Comments on: Do You Seek Influence or Income? http://wordful.com/influence-income/ Content marketing, branding, entrepreneurship and writing Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:02:21 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: How to Be a Successful Writer and Publisher: The Best of Wordful.com http://wordful.com/influence-income/comment-page-1/#comment-1969 How to Be a Successful Writer and Publisher: The Best of Wordful.com Wed, 06 Oct 2010 02:23:31 +0000 http://wordful.com/?p=688#comment-1969 [...] Being a poser may work in the short term, but trends don’t last forever. You have to discover the foundation of who you are before people can give you praise and money. [...] [...] Being a poser may work in the short term, but trends don’t last forever. You have to discover the foundation of who you are before people can give you praise and money. [...]

]]> By: John Bardos http://wordful.com/influence-income/comment-page-1/#comment-791 John Bardos Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:58:14 +0000 http://wordful.com/?p=688#comment-791 This post outlines the problem that most of us are struggling with online. We don't want to degrade the quality of our content with a snake oil salesman's pitch, but at the same time we want or need to make some money online. Promoting ourselves on our own blog and on sites like Twitter, can make many people uncomfortable. We don't want to feel like we are hawking some pyramid marketing scheme to defraud people out of money. Yet, we need to sell. I think the main problem is that we are selling ideas, and that basically means we are selling ourselves. Few would have a problem selling a table or cup we made. Physically things have tangible and clear value. Ideas on the other hand are relative. We expect to pay around $20 for a physical copy of a book, that comes with massive amounts of editorial influence, design, and promotion plus all the countless hours the author has spent writing and editing. At the same time we frequently come across self-published ebooks that can sell for prices at many multiples of a typical book. There are essentially no publishing costs and the content has faced much less editorial scrutiny, yet we charge more than a professionally published book. It feels like we are abusing the relationship with our blog readers even if the content is top notch. This post outlines the problem that most of us are struggling with online. We don’t want to degrade the quality of our content with a snake oil salesman’s pitch, but at the same time we want or need to make some money online.

Promoting ourselves on our own blog and on sites like Twitter, can make many people uncomfortable. We don’t want to feel like we are hawking some pyramid marketing scheme to defraud people out of money. Yet, we need to sell.

I think the main problem is that we are selling ideas, and that basically means we are selling ourselves. Few would have a problem selling a table or cup we made. Physically things have tangible and clear value. Ideas on the other hand are relative. We expect to pay around $20 for a physical copy of a book, that comes with massive amounts of editorial influence, design, and promotion plus all the countless hours the author has spent writing and editing.

At the same time we frequently come across self-published ebooks that can sell for prices at many multiples of a typical book. There are essentially no publishing costs and the content has faced much less editorial scrutiny, yet we charge more than a professionally published book. It feels like we are abusing the relationship with our blog readers even if the content is top notch.

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