If you haven’t realized it by now, social media companies are not a product. They are not beholden to their users for any reason other than that they need users to be the product. Social media then sells its data and insights to the highest advertising budget to get the most targeted results. While making you the product has been vilified in some arenas, it’s not any worse than you as the product for TV or radio. The biggest difference is that Facebook, Twitter, and their ilk can target you specifically, have done experiments to show they can manipulate your feelings, and are in it for a profit, not of millions of dollars, but hundreds of millions.
The purpose of online marketing is to drive people to your website to buy something. While the Internet is constantly changing as are the way search engines evaluate websites and their relevance to queries, one thing appears to remain true throughout the changes. In order for your online marketing to work, you need to provide meaningful content at your website.
I’m not any good at building a virtual community. I’m not sure why. My Twitter account hovers around 230 followers, usually fewer. My YouTube page is at about 250 subscribers. My Patreon has five dedicated and amazing Penguinators (Thank you!). The only reason I have over 1,000 Facebook friends is because I played a game called Castle Age for four years and I needed friends to get prizes (DfA!).
However, a virtual community is what I need to build to
survive as a writer. I need a group of individuals who will interact with my
webpage and social media. People who will share penguin posts and buy books and
penguins. A core group of active fans, who can help get the word out and keep
my TV series on the air for another season (figuratively speaking), would be
amazing.
Taylor Swift has her Swifties. Haley Reinhart has her Haliens. Firefly has its Browncoats. Justin Bieber has his Beliebers. What’s the name of J.K. Rowling’s fans? These fans are there to support and protect their chosen artists, and just such a fan base is what every creator needs.
I’ve seen examples of fan-building, but I don’t know how to
use my personality to do it. All I know is that I need to figure it out and
quickly. Change is coming, and when it does, I’m going to need a lot of support
and a lot of change.
I’ve been struggling with this idea of an email list for
several reasons. It’s a lot of extra work. It’s an extra expense. I don’t
really like the email lists I’ve joined, and I was hoping that people would
migrate over to my Patreon where we can make beautiful words and penguins
together. (You can still migrate to Patreon and get cool things for as little
as a dollar a month.)
Extra Work
I already write at least one post a day for my blog; I
surpassed 200 days of posting in a row on July 12, 2019. I plan on keeping that
streak alive, but it isn’t easy to come up with something new every day. I try
to write 3 posts a day for my SEO job when they have work available. I need to
write posts for my Patreon – one or two a month. I edit books as a side job.
Adding one more thing to my list of things to do, which
includes marketing, continued learning, reading, refilling the creative well,
dishes, laundry and other housework, taxes, teaching English, searching for
freelance jobs to supplement my income, keeping my social media accounts active
and relevant, and spending time with my wife and family, is a little
overwhelming, especially when I really have no idea what I’m doing. How can I
keep an email list current and active while still finding time to write my next
book?
Extra Expense
MailChimp offers free limited use email lists. If I get more
than 2,000 subscribers or I want to do something cool like set up a series of
future emails, I’m going to have to pay up for that. This extra expense may end
up being worth it, but right now, it’s hard to justify. Automation would be
great for an introduction to Penguinate.com and its creativity, books and
penguins. For now, I have to live with what there is – the opportunity to
follow up with an immediate discount email, a day later intro email, and an
email on the first of the month that rounds up everything I posted on my blog.
Then, I’ll hope people don’t forget who I was when the next email I send is
more than a month away.
Other Email Lists
Russell Nohelty and some other people do these great list
building contests. For a small fee, authors join the list builder. The money is
pooled to come up with a prize package that people will really want based on a fandom,
like Doctor Who, Firefly, or Marvel. I’ve signed up for a couple of these and
ended up on email lists that were not what I was expecting. (Who knew Buffy the
Vampire Slayer was related to the reverse harem genre of books?) Aside from
that, I received 20 to 40 different emails or more during a two-day period
after the sign up and those emails keep coming until I unsubscribe. They aren’t
just from the authors, they’re from Amazon, Kickstarter, GoodReads, and other
websites the authors had people sign up at to get more entries. (I did not win
the Buffy swag, by the way.)
All the emails end up being the same. Hi, I’m author, here’s
what I’ve been working on, here’s a free (short story, book), here’s a contest
you haven’t entered, here are some other free books… I don’t want to inundate
your email inbox with emails you aren’t going to read, and I haven’t figured
out how to make an email that is any different. Why would I want to make an
email list where people will get the same thing (minus the freebies) that other
authors are already sending out? Do you really want pictures of my cat? (If so,
I’ll send them, but she doesn’t like being photographed.)
On Patreon
I was really hoping to build my Patreon into a juggernaut.
If I could get 600 people signed up at a dollar each, my financial situation would
be much more stable. It wouldn’t give me the opportunity to quite everything,
but it would reduce the amount of freelance and SEO work I had to do.
Unfortunately, I still haven’t got a handle on how best to get fans to sign up
for the Patreon. I’ve offered discounts at any level. I’ve created offers, like
join at $30 for three months and get a penguin. I’ve posted about it on
Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. I haven’t figured out how to grow any of my
social networks beyond a certain number and Patreon is the same right now.
Why Am I Doing It?
I am starting an email list because it’s the best way to
keep you in the loop about what Jenya and I are doing creatively. YouTube changed
its criteria for creators to monetize videos. Facebook changed its algorithm,
so that creators had to pay to get their fans to see what’s being posted on the
fan page; it has also randomly marked my penguin8.com as spam without giving me
a reason or checking the posts that I sent notices about. Weebly eliminated
access to its website for anyone geographically listed in Russia and other
countries. These changes have made it more difficult for creators to make a
living off of random and organic growth. They have also shown that these
companies control my eCommerce to a degree that is not only uncomfortable and
unprofitable but also dangerously close to being able to remove my presence
from my largest outlets with a small change in their algorithms. I can’t count
on social media and search engines to drive organic views to my websites.
In addition to this, my SEO job ebbs and flows. There have been days when there just aren’t any articles to write. I need to find a better way to make money, and every other book and website I’ve read about being a creator in the Internet age says an email is the only way to go. When a website like examiner.com or MySpace shuts down or becomes less visited, the email list is still there to sustain the creator. In theory, I’m in control of the email list, and thus in control of my destiny. And isn’t that all anyone really wants? To control his or her direction?
So, please sign up for our email list. Like share, comment on our social media posts and sign up for our Patreon. I look forward to you becoming honorary Penguinators.
In creativity, the more ideas you
have, the more likely you are to find a great idea. When people come together
to share, they can combine ideas and build off each other. In these cases, it’s
better for the people involved to check their egos and their need for credit at
the door. If someone can come up with a world-changing idea because people were
open to sharing and participating in give and take, that should be what
matters. While the creative community knows this, it also knows that the person
or company who implements the idea gets the credit and the rewards. It’s a
stumbling block that comes with capitalism where the almighty dollar rules all.
Facebook went through this with the
lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg for stealing the idea from the Winklevoss twins
who recruited him to work on ConnectU. Zuckerberg is a billionaire, but he
cared about who got the credit.
In “How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention, and Discovery,” author Ken Ashton tells the story of vanilla and a slave boy named Edmond. Europeans loved vanilla, but it only grew in Mexico. Plants were taken to other countries, but they didn’t produce any vanilla beans. The world’s supply of vanilla was limited to the two tons of beans produced in Mexico and pollinated by a specific bee there.
It wasn’t until Edmond (who didn’t have a last name because he was a 12-year-old slave) pollinated a vanilla orchid, adapting a technique he had learned from pollinating watermelon vines, that the vanilla industry was able to grow beyond Mexico. Edmond was freed about 6 months before the rest of the slaves in Reunion and given the last name “Albius.” He went to the city, was jailed, his former owner was able to free him in three years, but Edmond came to a “destitute and miserable end” according to his obituary. Edmond is remembered through the name of his pollination technique called “le geste d’Edmond” (“Edmond’s Gesture” in English) and a statue that stands on the island where he created the technique. In 2018, according to “Time,” vanilla ($515) was worth almost as much as silver ($527) per kilogram.
While Edmond didn’t get the recognition he deserved in his lifetime, it was due to his status as a slave and African and not because his owner tried to take credit. In fact, his owner insisted on telling everyone the debt that the nation owed to Edmond for his discovery. He corrected false stories and did his best to improve Edmond’s standing in life. Twelve-year-old Edmond probably never thought about getting the credit for his discovery.
However, in today’s climate, discovery,
innovation and creativity take a backseat to quarterly profits and the need for
fame and recognition. We may be capable of achieving great things, but we need
to figure out how to justly compensate everyone involved. Unfortunately, greed,
intellectual property theft and laws geared toward improving the lot of corporations
make it increasingly difficult to justify being creative for the sake of humankind.
Every so often, I get caught up in one of those point-and-click
Facebook games, like Farmville or Castle Age, and I become totally obsessed
with them. I’m building characters. I’m building farms. I’m building castles. I’m
fighting monsters. I’m raking in the fake currency. I’m completing quests, and
in the best of these, I’m connecting with people on the Internet I will
probably never meet in person. In short, these games allow me the opportunity
to feel successful and enjoy the feeling of actually building toward something.
It’s a feeling that seriously lacks in real life.
No matter how many blog posts I write, how many books I
sell, or how many SEO articles I write, I don’t see the results that show I am
building toward something. Instead, my real life looks like I am spinning my
wheels and staying afloat, with the weather and waves threatening to change all
that.
These games have a time element and a rewards system. Just
wait five minutes, and you get another point, or energy bolt, or gold piece to
spend. Of course, you always have the option of throwing the developers some
real money to get more of whatever makes the game go. The more you play, the
more new lands you find the more powers you develop and the more secrets you
discover.
Discovery also lacks in life, even as I seek out new
experiences and new information. It seems like I am surrounded by old
information that is told in different ways over and over. It’s like looking up
30 articles on heart attacks to see that chest pain is the most common symptom
for men. It’s something we all know. Isn’t there anything new out there?
Recently, I got caught up in “Magic the Gathering: Arena.”
It’s a great game. You collect cards and decks. You build decks, and then you
battle against other people that you can’t really communicate with. It has all
the elements I love: Discovery, strategy and card collecting. (I had so many Magic
cards when I was in my teens and twenties.) And then there’s the winning – who doesn’t
love winning? I just can’t continue on with it knowing the responsibilities I
have.
These games are time- and attention-stealers. They don’t do anything to advance you forward, and if you’re like me, they suck you in and reduce your effectiveness in other areas of your life. If you’re thinking about the next reward you can get in your match three gems game or Candy Crush, you’re not thinking about how to solve other problems you’re facing or how to help other people get through life better. Yes, they are fun, and if you can play them in moderation, more power to you. I, however, cannot. Now, if there were a point-and-click game that translated into helping people. That might be a game worth getting lost in.
