You know what’s awesome? BlogWorld. You know what’s even more awesome than BlogWorld? Riding a levitating, air-breathing shark into BlogWorld. But since nobody has yet engineered a shark for me, let’s stick with plain old sharkless BlogWorld, which is still pretty cool

You may know that last year, for the Los Angeles event, I took over as MC and Big Cheese and King Daddy Bazooka in charge of their Virtual Ticket program, which is the way for you to get all of BlogWorld (and more) from home, in case you can’t be there live. What you probably don’t know yet is that we’ve made it even cooler this year. And since I am the guy who’s running the thing, I am of course going to tell you all about it on my blog.

And here’s why you care. Here’s why this is something that matters to you:

We did some informal research — and by that, I mean that we didn’t do any research at all but did eat some Hot Pockets — and realized that although most people out there in the blogging, podcasting, and web TV worlds know that the BlogWorld events exist, a lot of those people (maybe including you?) don’t really think they can go. And I get it. Attending BlogWorld, live and in person, is second to none. I’ve picked up the best stuff by meeting new people at events and getting new ideas, and BlogWorld is three days of nothing but that, wall to wall.

But if you can’t travel to New York, Los Angeles, or Vegas to attend, you think you’re fucked.

And so you sit at home, and you hear about all this fun and amazing BlogWorld stuff going on, and you think about how you wish it was in the realm of possibility that you could go, but you can’t afford the travel and the time away from home, and so you go, “Oh, woe is me, I am fucked, and now I’m going to eat Hot Pockets and think about how some day, I’ll be able to go.”

And so we said, “How can we help those many, many people sitting at home with Hot Pockets, totally bummed out because they can’t attend BlogWorld? How can we make BlogWorld accessible for people who can’t find the time or the money to travel?”

And that’s how the Virtual Ticket was born.

What is the Virtual Ticket?

Simply put, the BlogWorld Virtual Ticket is a way for you to “attend” BlogWorld on your own schedule, without leaving your home.

There are over 100 sessions (check out the session lineup!) at BlogWorld this June, and we’re going to record them. You’ll get the speaker’s A/V presentation and their voice, and you’ll be able to watch that video or download the MP3 of the audio to listen anywhere. It won’t be live, but it’ll only take us about a week to have all of those sessions up there for you, and then you can go through the sessions whenever you want, over and over again if you so desire.

You don’t have to travel. You don’t have to find a babysitter or a dogsitter. If you don’t have the money for a plane ticket or a hotel, that’s no problem.

But there’s more to it than that. Because when I came on board last year, I asked how we could replace as much of the “feel of being there” as possible so that Virtual Ticket attendees would get not just the event’s content but also some of the experience as well, and we came up with some ideas — behind the scenes interviews, social media interaction, and so on.

But this year, we’re kicking it up a notch.

This year, we’re giving you a bunch of stuff every day, almost as it happens. This year, June 5-7 won’t be the time during which you hear about people attending BlogWorld and feel left out and jealous. This year, you’ll get in on some of the action, too.

What we added

It’s not really feasible to try and stream anything from the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, but honestly, we wouldn’t want to stream the sessions live even if we could.

If we streamed everything, you’d lose one significant advantage of attending virtually — the fact that when you’re virtual, you never miss anything because two sessions you’d like to see are happening live at the exact same time. When you’re virtual, you can watch ALL of the sessions that were simultaneous at the live event, whereas the live attendees had to choose one and only one to attend.

For the same reasons, we didn’t want to stream any of our extras. But on the flip side, last year we waited until the end of the event to add ANYTHING, and the downside to that was that the Virtual Ticket attendees didn’t feel like they were part of the live event at all. They’d watch tweets about Chris Brogan holding the event center hostage (I won’t say that this happened, but I also won’t deny it because it’s funnier to not deny it) and would sigh and say, “Virtual attendance is cool and all, but I kind of wish someone would record some of the big happenings — including Chris Brogan possibly holding the event center hostage — so that I could participate and follow along.”

So this year, we’re doing “dailies.”

(That’s not “dallies,” as in “dilly-dallying along.” It’s the plural form of “daily.” We’re borrowing from the film industry, where at the end of the day you review what you shot that day… your “dailies.”)

What the dailies are are audio interviews and updates that we’ll record and then post — wait for it — every day during the live event. So when Chris Brogan takes the event center hostage this year, we’ll interview him to get his hostage demands. Then, the next day, we’ll have an interview with BlogWorld CEO Rick Calvert about how they didn’t want to have those sharpshooters dart Chris and throw a net over him and haul him off for heavy doses of tranquilizers, but how else were they going to get him to deliver his keynote?

So you can follow along with what’s going on in New York, see.

And in the event that there are no major hostage incidents whatsoever (booooo-ring!), we’ll get you interviews and happenings, and post THOSE each evening.

We’ll give you a written update each night. We’ll record a bunch of other interviews, these ones on video, with different people than we talk to for the dailies, getting their “bonus material” and secret tips, and we’ll have those ready when the session recordings are all finished and posted (about a week after BlogWorld ends). We’ll tweet. We’ll share photos.

We know we can’t really make you feel like you’re there. I won’t insult you by saying that getting the Virtual Ticket is just like being there.

But if you can’t be there, the Virtual Ticket is as close as we can get.

And you’ll get all that bonus stuff, too… stuff that live attendees won’t get.

And you’ll be able to watch all of the sessions, even if they happened at the same time, because you can watch whenever you want.

Arguably, it’s much MORE content than you could ever get live, which is why so many live BlogWorld attendees choose to add the Virtual Ticket to their registration — so that when they get home, they can watch what they missed.

Value: Baked into the Virtual Ticket just like fake and questionable ham is baked into that Hot Pocket you’re eating

The Virtual Ticket normally costs $347. Through the end of the day on Tuesday, May 15th, you can get it for $100 off, for only $247.

You can sign up here.

Aaaaaand, if you use promo code “Virtual10” (without the quotes) when you check out, you can save 10% off of even THAT amount.

But what if you’re going to be there live, at the actual BlogWorld event? Well, if you’re going to BlogWorld live, it normally costs $97 to add the Virtual Ticket to your registration so that you’ll get all of the session recordings and all of the bonus material and interviews, available for you to review when you get home.

But if you want to add the VT to your registration before the end of tomorrow, it’s only $47. That’s a stupidly low price for over a hundred hours of material.

(Side note: I’m actually pissed about how low that price is. I’m not kidding. As VT guy, I’m paid to make as much on the Virtual Ticket as possible. I told the BWE people, “That’s too damn low!” But they’d already published it and wouldn’t budge. A knife fight broke out. If we hadn’t been distracted by Chris Brogan taking a nearby event hostage, we’d never have resolved it.)

If you want to join us in the Virtual Ticket, of which I am your master of ceremonies or grand poobah or whatever, just go here. Don’t forget to use the “Virtual10” promo code to save 10%, and be sure to do it before the end of the 15th if you want to save $100.

(If you’re attending live and want to ADD the Virtual Ticket, just email BlogWorld registration and tell them you want to add the VT to your registration.)

So… look.

Going to BlogWorld is awesome. I highly, highly recommend going if you can.

But if you’re one of the thousands and thousands of bloggers, podcasters, and web TV producers who have watched BlogWorld happen in the past and wished you could be there but couldn’t, this is your chance.

Join us virtually. And eat whatever kind of Hot Pockets you want during the sessions.

—

THE THING I’VE SAID BEFORE BUT WHICH WARRANTS A FINAL NOTE: The $100 early bird discount on the Virtual Ticket ends at the end of the day on May 15th. That’s tomorrow as I publish this post. If you want in, register now, before the discount ends.

So I launched a podcast.

Teeeeechnically, it’s not true that I launched a podcast; I guess it’s more accurate to say that Sean Platt, Dave Wright, and I launched a podcast. But I’m the guy with the mixer and the recorder and the knowledge of how it all works, so without me it’s just the two of them talking to their computers, not even connected via Skype, and wondering why nothing is happening. (And just between us, I’m fairly sure that’s what was going on before I entered the mix. Dave: “So I feel that XYZ.” Sean: [sleeping hundreds of miles away] “.” Dave: “WHY WON’T YOU ANSWER ME?”)

Our new podcast is The Self Publishing Podcast with Johnny, Sean, and Dave. It’s all about how to get your work published in the age of eBooks and Kindle and actually make some money at it — because you CAN do that today, and it’s a mindblowing time to be a writer. You CAN actually make money as an author — even of fiction! — without being Stephen King or (as Dave says it) DEAN FUCKIN KOONTZ.

(And speaking of Dave, his obsession with goths who may or may not be pissing on trees rears its ugly head more than once, after which a melee inevitably ensues.)

You should check it out if you’re at all interested in getting something published — be it fiction, nonfiction, or grotesque elf porn.

Here’s the official podcast description, from iTunes. (Side note: We’re already ranked #1 for “self publishing,” proving either that we’re awesome, that there’s no competition, or that nobody is interested in self-publishing):

Want to get your words out into the world without contending with agents, publishers, or any of the other gatekeepers in traditional publishing? There’s never been a better time to become a writer, and to be in charge of your own destiny rather than jumping through hoops to please the Powers that Be. Self-publishing ninjas David Wright and Sean Platt — who have manufactured a publishing machine around Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform — join popular blogger and author Johnny B. Truant to explore everything related to getting published in today’s new DIY digital publishing frontier. This isn’t artsy talk… we’re business guys with no-BS strategies to help you make self-publishing a rewarding reality. Submit your questions at SelfPublishingPodcast.com!

We’ve got two very different perspectives on self publishing on the podcast, which is part of what makes it interesting… and applicable for just about any type of writer.

Sean and Dave (who are basically one person; I call them “Seave” or “Daan” or “Brangelina”) have built a very complex, very prolific machine around their own writing, enabling them to write and publish as their full-time jobs. I, on the other hand, am stepping into publishing much more slowly. I have one bona-fide novel, one short story, one humor collection, and a handful of experimental small titles that began life as posts on my blog. I do NOT have a complex, prolific machine. I’m a guy who has another business, and who gets a kick out of the idea that I can actually write and sell real books while using my marketing mojo to drive new readers to them.

Need tips on how to format your book? No problem.

Need marketing advice? We’ve got it.

Need ideas on how to create book covers, info on how to use free promos to drive sales, pricing tips, or anything else? We’re your guys.

Come on over and check us out our awesome new Self Publishing Podcast. It’s dandy good fun. (And really, it’s fun even if you don’t give a shit about self-publishing. There is much tomfoolery.)

Oh, and also: You can ask us questions! It’s way cool. We’ve got a call-in number right on the homepage. Call with your questions about self-publishing and we’ll play your question and then answer it on the show if we can. Just like a real radio show, as if we were professionals or something.

We’re pretty psyched about this new venture. Join us, will you?

NOTE: If you’re interested in Chris’s new book The $100 Startup, you can get it right now as part of the Only72 sale. Short version: For $100 total, you get the book plus over $1000 worth of the best online education products from people you know… including me. Check it out here. 

A while ago, Chris Guillebeau and I did a back-and-forth email interview. It was pretty cool and fit both Chris’s schedule and my sense of laziness. I’d email him a question, he’d email back an answer, and it’d go on like that forever with very casual effort. It was awesome.

Now, with Chris’s new book The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future due to release on May 8th, we decided to do it again. Here we go:

JOHNNY: Why do you think the idea “I need money to start a business” is so persistent even in the internet age? Am I just such a salty old internet dog at this point that I think that everyone knows you can start one very inexpensively, even free?

CHRIS: You may be a salty internet dog, but I can think of two other reasons that also apply:

a) Lots of people genuinely don’t know what’s involved in starting a business, so there’s a perception that it simply must take money.

b) Believing that something is impossible due to lack of resources is a good excuse for not doing it. And we all like excuses.

JOHNNY: What do you tell people about failure? In my experience, people are going to fail a few times before they get it right, but that’s a hard lesson to really internalize. Most of the people I see fail and then quit… whereas if they’d tried and failed a second time, then tried a third, maybe they would have blown something out of the water.

CHRIS: I tell them that failure is overrated. Yeah, it’s true that most of us are going to fail at various things, and that’s fine and normal. As you say, the important thing is persistence. But instead of failing, isn’t it also possible that you could succeed right off the bat? Instead of accepting failure as a prerequisite to success, why not focus on success right from the beginning?

JOHNNY: Okay, so one of the things this book does is to remove a key excuse from people who claim they’d like to start a business. Once that excuse is gone, do most people have the skills they’ll actually need to start that business? Is that something that’s really part most people’s makeup, or is there a certain type of person who can do this?

CHRIS: A key principle of the $100 Startup model is that the skills you already have are all you need. Forget about going back to business school (keep the $60k in tuition and send Johnny B. Truant a pair of Vibram toe socks as a thank-you).

However, sometimes you need to undertake a process of skill transformation—learning to apply those skills in a different way. For example, Brandon Pearce was an engineer by day and a music teacher by night. He noticed that keeping up with student scheduling and billing was a pain in the ass. Most music teachers want to teach; not worry about administrative details. Using his engineering background, Brandon built Music Teacher’s Helper, an online system to take care of all the administrative aspects of the business. Almost as an afterthought, he offered it to other music teachers. The platform took off and quickly grew to a steady base of customers and more than $30,000 in monthly income.

JOHNNY: That’s pretty interesting and makes total sense. Do you think there’s anything a person can do to develop their “thinking outside the normal nine dots” muscle, so that those good ideas become visible? If you don’t open yourself to doing stuff that’s different, weird, or outside of what you’re used to, I can see a lot of great ideas like that hiding in plain sight.

CHRIS: Sure, you can do something that most of us could be better at anyway: listen more, and begin observing. Notice things wherever you go. Is there something you want to do or have that you can’t find anywhere? Maybe you’re not the only one who wants it. What’s missing at the restaurant? What’s one thing they could do better?

When you start paying attention, you’ll begin to spot more of those ideas that have been hiding in plain sight.

–

This is really just a teaser… just the first part of our exchange. Keep watching the blog, because our discussion continues…

Remember, if you want to get Chris’s book as part of the Only72 sale, be sure to do it before the sale ends early Thursday. (And yes, that’s an affiliate link. Duh.)

You know how sometimes you read blogs and wonder if the blogger is telling the truth because everything they write makes it look as if everything goes perfectly for them all the time? Well, I hope to break through some of that perception with this post.

Here’s the story:

A little while ago, I released my novel The Bialy Pimps from the purgatory of my closet, where it had been languishing since I’d finished writing it twelve years earlier. I self-published it on Amazon’s Kindle platform, and celebrated its debut by doing a promotion that allowed anyone to get it for free. A bunch of you (you awesome people with excellent taste, you) snagged it. And a bunch of you wondered why, after spending all that time and effort on a novel, I’d simply give it away.

The full reasoning behind my debuting the book for free is here, but the short version is this:

1. Although nobody is totally sure how Amazon’s ranking algorithm works, one thing that seems clear is that a lot of activity will help your book rise in the overall rankings. I wanted to generate a lot of activity — more activity than I could generate by charging for the book — in the hopes that when the free period ended, The Bialy Pimps would be ranked well and would have impressed Amazon’s algorithm with my general awesomeness. Ideally, in addition to Amazon saying, “Dude, you’re awesome!” sales to people who didn’t already know me would start to happen on their own because Amazon would feel compelled to share the awesomeness by telling customers about me.

2. At the same time and maybe a little contradictorily, it was intended to be sort of a soft launch, going mainly to the fine people who read this blog, are on my list, or are one degree removed from either. I purposely didn’t do a BIG LAUNCH like a lot of authors do, which I’ll explain if you keep reading. In other words, the limited scope of this launch was intentional, and subsequent phases are still to come.

3. But even with that said, you hear stories where one free promo rockets someone to bestsellerdom, which ruin everyone’s day by setting unrealistic expectations of grandeur.

So here’s what actually happened, in real and sometimes embarrassing numbers, with no punches pulled.

My book release, by the numbers

The results of this initial release have been a mixed bag. In some ways, the first push was incredibly gratifying because people have had great things to say about the book, both in reviews and via Twitter and email. But in other ways it’s not been gratifying at all, because the numbers started off okay and then went downhill fast.

All probably totally normal, expected, and even planned-for… but not as much fun as unrealistic explosive growth would have been.

So without further ado, here’s what happened during those first few days and up to the present.

Tuesday, February 14th

Evening: I uploaded the final Kindle-formatted file to Amazon and then set the free promo to begin the next day.

Wednesday, February 15th

6:15am: I sent the first emails and put up the first blog post and sent the first tweets announcing the promo.

The book had been free for 4-5 hours by this time, but I’d had no downloads yet. This was a good indication that nothing was going to “catch” on its own and that the only people who found the book would be people I sent to it. From what I hear, this isn’t typical. Usually you can do a free promo, tell nobody, and people will start to download it. This happens because your book is already “in the system,” and Amazon has gotten it into their various algorithms. My book was so new, it wasn’t in the system or on anyone’s radar. This wouldn’t be a leveraged endeavor. This would be pushing a boulder on my own, with no help from physics.

6:15pm: After 12 hours, I had 444 downloads. Not bad but not ridiculous like some of the stories you hear from people whose books aren’t brand new and who catch a spark somehow or another. At this point, I was ranked #436 among all free downloads and #19 in humor.

11pm: 546 downloads, #420 in free, and #18 in humor.

Thursday, February 16th

6:30am: After my first 24 hours, I had 618 downloads and was ranked #500 in free and #19 in humor.

8:15am: 638 downloads, #422 free, #16 humor.

At this point, I began to realize how fragile the rankings are. My goal was to get into the top 100 free, and (spoiler alert!) the highest that I saw was #356, which happened on Thursday afternoon. But what I actually noticed about the rankings was that I’d have an hour with a smaller amount of downloads and the ranking would drop precipitously… followed by a good hour and a subsequent rise. You’ll drive yourself nuts watching it. I surely did.

2:30pm: 811 downloads, #378 free, #17 humor. This was the first time I noticed that I’d broken above #400 free.

7:30pm: 900 downloads, #382 free, #21 humor.

I’d crossed 1000 downloads by bedtime, but was also back below #400 in the free rankings. The promo only had a few hours left, due to end somewhere around midnight Pacific time.

Friday, February 17

Once the free promo was over, I woke up to get my total. During the free promo, 1025 people had downloaded the book from Amazon.com. I was also now ranked at #167,170 on the overall Kindle paid list. From what I understand, this ranking means pretty much nothing when a book is so new, but it was still amusing.

From what I’ve seen, heard, and read, any bump in paid sales that you’re going to get (if you get one) will start to show up a few days later. Nonetheless, I was prepared to accept worldwide bestsellerdom by noon. Hey, anything’s possible.

The way things actually went on Friday was a bit less impressive.

I got my first “borrow” at just after noon on Friday. Borrowing is a feature of KDP Select, the program into which I’d enrolled The Bialy Pimps in order to be able to do the free promo. Basically, people who are members of Amazon Prime can “borrow” your book for free within certain restrictions, and “return” it whenever they want. You do get paid for borrows, but it’s typically not as much as a sale. So in my case, with my book priced at $3.99, I get $2.79 for each sale. Borrows vary by month, but chances are I’ll get something closer to $1.70 for each.

I then got my first actual sale about a half hour later. Hooray!

By 3:15pm, my Amazon ranking had jumped up over 100,000 places, to #57,252 on the overall paid list. This sort of proved that rankings don’t mean much 1) when books are new and/or 2) when your rank sucks so badly. Could be either or both.

It’s probably also worth noting that at this point, those groupings of “people who bought this book also bought this” or “similar titles” that you normally see below Amazon listings were not yet showing up on my page — further suggestions that my book wasn’t really seasoned in the Amazon system and that it might have been smarter to wait on the free promo until it was. Given that I wasn’t totally in the system yet, it sort of felt like I’d generated a bunch of momentum that couldn’t go anywhere because the cables weren’t hooked up to the battery yet.

At 5pm, I had had no more sales or borrows and no customer reviews. Still, my rank was up to #36,313.

By the end of Friday, day one after the free period, I’d sold a whole four copies and had had one borrow, and my meaningless ranking was up to #22,086. This is the high life!

Saturday, February 18

Saturday was my “banner” day, with ironic quotes being very intentional.

I woke up to find that four copies had sold overnight and that my ranking was up to #17,910. I then had six more sales by 6pm and was up to #11,144. I also had gotten another borrow.

Alas, I didn’t crack the top 10,000. I ended the night at #18,284. By this point I’d also gathered six reviews, all of which were five stars. Aces.

Sunday, February 19

On Sunday, those lists of “customers also bought” that I mentioned had been missing finally began showing up on my page, indicating that I was at least making my way into the Amazon machine.

It was nice to see the fine folks whose work appeared in those lists on my page — people like Seth Godin and Julien Smith. So I went over to a few of those pages (not just the big names, but the smaller ones too) and tried to see if *I* was showing up on THEIR “also-bought” lists. This was, unsurprisingly, not the case. So nobody was really being sent my way from the algorithm yet.

Joanna Penn told me that she’s seen that it takes around three months for Amazon to really get you into their guts and start sending out emails to people who bought similar titles, suggesting they give yours a try. I guess I’ll see soon if that happens for me.

As of Sunday morning, I’d had a grand total of 15 sales and 2 borrows since the free period ended and was ranked #20,757. It all seemed quite random.

I wasn’t exactly raking in the sales, and this, if I’m honest, was a bummer. I told the world and told myself that all that mattered was to ship the book, but it was around Sunday that I realized I’d secretly been hoping for a lot of post-promo sales. Which was ridiculous, given that I’d intentionally not done a lot of the things that might bring about a surge…. but more on that later.

I sold nothing on Sunday. I just watched my rank drop all day, bottoming out around #35,000 by nighttime.

Monday, February 20 and beyond

I got another two purchases on Monday and had got a few more reviews, now up to eight 5-star reviews. My rank neared #50,000.

By Wednesday, I had a total of 18 books sold and two borrowed. It was pretty clear by this point that although the first week hardly determines the success of a book (especially without a big launch effort), the big surge wasn’t going to happen.

At the end of February, I’d sold 31 copies.

As of right now, I’ve sold three more copies in March and have had two borrows. My ranking hovers around #100,000, give or take. A few sales in quick succession will bump it up tens of thousands of places, proving further that ranks this low don’t mean a lot.

So…

Is this a success or a failure?

It’s neither.

It would have been great to see a big surge in sales after a free promo, but that was really just dreaming. Hell, it wasn’t even part of my plan, which I’ll go into in a minute. The first push was supposed to get the book into the hands of the people who were most predisposed to like it, review it favorably, and tell their friends about it. The first push was supposed to be about priming the pump so that when I do a later push, I’ll look impressive to the people who have no idea who I am.

So I guess it was kind of a success. I guess I’m happy that I, mostly by myself, could interest 1025 people, in under two days, in downloading a book that I wrote — especially given the fact that nobody knows me as a writer of fiction. I’m happy with my reviews, which now total fourteen — all of which are 5-stars. I’m really happy with the feedback I’m getting. People are saying it’s hilarious and poignant at the same time, which was what I was going for. People are saying it recalled their own fond memories, that it took them back to a cherished place. People are saying that it riveted them, kept them up late reading. This is all very good.

But I don’t know how much it helped my rankings. If I’d simply put the book on sale and not had a promo at all (free or a push for paid sales), would it be selling as it is now? Maybe.

But I still think the initial free promo is a good idea, and here’s why:

1. As I’ve already mentioned, it gets the book into the hands of people who are most likely to enjoy it. An anonymous push is a mixed bag. I can’t guarantee that any of my readers will like it, but they’re far more likely to enjoy it than a random person. This means good initial word of mouth, etc.

2. It’s a way to get good reviews. Reviews matter for two reasons. One, they seem to factor into the Amazon algorithm over the long haul, meaning that books with better reviews from verified purchasers are more likely to rise in the rankings and/or be promoted by Amazon. The second reason reviews matter is for social proof. New visitors will want to see that others enjoyed the book before they buy it.

(Side note: This might be a good place to say that if you got the book and enjoyed it, it’d be HOT if you’d click here and give me a review on Amazon.)

3. It’s a cool thing to do for your friends and fans. Look, I could have launched the book at $3.99 out the gate and I’m sure I could have gotten at least 500 or so buyers pretty fast. The good thing about that is that I have loyal readers I know would buy the book. The bad thing is that it’s my loyal readers who would have to buy the book. Then, when I offered it for free later, who gets it free? People I don’t know. What if those people are assholes? Do I really want my friends to have to pay and give it away free to assholes? That’s intolerable.

4. It’s a good karmic move. This goes hand-in-hand with #3 above. People like receiving gifts, and I just gave 1025 of my friends a gift. That’s going to generate some goodwill, I’d guess.

Now, does that mean I did it totally correctly? I doubt it. I don’t really like the impression I get that all of the free momentum was wasted because the book was so new to Amazon. I don’t know if this would make a difference, but a smarter move might have been to release the book on Amazon, say nothing about it, and just let it sit there on sale for a month or two or three… and THEN do the free promo. Maybe that would give it more teeth.

Here’s why I think there’s some truth to this, and to the theory that “seasoning” in Amazon probably really does matter at least for Kindle n00bs such as myself.

How I’m outselling myself

Check this out.

If you recognize that Kindle title, you get a gold star because it’s the same as this blog post. It’s up in the Kindle store because I took the advice of my friend Sean Platt and repurposed some of my blog material for Kindle so that i can reach a different audience.

Now, here’s what’s interesting:

The Kindle version of “The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You” sells about one a day on average, and has been for the past two months. This despite the fact that I don’t have it advertised anywhere, that I’ve never told anyone about it other than anecdotally, and that it still doesn’t have a single review.

Just in case you’re not engaged here, let me spell it out:

My novel, which I poured my heart into, which represents some of my best work, which has nothing but stellar reviews, and which I promoted heavily and was downloaded by over a thousand people in two days is being outsold by a brief piece that is freely available on my blog, which doesn’t have a single review, and which I’ve never, ever promoted.

This is obnoxious. But it’s also encouraging in a way, because the fact that none of the sales are my doing means that the only reason anyone is finding it must be because Amazon is promoting it via “customers also bought” or “Amazon recommends” or whatever.

In other words, this kind of proves that Joanna was right. All that piece did was to sit there for sale. Nothing else. And then it started selling.

So, given the better reviews, better traffic, and better promotion behind The Bialy Pimps, will it also start to sell on autopilot in a few months? Probably, right? It seems to make sense.

And when it does — when it finally seems to “catch” in the Kindle store — then that’s probably a good time to move on to phase 2 of my maybe-this-will-work-but-really-I-have-no-fucking-clue promotional strategy.

Phase 2

I mentioned that I didn’t go whole-hog with my initial launch. I don’t know if this is smart or will turn out to be dumb, but I can tell you why I did it.

I did it because I don’t want the first people who come to the page, buy the book, and leave a review to be random. I don’t want random, unbiased reviews and chatter to be the book’s first reviews and chatter. I want qualified, biased initial reviewers so that when the random people do show up, I’ll look really good.

My first fourteen reviews are all five stars. Think that’s sustainable, representative, or accurate? Not a chance. Those are the opinions of people who already knew me and who went into this expecting to like the book. This is what I wanted.

Once I’ve got good mojo going and have some momentum with the reviews (mission mostly accomplished) and once the book starts selling a bit better on its own (I give it a month or two more), then I’ll do a “real” promo.

But again, I’m going to do it via free, for all the reasons I explained in my last post.

I’ve got three days of free left out of the five KDP Select gave me. So what I’d like to do for phase 2 is to do another free promo, but this time do the stuff I purposely didn’t do this time. I’d like to try for a few high-profile guest posts, submit it for review, and ping sites like Pixel of Ink, which tell their readers about new free titles.

My hope is that next time, I’ll get the surge I didn’t get this time, and that I’ll get a little bit of a viral effect. Maybe this will tail off into higher ongoing sales. I’ve heard from a lot of people — and not all big-selling authors — that this does indeed tend to happen.

Phase 3

Phase 3 isn’t really a launch phase. It’s my ongoing plan to keep promoting myself — but this time prominently including “author of The Bialy Pimps” on my resume.

Phase 3 includes a lot of stuff — most of it boring to read about — but one thing it does include that may interest you is that I’m going to be starting a podcast. Stay tuned to this blog to hear more about that in coming weeks.

Phase 3 also includes writing more books. And more books. And more books.

I firmly believe that the bold new frontier of self-publishing means that you kind of can’t fail if you’re at least decent and you’re persistent. If your sales suck and a given title only makes you $2000 per year, that’s not much… but once you have ten such shitty-selling books, that $20,000 is a nice sideline. If you write 30 books, you can start to live pretty well as your backlist earns for you year after year after year.

It’s not “get rich quick”, but I think it’s “make a living with art certain.” I think that nowadays, math favors the persistent artist.

There’s probably a lot more to this, but this has been a long and rambling post and I’m going to let it be a long and rambling post. I’m not going to try and end it in a tidy manner. It’s just going to kind of fizzle out here.

So, you know, if you have questions or comments, ask or comment away. If you’re any kind of a creative person, we’re all in this together.

P.S: If you read The Bialy Pimps and liked it, would you be willing to leave me a review? That’d be seriously badass of you.

NOTE: The free promo described below has ended, so The Bialy Pimps now costs $3.99. Small price to pay for awesome, really, and people are LOVING it.

Yesterday I told you all about my novel The Bialy Pimps and how, after twelve years of indecision and resistance, I’ve finally rewritten it and published it, yada yada yada. And maybe that was interesting to you and maybe not, but what probably got your attention — if anything did — was the fact that I’m debuting this book at a price of FREE (through the end of today).

On hearing the whole “free” thing, here are some possible reactions you may have had:

“Wow, that’s awesome!”

or

“It’s free? That must mean it sucks.”

and probably most of all

“That’s incredibly stupid. He’s going to lose whatever for-sure sales he was going to get.”

I’m going to explain why I decided to launch for free in just a minute, but first I wanted to remind you to go ahead and download The Bialy Pimps for free here (non-US people, see the first P.S. below) before we go any further, because the free promo ends tonight.

Seriously. Go download it. It’s awesome.

In fact, download it even if you don’t have a Kindle, because there are apps that will let you read it… and even failing that, you can read right there on the website thanks to the “Kindle Cloud Reader,” which makes the process incredibly easy. Or, if you have an e-book reader that’s not a Kindle, email me and I’ll let you know what’s up. Hell, download it even if you don’t want it. Download it to humor me and make me feel better. I don’t have a tip jar, so downloading it to feed my ego (and spreading the word) would be an awesome way to give back if you’re so inclined.

Now, if you haven’t downloaded it yet despite my intolerable pestering, let me try something else in the interest of marketing professionalism:

C’mon.

C’mon.

Do it. You know you want to.

Please?

I’m totally serious. Go get it. It’s free. Then tell your friends and ask them to get it for free. Tweet it. Facebook it. Tell the world, so that as many people as possible can get it without giving me a cent.

Which raises an excellent point.

Why the hell would I be so eager to give something away for free?

Stupid, right?

After all, this book means a lot to me. It was written during a time of intense personal turmoil. It was born from a hell of a lot of pain, with hilarious results. It’s based (hilariously) on a real place and (hilarious) real people who I can safely say are, in the (hilarious) pages of this book, no longer that place or those people, but the sum of which is still (hilariously) still very meaningful to me.

I spent hundreds of hours on each draft of the book. There were four.

I spent dozens of hours prepping the manuscript for publication.

I spent scores of hours researching fiction marketing as it exists today, formulating my plan, and writing emails and posts like the one you’re currently reading.

And my strategy, after all of that work and head-scratching, is to give the book away — and not just to give it away, but to give it away to you, my prime audience… to the people who were most likely to actually shell out cash and buy it.

In short, I’m cutting off all potential royalties from the people most likely to earn me any royalties.

Why?

Angry Birds are smart birds

Let me explain by allegory, because that’s how I roll.

The other day, on a whim, I decided to download the Angry Birds app on my smartphone. I’d never played it before, but I’d heard a lot of hubbub surrounding it, so I figured what the hell. And besides, the app was free. So I opened it and I started playing. My son got very interested in it. Because he got interested, my daughter (who does everything her brother does) got interested.

While I was playing, I accidentally clicked on a few of the ads that exist inside the app. It didn’t annoy me, but it happened.

And then yesterday, we bought two sets of Angry Birds plushes. They are identical, but each kid had to have them. They spent their Christmas money. $25 each.

So if you’re following along, here’s what happened:

1. Angry Birds was released for free.
2. A lot of people liked it, spread it, and started talking about it.
3. Because it was free, I figured what the hell and decided to try it myself.
4. My son saw me playing and liked it.
5. My daughter saw my son playing and liked it.
6. We bought $50 in Angry Birds merchandise, and there’s no way that’ll be our last Angry Birds purchase. I also sent Rovio a few cents in ad revenue due to my fumbling fingers.

Now get this. Rovio could have priced Angry Birds 99 cents or $1.99 and there’s no question people would have paid it, because a buck or two is definitely worth it. Even the Android app has hundreds of individual levels, and it’s really addicting.

But at even a buck or two, I wouldn’t have played it, because I don’t care even a buck or two’s worth about games on my phone. Their decision to charge me $1-2 would have assured that they didn’t get my $50+ this week. And the same goes for millions and millions of other people.

But Rovio did a very smart thing. They created something great, and they made it free. Because of that — and ONLY because of that — they got my attention… and then they got my money.

It’s ironic. They got my money because they refused to charge me any.

The math of free

What would you rather do? Would you rather sell something for ten bucks, or sell the same thing for a hundred bucks?

Ideological concerns and matters of pride and brand integrity aside, you can’t make the decision without knowing how many of each will sell. The market’s appetite for what you’re selling will determine your success, and a large part of the market’s appetite is determined by price.

Again setting aside fears of bottom-feeder thinking and opinions about what a low price “means” or “says to the world,” the truth is that each time you lower the barrier to entry by lowering the price, you get more attention, and the sales get easier. You remove an excuse for a few people, and if what you have to deliver is good, everyone walks away happy.

Want more reasons why free is awesome? Okay, here are three:

1. Free results in delighted fans and lots of thank-yous. Everyone likes receiving gifts.
2. Free is very easy to promote. I can be more aggressive during this promotion because I’m not asking people to spend money; I’m trying to give them a gift.
3. Free is also very easy for others to promote. If you ask your friends to tell the world about your $2 (or $200) product, they’ll flinch because people hate to sell, or appear salesy. But friends are usually happy to tell the world about something you’re giving away.

Would you rather sell fifty thousand thousand copies of a bird-flinging app at $1.99, or would you rather distribute half a billion for free, each of which generate just a few cents in ad revenue?

It’s not a perfect analogy because price isn’t the only option, and I don’t plan to slash all of my own prices to see what happens. I also don’t plan to offer my book for free forever, and I’m not making ad revenue from my book the way Rovio makes it from their free games.

But given a limited and defined set of circumstances, I think you get my point.

The magic of free on Amazon

If you’re an aspiring author, pay close attention to this section.

I’ve enrolled my book in Amazon’s KDP Select program in exchange for the opportunity to offer my book for free on the Amazon Kindle platform for a total of five days, divided however I’d like. The way it works is, I give them a 90-day exclusive (the book’s not available on Barnes & Noble’s e-book store or anywhere else), and as a thanks, they give me the right to give my book away for free. It sounds like a shitty deal, but it’s not for a lot of people I’ve heard about.

It’s because of the algorithm, and because of critical mass.

See, there are two basic ways to drive sales of e-books. One is for people who already know you to seek out (or be driven to) your book. That’s significant if you have a gigantic audience or if you’re an established name. If Steven King farts and has it transcribed (with the possible addition of an evil clown), it becomes a bestseller because people know and love Steven King.

But if you’re like most people, the bigger source of sales is people who didn’t know you in advance, but who somehow run across your book. There are a few ways that happens (you rise in rankings like the top 100 or the genre bestsellers, or maybe you show up in the “people who liked this also bought” suggestions for books like yours) but all of them depend on you already being popular, and already being successful on Amazon.

In other words, it’s kind of a catch-22. You need buyers to attract buyers.

It’s a vicious circle, but the more positive way to think of it is as requiring a critical mass. If you — somehow, anyhow — get enough buyers who think highly of your work, you’ll rise in the rankings and more people will find you. As more people find you, more people will buy from you. And as more people buy from you, more people are able to find (and buy from) you.

Most authors aren’t able to achieve the critical mass needed to get the ball rolling. They don’t have enough “at the ready” buyers to sustain the reaction, and they fizzle out. Nobody can find them, so nobody buys them. And when nobody buys them, it becomes less and less likely that anyone will find them.

Amazon’s ranking algorithm is just as mysterious to the outside world as the Google search algorithm, but there are a few things that are known:

1. Popularity matters. The more people who visit your book’s page, give you good reviews, link to you, and buy your stuff, the higher you’ll rank.

2. Downloads of a free book give you the same momentum as do sales.

and the really important one:

3. It’s a lot easier to “sell” free than it is to sell non-free.

So yes, I’m giving up maybe a thousand relatively for-sure sales, but I’m doing it because much like Angry Birds, I’m trading those sales for what I hope are a lot more eyes. A lot more downloads. A lot more reviews. A lot more popularity.

I could sell X number of books at $3.99 this month and be happy, but I’d rather “sell” ten times that number for $0 and manage to hit my own critical mass.

Will it work?

Hell if I know.

I might as well say right now that what I’m doing scares the bejesus out of me. I write these posts in what probably sounds like a confident, authoritative voice, but it’s the magic of editing and zero body language that makes me seem sure of myself. I’m not sure of myself about this. Not at all.

Truth be told, I’m on a wing and a prayer here.

I haven’t staked my mortgage on selling even one copy of The Bialy Pimps, so no actual harm is going to come to me if, when the free period ends, nobody ever buys it. But I will tell you one thing: that would suck.

I would not like it.

It would seriously bum me out.

Because I spent a lot of time on this book, and because it’s a story that means a lot to me, and because (if I could pretend that it’s possible to be objective about my own work) it’s a really good story. It’s funny as hell, and I think it’ll also make you ponder a bit. I think the story will stay with you and resonate once you’ve finished reading. I think it speaks to some bigger, somewhat more serious truths. I think there are messages in this tale that are about conformity, about the fragile and random nature of fame, and about what we’re truly supposed to spend our lives doing.

It’s occurred to me, in my less-than-confident moments, that this book may have only a few hundred to a few thousand sales in it, and that what I’m doing right now may just be giving all of those sales away and getting nothing in return.

And although I don’t need that money, it’d be nice to have even that small amount of recompense if this thing totally bombs.

What the fuck

There’s a line in the movie Risky Business that forms a cornerstone of my life’s philosophy. It’s when Joe Pantoliano (as Guido the pimp) tells a very young Tom Cruise, “Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, ‘What the fuck.’ ”

Do I know what’s going to happen?

No.

Am I pissing away the small amount of reward I could get from my years of emotional and physical effort?

Maybe.

Should I remember that a (angry) bird in the hand is worth two in the bush? That if I know I can get some sales today, I should take those sales rather than rolling the dice on a free promotion?

Who knows.

Sometimes you’ve just gotta say, “What the fuck.”

So it’s free. And I want you to pick it up, and I hope you like it and share it.

If nothing else, I’ve shipped a work that’s been in my closet for over a decade, and that means a lot, too.

P.S: The book IS available at no charge on non-US Amazon sites too, so if you’re outside of the US and these links tell you that you can’t get it, go to your local Amazon site and search for “The Bialy Pimps.” Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link, for instance.

P.P.S: The free period ends TONIGHT. So be sure to download it now.

P.P.P.S: Remember, you don’t need a Kindle. Read the first part of this post again to see what I mean.

P.P.P.P.S: I think I forgot to mention that I have a book out, and that you can get that book for free. I forgot to mention that, right?

P.P.P.P.P.S: What the fuck.

P.P.P.P.P.P.S: Mitch Hedburg said, “At the end of my letters, I like to write, ‘P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.’ “

By the end of the week, I’ll finish the final draft of a novel I’ve been writing. It will then go to a few people who’ve agreed to give it a first read for me, and unless one of them says something very surprising, The Bialy Pimps will be for sale on Kindle by the end of the month.

But there’s more to this story. See, I wrote the first word of that novel on October 15th of 1999. For the past twelve years, my previous “final” draft has been sitting in the back of my closet, forgotten.

So in case you’re keeping score, here’s what happened:

Man writes novel.
Man shops novel around to literary agents, to no avail.
Man puts novel away for over a decade.

Then, in the middle of his busiest time, with a shit-ton of “brand-aligned,” “profit-generating,” and “strategically sound” projects on his plate that have absolutely zilch to do with fiction, man pulls novel out of closet and begins spending thirty hours or more a week working on it instead of on his more important stuff.

Why? Because this project matters to me, and because it doesn’t make sense to dogmatically follow any rules about how things “should” be done — including your own.

Question your assumptions

Here’s something we believe: Making money is important.

I’m not going to argue with that. I love money. I want more of it. If you feel you have too much money, go ahead and send it my way. I’ll give it a good home.

But the assumption that follows the belief that making money is important is that we should spend a lot of our time on what we know will make us money, and fit things that seem less likely to make a buck into whatever spare time remains.

I don’t buy it. Not this time, anyway.

I have no idea if this book (which is humor, by the way… think Catch-22* and you’ll be in the ballpark) will make me any money. I don’t care. Several things happened recently that created a perfect storm of disobedience, compelling me to work on a long-forgotten and less-than-lucrative project instead of creating products and writing sales copy, regardless of what it meant for business as I know it.

For one, I’d always wanted to write fiction, but I’d given up on it. When I graduated college, I was trained to be a geneticist but my dream was to be a novelist. Unfortunately, everyone knows that you can’t actually make a living as a novelist. A few lucky people win the publishing lottery, and everyone else has to settle for doing it as a hobby.

But a new medium recently came into play. Kindle. The Kindle revolution meant that authors could publish in a meaningful way (and for no cost) without getting the approval of agents or publishers. You still had to write quality and it wasn’t a magic fountain of cash, but you didn’t have to jump through everyone else’s hoops, either. So long, gatekeepers.

It just so happened that I’d been investigating and talking about Kindle for a while now . You know, coincidentally.

I knew from talking to my friend Sean Platt that thanks to said Kindle revolution, it’s now entirely possible to actually make part (or all) of your living writing fiction, even if you’re not Stephen King. Unthinkable!

And there was one more thing. With a decade’s distance from the first drafts of my novel and a hell of a lot of practice writing, I finally knew how to rewrite my book in a way that pleased me (pleased me a LOT, as it turned out) and make it feel ready to ship.

A perfect storm.

But there was one problem, and you can guess what it was.

Ridiculous.

I’m a business guy. A marketing guy. If you’re really generous, maybe I’m a “thought leader.”

What I’m not is a fiction writer. Not in the eyes of the internet, anyway.

It makes no sense for me to release a novel. Once I finish this one, it makes no sense for me to begin another, which I’m going to do. And it sure as hell didn’t make sense for me to push back some very relevant, very current tasks and spend six or eight hours a day working on a project that I hadn’t touched in twelve years.

Or did it?

I’ve mentioned how I’m okay with being abnormal because the usual definition of “normal” sucks. In the same way, I’m okay with doing stuff that doesn’t make sense because “making sense” is just someone’s opinion.

Who says that if you’re a writer, you shouldn’t write whatever strikes you, even if it’s a departure from your norm?

Who says that you shouldn’t follow where inspiration compels you to go?

Who says that you can’t be a novelist and… and whatever I am currently?

I don’t care if this book makes me any money, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it just might do so anyway. I’ve got a track record. I’ve got a network. I’ve got a readership. I understand marketing and promotion. And, now that I’m remembering how much I love writing fiction, I’m going to keep writing books and keep putting them out, which gives me more chances to hit the big dartboard. I have a sneaking suspicion that given persistence and patience, there’s no reason that book sales couldn’t eventually be a significant portion of my business, just as it is for not only J.A. Konrath, but also a hell of a lot of the people who comment on his blog. I’ve never heard of most of these people, and yet they’re making hundreds or thousands of sales each month. That’s paltry in the old world of book publishing, but it’s entirely livable with Kindle’s 70% author royalties.

Twelve years ago, I wanted to make my living as a fiction writer. After a twelve-year detour, I might actually be able to do that. But this way, this time, it would be even better than I’d imagined in my twenties. Back then, I’d have simply been a novelist. Today, I’m a blogger/business guy. And going forward, I can be both.

Maybe it doesn’t “make sense” for someone like me to write and publish a novel.

But I’m the one defining the terms here, and I say that ignoring all of the above simply because some rule says I shouldn’t mix fiction with business is the thing that wouldn’t make sense.

Question the rules

You may remember my course Question the Rules. Well, I’ve been planning a 2.0 release — adding new modules and new interviews, spiffing it up for the new 2012 kids — for months now, but never quite got around to it. I even did a new interview with Julien Smith for it this summer that’s absolutely amazing, but I’ve been sitting on it. The QTR 2.0 project just never felt very urgent. But recently, while working on this novel that it doesn’t make sense for me to be working on, all of that stuff about how arbitrary rules hold us back started to resurface in my head.

It suddenly started to feel urgent.

As the world and work continues to evolve, we need to look harder than ever at the rules that we follow, and decide if we should be following them at all.

2011 was a tough year for a lot of people. The economy still sucks. Everything is made in China. Companies are still laying people off. Many people still hate their jobs. People are still spending more of their time doing stuff that they don’t like than they spend doing stuff that they do like. Depression rates are climbing.

That’s “normal.” That’s what you get if you follow all of the rules.

And while I was working on my novel that doesn’t make sense, setting aside my logical and profitable projects because 1) I believe that I can be both “a business guy” and “a successful novelist” and 2) because I fucking felt like it, I figured now was the time to start talking again about doing things in unconventional ways.

Question the Rules, which has the lengthy but rather descriptive tagline “The nonconformist’s punk rock, DIY, nuts-and-bolts guide to creating the business and life you really want, starting with what you already have,” will launch in its 2.0 version next month.

Existing QTR members will simply get the new content for free. New folks will be able to get it all for a steep discount during the launch. And dude… the amount of content we have up there is just getting stupid. It’s going to be nearly 50 hours of assumption-challenging, life-changing information before I’m done, from a lot of the best minds in the business. (And in life, and in art, and in travel, etc.) PLUS a bunch of bonuses. It’s kind of ridiculous.

And you know what? Fuck it. Here’s a signup form, right in the middle of this post. I’m questioning the rule that says I should put it at the end. Go ahead and drop your email address in the box below if you want to know when QTR 2.0 launches, so that you can get it at launch-week prices:

Email:

Here’s what I think might be true.

I think that if you’re failing, it may be because you’re playing by rules that you don’t have to play by.

I think that if you think you can’t have what you want, there’s a decent chance that you’re not actually pursuing what you truly want. Once you do some introspection, you may find that your goals are closer than you think.

I think that even if you’ve never realized it before, the fact that you read this blog means that you are seriously punk rock. If you keep trying to follow the normal, non-punk way of doing things, you’re going to be frustrated and bored.

I think that if you’re unhappy with the hand that you’ve been dealt, you can reshuffle, or you can play it a different way. Are you holding a five and a two of different suits in the card game of life? Fuck it. Start playing a new game. Call a five/two off-suit a “Royal Awesome” and declare yourself the winner.

I think that even though there’s no reason for an internet marketing, business coach, thought leader kind of a guy to begin publishing novels, that I’m going to fucking do it anyway.

There are rules that it makes sense to follow, but only you can decide which ones they are.

* In case you’re actually paying enough attention to notice that I have described my book in the past as “zombies meet Fight Club,” that’s a different book. That’s the next one.

1. Begin.

2. Do the work.

3. Ship.

4. Repeat.

Almost nobody truly does all four. Those that do inevitably become great.

Last year, Adam Baker and Karol Gajda did their “Only 72″ sale for the first time, and I was blown away by how incredibly they’d managed the principle of WIN-WIN-WIN. Everyone pays lip service to the idea, but Baker and Karol had embraced it, dated it, married it, and had like fifteen kids with it.

They made an offer that was incredibly WIN for the buyers. (Over $1000 worth of stuff for $97 last year. This year’s is bigger… there was still a “over $1000 worth of stuff for $97″ offer, but they added a “$4344 worth of stuff for $497″ level.)

They made a big WIN for charity. In fact, they gave enough to Charity:Water to dig like 3-5 freshwater wells in Ethiopia. This year, the charity was WASI (a sustainable businesses women’s charity).

They managed a WIN for the people who contributed to the sale, who greatly increased their sales and profits during the sale.

They managed a WIN for affiliates who promoted the sale.

After all of that, I distinctly and honestly figured there was no way they would make money themselves, but they did, and a lot of it. Baker and Karol WON too.

This year, neither Baker nor Karol contributed anything to the sale itself, which means they did all of this without producing any content. That’s not just win-win-win. It’s incredibly outside-the-box.

If you want to be successful in business, you need to learn how to do this. You need to learn how to let others WIN first and trust that you will get your WIN later. This takes a leap of faith, but it’s vital.

I talked with the guys and picked their brains on how other people could do the same… not how they could create a super-sale, but how they could have the trust to GIVE before GETTING. It takes guts. It takes flipping “looking out for number one” on its head.

And it works. I’d daresay it’s the secret to success… for everyone.

Have a listen:

Download MP3

.

This post contains a lesson about life, about your job, and about being human. Hang in there with me with through the intro, because whether or not you’re an athlete, this applies to you.

—

This summer, over a two-month span of time, I did an Olympic triathlon, a bike century, a half Ironman, and a marathon.

That’s not bragging. Bragging carries the assumption that I did it with a purpose, to prove something to others. I did neither. Only after completing the second event did I ask myself what the hell I was doing it for. I’m not fast. I’m not going to finish in the top third of any event I enter. I’m not trying to impress anyone. Yet it took a huge amount of effort, required me to repeatedly get up around 3am, and had me going for up to seven hours at a time. So why was I doing it?

At first I thought it was to see if I could do it, but then I realized that the intent was subtly different. “Seeing if you can do it” comes with a positive expectation. It’s a carrot. You train, and hopefully you accomplish.

What I was doing was a bit more masochistic. I was trying to see how much I could take.

My empire of dirt

There’s a song by Nine Inch Nails, called “Hurt.” The lyrics go like this:

I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel.
I focus on the pain… the only thing that’s real.

It’d be really easy to dismiss this as the ramblings of a morose kid who grew up to become an idol for depressed teenagers, and that’s what most adults do. Kids do dumb shit, and as adults, it’s our job to explain away said dumb shit so that we don’t have to try to understand it. Dumb shit doesn’t require an explanation. It can simply be dismissed, because it’s dumb.

Why would pain have any value? Pain is real, sure, but so is the budget deficit, and we don’t want either of them in our lives. Pain isn’t “the only thing that’s real.” You know what’s real? This deadline. These bills. The fact that we haven’t done our Christmas shopping yet. Oh, and the Patriots game.

This is what we tell those whiny teenagers. But interestingly, it’s what we tell ourselves, too.

So what if you hate your job? It gives you genuine security. You can keep a roof over your head. You can even buy that new plasma TV you’ve been wanting. So turn in your work on time. Listen. Advance. These things are real, and important.

But if you think your deadline is real, go out in the woods and get a grizzly bear to chase you. Which of your pressing concerns seems more real now?

If you think your job is real, get cancer and be given six months to live. Then see if you give a fuck about your job.

The fears that come with your job, your finances, or your social standing are fears of things that aren’t real. If you lose your job, life will go on. This isn’t the way it used to be with the objects of our fears. Used to be, we were afraid of being eaten by tigers. That was a legit fear. You get eaten by a tiger just one time, and things change dramatically for you.

In first world societies, we’re not really in danger anymore. Sure, you can still get hit by a car. You can get a disease. You can get shot. You can get home-invaded or robbed or raped. But comparatively, today, true threats are almost nonexistent. Cave people got a cut and it got infected and they died. They twisted their ankle and lost some of their speed and died. They drank bad water and died. Food became scarce, so they slowly starved and died.

Those things don’t really happen much nowadays, but we’re wired to fear pain. So to compensate, we promoted the things we found moderately unpleasant to “pain” status and began fearing those things instead.

Stress. Discomfort. Awkwardness.

We used to make the choice not to cross a plain based on fear of the pain of being eviscerated. Today we make the choice to not start a new venture based on fear of the pain of failing.

We started saying things like, “This stress is killing me” and “Those people are exercising themselves to death!” and “I was so embarrassed, I could have died.”

That’s not pain. That’s not true discomfort. That’s not the peril to life and limb we evolved to avoid.

We’re not the fragile beings we’ve been trained to think we are. We’re not as weak (of body, of mind, of will) as we’ve hypnotized ourselves into thinking. But the only way to truly learn that — and to open the entire spectrum of human experience we’ve buried beneath the shiny veneer of modern existence — is to meet our own personal limitations and boundaries head-on.

It’s ironic. Letting yourself experience what you most don’t want to experience is the only way to truly be human.

What’s real?

Think about how we live today.

We live in television and on the internet. (I’m scorning neither and I love both, so there’s no finger-pointing here.) Sometimes our friends are people we only see once or twice a year, who we might have physical contact with only half a dozen times.

We go from place to place very quickly without having to wear down our shoes or the soles of our feet, thanks to fast cars and fast trains and fast planes.

We spend a lot of time accomplishing very little. The work of a human life might be the movement of one set of papers or one group of numbers from one location to another.

We have kids, but then we go to work and they go to school (so that they can later go to work, thus closing the circle). Often, our lives cross only briefly, like ships in the night.

We’re shaped by fashion and consumerism. Instead of desiring and chasing food, we desire and chase iPads and iPhones… present company included.

We check email and social networks compulsively. Are we lonely? Or are we just looking for some urgency that we can pretend matters — a surrogate for the survival requirements we used to spend our lives pursuing, but which are now handed to us?

We have fast food. We have video games so real you could step into them. We have reality TV that isn’t very realistic, so that we can vicariously live the lives of Jersey kids and celebrities. And even though we may never visit Australia if we live in New York, we can video chat with Australia, live, for free, whenever we want.

Old-fashioned, unfiltered reality worked for a while, but it was untidy. It was really time-consuming. It had some great positives, but it also came with some shitty negatives.

Move over, reality. Now there’s Reality 2.0.

The good old days

Used to be, things were different.

Used to be, you had to be strong, fast, and smart to survive. That was how evolution proceeded. Those with an advantage leading up to reproductive age passed on their genes, so humans got stronger and faster and smarter.

Then we started getting so smart that our bodies didn’t have to evolve quite as quickly to keep up.

We stopped needing to be strong when machines were invented.

We stopped needing to be fast when chariots, buggies, bicycles, and cars were built.

We no longer had to hunt for food. Others created food in such surplus that certain populations would never want for it. We even manufactured cheap superfoods that were so calorically dense, the poorest among us ended up being the fattest.

Even battling your enemies can now be done largely with the push of a button.

We found a cure for pain. A cure for sleeplessness. A cure for emotional upset. Some cures were medical, and some were behavioral. A cigarette could cure nervousness. A trip to the mall could cure sadness. Eating could cure fear. Drinking could cure shyness.

And that’s all fine and dandy until you realize that we’re hard-wired to experience all of those so-called “negative” things.

A lot of people today, they like to ride roller coasters. As time goes on, roller coasters get bigger and faster. The logical explanation for this is that progress must march on, and a bigger and faster roller coaster is the next logical step, but I think it’s because as our lives become less and less genuine, we require bigger and bigger thrills to scare us, for just a moment, into feeling human again.

Horror films get more and more frightening for the same reason. Those stop-motion sequences of Japanese kids in movies like The Ring? Holy fuck. I don’t need an iPad anymore; all that matters is that you keep those things away from me. Or the breed of intensely grotesque movies that started with the likes of Hostel and Saw — nothing supernatural about those at all, just stuff that could actually happen via ordinary everyday evil. Those movies were huge hits because the more you can feel yourself as being there, being in it, the more you realize, for just a little while, that what your neighbor thinks of your car is irrelevant.

This is the society that embraced Fight Club.

This is a society that spawned real-life fight clubs.

We all go about it in different ways and succeed to different degrees, but every one of us has a part inside us that wants to feel discomfort, because it’s visceral. It’s human.

Remember what Agent Smith said in The Matrix?

Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program; entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world, but I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. That perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrums kept trying to wake up from.

We’ll never create a utopia, because it’s impossible to define good without having bad to compare it to. There is no pleasure without pain. There is no Heaven without Hell.

The more we try to eliminate the negatives in life, the more we consequently eliminate the positives.

Modern society has tried very hard to be safe and secure, to keep us in the soft and protected center of our experience spectrum, and away from the perilous edges.

The problem is that the edges are where all of the really good stuff is.

Edgework

The way to expand your joy is by expanding your capacity for discomfort and failure.

We spend all our time trying to insulate ourselves from negative sensations and emotions, and we end up stunted on both ends. If the experience of modern life feels dim and muted to you, you’re not alone. We’re seeing the world through a protective wrapping. The reason people seek out extremes is so that they can, for once, truly experience something that they know is unblunted and real.

This is a legit sociological concept. It’s called “edgework.” (And thanks again to Julien Smith for introducing me to the concept.)

There are two sides to every coin. If you want to experience real emotion, you get the gamut. If you experience a level 8 emotion in one area, you get access to all emotions at level 8. And if you seek out a negative experience at level 8, you master it. Fear doesn’t blindside you because you went after it. Pain doesn’t overwhelm you because you went into it willingly, step by step. If you wanted to back off, you could have.

Whatever level of discomfort you reach, you reach deliberately. You’ve met the negative head-on, on your own terms. You own it, and you’ll own it forever.

And your world gets bigger. Your spectrum of experiences broadens in all directions — positive and negative. We don’t grow in a line. We grow in a sphere. If you master X, you get access to Y. That’s how it works.

We seek out edges so that we can reconnect with who we really are.

We are not averages and statistics.

We are not the upper, middle, or lower class.

We are not citizens, or constituents, or the governed.

We are not megaplex Christmas shoppers.

We are human.

Tick… tick… tick…

A few months ago, I wrote a post that part of me wishes I hadn’t written.

It was called “The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You,” and it was exceedingly popular. It went viral and got me a lot of attention, and it might just be the best thing I’ve ever written. But it came with a price.

The price is that I didn’t just write it. I read every word of it, over and over and over and over. I lived it. And so now, every day, almost without exception, I’m hideously aware that the clock is ticking. We all get older. We never get younger. And we all know this, but think about it. If you’re 30, do you look back longingly on your 20s? Good. Because they’re over. They’re fucking OVER. You’ll never be there again. Never. This is also true of the age you are now. You have exactly one chance to enjoy it… and then it’s gone.

I guess my new intense awareness of time is a gift. I guess it means that I know not to sweat petty details or to waste time. A lot of people haven’t figured that out yet and continue to squander what few days, weeks, months, and years we’ve been given.

I just watched the movie In Time which, in spite of being a ripoff of Logan’s Run, was still pretty entertaining. In it, the currency is time. The more time you have, the longer you live. When you go broke, you don’t move into a box in an alley. You just die. And that’s a great premise for a sci-fi movie, where you could live each day in a terrifying struggle to earn a few more minutes or hours, but that’s how we live too. You could punch out tomorrow. Nobody knows.

Every day now, I wonder if I’m spending enough time with my family. If I’m having enough fun. If I’m enjoying my work, and if I’m making a difference. I feel like a man who’s been given a death sentence. I’m not kidding. Someone asks me to spend an hour doing something stupid and I resent it. That’s an hour I won’t get back.

What are you doing with the time you have?

Are you watching life through a protective bubble? Are you afraid to leave that bubble, to feel the true pain of effort, of exertion, of something that you’ve never dared to try before? And as you succumb to your fear of the unreal, do you have to settle for experiencing fake joy, fake excitement, fake victory?

Life isn’t meant to be lived through a filter. When you walk into pain and discomfort willingly, and you feel it, unblunted, you know you’re beyond the filter. You know you’re finally experiencing the real.

I don’t know about you, but if I only have so many years here (we’re all born with a terminal disease, after all), then I want to experience the real.

Don’t be stupid, but test your boundaries. Do what bothers you. Do some things that hurt. Let yourself be afraid, and uncomfortable, and at your limit. If you’re scared of something, dive in the next time you experience that fear and revel in it, sampling it like a rare delicacy. Look at everything you’ve been trying not to feel and say, “Let’s try this on for size.”

I don’t know about you, but I want to see what’s out there in the world. And within limits, within reason, I don’t mind if it hurts.

Sometimes I run into people I haven’t seen since high school, or I meet someone new, and they ask me what it is that I do for a living. And so I tell them: I’m a blogger.

I used to pussy-foot around. I’d try to explain the substance of what it is I do (“I’m a writer.” “I’m a coach.” “I create online courses.”), but all of those things invite further inquiry, and eventually we end up getting into more questions — Who do you write for? What kind of people do you coach? What kind of courses? — and so I sigh and say what I start with today: “I’m a blogger.”

And that’s a shit answer, because it frustrates people.

You tell people that you’re a lawyer, and they get it. A little drawer opens in their mind and you go into it. Or you say you’re a paper salesman. Or a drill press operator. Or a social worker. People understand these things. They may not know the details, but they have a basic understanding of where a drill press operator fits and what he or she does. You operate a drill press. Probably in a big factory. You come home from work dirty, you probably earn X, and you’re likely in a union.

You tell people you’re a normal, predictable thing, and their brain gets all happy because it doesn’t have to do any more work. It’s like there’s a form in their mind that contains the essential information about all of your stats, and knowing your occupation populates that form from start to end in one fell swoop. They may not be right about the car you drive, but they can be confident that they’re close. If you’re a drill press operator and drive a new Mercedes and like opera, they’re going to be shocked, for instance. Or if you’re a banker and spend your weekends BMX racing.

You give people a convenient handle and they know what to do with you. But “blogger”? What the fuck is that?

When you tell people you’re a blogger, they don’t know how to populate the form. They don’t know where you go, so they can’t slot you into the mental box they have for you. You’re not neat and tidy. You become an open loop, a loose end in their mind. And people hate loose ends. Loose ends require mental energy. The brain likes to tag things with sweeping judgments — good, bad, happy, sad, fun, boring, tedious, difficult, easy — and to not worry about shades of gray.

(Imagine having a huge pile of receipts at tax time, and having a corresponding set of file folders that match up with where those expenses go on the tax forms. You sort through the entire pile of receipts, putting each one in place… but then there’s one big receipt left that doesn’t fit on any line. You’re going to need to call your accountant or maybe the IRS about this receipt. You aren’t even sure how to explain the receipt to them. Maybe you’ll have to drive down and show it to them, or contact the merchant on a 3-way call. Now: How much do you hate that receipt?)

If you tell people you’re a blogger, you become that receipt. Nobody knows where to put you, and how to profile you. What are your political views? How do you spend your free time? Are you fun and outrageous or boring? What are your kids probably like? What kind of house do you live in, and what kind of car do you drive? Do you even have a car, or are you one of those hippies who bikes everywhere?

Personally, I kind of enjoy confusing people, but if you spend enough time around people with orderly life descriptions and don’t know enough about your own field, you can start to feel that way to yourself. Where do you fit? What’s to be expected in “the blogging life” and what’s not? What’s working? What’s not working as well as it used to? Who are the others like you… and what are they like?

If you’d even consider telling people “I’m a blogger,” you’re probably used to being weird and you’re probably comfortable outside of the normal nine dots, but there’s a limit. If you’re totally out there on your own — and are out there on your own all the time — then things just gets harder and harder.

So how to do you deal?

Well, you meet others. You learn your craft. You treat blogging like a business instead of a hobby. Even if you never answer other people’s nagging questions (“How do you know what to write about?” “How do you make money?” “How do you build your traffic and keep people coming back?” “Are others like you making a living at this, and how are they doing it if so?”), you’ll at least know the answers for yourself.

You can learn those things by poking around online, but because I’m in charge of BlogWorld’s Virtual Ticket this year, I’m shamelessly going to suggest you register for a conference instead.

Yeah. I went there. But keep reading.

Ahem. You might have missed an important bulletin.

I suspect you might have missed my big announcement about becoming the head and the face (basically everything above the neck) of BlogWorld’s online program. And if you did miss it, it’s probably because I haven’t made a big deal about it, but that was dumb, because this is something that I’m really proud of and really excited about. Go ahead and give that announcement a read. I’ll wait.

See, if you tell people you’re a blogger, most people will ask what that means. You might not have figured out yet how to answer that question, and when it actually comes up for me, I do a lot of hemming and hawing too.

But if I were honest with these people, my answer would always be, “It means I do cool shit with cool people.”

That’s why I love my job: I’ve met a lot of cool people, and I do almost nothing that isn’t totally fucking awesome.

And how did I meet these cool people?

By going to conferences and learning my craft.

And what’s totally fucking awesome?

The BlogWorld Virtual Ticket.

You see where this is going.

Totally fucking awesome.

So how did all this awesomeness happen, you ask?

Well, as with any success, it started with irritating the right people.

About a year ago, I did something that pissed off BlogWorld Dave, BlogWorld Rick, and I’d guess also BlogWorld Deb. I didn’t mean to piss them off, but I was totally naive (that was my old slogan: TOTALLY FUCKING NAIVE) and made a faux pas that resulted in a few phone calls.

Ultimately, we came to an agreement wherein I wasn’t a total asshole and then nine months later, Rick says, “Hey, you’re doing some cool stuff and we’ve already spent time determining that you’re not a total asshole, so how about you kick the Virtual Ticket up a notch?” And I was like Bam! and Rick was like Awesome! and then we high-fived and rode sharks through hoops of fire.

This is how I met BlogWorld.

And my task about kicking it up a notch? That’s the fun part.

I’m not going to go through the entire Virtual Ticket sales pitch here because I did it so well here, but suffice to say that this isn’t your father’s virtual event. When we started working on the VT project (we = Jess and I; you know Jess from The Badass Project?), we basically went through this thought process:

Most online versions of live events end up being “the event on tape.”

If the BlogWorld Virtual Ticket was simply “BlogWorld on tape,” that would be TOTALLY FUCKING LAME… and remember, what we’re shooting for is TOTALLY FUCKING AWESOME. So there was a gap. I don’t want to work on lame shit, no matter how well it pays.

So we said, “How do we make it awesome?”

And we said, “We make it as much like ‘being there’ as possible.”

(In other words, providing the content of a live event is not enough. We had to provide the experience as well.)

And so we got all excited and said, “We can make it just like attending live!”

And then we corrected ourselves and said, “What are you, an idiot? No virtual event is like being there live, no matter how awesome it is.”

And then we got all mad about that and were like, “Don’t call us an idiot, idiot. We just meant that we can replicate a lot of the experience and that’ll be way cool.”

And then a fight ensued. Luckily, we won.

But the end result? I hope you’ll agree it’s totally fucking awesome.

Check this out, yo.

The Virtual Ticket already had content in spades. You get over 100 hours of recorded session content, and you have access to it for a full year. That’s the “BlogWorld on tape” part, and even though it wouldn’t be enough by itself in my opinion, it’s still an insane amount of material. What other info product has 100+ hours of professional sessions presented by the best minds in the business?

But then, on top of that, we added a ton of extras that will give you as much of the experience of BlogWorld as possible.

We’ve got:

• Live video from the conference hall floor (or quasi-live if the internet underperforms on us).
• Exclusive interviews with the bigwigs.
• Random behind-the-scenes footage, wherein I attempt to catch Sonia Simone in line at a Starbucks in an US Weekly style “Blogging stars: They’re just like us!” moment.
• Q&A with presenters via social media.
• Quasi-networking opportunities with other VT attendees through social media.
• Brief, on-the-spot interviews with every single presenter who isn’t able to outrun me.
• A host and MC for the whole event. (I propose myself as that host and MC, I accept, I congratulate myself.)

So yeah, I want you to sign up… but the reason you should is because it’s totally fucking awesome.

So, okay… brass tacks.

The price is $247. For 100+ hours of content and all that experience stuff I mentioned.

But in true internet marketing fashion, the price goes up $100 on Friday. Don’t ask me why we torture you like this. It’s just something we do, like playing checkers or setting fire to buildings. It’s a personality flaw or something.

So if you want in, best do it before Friday’s price hike.

Here’s the link. Click it.

If you went to BlogWorld live, it’d cost you thousands of dollars between travel and hotel and a pass. This is like 1/10th of what you might pay.

If you’ve thought, “I wish I could go to BlogWorld but I just can’t make it,” the Virtual Ticket your answer.

(“Answer to what?” you ask? Why, to the question, “What is totally fucking awesome and doesn’t smell like fish?” of course.)

Here’s the link again, because another thing we do on the internet is repeat links because we suspect you missed the one above or somehow feel that repeated exposure will weaken your resolve, like if we said, “C’mon, do it!” and you were like “Nah,” and so we said “C’mon” and this time you were like, “You make a good point” and then did what we wanted.

But if you want to sign up, I’d do it now, before the price goes up on Friday.

So… I hope to “see” you there.

(Oh, and if you’re going live, you’ll get an email in a week or two giving you the opportunity to add the Virtual Ticket to your registration for a stupidly cheap price. So you’re not out in the cold. Unless you live at the North Pole. And if you do, say, “Wassup?” to Santa for me.)

P.S: If you’re wondering why this post started with ruminations on being in an unclassifiable profession and ended with a pitch for a conference, I’m wondering the same thing. So I can’t answer your question. I started writing and this is how it came out. What… do you think I have a plan or something?