Let’s just jump right in and get to the point. Today, I learned that I am a failure.
Well, at least as an affiliate marketer. I’m trying to decide if I really care one way or the other about this, but let me rewind a bit and give you some of the backstory that brought me to this conclusion, so you’ll have context.
You may not have even realized that I am a marketer. After all, the site is called Higher Ed Career Coach, and most of the articles you find here are about job searching in higher education, and issues related to the changing landscape of higher ed. The ads you see are pretty much relegated to the sidebar and I took off some of my more sales-ey content a while back, including my Amazon.Com widget, my “book an appointment” Tungle calendar link, and the easy links to my shopping cart and Paypal payment buttons. You might even think the site is only about free career advice.
It’s not. The whole thing is an ad. And not a very good ad, at that. Sure, the articles can create discussion, and the podcast on BlogTalkRadio can offer different insights from guests, and you’ll certainly get the occasional articles that are really about me and the business. But the real goal of this site and my other site (Higher Ed Life Coach) are really the front gates for my business, and I’m not doing the best job with the selling part of things. It’s not why I went into business. I had more idealistic goals. I went into business to help people get jobs and find balance in their lives and careers (another thing I’d failed at plenty, myself, but learned a lot from.)
But I realized a few months back that I needed to get more comfortable with selling, because a business can’t just be about ideas and motivation. It has to be about action.
So I did a couple of things. First, I joined Third Tribe Marketing (affiliate link), a site founded by Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse and Sonia Simone, to try and learn how to do this without being annoying. Second, I redesigned my sites to be cleaner and to get away from Adsense ads, because their strange algorithms pull in all sorts of advertising content, and there is little you can do to truly control what ads end up on your site. It’s annoying, and I hate it. So I took a new approach, and joined affiliate networks and chose companies I have used or feel that readers can actually get some value from. But I never figured out the right way to draw attention to them, and to let people know why they are there, without being sales-ey. So people haven’t been buying.
In a recent post in the Third Tribe forum, Chris Brogan put it simply. He asked members if they were hinting or selling. And I realized I have only been hinting. And that’s pretty damn annoying, too. So it’s time I “man up” and let you know more about what I am going for with this site, with my business, and about why I participate in affiliate programs. The more you know about me and what I stand for, the better you will be able to decide how my sites and I can serve you better. And, if you can’t get past the idea that I am also looking to make money, as well as assist, enlighten, and occasionally entertain, then I guess you’ll probably be looking elsewhere for this sort of information.
It’s my sincere hope that you’ll stay on as a reader, and help me get where I am going with this. And not just for my sake, or the sake of my bank account. (Let’s just say that I’m fine in that area, for the most part, and that money is not my primary motivation for doing this. I actually believe that coaching helps people, and that I am good at helping people.There is a legitimate need for coaching in the higher ed space, and I feel that coaches need to come out of the ranks of our institutions and help others find the way. I’m uniquely qualified to do this, because I have known both great success and major failure in my career (and my life) and I love sharing what I have learned. Especially what I learned from failures.
If some parts of my life and career only happened to serve as a warning to others, then I am honestly okay with that.What value would they have as distant memories and trivia, when they could be signposts in the road, steering others in the right direction?
Monday: More on me, my business model, and where I see affiliate marketing and pa
It’s easy these days to get overwhelmed by the continuous stream of information that comes at you through social media, and e-mail. A while back, I discovered a great tool to help cut through some of the noise. It’s called Gist, and it brings your contacts into one place to give you a full view of your network, making it easy to find anyone, anytime. You see email addresses, phone numbers, work details and more, all assembled and updated automatically. You can also directly ask your contacts to provide their latest information by requesting a profile update.
I’ve been using it to help kind of take the pulse of my inbox and social network each morning, so I can prioritize my follow-up. It’s also great for getting some background on people you are meeting with each day. And it can be used in GMail (including hosted Google Apps Mail), Outlook and Lotus Notes, and works on your iPhone or Android phone.
Check it out and you’ll probably agree that Gist helps you stay organized while monitoring your mail, your calendar, and your network.
DJ Coffman, the comic artist who sketched this logo, just released his first e-book.
I guess if you’re reading this far, you must have some interest in finding out why I decided to take a break from our usual topic and what on earth I could be writing about. So thanks for checking out the post anyway. Please read along.
If you read this site regularly, you’ve seen some of the awesome spot art by D.J. Coffman. He’s the guy who did the “Monday Morning Quarterback” and “Tuesday TimeOut” logos, and hopefully we’ll have some more of his stuff featured here soon. D.J. is a talented and friendly guy I met through the Third Tribe membership site (aff. link) and a respected comic artist.
His work has been published in newspapers and publications around the globe and seen on HBO, MTV, Vh1, Late Night With Conan O’ Brien and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 2006, he won the first annual Comic Book Challenge with his project Hero By Night which is now in development as a live action TV show.
On Third Tribe, he’s one of those people who I enjoy connecting with the most, because he’s just a real guy, doing what he loves and has always loved, trying to balance his passions with time for his family. And he’s clearly the kind of person who likes connecting with people, helping them out and learning from them. I joined Third Tribe for an opportunity to learn from people like Chris Brogan. I stay because of people like D.J. Coffman. (No offense to Chris, though, he’s the real deal, too. But then again, everyone who knows social media and marketing already kinda knows that already.)
So this break from the usual topic comes to you with the simple goal of telling you about someone who pursuing a purposeful life, and some of the amazing things he’s doing. And indirectly, to give you a glimpse of who I am and the things I care about, like doing, etc. To let the cat out of the bag, I have always loved comic books, and I have a nice collection. I spent more time in high school with comic books than with girls. I used to incessantly draw superheroes everywhere, all the time. And I would give my left arm (hey, I draw with my right) to have the chops this guy has.
Yes, I am a certified geek. And I have always done my best to support others who are, especially if they are putting themselves out there in ways that help others. D.J.’s new e-book does just that. It’s called “Cash for Cartoonists” and it’s a guide to making money as a comic artist. I know that is kind of off the beaten path, and that you probably didn’t expect to read a post on this blog about something like this.
But look at it this way… in higher ed, we talk a lot about trying to “challenge and support” our students. The biggest challenge people face in life is to be their true selves. And support (whether it be from friends, colleagues, mentors, faculty or staff) is hugely important.
I like D.J., and I want to support his art and his business. So when he announced the launch of this product, I signed up to be an affiliate right away. I don’t know how many of my higher ed colleagues out there aspire to illustrate web comics for a living, but I bet a lot of you know people who might. And if you don’t, at least you know something interesting about the spot art on this site, and the guy who does it.
We now return to our regular topic. Thanks for reading!
The last few weeks have been interesting to me. With the exception of August 1999, when I was in-between jobs, I worked on college campuses during the busy back-to-school rush for all of my adult life. So it was weird to not be getting ready for new staff, RA training, and welcome week.
I expected this August to be different, in terms of how busy I would be, but that hasn’t been true. I’ve had a lot of client appointments lately, as some finally found themselves full-swing back into searches that had stalled for a while, and realizations that the grad school applications they’d been thinking about in theory need to find their way to paper (or electronic) form sooner than later. All the sudden, following up on a site redesign, some emerging partnerships, the development of some e-books, seminars and workshops moved from my “get to that soon” list to “Oh, crap, I really have to get in gear with that” list. And I realize that I wasn’t paying attention.
It reminded me a lot of my time on campus, and all that goes into getting ready for a successful year. I wonder now why I expected it to be different. There are so many things that pull at our attention and all too often, we drop the ball, and miss the important details of what is going on around us. Today, I was catching up on Twitter (something that often distracts me, but that oddly, during this time, I have been able to tune out) and I saw this tweet from my friend and coaching buddy Monica Moody.
The link she mentions in her tweet goes to a YouTube video of an interesting psychology experiment about attention. And a reminder that, as Linda Loman pleads in her famous monologue to son Biff in Death of a Salesman, “attention must be paid.” (Video embedded below.)
As you get into full swing of the back-to-college season, and all the stresses that come with it, how are you paying attention? What will you be missing? And how can you keep yourself from missing the “invisible gorilla?”
Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Mike Davenport (a/k/a LeadershipGeek) regularly contributes his “custom thought illustrations” to the discussions over at Third Tribe Marketing (aff. link), where the sketches for this guest post originally appeared. He is also slugging away at his own website, Not the Slightest Idea. You can see more of his stuff on SmugMug.
Work with Sean. I help higher ed professionals take control of their careers with tailored services including resume and CV development, LinkedIn profile optimization and networking strategy, interview coaching, and one-on-one career guidance.
