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An Ebook On Birds Made $500,000?! The Bob Dunlap Interview
(Can’t see video? Try it on YouTube.)
When Bob Dunlap of ClickBank told me that one of his clients made $500,000 last year selling an ebook about how to attract humming birds to your home, I had to interview him.
ClickBank helps you sell digital media (ebooks, audio, etc) online. I asked Bob to teach us how we can earn money by selling online. Here’s some of what I learned. (Download the full interview for much more.)
Go one niche deeper
Many of the people I interviewed on Mixergy have told you to find a niche–target bird-lovers, for example. Bob says go one niche deeper–target humminbird-lovers. ClickBank has found that getting more precisely will help you increase sales. So, instead of selling products that help your customers get fit, for example, show them how to get tighter abs.
Target the news
When gas prices rose, ebooks about how to get better fuel efficiency were hot sellers. When the dollar lost value, digital media on foreign exchange strategies made money. If you want to sell online, bob suggests trying the digital media that you sell to what’s going on in the news. (As Sean Percival explained in his interview, that also helps increase traffic.)
Recycle your content
After looking at Mixergy.com, Bob thought a good product for me to sell might be a compilation of my past interviews. Repackaging your content can be an easy way to start bringing in revenue. Matt Mickiewicz of SitePoint told me that’s how his company starting making money.
Court affiliates
Your site has a limited audience, so your direct revenue is pretty limited too. But if you tap affiliates–people who sell your product and earn a commission on what they sell–you can reach unlimited revenue. Rosalind Resnick told me in her interview that affiliate relationships helped her grow from a small home business to a successful, publicly-traded company.
Do you know others tips for selling digital media online? Add them to the comments.
Right click here to download the interview.
Seth Godin On How To Build And Lead Your Tribe.
Exclusively for Mixergy.com, Christel Hyden shot video of Seth Godin’s live presentation of the ideas in his new book, Tribes.
You can watch the video on Mixergy, or download the audio of it (below) and listen on your iPod/iPhone/etc.
Since, Godin gives a top-level understanding of how to build your community, a good followup to this presentation is my interview with Max Alexander about the tactics of creating groups.
Want to see more videos like this? Click here to tell me on Twitter.
Recap of Mixergy Lunch 2.0 in Orange County, CA
For more pictures, join our Facebook page.
We recently did the very first Mixergy Lunch 2.0 in Orange County, CA. Thank you WunderMarx|PR for hosting and bringing the internet community to your office.
If you want to be invited to future Mixergy events, get on our invitation request list.
Social Marketing Techniques - The Jason McVearry Interview
Within minutes of posting on twitter that Mixergy.com kept crashing, about a dozen people suggested that I drop my current Web hosting company and switch to (MT) Media Temple. Wouldn’t you love to have people champion your brand like that?
To learn how (MT) did it, I interviewed Jason McVearry, the company’s partnership director. Here’s some of what I found out.
The subtle influence
(MT) hosts web sites that internet companies consider authorities. If you look at sites like TechCrunch and Mashable, you’ll see the (MT) logo. In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini said that authority is one of the most powerful persuasion tools because it’s so subtle. Without feeling like they’re being sold, people instinctively follow authority.
In person
I kind of pushed Jason about this point. I wanted to understand why a tech company would spend so much money to fly its people to events. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to use online ads to acquire customers? He helped me realize that the reason people bond with (MT) is because they’ve seen them at conferences or had a beer with them at an event.
Sponsor
I saw the (MT) guys at the TechSet party at BlogWorld. Their logo was up on the wall and they were being ushered around like rock stars. Sponsoring events has its privilages.
Bring the brains
Most companies seem to send their sales people to conferences. These are the guys who know how to buy you a beer and smile, but they don’t know squat about the product. Jason told me that his company sends passionate tech people out to events. If you have an issue with your site, they’ll give you some live tech support over a beer.
Pictures From Mixergy’s Drinks Event With Sun
Click to see the full event pictures:
Want to be invited to future Mixergy events? Request an invitation.
Thanks Sun! And thank you to everyone who came.
By the way, if you’re a startup, check out what Sun’s Startup Essentials program can do for you:
http://www.sun.com/emrkt/startupessentials
How Blogs Helped The Four Hour Work Week Become a Best Seller - The Timothy Ferriss Interview
I’m sick of the usual interviews with Tim Ferriss, which waste time arguing over whether it’s possible to work four hours a week. What I want to know is how Tim got so many people to talk about him and his book, The Four Hour Work Week, and how he made his book into a New York Times Best Seller.
So I called him up and did my own interview. Here’s what I learned.
Blogs and radio
Before he published his book, Tim called successful authors to find out how they promoted their books. He discovered that the two most effective tools were blogs and radio–and radio was losing its influence. So he pursued bloggers
Least crowded channel
All the methods of connecting with bloggers were loud and crowded. Email is the most crowded. (Maybe because most people haven’t listened to my interview with Mark Hurst.) In-person, he says, is the least crowded channel. So he went to events that let him connect with bloggers face-to-face.
The messenger, not the message
Tim realized that building connections was about getting people to care about him, not his message. So he didn’t promote himself. He just got to know people by asking questions.
Robert has a mob around him
Blogging celebrities like Robert Scoble have mobs of people around them at events. (Here’s why.) Tim didn’t push his way in. Instead, he got to know the people around the celebrities–like Robert’s wife.
Being “trendy”
Alana Semuels, tech writer at the LA Times, taught this at the Mixergy PR Forum. She said that reporters don’t care about your company nearly as much as they care about trends. So when you want publicity, pitch a trend that includes your company. When Tim tapped into his blogging connections to promote his book, he didn’t pitch the book directly. Instead, he pitched a trend–people are outsourcing more and working less–and said that his book explains it.
Business Suggestion From Timothy Ferriss. Video Tip.
Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week, suggests that you take the skills that you’re good at and determine exactly what steps you take to perform those skills. Then put it on paper so you can create systems and delegate those responsibilities.
“ShoeMoney” On How To Be A Successful Blogger. Video Tip.
Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker says that you won’t be successful at blogging unless it’s something you love so much that you can’t wait to get up and do it.
What do you think it takes?
New Event: Mixergy Drinks With Sun
First drink is on Sun!
When: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 from 06:00 PM - 08:00 PM (PT)
Where: Nikki’s - 72 Market St, Venice, CA 90291
Real Entrepreneurs Get Back Up. The Mark Jeffrey Interview
I asked Mark Jeffrey for an interview because I knew he’d be open with me about the periods in entrepreneurship when things fall apart and you feel like there’s no way out. Mark helped launch 4 startups, including SuperSig, which was a disaster and Mahalo, a rising star.
Network by evangelizing
In the mid-90’s, Mark was just another guy working at Time Warner, but he loved the project he was working on, an avatar-based chat community called “The Palace.” He evangelized it to anyone who would listen, that’s how he made connections with people in the industry.
He knew that a behemoth like Time Warner was no place to grow an innovative startup. So he tapped his connections and got Intel and Softbank to buy pieces of The Palace and let him grow it. Within 3 years of launching, The Palace was sold and Mark was a superstar entrepreneur.
“There’s no joy in my life”
His followup venture was SuperSig, a service that let users personalize their emails’ signatures. Raising money was easy because he was a superstar and the dotcom market was hot. But then the dotcom bubble burst and he lost his investors’ and his own money.
He remembers telling his partner at the time, “There is no joy in my life right now except when I’m asleep.”
SuperSig closed down, but he fought till the end. When it was over, Homer Luther, Mark’s investor, sent him a note congratulating him for fighting long after everyone else gave up. If you’re ever in Mark’s office, ask him to show you the note. When you read it, you’ll feel the pride of putting up a strong fight.
The bust made us better entrepreneurs
I’ve interviewed a few entrepreneurs here on Mixergy who told me that the dotcom bust of 2000 made them better entrepreneurs. In Mark’s case, it taught him to cut costs to the bone.
His next startup was ZeroDegrees, an early MySpace. He launched it with ZERO outside investment. He ran it lean and sold it to InterActiveCorp. It gave him a big victory and financial freedom.
Today he’s working on his latest startup as the CTO of Mahalo. If you listen to the interview, you’ll notice that he’s as proud of the way it’s capitalized as he is of how cool a company it is. I feel like our generation of web startups was improved by the bubble’s burst the way the World War II generation was fortified by their reaction to the Great Depression.
“Being broken in half allowed me to write”
Aside from being a better entrepreneur, going through the dotcom bust helped Mark start writing books.
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