Lady GaGa, The Fame Monster.
Brand You, was originally published in 1999, and I’ll admit I may be behind in my reading. But it is fresh and new to me, and still topical. After all, aren’t each of us working to promote ourselves at whatever we do, or whatever we want to do?
If you know of Lady GaGa, you know she has created a persona that almost everyone recognizes, whether they care for her or not.
[pullquote]I’ve just discovered GaGa, too, in my usual, sideways, circuitous route . . . I’ve seen photos of her outrageous costumes and heard of her latex clothes, which seem to be talked about a LOT more than her music. I don’t have a taste for latex, and the red veil sort of put me off, so I didn’t pursue intimate knowledge of l’gaga.
Looking for something to watch on hulu, since I’ve seen everything netflix has to offer, I watched an episode of Glee and it happened to showcase the fame monster. I immediately hit YouTube, and fell in love with this woman.
I like the songs, I like the video, I love the name, The Fame Monster.
[/pullquote]
Tom Peters has written numerous books on self promotion, his latest being “The little BIG things; 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.”
And, they all are in the same voice. Be really, really good at what you do, and be really, really,really good at letting the world know you’re good.
Hence, the Fame Monster/Tom Peters connection.
In Web 2.0 parlance, this would mean that you
have developed a community
engage your audience
interact with your community
ALL the time.
and, as a “Fame Monster” you are actively engaged in promoting yourself in some or all of these fame machines:
Your Blog
facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube
Article writing
email marketing
newsletters
free reports
If not, I hope you’ll become a regular here . . . sign up for the newsletter, get the reports, get the RSS Feed. I want to help you in your quest to become a Fame Monster! And the best Brand You ever.
And for fun, heres l’gaga. Bad Romance . . . Reportedly the MOST watched YouTube Video of all time: Total Views: 238,152,814
Read “Dirty Little Secrets of Buzz: How to Attract Massive Attention for Your Business, Your Product, or Yourself ” by David Seaman and then, when you realize that doing everything in that book will be a full time job, come back and get professional help here.
Ten years web design, graphic, authoring experience. We will design your website start to finish. We will design your WordPress site with the Thesis theme framework and you won’t believe your eyes.
Unfortunately, in my business, I get called in a lot when web design projects aren’t going like they are supposed to. People who have jumped onto the internet bandwagon, bought a site, or had one built, and aren’t getting what they wanted from it.
Your blog is the most personal thing you will ever show the world.
