I’m now ready for my presentation on How to Make Money Online and am looking forward to meeting a lot of people on Saturday.
Is a Charlotte PodCamp next?
One of the next events I’d personally like to see is a Charlotte PodCamp. Others have expressed interest as well. So I may try to hold one in September.
What is a PodCamp?
You can read about PodCamps here, but it still may not make sense to you. So I’ll try to explain it a little simpler. Basically, it is a local event for people that create content online. Those that want to start creating content online are welcome too. This would include bloggers, podcasters, and Video podcasting.
According to “the rules”, PodCamps are held as a very open (and free) environment where anyone can speak on any topic (similar to BarCamp). All the information presented is available to share online via a creative commons license.
Interested? Which would you prefer?
If this is something you might be interested in attending here in Charlotte, please leave a comment below so I can gather some idea as to the interest.
My one other idea is to hold something very similar, but not have it specifically be a “PodCamp”. We could call it something like “Charlotte New Media”. This would allow us to be a little more structured and make sure some very specific topics are covered by the true thought leaders in this field.
Ok, so this post has nothing to do with Internet marketing, but we basically made huge news this morning in the Charlotte, NC area. We actually got SNOW! I hear it was a little worse to the south and east of Charlotte, but I thought I would do some live reporting from my home in Davidson, NC.
The video below shows exactly how bad it was outside my home at about 7:30 AM. I had been listening to the radio and knew it must be dangerous. All the schools in the area were cancelled.
Several of my friends and colleagues are struggling financially due to the difficult economy. Especially in the construction and real estate industries, work and money seems to be drying up right now.
So if you want to shift careers and try making money on-line, how do you do it? What are your options? Where do you start? What are the tips to success? That will be the subject of my presentation/discussion at Charlotte BarCamp this Saturday, January 24, 2009.
In fact, I’m probably going to be talking about it this evening at the Charlotte Entrepreneur’s Meetup. (Christine was kind enough to ask me to speak there again!)
I started preparing for this topic this morning while in the shower. Here is what I am coming up with.
The Options
Build content and get advertisers
Sell other people’s products
Sell your own services
Make and sell your own products
Market your offline products or services
Each of these has their pros can cons. The real challenge here is not doing any of these things. It is figuring out which you should do. So how do you determine which of the above to do?
How to Decide
You don’t start by choosing one of the five options above. You start by thinking about yourself. What do you enjoy? What hobbies or work have you done in the past? What connections do you have?
In the online world, it does not really matter what you know. You can learn almost anything online. You need to determine what you enjoy. Succeeding online requires endless patience, determination, and desire. If you don’t like what you are doing, you almost always will not succeed.
The next step – listen and engage
Once you decide who you are and what you would enjoy doing online, you need to start listening. Don’t jump straight into building a website. Start with Google and search to see who is already in the industry you want to break into. Read blogs, scan e-commerce websites, and join groups on Facebook. Follow people on Twitter.
But don’t just read, comment. Start commenting on blogs, leaving reviews on e-commerce websites, and replying on social sites such as Facebook and twitter.
Now you can start
At this point, you can now start building your website. Start with a blog. Join the conversation. Point people at your blog. Let it grow.
But don’t stop there. Make the e-commerce website. Build products and/or services to sell, etc.
How?
But how do you do all this? Learn. There are endless resources online on how do do the various things I mentioned so far. Think about taking our classes, or reading this blog, for example.
I’ll share some very specific ways to do all this stuff at Charlotte BarCamp. If you have not registered, you need to. See you there.
The other week, we had a record-breaking Charlotte SEO Meetup about Twitter. The place was packed with over 50 people and another 50 or so were watching live on Ustream.
It was a real pleasure to be the moderator and ask the four “Twitter expert” panelists some good questions. I really tried to push them to talk about the true benefit of Twitter and how they use it effectively instead of just wasting time on it.
The results were incredible. Twitter is buzzing in the Charlotte area and I hope it keeps up. Many that were present appreciated the opportunity to hear this stuff.
Over the last couple of years, instead of attending search engine conferences, I have been enjoying a very different kind of conference. Two years ago, I attended Blog World Expo. This past year, I attended New Media Expo.
Interestingly, they both combined for 2009 to make one incredible conference that I will definitely be attending this year in Las Vegas. If you are going too, please let me know.
The one huge benefit of attending a conference like this is that it helps you appreciate what the future holds. Online media (blogging, podcasting, and online video) which is named “New Media” is growing. It’s taking viewership from traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio, and television) which is typically referred to as “Old Media” or the more politically correct “Mature Media”.
And the side effect is mini-celebrities. Seth Godin refers to these people as leaders in his book “Tribes”. But with the ability to publish so easily online, it is easy to gain little followings.
How do you do it? No one says it better than Gary Vaynerchuk. If you are not familiar with Gary, check out his appearance on Conan O’Brien below.
Gary now has over 30K followers on Twitter and his videos are extremely popular.
How can you do this? The true thought leaders have not emerged online yet. There are mini-celebrities such as Seth Godin for marketing and Aaron Wall for SEO and Matt Cutts for Google.
But what do you know? What is your specialty? You can become a mini-celebrity in your field.
How? Gary tells us how better than anyone else. Here’s some great advice in his interview at that same conference I attended.
I have some other great advice from Gary Vaynerchuk here. Check it out and you are on your way to becoming a mini-celebrity online.
This morning we posted the new dates for our Search Engine Optimization class, Google AdWords class, and Blogging class.
We were planning to do some new and extra courses this year. However, after sending around a survey, it seems as if many of you would prefer to have some online webinar type courses.
Therefore, I’ll be working on creating some new webinars around the topics you want in 09.
So if you want to shift careers and try making money on-line, how do you do it? What are your options? Where do you start? What are the tips to success? That will be the subject of 
It was a real pleasure to be the moderator and ask the four “Twitter expert” panelists some good questions. I really tried to push them to talk about the true benefit of Twitter and how they use it effectively instead of just wasting time on it.