Maximize Results

Entertain or Educate - What Is Best?

I’ve been doing some thinking lately (I know it’s dangerous)…

Looking back at all of our businesses over the last 5 years, plus the 100’s of websites I’ve consulted with or studied, it seems like most sites fall into one of two categories.

The first is where the website’s purpose is to educate the reader.

This can include things like teaching valuable lessons, giving outstanding advice to people in their market, sharing things that most people don’t know about, etc.

This is basically the model I chose when I took over the BloggingExperiment blog a couple months ago. Since taking over the site, the traffic level remains pretty steady compared to when we bought it. The RSS subscribers has increased slightly. Income has increased significantly. BUT, the site hasn’t taken off to the equivalent of an A-List Blog…

My initial thought was, people NEED to learn how to make money online, and I was determined to teach people what I knew.

I’m not saying this model is flawed, but it may not be the best option if you want a super popular website.

The second path people take with their sites is to primarily entertain their readers.

I was listening to an interview Frank Kern did a while back where he gave this example. I can’t remember the exact way he stated it, but it was something like this:

“People are painfully bored in their lives and they are desperate for entertainment…your job with your website should be 15% content, 85% entertainment” (something to that effect anyway)

Then he gave this example:

He said “close your eyes for 10 seconds, and think of 4 things you learned in college. Next, close your eyes for 10 seconds and think of 4 characters from the tv show Seinfeld”.

Sure enough, Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer came to my mind MUCH faster than anything I learned in college. In fact, not one single thing came to mind when I thought about what I learned in college.

The difference?

Entertainment is more enjoyable and easier to remember than even the best education or training.

Is this the reason why JohnChow and Shoemoney are two of the most popular blogs in the make money online niche? Probably so. Do they always give out the best content? Not even close…

So, what direction are you taking your website or blog?

Are you so focused on educational content that even though you have incredibly valuable stuff to share, it’s just not catching on because you are “not entertaining enough”?

That’s why celebrity gossip is so popular, as well as reality TV, soap operas and Youtube. Entertainment trumps true content every time, but is it a more profitable direction to take your business?

Which do you think is best?

Buy the Blogging Experiment Theme for Only $75!

Your Customers Are Busy Too

What is the most valuable part of your life? It’s the only thing in the world that is limited…

TIME

This is something most marketers and internet business owners forget about.

Of course we know OUR time is valuable, but we tend to forget that our customers and readers have limited time as well.

Especially in the future, when there will be 10 times as many things to distract us in a day compared to our crazy busy schedules today.

I predict there will be a major shift in how marketers and internet business owners operate in the near future.

When you think about it using common sense, it’s pretty obvious.

Example #1

Would you rather purchase a huge 22 DVD, 1000 page manual mega training course or a condensed “no fluff” 1 DVD, 50 page guide?

Personally, when I see those mega courses being sold for $2,000, my first thought it “how am I going to find time to go through all this stuff”. Sadly, this is exactly what happens most of the time.  People get excited about the opportunity to learn what the course teaches, but when it arrives, the customer gets overwhelmed and may never even open the box!

I know the purpose of having those huge courses is to “increase the perceived value” by making people think they are getting more for their money. I’m sure this little trick does work for most people in the market. To me as a marketer however, I know MOST of those DVDs are going to be fluff and a complete waste of time.

There is nothing worse that trying to learn from someone who waffles around for 30 minutes telling stories about their dog, rather than just getting to the point of the lesson.

Example #2

Blog posts are another thing to keep in mind. I hear a lot about how you need to make in-depth blog posts for them to be considered a valuable contribution, and that you need to make posts every single day or people will stop following you.

This is something I’m trying to get over myself!

From this point on, I’m going to work really hard to shorten my blog posts AND only keep the most valuable information in the post. I know your time is limited and you don’t have time to read long posts from 30 different bloggers.

I’m also going to change my posting frequency to about 3-4 posts per week. If you have time to read this blog (or any blog) 7 days a week, then you are taking away from your time to make money online. Not saying I don’t want you here or that I don’t think you should read this blog, but I do appreciate your time and I want you to be successful online. If I can help you save a little bit of time and help you put that time into your own business, I’ll be happy.

YOU DON’T MAKE MONEY READING A BUNCH OF BLOGS EVERYDAY!

I know that doesn’t make sense for a blogger to say that, but it’s true. It’s important that you spend most of your time working on your own business. I’d recommend only reading your favorite 4-5 blogs (this one and 3 others, ha!), and only dedicate 20-30 minutes per day total to blog reading/commenting. If you can do this, I guarantee you will make more money online than you are right now.

I’m taking this exact strategy with my How To Buy & Sell Websites class I’m teaching in a couple weeks. The lessons are going to be intentionally short and to the point.  Most of the videos will be about 5-10 minutes each, and ONLY contain valuable content worth its weight in gold. Each lesson will have bullet points explaining what content is shared in each video so customers and jump to exactly what they want to learn.

Sure, it will be more work on my end, but my customers will appreciate the fact that they don’t have to sit through hours and hours of long videos. I won’t be rambling on about nonsense just to make the class “look bigger”.

When you are working on your business, please make sure you consider how valuable your customers’ time is as well. If you are writing a 7 day mini email course for an autoresponder, don’t just write a bunch of fluff to fill up the emails.  Make sure you write solid, to the point, and valuable information.  Your customers will appreciate that much more than 20 pages of nonsense.

I know your time is valuable so I’ll wrap up this post now…