http://TannStarr.net http://uberMental.com
I own 35 websites. I am systematically destroying and rebuilding them because I want to do something new with my creative side. After hanging out in the Rain for a little over two years and reading Ewen Chia, Mark Victor Hansen, Robert G. Allen, Timothy Ferris, Penelope Trunk, Donald Trump and a host of Rainers, I have come to discover some fascinating truths about the Internet and Social Media: If you don't squander your social media connections you can do very well for yourself by developing multiple streams of revenue. They do not have to be big streams. Small streams can add up to five, six and even seven figures if you take the time to develop social media distribution hotspots...
Rule 1: just get the public reading you. Rule 2: start offering small potential solutions to specific problems that are actually useful to solving what a person needs. Rule 3: You do not need 35 websites to do this (LOL). A few good ones will do and do not rush to be a problem solver. Just start talking to people like they are really there and you are sharing something about your life, your interests and tidbits about what you have gone through.
People like to learn. Did you go to a family friendly restaurant? Share it. Did you find a really cool bakery that caters to people with food allergies? Share it. Is Wednesday buy one get one free at your neighborhood store? Share it. Doing a seminar next month? Share it. Career advice as an employer? Share it.
Writing about different things you are familiar with means people Googling shared interests have the potential of finding you. uberMental is a baby blog with its social media pampers on but it will be a good site. Do you know why? Thought, perception, memory, emotion, will and imagination... Those six categories drive all of my blogs and my goal is to start launching some interesting PDFs from that site.
TannStarr.net is where I am going to network with some talented, artistic friends and launch quirky, fun ebooks. The two domains are already showing each other link-love and sending traffic back to my other blogs. Your ability to be found is the name of the game, not how many comments you rack up. If you don't cross link your work people will have less reasons to come back.
Why mess with Wordpress and GoDaddy? Your ability to capture subscription leads by people opting in at your sites is crucial for further expansion. How can you follow up with the people who read you if you do not know who any of them are? When you start to monetize your blogs you have to visualize those readers. I want you to think of these simple points when you feel the doubt setting in:
01. "The 4 Hour Workweek" (Timothy Ferris) was turned down by 26 out of 27 publishers... Ironically, it took five days to make the New York Times bestsellers list. My point? Keep writing. People who think they know sometimes don't know a thing about you and how people will receive the messages you decide to share. Consumers make bestsellers, not critics.
02. "The One Minute Millionaire" (Mark Victor Hansen & Robert G. Allen) defines money as a tool and as not being good or bad, but neutral. They speak of how to be enlightened millionaires, they explain that it is a path and mindset one needs to embrace and they drive home the fact that even millionaires (a) experience setbacks inclusive of bankruptcy and (b) they also experience embarrassing moments of devastating financial instability. My point? Start where you are and stop waiting for the perfect moment to save up to doing your thing at some future date. Start now, not later. Keep writing with the messed up credit, the looming divorce, the ridicule, the resentment, the speculation. Just do it because if you don't you will never get it done.
03. "How I Made My First Million On The Internet" (Ewen Chia) is a must read. He tells you about his stress and tears regarding the devastating mistakes he made and the mounting debt he incurred only to discover he knew the answers to his problems but was so used to searching for answers and paying other people to find solutions for him he missed the fact that he was not using the knowledge already gained to maximize his efficiencies. My point? Been there, done that, do not want to do this anymore - am watching a lot of you spin your heels as well. I have been picking some very intelligent brains. Now its time to see if I learned anything useful (LOL). We can do this together or I can do this alone. I am going to do this because I want to change where my life is going. I want to enjoy a fun job and have more time for my little minions. A 5 hour work day would make me very happy.
04. Penelope Trunk wrote a very interesting post entitled, "Popular Posts of 2009. Sort Of." My fave quote: "I want to say something upbeat about 2010. You know, start on a good note. But it seems so artificial. I don't think we need to magically be in a great place at the end of a year. Or magically know our goals to start off a new year. I think, sometimes, that it's already magical that every day we wake up with the strong belief that we can make things better." My point? Make things better to the best of your ability one day at a time. Write one day at a time. Write one post at a time. Don't create an artificially rigid schedule for writing. Pop in and say hello if that is all you have. You can always come back later and say hello again with another tidbit of information about your day. Sometimes, just being truthful about a simple thought can connect with more people than a brilliantly researched paper. Sometimes, writing the brilliant post with several comments gives a writer more satisfaction than the ones with over 400 comments (LOL).
05. My fave two Donald Trump quotes this morning: "Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken." and "As long as you are going to be thinking anyway, think big." I need you to think big thoughts about your blog. I need you to believe that as you write across the multiple platforms of your choice you are going to formulate ideas to create multiple streams of revenue. Affiliate program? Seminar? PDF? Publications? CD/DVD? Digital downloads? I want you to start thinking about the work that you've done before and how you can update and revise it into something new, relevant and eye catching like a very useful e-book or newsletter with advertising space.
Try this: write a blog post that spans from your AR dashboard, to your outside blog to your Localism blog to your personal site to your other social media sites. I want you to do it in a way where each site gets a piece of the idea and not a replicated re-blog. Your dashboard will have all of the components but not each site. This is how you series write. This is how you get one idea to vie against itself in Google. This is how you discover which components of your writing do well (or not) in the rankings for the same idea...
That little excercise was gifted to me by a very talented writer. That bit of advice was when the Mind of Minion created uberMental.com because being a Google Whore I have every intention to taking this game to a whole new level (LOL). The WP entries are already on page one of Google. It took approximately 4 hours. Lets see where my Outside Blogs go in the rankings. :-)
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