by Comm, Joel
Comments are one way for your readers to communicate with you and to share their thoughts with other members of your community. It’s social media, though, that’s really made the difference for publishers trying to turn their users into a community.
The three most important sites for an Internet publisher are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Each site has its strengths and each serves a different purpose.
You’re probably already using Facebook to keep in touch with old friends and colleagues. Once you launch a web site, it’s worth creating a Facebook fan page for your site, which acts just like your regular Facebook page. You’ll be able to use status updates to tell people when you’ve published a new post. You’ll also be able to create discussions on topics that are important to your community. Most of all, you’ll be able to see who is reading your posts, and they’ll be able to see you. That helps to create a much more powerful connection between you and your readers and between your readers themselves.
LinkedIn is similar, but it has a greater emphasis on business relationships. You should certainly create a profile for your site and your business on LinkedIn if you’re going to be publishing anything related to commerce, but even sites dedicated to passions rather than professions should be using LinkedIn. It’s another useful link between you and your community.
I use both of those sites, but these days I use Twitter even more. In fact, I even use a special application on Facebook that lets me send my Twitter updates to Facebook so that they appear as status updates (Figure 2.3).
Figure 2.3 Twitter helps me to build my personal brand and talk directly to my community, but look at what else I’ve crammed into my Twitter page: sponsored tweets, announcements, personal updates, links to blog posts, URLs, and plugs for my products.
For a publisher, Twitter can be like lifting the curtain and taking your readers backstage. While a blog post is carefully crafted and researched, a Twitter update can be spur of the moment. It can be something as important as an announcement of a new product release or as simple as a description of what you’re having for lunch. Each of those posts helps bring you a little closer to your audience.
Because your followers on Twitter can also write to you directly and publicly—and receive a reply—that relationship becomes personal. I don’t think there’s a more powerful community-building tool than Twitter—and its benefits don’t stop there.
You can also use one of Twitter’s widgets to post on your blog tweets that you’ve written, tweets that have been written about you, and even tweets that have been written about your topic. That’s valuable and dynamic free content. You can set up your RSS feed so that it feeds into Twitter, letting people on the site know automatically when you’ve posted new content. And you can include affiliate links and ads that let you earn money directly from tweeting.
It’s a hugely valuable tool that can act as a strong glue holding your community together.
Once you’ve built that community, you should find that you’ve given your site the kind of foundation that will keep it secure in the long term.
The Seven Keys to Success
In this chapter, I’ve tried to demonstrate two of the most important conditions of online success. In fact, they’re the two most important conditions of success at whatever you do:1. Do what you do best.
2. Do what you love.
When you’re doing both of those things, I think it takes a special effort not to succeed. The pleasure and satisfaction that comes from doing what you enjoy will keep you going even when the success you really want still seems far away.
When you’re working in a field about which you know more than most, you’ll have the assets that deliver the returns.
That’s all very simple, and it makes choosing a topic for an online business—and then a more valuable subtopic—a very easy decision. It also makes building a community around your site very smooth. You’re going to be interacting with people just like you, people with the same interests, concerns, and goals. That’s like working every day with the sort of people you’d choose as friends. How many workplaces does that describe?
Those two principles are the foundation of success, but there’s a little more to it than that. As I built up my business from a single site with computer game reviews into a multi-million-dollar company, and after speaking with dozens of other successful Internet entrepreneurs, I’ve come to recognize seven keys to success. They develop from the same starting point. You still have to focus on what makes you unique and what makes you happy, but once you’ve done that, you then have to do the following.
1. YOU HAVE TO DREAM
All the entrepreneurs I’ve met had a dream. Actually, they had lots of dreams. In some of those dreams, they were lying on the beach in Cancun with the surf lapping gently against their toes and threatening to wash away their piña colada.
But that’s not the dream that moved them to set up their own business. A dream of material wealth, comfort, or a certain lifestyle is fine. It might be something to aim for in the distance. But it’s a destination. It’s not the engine that keeps you driving forward.
That’s the dream of doing what you’re passionate about.
Even lying on the beach can get old. It might take a little while, but you will eventually start to think of another trip to the sea the same way you think now about going back to the office after a weekend off. It’s why retirees with condos in Miami still keep a hand in their old business and sometimes do a little freelance consulting on the side. If you enjoy your work, why stop?
That’s the dream. If you were living that dream, each morning you’d leap out of bed ready to seize the day. Most people, of course, don’t leap out of bed each morning. Most people aren’t doing what they were born to do. If you’re not following your passion—if you’re not building your dream—then sadly, you are one of those people, at least for now.
Identifying your dream and following it aren’t always easy, but it really shouldn’t be that difficult. Most people have more than one dream and more than one passion. After I had turned my love of computer games into a successful web site, I turned my attention to something else that gave me pleasure, and still does... shopping!
Yes, I admit it. I don’t just get a thrill from hearing a KaChing telling me I have money coming in. I also get a thrill from hearing the KaChing that tells me I’m spending money—especially when I’m buying something on sale. So after creating WorldVillage.com, I launched DealofDay.com, a site that helps people find bargains. The site gets over 25,000 visits a day and continues to grow.
Since then things have gotten better and better, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I believe that when you’re doing what you were born to do, the path unfolds right in front of you. It might not be straight, and it certainly won’t be bump-free. But it’s yours; it takes you where you want to go, and it feels right.
Nor will it be the only path you take. Passions change over time. I started with a passion for computer games, and I still enjoy playing. But my mission is a lot bigger now. We grow and mature and change.
Today, whether you’re taking your first steps and have yet to hear that first KaChing, or whether you have been online for a while and just want to know how to take in even more money, ask yourself whether you’re doing what you love. Launch a site about your biggest passion and just see how much you enjoy building it.
Don’t worry about the money. Do it for fun. I think it’s inevitable that when you do enjoyable work in an environment that’s as fertile and rich as the Internet, the rewards grow on their own.
2. YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE
Once you’ve identified your dream, you have to believe it’s the right one.
You have to believe that your life has a plan and a purpose. That belief can take a number of different forms. Personally, I believe there is a God and that He has a plan for my life. Regardless, you have to believe that what you’re doing is right—and right for you. With a belief and a dream, things start to
happen.
But they don’t always happen in quite the way you want. Businesses have ups and downs, and there will be times when your belief is tested. That certainly happened to me when I was starting out.
When I began building a web site, I had an investor. He provided $25,000, allowing me to quit my job and prepare to make my first million. By the summer, I had $1.37 left.
Things really weren’t looking good and I had every reason to think that I should be doing something else. But I was certain that this was what I was supposed to do. I knew it.
I believed it.
Within a week I received an e-mail from a man in Seattle. I’d never heard of him, and I’d certainly never heard of the Japanese multimedia corporation he said he was representing. His e-mail said that the company wanted to license some of my web site content and localize it for the Japanese market.
I figured that would be worth a couple hundred bucks a month. Before I could say anything, he offered me $5,000 a month. We upsold him to $7,500 a month, and out of nowhere the company was saved.
You could say that was just dumb luck. But I don’t think so. If I hadn’t believed that I was doing the right thing, I would have given up long before that e-mail came in. When you believe that you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing, things happen. You stick to it and you work hard, even when the quitters would have long since given up.
If you want to be successful, you have to believe that there is a plan and a purpose in your life. Forget about what your friends say. Don’t listen to your relatives if they try to change your mind. You have to believe the truth: that you have a path. Once you’ve found it, you have to keep doing it.
3. YOU HAVE TO PREPARE
Dreams and beliefs are mental things. But to achieve success you have to break a sweat, too. You have to prepare.
Before I became a mobile DJ, I researched equipment. Before I give a talk, I prepare the slides. And before I create a new product, I examine what people want from it and what I need to do to find the up-to-date, practical information they need.
I prepare.
Whatever the subject matter of your web site, you have to commit yourself to having the latest knowledge on your topic. You have to understand how the field ranges, who the important influences are, and which topics are most in demand.
It’s a process that takes time—and that’s why it’s so valuable. The information that you’ll be offering through your site allows the people who read it to skip past some of that learning stage. Whether you’re a professional plumber or an amateur photographer, your expertise is the result of years of practice and experience. That’s an asset, and the next stage of the preparation is to understand which parts of that asset are the most valuable and how people most want to receive them.
Preparation means investing in yourself and in your success. It’s a fundamental part of that success.
4. YOU HAVE TO ACT
Preparation is essential, but it brings a danger. I’ve come across plenty of people who buy the books, do the conferences, talk the talk ... and yet never accomplish anything. They suffer the “paralysis of analysis.”
You can never feel prepared enough. There’s always more to learn, more to read, more to test. Preparation is all about answering questions: How much are the keywords in that subtopic worth? What happens if I put a different ad unit here? How many people really bought that e-book? How much did they pay for it, and how would my own differ? Every answer brings up three more questions.
Eventually, there comes a time when you just have to act, ready or not.
Back in 2006, I teamed up with my friend Eric Holmlund to create an online reality television show. We wanted it to be something like The Apprentice, but focused on Internet marketing. In each episode, a group of rising entrepreneurs would be set a task related to one aspect of building an online business, and the worst-performing candidate would be eliminated. The idea was simple enough, but the implementation? That was another story.
Eric had dabbled a little in film production—although nothing on this scale—and it was all completely new to me. We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. We spent months doing the research. We had to know what the program should include, what sort of people we’d want on it, what sorts of tasks we wanted to give the contestants, how to distribute and market the finished program, and of course, how to raise the funds and bring in revenue. It was a massive undertaking that took a huge amount of time and effort.
At some point though, we just had to dive in and see if we’d sink or swim. We swam.
I wish I could tell you it always works out that way. But it doesn’t. Not every action will bring success. Entrepreneurs take risks. You have to be willing to put yourself out there, and you have to learn to fail fast.
Failure to take action is usually a result of FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real. It’s what happens when you believe a lie, when you’re afraid of what might happen. You overcome fear when you take action.
5. YOU HAVE TO RELATE
There’s a reason that I mentioned the value of community building so early in this book. It’s vital to your success, and it’s very easy to forget.
Being an entrepreneur, especially an Internet entrepreneur, looks like a lonely business. When you’re starting out, it will be you, your computer ... and that’s all. Maybe you’ll send e-mails to contractors—copywriters, designers, and programmers. Maybe you’ll make the odd phone call to explain in more detail what you need, but you won’t have the kind of face-to-face meetings that cement relationships in brick-and-mortar businesses.
That will be fine ... for a while. But if you want to succeed-really succeed—it can’t stay that way. The Internet, like every industry, is still about relationships. I found that out myself in the best way possible.
By 2005, I had written the first version of my AdSense e-book, a guide to all of the strategies that had worked for me in using Google’s advertising program. The e-book sold a lot more than I expected, and I was looking for the next level. Both my wife and my friend Jeff Walker suggested going to Armand Morin’s Big Seminar in Los Angeles. That didn’t sound like a good idea to me. It’s true that I had given AdSense a second look only after seeing someone’s results at a workshop, but I’m really not one for sitting in a lecture hall and taking notes. In fact, I’m not really one for sitting at all.
But I listened to their advice and showed up. I discovered that I was already a celebrity of sorts. People knew about my book, and because my picture was on the web site, they knew who I was, too. I was part of a community and I didn’t even know it!
The people I met at that conference have helped me ever since. They’ve told me about strategies that would have taken me years to discover and learn. They’ve introduced me to their audiences, as I’ve introduced them to mine. They’ve inspired me, taught me, and enhanced my understanding of every aspect of online business building. The relationships that I’ve built with the people I’ve met at conferences and workshops might well be my most valuable asset of all.
Forget about competition. There’s enough to go around for everyone. Make contacts. Build friendships. Provide value without expecting any payback. In time, you should find that those investments in human relationships pay you back in spades.
6. YOU HAVE TO USE MODELS
When you’re looking to enjoy success, you want to enjoy it right now. You can’t do that. Unless you win the lottery, wealth—and the freedom that wealth and success bring—come only as a result of investment of time and effort. Still, there are things you can do to reduce the amount of effort and time you need to invest.
One of the most important—and a vital aspect of your preparation—is looking at what other people have done.
There’s very little that’s completely new in the world. Growth tends to happen incrementally rather than in giant leaps. When someone else has achieved success, there’s nothing wrong with looking at how they did it... and copying them, adding your own uniq
ue touches.
Once I’d achieved success with AdSense, I was happy to share what I’d learned so that others could do the same thing. It’s a pattern I’ve followed myself, so it’s only fair to give back.