The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

These people are idiots!

Do you know how little I care about that last statement? Allow me to explain…

I’m on an email list that I think is a very valuable resource. And it’s a new list, so I’m a little more forgiving in terms of giving a pass to the inevitable bumps and rough spots. But there’s been a recent issue that I think would make for a good discussion here, so I thought I’d share it with y’all.

If you run an email list of any sort, one rule is paramount: Keep the list professional, and don’t use it as a bully pulpit from which to whinge on about how stupid other people are who don’t agree with you or who don’t “get” you.

Here’s the story:

This list is new and growing. It’s one of those compilation lists that comes out three times a day (sorta like a Yahoo group, but private label). A while back, apparently some folks griped to the list-runner that three emails a day was too many. So he held a survey of the subscribers, and the overwhelming response was that three emails was just fine, thank you very much. So the list-runner has decided (wisely, I feel) to keep it to three emails a day and let those who disagree unsubscribe.

And if that were the end of the story - list owner takes the responsible route vis-a-vis some complaints, checks in with the list and comes out with a majority ruling - we’d have nothing to talk about. But it’s not.

The list-runner has spent the time since that event complaining about the people who think three emails is too many - basically trying to argue them out of their own opinions. In a recent email, he pointed out that a similar service sends over a dozen emails a day, and by that comparison his list is downright shy and retiring, so these people are crazy for thinking three emails is too much. Which is a ridiculous argument to make, because A) how many emails constitute too many is for them to decide, not you, and B) if they’re unsubscribing to a list with three emails, they’re almost certainly NOT subscribing to the other list anyway.

I chalk it up to this being a new list, and have corresponded with the list-runner to share my opinions (and they have responded more or less in agreement). Hopefully, this will die a natural death and all will be well.

The point I’m trying to make here is that if you’re running a list, a newsletter or any other professional public correspondence, keep the tone professional and on-topic. This is not to say you have to be without any personality at all. Said list-runner does include some witty personal banter in the emails which I find very humanizing and funny, and which I think adds to rather than subtracts from the list, although that’s also an opinion others have apparently differed on.

But for God’s sake, don’t use the list to harangue others, revile people who don’t agree with you, ridicule “losers” who leave the list for some reason or basically turn the list into a platform for you to rage against all those people out there who just don’t get you, and how stupid they are because of it.

Doing so only makes you look whiny, intolerant, ungracious and unprofessional. It never makes the others look stupid, no matter how clearly you try to connect those dots, because every single person on your list has held a minority opinion on something at some point and knows good and well that opinions are just that - a matter of personal preference, and as such, always right (for that person, at that time, in that situation). If I hate meatloaf, than I’m right, regardless of how much you feel meatloaf to be the food of the Gods - trying to argue me out of my opinion by pointing out how much other people like meatloaf, how nutritious it is, how cheap it is to make and so on is both pointless and makes you look like a blithering idiot for trying.

I’ve had to unsubscribe to countless lists for just this reason - some of which were hard to give up, given the value I was otherwise receiving. But, as I noted in my correspondence with the list-runner, I’ve got enough drama in my life to be adding someone else’s to the mix.

Do your subscribers a favor. Keep it light and professional, stay on topic and don’t give into the temptation to feed the trolls. This is even easier if you’re running an email list or newsletter, since the trolls can’t even be heard by anyone but you unless you give them a platform in the first place.

Your subscribers are there to get the information you’re sharing and to be a part of the community. And none of them wants to wade through your rants about the philistine, uncultured idiots who are chapping your ass because they don’t get your particular brand of genius in order to do so.

Tags: Conversation Economy, Ethics and Business, Internet Marketing by Soni Pitts
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My current favorite author, John Scalzi (of whom I am an obsessive fan, if not yet financially a True Fan), has a thoughtful and well-reasoned argument against Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans concept that I wrote about last week.

The Problem With 1,000 True Fans

…it’s not impossible to get 1,000 “true fans.” It can be done. The problem is that Kevin Kelly, in his enthusiasm, wants to make it seem that getting 1,000 people to give you $100 is no great trick. What I am telling you is that it actually is — it’s a pretty damn neat trick, in point of fact. Even if you manage it, the financial reward is not likely to be anything close to what you had hoped for, nor will it likely be as permanent as Kelly seems to imply.

John’s an exceptionally smart and well-educated man with a very popular blog (30,000-40,000 hits a day), several earned-out novels (meaning, they’ve sold well enough to pay out the advance and earn him royalties, which is the novelists’ holy grail), several current and past paying gigs for media corps like AOL and the Chicago Sun-Times and has a backlist of fiction, non-fiction and commercial work that takes up a respectable chunk of a webpage to list. In short, he knows whereof he speaks, and I always find it instructive and entertaining to pay attention when he does.

If you read 1000 True Fans and are considering that approach to making a living, it’s only smart to give the Devil’s Advocate at least as much attention - if only to make sure you’re armed with all the enemy intelligence you need to plan your ambushes. And John’s a smart a DA as you’re likely to find out there.

Oh, and don’t skip the comments section. John’s readership is every bit as whip-smart and well-spoken as he is, so at least half the shiny of any post he puts up sits below the comments cut (which is saying a lot, considering his posts are usually quite shiny enough all by themselves).

Tags: Business, Conversation Economy, Customers, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
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Since a not-insignificant portion of my peeps and potential clients are organ grinders of the artistic sort, I thought I’s pass along Kevin Kelly’s thought-provoking article on making a living as an artist in the 21st century, 1000 True Fans.

According to Kelly,

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

[snip]

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

Kelly’s formula is at once breathtakingly simple and yet compellingly feasible:

First, create 1000 True Fans. According to Kelly, this involves finding and converting 1000 regular fans to True Fans by connecting with them personally and directly, which is an imminently rational goal and one that any artist worth their salt should be able to do, given access to such basic resources as an Internet connection, some basic marketing smarts and a salable product or service.

Second, Kelly estimates that a True Fan will spend an average of one day’s income per year on a favorite artist, although of course some will spend more and others less. For easy math, he rounds this sum out to $100 per True Fan. At this rate (which is, you have to admit, an entirely realistic reflection of what many of us spend on our own favorite artists in a year’s time) 1000 True Fans + $100/year = $100,000.00 per year gross, a nifty living by any artist’s standards.

The key, he points out, rests on that personal contact. You’ll need to nurture, connect with and personally involve these True Fans. Of course, for the average artist, this isn’t a problem. You want to reach out and touch people personally and profoundly. You want to enter into a conversation with them and hear their responses to your work. You want to learn about them and geek out over mutual interests and so on. That connection is a vital part of what makes your art worth doing. It’s fun. And it’s one of the reasons why you sing/paint/play/film/photograph in the first place. (For those who don’t, however, he suggests that an intermediary or manager can handle this task perfectly well.)

Obviously, as Kelly himself points out, the requirement of 1000 True Fans applies best to the solo artist. Bands, comedy troupes, painter’s collectives and other groups would have to increase their effort to achieve enough True Fans per member to scale the formula. But nonetheless, it does scale relatively easily. Also, the number of fans varies depending on the type of media, price of the work, costs and so on, although not by so much that it upsets the formula in very many cases. Finally, Kelly notes that this formula only applies when the fan support is direct (people go to your site and buy a download) rather than indirect (people buy your book or click on a blog ad, which spreads the money out over a wide variety of middlemen). Indirect income means you’ll need far more True Fans to support you in a reasonable manner.

There are several interesting case studies mentioned in the article, including an author that funded his novel through direction donations and a musician who is paying for the production costs of her next CD through a truly creative, tiered level of direct support ranging from…

…$10 “unpolished rock,” which earns them a free digital download of her disc when it’s made, to the $10,000 “weapons-grade plutonium level,” where she promises “you get to come and sing on my CD. Don’t worry if you can’t sing - we can fix that on our end.

Wrapping up, Kelly has this to say:

The usual alternative to making a living based on True Fans is poverty…I am suggesting there is a home for creatives in between poverty and stardom. Somewhere lower than stratospheric bestsellerdom, but higher than the obscurity of the long tail. I don’t know the actual true number, but I think a dedicated artist could cultivate 1,000 True Fans, and by their direct support using new technology, make an honest living.

Sounds like a plan to me.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Business, Conversation Economy, Customers, Social Media by Soni Pitts
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Wired’s lastest issue is all about “free”, specifically, FREE, the book by editor Chris Anderson (coming out in 2009) that is bound to get more than a few economists’ knickers in a twist.

I highly recommend that anyone who plans on doing business in the next decade or so go read the article, paying special attention to the scenarios (in gray boxes) and other supplementary resources they’ve decorated the article with (including the video - it’s just a few minutes long and worth the click.)

In the video, Chris Anderson notes:

“The difference between one penny and free is the difference between having to make a conscious decision to purchase a product and to just do it.”

And while that seems to be a subtle difference, when you actually think about it it’s actually quite a significant gap. Crossing that gap requires a decision. And anytime your customer has to make a decision, the answer could always be “no.” Take that decision away, and the answer is almost always “yes.” Now, if the cost of production, distribution and materials is essentially nil, why risk “no” when you could virtually guarantee “yes” by eating that almost non-existent cost?¹

A few quotes from the article:

From the consumer’s perspective, though, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of “free” is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you.

[snip]

Surely economics has something to say about that?

It does. The word is externalities, a concept that holds that money is not the only scarcity in the world. Chief among the others are your time and respect, two factors that we’ve always known about but have only recently been able to measure properly. The “attention economy” and “reputation economy” are too fuzzy to merit an academic department, but there’s something real at the heart of both. Thanks to Google, we now have a handy way to convert from reputation (PageRank) to attention (traffic) to money (ads). Anything you can consistently convert to cash is a form of currency itself, and Google plays the role of central banker for these new economies.

There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets for the sake of a business model to be identified later. Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.

In short, it’s very possible that free will be the basis of trade and commerce for the foreseeable future. And yet, as Anderson points out, all of the biggest vendors of free services - Yahoo, Google, etc - are filthy rich and increasingly raking it in hand over fist. So yes, it’s possible to get rich on free.

But you have to embrace it, rather than fearing and avoiding it, or trying to take it on in baby steps. The first response will simply keep you in the realm of the buying decision (i.e. trying to work around “no”). The second will simply ensure you’re left slugging it out for customers and memespace as those who embrace free wholeheartedly get all the buzz (and all the crowd momentum).

1. In most cases, it’s greed, ego, habit and confusion, in that order. Greed operates at the “Even a penny is better than nothing” level, which is patently untrue anymore. Also, any time you hear any argument against free that includes the term “stakeholder value,” you’re probably looking at greed and, not insignificantly, the primary stakeholder the speaker probably has in mind. Ego is concerned with the “appearance” of giving things away equated with lack of quality, and the “I don’t have to give it away, because I’m so good” argument…again, neither are relevant here. Habit is just that - business as usual making it hard to envision business as it’s becoming and hard to get out of the rut of the way it’s always been done. And confusion is simply a matter of doing what you’ve always done, because it’s easier than figuring out how to make the new ways work. [↩]

Tags: Business, Changing the World, Conversation Economy, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
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Ah, the plaintive cry of the spam-hounded netizen (that quote was nabbed from a comments thread about bulletin board spambots). No doubt you, yourself, have bitched or moaned something similar in response to a particularly annoying or persistent ad. Remember that feeling? Great, now turn it around…

What does that frame of mind mean for you, as a business owner?

Simply this:

1. Make it dead easy to find you.
2. Don’t give me any reasons to click away when I do find you.*
3. Make it easy to complete the transaction that I want to complete, and make it worthwhile and fun for me to do so.
4. Stay in touch whenever it’s in my benefit for you to do so, not yours.
5. Leave me alone when none of the above are happening.

I see some of you out there nodding your heads. Now contrast those rules with the rules for Business As Usual:

1. Get in their face as often as you can, wherever you can, however you can, and as loudly as you can.
2. Do things your way, regardless of what the rabble wants. What do they know, anyway? (Or, alternately, “Who’s the professional here?” God, I just can’t get enough of that…)
3. Proprietary code that only functions on one specific browser and build, unnavigable Flash, impenetrable navigation schemes, unfindable goods, pop-ups, unholy web design, redirects, etc…it’s all good. So what if it makes things a little harder to use? We paid good money for that website/software/technology. If they want it bad enough, they’ll slog through it. And make sure they only buy what we want them to buy, in the packages we want them to buy it and under whatever conditions we happen to set. While you’re at it, make sure you don’t give away any more than you have to for the money. Man, I’m telling you…if you don’t keep an eye on them, those customers will rip you off to the bone!
4. Keep hounding them until they buy something. Then take note who bought and really turn up the burner underneath those “valued customers.” 7 touches is just the start!
5. GOTO 1
   DO NOT END

If you recognize yourself or your business strategy in any of these last 5 rules, you have some work to do. Time to get busy…

*Note that on number 2 of the first list, I DID NOT say “Give me a reason to click through or to stay once I find you.” These days, you start with “NO” and earn “YES,” not the other way around. Remember that.

Tags: Advertising and Marketing, Business, Conversation Economy, Internet Marketing, Society and Culture by Soni Pitts
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Patrick Coffey has an insightful - and statistically supported - take on why making the front page of a major aggregator site like Digg, Stumble Upon or Reddit doesn’t do you any good.

His key message? A small amount of highly targeted or qualified visitors will out-convert a tidal wave of random visitors every time.

Through some trial and error, Alexis was able to help our natural health e-letter site get a boatload of traffic from Stumbleupon. In fact, in the last month, one page generated over 28,000 new visitors.

When I heard this, I thought it was great news. You see, when we get traffic from outside sources, we can generally convert at least 10 percent of it into e-mail sign-ups.

So how many of these 28,000 social media visitors do you think signed up for our natural health e-letter?

500? 1,000? 1,500? 2,800?

No! Try 80. That’s a conversion rate of just over 0.2 percent.

In the article, he notes that the reason for this is that social media visitors are notoriously hard to convert. They tend to be very ad and marketing savvy (and resistant), they rarely sign up for stuff like newsletters and they don’t tend to stay around on a site for very long (stickiness is vital to making sales). He also notes that the added expense of the bandwidth use and server strain also detracts from any value this sort of traffic brings

Being someone that surfs the social media sites for news and other interesting tidbits, I have to agree with his conclusions. I rarely stay on any site I click through - usually just long enough to skim it for relevant news. I almost never sign up for anything on the sites (who needs more inbox filler?), nor do I buy stuff. I’m news and giggles hunting, not shopping.

Of course, your mileage may vary. Increasing your traffic can help sell advertising and increase awareness of your existence. Plus, sites that get Dugg or Stumbled stand a better chance of attracting the attention of top-level media sites, highly-rated blogs or other websites that can provide qualified visitors. And if your product or service truly does fit the needs of all those Diggers, you might have better luck with the sales. So it’s not all bad news.

The key here is that social media sites are a great tool for getting traffic, but getting traffic is meaningless unless that traffic converts once it’s on your site. If they don’t, then no matter how many hits you get you’re no better off than a storekeeper on the Pamplona bull run. There’s a lot of people running by, but none of them are going to stop and shop.

This doesn’t mean you should ignore these sites. Nor does it mean that hitting the front page is pointless. Just keep in mind that for the most part, it unlikely to bring you much of anything other than a temporary spike in transient traffic. To increase sales, you need to increase your exposure to specific, qualified people. Everyone else is just passing through.

Tags: Conversation Economy, Internet Marketing, Social Media by Soni Pitts
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Hugh McCleod has been elaborating on his theory of “social objects” and why they will be shaping the nature of commerce for the foreseeable future (and have been shaping it all along). His recent posts on this are definitely worth a read.

In Social Objects for Beginners (warning: the cartoon that accompanies this post contains language that is NSFW), Hugh gives a quick entry-level definition of what a social object is, and how and why people interact with them.

The Social Object, in a nutshell, is the reason two people are talking to each other, as opposed to talking to somebody else. Human beings are social animals. We like to socialize. But if think about it, there needs to be a reason for it to happen in the first place. That reason, that “node” in the social network, is what we call the Social Object.

He goes on to offer several examples of different types of social objects, which goes a long way toward making this somewhat abstract idea very understandable and concrete.

He follows up with Why The “Social Object” Is The Future of Marketing, where he delves deeper into the topic of how social objects work (people want to talk about things they share an interest in), why businesses must understand and act on the concept of social objects (if your product isn’t a social object, it’s probably irrelevant), why things were different before (or maybe not), and how the concept of social objects is going to be changing the way business is done.

Now, when you buy something, you don’t phone up the company and order a brochure. You go onto Google and check out what other people- people like yourself- are saying about the product. In terms of communication, the company no longer has first-mover advantage. They don’t ask your company for the brochure until your product has already jumped through a series of hoops that SIMPLY WERE NOT there twenty years ago. (emphasis his)

Go on over and read these two posts. You’ll either find them terrifying or enlightening. Or both.

But ready or not, he makes a good case for why the creation, discovery and sharing of social objects are going to be the heart and soul of commerce and business for the foreseeable future.

The world is changing. What are your customers talking about?

Tags: Conversation Economy by Soni Pitts
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Hugh McCleod is talking about the true size of your audience vs just what you can count up via website metrics and list length. Turns out, your audience may be enormously bigger than you think:

Another way to think about this is akin to a favorite rock band. You may not listen to their recordings every day, but pull out their music every so often, when your life needs a dose of their particular brand of inspiration. They might not be a daily fix, but they’re nonetheless a regular and important part of your life.

So following this logic, I’m guessing there are a lot of people who read me in the same manner that I read [fellow blogger] Weinberger. I may not be part of their daily fix, but they are part of my audience nonetheless.

In other words, just because someone doesn’t subscribe to your newsletter, stop by your blog every day (or even every week) or open most of your emails doesn’t mean that they’re not out there, waiting for you to say something that touches them and makes them want to reconnect.

Conversely, in a few quick notes at the end of the post, one of Hugh’s Twitter friends points out why traffic isn’t always the best measure of your audience.

..if ‘traffic’ is what you want, then more cartoons may mean more traffic. If you want connections and relationships, that’s harder.

And that’s the kicker right there. You can have a million people an hour hitting your site, but if none of them connect with you, your product, your personality or your message, they might as well not be there. OTOH, a small, but dedicated audience (even if they only check in on you once a month) is pure gold and worth 10 times the traffic numbers in actual value.

So, how big is your audience, really? You may never know. But one thing you need to realize is that focusing on traffic over building relationships = fail.

Tags: Conversation Economy by Soni Pitts
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Full contact blogging will resume as soon as these last few gallons of eggnog wear off. In the meantime, enjoy these profoundly wise words from Hugh McLeod:

Tags: Conversation Economy by Soni Pitts
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Over at Blogfeeder, Dina writes about the concern some bloggers face over giving away the goods in their blog (or, by extension, a newsletter or any other free information source). Coincidentally enough, I had a discussion with a client on this very matter yesterday. So I’d like to throw in my $.02 here. (Hey, when the blog gods are handing me a topic on a silver platter, who am I to refuse?)

I absolutely agree with Dina when she says, “Trust me, if 100 people come by and read your blog today, you’ll get 20 people who actually heard what you said correctly, five people who have a vague idea that they might follow the advice, and one person who actually does something about it.”

But I’ll take her dissection even further by saying that of that 1% who actually acts on your advice, only a few will be able to take your gems of wisdom and use them effectively on their own. These are the one’s everybody’s afraid of.

Don’t be. For starters, there are very few of them, and so they’re not a threat to your bottom line. In fact, they are the one’s who are likely to be your best customers and I’ll tell you why in a minute. But first, let’s look at the rest of the group.

[Read more →]

Tags: Conversation Economy by Soni Pitts
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