Self-Help: A polluted source - makes it hard to turn a profit

Why Self Help is a Polluted Income Source and what makes it hard to turn a profit

Because the most expensive advice is free.

And everyone was born with an opinion to give away.

Also, since everyone has their own world view, everyone has a unique solution to handle any problem in front of them.

So we get 2 or 3 dozen or more articles every week which never pass muster - because they are based on a single, isolated world view and have no credence. You can't believe them because no one else says they are worth anything.

These guru's out there got their credibility by delivering the goods - going out on a limb and being actually entertaining, enlightening, and educational. The best are all three.

And guess what, these are the three points Charles Helflin points out as being the key points you have to have in social media. Yes, being a self help guru is social media governed. Any celebrity status is. No real surprise. Same governs all commerce, all marketing. It's just been hidden under the lack of a feedback loop until the Internet showed up - and evolved.

Solution: quote well-known authors who already made it - become an expert on these guys. You can't just "talk" about the "current fad" in self help. Some subcategories are hotter than others, some are evergreen - like weight loss and depression. But you have to know what you are talking about - and give real, valuable, worthwhile data when you talk. Real solutions for real situations. You have to do this in a style which is entertaining, educational, and enlightening - all three.

Wayne Dyer is a great example of the above paragraph. Dissect a few series of his tapes and you will quickly see that this is sooth.

Over to you.

How to Get New Business Ideas - self help book promotion through social media

When you have the secret genius recipe for Getting New Business Ideas, you want to get the word out.

And that's what I've been doing this week. Took a lot longer than I thought. But the result has been worth it.

Slideshare has some user hurdles I'm just now jumping - and these are the preliminary findings:

• Slidecasts (contain audio) do better than simple Powerpoint. More exposure faster.
  
• Can't be overly long. Ideal is probably around 3 minutes, like a pop song.
• Lots of high-quality visuals, not a great deal of text on each slide.
• Like articles, you need to give valuable data quickly, concisely.
  

Technical details:

• Very active community, so only post your best and final version.
• Means you have to have your audio ready for sync-ing right after you post your slideshare (in order to make a slidecast).
• Links are active, not no-follow - means you get link love from Slideshare when you comment on someone else's creation (or your own). Search engines follow those links.
  
• Google loves Slideshare currently and posts your stuff at the top of their rankings within minutes.

My point with posting this was to get the word out about my new book - but also to help people with what I'd found. (And in the process, tell people that I was available for hire as a genius idea-finder.)

Earlier work was just on YouTube and didn't go anywhere. Here's the video:





As you can see, it's not bad, but isn't the same quality as my later slidecast:

| View | Upload your own

Comparing the two - I've gotten just over 500 views through YouTube on the first video in the month since I posted it. Slideshare has given me over 230 views in 12 hours, with three or four people favoriting it.

Just for grins and giggles - here's the same data (pix and audio) converted to a YouTube video:



Technical How-To's:

In this case, I tried something new, as well as keeping to the established ways of doing things.

New - created this in Corel Draw as it doesn't have to have a template like OpenOffice Impress (or MS Word's PowerPoint). It's an excellent graphic layout tool, though it remains a niche product. CorelDraw outputs direct to PDF, and so can import into Slideshare easily.

Old - learned from my earlier mistakes and held off posting the slideshare until I had the audio online.

Here's that audio from Archive.org:



You'll note that I've got two soundtracks here. This falls under new-based-on-old. I put a short and a longer soundtrack up for the same slides. You see, I sit on a wealth of data on self help, as well as how to create/unleash genius abilities. So the first short version (the popular one) was just to create the overview. The longer one gives the down and dirty of how and why I say what I do.

Now, with those sound tracks posted, I then finished up posting the slideshare and quickly converted it to a slidecast.

Why this sequence? So the initial impression is with sound. Higher value for the visitor experience.

Creating the slideshow was first, but posting it was fourth. Audio posting was third. First was creating a one-page landing page. Second was working out a press release and getting this into my article submitter program.

The web page is the end-point I want people going to. The press release drives people to the slidecast and my websites. But I didn't wait to get all my press release sites contacted before I got the slidecast up and running.

Following all this promotion is this blog post, which I'll social post.

Different from earlier work is the absence of an article to put on the article directories. I'd already posted the "Genius Recipe" so I didn't figure I could revamp it again. (And, spending a week on this slidecast, plus other distractions, has put me behind on other work...)

- - - -

So this about wraps up the scene. Oh yes, a word from our sponsor:

Genius - How to be one, How to live with it.

Print: $37.00

Download: $17.00

HOW TO MAKE A GENIUS is as little understood as geniuses themselves.

Genius, as the ancients knew, is completely spiritual in origin. And taking a metaphysical approach to this is where we start making progress in understanding this extreme state of ability (or talents). Basic premise to a book like this is to assemble all the known data on genius (genii) and to publish this as a collection of works.

Want to become a genius?

Know someone who could cope better with their incredible ability?

Note: contains controversial statements which contradict the best modern authorities.