I’ve decided to start doing these “what I learnt this week” posts, I’ve never seen it done although I’m sure there are several people doing it somewhere in the blogging space. This isn’t one of those silly commercial blog posts, these are real lessons that I’ve learnt that will be of value to some of the people that read this. I love to give credit where its due, so I will (usually) acknowledge the person who taught me the lesson. This week I’ve kind of summarised the points from the interview I did with Danny Iny and the interview I did with Ryan Critchett. I’ve included any other lessons I’ve learnt in here as well.
Let’s jump straight in!
1. Nothing is Push Button Money, heck I knew this, just wanted to reiterate the point! Something that I discussed with Danny Iny and Ryan Critchett. There is no easy solution. If someone makes $30k a month are they going to sell you their secrets for $37!? NO! There’s no substitute for hard work!
2. People are far more important than figures - its better to get 50 regular visitors per month than 500 visitors who visit once and never return. Don’t just look at statistics, these are real people! If you’ve got loads of unique visits to your blog but they are not returning, what are you doing wrong? Not posting often enough? Posting too often and quality is suffering? Danny and I discussed this inthe interview.
3. Just because someone has a smaller presence than the “gurus”, never immediately choose the “gurus”. This is also something I discussed with Danny and Ryan. As Ryan said, sometimes the guru’s may merely represent a marketing message, and as Danny said, it is easier for them to close sales vs a person with a comparatively small online presence. A guru already has the money, the status and the reputation, but this doesn’t always mean that they will bring out the best products. Just look at Danny Iny, he may not be as well-known as some of the guru’s, but his product, knowledge and content is second to none! I truly learnt so much from our interview.
4. The importance of engaging with your blog readers - This was something that I talked about with Danny. To be honest, for the unique visitors I’m getting, I should be getting more blog comments, its something that I’ll be working on. It’s vital to engage with your readers.
5. Mathematical models work in theory, but not always in reality. - Danny said this when he was talking about viral content. If you share content with three people, it doesn’t automatically go viral. Maybe one out of three people will share your content, and none of their friends will. If you don’t give people incentives to share, unless your content is uber-cool they probably won’t share it. It’s like when I see some “guru’s” say “Well, you only need ten opt-ins per day to make $3,000 per month.” If you’re not getting one opt-in per day, how can you suddenly get 10, that’s like 300 per month! How many people do you know that get 300 opt-ins per month on ANYTHING!? If you break anything down enough, you can make it sound easy in theory. Did I tell you about the new Ferrari? It’s only 50 dollars a day (FOR TEN YEARS!)
6. Have your own opinion on things - Ryan and I discussed this, it’s important to have your own style and opinion, be yourself when you blog. Trying to be someone else will only backfire on you one way or another.
7. People love honesty – It’s better to be honest, have fun and have some personality! Don’t take yourself too seriously! Yeah, not everyone will agree with everything you have to say, and that’s cool. Remember, you can always be honest without being offensive (well, nearly always!)
8. Be wary of changing your strategies! - Something else that Danny and I discussed at length. Alot of people starting out in business have the “shiny beacon” syndrome, always trying to find the next best thing. In the wise words of Danny: ” You’ve got to just pick one strategy and stick to it, to the point where you can track and measure what’s working. Be very hesitant to change strategy before you have reached this point.” It is important to be both consistent and persistent in whatever you do. Stick to one thing and see it through. If it doesn’t work, then try something else, just be sure to give it enough of a shot.
9. Track your data - Ryan puts heavy emphasis on tracking data. I think that it’s a very intelligent approach. How can you know the outcome of something and if it has been successful if you haven’t tracked and analysed the results, and maybe compared it to other tests?
10. Never record Skype calls with Camtasia Studio! - Enough Said!
No comments:
Post a Comment