Jason Unger

Video Blog: Renewing My PC Magazine Subscription

Posted by junger - 12/12/08 at 12:12:38 am

This is what happens to your renewal notices when the magazine goes digital only.

For more, follow me on Twitter, sign up for email updates, RSS, or videos.

Is Your Content Valuable?

Posted by junger - 12/11/08 at 08:12:17 am

As you're reading information online, ask yourself: what is this worth to me?

Would I

• actively find out more about the topic?
• sign up to get more information like it?
• pay money for it?

If you answered 'yes' to at least one of those, the content has value to you.

But as a Web publisher, you can't be sure that your readers recognize the value your content has unless you treat it valuably.

How Content's Value Has Changed Completely

The Internet has democratized information. It's a beautiful thing, right?

Well, not for traditional publishers. Control of information has been their domain for hundreds of years.

Newspapers are going belly up. It's not going to get any easier next year, and it will hit certain places much harder than others.

Now that information is available from millions of resources, much of the actual content has lost its value. It's not a rare resource, dominated by a few in power. Anyone can produce it.

Giving Your Content Value

So how do you give your content value?

For small Web publishers, your content has to achieve certain goals or you won't succeed. Even if it's not about making money, it has to serve a purpose.

Your content could:

• Build a community around a product (ex. The Mint Blog)
• Grow a brand around yourself (ex. Robert Scoble)
• Market your offline services or products (ex. any freelance writer with a blog)

How to Make Money From Your Content

As forecasters expect online ad spending to decrease next year, you need to understand that pageviews are not going to pay the bills.

Even if ad spending was going up, users would still ignore ads unrelated to their online goals.

In order to make money from your content, you generally have two options:

• Charge for it
• Treat it as marketing materials for your paid products

Charging for content? Are you serious? Yes. Charging for content can be an extremely compelling business model IF you are creating the right content and, most importantly, targeting the right people.

Most people are not going to pay to read the Wall Street Journal online, especially because the information is available through other outlets.

But if you're a business owner, would you spend $100 to attend a specialized online training or business summit that will make you more money? Of course!

Targeting the right niche with information that will make them more profitable is, in itself, a profitable venture.

Use Your Content to Market Your Product and Services

Instead of charging for your content, use it as marketing for what you do get paid for.

Let's look back at the three 'free' ways to give your content value:

• Build a community around a product
• Grow a brand around yourself
• Market your offline services or products

Each of these use your content to make you money.

If you sell a product, you want a thriving community of users, critics and evangelists.

If you are a talking head or consultant, you need to build up your brand in order to establish your expertise.

If you are a freelancer writer or designer, you need to show off your skills.

Treating your content as marketing does not, however, mean it should be a sales pitch. Like all other information, if it isn't useful, your users won't respond.

What's Your Content Worth?

You're already producing content. But why?

The next time you sit down to write something, measure the value of your content. If you're not getting anything out of it, then your readers aren't either.

For more, follow me on Twitter or sign up for email updates or via RSS.

3 Things You Can Learn From Salespeople

Posted by junger - 12/10/08 at 09:12:58 am

You're either in sales or you're not.

There's no getting around that — some people are born to sell; some aren't.

I fall in the second camp. Selling, to me, has always brought forth conflicted emotions — obviously, it's about making money, but it's also about filling a need.

As I've transitioned from doing more of the day-to-day content production to meeting, planning and executing on bigger Web projects, I've had to pick up a few sales best practices.

Here's what you can learn from the salespeople you work with.

Act Social, Even if You Aren't

You need to be social to survive in sales. If you're an introvert, look for another line of work.

The easiest way to get someone to buy something from you is to be social with them. When was the last time you opened up your wallet for a significant purchase from a complete stranger?

Even if you're not friends with potential customers, you have to know them. Never eat alone. Network all the time. Go to local events and meetups.

If you don't know your customer, you can't sell to them.

It's All About the Customer

If your customer needs a hammer, you can't sell them a screwdriver.

When you can identify their needs, you can develop an offer that solves their problems. Sometimes, you're not going to have exactly what they need. That's just life.

A good salesperson can determine what the customer wants and package a solution that works. When that works, it opens up a lot of doors for you. The customer know trusts you to offer products that solve his goals.

After the initial sale, you have the opportunity to come back and sell them more. This is where you develop repeat business and can make the sale on higher margin products.

You Need to Believe in the Product

You cannot sell a product you don't believe in. If it doesn't work the way it should or doesn't fit what the customer is looking for, it's not the right product.

The reason passionistas are so important to sales efforts is that the truly believe in the product and let everyone know about it.

If you aren't excited about your product, how is the customer going to be?

Why This Matters To You

If you're not in sales, you might not care what they're doing. But you should.

At a certain level, salespeople are your product evangelists. They're out there shouting the praises of you and what you do. Yeah, they're getting a commission on it, but they're working to expand your presence and notoriety.

When you're developing a product, you need to understand what your salespeople need in order to do their jobs. Think of them as your customers — you have to convince them that it's worth their time to promote your product.

While not every salesperson is going to be an evangelist for you, the good ones are. They're excited, they believe in what you're doing, and they want to help you do it.

Can You Be Creative Inside the Box?

Posted by junger - 12/09/08 at 10:12:43 am

How many times have you been told to 'think outside the box'?

Everyone seems to think that this is a creative way to approach solving problems, but they miss a big point: there's a box for a reason.

Imagine if the only rule in football was to get the ball to the other end of the field. How would you do it?

You certainly wouldn't limit yourself to 4 tries, trade off possessions, and suggest 300 pound guys try and tackle you in the process. You'd probably walk the ball down the field … and that would be that.

When You Have Guidelines, You Have the Tools to Decide

But that's not creative or fun. That's not even remotely interesting. So you establish rules. You establish guidelines for how the solution should be achieved.

Hence, your box. Your box is the path to your solution.

When you're working inside of the box, finding creative solutions can be way more fulfilling than choosing from the unlimited possibilities outside of the box.

You could easily tear the stickers off of a Rubik's Cube and re-arrange them to get all the colors on the right sides. But that's not the point.

Working within the guidelines challenges you to be more creative. Having a guide can help you find a solution that doesn't seem obvious at first.

The Ultimate Inside-the-Box Creativity

Debbie and I are currently working on the ultimate inside-the-box creativity. With a baby on the way, we're coming up with possibles names. (We don't know if it's a boy or a girl, so two names are necessary).

As Jews (and Ashkenazi ones at that), our naming box is only so large. Aish explains:

Ashkenazi Jews have the custom of naming a child after a relative who has passed away. This keeps the name and memory alive, and in a metaphysical way forms a bond between the soul of the baby and the deceased relative. This is a great honor to the deceased, because its soul can achieve an elevation based on the good deeds of the namesake. The child, meanwhile, can be inspired by the good qualities of the deceased — and make a deep connection to the past.

So when we're thinking of names — both a first and a middle — these are the guidelines we're working with. And it helps.

If there were no guidelines to picking a name, we'd be all over the place. She likes certain names, I like totally different ones.

When we're working within the same confinements, we can come to a common solution. We have to be more creative because of the limitations.

Yes, You Can Be Creative Inside the Box

I hate boxes. But they're there for a reason.

When you need to work in a box, don't consider your creativity lost. Use the guidelines you have to develop a creative solution.

If the Apollo 13 crew can figure out how to fit a square peg in a round hole while the astronauts lives are at stake, you can be creative inside the box.

Coincidentally, Mark McGuinness at Lateral Action posted a story yesterday called "Why Thinking "Outside the Box" Doesn't Work" — give it a read for a different perspective.

Welcome to My Lifestream

Posted by junger - 12/08/08 at 10:12:56 am

In a world of facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the rest, it's increasingly likely that you'll be living your online life on someone else's Web site.

So if you're looking to keep in touch with the people in each of these communities, you need to get involved.

But at what expense? Are you becoming someone else's user-generated content?

The new blog design (RSS readers click through), Agregado from the amazing folks at Smashing Magazine, looks to balance those two worlds: your blog and the greater online community.

On the homepage, you'll see my Twitter, del.icio.us and flickr updates, with links to stories from the Online Savings Blog and I Share Funny Stuff. On every other page of the site, you'll see my latest Twitter status.

It's appropriately called my 'lifestream' — and it's open to anyone who visits the blog. Now, you don't have to subscribe to my Friendfeed or check out my facebook News Feed to see what's going on.

Thanks for being a friend.