Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn

Following a recent discussion about “Web 2.0″, I felt it would be a good idea to discuss the nature of social media itself - and break it into chunks that allow you to really understand one of the most successful social media websites built so far: Facebook.

One of the reasons I dislike the label “Web 2.0″ so much is that it’s FAR too general. And so is “Social Media” for that matter.

Social Media is not all alike by any stretch - different types of social media do different things. Some aggregate information, some produce content, some enable more personal and frequent communication between people, some replicate social experience and attempt to create venues in which users can interact with each other the same way they would in real life.

Also complicating the nature of social media further, is the nature of the social media members (or “society”) that enables the social media.

For example:

If the website produces content - knowing what motivations the content producers have for creating that content is very important - both as a user who needs to be discriminatory when reading the information, and as a marketer who may want to use the social media to gain a top social media users attention and therefore enhance market reach.

So let’s start by categorizing the most popular social media sites into two sub groups with their separate uses, based on the “output” of the website:

CONTENT CREATION AND AGGREGATION SITES - AS A MARKETER, LEVERAGING THESE INCREASE YOUR REACH AND POSSIBLY INCREASE YOUR CREDIBILITY

1. User Contributed News Sites - Digg.com, Reddit.com, Slashdot.org, Sumbleupon.com, Social Bookmarking - these news sites rely on their own users finding, summarizing, and then submitting and voting on particular web pages they find. These sites DO NOT produce content, however, they can be a tremendous source of traffic for a web page that receives enough votes from the individual news sites user base.

Motivation of the active submitting/voting members: Gaining a large network of fellow news submitters who will vote for their own stories when they submit them. People who regularly participate in news sites do so to further their own business exposure - a good example of how members network their way to the top of these news sites was written by Maki from DoshDosh.

Marketing Opportunities: Increase market reach enormously and very cheaply. Also it can be argued that by being seen on the front page of Digg or Slashdot you receive some extra credibility because of the implied social proof needed to get on the front page.

Marketing Problems: Networking into the path of top social media contributors is time consuming and has no definite outcome - anything could happen. Compounding the problem is that many internet users who read social media sites are doing it for the stimulation of an interesting story, and once they have their “hit of excitement” they never return to your web site.

2. User Contributed Content Sites - Wikipedia.com, Squidoo.com, Mahalo.com, Youtube.com - these sites rely on their active members producing hundreds of thousands of pages of content. Many people don’t realize that Google.com is also a user contributed content site - it relies on content producers creating content it indexes in a website that becomes a hub for the general public to visit. Obviously user contributer content sites are incredibly lucrative if you can make the model work - but that’s no easy task.

Motivation of the active content producers: Gaining traffic to their own website, and/or monetizing the content they write on the social site itself through contextual advertising programs such as Adsense. Some content producers are also highly motivated by recognition and prestige - like the wikipedia writers.

Marketing Opportunities: Like the users contributed news sites, the content sites have the capability to increase market reach enormously. Also, the content sites have a built in opportunity to pre-sell the website visitor on the website you are promoting, or, you as an expert. Being cited by Wikipedia as a source can both drive a large amount of traffic to your site as well as categorize you as a “trusted” site far more then your site being listed in the search results ever could.

Marketing Problems: Competition! Because of the potential upside of being cited as a wikipedia source, or being a top youtube channel - every man, every company, and anyone with an interest in increasing market reach is falling all over themselves to leverage this opportunity. Barriers to entry include ALREADY having market reach you can leverage to build your profile on these sites, as well as being able to afford giving away content that most people would have to CHARGE MONEY FOR to break even on the content creation in the first place.

COMMUNITY COMMUNICATION SITES - AS A MARKETER LEVERAGING THESE, YOU POSSIBLY DEEPEN YOUR ESTABLISHED COMMUNITY BOND

3. Social Chatter Sites - Twitter.com, Jaiku.com, Pownce.com - these sites allows users to micro blog about their everyday life.

Motivation of the active participants: To connect and chat with friends/family members, and follow along in the lives of “well known people” or celebrities.

Marketing Opportunities: To engage your followers more frequently, in a more personal way. This may result in higher take up of your offers from a group of people who may trust you more because they feel they know you more then they otherwise would.

Marketing Problems: Does not increase market reach at all. Only allows a closer relationship with customers and prospects you already have.

4. Socializing Facilitation Sites - Myspace.com, Facebook.com, Bebo.com, Friendster.com - these sites attempt to create a social environment in which users can express their own personality and interact with other users in way that resembles real life as closely as possible.

Motivation of the active socializer’s: To talk and interact with friends/family and possibly to make new friends. Interest groups are popular on these sites and resemble clubs in real life. Membership into these groups is often simple and straightforward.

Marketing Opportunities: Like the Social Chatter Sites these sites can facilitate a closer relationships with current customers and prospects through the user groups. These sites can also be a source of traffic if you develop an application that becomes popular.

Marketing Problems: Unless you’re monetizing Facebook/Myspace application or layouts businesses - these sites do not increase market reach. Facebook also reserve the right to steal your business if it becomes profitable for them to do so. Top marketers have also reported that users of these sites can be very resistant to marketing.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Content creation/news aggregation sites can increase your market reach and credibility, while social communication sites can be leveraged to increase community bond.

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I’ve been amazed at the extremely SHIT quality advice around on “how to get more blog comments” - and how to begin starting community conversations.

So in this post I’m first going to explain the different types of social structures that encourage blog comments, and then lay down an exact blueprint for getting more of the topical comments that help build awareness and word of mouth traffic about your blog (and business).

Last night I read FIFTEEN “how to get more blog comments” posts, and was disgusted to see that ALL OF THEM were COMPLETE CRAP. (Some of them were from people who should know better too.)

I actually feel that giving people rhetorical “be nice and helpful” advice is toxic - because people waste years of their lives trying to be nicer and more helpful then they already are - and never end up GETTING ANYWHERE.

So before you read on, understand that I’m NEVER going to suggest you get blog comments by:

1. Being MORE helpful.
2. Responding to any and all blog comments you get.
3. Being controversial (that’s such a vague fucking piece of advice, it’s right up there with “be more helpful”)
4. Asking for feedback (Puleez, if people don’t feel like responding, that isn’t going to change just because you ASK them to - telling people to ask for feedback is such weak advice it sickens me)

So SBJ, how DO you get more blog comments? Glad you asked!

First of all, let us examine some random blogs which already get a large VOLUME of comments:

• Shoemoney
• Bob Parsons
• Perez Hilton
• John Chow

If you visit these blogs, you will notice they get a large volume of comments. However, you may also realize these blogs get a VERY LARGE volume of traffic to go with those comments.

In fact, if you were to break down the visitor/comment ratio, you would discover that as a percentage, these blogs really don’t get many of their visitors leaving comments, or participating in community discussions.

Some do, but most don’t. My guess is it’s LESS then ONE PERCENT of visitors who leave comments.

So using these blogs as models for community conversations is actually a BAD IDEA. Also keep in mind that many of the people who leave comments on niche marketing blogs like John Chow, or Shoemoney are just doing it to try and get more exposure for their own blog and business.

And unless your blog is perceived to get a similar market reach of Chow and Shoemoney, you won’t get people motivated to leave comments on your blog to get themselves exposure - so don’t even bother trying.

No, to get topical conversations going we must understand WHAT MOTIVATES people to stand up in a crowd and say “here’s what I think!”

One of the luxuries I have as being a large list owner in several different markets is that I see the response rate for different types of messages.

I can change my message, I can play off of different emotions, and I can literally MEASURE the rate at people respond to what I send them.

An interesting thing I’ve noticed is that as a percentage, people are FAR MORE likely to respond to an email message then they are to respond to a blog post.

A blog post is very impersonal. It’s you talking from a podium to a room of people. People KNOW when they read a blog post that they are part of the crowd who is listening to you. And like a person in a crowd, they have a lot of social self consciousness to overcome when it comes to SPEAKING IN FRONT OF EVERYONE.

It’s amazing the rude “fuck off” messages people are happy to send through an email account - because the social environment allows them to act invisibly. The same person who sends “fuck off” email messages is probably extremely POLITE when the social pressure changes, but through the anonymity of an email account, that person will be as obnoxious as the social pressure they feel ALLOWS them to be.

A persons behavior is dictated by social pressure FAR MORE then most consumers are aware of. (I say consumer because it’s slang for “uneducated person who reacts to their emotions as if those emotions are REAL and follow what they FEEL unquestioningly”).

Until you are aware of the EXTENT to which your and my behavior is dictated by social pressure you will find it impossible to influence that behavior. Don’t be a naive idealist that says “people shouldn’t care what other people think” - people DO AND ALWAYS WILL care what other people think about them. It doesn’t matter why (and it’s evolutionary btw), just accept it as fact and move on to HOW do I use this to my advantage?

ADVANCED CONCEPT: It’s easier to to appeal to a persons fear then a persons self interest. People will do more to avoid pain then they will to gain pleasure. Hence it is easier to to make people internally UNCOMFORTABLE enough through a post which FORCES them to voice their thoughts - because NOT voicing them would actually cause them more misery then speaking in front of a crowd does.

Let’s look at some more blogs which get a lot of comments:

1. Standup101
2. BlueHatSEO
3. itsChrisCrocker (a youtube video blogger)

As you can see, these blogs have a very varied subject matter. But they get a LARGE PERCENTAGE of their readers RESPONDING to what they write (or communicate).

Now BlueHatSEO gets a lot of comments for different reasons then the other two - but I’ve included it because people who are very knowledgeable in their markets may be able to do what Eli does.

The comments BlueHatSEO gets are mostly clarifying questions. People want more information, and they are prepared to speak up so that they DON’T MISS OUT. They don’t want to look stupid, but Eli speaks with so much authority, in such a logical way that people are SURE he has an answer they NEED and MUST HAVE . They RISK “looking stupid” to avoid the bigger pain of MISSING OUT.

Lucy and Chris get comments for a different reason (and this reason is very accessible and replicate-able).

It’s NOT because they are controversial - it’s because they POLARIZE people’s CORE VALUES.

People have an internal set of core values - some of which they are taught, and some of them I believe they were simply born with. Their values are hardwired INSTINCTUALLY, through evolution.

Humans are empathic to others because we are pack animals. We live in large, organized, hierarchical, social structures. These social packs occur naturally because it’s how we’ve evolved as a species.

And when people have their HARDWIRED values challenged they FEEL THEY MUST RESPOND. Internally NOT responding causes them more pain and misery then speaking up in front of a crowd.

In fact, when it comes to core values, people want to share their gospel with everyone - whatever that gospel may be.

The key however (and this is where you MUST BE VERY CAREFUL) is to keep on topic. Attention for attentions sake is useless. You want organized, purposeful, useful attention.

I believe Chris Crocker will never be as financially successful as similarly infamous gay youtube video blogger William Sledd - because William Sledd has used his ability to polarize, around a TOPIC that clothing companies have a COMMERCIAL INTEREST IN.

William Sledd dishes out fashion advice in a very polarizing way - people love him or hate him. But, he keeps his focus directed squarely on FASHION. And thus garners a large conversation ABOUT FASHION - not about RANDOM CORE VALUES.

The key is to know what core values people have, and then play to those values in an ON TOPIC kind of way.

So let’s take a look at some common core value themes/polarizations, and then we’ll talk about how to use them TOPICALLY:

• HONESTY - TREACHERY
• GREEDY - ALTRUISTIC
• LOVE - HATE
• DISCIPLINE - SELF INDULGENCE
• HELP OTHERS - SOCIOPATHIC
• GET RECOGNITION - FLY UNDER THE RADAR
• UNDERDOG - ESTABLISHED CHAMPION

A powerful example of “Helping Others” was executed by Marketer Jason Moffatt a few months ago when he asked his readers to help a woman who was a fellow marketer, who had an abusive husband and had fled her home.

She was stranded in a shelter with no money. Unfortunately Jason has removed his post, but click on the link and read the comments which are still there - you will get a real feeling for what I’m talking about when you read through them.

The post received an enormous commentary both from people who wanted to help AND WHO WANTED TO VOICE THEIR CORE VALUE OF HELPING ANOTHER PERSON IN NEED.

Similarly, Buzz Marketer Dean Hunt received an enormous percentage of his visitors commentary when he tapped into peoples underdog feelings against the established champion (and big bully) Google. People don’t like dictatorial behavior and will stand up and voice their “fairness” values when an opportunity they feel strongly about presents itself.

YOU MUST GIVE YOUR READERS THAT OPPORTUNITY IF YOU WANT THEM TO RESPOND AND LEAVE COMMENTS!

But you must do it TOPICALLY.

Jason Moffatt was helping a MARKETER who other marketers could relate to.

Dean Hunt was giving the finger to Google’s treatment of small webmasters. Other small webmasters wanted to join him and voice their support for the cause.

So now you understand a few powerful ways to get blog comments… I’m going to ask you a TOUGH question:

Do you really NEED blog comments?

Here’s some well read blogs who make it impossible (or almost impossible) for you to leave them comments:

• Seth Godin
• Aaron Wall
• Ralph Tegtmeier

Of all the marketers in the world who would encourage marketing conversations - you would THINK that Seth Godin would be LEADING the pack.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t want your comment.

Why? This is what he says.

Personally though, I only think he’s telling you half the story in that post.

He doesn’t allow comments because he is EXTERNALIZING the marketing conversation. He knows if you can’t talk about what he writes on HIS BLOG, you will have to DO IT ON YOUR OWN BLOG.

This increases his blog reach dramatically because instead of a centralized conversation on the Seth Godin blog, he gets a DECENTRALIZED conversation about the Seth Godin blog all over the internet and blogosphere!

ADVANCED CONCEPT: It’s not really about blog comments - it’s about topical community conversations that directly or indirectly involve something YOU have said. WHERE those conversations take place is dependent on your “market brand recognition” and “market celebrity”.

The more social proof you have, the more people who know who you are, the more you should EXTERNALIZE the conversations that take place around you, your blog, your business, and your brand. This has a LOGARITHMIC progression affect on your market reach. Instead of the linear progression you get from simply allowing people to comment on your blog. Perez Hilton could increase his reach enormously if he didn’t allow blog comments.

However, if you have very little recognition, small reach, and are building things up - then allow comments and a centralized community to form around you - and then decentralize the conversation.

Remember that you don’t NEED a ton of comments on every post, and that subscriber numbers and subscriber RESPONSIVENESS is a much better indicator of your post quality then comments are.

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I don’t know John Chow or Shoemoney, and until recently I had never heard of either of them.

Anyway, I just read a post on John Chows blog that irritated the hell out of me.

It was called “When You Should Put Ads On Your Blog“. In it Chow argues that a new blog should be monetized from the “get go”.

Something that he didn’t actually do on his blog - but yet - he posts a strong opinion about it without really thinking about the evidence that may support or not support such a position.

Shoemoney for his part (now don’t get me wrong, I’ve read a few of Shoemoney’s posts now and can see he is very good at certain traffic/monetization exploits) also wrote about this in a post called “If You Don’t Place Ads On Your Blog Now You’ll Hate Yourself Later“. [edit update: apparently shoemoney does not suggest you should put ads on your blog before traffic - the post on his blog has been reported as a guest post]

And both Chow and Shoemoney cite themselves, as well as Techcrunch, and Engadget as reference points for WHY monetizing a blog from the beginning is a good idea. The fact that these guys and their reference points are already social proofed up the wazoo seems to have escaped them.

Let me say clearly: monetizing a blog that you spend time writing and promoting - with the intention of turning into an authority blog - from the start is a HORRIBLE idea.

And there are many good reasons for this - most of them I covered in my recent post entitled “Why Direct Response Blogging Is The Answer” - a post which made the front page of Sphinn, got Brian Clarks (author of copyblogger) attention, Woody Maxim (millionaire ex adult webmaster) posted about it, along with numerous shout outs that were emailed to me.

So read my post and then reconsider your blog market entry monetization strategy!

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I’m a harsh critic of Google, I don’t trust their business practices, and I don’t think they come CLOSE to living up to “not being evil”.

So I’ve just installed the new Google No Follow Plugin.

This Plugin puts a no follow attribute on all links to Google - it’s a way we webmasters can put a vote of no confidence into Googles business practices.

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This post is going to be a business analysis of a Standup Comedians blog, written by a very sweet girl called Lucy.

Lucy wrote to me a while back and told me how much she appreciated my blog, and asked me to come visit her blog and “tear it up” (or something to that effect).

She actually reminds me of myself when I was a young up’n'coming snowboarder. Ambitious, angry, wanting to “hit it big” by making a difference in the world.

Unfortunately, while you can make it by being Ambitious’n'Angry - I feel you are REALLY TYING YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR OWN BACK BY TRYING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

Business is about one thing: money.

Those who have not succeeded at business yet may vehemently disagree with me on that one. Likewise, those who have hit it huge may also disagree with me on that one.

But they would both be disagreeing for different reasons - and that difference is the reason why my point is so important.

Let me tell you a story about my Mom:

My Mom currently runs a very successful Consulting Business. She’s turned from an Academic Researcher and Lecturer into a great marketer and a very calculated business thinker. But she hasn’t always been as good as she is now.

A few years ago when she was starting her business she told me how much she loved being an entrepreneur - and how it was a “big adventure”. (She’s quite an adventurous person and loves to travel and do new things).

She struggled. She often did things in business that aligned with her sense of adventure. “Try this out, see how it goes, fly by the seat of my pants. ADVENTUROUS.”

She also likes helping people. Being helpful is a very high value thing to her and so she wanted to incorporate that into her business thinking and behavior. She figured: “sure I want to make money at this, but I also want it to be an adventure and really help people”.

So that’s what she did. And she struggled and fought and struggled some more. Eventually, over the years, she listened to what I’d been telling her - so much so that she reminds me of this lesson all the time and keeps me from straying off the path:

When your reason for being in business is anything other then money - you SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE the effectiveness of your business - so much so that it (or you) may NEVER end up succeeding.

This is because you are making micro decisions all the time - about: what you pay attention to, what you learn about, what your unconscious mind is problem solving and so on. These micro decisions SERIOUSLY IMPACT the net overall effect of YOU as an entrepreneur.

In poker, the only people who play in stakes where losing hurts for reasons other then making money are known as “fish”.

Maybe they do it for the “Adventure” of playing high limits - who knows? Who cares? All I know is that the probability of them beating me is almost zero - and that’s because my money motivation is so high that I know all the hand percentages off by heart. I know the chance of a pocket pair hitting trips on the flop is 7-1, and for me to call preflop and expect a long term profit I need to be getting 7-1 on my money, either by having 7 other players in the pot before I go in, or have implied pot odds of at least 7-1.

I know the minute mathematical details BECAUSE I WANT TO WIN MY OPPONENTS MONEY.

If I was motivated by FUN and ADVENTURE - I would never have the motivation to learn all the PAINFULLY BORING - but TOTALLY NECESSARY math you need to win at poker!

If I was motivated by BEING DOMINANT - I would also lose at poker. People who noticed my tendency for my ego to make my decisions would exploit me for it. They would PUNISH me for being motivated by anything other then money.

Focusing on Making $$ FORCES you to… guess what?…

BE A PROFESSIONAL.

The difference between an Amateur and Professional isn’t only that the pro gets PAID to be there - it’s that the pro’s ONLY REASON for being there is the money! Amateurs are in it for their own reasons, pro’s are in it to get paid.

This shift in mindset produces a VASTLY different result in your own life - it FOCUSES you like a LAZER on things you need to focus on to BECOME a pro at whatever you’re doing. Instead of screwing around trying to live a few of your values in business, you are focusing ONLY on things that increase your NET WORTH.

Look, I’m not saying DON’T HAVE VALUES - I’m saying - live those values outside of your business.

Getting back to Lucy I would say: focus solely on the comedy. I know you want to make a difference, and make people think after your shows - but - as a professional comedian your job is to make them laugh. That’s where the money is.

Go for the money.

In his book “Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting” Robert Mckee states that the biggest problem with up’n'coming movie script writers is that they write “anti plot, anti stories”.

What this means is that they try and write the Next Pulp Fiction, instead of writing the Next Forrest Gump.

Sure “s/he wins in the end, defeats a few problems along the way, gets the boy/girl in the end” stories are predictable - and so - screen writing students TRY NOT to write them. But Mckee points out that they’ll never be a professional writer UNTIL THEY MASTER THEM.

Mckee’s whole book is not just about convincing new screen writers that they must learn the craft of Single Protagonist hero stories - but - it’s a blueprint “how to” that reveals writing those hero stories is MUCH HARDER then it appears.

And that’s the next lesson: it’s not until you are solely motivated to make money in your business that you discover being a heartless entrepreneur like me is much harder then it appears

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This post is a definitive “how to” guide of direct response blogging.

It’s funny to me that no one I’ve seen who is well known as a “pro blogger” has written about blogging in the way I’m going to discuss here.

The Biggest Blogging Problem

Basically I think many people who have a blog struggle to make it work because they are not making their blog process “sequential”. They have too many actions available to the blog user, they offer the wrong action at the wrong time, and they “spend” their equity (which is their blog readers attention and willingness to take an action) on things that have a very minimal return.

In the past I have heavily criticized social media buttons, offering paid reviews (though I think buying them is a good idea), and “fancy” blogs that have a lot of bells and whistles. Clearly my blog is very simple and straight forward. And that is for a very good reason.

Before I get to that reason though, you should know I learned a lot about blogging from reading Eli’s Blue Hat SEO Blog.

You can see that I’ve borrowed a lot of my own blog’s “look and feel” from that site.

You should also realize that Eli is a great marketer - not just a great SEO. His blog is laid out the way it is for a very good reason. Do you think someone with Eli’s skills could not have a “fancier” blog with more “stuff”? Of course he could!

But he doesn’t because he is implementing a much more effective “direct response” blog - which is designed around how humans take actions when they: discover, like, want, and finally BUY something.

So before I go on I want to lay out the different (and specific) actions you can get your blog readers to take - these actions can be spent on what I call “currencies”.

Blogging “Currencies” - What You Need To Know About Them

Because you can spend actions on different things - not just “cash” - but other actions which can bring more traffic, more links, wider reach, higher authority, and so on.

In fact, until you have spent a lot of your blog readers actions on “currencies” OTHER then making cash, I think it’s a bad idea to attempt to make money from them.

This is because you want to reach a readership “critical mass” BEFORE you start monetizing. With a critical mass you will be able to monetize much more aggressively, with significantly higher conversion rates. This is because the more people who read and participate on your blog - the more “social proof” you have.

Social Proof is a type of blog currency you must be building at all times - though it is especially important to build your blog social proof as your NUMBER 1 priority when you first start your blog.

Social Proof does several great things simultaneously for your blog (and your future marketing):

1. It builds links. The more people who know about you, the more they will write about you (and hence link to you).
2. It creates topical conversations that are more relevant to large amounts of readers. The more readers you have the higher the likelihood that they will talk about what they are interested in - once you know their biggest area’s of interest you can become even more relevant then you already are. It’s an ongoing process that can never have too many readers involved.
3. It significantly increases the amount of weight your readers will give what you say. If after each post you have many comments thanking you for your great advice, then the more likely a first time reader is to perceive you as someone worth listening to.
4. It significantly increases the amount of bullshit your readers will put up with. If your social proof is big enough, and enough people see everything you say as GREAT then you can sell HARD to them - and they will forgive you for it even though they don’t like it. Selling hard without a large following is akin to being an arrogant jerk to the only beautiful woman in the room - you’ll only annoy her - as opposed to being an arrogant jerk in a room full of beautiful women - and you’re the only man. Feel the difference?
5. Social Proof is self building and self reinforcing. It’s a system that feeds back into itself if you nurture it, encourage it, and strategically grow it.

It’s important to realize that Social Proof doesn’t occur quickly, or easily.

Even with recommendations from people who already have large amounts of social proof in your market place - the market place will still be fairly skeptical of you and whatever you say.

Think about your assessment of me and my blog up to this point.

If you have decided that I’m knowledgeable and trustworthy at this point, ask yourself why that is. Is it because you heard from someone else that I was worth listening to? Or was it because you read one, two, three, or more of my posts and because they made internal sense to you, you decided I knew my subject matter rather well?

So, after telling you about all the great things Social Proof does I feel it prudent to also bring up Social Proof’s limitations, and make an important distinction.

Because Social Proof is not what it seems - indeed - there are two types of social proof. And they both do different things.

Everything I just talked about can be categorized as EXTERNAL social proof - social proof that is seen by others, as others are reacting to you and your blog (or business). That still leaves the next (and possibly more important) type of social proof.

IMPLICIT social proof.

This social proof is evident through a persons behavior - not through how other people react to the behavior - but purely the behavior as it is in a vacuum.

It is your perception of a persons behavior when you have no other gauge of what people think about that person available to you.

People like to call this “Confidence”, but confidence is a misnomer. It’s really social proof. But social proof expressed as an action taken by a person.

Let me illustrate this for you: when a man meets a group of women it would be advantageous for him to have a gorgeous woman on his arm (obviously) so that all the woman can see what type of women choose to be with him. However, if he then meets those women, and his BEHAVIOR does not fit congruently into the preconceived notions those women have about the type of man capable of getting a woman like that… then guess what?

The women will smell a rat.

“That must be his sister” they’ll say. Or maybe his hooker.

Either way, they won’t believe he is the type of man who could get a woman like that because after the initial EXTERNAL social proof, his IMPLICIT social proof (his behavior, communication skills) did not meet their EXPECTATIONS that would go along with what they’ve seen up till this point.

Make sense?

In the same way, your blog readers will not accept you as an expert (or authority) just on the “say so” of somebody else. Even if that person is an expert.

They also, will smell a rat.

This is where the power of being authentic comes into play.

Authenticity is a dangerous word because it’s not conventional authenticity in the context that I’m talking about here.

Because I’m definitely not suggesting you just “be yourself” - on your blog, in your marketing, or anywhere else for that matter.

You must CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE how to interact with your marketing at all times until you have internalized the principles into behavior that works without you having to think about it.

When I say “Be Authentic” I mean tell your unique story within the rules of Cialdini’s Principles.

For example:

• If you’re in the Poker Market and you don’t know much about poker, then tell a story like “Can I Make $10k Playing Free Roles In The Next Six Months?” - and report honestly about your losses and your lessons. Swear when you lose. Complain a little. Be HUMAN. Be as outrageous when you win as you would be with family members (don’t put that shit on, but be as out there as you would be around people you trust). That way, when people link to your blog and say how great it is, they will be met with something that fulfills their expectations.
• DON”T pretend to be an expert and rehash a whole bunch of advice that most of your readers have probably heard before. (Btw if you don’t understand the market, you don’t know what they do and don’t know - so everything you say will be incongruent with a REAL expert who would easily be able to pace their experiences)

The Setup I’ve Been Getting At

In reality telling a story is HARDER then putting bells and whistles on - it’s more involved, takes more skill, is less tangible, and is often invisible.

If you miss the mark with your story line - no one will know. You will simply be ignored.

However if you miss with a Bells and Whistles blog - you will still be ignored - but will be able to console yourself that at least you have a cool looking blog. The problem is that the cool looking blog SUPPRESSES the story you want to tell in the first place because it PREVENTS you from spending your attention/action currency economically and in the correct places.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that direct response “story” blogging is more powerful then “fancy” blogging at this point. So I’ll come back to the Currencies.

How To Maximize Blog Reader Action Economies

Remember if you’re getting your story right, you’re building equity in your readers.

They will become more willing to do things for you - the Cialdini principle of reciprocity comes into play.

The question is, what do you spend it on?

The first thing I would say is: try not to spend it on more then one thing at a time.

Direct response marketers have learned through bitter experience that a person faced with more then one choice is likely to do NOTHING AT ALL.

People like simple “Yes or No” internal questions. So if you’re leading them to complicated internal questions about what they should do next, they probably won’t doing anything, and WON’T subscribe to your feed, click and read another post, and so on.

However if the question process they ask themselves on your blog is “Does this headline make me curious?” - “Yes” - Click - “Does this next related post make me curious?” - “Yes” - Click… and after each story and post they have the option to Subscribe to RSS Feed - then you are much more likely to get them asking themselves an internal question about an action they can take on YOUR BLOG instead of about whether or not they feel like making a decision.

If you never get the reader past “Do I feel like thinking about making a decision?” then you lose an enormous action economy.

Give them LESS to do. And ask them to do it at the point they are MOST LIKELY to do it.

It sounds so obvious - but if that were the case I wouldn’t see so many blogs asking readers if the first thing they want to do is subscribe the blog RSS Feed.

By contrast here’s the process I use to get RSS subscriptions (and it’s worked rather well):

1. Write at least 10 high quality posts - you’ll probably need to write 50 posts to get 10 good ones.
2. Note which posts get the most links, most comments, most emails, and so on. Don’t go on stats alone - news type link bait-ish type posts will have great stats but may not be your best work - so use some intelligence as well.
3. Use the What Would Seth Godin Do plugin and DELETE the pre configured request for people to sign up for your RSS Feed. Instead list your 5 best posts of all time, and say that “these are the posts other readers recommend.”
4. Use the RSS Subscribe Remind plugin to ask the reader if they would like to subscribe to your feed at the BOTTOM of each post.

How To Categorize And Spend Your Currencies

Having a detailed plan of outcomes you want will help you execute this part of your plan - like the saying goes, “if you don’t know what your target is you’ll never end up hitting it.”

These are the types of non monetary equity (or currency) you can spend your blog reader actions on:

1. Links. Asking the reader to post about a post you’ve made. I do this all the time - I just don’t do it on my blog post itself. I email other people who own blogs and say “Hey, I love your blog and what you do and I’ve written a great post I think your readers would really like - I’d really appreciate it if you could mention my post on your blog, and in the future I’m happy to return the favor because I know you write quality stuff. If you’re not interested, no hard feelings I completely understand - thanks for taking the time to read my email and consider my offer. Cheers.”
2. Social Media Submits. Once again I go find top social media submitters and send them a very similar email to the one I send to other blog owners. Ask them for an action - they get to be an important news source if my post is good enough - and I get more readers. Everyone wins.
3. Bookmarks. From my experience (and observations) the only bookmarks I get in any worthwhile volume (and other big blogs that I’ve researched) are del.ico.us bookmarks. If you want to have a pretty social media button this is the only one I can really recommend. But because people who use del.ico.us often have the firefox plugin for it as well, it’s definitely NOT a must have.
4. Articles about your blog. I was astounded to discover that a guy who I have a TON of respect for (Wood Maxim - http://www.woodymaxim.com) had written an article about my blog and my mentality. I started looking into articles about other blogs and discovered that blog readers often write stories about blogs they really like. This type of social proof pre-sell on who you are and what you do is extremely powerful, as it grooms would-be-readers more effectively then anything YOU write ever could.
5. Resource Listings. The most successful single post I’ve made on this blog was the post about Blog Rush. And that’s because I emailed John Reese and asked him to use it however he wanted. He decided to link to it inside the Blog Rush members dashboard. By writing a post that was a great resource for a site like Blog Rush I positioned myself in a way that would attract a bunch more readers from a different source from the ones I already had - and gained a lot of traffic in the process - and a host of new subscribers and fans who email me stuff that makes my ego grow day by day.

A big SUPER COMMON mistake people make is trying to get their blog to AUTOMATICALLY achieve the things I’ve listed above - by giving their blog readers the OPTION to do this stuff on their own.

That approach just DOES NOT WORK!

YOU HAVE TO DO IT - and understand that your blog is a lot more like a passive fly trap then an active marketing strategy.

You are the active marketer - your blog is your passive “direct response” back up. That’s the reality even if you don’t want it to be.

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This is a short post about something I was discussing today.

(I have a proper post coming up in the next few days which will kick some serious ass).

Anyway I was talking to a business associate about how much I hate the whole “set a high level financial goal to motivate you and set you to figuring out how to obtain it”.

IMO this type of thing is Business Guru Bullshit that’s designed to get people hyped up about the amount of money they’re supposedly going to be making so that they’ll buy “Guru Products” that will help them get to that goal *cough* *cough*

Let me tell you about myself, and see if you can relate to my current beliefs about this topic.

I’m a type A personality. I’m already trying to be better then the best. Not for money, but just because I WANT to be the best. I want to be known and recognized as being the best. And I don’t just want people to think and say that about me, I actually, INTERNALLY, want to KNOW that I’m the best. Like 15000% KNOW there’s NO ONE better then me at whatever I’m doing.

I don’t need the pressure of “making $2 Million in 2 years” to make me want to train, study, implement, fail, question, get coached, ask questions, improve, and so on to be the best I can be.

In fact, having that tangible financial pressure has made me feel downright miserable at times in the past. Oh look, it’s one year later and I don’t have my first million, why am I so unlucky? Or AM I unlucky? Maybe I’m just really bad at this…

Truth be told I look back at a lot of my huge financial goals and my skill level at the time and I think “Man, I was really good for how long I had been picking up that skill - I really should have been high 5′ing myself for being as good as I was at that time.”

Instead I was questioning myself and feeling really shitty.

As a somewhat seasoned entrepreneurial vet at this point I don’t even care about financial goals any more.

Because wanting to have $1 Million, $100,000, $10,000, or $10 Million doesn’t INCREASE your ability to ACQUIRE that money AT ALL! If you’re a new entrepreneur, let me tell you, you don’t even have enough information to CONCEIVABLY UNDERSTAND how a $10 Million business functions. Wanting to have that much income won’t increase your brains ability to figure out how to get it - because your brain doesn’t even have enough pieces of the jigsaw required to put the picture together - never lone IMPLEMENT that picture!

In fact it only increases the likelyhood that you will SPEND some of your money (like consumers do) on GETTING more money! Which is totally crazy!

MYTH: You have to spend money to make money.

TRUTH: You have to RISK money for the POSSIBILITY of making more money.

REALITY: Unless you know the market, the media channels to reach the market, the expected ROI on an advertising spend, your lead gen conversion rates and so on - you’re acting like a consumer when you spend money trying to make more of it. You’re not risking money for the possibility of a higher return - how could you be? - you don’t even know what the numbers are! That’s not a risk! That’s financial suicide! And you’re a sucker the punters are hoping to make a profit on.

Sorry!

So the next time you hear someone telling you to write down the amount of income you want to receive and then tell you that you need to formulate a plan for getting that money - you RUN - because you understand that wanting the reward for a skill you don’t have, doesn’t increase your ability to get that skill.

And in fact it is quite possible you will become disillusioned in your efforts to acquire that skill if you’re doing it for the skills payoff - instead of for the sheer enjoyment of knowing you have the skill.

Okay?

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