My Favorite Business Model for a Breakthrough Digital Business

It was the end of 2008. Something you might remember about that year - in October, the markets took a nasty fall and the global economy melted down.

I was the sole breadwinner for my family. The company I worked for was going through round after round of layoffs. The well-paying, secure job I'd had for five years looked likely to evaporate underneath me.

I had some savings, but not a ton. I had a mortgage and preschool for my three-year-old to pay for, as well as silly habits like buying groceries and having health insurance for my family.

I had been noodling around with business ideas, but I hadn't gotten serious.

In the final few months of 2008, I had to get serious. Early in 2009, I took the leap. Here's how I did it.

My year of living dangerously

In 2009, I felt a lot like a chicken trying to cross an eight-lane highway. It was theoretically possible, but there was a non-optimal level of stress involved.

The first thing I did was hang out my shingle as a freelance copywriter.

In a lot of ways, it was wonderful. I worked on fascinating projects that I cared about. I had lovely clients who actually listened to me. I was able to implement content strategy (which I learned, incidentally, mainly from Copyblogger), instead of sitting in endless meetings talking about it.

The main downside for me was the “you don't kill, you don't eat” freelance model, in which I was endlessly having to close new clients in order to keep my revenue going.

I know people who are masters of this. I was not one of them.

But it worked, more or less. I was supporting my family.

Growing the audience

One thing I'm so grateful for about that time: I had started growing my audience well before I needed clients. My original intent had been to find another job - I figured a blog would help me stand out with prospective employers.

As it turned out, I was functionally unemployable, but the blog was an amazing resource. It didn't have zillions of readers or email subscribers - but it had enough.

(By the way, I launched an email list with a simple autoresponder before I even had that site up, which I recommend if you're starting from scratch today. You want to capture every drop of attention you can.)

By the time I went out on my own, that blog had already started to pull a small audience together. It also connected me with like-minded people for projects, support, expertise, and eventually business partnerships.

The email list allowed me to put offers in front of potential customers - and discover what worked and what didn't.

Finding stability

2009 was a year of hustle, and trying out all kinds of business models.

I tried freelancing, which sort of worked. I tried some content strategy consulting (we called it something else then), which also sort of worked. I put together a few simple information products with friends. I had some affiliate offers going.

My friend Gary, a business coach who talked me down from Mount Freakout about a thousand times that year, had been on my case to launch an online course with a membership component. I told him I'd get it done that year.

It was not pretty. Building the site was complicated, and I needed to hire someone to put together a variety of puzzle pieces that came from entirely different puzzles. It was fairly expensive to build. But I got it launched - in mid-December, since I'd promised Gary I'd do it that year. (Accountability is a useful thing.)

I called that site The Remarkable Marketing Blueprint, and it changed everything.

(There are still lovely and successful folks out there who identify themselves as “The Remarkables.” That makes me deeply happy.)

I launched the Blueprint at a pretty modest monthly fee. The checkout system was a PayPal nightmare, and I'm lucky it worked at all. The membership management tools were primitive, with lousy security. (Remind me to tell you about the week that Russian hackers kept putting porn into my member library. Fun times.)

That's why I'm a bit emphatic about how much easier the Rainmaker Platform makes things. Trust me, the early tools were not so user-friendly.

But they got the job done. People bought the course. They benefited from the course.

After a short time, I relaunched the Blueprint (Gary was bugging me again) at a higher price. And that launch went even better.

I didn't become a millionaire. But I had momentum and steady revenue. I was helping people with their problems, and in turn, I was making a reasonable living. I had a business that worked.

If you think that would be an amazing feeling … you're absolutely right.

Come to the free webinar

Building an online course or membership community is a great business model - but it's not a guaranteed home run. You can set yourself up for failure, or set yourself up for success.

Brian Clark's original Teaching Sells was the course that taught me how to set the Blueprint up for success. How to structure it, how to make it marketable, how to position it, how to get the content created, how to launch it, and how to run it.

Teaching Sells isn't on the market anymore, but Brian Clark still teaches folks how to build online courses - only these days, it's a much more streamlined process.

Brian's holding a free webinar on Wednesday, December 7, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time that will get you started.

Click the button below for easy (and free!) registration.

Free Webinar:


How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)

I love this model for so many reasons.

• I won't say it was easy, but it was doable.


• It supported me and my family when we really needed it.


• It provided steady, predictable revenue so I could catch my breath and actually plan something.


• It was conducive to my commitment to be a good parent and spouse as well as a capable businessperson.


• It connected me with wonderful customers, who became friends, and who went into the world and did amazing things.


• And it opened doors to other possibilities - the business stage that Brian Clark calls “Acceleration.”

It's a model that works if you know how to do something really well. It's also a model that works if you don't have your own particular area of expertise, but you partner with someone who does. (You set the course up and run it; they provide the content and expert authority. These can be remarkably productive businesses.)

Even though we've been business partners for years now, I always make a point of listening to what Brian has to say about online courses. He always has new insights and points of clarity that I learn from.

So I'll be there … and if you have any interest at all in this model, I recommend you check it out as well. You can just click the button to get registered.

Free Webinar:


How to Develop an Irresistible Online Course People Will Line Up to Buy (and Then Actually Use)

The post My Favorite Business Model for a Breakthrough Digital Business appeared first on Copyblogger.

How to Find Epic Keyword Opportunities That Turn Into Easy SERP Wins by @josephhhoward

Do you write content and never see it on page one in search results? Find less competitive keyword opportunities so you can finally win at Google!

The post How to Find Epic Keyword Opportunities That Turn Into Easy SERP Wins by @josephhhoward appeared first on Search Engine Journal.

NES Classic Edition gets Bluetooth support with a $40 accessory

Nintendo's NES Classic Edition is a gift from the gaming gods, but it's marred by one explicable flaw: the controller cable is too short, forcing you to sit extremely close to your TV. The solution was to get an aftermarket extension cable or alternate controller, but why not just get rid of the cable completely? That's what 8Bitdo's Retro Reciever does, operating via Bluetooth with an included remote that adds an extra two face and shoulder buttons, (should you want to use the controller for other, more button-y systems). Moreover, you can connect just about any Bluetooth controller to the Retro Receiver too.…

This story continues at The Next Web

Google Adding More GMB Notifications?

Barry Schwartz reported on a new feature that allows configuration of your Google My Business settings to send notifications on a wider range of tasks than was previously permitted. The new feature will allow the account (as opposed to each location) to set email and mobile app notifications for the following activities: Important updates Google … Continue reading Google Adding More GMB Notifications? →

Related posts:

1. Google MyBusiness Email Verification Now Confirmed


2. The New Google Plus – All About Collections Not About Business


3. Google Releases Mobile My Business Updates

How do outbound links affect organic search rankings?

Chart of the Day: New experiment on outbound links shows their impact

A lot of discussion of SEO is around the right type of backlinks, links into a site, and rightly so given their continued importance to ranking. But what about links out from a site, do they have an impact? These are discussed less often, but can have an impact as the chart from this experiment by Reboot Online shows.

The experiment involved purchasing 10 new domains which mentioned the niche term "Phylandocic". Each article mentioned 2 authoritative, related websites. On 5 of the websites, mentions are in plain text whilst on the other 5 sites, they are hyperlinked. The domains were all registered at the same time to remove any domain age influence. All domains contained 10 random but pronounceable characters and all domains were confirmed as having 0 search volume produced in Google. All sites were co-hosted to minimise any hosting related bias.

The full research gives more details, but these visual results summaries are compelling. You can see that the ranking stablised after a period of 8-10 weeks to give higher rankings for the sites with outbound links.

Here are the rankings for the term which also makes the point effectively.

Implications of the experiment?

It seems to me as I review SEO practices of different sites, that some businesses and some copywriters seem to have an attitude that all in-line links to other pages on their own site or on other sites are negative, so they don't follow this practice. Perhaps they are fearful of leaking visitors, but to me, the benefit to users of providing relevant links and the benefits of improved rankings will typically outweigh any disadvantages, particularly on a blog post. This experiment is interesting since it suggests that outbound links do have a positive impact.

In the early days of Google, whitepapers from Google research (and patents) referenced the Hilltop ranking concept related to "Expert documents". This concept hasn't been forgotten though, more recently a Moz Whiteboard Friday video asked: "Is External linking good for SEO?"

• Full details of Experiment: Reboot Online


• Recommended Smart Insights member toolkit: SEO Toolkit

5 Takeaways from Earning Links in 130 Countries

Posted by kerryjones

I was in Peru earlier this year for a digital marketing conference, and I overwhelmingly heard the same frustration: “It's really hard to use outreach to earn links or PR coverage in our country.”

This wasn't for lack of trying. As I continued to hear this sentiment during my visit, I learned there simply weren't a lot of opportunities. For one thing, in Peru, there aren't nearly as many publishers as in more populous countries. Most publishers expected payment for mentioning a brand. Furthermore, journalists did a lot of job-hopping, so maintaining relationships was difficult.

This is a conundrum not limited to Peru. I know many people outside of the US can relate. When you see the Fractl team and others sharing stories about how we earn hundreds of links for a single content piece, you might think it must be nice to do outreach somewhere like the US where online publishers are plentiful and they'll feature great content with no strings attached. While the work my team does isn't easy by any means, I do recognize that there are ample opportunities for earning links and press coverage from American publishers.

What can you do if opportunities are scarce in your country?

One solution is focusing your outreach efforts on publishers in neighboring countries or countries with the same language and a similar culture. During conversations with the Attachmedia team (the company hosting the conference I was at), I learned they had much greater success earning media stories and building links outside of Peru because publishers in surrounding South American countries were more receptive to their email pitches and publishing third-party content.

But you may not need to do any international outreach if you know how to create the type of content that will organically attract attention beyond your borders.

At Fractl, many of our top-performing client campaigns have secured a lot of international links even without us doing much, or any, international outreach. To dig deeper, we recently conducted an analysis of 290 top-performing client content campaigns to determine which content naturally attracted coverage from international publishers (and thus, international links). Altogether, these campaigns were featured by publishers in 130 countries, earning more than 4,000 international media stories.

In this post, I'll share what we found about what causes content to spread around the world.

1. Domestic success was a key factor in driving international placements for Fractl's campaigns.

For years, we've noticed that if content gets enough attention in the US, it will organically begin to receive international press and links. Watch how this happens in the GIF below, which visualizes how one of our campaigns spread globally after reaching critical mass in the US:

Our study confirmed that there's a correlation between earning a high number of links domestically and earning international links.

When we looked at our 50 most successful client campaigns that have earned the highest number of media stories, we discovered that these campaigns also received the most international coverage. Out of the 4,000 international placements we analyzed, 70 percent of them came from these 50 top-performing campaigns.

We also found that content which earned at least 25 international media pickups also earned at least 25 domestic pickups, so there's a minimum one-to-one ratio of international to domestic pickups.

2. Overcome language barriers with visual formats that don't rely on text.

Maps showing a contrast between countries were the visualizations of choice for international publishers.

World maps can be easily understood by global audiences, and make it easy for publishers to find an angle to cover. A client campaign, which looked at how much people eat and drink around the world, included maps highlighting differences between the countries. This was our fourth-highest-performing campaign in terms of international coverage.

It's easy for a writer whose primary language isn't English to look at a shaded map like the one above and pick out the story about his or her country. For example, a Belgian publisher who covered the consumption campaign used a headline that roughly translated to “Belgians eat more calories than Americans”:

Images were the second most popular visual format, which tells us that a picture may be worth a thousand words in any language. One great example of this is our “Evolution of Miss Universe” campaign, where we created a series of animated and interactive visualizations using photos of Miss Universe winners since 1952:

The simplicity of the visuals made this content accessible to all viewers regardless of the language they spoke. Paired with the international angle, this helped the campaign gain more than 40 pickups from global sites.

As we move down the rankings, formats that relied on more text, such as infographics, were less popular internationally. No doubt this is because international audiences can't connect with content they can't understand.

When creating text-heavy visualizations, consider if someone who speaks a different language can understand it - would it still make sense if you removed all the text?

Pro tip: If your outreach strategy is targeting multiple countries or a country where more than one language is widely spoken, it may be worth the effort to produce text-heavy visuals in multiple languages.

3. Topics that speak to universal human interests performed best internationally.

Our top-performing international campaigns show a clear preference for topics that resonate globally. The six topics that performed best internationally were:

1. Drugs and alcohol


2. Health and fitness


3. Entertainment


4. Sex and relationships


5. Travel


6. Technology

Bear in the mind that these topics are reflective of our client campaigns, so every topic imaginable was not included in this study.

We drilled this down a little more and looked at the specific topics covered in our top 50 campaigns. You'll notice many of the most popular topics would make your grandma blush.

We know that controversial topics are highly effective in grabbing attention, and the list above confirms that pushing boundaries works on a global scale. (We weren't exactly surprised that a campaign called “Does Size Matter?” resonated internationally.)

But don't look at the chart above and assume that you need to make your content about sex, drugs, and rock and roll if you want to gain international attention. As you can see, even pedestrian fare performed well globally. Consider how you can create content that speaks to basic human interests, like technology, food, and … Instagram.

4. A global angle isn't necessary.

While our top five international campaigns did have a global focus, more than half of our 50 top-performing international campaigns did not have a global angle. This tells us that a geographic angle doesn't determine international success.

Some examples of non-geographic ideas that performed well are:

• A tool that calculates indirect sexual exposure based on how many partners you've had


• The types of white lies people commonly tell and hear


• A face-off between Siri, Cortana, and Google Now performance


• A sampling of how many bacteria and germs are found in hotel rooms

We also found that US-centric campaigns were, unsurprisingly, less likely to succeed. Only three of our campaigns with America-focused titles received more than 25 international placements. If your content topic does have a geographic angle, make sure to broaden it to have a multi-national or worldwide focus.

Pro tip: Consider how you can add an international twist to content ideas that already performed well domestically. The Miss Universe campaign example I shared above? That came to fruition after we successfully did a similar campaign about Miss America. Similarly, we could likely reboot our “Tolerance in America” campaign to look at racism around the world and expect it to be successful, as this topic already proved popular at home and is certainly relevant worldwide.

5. The elements of share-worthy content hold true internationally.

Over the years, we've seen time and time again that including certain elements in content greatly increases the chance of success. All of our content that achieved international success included some combination of the following:

• Surprising information


• An emotionally resonant topic


• A universally appealing topic


• Comparison or ranking of multiple places, things, or ideas


• A geographic angle


• A pop culture angle

Look back at the content examples I shared in this post, and make note of how many of the characteristics above are present in each one. To increase the likelihood that your content appeals to global audiences, be sure to read this post about the vital role these elements play in creating content that earns a lot of links and social shares.

What has your experience been like using content to attract international press and links? I'd love to hear what's worked for you - leave a comment below!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Google Testing New Feature for Messaging Businesses From Search Results by @MattGSouthern

A select number of site owners are being invited to test a new feature that allows searchers to message businesses from search results.

The post Google Testing New Feature for Messaging Businesses From Search Results by @MattGSouthern appeared first on Search Engine Journal.