Magic MarketBuying and selling in the marketplace of ideas

Up-and-comer Fabulis did some research into what gays do and want on the web, and the results are a little surprising! Also, some of them are not so surprising.

Not surprising: nobody likes MySpace.

The big shock to me was that there seems to be a lot of demand for friendship sites, rather than new hookup sites! Not what I would have expected, given how much word-of-mouth Grinder’s been getting. But maybe that word-of-mouth hasn’t translated into actual conversions — it’s just chatter, rather than satisfied customers.

I wonder how accurate this really is. Do gays just say they want a friendship site because we don’t want to admit that we’re looking for dating?

I’m going to try using the “What Would Seth Godin Do” Wordpess plugin: it greets brand-new users with a special message. In this case, it’ll be an introduction and a reminder to subscribe. Currently, readership of the site is pretty low, including RSS, so I’ll be interested to see if this has an impact. Couldn’t hurt, right?

Right?

Richard Wong asks, “Is Social Media a Waste of Time for Photographers?”

Kind of a leading question, obviously it can be a waste of time, just as easily as it can be absolutely vital. It all depends on your strategy and execution.

A commenter on the article makes a good point: the best way to use social networks is the same as the best way to network in person. Build relationships, gain trust, get referrals. Karma, basically.

The point in Richard’s article that most caught my eye was a criticism of social networks: it’s hard to be heard over all that noise. Oh goodness YES. All this connection is great, but it’s a bit of an overload sometimes, isn’t it? And by sometimes I mean always.

Richard’s response to this criticism is basically, “don’t worry, the good stuff will get eyeballs and the bad stuff will disappear.” And boy oh boy I really want to believe that, but I don’t know if I do.

There’s lots of fabulous photographers (and fabulous bakers, actors, tennis players, osteopaths, etc) toiling in undeserved obscurity. Some cream rises to the top; some cream settles to the bottom. Why? What’s the difference? Is it purely a matter of “right place right time?”

There’s a nice post on Problogger (bluh, how I cringe at that name — it sounds so snake-oil to me, plus it has that “probe” sound to it) about getting rich.

Most of it is common sense stuff: seek a market that’s willing to buy, generate trust and goodwill, and so on. For most of the article, I was like, “yes, yes, obviously.”

Then it gets to the end and the author mentioned that he can make hundreds of dollars a day on the strength of his personality. Wait, what? What does that mean? That’s where I’m most aware of the gap in my marketing-knowledge.

I mean, I know people do that, but I’m still pretty vague on what exactly it is that they do. He says in his article, “Personality marketing means using your own voice and own self and own talents to generate value rather than embarking on an anonymous system like niche websites or AdSense.”

Hm. Yes. That does sound like a good idea. But still … I’d like to see what exactly “generating value” looks like. I have a feeling that it’s something I do it already — but I’m still fuzzy on how to define it, and even fuzzier on how to turn it into money.

For example, I appeared on a news show the other day, talking about transit. That’s something that I’m uniquely positioned to do, and I know I get a lot of attention for doing it. So it startles me to see that I could actually turn it into income, rather than giving it away for free.