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There's one problem that gets in the way of everyone's success (especially mine).
Just a couple years ago I founded a company called Quick Cup. I sold disposable shaker cups (essentially Blender Bottles that you use once and throw away), and I was working together with the IP Venture Clinic at Case Western Reserve University to get a patent for the final design. It all looked and sounded great; everyone was cheering me on. There were only a few hiccups (minor fuck-ups that shouldn't have happened had I been more careful), but nothing that seriously interfered with the trajectory of the company. My goal was to eventually sell Quick Cup to a larger supplement company for a massive profit.
There was only one problem, and it's the biggest lesson I've learned in business since: There's a huge difference between pitching your idea -- "Would you buy a product like that?" -- and asking someone, "Would you buy that product right now?"
It's by far the most important thing I've learned about business.
Still -- and this is a problem that I have with both this blog and my start-up -- I have one major issue that's infecting every idea I have: I don't market.
I expect organic growth. I expect to tell someone about my blog who tells someone else about my blog who tells someone else about my blog and, sooner or later, I'll be making just as much money as Financial Samurai.
But if there's one thing that Neil Strauss has taught me about writing, it's that No One Cares About You -- and, also, you should keep open loops like the ones above. But they like to hear about your failures, and they like you to have life experience that they can learn from to improve their own lives (especially the dweebo workaholics in the PF space).
In this post, I want to to lay out a plan to get at least ~1k views per month for two months.
I've never actually broken 1k views in a month.
On Twitter, I asked my fellow PF bloggers (The Frugal Gene, Debt Free Geek, and Dividend Diplomats) for advice on how to build a bigger following, and Lily from The Frugal Gene told me I should look into Frugal Asian Finance's Blog Traffic Reports, so that's what I'm going to do.
Lessons
Frugal Asian Finance, according to her post, "How I Went From 0 To 31,104 Views/mo In 7 Months," said that her main source of traffic was from Pinterest. It seems the obvious answer, for me, would be to copy her. Make a Pinterest and promote, right?
Well, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to use her success as a framework, but I'm not building the same house.
Pinterest in particular would be a poor site for me to use. The same thing goes for anyone else who's writing about cryptocurrency. Tim Ferris said in The Four-Hour Workweek that you shouldn't waste time trying to create demand; instead, you should fulfill demand that already exists. According to the Omnicore Agency, 81% of Pinterest users are female and only 7% of total pins on Pinterest are created by men.
Meanwhile, since Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies offer their users and investors a level of anonymity that's virtually unknown in any other industry, hard statistics are fairly difficult to come by. However, Coin Dance has surveyed Google Analytics data and compiled a "Bitcoin Community Engagement by Gender" infographic. It mirrors a SurveyMonkey survey that I did on r/Bitcoin pretty well (even if I only got ~30 responses):
For whatever reason, interest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are largely driven by males. As a sidenote, this creates, in my opinion, a huge demand for women's voices in the industry. No one wants to hear about what another young white millennial has to say about the future of financial technology, but everyone wants to hear about what an attractive woman has to say about it.
In the coming years, I think it might be a good idea to promote my blog on sites like Pinterest. For now, however, while cryptocurrencies are still viewed as a risky investment -- and women's investment strategies (and natures) tend to be more risk-averse -- I'm going to start promoting my posts on steemit instead. (It should be noted that, ironically, women's risk-averse investment strategies tend to make them better investors):
Probably has a lot to do with men actively managing their portfolios (as the next chart in the article shows) more than women.
What is steemit? I like to put it this way: steemit is reddit, except it pays the content creators. I already earned one whole penny for my last article on their site. Here's a good guide on getting started in the steemit community. The gist, as he stated, is this:
Steemit pays both the content creators when their work gets upvoted, as well as the people who curate the best content on the site by upvoting others work.
There are three main forms of currency that the steemit community uses: Steem, Steem Power, and Steem Dollars.
Steem works just like any other currency in the crypto space. You can buy and sell it on any exchange where it's offered.
Steem Power is a little bit different. Steem Power is a little like buying influence on steemit. The more Steem Power you have, the more your vote counts. However, the catch is that you're not allowed to sell Steem Power units until you've owned and held them for two years.
Steem Dollars are kind of like Steem, except Steem Dollars are what you're rewarded with when someone upvotes your post.
I plan on becoming more active within the steem community. We'll see how this plays out in terms of blog followers. For all intents and purposes, I'm starting this experiment with virtually zero followers. I'll put $100 in this first month to see if it works.