It had to be said, especially in the wake of all the 3rd Tribe criticism and the defense that was roused against it.

Yes, it’s true…there are problems in our industry, but that doesn’t mean you should throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Problem 1 – Topic

The problem that needs addressing, and it’s one that seems to be glossed over by both bloggers and their audiences, is that blogging about blogging has to go. It’s lame…pack it up.

Seriously, outside of the people that actually make money blogging, there’s no need for people teaching others how to blog, especially when many of these teachers aren’t even qualified to teach. That’s like taking a college physics class and then thinking that you’re good enough to teach physics.

Let me ask you a serious question: How many people do you know outside of the Internet, that would be interested in reading about how to blog about blogging? None…right?

So why do we keep pretending that people do? Why, when the “A-Listers” tell you that you need to find your own niche and find a way to be remarkable, do people immediately revert to blogging about a) making money online, or b) blogging about blogging?

I’m not talking to the “A-Listers” here, I’m talking about everyone else, because quite frankly, I don’t blame the bloggers that teach this. There is a need for this info. However, blogging is just a portion of a successful business strategy.

But seriously…how many people do we need blogging about how to build a better blog? How many of these people teaching you to build better blogs are actually making money outside of selling you how to blog better? Very few.

Problem 2 – Method

OK, so now that I’ve said my peace about blogging about blogging (wow that sounds redundant doesn’t it?), allow me to move to the next problem facing almost every blogger I’ve met.

As I said previously, blogging is only a part of a complete business strategy, and some would even argue that its an unnecessary part. I disagree with the latter, because I believe that if you don’t want to move from selling WoW E-Books to dating guides, and back, then you need a long-term business strategy.

Blogging is great for this because you can dedicate yourself to a single useful product and let your blog attract search traffic while you sleep. Blogging is great Google food, and helps to create a sticky site…which is important.

HOWEVER…it’s not the blog itself that makes you money, it is your product. You do have a product right?

It’s easy to see an A-List blog and think that it holds the key to online success, but the truth is that many of those guys/gals did it before blogging was cool, and as a result, they were able to build their empire before the gold rush. They’re embedded in the industry itself, which is a great place to be.

But that won’t work for many of you. Why? Well, unless you have a smashing personality like The Bloggess or Perez Hilton (puke), then your content had better be damn good if you want to attract thousands of unique visitors per day. Even then, you’re going to have to fight to exist longer than a one-time book deal or TV show.

Blogs like This is Why You’re Fat and Hot Chicks with Douchebags are fabulous sites, but they are built to be a one hit wonder.

Eventually, when something like LOLCats comes along, they’re screwed. You’ve got a 100K advance on your book, but now what?

I’ve gotten a bit off track here, but here’s the scoop:

Making money with a blog has much more to do with having a business first than it does with having a blog first. A blog should sell something for you…not the other way around.

When you buy a course like the Third Tribe, Blog Masters Club, or the 31DBBB, do yourself a favor by actually providing a product or service that people want. Money doesn’t magically appear in your bank account because you have a lot of cool headlines or a lot of blog posts…it appears in exchange for giving someone else what they want.

Problem 3 – Medium

I’m going to take a lot of shit for this one, but it has to be said.

Quit writing E-Books.

Yes, it’s pretty cool that you can sell a PDF for 50 bucks (I’ve done it, and still do, but just bear with me), but in order to live big and retire early, you’ll have to sell a hell of a lot of E-Books. Even at $100-$200/pop, we’re talking 1,000 sales per year to get to 6 figures, which as you know, doesn’t last as long as you’d think.

The trick to making a lot of money (again, it’s not just the money that’s important, it’s the freedom that comes with it) is in having something that people will want both today and tomorrow. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be writing E-Books every few months in order to make a living…it just doesn’t scale.

But, if I can provide a useful service, like Dropbox, Zendesk, or 37 Signals does, then I’ve got a chance. If I can provide a product, like this, that not only is in demand, but has a very large reach, then I might be in business.

The money isn’t in the E-Book, it’s in the service that distributes E-Books (iPad/Kindle).

The money isn’t in the media, it’s in the distribution of media(see Leo Laporte and/or Revision3, Chad Vader).

It’s in having a unique talent or skill, understanding what a market wants, and providing it as quickly and as inexpensively as you can.

Take Heart

I’m not trying to bring anyone down here, but I feel there’s a lot of misinformation making its way through our industry, and unless someone says something about it, then new bloggers are going to just keep perpetuating the cycle.

These days, having a lot of comments, RT’s, and subscribers isn’t enough. People see free all over (we’ve talked about this before), and I hate to break it to you, but there’s a chance that your blog serves as lunchtime fodder more than an authority site.

That model works great for small niche sites and Affiliate/AdSense sites, but very few others.

What I’m trying to say, is don’t get too caught up in your blog. It’s like a Venus Fly Trap. It’s all nice and pretty and it’s really cool when people talk about it, but the minute you take a wrong move you’re trapped.

You aren’t supposed to be the one getting caught in your own trap…it’s the customers that you’re supposed to hook. But unless you have a good product, then your blog functions like a broken net.

More than anything though, don’t take your blog too seriously. It’s easy to get down when the traffic is too, but don’t.

Blogs are flaky…investing your emotions in them is a waste of time. Focus on the product first and I promise you…life will be much easier.

(Like this post? There’s more in here)

Image Credit

Cat Picture Credit

Where 99% of Bloggers Go Wrong is a post from: Nathan Hangen

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Want to Stay in Business?

It is no secret that the economy is struggling, made worse by the pundits on TV telling us how bad things are getting. It seems that for every 1 person talking about the great times in which we live, there are a thousand talking about how the world is on the verge of collapsing into dust and ruin.

I happen to be one of those that doesn’t mind standing alone on an island proclaiming how lucky we are to live at this very moment. Although the economy is in shambles, it is nothing more than a natural cycle of ups and downs. Eventually, things will even out and those of us with the inspiration to capitalize on this downturn will be sitting pretty when it all evens out.

This brings me to the point of my story, which is that in times of crisis when it seems like there aren’t any buyers, why not turn to the one company that you know isn’t going anywhere? Why not turn to the company that seems to single handedly hold the Internet together?

Of course, the company I am talking about is Google, and you can bet that even though the Dr. Evil of the technology world might be sitting in a dark corner plotting their every move behind a veil of secrecy, they aren’t going out of business anytime soon. This means that revenue models, such as AdSense, the Google Affiliate Network, and any other business associate with Google are going to be surefire ways to get paid during these difficult times.

If you are in the consulting business, then take the ever loving giant arms of Google and use them to your advantage. Google always has a new product in the pipeline, and let’s face it…they own the search engines. Master SEO, using Google’s content network (knol for example), or use the iGoogle API to develop applications. There are a million ways that you can make money with Google. Heck, I hear that working for Google isn’t so bad either.

The bottom line is that if you aren’t sure where your next paycheck is coming from, switch to a revenue model that won’t disappear. Google isn’t going anywhere and the more ways you can get your hands in their pockets the better.

Do Business with Google is a post from: Nathan Hangen

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Hey guys and gals -

Real quickly I just want to let you know that I’ve enabled Google Friend Connect on my blog here so that you can take advantage of the future of social media and social networking. Make sure to join via the sidebar and then you can post comments or links via the bar on the bottom of the page. There are a ton of features currently available and I expect many more to come. So help me usher in a new era of Awesomeness and sign up to join!

Here is the link to read more about GFC:

Google Friend Connect

I’ve Enabled Google Friend Connect is a post from: Nathan Hangen

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Seasteading, Have You Heard?

Image by Seasteading

I read about Seasteading several months ago, but at the time I didn’t think it was relevant. However, since I am starting to break into new topic on this blog, I thought I would take a shot at making it relevant. If you read my post on the future of architecture, then you have some insight into my fascination with the future and how excited I am to see the concepts I read about as a child slowly start to come to life.

What is Seasteading?

According to the Seasteading Institute, the definition is as follows:

Seasteading means to create permanent dwellings on the ocean – homesteading the high seas. A seastead, like in the picture above, is a structure meant for permanent occupation on the ocean.

According to the same site, Seasteading is a way to live outside of traditional national boundaries and laws and in essence allow in-depth social experiments to take place. Although I think moving to a sea platform in order to re-create cities from the ground up seems a bit like an overreaction, apparently Google does not. A Google engineer has stepped in by adding funding and Google has filed for patents of ocean platform technology.

I view this Seasteading thing as a curious experiment more than anything, but there are several interesting points to note about the project.

• Google is continuing to prove that they are not simply a search engine. Google continues to invest itself in the future of business, science, and technology at an alarming rate. At this pace, Google may own the planet some day.
• Many people complain about governments and laws, but the fact that people are investing large sums of money to escape them is very important. This may signal the start of the revolution that enables small communites to become heavy in the influence department.
• 10-20 years ago people would have thought this idea was crazy and impossible to achieve. Who would have thought that we are on the verge of being able to colonize every portion of the planet. This may be a realistic solution to the present and future land availability problem. This may also make a tremendous impact on world economies if the technology is able to harvest the power of the sea to create a trade and energy production network on every corner of the globe.

I am predicting that this particular experiment ends in a whimper, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it resurrected by the end of this century.  The human will is tremendous and I wouldn’t doubt in our capability to accomplish anything.

What do you think?

A Pirate’s Life for Me is a post from: Nathan Hangen

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I’ve been using Google Notebook for nearly a year now and although the product wasn’t perfect, I really couldn’t complain all that much about it. Any time I was on the computer and had a random thought or business idea I wanted to jot down, I’d throw it into Google Notebook and quickly be done with it. Although there is no real lack of Google haters, I find myself to be a very happy and content Google fanboy. Still, something didn’t feel quite right about Google Notebook and all my Twitter friends kept talking about this new software called Evernote. Often times when I’m under a barrage of tweet attacks I’ll find myself ignoring most of them due to stubborness (a trait I refuse to apologize for), but eventually I couldn’t withstand the attack and checked it out.

Note: Although Evernote offers paid “pro” features, this review features Evernote’s free functionality.

My first impression of Evernote was that the site was much better looking than I expected and it had that unmistakable web 2.0 quality to it. They had a cool logo (an elephant, totally cool) and the signup looked easy, so I gave it a spin. Mind you, this was about a month ago and I wasn’t even really looking to replace Google Notebook, just to voraciously consume every web 2.0 site I could get my hands on. What ended up happening however, was a battle so fierce that…well I actually can’t give it away yet because that would defeat the purpose of the review, but anyway I had a really hard time deciding which application I preferred. So in an effort to decide who would be victorious in the realm of web based notebooks, I matched them up head to head, and this is what I found:

Ease of Signup

The first thing that people do when they want to use a new web 2.0 product is sign up…easy enough right? Well Google Notebook is a very easy process, particularly if you already have a Google Account. You simply press a few buttons and boom, you’ve got a new notebook.

Evernote is fairly simple as well, you just click a button to get to the new user page, type in a few details about yourself, and off you go.

I’d call this one a toss up because both of them get you off and running in just a minute or so, which is how it should be.

Interface

Google Notebook’s interface is fairly straight forward, albeit a little bland. The left side of the screen lists all of your current notebooks with the note labels in a box below. There is a typical text editor and a few buttons to save or start a new notebook. Here is a screenshot:

As far as Evernote goes, the interface is more involved, which I believe to be a good thing. At first glance, the options are a little overwhelming, but at least there are options. The opening interface lets you see all of your notes combined onto one page in the form of little sticky notes. If you open an individual notebook you will find the same interface as well as the option to open up the text editor to add or change your notes. The interface allows you to customize the page to your preference, which is a far cry from Google’s simple interface. Here is a screenshot:

Overall, I’m going to have to give this one to Evernote because of the ability to customize the interface as well as the overall “feel” of the page itself.

Labels / Tags

Labeling and Tagging is a huge issue for me because I keep a ton of notes and without a good labeling system my notebooks become a cluttered mess. What’s the point of keeping notes if you can’t go back and find them easily?

Google Notebook gives you the ability to label every individual note at the click of a mouse. You can also comment on your own notes, which comes in handy if you want to monitor progress or add something to your original note. Although the feature isn’t fancy, it works well enough to keep a handle on your notes.

Evernote has tags as well, but they are a bit more difficult to access and record. However, once they are stored they are very easy to access via a menu on the sidebar.

I happen to like Google’s tagging feature better, but that doesn’t mean Evernotes is lacking in any way. Still, I’ll give this one to Google.

Browsing

This is where an online really defines itself in my book. Having to do the whole copy and past thing on a webpage, especially if I want to bookmark or stumble a page, is just an added hassle I don’t want. Luckily, both of these programs offer great solutions to this problem.

Both Google and Evernote require the Firefox plugin to make these features work, but they are a very quick install. Google’s is here, and Evernote’s is here.

Google’s plugin gives you the ability to pull up your notebook from the bottom of your browser window, which is really handy if you don’t want to open a new window. It pops up attached to the bottom corner of your browser and lets you add a quick note and close it in a hurry. You can also choose to go full screen if you wish. Also, when on a web page you can select anything on that page, right click and add to Notebook. The only problem I have with this feature is that it can be difficult to get the content into the right notebook and the loading time is a little slow.

Evernote has a nice concept with their plugin because although it basically works the same way, a small pop-up opens in your current window allowing you to choose the notebook, tags, and title for the note. This saves you the aggravation of loading time and waiting for a new window. Also, there is a very cool feature called web-clipper that lets you screenshot anything with a resizable box and then post the screenshot to Evernote.

Although I like Google’s innovation in this department, Evernote came out and improved on the design. Give this one to Evernote.

Extras

This is where things will really start to get fun and I’m so excited about some of these features that I’m going to go against order and talk about Evernote first. Evernote wasn’t happy with just a web interface and so they decided to go all out. If you visit their download page, you will find not only a Windows and MAC version of the software, but you will also find a mobile version and an Iphone version. Although I haven’t used either mobile version, I have used the Windows version and I love it even more than the web interface. For starters, you have the ability to synchronize your account from Windows which allows you to access and use Evernote from nearly any PC in the world.  The software has easy to use buttons for adding, printing, emailing, tagging, and deleting notes and lets you export them in a variety of formats. The software is flat out excellent.

Evernote also lets you email yourself notes in the event you don’t have access to the software online or on your desktop. You are assigned a simple email address and you can email notes, photos, and audio clips from your computer or phone right into an Evernote notebook. Emailed notes are placed into your default notebook. Although I haven’t used this feature much, having the option to is great.

Lastly, Evernote offers you the ability to import Delicious Bookmarks and their tags. Although I don’t use this feature a lot, its nice to know that I can hit up my bookmarks while going through my notes.

The only extra that Google Notebook really offers is a way to share your notebooks. This may be handy for collaborative projects or if you like to share lists (I use it to share Gift Wish Lists), but this really isn’t that special or irreplaceable.

Now, obviously I’m going to have to give this category to Evernote and although it looks like Evernote has the clear edge, I’m going to have to pause before my judgement. You see, even though Evernote clearly beats Google in several categories, I still find myself using Google Notebook nearly half of the time. As I’ve tried to find a reason for this I can only think of one reason: Google Notebook is cleaner, simpler, and really I’m just used to using it. Where Evernote reigns supreme, features and innovation, Google is weak. However, Google Notebook’s strengths lie in its ability to be used quickly and without effort for quick notes or ideas.

So there you have it, Evernote is the clear victor by category, but I’ll still be using Google Notebook for simpler note taking and random thoughts. If you haven’t yet, try them both and let me know what you think.

Google Notebook vs Evernote is a post from: Nathan Hangen

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If you haven’t heard the hype about the next “greatest” search engine yet, I’ll give you a brief rundown of how Cuil.com came about. According to DigitalTrends, Cuil was founded by ex-Google employees and was designed by the same designers that had a large hand in creating the famous Google algorithm.

Cuil seeks to overthrow Google from the top search engine throne, but sceptics are already finding flaws in the software. That still won’t be enough to stop the hype machine and I’ve already seen numerous blogs, posts, and articles trying to pump the new usurper up.

Cuil launched this month and does boast a web index of over 121 billion pages, which is 3 times that of Google’s current index. From my own experience, although Cuil does have an interesting layout that could revolutionize search results, the results themselves don’t seem to be as accurate as I am used to and the pictures they display aren’t always related to the site itself.

For instance, my own site, nathanhangen.com comes up on page 1 in Google’s database (imagine that), but doesn’t even rank on the first several pages on Cuil. Maybe I’m just not used to the keywords or the way they index pages, but for now I will be sticking with Google.

Technorati Tags: search engine, google, web

Cuil – The Next Big Thing or Next Big Bust? is a post from: Nathan Hangen

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