Case Study: How a “No Meat Athlete” Built His Profitable and Satisfying Business

Matt Frazier has worked hard to build a loyal community of vegetarian and vegan athletes. His blog, No Meat Athlete, gives his readers fun and accessible information on their favorite topics — training and food!

These days, Matt’s site gets about 600,000 page views a month, and he has more than 20,000 people on his email mailing list.

Matt has now created a successful business around his community, which includes digital training programs, a membership site, and a line of No Meat Athlete clothing.

Matt’s business has also allowed his family to become location independent, enabling them to move to Asheville, North Carolina. His next move? A traditionally published book, which will be published soon.

Let’s catch up with Matt, and find out how he built this successful and satisfying niche business.

What’s your site and what do you write about? 

My site is called No Meat Athlete, and I provide ideas and tools to simplify what most people consider to be a pretty extreme lifestyle – that of doing endurance sports on a plant-based diet. I really try hard to keep it light and fun and totally non-preachy, so that people who are just curious feel welcome.

Who are your readers and how do you serve them? Was there a pressing problem you were trying to solve?

They’re active, healthy people who eat a vegetarian or vegan diet or at least have some interest in lessening the amount of animal products they eat, usually for their health, even if they aren’t ready to go 100 percent plant-based.

When I started the blog, I was a serious marathoner who was feeling an “inconvenient” urge to become a vegetarian, and I had no idea if it was possible to be both. (“Am I going to collapse at mile 20 when I run out of protein?”) It turns out that a lot of athletes choose a plant-based diet precisely because of what it does for their performance, but when I started No Meat Athlete, the little information about it that I could find online wasn’t presented well – it was either too wrapped up with the ethical issues or just not reader-friendly … and a lot of it was on webpages that looked like they were built in 1997. So I thought there was room for a fun, friendly, trustworthy alternative.

What kinds of content are most important to your business? Blog? Email list? Podcast?

I use an email autoresponder sequence and recently started a podcast too, but the blog is really the hub of it all. I learned (from Brian Clark, in a Third Tribe seminar) to think of any other types of content, including social media, as satellites that surround the blog and ultimately lead people back to it.

What resources or tools did you find most helpful when you were getting started?

Seth Godin’s book Tribes provided me with an initial vision for what No Meat Athlete could one day be, and that vision still dictates most of the decisions I make about the site. No Meat Athlete shirts, of which we’ve sold something like 10,000 now, are a fun, visible example – they’ve become a sort of cool, not-so-secret handshake among No Meat Athlete fans when they see each other at races.

As far as putting the pieces together, though, just about everything I learned came from the Third Tribe — I joined when it first launched, and I’m still a member! Those early seminars that Brian and Sonia did were so foundational for me when I was learning how to write content, grow an audience, and run an online business for the first time. I would burn the seminars onto CD’s and listen to them over and over while I was driving to and from grad school classes … I had this big stack of them that I listened to so often they eventually got all scratched up and I had to burn them all again! (Then I heard about this newfangled thing called MP3's that the kids are into these days.)

Jon Morrow’s Guest Blogging course was also a big one for me. I had actually already done some pretty big guest posts, including one for Zen Habits, when Jon launched his course, but I learned so much about blogging in general from that course and some coaching calls I did with Jon that really helped me with choosing post topics and engineering posts to get traffic.

What was your situation before you started blogging? Were you always a business owner, or did you have a more traditional career?

I was in grad school, studying Applied Math. I enjoyed math and I still do, but I remember sitting in a mandatory seminar about how to position yourself for a job after graduation, and thinking, “There’s just no way I’m going to go through this competitive, stressful job-application process in hopes of sitting at a desk working for somebody else for 50 hours a week.” So I was always trying to think of business ideas and ways to spend my time doing something I cared about, and eventually one worked out. (It helped that the cost of getting started was essentially zero, because that’s about all I could afford!)

How do you use social networking in your business?

I use Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

I got on Twitter as soon as I started the blog back in 2009, and it really helped me to shorten that phase when nobody is reading what you write. But pretty quickly, I made an important distinction — that even though the people I was interested in learning from about blogging and business were on Twitter, the typical No Meat Athlete reader was not. Instead, she was on Facebook, and that’s since become our main social media channel.

I still use Twitter for fun and to connect with other bloggers and authors, but I’m slowly moving to Google+ for that because I think eventually it will be the place to connect with these bloggers and with readers. And since Google owns search, it seems like a bad idea to ignore it.

One thing I learned from Sonia is to focus on doing a few social media channels well instead of trying to do all of them and doing a poor job of it. So I set up accounts on other sites, like StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, but I really don’t use them much.

What were some of the main tipping points or “a-ha!” moments (if any)? How did they come about?

Without a doubt, the biggest shift came right after I found Copyblogger and learned about the importance of headlines, nine months after I started blogging.

But it wasn’t just the added sharing and traffic that having a good headline brings – it was more fundamental than that. When you force yourself to come up with a strong headline before you start writing a post, you’re performing a litmus test with your topic. If you can’t come up with a compelling headline for the post – like I never could when I was getting ready to blog about what I ate for breakfast – that’s a pretty good sign that the post is too much about you, or just plain boring. The converse, of course, is that headline brainstorms like the Cosmo technique lead to ideas for your best post topics.

Another “a-ha” was something I learned from Jon Morrow, and I think about it every time I sit down to write: If you don’t think a post isn’t going to get tons of comments, links, and traffic, then writing it is a waste of time. A lot of bloggers have the notion that it’s better to publish something boring than nothing at all, and I did too, but that’s a sure way to train readers to ignore you.

What were your biggest mistakes, or biggest wastes of time or money?

I wasted a lot of time in the early days fooling around with coding and design. I’d try to make my own header, and end up spending 8 hours on something that looked way worse than a real designer could have done in 15 minutes. And several times when I tried to mess with HTML and CSS to tweak my blog theme, I screwed something up and the whole site wouldn’t load — I’d panic and think No Meat Athlete was gone forever. It’s just not worth the stress, so now I have a StudioPress theme and leave the design stuff to pros (like my designer, Charfish Design).

I’ve also wasted money on one of those the big, expensive internet marketing courses – it made me realize that the techniques those guys teach, while perhaps effective for some niches and types of businesses, need some serious tweaking (and humanizing) if you’re going to use them with an audience of people that you genuinely respect.

Why do you think you became an independent business owner and blogger, when most people just stick with the career they have, even if it’s unsatisfying? What’s different about you?

Change — especially starting something and calling it yours — feels risky and scary. We’re wired to avoid it. Seth Godin teaches us now that what’s really risky is choosing not to start your own gig, or making the choice not to become essential in your job. But I think for most people, that’s hard to accept on a gut level, even if you believe it intellectually.

The difference for me is that the thought of spending the better part of my life doing work that doesn’t matter to me and for somebody else truly does terrify me at a deep level — way more than the choice to work for myself does (which has its moments). I spent two years after college doing the normal 9-to-5 thing, and I was so miserable. Something just felt very wrong and unsettling about it, like I was on the wrong path. I’d wake up in the middle night with this horrible, “What are doing with your life?” feeling, and my old roommates like to joke about this one night where I was just lying on the floor groaning about how much I hated what I was doing — but it wasn’t funny at all back then, at least not to me.

What does your business look like today?

Things are going really well. I decided to leave grad school with my Master’s degree instead of finishing the PhD, in order to work on No Meat Athlete full-time, and it was the right decision.

The site’s revenue is split between digital training programs — including a membership site side-project that I run with Jason Fitzgerald from Strength Running — and No Meat Athlete gear, like our shirts.

As far as other numbers go, the blog has 16,000 subscribers and the email newsletter another 21,000. And we get around 600,000 pageviews a month now; about 280,000 of those are uniques.

While our family car is still not a Lamborghini filled with bikini models, we have fulfilled another online business dream: location independence. Last year my wife, son, and I moved from the suburban town where I grew up, to Asheville, North Carolina, a funky, vegan-friendly town in the mountains, with lots of art and music and outdoorsy stuff. It’s like we’re no longer the weird vegans — here we’re the boring, normal people, and we love it that way.

What’s next for you? What are your next goals?

The big news for me is that last month I finished writing my first book with a publisher. It’s called – what else? — No Meat Athlete, and it’ll be in stores this fall. Writing it was an entirely different (harder) process than self-publishing, but I’m so excited about the chance to spread this message to a much wider audience of people who can benefit from it than I can reach with my blog.

Beyond that, I really want to give No Meat Athlete a presence at the local level. To me, having No Meat Athlete groups around the country (and world) that meet up to train together or grab some vegetarian food and hang out would be the completion of the loop that Tribes opened in my mind. I’ve got a community part of the site in the works, with forums and fun ways to connect people, and I’m hoping that will be the first step.

What advice would you give to bloggers and content creators who are trying to build an online audience?

Learn everything you possibly can about writing and blogging and making connections online. Really study it. And then expect six months of sucking at it before you get good.

Get comfortable with (and truly enthusiastic about) giving away your best content for free.

And finally, an approach to blogging that Jon Morrow taught me, which I’ve found leads to a pretty fulfilling life outside of blogging, too:

Figure out something everyone has always wanted to do but they believe is impossible.

And then do it.

And then write about it.

Editor’s Note: We’ve absolutely loved watching Matt’s progress inside the Third Tribe. While Third Tribe is closed to new members, we do have a new resource coming for you that will help you build your authoritative, business-building online presence the same way that Matt did. Keep reading the blog, because we’ll be letting you know about that very shortly.

About the Author: Beth Hayden is a Senior Staff Writer for Copyblogger Media. Get more from Beth on Twitter and Pinterest.

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How to Immediately Become a More Productive (and Better) Writer

You want to become a better writer.

I know this because you’re reading Copyblogger.

I also know that you fear becoming a better writer.

This I know because you must change to become better, and to fear change is to be human.

But what if I told you that you only need to change one thing — one small thing — to achieve your goal of becoming a better writer?

Would you believe me?

You should. It’s not just theory; it’s science.

One small step really can change you.

Those are the first six words on the book jacket of One Small Step Can Change Your Life, the bestseller by Robert Maurer.

This is exactly what I want this post to do: unleash the potent force of kaizen … in your writing.

Kaizen is a Japanese word representing the process of achieving sustained success through small, steady steps.

The concept actually originated in Depression-era America before being introduced in Japan by General Douglas MacArthur after World War II. There, it quickly took hold and became a driving force in Japan’s economy, growing into one of the most robust the world had ever seen.

Now, thanks to books like Maurer’s, the concept has gone from macro to micro, and become a proven driver for individual development.

So let’s go even more micro.

Rather than change your life (that’s what the book is for), I want to help you change as a writer. In one small but significant way.

Sometimes all it takes is one tiny step to propel you with momentum on a path of continuous development. But you have to take that first step.

Here are a handful of ideas for small changes you can make right now that will improve your writing …

Stephen King — who has surely forgotten more about writing than you and I know combined — believes that adverbs are “not your friend.”

In his book On Writing, King goes so far as to say that “the road to hell is paved with adverbs.”

I don’t know if I would go that far, but I do agree with this quote from him:

They’re like dandelions. If you have one in your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day … fifty after that … and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are.

King’s hatred for adverbs is well-reasoned. He believes they were “created with the timid writer in mind” and tell us the writer “is afraid he/she isn’t expressing himself/herself clearly.”

Timidity, be gone!

Write what you mean and mean what you write. Use adverbs where they are pretty and unique in their boldness. Then, and only then.

Mark Twain instructed us to “employ a simple and straightforward style.” Adverbs are neither. They are, more often than not, vanities that offer little benefit to the reader.

Start paying attention to your adverb usage. Be judicious.

Discover the difference between your reader needing an adverb for context or clarity and you needing an adverb to make yourself feel better.

Then write (and edit) accordingly.

There are bloggers, and there are writers.

Bloggers casually write within their WordPress dashboard, adding links, pictures, and videos, as they create content. Bloggers may even have Twitter open to capture any late-breaking news about the topic they are covering. The words are important, but they are just part of the show.

Writers write.

Writers do their research, open up a blank document, have whatever notes handy that they need, block out the world, and then focus on the words and only the words.

Writers don’t edit as they go. Writers don’t break their flow to pull a video embed code from YouTube. They do this after the draft is done.

I came up on the web as a blogger. I am now transitioning into being a writer. And I am finding that what I produce is much better writing as a writer — with my first draft always in Word — as opposed to writing as a blogger.

Editing, linking, embedding, etc., can always be done after the first draft is complete. But you can never recover that uninterrupted wave of initial thought and inspiration. In my experience, once it’s gone, it’s gone.

Do you blog, or do you write? Try writing.

Focus solely on the ideas in your first draft. Record them in Word or a text editor, then transfer them to WordPress for editing and formatting later.

Maybe it doesn’t matter whether you are writing or blogging. Maybe your issue is discipline.

Don’t fret. You are not the first to struggle with this, and you won’t be the last.

Sometimes the single hardest aspect of writing is simply putting the rear end down in the chair and … writing.

If you could make a small change that would increase the frequency with which you do this, you’d automatically be a better writer.

So why not try the technique that worked for one of the most legendary copywriters of all time?

It’s incredibly simple: just set aside certain times each day when all you do is write.

And time yourself. Maybe it’s 10 minutes, maybe it’s 33.33 minutes, maybe it’s an hour. But during that time, allow yourself to do nothing but write.

If you end up staring at the blank screen producing nothing, so be it. More likely, boredom will overcome you at some point and you’ll start to write something.

Something is better than nothing. And every time your butt is in the chair writing, you’ll be getting better.

Just because you’re confined to a chair for a prescribed period time does not insulate you from being intimidated by the blank page. In fact, sometimes it can make the pressure more acute.

The vast white expanse and blinking cursor can get to the best of us.

The next time this happens, turn to a friend.

I don’t mean literally. While talking your ideas out with someone may help in some circumstances, you won’t actually be writing. Instead, think of a friend — preferably someone similar to your target audience — being on the other end of the empty document, as if they would be the only ones receiving these words. Then consider your goal to be nothing more than explaining your idea to them.

Go so far as to write Dear So-and-So at the top of your document (I do).

Now, instead of writing to no one and everyone all at once, you’re writing to one person. It’s like an email. And the ideas flow naturally and with less pressure.

You have the editing process for smoothing out the rough edges. But the ideas have to come first.

Anything you can do to coax uninhibited ideas out of your head will make you a better writer. A small shift in thinking at the beginning of your writing session is all it takes.

Settle down. I’m not talking about plagiarism here. I’m talking about studying other successful writers, seeing what works for them, and incorporating it into your own writing strategies.

That’s right: your one small step doesn’t even need to be an original idea.

Just take what is proven to have worked for another writer — like the timed writing sessions above — and implement it to see if it works for you.

If you want a specific suggestion for how to do this, I say start reading The Writer Files and pick out one tip in each edition to implement for testing.

Maybe you decide to see if waking up at 3:00 am works as well for you as it does for David Meerman Scott.

Maybe you commit to emptying your bladder and filling up a water bottle before sitting down to write, like Lisa Barone.

Maybe you turn off your phone before writing, like Daniel Pink.

Maybe you try listening to jazz while you write, like Seth Godin.

Maybe you try all of these strategies and none work for you. Great! Just by trying them you’ve changed. You’ve initiated the process of improvement. You’ve figured out what doesn’t work, thus getting closer to what does.

Writing may be a solitary act, but the process of becoming a better writer doesn’t need to be.

Yes, I’m serious.

If you’re like me (and countless other writers I’ve talked to), your best ideas come to you in the shower. There’s plenty of science to back this up.

Yet, like an idiot, I have never devised a good system for capturing my epic shower ideas. Sure, I’ll try to remember them and record once I get out of the shower, but all to often I forget the brilliant thought and am left lamenting the loss.

No more.

It finally dawned on me that my shower passivity has cost me a lot over the years …

It’s cost me money, in terms of brilliant story or blog post ideas I never followed through on.It’s cost me arguments, because I’ll forget a perfectly worded rebuttal or explanation.And it’s cost me peace of mind, because a brilliant conclusion to some issue is forgotten, thus leaving a thought train open that must still be dealt with later.

Compared to such costs, the $10.19 Amazon charges for bathtub markers is a bargain!

Now I can write down what I’m thinking on the shower wall and record it later. (If your shower walls won’t allow for this, go with Aqua Notes.)

As writers, our ideas are our most precious assets. Don’t let any more go swirling down that shower drain.

Recording just one great idea that you would have otherwise forgotten will make you a better writer. Just think how powerful this one small step could be if it became a habit.

You want to become a better writer, and I’m not asking you to make any bold, sweeping changes to your life in order to get there.

Just do one thing.

Take one step.

Maybe it’s one of the six steps described in this post, or maybe it’s something else. But by taking just one step in the direction of becoming a better writer, you make yourself ready for step two, and then step three, and so on.

Let me end with a few immortal words from Lao Tzu …

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with the first step.

Take that first step.

You’ll be a better writer tomorrow than you are today.

Image via Lethaargic.

About the Author: Jerod Morris is a copywriter, blogger, and founding member of the Synthesis Managed WordPress Hosting team. Get more from Jerod on Twitter and Google+.

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How To Sell Without Selling

If you want a simple way to make your emails more profitable, without any hard pitching or looking even remotely “salesy”, then give me a few minutes here, and let me show you how to do it in this article.

Here’s the story …

One problem a lot of people have with writing effective emails is they think they’re writing a sales letter. And because they think their emails are like sales letters, they pack them with benefits and use all the usual copywriting tricks — out of context — and selling “choke holds.”

But if you sell a product that solves a painful problem, the opposite is true.

What you really should be talking about (instead of your product and its benefits) is all the pain caused by the problem your readers want solved.

This means getting inside their “world” and writing about the pain they’re experiencing (or COULD experience if something isn’t done to deal with the situation pronto).

Yes, you still make a call to action.

And yes, you still plug your URL (either aggressively or passively, such as in the example below).

But, you don’t need to hammer your readers with benefits. Instead, you hammer them with the painful symptoms they’re feeling — or could feel if they don’t find a solution.

How does this help your sales?

The answer is simple.

Since YOU are the person emailing them each day (you are mailing them daily, right?) and bonding with them (not just “pitching” them) by showing them you understand their pain, they will naturally look to you as the go-to person for help.

This concept is hard for a lot of online marketers who study copywriting to grasp at first.

So below is an example of how to do it:

Subject Line: The real reason why good writers die young

Writing’s a dangerous job.

Sitting there on your rumpus for long stretches of time … letting your legs form dangerous (life ending) blood clots, and wreaking havoc on your entire nervous system — which all can lead to some really NASTY pain.

Leg pain.

Neck pain.

Shoulder pain.

Elbow pain.

Wrist pain.

And, especially BACK pain.

In fact, I knew this one copywriter who was spending sometimes 8-10 hours straight in front of his computer in a small “closet like” office — writing copy, editing video/audio, messing around with website design etc, who was always in excruciating back pain.

Every movement hurt like hell.

Every shift in his seat like white fire up his spine.

Every turn of his neck agony.

He suffered like this silently for months, but figured it’d just go away on its own.

It didn’t.

It actually got worse.

In fact, it spread to his rear end and then down into his hamstrings making running (something he loved doing) impossible, and even walking to the kitchen from his office was exhausting and excruciating. Even sleeping was fitful at best as he had to lay in just the right position (and not move) in order to keep the sharp, “dagger like” pain away.

Eventually he sought help.

Doctors.

Orthopedic surgeons.

Chiropractors.

Acupuncturists.

None were any help.

(One of these doctors even said it was just “phantom pain” and sent him on his merry way with a bottle of pain killers …)

All his tests — MRI, EMG, X-rays — came up negative.

Yet, the pain was getting worse.

And his livelihood (writing) was at stake.

One of the doctors said whatever the problem is, it could be permanent if he didn’t figure it out soon … and to see a neurologist who told him there was nothing they could do and that humans are not built to sit for long stretches of time like that (and he was lucky he hadn’t developed any blood clots …)

Anyway, the point?

Writing for a living really CAN be dangerous.

To your health.

To your sense of well being.

Even, to your life …

To see my “writers pain” prevention plan, check out:

[Sales page URL here]

[Signature here]

See how that works?

The entire email above is about the problem, not the solution. It doesn’t talk about a product, and there isn’t a single benefit mentioned. Yet, it does a better job “selling” the click than pummeling the reader with benefits, bullet points, and features.

It also prepares the reader to eagerly be looking for a solution when they see the landing page, instead of being on guard against a sales pitch. In fact, they’re looking to be sold when you do this correctly.

This is a very simple way to write emails.

You don’t have to be a great “writer.”

You don’t have to use any copywriting tricks or tactics.

And, you don’t even need to mention your product.

All you have to do is know your market and these emails practically write themselves.

Your homework assignment: Go write a “pain” email like the one I’ve shown you above. Think of all the pains your product solves, use the above email as a template and watch what happens.

About the Author: Ben Settle is a direct response copywriter and email marketing strategist. Although Ben no longer accepts clients, he gives away over 700 pages of his bestselling ideas and insights free at BenSettle.com.

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A Simple Story About the Power of Publishing Content on the Open Web

I think everyone who has ever wanted to write a book has dreams about what publication day will be like. So far, mine has involved exactly zero groupies and parades, but it’s still been nice.

I’ve been watching this day creep towards me for a long time, and now that it’s here, I’m feeling more emotions than I can describe. Excitement and an agreeable sort of fear are vying for the top spot right now.

But sitting on top of this stack of feelings is gratitude (Sonia and Brian, this is going to be about you, so stop reading if you’re the blushing types). Just under that is a stunned sort of disbelief.

I work in a public library. I make about $40,000 a year. I’m a simple guy and I’m pretty happy if I have a book to read, some weights to lift, and I can spend enough time with my family.

I was never looking for anything life changing.

And yet, today, on Book Tour Eve, The World’s Strongest Librarian is …

One of Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers SelectionsOne of Huffington Post‘s most-anticipated reads of 2013Recently featured in O MagazineThe subject of a great review in The New Yorker

Seth Godin wrote about it. Steven Pressfield, an author whom I had adored for most of my adult reading life, was suddenly writing to me, some guy working in a library, to say “good job!”

All very surreal, but, to use a cliché, a bit of a dream come true.

This dream would not have happened — at least not in the same way — without some early support and encouragement from friends in the blogging world.

Way back when, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone gave me a chance to write here on Copyblogger. They were incredibly supportive and encouraging, and that in turn gave me a chance to be seen by more and more people online.

Opportunities to write elsewhere — and to become a better writer — appeared. Opportunities to speak. Opportunities to grow. Opportunities to meet and befriend many of you who read this site.

Opportunities to develop this quality the Copyblogger people are calling Authority.

And most importantly for making progress online (and for the book), I learned how to figure out what worked. I learned how to test. I learned how to figure out my own way of doing things, without worrying what everyone else was doing.

Somewhere along the way, as each new improbable development in the book deal happened, I had to stop saying “It could never happen to me.” Because, whether it was earned, deserved, or just the chaos of the universe, it did happen.

Somewhere along the way, it made more sense to say, “You know what? Why not me? Why not you? Why not anyone?”

If I could choose the takeaway from this thank you note, I would love for each of you to say, “Why not me?” Then put your head down, go to work, and keep marching forward. As Steven Pressfield said recently, Put your ass where your heart wants to be.

This has all been the result of some good luck, bad luck, dumb luck, and a lot of hard work and stubbornness. But it also, as with so many things, comes down to people who were generous when they didn’t have to be.

Thank you Brian and Sonia, for one of the many small pushes that got things moving.

And thank you to all of you who have supported me as readers and friends.

Onward!

About the Author: Josh Hanagarne is a writer, speaker, librarian, and the author of The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Strength, Faith, and the Power of Family, which recently received a rave review from The New Yorker. He works on level 3 of the Salt Lake City Public Library, loves his job, and doesn't plan on leaving. Get more from Josh on Twitter.

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Two Words That Will Make You a Smarter Content Marketer

You don’t usually envision a poet engaging in a pistol duel — let alone twenty-nine — but that’s exactly what Alexander Pushkin did.

His last duel proved fatal.

Sadly, as long as there are two people on earth, there will be conflict. But it doesn’t always have to end in death.

I’ve been in several duels myself. Not of the pistol-slinging variety — but the copywriting kind. You’ll probably recognize the scenario …

I trot out my idea.

The client cringes and says, “It will never work.” He’s got a better idea.

“Fine,” I say, “let’s test them both and see which one works better.”

And so, we let the marketplace declare the winner.

Testing makes you smarter.

The beautiful thing about testing what you create in the marketplace is that you learn firsthand what works and what doesn’t work. It’s like being a marketing scientist.

If you don’t test your ideas, then you’re just groping around in the dark … ignorant (perhaps blissfully) of the truth of what you create.

Instead, test hundreds of variables over time — headlines, calls-to-action, copy length, images, words, and so on — and you will build a healthy set of winning ideas.

It’s this experience that will transform you from a so-so content producer to a sophisticated and seductive one …

And it’s this experience that will drive people to ask you for advice, invite you to sit on panels, and beg you to work on their best projects.

In one way, I think this is why everyone should learn how to write direct-response copy … it’s the perfect way to make sure that your best ideas see the light of day.

Test everything, and you will get smarter (and wealthier). But don’t be surprised if you run into a lot of resistance.

Imagine your boss insists on formatting blog posts a certain way. She wants an opening that describes the post, then a blurb about an upcoming conference (with a call to action button), and then the article.

You have a hunch that the blurb is impacting bounce rates, shares, and reading time on the page. It bugs the heck out of you.

You mention something to your boss and she says you are being paranoid. However, the only way you can know if that is true is to test it.

It could be a handful of variables that are suppressing shares, subscriptions, or conversions … you won’t know which ones until you start testing and isolating variables.

And keep in mind, if your boss (or client) bristles at your suggestions, remind her that it’s your job to increase traffic, improve conversions, and make her more money … and the only way to do that is through testing.

As Andy Grove once said, “Only the paranoid survive.”

Testing has another way of transforming you. It can break your ego (in the best kind of way, and if you allow it).

I belong to a certain species of humans who think they’re right … about everything. I’m smug. I smirk when I think I hear something ridiculous. And I like to say things like, “That’s silly,” and then explain why.

Losing copywriting duels has tempered that attitude.

See, I’ve lost some testing duels. Ones I was sure I would win. I’ve also been scolded by the best about my “winning ideas.” I’ve got the chapped hide to prove it.

But in time I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut, and let the market prove me right (see, there’s that smugness coming out again).

I’ve won some tests, too, and as my experience grows, I tend to win more than I lose, because I’ve developed a sense for what will work and what won’t.

This is why I like to go to the court of last appeals — it avoids trading in personal preferences.

It boils down to four things: copywriting, engagement, sharing, and lead generation. Let’s break each of those down separately.

Copywriting: Which two headlines or subject lines work the best? How can you re-write a call-to-action to raise conversion rates on your landing page? Is that image suppressing response?Engagement: Do people leave comments on your blog or email you? Do they respond on Google+ or Facebook?Sharing: How is your content spreading across Google+ (use Ripples to find out)? Which content works best on Facebook? Twitter? Pinterest?Lead Generation: Are you generating leads and revenue from your content? This is the most important metric.

And when it comes down to actually measuring the above segments, here are some fundamental metrics to consider:

1. Website, Blog, and Landing pages

VisitorsPage ViewsInbound LinksConversionsCommentsSubscribers

2. Digital Products (including ebooks, white papers, and case studies)

DownloadsSocial SharesSubscribers

3. Email Marketing

OpensClickthrough ratesSubscribersForwards

4. Social Networks

FollowersLikes or +1sRetweets/Likes/PinsClicks

The goal is to look at those metrics and ask questions like this: How do I increase clickthroughs on email? Increase social sharing? Get more people to hit my landing page?

Your next step is to actually find the right tools to test each of those metrics.

Here are the essentials:

Premise: Quickly and easily build custom, graphically-enhanced (and easily testable) landing pages without coding or hassle. Plus, copywriting advice from within WordPress, conversion optimization seminars from industry experts, and much more.Scribe: Helps you discover the topics that matter, choose smarter language, optimize for social and search, and attract links, likes, and shares in the process.Google Analytics (GA): Use GA for your basic site wide metrics. I like to use it to see what sources are pushing the most traffic to my site.KISSmetrics: Helps explain why people do what they do on your site. Takes GA to another level.Aweber: Gives you analytics — open rates, clickthroughs — about your email campaign.Sprout Social: One of the most comprehensive social media measurement and management tools out there. If the price is outside your budget for now, try HootSuite.Facebook Insights: Robust analytics on the social network giant … critical if you depend heavily on FB. Ripples: Shows you how a particular Google+ post spreads. I use it to track people who share my content, and then follow them if interesting. Google Alerts: Notifies you when someone mentions you, your brand, or any keyword you enter in the news, a blog, or website.

Understand this: you don’t have to be an analytics expert to use these tools. I’m a writer with spreadsheet phobia … but I manage to use these tools quite easily.

You can, too.

Don’t be afraid to put your neck on the line … do some testing on your own. But also invite people who disagree with you to a duel (do it humbly and without a pistol) … and let the marketplace decide.

In the end, testing is a great schoolmaster that will drive you to explore the surprising, buck the conventional, and push you to become the best content producer you can possibly become.

Remember: being paranoid pays. So test everything.

About the Author: Demian Farnworth is Chief Copywriter for Copyblogger Media. Follow him on Twitter or Google+.

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The 5 Cornerstone Values that Build an Authoritative Online Presence

You’ve seen us talking a lot about authority — authority with your audience, with search engines, with colleagues, with other web publishers.

Why do you want it? Because given the noisy, cluttered state of the web right now, it’s the authoritative site that earns the business.

It’s the site that delivers credible, effective solutions to customer problems.It’s the site that attracts links from other authoritative publishers.It’s the site that earns plenty of social sharing from an audience that wants to share high-quality, user-friendly content.And it’s the site with a confident, ethical sales process that converts attention into business.

There are a lot of components to authority — site design, intelligent SEO, strategic content promotion.

But behind all of these is a single, non-negotiable element that every authoritative site needs. You’ll find a clue in the graphic that accompanies this post.

The “secret sauce” — the magic ingredient that makes the others work — is the intelligence and skill set of a talented, well-trained author.

In other words, the secret sauce is you.

The web, for all of the automated stock trading and spambots, is made of people. It’s made of readers and writers, connectors and curators, mavens and clowns, teachers and trolls.

Creating a site that people trust and turn to can only happen when smart, informed authors make a concerted effort to create something worth reading.

That’s why “spun” content and anonymous content farms were never going to amount to anything. They might have managed to fool search engines for a short while, but they never fooled readers into thinking that their content was useful or interesting — and they never will.

After observing hundreds of authors with hundreds of different business and audience types, here are my thoughts on what makes the difference between a run-of-the-mill web publisher and a true authority. Remember, like all business values, these are important because of how they affect your audience and your customers. They come first, you come second.

Your worth as an authority, in my excruciatingly humble opinion, comes from the number of people you help and how profoundly you help them.

A “guru” whose advice doesn’t solve real problems in the real world isn’t an authority — she’s a con artist.

Any train wreck who gets a million site hits a month for being an idiot isn’t an authority — he’s just an attention-craving jackass.

Authorities help others. They serve their audience first.

That doesn’t mean you don’t get to put your own needs into the equation. As my favorite Zig Ziglar quote says,

You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.

In order to help people, you have to actually know something.

In fact, we look for credible authorities precisely because there’s so much downright bad information available on the web.

Authorities take the time to really understand their topics. They sift out misinformation. They ask a lot of critical questions … including of themselves. They stay on top of their topics and make sure their advice is as good as it can possibly be.

That doesn’t mean that an authority is always the world’s foremost expert in a topic. Often, the most valued authority is the one who can take useful information and turn it into interesting, digestible, user-friendly content.

When you stop caring about your audience, it starts to show. Quickly.

Authority can bring tremendous satisfaction with it — from the good you do for the people you serve. The energy you bring to your site and your business comes from that satisfaction.

All of this may sound very kumbaya — but to be a valued author who’s getting recognized on the web and elsewhere, you need a strong grasp of strategy.

You need to understand things like site design and SEO and content promotion. You need to understand how to put your great message into the world so it will be heard.

And if your authoritative site supports a business, you need to make money. Consistently. You need your expertise and authority to translate into paying customers, or all of it is just a time-consuming hobby.

We live in an “instant results” society, but a true authority knows that the riches go to the one who can successfully play the long game.

As I like to tell my students, Don’t take shortcuts, they take too long.

Fortunately, the web itself is such a powerful accelerator that we don’t have to wait 10 or 20 years for our hard work to pay off. But we’re not going to build thriving businesses in 10 days, we’re not going to triple our audience in a month, and we’re not going to double our revenue this year without plenty of hard work and smart strategy.

Patience, integrity, and hard work — combined with some smart business education to make sure you’re making the best use of your time — are what works. They always have been, they always will be. Put these at the heart of your business strategy and you’ll see real results that last.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is co-founder and CMO of Copyblogger Media. Get more from Sonia on Twitter and Google+.

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5 Writing Links You Can Use in the Field

This week on The Lede …

Why You Should Write DailyWhy Originality is OverratedThe Few Sentences You Need to Dominate Your MarketDavid Ogilvy’s Obituary10 Ways to Write Clearly. No, Make that 1.

Want to grab even more useful links (beyond those that make The Lede)? Follow @copyblogger on Twitter.

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Why You Should Write Daily
Mr. Babauta’s article gives very good advice. It’s also one hell of an example of the type of advertorial that works to support and fund independent content (you’ll see what I mean when you click through).

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10 Ways to Write Clearly. Make That 9. No, Just 1.
This article delivers one of the first lessons every good copywriter learns. It’s a lesson that must be remembered and used throughout any career that matters, and it all boils down to just one thing …

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The Few Sentences You Need to Dominate Your Market
I am a believer in the power of brevity. Most people are, even if they don’t know it. Within the craft of writing copy that sells, there’s often a necessity for long copy, but Mr. Sandeen argues that the initial decision to continue reading usually boils down to just a few sentences. And of course, he’s right.

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Why Originality is Overrated
In line with David Ogilvy’s famous quote, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative,” Mr. Tullman makes a brief case for the eradication of novelty in selling. You may feel that you’ve “accomplished something” with that clever turn of phrase, or that outrageous storyline involving rappers, zombies, and your product … but does it actually sell? If you go looking for gasps or laughs in reaction to your sales copy, you’re merely trading the hope of a potentially profitable business for the vacant pursuit of “creative” awards and adulation.

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David Ogilvy’s 1999 New York Times Obituary
Speaking of Mr. Ogilvy … I’m not quite sure why this link made The Lede this week. I suspect it has something to do with the human fascination with our common (and final) problem. A gentle reminder that our time here is short, and our remaining working hours should be as generous, helpful, and industrious as we can make them. Perhaps.

About the Author: Robert Bruce is VP of Marketing for Copyblogger Media, as well as its Resident Recluse. Get more from him via Twitter or Google+.

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