Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn

I have a confession to make: I abuse social media.

Not because I spam it… or… at least… not because I spam it because I’m greedy or lazy.

No. My abuse stems from a different source. I lack time.

I lack the time to participate as a proper contributive member of social media. And then I complain about the poor quality results I find in my favorite social news sites.

I’m the worst kind of social media abuser: I participate solely for my own promotion, and then expect the site to somehow work effectively without my genuine input as a contributive member.

Here’s a list of the abusive things I do:

1. I vote for stories without reading them. I know I shouldn’t, but I know I need to vote for other people’s stories because I want to seem like I’m an active member. I’m not really - I don’t have the time to be.
2. I sometimes vote for every story. Heck, that gets my name in front of everyone, and it seems like I’m spreading love - not just spreading myself. Which is what I am really doing.
   
3. I submit only my own stories. Never anyone else’s. I’ll vote for other stories sure… but… I’ll never submit them.
4. I collude with people who think how I think. Or at least, people who pretend to be like me.

I do more things than this. But these are the main things I do that come to my mind.

I don’t really feel guilty either. Why should I?

Business is hard. Even when the money is flowing in, there’s more problems then when there is NO money flowing in. There’s always an employee out of line, a project running late, an adwords campaign that’s failing, a competitor one upping me in the serps.

There’s always something else I could be doing that would bring me more money. And an easier life.

Sometimes I think that I should focus on giving… and I want to… and if the day comes where I’m far enough ahead - I will…

… I definitely will…

(Can you recognize someone else in there? Maybe even YOURSELF a little? I know I see some of myself in there… maybe not all of it, but some of it…)

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Is it just me, or do the Sphinn users seem to vote up stories depending on who submitted them, instead of the actual content inside them?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for community participation and rewarding those who take the time to contribute to the community by voting for their stories. However, I’ve read several things on the front page which frankly make me scratch my head wondering why they are there in the first place.

I’m not going to link to the stories, because it’s not the authors fault these stories are getting so much exposure - and in any event I’m glad for anyone to get their hard work rewarded - even if it’s not up to my personal expectations of “important news”.

At the same time, I start to devalue resources when I begin to see collusion (either implicit or explicit) and I was regarding the Sphinn homepage as a short cut to important news, or great insight.

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Make sure you watch THE ENTIRE video:

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Just because I care: Get it here.

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This weeks winner is… dum dum dum…

Mihaela Lica who writes a very interesting and informative blog about SEO Web Design.

Mihaela came across my blog when someone submitted my article about “Why You SHOULD Buy Paid Reviews” to Stumble Upon. As you can see the comment Mihaela left didn’t neccessarily agree with what I wrote, however it was well thought out and argued.

If you would like to get an editorial mention and link from me, then make sure you write interesting, well thought out comments. Each Sunday I choose the best commenter of the week and give them some exposure.

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You’ve probably seen the youtube video of extremely gay Britney Spears fan “Chris Crocker” crying his eyeballs out and looking like a nut job while he defends Britney’s super poor performance at the recent VMA’s.

And I’m sure many people watching him have simply assumed that this new “internet thing” allows people to get instant celebrity status - and - give people who would never get any air time the opportunity to get in front of the nation.

This is a GROSS misconception. And it reflects an EXTREME ignorance of society at large about the internet.

First of all, let me educate you about a “life reality”. And that is to get noticed by more than a few people, you have to be noticed by SOME people. To get noticed by a LARGE amount of people, a BIG amount of people must already know who you are. To get noticed by tens of millions, millions must already follow you. (OR you must have access to someone who HAS a following and will promote you).

Chris Crocker spent SEVERAL YEARS building a fan base of followers on the internet. He produced content RELIGIOUSLY, and experimented with different shot angles, story lines, and emotional appeals. He might LOOK like a nut job (and personally his stuff isn’t my cup of tea), but he’ is one hard working, intelligent, calculated mofo. For real.

His earlier video’s often involved his Grandmother, and him doing little skits and stuff:

His style was fairly outrageous then, as it is now. But he cycled through subject matters until he hit something which worked well for him.

My reason for bringing this to your attention though is to get you to understand that creating a FOLLOWING is the hard and important work. Once the following is big enough, you’ll get traction, and good things will follow.

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Damn, I’ll probably catch some fire for this one.

Anyway, I’m sure you’ve probably noticed that most “Gurus” are always talking about why you should “give away what you know” as a front end.

Unfortunately though, many people who follow this advice ultimately fail to make the model work. So I want to discuss the pitfalls you face when you give away free stuff to your market, and then, discuss some of the best ways I’ve used to overcome them.

Let’s get started.

Here’s some problems the “give it away free” model runs into:

1. Because you don’t give away an affiliate commission (like you do with a paid product) no one that HAS the power to promote has an incentive to promote you. Why would they do it? Because they are such great people they want to promote you for free? 9 times out of 10 this is not going to happen. And in the back of anyones mind who you’ve approached to get some exposure for your “free” front end, is the thought that once you get known, you will monetize WITHOUT THEM… and… you probably will.
2. Why would anyone bother reading something from someone they’ve never heard of? Unless you’re already a perceived authority in your market, the market itself will not receive your offer with much enthusiasm. They are already exposed to the “Give It Away Free” Business Model on a daily basis - and - as such they are quick to ignore free offers from “wannabes” who currently flood the internet with a lot of content (some good, some not) attempting to get people to click on their affiliate links. Your free offer has the impact of ONE MORE single person clapping at a football game.
3. It’s time consuming as fuck. Sorry for my French but writing a well put together, well edited 20 page ebook would cost upwards of $1000 USD if you outsourced it. And the chances are that even with a GOOD writer, it will still fall below expectations, and YOU will end up doing most of the work.
4. Free front end information can become outdated quickly depending on the market. You have to constantly go back through your give away and update it. Which sucks.

There are more problems than this, but these are the main ones that I’ve encountered over the last few years. The free business model sounds so sweet (and makes so much sense when you first hear about it)… but… as you’ve seen is riddled with potential problems.

I wouldn’t be much of a badass if I didn’t have some solutions for you though.

So here’s some things I’ve discovered that “offset” the above mentioned problems:

1. Give away software. Software is not like information - you don’t need any credibility to get people consuming it. It’s like giving away a Swiss Army Knife. People can see the value if you just describe what it does for them. Also, market leaders are somewhat likely to promote your free software as they actually DO NEED cool stuff to tell their market about - and you can provide them with some easy value.
2. Blog without monetization. In this market, this is obviously what I do. And I do it because it creates several opportunities for anyone who does it: A) It teaches whoever reads your blog to CONSUME what you write. B) It allows you to exchange links and traffic with similar other blogs. By not having monetization you dramatically increase the likelihood that people will link to you and refer to you. C) It gives you an opportunity to brand yourself - not something to worry about until you have a large readership - but not to be underestimated all the same.
3. Create video. People will consume video much more than they will consume a written PDF. Video is much more viral as well - I’ve got a ridiculous video on youtube that has gotten over 80,000 views and took me 3 minutes to make.
4. If you want to give away written content MAKE IT SHORT. You’ll notice the PDF’s I give away from this blog are usually between 1-3 pages and no more. I get email from people though who tell me that my 3 page PDF gave them more value then the $47 ebook they recently bought.

There’s more problems and solutions then the ones I’ve mentioned here, but I feel this is a very good start to a problem that many people unknowingly face.

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I stumbled across this crazy article about a 17 year old high school girl who has done over $1 Million in adsense for her myspace layouts business.

It’s an interesting read.

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