One Born Every Minute

Exhibit Meh has been live for nearly a month, and I've got a few key stats that start to tell a clearer story about my progress so far:

• Nearly 130 unique visitors. There was a minor spike at the beginning, but right now traffic is hovering around 3-4 visitors per day. By comparison, it took me nearly a year to get to the same number of visits for this blog, so building a network beforehand has paid some dividends. 
• A bounce rate of 58%. Ostensibly, not great, but more recent numbers show it's in the low 30s, which is excellent. I'd be happy with fewer viewers who are engaged, but I will take this moment to shamelessly self-promote on my own blog [In authoritative gameshow announcer voice: If you haven't yet explored Exhibit Meh, take a look. If you have, tell your friends, and make sure you visit often. Also, please consider donating. It's only $3, and I believe my edutainment value is well worth the price, even on an annual basis (Yeah, I know, I know, pride goeth before the fall, and all that, but I have to advertise somewhat).]
• 12 pieces posted to the site.  I'm happy with the framework I've created.  It allows me to add content easily without worrying about formatting, so my time is completely dedicated to research and content creation.  I don't know whether it'll be useful for someone else, but once I clean up some of the cruft specific to my deployment, I'll open source the framework, so others can use it for their own projects.
• $12 in revenue.  In actuality, I'd say the number is probably $6, since $3 of that revenue was me testing my payment system, and $3 is from my wife, so only half of the revenue derives from outside my address.  Still, though, $6 is a start, and it shows that someone's willing to pay for my efforts, which is encouraging.
• A LinkedIn poll indicating that a full 25% of potential subscribers would pay.  Granted, the sample size was 4, and I assume that several other people didn't respond because they don't want to flat out tell me "No, I won't pay for this," but statistics don't lie, right?

I'm assuming that, much like this blog, the numbers will grow - even if modestly - the longer the site's up, so I just need to be patient and wait.

Except it's not really about waiting, it's about care and experimentation.  A post on obtaining 50K followers "effortlessly" crossed my feed on LinkedIn, and it left me feeling a little underwhelmed.  Of course, the idea behind my content creation is to be able to collect revenue even when I'm taking a pause, but I recoiled slightly at the idea that I could've simply raked in cash without any effort.  What would you even do with a magical 50K followers? How are they all connected that makes having them immediately worthwhile?

I suspect the post was one of those "if you pay me a fee, I'll teach you the secrets of X" type pitches (I only glanced at it briefly), so it wasn't simply a path to pecuniary enlightenment with no strings attached.  But it did make me realize - I don't want to exhaust myself in building a business (people who revel in sleepless nights and time away from their family have another void in their life they're obviously trying to fill), but what benefit do you derive from success if you do nothing to earn it (yes, this is definitely a Protestant Work Ethic type statement, but there are always degrees - no one is saying life has to be constant toil and disappointment before you die, but if your greatest accomplishment in life is listening to every Pink Floyd album back-to-back without getting off the couch, you may want to get a bit more ambitious)?

Even buying an existing successful business or a mailing list from someone can still lead to a sense of fulfillment.  First, you're theoretically doing your research to determine the value of the existing business; second, you're accumulating enough capital to purchase the business; and third, you still need to run it successfully once you've purchased it.

The people who sell entire courses on how to start and run successful businesses without providing specifics are just running Ponzi schemes or selling picks and shovels to newly arrived miners in Klondike country.  They're building a successful business on nothing more than sketching for others how to build a successful business, profiting off the hopes of their clients with no investment in the welfare of the people who've forked over valuable money in an effort to better their lives.  Sure, these people could be gullible and should know better, but that doesn't mean your business model is a moral one.  I prefer to do more than just live on this side of legally dubious.

I don't have a problem with someone packaging up their know-how and selling it in a reasonably-priced volume (probably because I would consider doing something like this myself if I do accumulate valuable advice to impart), but there's a difference between charging someone $14.99 for a 200-page book vs. several hundreds (or thousands) of dollars for a course (or worse, a cheat sheet) that's the equivalent of "buy low, sell high."

One of the beneficial by-products I hope to create while starting up Exhibit Meh is an accumulation of business advice.  What marketing levers worked and why?  Will there be a time when it's worth paying someone to help me market?  Will adding new features add new viewers?  Will there be a tipping point in content creation, or with an innovative feature, that will increase my number of subscribers?

I'm excited to find all of these things out.  Even if I fail, I'll have some advice to impart, because I'll be able to point to a combination of factors that didn't work out.  

But, whatever I discover, I know that if I charge for it, I won't obscure my pricing and require that you like my post and write "I'm a Botliever" in the comments section before I send you a heavily redacted, poorly formatted PDF that asks for more money before giving out the real secrets.  Chances are that I'll probably provide the content for free and ask for donations for a personally autographed PDF.  Who knows? Maybe that means, ultimately, I'm the sucker, but I'll shy on the side of less capital and sleeping soundly vs. more Ferraris and the possibility that I cracked into someone's nest egg solely for my personal gain.

In one of the next posts, I'll talk about some of the upcoming developments I've got planned for the site.  If I'm lucky, I may even be able to correlate some of those plans with expected business results.

Until next time, my human and robot friends.