Originally published on August 4, 2010. Republished as a BlogcastFM Classic on January 5, 2012.
Unless you haven’t left your house or set foot in a bookstore (which would make you a really strange blogger), for the last five years, then it’s likely you have heard of or even subscribe to Ramit Sethi’s Blog. This has been one of the most eye opening interviews I’ve done and it really shifted my perspective. In this interview you’ll hear some really different perspectives on blogging.
Here are some highlights from our conversation:
- How Losing $2,000 Motivated Him to Learn About Money
- The Unsuccessful I Will Teach You to be Rich Course He Created in College
- Telling the Right People About Your Blog and Content
- Using the First 6 Months to Find a Voice
- How to Write a Series that Generates a Sh*tloads of Traffic
- The Reality of Publishing a Book
- Why You Shouldn’t Focus Your Relationships Building Efforts on the A-list
- Why Blogs are an AWFUL Way to Make Money
- How Turning Down $100,000 in Sales Enabled him to Connect to His Audience
- The Most Important Questions to Ask to Determine Your Audience
- Segmenting Your Readers and Targeting them Accordingly
- Why He Didn’t Monetize for 3 Years
- The Advantages of Freelancing
- The Keys to Effective Email Marketing
- Dispelling the Passive Income Myth (Something You Really Need to Hear)
Ramit Sethi writes about personal finance and personal entrepreneurship at I Will Teach You to Be Rich. He has a specialty in persuasion and behavioral change. You can follow him on twitter @ramit.
If you liked this article, would you share it with your friends? Just click here to post it to Twitter.
One of our goals for 2012 is to become a top 100 show in iTunes. We can get there with your help and it will enable us to improve the how and bring on even bigger guests. So if you can, we’d be really grateful if you write us a review in iTunes.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 47:05 — 64.7MB)
This is such an excellent interview Sri. Great job!
Ramit, why don't you think publishers put some elbow grease in to help market their books? wouldn't that be completely logical?
Thanks Sam. Ramit is really the guy to thank. He provided tons of insights
I think both of you need to be thanked. Ramit for his insights, and Srini for actually materializing on making this interview happen.
Another awesome interview BlogCast..and I love the new look of the site too..
“TrafficColeman “Signing Off”
Terrific interview! I'm particularly interested in the discussion of being more personal on your blog and calling this authenticity. Can't you be authentic without being personal? I really struggle with this. For example, I think Malcolm Gladwell is a terrific writer, but he doesn't write personal essays. Are you suggesting there's a different expectation for blogs as opposed to other media?
Really appreciate the tips and suggestions here. It's funny, I have of course heard of Ramit, but had avoided his blog because the name (I Will Teach You To Be Rich) sounds scammy to me. So it was interesting to hear his thoughts on that title as opposed to “financial literacy.”
Very enjoyable interview. Thanks!
Jen,
I have some pretty strong opinions about authenticity and being personal. I think it's really hard to be truly authentic without being personal, but it may not be impossible. Find a voice is one of those things that I seem to discuss with people in almost every interview, and the advice is always different. The one common theme however is that it has to be your own voice. I've found that it will take time to find that voice. As far as blogs vs other forms of media, I do think that there is a different expectation. In my opinion why we read blogs is to connect with individuals. Other forms of publication you know have been through alot of filtering in my opinion so it tends not to be as authentic. The nice thing about a blog is the owner can literally say whatever he or she wants and that's why it' s so refreshing.
I definitely agree that the big plus of blogs is the ability to connect on a deeper level. I think my difficulty is that I tend to personally connect with others who share good ideas, not necessarily personal aspects of their lives. Now, the post needs to have lots of specifics and details to be worth reading, but they don't necessarily have to be personal.
That said, I think I'm in the minority. If, as a blogger, I want to connect with a wider audience, I suspect I'm going to have to open up a bit more. I'm running a reader survey on my blog right now, and got that very input from one of my most trusted readers, so…hard to argue! LOL
Thanks for your thoughts–see, I like you already!
Not really. Sort of.
1. They don't know how, so it would be prohibitively expensive and difficult to learn, especially now
2. Their model is to simply bet on a few, much like VCs, and wait for the big one to hit. THEN they can spend resources on promoting it even more.
Though I have to say it's not working too well these days…
What really needs to happen is publishers buying fewer books and promoting them more. This might raise profits, but at the expense of the size of publishers. Most execs wouldn't want this, even if profitability goes up.
I have a detailed list of publishing bookmarks at http://delicious.com/ramitsethi/publishing if you're interested.
Another great interview! I learned three really important things from this interview:
1. It's never to early to capture visitors email information and have them sign up for a newsletter.
2. Decide who you should be marketing with your blog- don't try to appeal to everyone. I think that was my biggest mistake when I started a year ago. Now that decided on an audience, it's easier to great and market content.
3. You aren't going to make money blogging in your first year. That makes me feel so much better. As someone who started blogging a year ago on a part-time basis I thought I was doing something wrong (you read people's story's that managed to do it quickly- those are exceptions to the rule). I figure as long as you're growing in content and traffic you must be doing something right and not to give up.
Question though- in the beginning stages what percentage of your time should be spent on growing traffic vs. creating valuable content vs. sending out newsletters?
I say it's a bit of a balancing act. I think I spend around 30-40% creating content, and the rest on other activities. I don't know if there's an exact formula. It's really about experimenting and finding what's most effective for you.
Both Ramit and Julien mentioned how little marketing a publisher will do for your book. I didn’t know that. Great information.
I think this was my favorite interview of the last 4 or 5. He just earned himself a new fan. he seems to be more realistic about things than most.