Throughout my ventures over the past years, I’ve always, ALWAYS, came up with ideas and thought to my self “Wow, this will make me a millionaire.” I’m (currently) still not a millionaire. Hmm, what gives?
I used to be an idea man.
Ideas are only the start of the uphill battle to success. Just because you think your idea is great, and hey it probably is great - revolutionary even! This doesn’t mean it will create and market itself.
You need to be an action man And no I don’t mean the kind you’ve played with, and still do (while hiding them under your mattress - where your millions SHOULD be). An idea is just that, an idea. You have to nurture and build this idea. Be passionate about it, if you come up with a few ideas a week - just because they might “make you rich” doesn’t mean you should pursue them. Pursuing the ideas that don’t suite you wont make you rich. There will be no passion, and no attention to detail. Frankly, you probably won’t care about it - so why will the user, consumer, etc? Pick the best of the best, and follow through on every little detail.
Build it, and they will come, fingers crossed?
Marketing your product or service, in my opinion, is the hardest part of the battle. I’ve built some pretty kick-ass stuff throughout the years, but I didn’t know a drop of marketing. Needless to say, those projects might have been awesome for a hundred or so people - but I never truely got the word out in order to make my project known, and turn a profit. If you don’t know anything about marketing, hire a consultant, read ebooks, learn. If you truely believe in what you’ve taken your time to create - you will find a way to make that project have its reach.
Organic growth is fairly rare, at least in terms of double or triple digit growth.
And you may chuckle while reading that and think of the many websites out there that have grown seemingly without much effort - but you would be wrong. Youtube, Myspace, etc. All of these websites have so much going on behind the scenes that we can’t even begin to imagine. I remember when Youtube first came out, they were in any and every press publication. I’m sure they had a great PR team and connections, they set that up. And Myspace? Well they threw parties and concerts for ages, and still do, to encourage the spread of the word of mouth movement that made the site what it is today. The point? Nothing really happens “just because”, the majority of things are always planned in detail - even if it all doesn’t seem that way.
Dont let anything get you down
The difference between an idea man and an action man is, the idea man might throw some money at a concept, have it made, and then it sits there. The action man, you guessed it, he throws money at something he really wants to do - then follows through on it. While an idea man might cut his losses once the project doesn’t take off, an action man figures out why it didn’t take off - and pushes into it two times as hard.
The internet is just becoming more and more competitive.
This isn’t the 90’s anymore. Having an idea and getting some investors to pump cash into it doesn’t work anymore. Those who take action and learn, live, love their product, are the ones you will see on the cover of Entrepreneur.
You go to a live show on their tour and you’ll understand. When you go to your average concert, your average band parades out from the back of the stage excited to get the show started with their instruments at center stage accompanied by mixing equipment here or there. When you go to a Daft Punk show, you are confronted with silence and darkness. Anticipation sets in.
The set begins slowly, lights out, with just a black shadow that is the stage and the hum of the anxious crowd. Lightly a quiet tune splits out from the speakers, and the crowd explodes in screams and applause, knowing something is coming—and it is. Suddenly you hear this scratchy synthesized voice slowly leak out the word ‘robot’ and the sea of people beneath Daft Punk’s huge pyramid structure pull out their camera phones for the inevitable. The show begins.
Slowly the opening song starts, building up as lights behind the two masked French producers alternate with the words. The song’s intro comes to a close and the alternating words ‘human’ and ‘robot’ cease to an explosion of the well-received music from the speakers while the mammoth walls behind the duo’s pyramid splash light over the crowd synchronized cleverly with the music.
What can you learn from these electronic musicians?
Give your customers a taste of a unique lifestyle. Help them immerse themselves in your brand. This ‘brand immersion’ is the most powerful tool you can have, yet it’s one of the hardest to develop. It’s not something an advertising firm can make for you. It’s not something you can establish in a business plan.
Immersion comes from living the lifestyle that your brand exudes. This is why skate company Birdhouse, snowboard brand Burton, and clothing line A Bathing Ape are so successful: their founders live their lives around what their brand represents.
What does brand immersion require?
Passion- Without this, you won’t have the drive to build your business to what you have envisioned. Without it you won’t be able to mentally grasp what your customers and users envision for your brand; what they want out of experiencing your brand. Passion leads to a deeply-rooted understanding in your industry, topic, or field.
Daring and Fearlessness - You will be told you will fail and your ideas are stupid. Listen to guy Kawasaki when he says, “don’t let the bozos grind you down.” You have a goal to achieve and plans to get there; they’re just jealous of your zeal and are too lazy to strive toward their own dreams. This near-careless attitude is contagious with your users, and they most certainly will invite their friends along to join the fun.
Unique Experience - This is the most important. Without this, you are just another label. Why go to the Rainforest Cafe? …because it’s a unique experience. Why see Daft Punk live? Because it’s a unique experience. Why does your market go out of their way to buy your product or to hear what you have to say? Because you deliver a unique experience. Think Starbucks or Apple.
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This entry is discussing two things I ran across today that I thought were beyond cool. TED (standing for Technology, Education, & Design) [website] is an annual conference where some of the brightest minds gather to discuss, share, and demonstrate ideologies, products, and humor which are likely to revolutionize the world.
The video above I pulled from YouTube, but seeing the videos on TED’s website is much more enjoyable; they’re all hi-res and stream quicker. The TED conference has been around since 1984 and there are now about 200 videos uploaded onto the site for your viewing pleasure and mental astonishment. I recommend watching at least one a day. Some of the speakers have some really jaw-dropping presentations.
I will be posting many of the videos here on the blog as I find them relevant to whatever topic Bryan or I are covering with our personal and joint projects.
Photosynth is even more mind-blowing
Currently, the best way to view photos is to see them lined up in a clumsy grid ever-so-slowly loading on your screen, one picture at a time. Photosynth is software being designed based off of Microsoft’s acquired C Dragon technology which makes browsing through pictures and content seamless, allowing full scaling inwards and out
The video demonstrates by showing a small collection of items and zooming in to one, which turns out to be an entire text-based book. Also demonstrated is The Guardian with a fake ad implemented taking a small corner of the page, which contains massive amounts of information—all the user need do is zoom in to see more information, and zoom in further from there to see even more relevant information.
That’s just the framework for the even more amazing power behind C Dragon. Photosynth is built off of C Dragon as a system that gathers photographs from all over, parses through its meta data to know what it’s looking at, and piecing each relevant photo together in a continuous photo comprised from many.
The example given uses Notre Dame, gathering literally thousands of pictures taken of it and computing the different reference angles and whatever variables are necessary (and I’m guessing there are tons) to literally build a 3D model of the photos’ subject. Using the interlinked pictures, Photosynth built a model of the cathedral and uses each image to map it out, so when the user mouses over a part of the building, they can see where each picture was taken from and can click through to see it or browse through all the others.
Truly amazing stuff. Needless to say, today has been beyond inspirational for me.
We’re all in the business of helping people, whether you may realize it or not. Your computer isn’t some mystical creature that allows you to tap into its powers to produce some sort of product or knowledge—it’s a tool; programmed by humans to be used by other humans to create greater efficiency and to expand one’s capabilities.
Many people building web empires, apps, and what-have-you forget that they are building their business plans around other living breathing thinking people. The ideal of each unique visit to your site representing an individual person who has an entire life story behind them is sort of mind-blowing, especially as your site gets into the thousands and tens of thousands of visits a day. That’s tens of thousands of unique individuals with their own theories, feelings, and preferences who have stumbled across your business or site somehow.
The question I’ll want to raise is this…
How do you treat each number in your analytic software as a human?
Do you answer each email as if you are looking to make a new friend out of the transaction, or do you respond as if this person is just ‘another’ lemming-visitor of yours? Do you genuinely thank those who visit your site or refer you traffic, or do you complain that you aren’t getting enough attention? Do you understand that for every 86% of your traffic that doesn’t convert, the 14% are all people who have committed to your service or product?
We’re all people, and we all love being acknowledged for helping others; a simple ‘thank you’ to a stranger (and especially a visitor or reader) will light them up and before you know it, you’ll have friends everywhere willing to help you with anything simply because they respect you as someone who took the time out of the day to say thank you and carry a conversation.
Geocities was cool, drag and drop web page creation was the hottness.
Html was something you ended up learning to make webpages, not to whore glitter graphics on myspace.
AOL’s sexual chatrooms were hilarious, posing as a 35 yr old lesbian was hours of entertainment. Check out this YouTube video for a quick summary of this. (Semi-NSFW, vulgar language)
You have battle scars from fighting siblings from the family computer. Before the good ‘ol everyone has a laptop days.
You used Internet Explorer, and erasing your history never worked right. It made for some awkward dinner conversations with the family.
You may have been in grade school, but teachers still picked you over the IT guy to fix their crap.
Getting 50 hits to your web page was awesome; now it has to be 50,000.
Mavis Beacon is a name that really pisses you off.
AIM was a great tool to sign onto, and actually talk to people. Now its just sign on, throw up an away message.
Kicking people off aim was fun, gotta love those “progz”.
You could still warn people, and boy was it hilarious. Also a great tool used in obnoxious flirting.
The 3 N’s: Netscape, Napster, and Newgrounds.
Alta Vista was your first choice in web crawler.
And finally… Three letters anyone? - A/S/L
Added by others:
Two words… or maybe just one… CounterStrike.
You had an account on theglobe.com.
You used Sub7 to royally screw with your friends.
Oregon Trail - You have died of dysentery.
Endless hours playing the game Myst.
You owned a Packard Bell and not a Hewlett Packard.
Playing Command & Conquer through the phone line.
Waiting 12 minutes for a picture to load, and that being fast.
Got yelled at by your parents for hogging the phone line all day.
Lara Croft. ’nuff said.
stickdeath.com
You ran a few Angelfire pages.
You used Winamp 1.0a.
Zip drives, jazz drives, and MiniDiscs.
You have a low digit ICQ #
You spent time on other IRC’s.
You played on Quakeworld.
Operation cwal; There is no cow level; Power overwhelming.
Many bloggers have this odd tendency about them to desire comments on their posts more than anything, but won’t go about commenting anyone else’s posts. That’s BS.
What The 2/1 Rule is
Bryan and I have created and adapted the 2/1 Rule which stipulates that for every one real comment you receive on your blog, you comment that person’s blog twice. If they have great content, they likely deserve more than 2 comments! If it’s one of those automated link-farming sites that comments any post you write with its main keywords in it, report it to the blog police for being lame!
How The 2/1 Rule works
Comments are a great form of blogging currency. Most importantly, if you get comments and if you leave comments, everyone is getting free link-backs for contributing to the online community of bloggers. This rewards consistent reading and commenting with potential traffic and free links.
The rewards for using The 2/1 Rule
If you post enough insightful comments, which they should all be insightful, A-List bloggers will eventually catch on that you exude quality and they might want to write about your blog or have you write a guest post for them, which has been proven to generate great amounts of traffic. Top-tier bloggers also love showcasing great guest posts because it makes their life easier in terms of content creation.
Writing comments to other bloggers is a great way to keep your mind fresh by exposing yourself to other blogs, which offer different ideas, philosophies, and topics. You can then use this to compose your own articles for your blog without feeling swamped for ideas or motivation to write yet another post about the same thing you always seem to cover.
Traffic generation, ideas for content, networking with like-minded people and the top bloggers (who obviously can not be like-minded… or real people for that matter), and getting free links. Comments are a sure-fire way to jump start your new blog or if you’re an established blog, to give you a little push in the right direction.
Average products aren’t good enough anymore. Not when you can log in to Amazon or any other e-commerce site to read what hundred or thousands of previous purchasers have to say about any particular product. With this, people gravitate towards the best products, and nothing else.
Make yourself remarkable
Being remarkable is a solid basis for a business’ model. It really is. If you, your product, your service, or your brand is worth the effort for someone to bring it up in discussion—to remark about it—then you are remarkable.
Brands like Google, YouTube, and Amazon grew to where they are by users of the sites finding them extremely valuable; enough so to tell their friends about them. Products like the iPod and the Nintendo Wii follow the same formula in being worthy of remark. People like Radiohead and 50 Cent have the remarkable factor down to a science.
Being remarkable slashes marketing costs
You’ll notice a common thread in all of the aforementioned products: They all became popular without extreme advertising campaigns. Why is this? Scott Cook, founder of Intuit—the guys behind Quicken and Quickbooks, explains the value of being remarkable:
“A brand is what a friend tells a friend it is. Not what a company tells them.”
There is no set formula. That’s why not everyone is remarkable. Everyone is capable of being remarkable or creating a remarkable idea, product, or concept, but for some it takes a little practice… a few tries to learn what isn’t remarkable. One of my favorite authors and marketers, Seth Godin, covers the topic of remarkability in many of his books and writings, such as his book Purple Cow. The first result in Google when you search for “remarkable” is a blog entry by Seth covering 10 guidelines in how to be remarkable.
Online video entertainment sites have been seeing a huge boost thanks to the recent strikes going on in Hollywood, and I’m glad internet producers are getting their time to shine.
Oh wait…they aren’t.
Viral videos of people doing the dumbest crap are still some of the most popular videos on the web today.
Welcome to the ADD generation
As a producer you want to aim to put out a professional product—you know, quality. But when you look around at the top videos around multiple video sites - most are kids picking their boogers and feeding them to their dogs. Normally, I’d think this was awesome - but I’m out to create a business entertaining people, and thats my biggest competition.
A few simple things I’ve learned from this
Don’t give up on what you feel is right
In my case, just because weird crap is what’s popular - doesn’t mean my audience isn’t out there somewhere. I’m just going to have to look a bit harder to find them. If you have to, (and this usually is a good thing) niche thyself. You may not appeal to everyone, but the people you do appeal to will be loyal.
Don’t mold yourself to what people want
You do want to satisfy your customer, or your audience, but don’t always mold to what they want. If I started spinning out plenty of booger-picking-dog-feeding videos, I might get attention for a bit, but my content will soon be forgotten because its just like all the other weird stuff out there. Do what you want to do, and what your the greatest at, the best quality product you could put out will be what you get, and the customers/audience will come.
When in (serious) doubt, conform with a game plan
If you absolutely must conform to get the attention you need, make sure you do it by only tweaking on your original idea. Then, when your “conformed” project blows up, you can use it to filter the eyeballs to your real work. You most likely won’t retain that entire audience, but it is a quick way to gain the attention you need.
I know my industry is a bit different than the majority of people reading this blog, but these are tips for everyone. Happy producing/affiliate marketing/spamming/dog sitting. Cheers.
In correlation with the synonymous appearance of youth and binge drinking, I’ve decided to create the ultimate list of drunken personalities and how they relate to business. I, at 18, am in the golden years of alchohol consumption. Whats this mean? Late teens don’t drink to socialize, they drink to get drunk. Now, let’s presume this is truth for everyone of every age…we all drink to get blasted and our true drunken personalities comes out. What do they mean, in relation to how we work?
The Douchebag
When referring to the “douchebag” whom throws himself at every female and talks about how awesome he is, this man has power issues. His theory is that he is the man, and they should all immediately be able to tell that and want to sleep with him.
Whats his business attitude?
This guy will run his business power hungry, be cautious of partnerships and working for such an individual. If he gives you an inch and you take a mile, he will bring the hammer down on you. It’s HIS business, and everything he does to benefit you will benefit himself more in the long run. Nothing is a nice gesture with this man, it all adds up to something.
The title says it all, but in a recent entry on my personal blog, I cover statistically why my stagnant blog manages to get more subscribers than BS Bloggers, which Bryan and I put great effort into. What is all boils down to is that we’ve been getting our posts on BS ‘Stumbled’ which provides a huge portion of our traffic, where as StevenKovar.com has a much larger percentae of Google traffic.
