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How Jeremy Schoemaker Became “Internet Famous.” Video Tip
When I interviewed him, Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker told me that the reason he’s “internet famous” is that he writes like the regular guy who learned how to make money and is willing to tell other people how he did it.
He said, “I’m just a regular dumbass. I used to be 400 pounds, $50,000 in credit card debt, and yet I was able to do it. I’m not charging you anything. I’m just showing you how to do this.”
(Shot at Blog World Expo thanks to Rick Calvert, who I interviewed on Mixergy.)
Why Does John Chow’s Personal Site Make $30,000+ Per Month? Video Tip
John Chow has been saying that the reason his site keeps growing is that he gets his readers to subscribe.
As you’ll hear in this video, he’s a big believer in aweber mailing lists. His success with mailing lists is one of the reasons why I interviewed Justin Premick, aweber’s instructor about how to build and grow a mailing list.
(Shot at Blog World Expo thanks to Rick Calvert, who I interviewed on Mixergy.)
Do You Text While Driving? - The Laurence Gonzales Interview
Suppose you’ve been texting while driving, and it never caused an accident. Wouldn’t you start believing that it’s safe?
What if you had a few close calls but you managed to still avoid accidents. Wouldn’t that reinforce your belief that you’re safe?
Of course, you’d be wrong. It’s not safe. And your past success is making you stupid.
Haven’t you seen similar examples in business?
To learn why we make such seemingly obvious mistakes and how to avoid them, I interviewed Laurence Gonzales, author of Everyday Survival, a book about “Why smart people do stupid things.”
Download this interview to get insight into how your mind works.
Right click to download the podcast interview
Community Before Cash - The AJ Vaynerchuk Interview
Over the past year, bloggers and entrepreneurs have studied Gary Vaynerchuk so they too could build killer online businesses and maybe even become famous.
AJ Vaynerchuk has been studying Gary since he was a little boy. Now AJ is using many of the social media techniques that his brother developed to build PleaseDressMe, a tshirt search engine. I interviewed him to see how those techniques could be used to grow a startup.
Here’s some of what I learned. (Download the full interview for much more.)
Community Before Cash - I asked AJ over and over about making money and being rich. He clearly has a business model for PleaseDressMe and revenues are coming in, but he kept telling me that cash is not his focus right now. It’s all about building the community.
Answer Every Email - Years ago I sent Seth Godin an email and got an instant response. I couldn’t believe it. He’s a guy who’s running business and has a large fan-base and he responded to my email right away. It was a personal touch and it won me over. Gary has given speeches about responding to every email. Now AJ does the same thing at PleaseDressMe. Test him if you want.
(Listen to this interview that I did with Mark Hurst to learn how to rip through your emails quickly.)
Make It Sharable - The first time I went on PleaseDressme, there wasn’t much on the site–but every single tshirt had a “share this” button. If you want people to talk about your site, you need to make it easy for them to share it. I don’t know why bigger sites like the GAP don’t have “share” buttons on their clothes.
Use Every Social Site - Did you see the video I did with Ted Murphy? He said the same thing. Let your audience talk to you on any site they want. AJ tried doing live videos on ustream and his customers gave him an idea for selling more tshirts.
Give Bribes Gifts - AJ gives people a chance to win free tshirts if they become fans of PleaseDressMe on Facebook or if they message his site on Twitter or if they participate in his community in some other way. We talked about this technique a little at the Mixergy Viral Forum. It seems to be an under-appreciated, but powerful catalist for community-building.
Shock Customers With Service - AJ links to tshirt sites that don’t pay him a referal fee. If you can’t find a shirt on his site, he might Google it for you and send you a link to another site. He shocks people with customer service. Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com’s CEO, told me how he built a billion dollar company on this kind of customer service.
Right click to download the FULL interview
Tips For Successful Online Marketing - Ted Murphy CEO of IZEA
I asked Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA, for tips on successful online marketing because he’s running a well-funded company that specializes in social media marketing.
His tips:
- Participate in every single social network that you can.
- Be very active on other people’s blogs.
- Be active on your blog.
- Keep producing content
(Shot at Blog World Expo thanks to Rick Calvert, who I interviewed on Mixergy.)
Do you have any other tips for marketing online? Add them to the comments.
How to Increase Conversions - The Olivier Chaine Interview
To learn how to increase conversions, I spoke with Olivier Chaine, the CEO of Magnify360. I knew he’d make a great teacher because his company is in the business of increasing conversion rates. Magnify360 offers a software-as-a-service platform which enables Web sites to adapt in real-time to the behaviors of individual visitors
Download the full interview to hear more, but these are some of my notes from the conversation.
You know so much more than you realize
Olivier showed me that even if a user has never been to your web site, you can still predict what will appeal to her. You can tell, for example, if she uses a Mac or PC. If she uses a Mac, you might make your page look more cutting edge. If she uses a PC, you might make your landing page look more official.
Other things you can easy know include: time of day, where your user is, and what she did just before she came to your site. If you take each of those factors into account, you can deliver the perfect pitch to each user and increase your conversion rate.
Why should anyone do anything?
You need to give people a compelling reason to take the action you want, or they won’t do it. I asked Olivier to look at CauseCast.org and tell me what they could to increase conversions. After complimenting them on their use of celebrities and user testimonials, he noticed the registration process and wondered why anyone should register. He suggested they give a strong, clear reason to join and more people will register.
Check out how goodreads does that on their homepage.
You want people to tell you all that?!
Another way to increase conversions is to ask fewer questions. We looked at qtask.com. Olivier loved their use of images, but when he saw the registration form, he said it might overwhelm users. Also, the optional fields aren’t clearly marked “optional” so the form seems even longer.
Do you know any ways to increase conversions? Add them to the comments!
Right click here to download the interview
Robert Scoble On Building a Personal Brand
5 Steps to Becoming a Networking Superstar - The Peter Pham Interview
If you want to know the value of having a good network, take a look at what it’s done for Peter Pham’s new company, BillShrink:
- Networking helped him find a co-founder who is a former venture capitalist.
- Networking helped him land a top creative director without having to pay a recruiting fee.
- Networking helped him get an adviser who successfully sold a startup in the industry Peter wants to dominate.
- Networking helped him get his business funded.
Here are 5 of the steps he took to become a networking superstar. (Listen to the full interview for more.)
Go where they are - To get hooked into the web startup community, Peter went to tech events. He met his co-founder at the very first event he went to, the TechCrunch party in Michael Arrington’s house.
Once isn’t enough - Even the shiest networker can start building contacts by consistenly going to similar events. People start to recognize you and relationships naturally develop.
Everyone knows the host - After going as a guest to a few events, Peter switched roles and started hosting his own dinners. When you’re a guest, you get to meet a few people at an event, but the host gets to know everyone.
Tap their lists - To broaden his guest list, he co-hosted his dinners with two other connections: Mike Jones, CEO of userplane and Keith Richman, CEO of Break.com
Watch it grow - Word started to spread about his small dinners and people started asking for invitations. So Peter and his co-hosts created bigger events. The most recent one had over 150 guests. There’s even a web site, now betasouth.org. It’s a “.org” because the goal to make connections, not profits.
What are your networking tip? Add them to the comments.
Right click to download this interview
How To Grow An Email Mailing List - The Justin Premick Interview
When you signed up for Facebook or Twitter, did you start using it right away? Or were you like me and only started becoming an active user after getting a few emails for the company to remind you that you have an account and helping you get acquainted with it?
I’ve noticed that many of the most successful online companies–and many well-known bloggers–understand how to use email well. To learn what they know, I interviewed Justin Premick, a teacher at aweber, an email software company.
Here’s some of what I learned about growing a mailing list:
Understand why: Most people don’t understand the power of email marketing so they don’t make growing their list a priority. If you have a good mailing list, you can ensure that you’ll reach your audience–if you don’t, you never know if a user liked your site but never came because because he forgot about it.
I don’t even see it! One reason that users don’t join mailing lists is that they don’t even see where the registration process is. During our interview, Justin and I went hunting for the email registration form on a company’s web site and we couldn’t find it.
“Why should I?” Most people don’t say, “I want more email.” They say, “why should I register?” So you have to give them an incentive to join your list. When Justin looked at my site, he said I didn’t give people enough of an incentive to register and suggested I offer special interviews just to people who register.
Location, location, location: Justin told me that one thing successful list growers do is put their registration processes in multiple locations.
Do you know any other ways to grow a mailing list?
Right click here to download the full interview!
How “Talk Like A Pirate Day” Became A Sensation - Interview With The Founders
Ahoy, me hearty!
Have you noticed how every September 19, people around the world start talking like pirates and web sites start writing like pirates? It’s called “Talk Like a Pirate Day,” and it’s gotten so big that it was even celebrated on the International Space Station.
I wanted to find out where it started and how it spread, so I could learn how ideas take off. That’s why I interviewed the two founders, John “Ol’ Chumbucket” Baur and Mark “Cap’n Slappy” Summers. Here’s what I learned from them.
Random & fun: This was the most disturbing aspect for me. I like to think that everything can be planned. If you listen to my interview, you’ll hear me constantly ask for the techniques the two founders used to grow their movement (that’s what I do). And they keep telling me there was no business plan. It just happened.
Simple publicity: The only formal publicity they did was email humor columnist Dave Barry. They told him how one day on a raquet ball court they started talking like pirates and that their friends thought it was so cool that they too started talking like pirates. They asked Barry to run with it and he did.
What trademark? I think a key reason that Talk Like a Pirate Day spread is that Baur and Summers allowed anyone to run with it, no limits. You can sell tshirts, call yourself “the official” this or that of Talk Like a Pirate Day, or do whatever you want with the concept without asking their permission. That opens people up to creativity and helps the idea spread virally.
You can be uptight: Another reason the “holiday” spread so fast is that anyone can do it. You just have to toss an “Ahoy!” or “me heart!” into your conversation and that’s it.
Why do you think “Talk Like a Pirate Day” spread so widely?
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