Three years later, he jumped into full-time “entrepreneurship” (aka unemployment) and that was when things really started to take off!

Whenever he’s not eating or sleeping, he’s replying to emails, messaging the team or thinking about his strategy. More recently, he’s even started dreaming about Car Throttle – I know right, what a freak!

Running a business is all-consuming, but Adnan Ebrahim wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s currently running one of the fastest-growing internet car communities…

And in just over a year, CarThrottle has grown from less than 100,000 unique visitors per month to over 2.5 million.

They’ve signed exclusive deals with YouTube, have been featured in TechCrunch, DailyMail and Bloomberg, and are even backed by London’s most prominent investors including Passion Capital.

Quick Fire Questions

Book Your Currently Reading?

The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz

Best Business Purchase?

MacBook Pro Retina (for the 22 years prior, I was an adamant Windows fanboy!)

Favourite Business Resource?

The Car Throttle business bank account…

Biggest Inspiration?

Elon Musk – a true risk-taker and visionary. And he loves cars, so he’s basically faultless.

Favourite Business Website?

In the early days (2006, when I started my first blog), I was mainly inspired by the “probloggers” who had managed to turn content creation into a full-time living. Two guys instantly come to mind – Darren Rowse and Yaro Starak – whose sites chronicled their rise.

After leaving University, there were definitely some tough times. Eliminating the fear of failure was the single most useful thing which encouraged me to keep going. I basically asked myself “What’s the worst that could happen?” When the answer wasn’t death, I knew I was worrying for no reason!

The Best Thing I Did For My Business

Without awesome investors (specifically Eileen Burbidge from Passion Capital who sits on our board), I wouldn’t have been able to hire my amazing team. Without my team, I wouldn’t have been able to create such a fast-growing brand. Both have been equally as important.

How I Make Money

Finding our target audience has been absolutely crucial to our success. We’ve created a brand that resonates with young, 18-34, male car enthusiasts, and we know exactly where to find them online. Advertisers are willing to pay more money to speak to this hard-to-reach demographic. Find your niche and know what you stand for.

How I Work

A typical working day starts late and finishes late. With our HQ in London, this allows us to miss the worst of the infamous rush hour, and means we’re still working when our American audience starts to wake up.

As a team we’re constantly communicating, whether it’s on Slack, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, calls or via good old face-to-face conversation. As the official “jack of all trades, master of bugger all” hat-wearer. I spend the day talking to advertisers, touching base with our investors, bug testing, reviewing unreleased YouTube videos, monitoring stats, and making sure the ship is sailing smoothly.

I’m much more removed from the content creation process now, which is great, because others in the team are far better at it than I am!

The Day I Realized I Made It

As the team will tell you, I never think we’ve made it. It’s just not who I am. I’m always looking for more, thinking of ways to be better, and striving to hit the next goal.

But breaking 100,000 subscribers on YouTube was an amazing feeling of vindication as was hitting 1 million unique visitors per month. Check out this great guide showing how to make your YouTube videos interactive.

I Would Have Been Successful Sooner If…

It took us a while to find our growth formula; using Facebook as a distribution tool. But “what ifs” don’t exist in life and I prefer to look forward, rather than backward!

Thanks to the rise of internet publications, there are a huge number of emerging car blogs and social media ‘gurus’. All are aiming to become the next TopGear. Whilst it’s great to dream big (we certainly do), the most successful new media brands have an edge and a different angle that help them attract a different kind of audience.

Creating The Next Car Brand For A New Breed Of Digital Natives

Given the industry we’re in, we have a lot of fun.

Whether it’s reviewing the latest cars, attending glamorous launches, creating awesome videos or developing products which are instantly used by millions of users, working for Car Throttle definitely has its perks. And we can’t wait to see what the next year has in store for us!

The post Adnan Ebrahim – Creating Popular Brands For A New Breed Of Digital Natives appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

You’re Not Telling them Why

I know this sounds like fluff, but bare with me, it’s actually very important.

I’m constantly running into fan pages who are now using Timeline, but haven’t set a cover photo – that’s just lazy. There’s countless fan pages, Twitter accounts, and Pinterest accounts, with no bio whatsoever. If you don’t let people know what you’re about, how are they supposed to know whether they want to follow you or not?

I start with a Twitter bio, which might seem like a weird place to start, but it forces you to stay short, but sweet. Here’s my bio:

I teach expert knowledge and techniques to photographers, from beginners through to advanced.

It tells you exactly what I can provide you, without forcing someone to read some lengthy paragraph (which they probably wouldn’t). If this information isn’t included, then the page just looks naked to me, like there isn’t a human running it (we’ll get to that further down the page).

The same goes for when you ask people to click like in your posts, something as simple as ‘If you would like to see more content like this, click like below’ can work a treat.

You’re Not Making it Easy for Them

This was a struggle I had in the early days of ExpertPhotography. I couldn’t understand why people weren’t clicking like onto my fan page when I wanted them to, and then it dawned on me like a smack in the face; I wasn’t making it easy for them.

Asking someone to ‘Come on over to the fan page and click like’ isn’t exactly making it easy for someone to who may want to like your page, especially when some many other pages make it so easy. As soon as I installed the Facebook like box at the bottom of every post, and in the sidebar, I started seeing way more new fans.

I know the complaint, Facebook isn’t the most attractive widget, and it probably doesn’t fit in well with your design (this was a complaint of IncomeDiary), but needs must. Most people are used to seeing them these days, they don’t really ruin your design too badly.

You’re Not an Early Adopter

Oh wow, I wish someone had pointed this out to me. The importance of being an early adopter was lost on me when I first started, and I ignored a very important source of traffic, which now feels like throwing away thousands of dollars. The social network? Pinterest.

It was over a year ago when I was checking my Google Analytics and I saw traffic form some website called Pinterest, and I had a brief look, thought it looked good (but was clearly a website for women), and moved on. If I had jumped on board then, when the website was nothing (it’s now the third largest social network in the world, after Facebook and Twitter), I could have built an account which would probably be 100 times the size by now.

I liken it to claiming the Facebook fan page for ‘Photography’ when you run a photography website. If I was an early adopter, and got on board back then, the traffic I would see from Facebook now would be enormous.

Constantly check your Google Analytics for new sources, and see the content they’re linking to, and write more content like that. Not every website is going to be the next Pinterest, but once a year or so, there’s going to be a website that has the potential to drive lots of traffic to your website, and you need to jump on at the start of the wave.

You’re Not Encouraging Sharing

Sharing is caring, and that’s exactly what social media is all about. You want people to constantly share your content over their preferred networks, because that provides you with traffic and recognition. But for people to share, you really need to make it easy for them. You have to remind them that they want to.

The first thing you need to do is install some sort of sharing plugin, I use Sharbar on my website Mike uses Digg Digg on this website. I find that these bars work better than buttons at the end of a post, because they’re constant reminders to people, but you can decide for yourself.

Another thing you can be doing is actually asking people to share it. Something like ‘Sharing is caring, if you think others would enjoy this post too, please share it’ in your footer works really well. It adds a little bit of guilt to the reader who feels like they should be sharing it, and it reminds them that they can share it too.

Just ask, you may be surprised by the results.

You Don’t Post Frequently Enough

I get it, you might not have much content just yet, but that’s no excuse. I post at least five times a week on my Facebook, just to let people know I’m still there. Facebook in particular will vary the amount of people who see your content, dependant on how active you are. You need to make yourself known.

I post every day to Twitter and Pinterest, because although people will always see what you’ve been posting, you can get away with sharing more content, because that’s the norm. I probably post to Twitter around 10 times a day, and then always post any Facebook posts or Pinterest posts to Twitter too. I’ve never had complaints about too many posts and I have 11,000 followers.

Pinterest is a little bit different, because I post around 5 times a day, every day. Posting lots of good content here is encouraged, just be sure not to only post your own content, as this puts people off. Oh, and make sure you post at the right time.

You’re Posting at the Wrong Time

Check your Google Analytics, and see which countries send you the most visitors. If you’re anything like me, it’s the US and the UK. You need to time your posting so that is matches up with the right countries. I post on Twitter all day, but lets have a look at Facebook and Pinterest, which I post to at different times.

Knowing my audience, I post at 5pm UK time on Facebook, because I know that in England, people are finishing work, and in the US east coast people are having lunch, and US west coast, people are waking up. These are all key times to post to Facebook. You can post earlier on in the day, but it’s not usually as effective, unless it’s a really popular post.

Pinterest is a little bit different, because people seem to be using their accounts at different times. At times that annoy me, here in the UK. If you want to find out when the most popular time is to post to Pinterest is, you have to use Google Analytics. Make an Advanced Segment to include Pinterest and m.Pinterest traffic (mobile), and then only view that traffic. This will allow you to break down when your website is most popular with that source of traffic, because rather than looking at it on a day to day basis, you can look at it by the hour.

These are the times that I find to most popular on Pinterest.

So 3am and 8pm is when I should be posting to Pinterest, which is when I’m asleep and when I’m eating dinner. But that’s fine. I usually don’t sleep until very late, so I post right before I go to sleep, and allow other others to repin it, and I also at 8pm, no big deal.

Great information to know. If you would like to schedule your posting, try using Pingraphy.

You’re on Too Many Networks

Jack of all trades, master of none. I don’t know if that’s a british expression, but it means that you’re better off focusing on a few different aspects of social media, rather than every single social network available. Don’t spread yourself too thin.

I don’t use Google+ (still not entirely sure how it works), and I automate Twitter (except for replies), which frees up the time I need to focus on my top 2 referrers – Facebook and Pinterest.

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a notebook with a never ending list of stuff that needs doing in it, and there never seems to be enough hours in the day. Rather cover many social networks poorly, I made a conscience decision to only focus on the best networks in my niche.

Social media is only a small aspect of all the work that I do in a single day. The traffic can be good, but I need time for many other tasks too.

You’re Clearly Automated

Grr, this is a real pet peeve of mine. Yes, I’ve admitted to my Twitter being mostly automated, but there are exceptions to the rule. Firstly, even though Twitter doesn’t technically allow automation, it’s widely accepted by Twitter users, so long as you’re providing a service that they’re looking for. I have my human side of Twitter where I reply to tweets, and post from Facebook and Pinterest, but the automation lives on, and that’s fine.

Now lets look at when automation isn’t allowed.

Well, if you’re using a program called HootSuite, I’d go ahead and uninstall that now. When you post to a social network like Facebook, using any automated program, people feel an instant disconnect. Think about it, when you see ‘via HootSuite’ or something similar, doesn’t it feel like you’re talking to a robot and not a person?

People like to talk to other people, not robots. I see this mistake all the time, and I’m pretty adamant that people stop making it.

I have started to see some Pinterest automation software surface, and unfortunately it all seems to be Windows based, and not Mac (which I use), so I can’t test it out yet. But to be entirely honest with you, I can’t really see the advantages. I can imagine it’s just very agressive pinning and following, but I don’t agree with that strategy. You’re better off having a trusted hub for people to follow, in my opinion.

Your Readers Don’t Know You

This might seem like an odd one, but it fits in nicely with the point I made above about being automated. People want to make a connection with a person, not a machine. The same goes for companies or websites; if you can put your face on it, you’ll find that people are more likely to follow you as a person.

My Pinterest and Twitter username is PhotoJosh, so already people know what my name is, and what it is I do. But I go a step further than that, because most people know me because of my website, and not my social network.

At the bottom of every single post, there’s an about the author widget, where people can read just a small paragraph about myself, see my name, and a photo too. After reading multiple articles, they know who I am.

I recently launched my own forum, and I was surprised by the amount of people who were mentioning me by name, as if we were old friends. I was just ‘Josh’ to those guys, which just goes to show that this can really pay off. I thoroughly recommend putting your face on your business/blog if you can.

Everything is Self Promotion

This is one of the biggest no-no’s in the game of social media, but probably one of the most commonly broken rules. It’s easy to see why you might think it’s a good idea to only promote yourself, the reasons are obvious, but I’m going to tell you why you’re wrong, and to do so, we’re going to look at Starbucks.

When it comes to restaurants/coffee shops, there is no business in the world with a more extensive social network than Starbucks. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, etc. Starbucks almost always comes out on top with the most followers. Lets have a look at their Pinterest to see what they promote to their fans.

This is their blurb:

These are some of the things we love: coffee, food, music, inspiration. But most of all, we love sharing these things with you.

Nothing like ‘Follow us for coffee and coupons’ or something equally self-promoting. And have a look at their page, it’s all food, coffee and design related, nothing to do with their business. They see the value in stepping back and becoming a brand that their customers can relate to, and find value from.

Check out their Facebook page with 32 million fans. Very little self promotion, mostly nice images, messages, and polls, but it’s certainly not hurt their business at all.

The point is, you’re better off only promoting yourself 50% of the time, and the rest of the time promoting content that other people want to see. That way you’re providing them with a service and they’re more likely to follow you.

—–

That’s all from me today, I hope you’ve learned a thing or two, and can stop making the mistakes that so many other people are making. It will give you the edge.

The way I see it, you probably know enough about social media right now to start your own side business!

The post 10 Reasons Why You Suck at Social Media appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

I’m going to put this as simple as I can: A brand is consistant message of who you are. It’s your business’ identity, and should be the same over all of the branding you do, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Google+, you website, or even your business card. This identity is not just about a logo though, it’s about something that people can relate to, associate with; something which will resonate to customers, to keep them coming back time after time.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a “Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”

A good brand will:

• Deliver your companies message in a clear and concise manner
• Connect you with the customer and motivate them to revisit you
• Increase your credibility.

How Important is a Brand?

If you want to grow, you need to be something that someone can get behind, and for that, you need to have a company image; a brand. Every company has a brand in one way or another, some are just more successful than others, and when it comes to successful brands, I can’t think of much better than presidential campaigns. In a very short space of time, they build an brand for themselves, covering everything I detail in the following section. Think of Obama’s electoral campaign, how many of you have seen a variation of this poster before?

I was reading a rather interesting article online today about Occupy Wall Street, and it was talking about their failure to come together as a simple brand.

Wall Street Occupiers,

While we’re quite sure that corporate-world concepts like branding, marketing and messaging are the last things you’re thinking about at the moment, we’d strongly suggest you start soon if you want your movement to hold together and succeed.

Here’s why: Today we live in a world where activism—no matter how organic—lives at an intersection with branding. And the simpler the message, the more likely it is to find a sympathetic following.

Simple enough of a message there, and it goes on to give some solid advice…

…you have managed to make something that ought to be simple complicated by convoluting your message with a litany of tired clichés about corporations, free trade and even capitalism itself. The response to that convoluted messaging: An apathetic view from the center of America, which polls showed was originally quite sympathetic and generally aligned with the fundamental principles represented by your movement. The muddy message and unhinged theatrics have even led to a lack of support from places that ought to be friendly to your cause, like the editors of The New Republic, for instance…

…Movements with clear, simple messages are the ones that maintain focus and achieve the ends they originally sought, just like well-disciplined brands do. Think about Nike, Harley-Davidson or Apple.

So yes, I would have to agree that Branding is exceptionally important when it comes to building a company, but why have so many businesses, particularly blogs and websites, got it wrong? The simple answer, as far as I can see, is that blogs are made by the likes of you and me, with no background in marketing, so we don’t know what we’re doing when it comes to building a brand (at least we think we don’t), but that’s about to change.

How to Build your Brand

A brand isn’t something you can throw together all at once if you’re just finding your feet in your field. You need to be able to first find your direction, and then test different changes that you make to your brand as you grow. Sure, if you’ve got a branding expert doing this for you, it will happen a lot quicker than that, but if you’re doing this on your own, then it’s going to take time. And that’s fine, because as you make adjustments, you can ask for feedback, and see how well received it is.

Name

The first thing that you need to focus on, is clearly stating what you do, not who you are. Hi, I’m Josh, I’m no one. My first blog was attached to my portfolio at www.JoshuaDunlop.com and guess what? It got next to no views. No one cares who Joshua Dunlop is, but they care what Expert Photography is. Just using the name you’re halfway to understanding what I’m about, and you’re even further than halfway when it comes to IncomeDiary. So choose the right name in the first place, because even though there are successful people, such as Arianna Huffington, who have built a brand around their name, that is by no means easy to do, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone starting out.

Think about your keywords and what describes you best. Then think about what people are going to Google. As I mentioned in my last post on Facebook promotion tips that you don’t know about, it’s all well and good calling yourself Joshua Dunlop Imagery, but is that going to show up in Google, and will people know what you do when they do find you? Your name HAS to reflect your product.

Design

A visually attractive website is the next step to building a strong brand, that means putting a little bit of money into it, perhaps on a decent WordPress theme, and then changing it to suit your tastes and niche. I often flick through the websites of people who comment on IncomeSup, and it seems to me that a lot of people don’t really pay too much attention to the design. I’ve spent very little money on ExpertPhotography, just the theme, a featured slider, a header, and a logo. It doesn’t take much, and we didn’t even do it all at once, but I consider all of it to be essential to building our brand.

Your website needs to be welcoming, so think about how it feels to be on there. Does it load slowly? Is there too many ads? Are they too intrusive? Are the colour schemes hard to look at? Are there images where there’s supposed to be images? When you get to the bottom of a page, do you want to click on another? Is the theme customised enough so that it stands out from all other people using the same one? These are all questions you need to ask yourself when viewing your website, because building a brand is part of making people want to come to your website, and design is a big aspect of this.

Symbol/Icon/Logo

As my website has grown, my aim has always to be able to be recognised by a single image, because I’ve always felt that the strongest brands in the world are made like this. Think of Nike, think of Apple, think of Coca-Cola. Whether the symbol is an image, like the first two, or a manifestation of some text, into a widely recognised symbol. Coca-Cola hasn’t changed their logo since they started business and even though they’ve chosen a text based logo, you could write anything in that style, and you would still think Coca-Cola.

To help build my own brand, I’ve gone with a simple text logo, accompanied by a circular spectrum of colour, which represents the aperture of the lens, which is suitable for my niche. I am slowly implementing the image into different parts of my website, starting at the header, and then as a watermark, and then Facebook, and soon, Twitter too. The Facebook integration of my branding is especially important because it allows me to carry out my brand through my marketing. Not only do I use my logo in my imagery, such as profile picture and wall photos, but I also use the symbol on it’s own, in the profile picture and as my thumbnail image. This is spread throughout my Facebook page, and then again on the website, in the two Facebook plugins, which only goes to reinforce my brand.

As you can probably tell, repetition is very important to helping commit a brand to somebody’s memory, so it’s important to keep the brand repetition throughout what you do.

Slogan/Tagline

This is something that I’m currently working on, and it will probably be introduced in the next site redesign. When I describe my site now, I use the phrase:

We teach expert knowledge and techniques to photographers, from beginners through to advanced.

That’s not really much of a slogan though really, it’s more of mission statement. Something like ‘Great Photography made easy’ would be better, but that’s just off the top of my head. Lets have a look at some famous brand slogans, and see how many you recognise.

“Just do it.”

“Connecting People”

“Don’t be evil”

“Life’s Good.”

“I’m lovin’ it.”

The five companies above are Nike, Nokia, Google, LG and McDonalds, not that you really needed telling that. They are all very easily recognised by their slogans, which is no small feat. You see, they’ve stripped back all of their brand to just a few words, which we all recognise, whether they’re said in or out of context.

One thing you may notice about the above five slogans/taglines is that only one of them, “Connecting People”, could you guess what they might do, and even then, you could be wrong. What does this tell us? Well, quite obviously, it’s more about the association with the rest of the branding which helps you to remember the slogan. Sure it needs to be vaguely related, but you really have a license with creative freedom. Some might even say that the contrast between the logo and title, and tagline is what makes you remember the slogan.

Content

You need to produce content that reflects your brand, whether you’re teaching, selling or just rambling. My brand is founded on photography tutorials, but I can, and will, expand into other areas of photography. My brand is photography, so to expand from there onto something that’s not nearly as relevant, such as art, would be a mistake. Stick to content that will build on your brand, because as it continues to grow, and as you gain a following, you will start to exclude the very people you’ve been working on getting to your website or business.

This is something I’ve noticed recently as I’ve started to diversify my content a little bit more as I begin to run out of subject to write tutorials on, which will happen to the best of us. In the past week, I’ve written about how to find models for free, and how to build a Facebook fan page for a photographer. Both relevant content, but not the sort of standard of tutorial that some of my fans have come to expect. Both post have done reasonably well on Facebook, and I’m sure they will do well in Google too, but they’re not as popular as some of my old favourites.

Personality

Lastly, and perhaps more important than any other thing on the list here is personality. Personality is what makes you stand out from the crowd. Some of my most popular articles have come from when I’ve written about something, using just my personal opinion as a source, because people are more interested in a person, than they are a business. Give your company a face, and you will soon start to become a lot more successful; I’ve been putting it to the test recently, and the difference is starting to show. Check out my post on why you’re not yet an authority on your niche to see what I mean.

Think about bloggers who are famous purely because they write a blog. The likes of Perez Hilton spring to mind, as a man who has created a celebrity gossip blog, for the most part under his own name. There’s no denying that he is a strong character and personality, which has made him easy to remember, and kept fans coming back. Put a face to your blog.

The post How to Build a Brand for Your Business appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Before I start, I would like to thank Steve Kamb for his incredibly insightful interview with us, where he talks about his website Nerd Fitness. It was his final section, on why he’s successful, and others may not be, that really struck me. Here’s what he wrote:

I think the biggest mistake people make in the online fitness industry is that they’re not unique. There are millions of fitness blogs out there, so writing the same stuff that other people write is a surefire way to go unnoticed. I actually wrote 5 articles a week for the first 9 months of my blog, and it resulted in 90 subscribers! 90! Why? Because I wrote what I thought other people wanted to read or what worked for other sites, rather than what I wanted to read.

After 9 months, I decided to make a change, and injected WAY more personality (and thus nerdiness) into Nerd Fitness, and almost overnight it took off. Had I not made this change, I’m not quite sure where I’d be today.

So, if you’re trying to stand out in a crowded field (online income generation, finance, fitness), find a way to BE UNIQUE! I’m certainly not a fitness expert, and I’m not the best fitness blogger out there, but you can sure as hell believe that I run the best fitness blog out there…dedicated to nerds. Eventually you can cover more general topics, but in order to have an audience you need to find a way to get noticed in the first place.

As someone who write three times a week, but doesn’t quite see the sort of growth I’m looking for, it got me thinking about what I can be doing differently.

I’ve always said that when it comes to blogging, or anything in life really, if you want to succeed, you have to do the best that you can. There’s no point in providing the internet with more average content that it doesn’t need, because that doesn’t make you any better than the next person. That’s why I’ve always written the best content that I can, and it’s what I believe separates me from the competition. But there’s something else I can do; I can be different.

Now that I look back on it, I can see how some of my most popular content has helped to make my website more successful, and how some of that content differs to what I usually write. These posts were much more personal, where I would talk about my own opinion on something, and this would spark conversation. Conversation leads to sharing, and sharing leads to new fans, and so on.

Until recently, I’d never really looked at what some of my popular content had in common, I would simply say that, ‘those are top lists’, and ‘that one’s controversial’, or ‘that’s current and opinionated’, I had never said before what they all had in common, which was that they were all a matter of my opinion. I would say that I have a pretty strong opinion, and a writing style that helps people to understand what I’m saying, which certainly helps to get people on my side, and that has contributed to the growth of my website.

What should I write about?

Well, to know what’s the most popular, it’s always good to call on our old friend Google Analytics. When I go over the whole span over my website, and look at the most popular content, I can see quite clearly that 8/20 of the top 20 posts are based largely on my opinion, and three of these are top lists. Now, I’ve been through top lists in some detail before, so I’m not going to mention it again, as you should all be well aware of what they do. If not, click here.

The other five posts are as follows:

• Top 10 Photography Clichés You Should Avoid To Improve Your Photography
• 10 Embarrassing Mistakes I Made As A Beginner Photographer
• 10 Reasons Your Photos Suck
• The World’s Most Expensive Photo – What Makes It So Great?
• 10 Reasons Why Being A Photographer Sucks

Notice anything about them? Two things spring to mind when I see that list, firstly, all but one of them is in a ‘top 10’ list format, and secondly, they all seem to focus on the negative.

Leaving the forth post aside for a second, lets focus on the other four for now. It’s quite clear that people are interested in the negative aspects of a problem, which point out their mistakes (in a list in this case), rather than positive solutions. I should make a point here, that although there are posts such as 10 Tips For Sharper Photos in the top 2o, what makes these results so special is that they’re the only negatively focused titles I have, rather than a huge number of positive ‘top 10’ lists that I’ve written. Now, I’m no psychologist, and I’m not about to start writing about why this may be, but all I know is that this seems to be true.

But I don’t want to write negatively?

Good news, you don’t have to! None of these posts are negative posts, they merely highlight a problem, or a potential problem, and then I talk quite positively about how you can solve it. For whatever reason (again, I’m no psychologist), people are more interested in being pointed out where they’re going wrong, than where they can go right. The thought that they may be doing something wrong is what interests the reader, which is all about what those top three posts are about. It’s all about capturing the reader with an interesting title, then following it up with relevant content, coupled with a positive spin, and then you’re well on your way to writing more popular posts.

What about being personal?

Well all eight of the posts that I’ve mentioned (the five above, and the three top lists), all include a personal opinion on a subject, and that is what people seem to be interested in. It’s what makes you stand out from the crowd, and what makes people interested in you, and remember you. A different take on a common subject is going to separate you from the rest of the pack, and will help you to stand out to your readers, who will begin to really value your opinion… if you can support the points you’re making.

Don’t get me wrong, I get people disagree with me all of the time, but I carry on with what I’m doing, because these people are the minority, and the majority of people who comment will agree or at least provide their own take on a situation. When it comes to dealing with negativity on the internet, you really have to just pay no attention to it. Let it go over your head, and if anyone decided to leave a negative comment, that you don’t feel in contributing, then don’t accept it – it’s your website. If however they disagree, but provide their own thoughts on the subject, then accept and reply to them, and spark a conversation. All of this is good for Google, and creating interest in your posts – people read comments.

Writing an Opinion Piece

When I say opinion piece, I’m referring to a post that is largely based on your own personal thoughts, and not backed up by hard facts. So whereas Top 10 Photography Clichés You Should Avoid To Improve Your Photography may be considered a tutorial, The World’s Most Expensive Photo – What Makes It So Great? would not be, and that is what we’re going to be looking at here.

I wrote The World’s Most Expensive Photo – What Makes It So Great? on a whim really, I couldn’t think of anything good to write about, but I had recently learned about the sale of the world’s most expensive photo, which had sold for the princely sum of $4.3 million. I had done some reading about it online, purely out of interest, and the biggest problem that people seemed to have with it, was that it didn’t seem at all interesting. Have a look below, what do you think of it? Not really a lot going on is there? Well, that was a common thought, so I tackled it with what I thought was so good about it, and how I grew to love it.

This was greeted with a really positive response, which got people talking. Not only that, but I started to rank in Google for it too. Not a lot of results, but I was doing much worse with Google then, than I am now. The point is that I found a niche within my own niche to write about, using my opinion, and it became very popular.

Because it was my opinion, and an opinion that people seem to support for that matter, rather than some facts, people started to share it. That includes Google, as I previously mentioned. This contributes towards my authority status on the subject of photography, as I could point out what people couldn’t see for themselves. It may not seem like a lot to some people, but that was an incredible amount of traffic from Google for me at that point, and the same goes for Facebook. The bottom result is from a forum that I posted the link on (just in a comment reply), and it proved to be a hot topic. If you want a fast track to becoming an authority on a subject, then this is what you have to do.

How to Write an Opinion Piece

There are a few guidelines you’re going to want to follow.

Stay Current. Stay Relevant.

This is probably the most crucial element behind writing an opinion piece, because if I had written that same post now, rather than back in November, then it’s unlikely that it would have the same affect. People were interested at the time, because it was current and relevant, but if you asked them how much it sold for now, or who took it, or what it’s called, it’s unlikely that they would know. I recommend following forums, and RSS feeds for different websites, and see what’s becoming a hot topic, and then act quickly and write about it.

I wrote about Canon Vs. Nikon, which is a big debate with photographers, and even though I’m very happy with what I’ve written, it hasn’t really provided me with many visitors, because it’s not a current topic that a large group of people in my niche are interested in.

Set yourself boundaries.

Don’t start exploring other niches. Stay within the realms of your knowledge and try to write about what you know best. I’m very good at studying composition, so I could decode the photo above and tell people why I thought it was so good, which was met with a positive response. It was clear that I knew what I was talking about, and if people disagreed, then it was a matter of their opinion, but they would still respect mine. If you start writing about something that you know little to nothing about, then people are going to see right through it and stop listening to what you’re saying.

Research Research Research.

Whatever you’re going to be writing about, make sure you research it a lot, even if you’re only going to write a short post about it. Not only will you find other people’s opinions that may influence yours (I recommend looking through comments for this), but you’ll soon find the general consensus on what you’re writing about, and then you can choose to contrast or reinforce that viewpoint.

Disclaimer.

It’s an opinion piece, so make sure people know that. In mine, I said on more than one occasion something along the lines of ‘all art is subjective, and what I think is good, may be different for you, but here’s what I get from the photo…’ You want to keep your reputation, and all though some discussion is good, you don’t want people to outright disagree with you, so again, back up what you’re saying with some explanation, and make sure people know that it’s your opinion – they will start to value it.

Ask your readers what they think.

This is a great way to improve reader interaction, and the majority of people reading your post will have an opinion, it usually sparks a pretty decent discussion. Comments will appear in Google too, so you want as many as you can get really, so long as they’re relevant. It also means that if they’re willing to comment on a post, then they’re probably willing to share it too, as they will likely know someone else who may be interested.

Well there you have it, my favourite new tip to becoming an authority in your niche. If you’ve enjoyed the post, then do me a massive favour and click ‘Like’ below.

The post Why You’ve Not Yet Become an Authority in Your Niche appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Lewis Howes has one of the coolest and most inspiring stories of any online marketer I know and I am pleased that he has gave us so much background not just on Linkedin.com but also on his personal story and how he has overcome adversity to be where he is today.

Like all great entrepreneurs Lewis’s story starts with an idea

Following a Football Injury (more on that in Interview) Lewis had a lot of time on his hand and spent a lot of time on LinkedIn – building relationships and connecting with people. (This was a couple of years ago when there was only something like 23 Million people on LinkedIn.com)

Lewis became an EXPERT on Connections and online networking (all great entrepreneurs are) and one day had the ‘crazy’ idea of trying to get people to meet physically and not just in the virtual world of LinkedIn.com.

Using his personal 30,000 plus email list of contacts he built up using LinkedIn he promoted a 20-city tour around the US. Entry to these live networking events was not expensive (between $5 and $20) but on average he got 300 people and sometimes up to 500 people coming to these events – all marketed via LinkenIn.com

And that is just part of his story. Even if you have never thought LinkedIn was a medium you wanted to use in your business please listen to this interview – I just have a hunch that Lewis may change your mind – plus either way you will be inspired.

And the other great think about Lewis as you will find out in this interview is that he is a very cool guy to hang out with. I believe in ‘modeling’ the success strategies of others and what they do that works. Perhaps the coolest thing about Lewis and the thing that more of us could do with modeling is his authenticity. He is sincere, approachable, caring and inspiring. He is not a Pitch Master – Lewis always delivers value first, indeed his success is as a direct result of him adding value first. That is a powerful point to remember.

Add Value First and The Money Will Follow

Enjoy the interview. I’d be really interested to hear your experiences with LinkedIn.com as well. What has worked for you and indeed what has not.

Interview With Lewis Howes – Linkedin.com Expert

Michael Dunlop: Hey, guys. Michael Dunlop here, from IncomeDiary.com. Today, I’m with my good buddy, Lewis Howes, who I met back in May, and we have been chatting loads. He is a very intelligent guy, expert in LinkedIn, branding, webinars… You name it, he knows lots about it. So I’m really looking forward to picking his brain. So welcome, Lewis.

Lewis Howes: Thanks, Michael. How are you doing, my man?

Michael: Very good. I think it is only fair that we start with your story, because you have got a crazy story. Started as a footballer, had an accident and now you are an Internet entrepreneur. So take us through that real quick.

Lewis: Yeah, I guess when you mean footballer, I mean American football as opposed to soccer player, but I used to play professional football here in the US. And to make kind of a long story short, I got injured early on during the season, broke my wrist in a game while diving for a football, played wide receiver, dove into a wall, snapped my wrist, played the next 14 games with a broken wrist, had surgery after the final game and they took a bone out of my hip and put it into my wrist because my wrist bone had crumbled so much from playing those 14 games while it was broken. So for the next six months, I had a full arm cast on my arm, so basically at 90-degree angle up in the air was my arm. Couldn’t move it, couldn’t turn it, and couldn’t do anything. And I had 20 staples on my hip for six weeks, so I couldn’t walk for a while as well, basically ended up going from doing something that I was the most passionate about in my life which is playing football, getting paid to play football to sleeping on my sister’s couch for the next six months because I didn’t have a job. I basically fired myself from my job by getting injured, and was living off of three credit cards at that time.

So during that time, I basically was a little bit depressed, but I had all the free time in the world because I couldn’t work out, couldn’t get a job, couldn’t play football or anything, so I basically spent six to eight hours a day using LinkedIn. A mentor of mine introduced me to LinkedIn and suggested I start getting on it to build, I guess, my relationships with business contacts and see what type of opportunities were on there.

So I went full steam ahead six to eight hours a day on LinkedIn for the next six months, and it kind of hasn’t slowed down ever since.

Michael: Very good. And so from LinkedIn to Internet entrepreneur, what happened to make you start making money online?

Lewis: You know, I was building like this huge email list through LinkedIn. I probably built up around 30,000 to 35,000 personal email list in the first six to nine months through LinkedIn just because I had a lot of free time and I was kind of figuring out. I got on there a couple of years ago when it was only about 23 million people on there, now there’s over 80 million people on. So it was kind of, lot of people still weren’t figuring it out. They didn’t know how to use it. Was it a site for job seekers? Was it a resume site? They were trying to figure it out and I was just connecting with people and figuring out that it was a great way to drive traffic to things that you could build a email list because it is the only social networking site we could export your database, your friends list as opposed to Facebook or Twitter, you can’t do that.

And so, I was building this huge network basically and what I did early on, I had zero business experience. I still hadn’t graduated from college and never worked at jobs. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I decided that I’d have these big audiences in various cities around the country. And I thought you know what, it would be great if I could bring these people together and help them build their business. I didn’t have a business or a product or a service at the time, but I thought one way I could help others and maybe generate some business for myself down the line was connecting people together.

So I thought it would be great to bring people together who were online on LinkedIn together in the real world, to kind of meet face to face and see how we can help each other. So I did, basically, a 20-city tour around the US and only used LinkedIn to promote these events. Some of them were five dollars, some were $10, some were $20, so nothing too crazy. But we will get around an average of 300, sometimes up to 500 people to come to these events every time and all I will do is market it on LinkedIn.

And people were amazed as to how many people I could actually get to live I guess networking events when some people couldn’t even get 100 people on a webinar. And so I started showing other people how to basically build their business with LinkedIn. So a lot of people were asking me to help them with their LinkedIn profile, help them with their business, so I started kind of consulting on LinkedIn.

I realized that I could use my email list, got 30,000 personal email list, was this very strong basically asset for me because I didn’t know what affiliate marketing was at the time and I was completely green with marketing online. But someone asked me to promote something, I think it was a webinar one time, I promoted it just to like a couple of my groups in my list or whatever on LinkedIn.

And we did over like $5,000 in sales stream, so I was like blown away that this could actually happen, just by promoting something. And from there I really delved deeper into it, understanding online marketing, created my own products, selling other people’s products through affiliate marketing and just kind of going to the next level from there.

Michael: Wow, pretty impressive. And I think a lot of my listeners today will be thinking how can I right now go to LinkedIn and get some traffic. Is it still possible?

Lewis: Oh, yeah. It is always one of the top five sites that drives, I guess, organic traffic back to my sites and sales pages each and every month. And there are some simple things you can do, actually wrote a post about the top 10 ways to drive traffic to your site using LinkedIn. If you just want to Google that phrase, you can learn more about it, but here are a couple of quick tips. Right off the top of the bat, you can get a ton of traffic and expose yourself to basically hundreds of thousands of highly targeted professionals by doing one simple step and I will walk you through it, although you just kind of got to stay with me, because it may be confusing without seeing the screen. However, what you can do, if you have an article or back to your website or sales page or anything you want to promote, any link, you can update that on your LinkedIn status section.

So basically you are updating a status like you would on Facebook or message on Twitter for those who don’t know about LinkedIn. For those who do know this, this will seem pretty natural for you. Go to your home profile, you will see a status update, put that link in there with a call to action just like you would on a tweet or Facebook update and then click “share”.

What that will do is that will send it out to the direct contacts that you are connected to on LinkedIn just like a tweet would. So that may not seem like a lot, what if you only have 100 people or 500 people that you are connected to, it is not going to get a lot of traffic, I understand that. The next step is what will help you tap into a larger network, a larger database, which again LinkedIn has the highest average household income over any other social networking site.

I currently average $109,000. Whereas, if you use Facebook or Twitter or MySpace, it is under $100,000 is the average household income. It is also higher than NewYorkTimes.com readers, Forbes.com readers, Entrepreneur.com readers. So you are dealing with highly targeted professionals when you promote anything on LinkedIn.

Also, 45 percent of business professionals on LinkedIn are business decision makers. So you are targeting people that make decisions, can take action, who have money, who can buy from you. And if you go to Twitter or Facebook, again, it is only around 25 to 29 percent are decision makers.

So back to this point of driving traffic to your site. After you click “share” on your status update, you are basically sending a status message update, you then click “share again.” So you will see that update go down on your LinkedIn profile, just like you would when it comes to a tweet. You could see that status update. And then, right below your link and your call to action and the picture that it was included in, you will see a button that says “share.”

You want to click the share button again and then a pop-up window will come over your screen and will ask you if you want to send a message to share it with groups, share it with other people in your network and things like that. You want to click on the “share to groups” button, so hopefully you are staying with me here.

Click on the “share to groups” button. By doing this, you can start typing in the various group names that you are already a member of, so you want to join up to 50 highly targeted groups in your niche. There is a group called “e-Marketing Association”, which has over quarter of a million people in it. There is entrepreneur groups, there is bloggers groups, there is business professionals, there is local market group.

So there is tons of groups out there, real estate or any type of group, you can type it in and you can join us. What you want to do is, start typing in these groups where it says “posted groups.” And what you are going to do then, if you are tapping into a larger database, larger networks like you didn’t have to put any effort into basically tapping into someone else’s network by posting your status update or your link to these groups.

That’s going to go into the discussion of the groups, that’s going to be emailed out to all those members of the groups, so people who are in those groups get a weekly email with those articles that people update with. So you are basically… Every time I post an article, I’m tapping into over 500,000 personal database from all the groups that I updated. That’s just one way you can do it, from posting a status update and then sharing it with all your related groups. It’s kind of a longer version of explaining it. Sorry.

Michael: No, that sounds really impressive. I’m sure everyone should actually look into it. Very good stats for LinkedIn, obviously. It’s a very talented group of people. So I know now that we can get some traffic from LinkedIn, but one of the real good things you’re really good at is monetization. Doing webinars, products, affiliate programs, all sorts I want to jump into webinars first, because you do really good webinars. So tell us about webinars. What are they, and why should people be doing them?

Lewis: Sure. Webinars are pretty simple, actually. As opposed to giving a live speech, you’re basically giving a presentation online to an audience. They can see your screen, they can hear you, they can ask questions by chatting or they can call in. It’s basically a teleseminar, but you’re adding a video element, so you have complete control of what people see. In my opinion, it’s probably 10 times more effective selling and getting your message across on a webinar than you would a teleseminar. It’s just common sense. When people visually see something and they hear something combined, it’s going to influence them more on a buying decision or taking action on whatever you have to offer.

So in my opinion, webinars are huge. I’m doing about three to five of them a week right now, live webinars, just because they’re converting so well to me. Not only for my own products to my own list, but getting other people to promote my products as well. I’ve got a good business product, Sean Malarkey, who does these webinars with me. He does more the technical side of things, and I do more the marketing and sales side of things.

They’re extremely powerful. Just to give you an example, you don’t have to be an expert at webinars. Our first webinar, we did about $12,500 in sales. We had a presentation that had three janky slides with ugly bullet points, no pictures. Our audio was all messed up. The video was messed up. We were flustered, things like that. We started late. And we still did over $12,500 in sales in our first webinar. And we did over $17,500 in sales on a webinar recently last week, where we didn’t even start until 20 minutes after the presentation was supposed to begin because there was a technical issue with the audio.

So you can succeed on a webinar just by the fact that it’s a webinar, in my opinion. People love being able to see something. Even if you mess up, or you’re not an expert, you can still generate sales doing webinars. So that’s my thoughts on it.

Michael: Very impressive. I imagine one of the things that you struggle with with webinars is making sure people are on at that particular time. How did you get around that issue?

Lewis: We tested it with our list. We figured out that most of our list is on East Coast time in the US, so we do a lot of them around lunch time. If people have lunch breaks, we do them for an hour around noon. Or we do them around eight or nine p.m. at night, when most people relax, come home, eat dinner, put the kids to bed and things like that. You’re never going to get everyone on your list on, obviously. We did a webinar last week, again, that did over $17,500 in sales and had 925 people on live. There’s definitely a strategy of getting people on, a marketing strategy. We do a four-day promotion beforehand. We do reminder emails 10 minutes before, asking them if they’re on already. A lot of different things. We use social media, we use social proofing in getting people on. So you just want to make sure you do a right marketing plan of getting people on live.

[laughter]

Michael: Wicked. So you mentioned earlier that you get people on a webinar, you talk about stuff, you teach them some stuff, and at the end, you’ll sell them something. How do you go about creating your products? I presume most of them are quite high-end. What tips would you give to people who think right now, “Actually, I’d like to have a product online.”

Lewis: You know, the best way to create a product… I remember trying to create my first product. I had no idea what I was going to do. This was when I had no clue what I was doing. I didn’t even know what affiliate marketing was. I didn’t know how to create a video, even. I was so green. I just thought, “How can I create a product?” And Joel Comm told me, “You know what? Just record a webinar. Do a live training for someone and record it. Map it out. Have some bullet points of exactly what you’re going to cover so that you can use that in your marketing. Have a plan or a blueprint, and just make it simple for people to understand.”

So the best way to create a product is to sell a webinar. Sell some type of training. You can do a free webinar to get people on the call. Give them some great free trips, and at the end, sell them. If they want advanced training, then they can go through your three-hour webinar course, whatever it may be, or your six-week webinar boot camp.

You can do one-hour video, transcribe it, strip the audio, things like that. Make Cliffs Notes and just put it on a wish list WordPress site and throw up those videos and all that content. And you can sell that afterward.

So I like to create products on the fly before I actually lead them. A good test factor of you creating it is if it sells. If it doesn’t sell, then you don’t have to create that product. But if it does sell, then you can just deliver it live, record it, and then make that a home study course afterward.

Michael: Great advice. So you’ve told us about webinars, training products. You’ve got some membership sites. You do pretty damn well with affiliate promotions. If you could only focus on one, if you’re starting over again and you can only do one right now, which would it be?

Lewis: Hm-mm. That’s tough, because I like a lot of them. [laughter]

Michael: They all work really well together, right?

Lewis: They all work really well together, yeah, because they’re all extra revenue streams. I want to have multiple revenue streams, but if I had to pick one, right now I am dominating on webinars. It’s a great way to build your list. My list is my most important asset, and I’m sure you would agree with that for yourself. I’m building a list of over 1,000 or 1,500 people a week by doing webinars with other affiliates and also just promoting webinars via social media, getting people to opt in. Doing Facebook ad campaigns sometimes, getting opt-ins that way. It’s building my list, it’s building my brand. I’m connecting with an audience for 60 to 90 minutes at a time. They get to hear my voice. They get to see me sometimes. I answer their questions live. I give them a lot of good content.

So if you can get 500 to 1,000 people watching you three to five times a week, new audiences, you’re building your brand that way better than you can through a blog post or an audio or anything else except for live face-to-face interaction So it’s a great way to build that brand for long-term value. And then you’re also able to create a product and sell more products that way.

So webinars overall are the best, because you can drop people into continuity. You can drop people into high-ticket sales, low-ticket sales, live events, anything you want to do. So I’d say webinars right now.

Michael: All right, sounds good. So you just mention branding, and I have to admit, you do a really good job with your brand. Your brand is pretty much yourself, though, right? So what tips would you give to my readers in the business for building their brand online today?

Lewis: You know, early on I was following the Gary Vaynerchuks and Tim Ferrisses of the world just because that’s what I was reading early on, and I was inspired to connect with that mentality when I was trying to figure all this stuff out online. The thing that they do really well is just really authentic and genuine to themselves. Gary is really out there. He swears. He says whatever he wants. But some people really love that, because they appreciate him being himself and not being someone that’s fake, someone who’s trying to just pretend to be. So I would just say be yourself.

The one thing that I think has helped me and that I see others doing that really helps them with their brand is focusing on promoting others first and not really promoting yourself too much. When I studied sports professionals’ blogs early on, when I was just getting started, what I did was just interviewed executives and other high-end professionals in the industry, athletes, things like that, and promoted them. So it wasn’t really about myself. It seems contradicting, but promoting other people can help you build your brand in a positive way as well. So just be yourself and promote others.

Michael: That’s some top advice. I highly recommend that.

Lewis: You do that a lot, too.

Michael: Yeah. I mean, I’m interviewing you right now! It builds real good authority, because people associate me with you, and it will build my brand. So that’s great advice. I have to talk about this, because back in May, I didn’t know who you were. But since then, I have seen your face and name everywhere. You must do some really good networking. I want your top tips for anyone who wants to network and get themselves out there.

Lewis: The thing is, I tell a lot of people that I’m usually one of the dumbest people in the rooms. Someone like yourself, Michael, you’re 10 times smarter than me. You’re like 12 years old and making $20 million a year or something crazy. So you’re a lot smarter than myself. The one thing I think that I do well is just connecting with people and just being real with people. I think so many people try, either try too hard, they don’t put in any effort at all, they act like someone they’re not. All I try to do is just be friends with people. I don’t try to push anything. Like people, they’re just eager to have them promote stuff and things like that.

My main focus is just saying, hey, how’s it going? And then try to relate with them on a personal level, not a business level. By connecting with them, talking about sports, talking about whatever, dating, whatever it may be. But getting on a different level besides asking them if someone will promote or sucking up to someone or whatever it may be, just connecting with people on a personal level is the best way to network.

What I do, what I’ve done over the last two years, is to do this I guess somewhat well, is to go out and go to all the major conferences and events that the major players and the major influences in my industry network go into. I travel a lot because I believe that connecting face-to-face with someone and getting on that personal relationship level with them will allow you to do anything you want at any time in your life in business with them. If you can connect with them on a personal level then you can do whatever you want.

When I first met you, we were talking about girls and partying and hanging out and going out that night and things like that, and we’re just kind of hanging out on a personal level. We were mentioning different friends we knew and things like that. But I wasn’t asking you to promote. I wasn’t asking you to do anything for me. I was just like hey, how’s it going? Man, I love your stuff. And how’s the love life? Basically stuff like that.

By doing that, by getting on that personal level with someone and just being friends with them, you’re building a strong relationship off the bat where they’re breaking down the barriers of trust with you. So they’re more like to trust you in the future, to recommend you, to promote your stuff, whatever it may be.

You’re building more than just business relationships. You’re building lifelong friendships. For me, it’s all about the true honest friendships than it is about doing business with someone. So that’s my part of it, just really become friends with someone. And the best way to do that is late at night at parties, at events.

Michael: So true. You speak a lot of truth. I have to admit, from the point of view of somebody who would be coming to me and saying, want to be my friend or get in my radar, the worst thing you could do is pitch me, come up to me and say, “I could do something for you. You should buy this. We should ponder…” That’s so unattractive. You just hang out, have fun and work.

Lewis: Just chill.

Michael: Yeah and then follow up later or something. I don’t know but…

Lewis: Yeah, or promote them first.

Michael: Yeah.

Lewis: Never ask for anything.

Michael: Yeah. Doing something for someone first is one of the best things you can do. OK. So we’re finishing up soon but I have to go into this as well. You’ve achieved so much over maybe the last two or three years since your accident. You have an amazing mindset. How do you think you’ve been able to do so much so quickly?

Lewis: It’s funny that you mentioned it, because I’ve lately been strategizing on my next book, it’s going to be about how to translate the athlete mindset into business. Because there’s so many professionals, there’s so many people that I know that want to make it, who have been in the business longer than me but I’ve surpassed already, or just don’t know how to get to the next level, don’t know how to make a side income that replaces their normal income. They’re just trying to figure out how to do it all. I think that’s the thing that they do wrong, they try. They try too hard and they don’t just take action. For me, again I say I’m one of the dumbest people in the room usually but I love to get results and I love to take action to get something finished. I think that’s the difference between I guess… Some people who aren’t athletes have this mindset as well, so it’s not just an athlete mindset.

But I think in general, as an ex-professional athlete I know a lot about pain. I went through broken bones pretty much. Many years I played football. I know a lot about the taste of failure and the taste of losing, how bad it sucks after you put so much energy, sweat and tears and agony into trying to win something. I just know a lot about all of those things through playing and just kind of having it as an athlete.

So for me, the business world wasn’t hard for me to transfer into except for the initial stage of trying to figure out, wow this is a different thing. I can’t just go and hit someone or catch a football and be successful. I really need to figure out the strategy behind business, how people interact in business, some of the technical things of business and things like that.

Once I got past the early stages of just being scared of just being in the business world and dealing with money and things like that as opposed to dealing with the game, my mindset just took over. I said, “You know what? The only thing you need to do to achieve this is take action and you’ll get results. If you don’t get results, you test and tweak just like you would in a football game. You practice something else. You make a different slight adjustment. You do it until you get it right.”

It’s pretty simple in my mind if you just translate it that way. But a lot of people have this thing holding them down because they can’t get that through their head or in their mindset. They over-analyze everything. They try way too hard. And they make a ton of excuses. Too many excuses are going around these days and not enough action. So people just need to shut up, take action and tweak and test along the way. That’s my thoughts.

Michael: Great. I couldn’t agree with you more. I mean, that’s what I try and preach to a lot of people. OK. So with Internet marketing and a lot of things really, everything’s always changing. There’s something new every day and something stops working every day. What are you working on right now? What’s working for you?

Lewis: Webinars again are really working and that’s why I’m hitting them hard. Also, I think that the novelty factor of social media, like social media isn’t a fad and it’s going to continue for a long time in my opinion. It’s just going to be a different name or it’s going to evolve, but a lot of people are going to be doing business through networking online. However, I feel like a fundamental shift… Everyone went from connecting the real world to then just connecting online and that being like the main thing. They can sit behind their computer and they can connect with people. But I think it’s going to be shifting back to everyone’s going to need to be going out and connecting with real people face-to-face here in the near future or else you’re going to be missing the boat.

For me, just being active and engaged… I’m a people person so I have to be around other people or I’ll just go crazy just in front of a computer all day. So for me, I’ve been going out and networking and throwing events, hosting events, attending events, speaking over the last two years all around the world. I see that it’s so powerful to do this in person because I’m building a database that trumps an online database only. So the more you can go out and speak, the better.

That technology or that strategy is never going to change. Webinars may go out of style. Again, certain things online may go out of style and there’s new technologies that come in. But networking face-to-face and literally building those relationships, you’ll be able to leverage that with whatever technology, whatever strategy online, with a webinars membership sites, creating big ticket items. Whatever it may be, you’ll be able to leverage that once you connect with people face-to-face and build those relationships.

So that’s kind of my shtick there.

Michael: All right. To finish this interview off, tell us. If you could start all over again and do one thing differently, what would it be?

Lewis: Well, I was kind of lucky because I built a list pretty fast. When a lot of people say that’s there one thing they wish they did is sort of building a list bigger, but if I had to start all over again I would have been even more aggressive in building a list in multiple different ways, of not just on LinkedIn. I would have created an article every day on my sites and been so aggressive in building an email list and probably would have tried to get into webinars earlier. So building a list, getting into webinars earlier and… I mean, I went out early on and did public speaking. I joined a public speaking class, practiced every week and went out and did it for free because I knew that if I wanted to influence people that I would have to be able to do it best on stage.

So public speaking, I did that early on but if I was someone else I would give public speaking, definitely building your list as aggressively as humanly possible without offending the majority of people who are reading your contents and doing webinars. That’s what I would do.

Michael: All right, great advice. And I hope you guys listened to his last few things, because those are all things that I even say myself. Especially list building, it’s one of the biggest mistakes most people make. They don’t pay enough attention to it when they start. So, great advice, Lewis. Thanks very much for sharing all your advice and I look forward to hearing more from you in the near future.

Lewis: Thanks, Michael. My pleasure.

Contact Details for Lewis:

http://www.lewishowes.com

The post Lewis Howes Interview | Build Your Personal Brand With LinkedIn Marketing appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Originally published: Oct 12, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of being in New York and getting to meet Gary Vaynerchuk and interview him about his new book: Crush It

Meeting a hero is always a slightly awkward situation (or at least it is for me) — but never in my life have I met an individual who made you feel so comfortable and at ease, so quickly as Gary did.

Today I am pleased to release not only a Podcast (Player is above) of that interview plus a transcript. Gary delivers and Gary delivers quickly – this interview is literally riddled with Wisdom and Inspiration. I am just going to high-lite a couple of points that grabbed my attention personally:

1) There are a lot of social media experts out there that talk about making money, but have never made money outside of talking about making money

2) If you are playing Wii (XBOX etc) for four hours a day, or if you are watching football for 10 hours a day, you’re not entitled to complain about your job. You’re not.

Maybe my biggest “take away” from Gary was his work rate — no one can out work me says Gary, no one can out-hustle Gary.

The other bit Take Away was how passionate Gary is about Caring for his website visitors and how important it is for all of us to CARE about our customers.

Michael’s Strongest Recommendation:

Now occasionally on this blog I recommend a product – some of them can even cost $100’s of Dollars and I am fully aware that not everyone can afford that kind of investment – so today I want to give my strongest recommendation ever of a “Must Buy” product if you are serious about becoming a successful blogger / website owner — Gary’s new Book: Crush It Right now I am seeing CRUSH IT available to pre-order on Amazon.com for $10.79 and on Amazon.co.uk for lb8.44. All this information for around the cost of registering a Domain Name — Amazing Value! Official release date is: October 13, 2009 – so BUY IT today.

Also, if you would like to have a bit more of a Crush It Experience, check out: Crush It! – The Experience — options include: Buy 250 Books and you get to meet Gary on December 2nd for a full day of business advice followed by a wine tasting on the top of the Roger Smith Hotel in NYC, but there are also options like getting Crush It Wrist Bands or getting a personal video from Gary.

I know you will enjoy this interview – and I look forward to reading your comments

To Our Success

Michael

Podcast / Audio Version of this interview below:

Click Here To Listen To The Gary Vaynerchuk Interview

Gary Vaynerchuk Interview – CASH In On Your Passion

Interview Transcript:

Michael Dunlop: Today I’m with Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s from “Wine Library TV” and we’re doing an interview today about his new book and passion. Welcome, Gary.

Gary Vaynerchuk: Thanks for having me.

Michael: Great. Would you like firstly just to tell everyone who are you are and describe yourself?

Gary: Sure. I’m going to assume the far majority of people here don’t know who I am. My name’s Gary Vaynerchuk. I was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union. I immigrated to the U.S. in ’78.

I’m a serial entrepreneur, not the kind that you eat, just like lemonade stands, baseball cards. I was making thousands of dollars a weekend selling baseball cards when I was 13.

I got involved in my family business when I was 15, a liquor store, Shopper’s Discount Liquors, and re-branded it to Wine Library in my college years.

I took over the family business in 1998 and renamed it to Wine Library. From ’98 to 2005, I grew sales from a couple million dollars a year to 45, which was a big deal. It made everybody in my family very happy.

In 2006, what’s probably led to a lot of people, the few that do know me on this video, is a show called “Wine Library TV,” a show where I taste wine five days a week, three or four wines in front of me.

It became really big here in the States. I’m actually going to the UK and taping the “Paul O’Grady Show,” so it’s made a lot of attention throughout the whole…

Michael: You’ll enjoy that.

Gary: Well, I’m excited about it. I saw some clips on YouTube. I think it’s going to be pretty radical.

Anyway, in 2007 I started talking about business on GaryVaynerchuk.com, which really led to an explosion of my brand – 850,000 followers on Twitter.

I get tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of views on my business videos. I’ve spoken at tons of conferences. I’m in the UK once every year to speak at FOWA, the Future of Web Apps.

Now I’m now writing this book called “Crush It” – CrushItBook.com, check it – because I really think that for $14, I have something to say and something that people can get out of it.

I like that I’m not full of baloney. There are a lot of social media experts out there that talk about making money, but have never made money outside of talking about making money, and I think that separates me in a lot of ways.

I think it’s powerful, and I think it changes the dynamic a little bit. It doesn’t come from the intellectual standpoint. It comes from – not that I’m a dummy, but maybe I am. It comes from actually feeling it.

It comes from this: 15 hours a day, grinding, hustling, understanding that this new media is about listening and not talking. That’s been able to separate myself.

Michael: Wicked. Thanks. All right, so you have the “Crush It” book, which is about cashing in on your passion, is that right? Do you want to just tell us a little bit more about the book and why people should check it out?

Gary: It’s my thesis. It’s my thesis on, hey, everything has changed. I mean, look what we’re doing right now.

Let me tell you something. If 10 years ago, you would go up to somebody – 10 years is not a long time – and said there’s going to be a computer that’s movable, that’s connected to the Internet, that’s fast, there are going to be two little devices that are more powerful than the thing that’s like this, and costs $5,000, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people have the chance to see it, and you don’t have to spend any money to buy commercials or newspaper ads to get them to see it.

Do you know what that means?

Michael: That would be great.

Gary: It would not be understood two decades ago. That is what I’m excited about. People back then thought CDs were the greatest invention ever, and they changed the world, right?

Michael: Yes.

Gary: Well, now they’re obsolete, and one day this will be too. I talk about why there’s a lot of money involved in that, why there’s a trillion dollars in play for people to get a little piece of their action.

So if they’re passionate about what you guys call, rightfully so, football, if they’re passionate about that, or they’re passionate about something I’m passionate about, boxing, if you like Ricky Hatton, for example, if you love boxing, or if you like soccer – or football, sorry – or gardening, or yoga, or wine.

The fact that you can use WordPress, or Tumblr, or Movable Type, or anything to build a platform for free, and the fact that you can then go use Twitter, and Tumblr, and Facebook, and leave comments on blogs and forums for free, and build a business that allows you to make $10,000, or $20,000, or $100,000, or $400,000 a year instead of doing that job that you hate – well, that’s game changing, and to me, I’m going to scream loud about that.

Michael: Brilliant. What would you actually say, because so many people don’t have passion? What would you say to them?

Gary: What do you do when you have free time? What do you do? What do you do when you’re not sleeping and working? Are you watching television? Fine. What are you watching about? Are you watching a cooking channel, or are you watching a sports channel, or a music channel?

Are you outside climbing rocks? Are you painting? What are you doing? That is your passion, because that’s when you have a choice to do anything, and you decided to do this.

Are you going to movies with your husband or wife every night? If that’s what you’re doing, maybe you need to start a movie review site.

It’s all there, but people don’t want to work as hard as I do. I’m going to always win, and I’m going to give away all my information for free because nobody watching, none of you guys, are going to out work me – not one of you.

That’s the defining moment that people need to understand. Who’s going to hustle the hardest? The only way you can hustle that hard is if you love it. Do you know what I mean?

Michael: Yes.

Gary: So you’ve got to really love it, and then you can work that hard. I think that that’s what I want to get people to understand. You’ve got to find a way to love that much.

Michael: All right. You brought up a really good point about working hard. You’ve got to crush it and hustle.

I remember I read some chapter, and it mentions the Wii. You shouldn’t be playing. You shouldn’t waste all your time. You’ve got to get on it, and hustle, and do what you have to do.

What would you say to those people, myself included, who play too much and are not on the ball all the time?

Gary: I have no problem with you playing, because you probably need a balance. I needed to play a quick game of Ping-Pong in the office today because AJ was talking trash and I had to beat him.

We need escapes, but I want you to understand this. If you are playing Wii for four hours a day, or if you are watching football for 10 hours a day, you’re not entitled to complain about your job. You’re not.

Everything has a price. I’m jealous that you get to play the Wii so much. I’m jealous that I’m not fishing all day today or laying on a beach, but there’s a price to be paid for success.

People that are looking for shortcuts, which a lot of you right now watching are. SEO, affiliate, all this stuff – they’re shortcuts. If you want to build a real business, it takes years, and years, and years, and it takes lots of passion and lots of hard work.

There’s no one-hour [snaps fingers] quick. There are no four-hour work weeks. I love Tim Ferriss because Tim Ferriss works about 44 hours a day.

The fact of the matter is this: find what you love, because then you could work that hard. I have no problem with people playing the Wii or doing that mainly because that means I’m out-hustling them and I’m getting their cash. So keep playing.

Michael: I love that. All right. OK, on to running your own entrepreneur site. Does it have a big readership with lots of young people? What would you say to young people at school and college that want to do something big in business?

Gary: Don’t listen to your parents, or your teachers, or anybody else besides yourself. If you’re entrepreneurial enough to be watching this man, to be part of this community, or listening, that already means that you have something different.

Why did you seek out to be with me in the first place? That means you’ve already got it. You’ve already wanted my opinion. What you’re not doing now, the next piece is to understand how right you are.

Don’t listen to your elders because they’ve been around longer. Listen to yourself only, and if you do that, you have a far greater opportunity to cash in because too many people think they’re too young.

“Well, I don’t get it. Let me listen to Mom and Dad, or let me listen to the professor. They’ve been successful.” Be more successful. Just listen to yourself.

Since you’re part of this community already, you’ve already got that interest, that taste, that hunger for entrepreneurial success. Don’t listen to anybody. Listen to yourself. Work extremely hard.

Don’t get discouraged, because entrepreneurs like us, we fall, but we get up. It’s like the best boxers are the ones that get knocked down. Those are the best guys.

How can guys like Roy Jones, Jr., who never gets knocked down, and the first time he gets punched hard in the jaw, he falls and he never gets up. Sorry, Roy Jones.

Not Calzaghe. I know he’s undefeated and all that. I want to see him go – well, actually that’s not true. I’m on it, because Calzaghe got dropped in the first round against Bernard Hopkins and got up. Those are the guys I like.

Entrepreneurs get knocked down because we’re taking chances. We’re taking risks. But we love the game, don’t we? Just keep loving the game.

Michael: Brilliant. We’ve got lots of older people people on the site as well. For example, one reader has just started his first blog about how he wants to climb Everest at age 75.

Gary: I love him.

Michael: What would you tell those older people that think they can’t get on the Internet, can’t deal with the things that they can do to make money, and just have fun with their passion?

Gary: Yeah, I think that age is irrelevant. I think it’s DNA. I know a lot of 25-year-olds that have no clue what the hell is going on. It’s barriers, it’s barriers of listening to your… Last question, parents and professors, it’s barriers of listening to society say you can’t because you should be done.

Nobody is putting me into retirement. I’m going to retirement when God says I’m going into retirement, that’s about it. No society or case study or survey that you should be 68, I’m not listening to anybody but my heart and my soul that I want to do this. So, that’s it.

Michael: Brilliant. And you’ve had so much advice. You’ve given out so much great advice, what in the tape would you say to anyone? What advice would you give out if you had to give one thing?

Gary: Care.

Michael: Brilliant.

Gary: I think that people care about themselves too much. I promise you, if you care about your audience – how many people leave comments on a post of yours?

Michael: Sometimes hundreds.

Gary: OK. How many of those people – do you use WordPress?

Michael: Yeah.

Gary: How often do you do this? Because this is what I do. The first thing, my top bookmark, is this. And what I do is this.

Michael: I completely agree with you.

Gary: If you emailed every person that leaves a comment, and read it, and left a comment thanking them or added your two cents every day, you would be even more successful than you are now, which is wildly successful.

Michael: Yeah, you’re right. So many people will forget about inviting anyone, caring about everyone who comes to their site and to visit.

Gary: The fact that anybody is watching us right now is insane. People take it for granted, they completely over estimate who they are. They think they’re big shit – you’re nothing. You need to remember that. And neither am I or you or anybody else who are lucky that other human beings respect our thoughts and ideas enough to spend time in our communities, and we need to cherish that gift and that opportunity.

As big as – and listen, I’m going to be big ass – but as big ass as I’m going to be, I’m going to be – and sometimes people think I’m a big ass, too. But as big as I’m going to be, I’m never, ever going to forget where I came from, and that’s a very big differentiator. The reason I’m winning is because I care more than my competitors.

Michael: Exactly. All right, so we’ve mentioned WordPress and your blogging, so what would you say to those people out there who want to do their own video? Because you’re at the top of the video growing market right now.

Gary: Make sure you’re good enough to do video. Do what you’re good at. If you don’t like video, then don’t video. If you like writing better, great. If you like audio better, great. Do what you’re good at. I think a lot of people – when you’re a turtle, don’t try to be an elephant.

So first, decide. Just because you hear video is working and Flip-cams are cheap and people like me are doing well, this is my domain. I’m cozy with the camera. I want to make love to that little Flip-cam. It’s my environment. You put a pen and paper in front of me… The reason I was able to do my book was because I dictated the whole thing. That’s why the book is doing so well to the long lead magazine writers, because they’re like, “Holy crap, that sounds exactly like you.”

Hell, yeah! Because that’s exactly how I talk. The ghost writer just fixed the grammar, right? So I think it’s imperative for people to understand if they’re good enough to do it, and if they are, they need to understand it’s not about the lighting or the makeup or the camera. It’s about what you give.

And it’s not even so much about what you give here, in the content, it’s what you give them there for the community. It’s very obvious to me that I lead out those principles in the book.

Michael: Brilliant, and actually, you’ve touched on another good point. You started with blogging when you came online, and we recently featured Gary in a list we did about 20 people who started with blogging and are now doing so much more. You’re releasing your first book next month, I believe. What would you say – because that’s one thing so many people want to do is they want to write a book – what would you actually say to those people out there?

Gary: Don’t try to write a book.

Michael: OK.

Gary: If you focus on your community, and you focus on building your brand, the books will come to you, books will come to you.

Michael: Brilliant, and what about Jets and branding? Because you’re pretty much the guy.

Gary: That’s the game, to me. To me, that’s the game, because look, I was a wine guy. But it was about Gary Vaynerchuk, right? And then when I segued into talking about business, people were like, “huh?” Plenty of people were like, “Stick to wine, douche bag.”

But, the fact of the matter is many more came with me and I think that’s very powerful to understand. You can’t call your thing twitterhouse.com or thefacebookconnectworld.net, because you’re associating with something else. It needs to be about you. My last name was impossible. My name is Gary Vaynerchuk, that’s no present.

But, the fact of the matter is because I own it and it’s about me, people know I love business, and I love wine, and I love the Jets, and I love root beer, and I love WFF wrestling and boxing. It allows you to show multiple tunnels to your personality. If I go now and start a Jets website, it’s not going to seem weird to people, because they already know what I’m passionate about.

Michael: I think everyone who follows you – that’s actually a question I was going to ask is you love the Jets, and you also love wine. If you had choose…

Gary: Oh, the Jets. I’d give up wine in 30 seconds and I love wine. But the Jets are my religion.

Michael: Yeah, brilliant.

Gary: Honestly, I wish I was more like you guys. I was born in Europe, my parents screwed up. I am, by DNA, a football, a real football, a soccer fan. My DNA, the way I am, I’m an anomaly in the U.S., fanatical. I fit right in in Europe when it comes to soccer, because I would punch somebody in the face. I get crazy, I lose my mind.

Michael: All right, and if you could jump in a time machine, go back and change something. I know there’s so many things.

Gary: That’s a great question.

Michael: I know there’s so many things like, it makes us who we are, our mistakes. But if you could actually change one mistake or one thing, what would it be?

Gary: Yeah, I would approach Sergei and Larry and try to invest in Google, because I know I’d make money and I could buy the Jets. The funny thing is I live very non regrettable. I don’t do bad things, because my parents raised me well. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m not sure I like that. My mistakes are the things I didn’t do, not what I’ve done, because when I choose to do something – and this is big.

If you’ve stuck around long enough to hear this or watch this, here’s going to be probably the best thing I’m going to tell you. If I’ve ever decided to do anything, Corked, Vayner Media, this gourmet food center is one, I did it with the purpose of enjoying and learning about the process, not how much money it made at the end.

I made the decision to do it, and the second I made the decision to do it, I had already won. I wanted to do this because I wanted to learn. And it’s never been the best financial decision, it’s the education decision. I need to learn this, let me take my bruises, but at the end of the day I’ll be better off for it. And most people are too thin skinned to take bruises in our society today. Love the process, and the results won’t matter.

Michael: Exactly. One of the things I always think about when I’m doing the sites and doing new projects is that the money is just a byproduct. The main thing is doing it and having fun.

Gary: The challenge.

Michael: Oh, the challenge.

Gary: The challenge is the game, it’s a game. Money is shit, except I like the fact that it allows me to count points. It’s points to me. I agree with you, that’s why you’re successful. If you love the game, you’re going to win. If you’re chasing cash, you’ve lost.

Michael: Exactly. All right, just to end the interview, you’ve been asked so many questions, what would you want to add? One question you haven’t been asked before. What question would that be and the answer?

Gary: I probably would want to be asked something that would allow me to elaborate on the fact that I know I got really lucky with my DNA in liking people. It makes me feel good when people, after six months of knowing me, are like, “Oh, crap. You’re like a really good guy, huh?” That’s what I live for. That’s what I wrote this book for.

I wrote this book for one reason, for February 2010. You know what’s going to happen in February 2010? I’m going to start getting emails from people saying, “Dude, I read your book in October, and this winter I’ve been doing what I’ve loved and been hustling, and I’m making 10K. But I’m not ready to quit my lawyer job, but my ski blog or my skateboard site is on its way and I think I’m going to be quitting by this summer because I’m making enough money. Thank you, you’ve changed my life.” That is the only thing I did this for.

Michael: So it’s a legacy.

Gary: Legacy is greater than currency. My favorite video I’ve ever done for myself.

Michael: All right, brilliant. Thanks, Gary.

Gary: Thank you.

Michael: This is Mike and Gary for incomediary.com. Work it.

Gary: Great job.

Michael: Thanks very much, man.

More On Gary Vaynerchuk at:
http://garyvaynerchuk.com
http://crushitbook.com

Buy Crush It at Amazon.com

Buy Crush It at Amazon.co.uk

Gary’s Websites:
http://garyvaynerchuk.com
http://tv.winelibrary.com

Please Leave Your Comments Below:

The post Gary Vaynerchuk Interview – CASH In On Your Passion appeared first on How To Make Money Online.