Magic MarketBuying and selling in the marketplace of ideas

A recent acquaintance asked me this morning how I manage to eke out a living on the nets. Here’s my response. Note the links scattered throughout! Providing links is something that’s become second-nature to me, which is interesting because it relates to my advice in the email: share, share, share.

Hi Michael,

I’m lucky enough that I work full-time (and am paid! so rare in the blogosphere) to generate content, so I’m spared the usual freelancer chore of chasing gigs. (But I still do little side jobs from time to time: http://mattbaume.com/)

I agree that online audiences are browsers, not buyers! Getting people to open their wallets is a trick that many greater minds than mine are still trying to figure out. I’m more of a journalist than marketer, but there are handy tips to be found here: http://www.problogger.net/

A lot of those “Problogger” techniques seem a bit snake-oil to me; to really be a successful salesman online, it seems like you need to have a bit of the old-fashioned pitchman’s instinct. The tactics that have worked best for me (and that I am also the most comfortable with) involve building community around high-quality content: commenting on other people’s work so they comment on mine, nurturing relationships, making content as “sharable” as possible.

There are two books that I’ve found to be the most helpful for this sort of thing: one is “Made to Stick,” which is all about being memorable & viral. The other, as crazy as this sounds, is “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Despite the super-corny title and old-timey writing, the advice in there really gets to the heart of how humans always have and always will work.

Recently I’ve found myself having to do more and more marketing for myself, and I just stared a blog to document what I’m learning. That’s here: http://magicmarket.mattbaume.com/ (See? Networking!)

Fundamentally, a lot of what I’ve learned comes down to a simple formula: “Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy = $$$$” … That is, the “secret” to success is building a community and offering something amazing. Both of which, obviously, require a lot of hard work. But if you’re doing what you love, it hardly feels like work at all.

Hope that helps! And please do keep in touch.

Matt

Well isn’t that helpful!Just the other day I was wondering about how bloggers make money on the strength on personality, and then conveniently enough Darren Rowse wrote a post with a few hints in that direction.

While his post “How to be a More Relational Blogger” doesn’t spell out exactly how I can make cash off of my blog-punditry, it does address the importance of having a personality when you write.

The highlights:

• Build a core group of loyal readers
• Respond on your blog and participate on other blogs
• Creating great content is your primary concern. (It is a relief to read this! Because it is my favorite part.)

I like what he has to say because it calls to mind a helpful formula: Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy = $$$$.” Okay obvs it’s a little more complicated than that to make $$$$ but the point is well-taken. So much of the markety-businessy advice that I read can be distilled down to that formula.

Here’s Mike Masnick from Techdirt, helpfully expanding on the concept:

I really want to believe that this works, because it sounds both ethical and accurate. But I worry that CwF+RtB might just be a really nice dream that works now and then in anecdotes but not on a large scale.