Writers Aren’t Wired for Marketing

I don’t know about you, but I love words. I love poetry and literature and great letters. I loved being an English major in college. And I’ve always considered myself a writer and editor before anything else. It’s been that way long before the internet existed. But I also love the times we’re in, when an average person like me can make an extremely lucrative living on the web from this thing called “content.”

You gotta problem with content?

As it pertains to making a living online, content is the stuff you need to get people hooked on your site so you can sell them things. In most cases, content is nothing more than written words—articles, blog posts, ebooks, reports, etc. Here’s the problem: [Read more...]

Why Mainstream Publishers Can’t Make Money

Looking around the web, I’ve noticed two types of publishers—private and public (these are terms I coined myself).

The Private Side

Private publishing puts marketing first. It treats content as commodity—like an ebook or a free report or even a blog that drives people to opt into a list. The list is where the magic happens: suave but automated relationship building that push sales of affiliate products in a given niche. When done right, private publishing works. It rakes in huge profits not because the content is good, but rather good enough. By this I mean the content serves as the tool (aka weapons of marketing) for selling other products rather than serving as the product itself. [Read more...]

Why Bloggers Matter to the Publishing Industry

What makes a blogger? A penchant for the rant? A crowd hustler with sticky offers? A spirited journalist, an observer of life, a thought leader? And what about the rest of us, scratching hard to make (not even a) living? Is it all for nothing or is there a future for us? The answer is absolutely. The titanic publishing industry is mobilizing, and we need to upgrade our strategy.

The Myth of Make Money Online

For the obscure blogger aspiring to the privy rank of ‘problogger,’ chances for commercial success are [Read more...]