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Choose the Right Frame to Boost the Power of Your Content

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Choose the Right Frame to Boost the Power of Your Content

Looking to create a much greater impact with your content? Start by understanding how it’s framed.

It’s a little early for a Book Club episode, but I just read the new edition of George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant, and I was blown away by the simplicity and power of his ideas.

In this 19-minute episode, I talk about some of the key ideas in Lakoff’s book:

  • What a “frame” is, and how it shapes the information we take in
  • Why facts aren’t, by themselves, persuasive
  • Why you must at all costs avoid using the language of your competitors
  • The two big frames that inform culture and politics in the U.S. (and are active in other places as well)
  • What to do with an audience that has both frames “installed” (a common scenario)

Listen to Copyblogger FM below …

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The Show Notes

The Transcript

Choose the Right Frame to Boost the Power of Your Content

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

Sonia Simone: Copyblogger FM is brought to you by the all-new StudioPress Sites. A turnkey solution that combines the ease of an all-in-one website builder with the flexible power of WordPress. It s perfect for bloggers, podcasters, and affiliate marketers, as well as those of you who are selling physical products, digital downloads, or membership programs. If you re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why more than 200,000 website owners trust StudioPress. You can check it out by going to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. That s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress.

Hey there, good to see you again. Welcome back to Copyblogger FM, the content marketing podcast. Copyblogger FM is about emerging content marketing trends, interesting disasters, and enduring best practices, along with the occasional rant. My name is Sonia Simone. I’m the Chief Content Officer for Rainmaker Digital and I like to hang out with the folks who do the heavy lifting over on the Copyblogger blog. You can always get extra resources and links, as well as the complete show archive, by visiting Copyblogger.FM.

Today is a little bit early for another book club, but I really want to talk to you guys about a book that was recently released by George Lakoff. It’s called, Don’t Think of an Elephant. Just a word of warning, it is political, in that it is a book about political strategy and persuasion strategy. If you totally hate politics, then you probably should not pick it up, because you will probably not like it.

Now, Lakoff is not neutral, he has a point of view politically, and as a matter of fact, he makes a good case that no one’s really neutral, that we all subscribe to what he calls frames, which are sometimes, but not always associated with a political side. Given that both political sides have used his work, have benefited from his work, and in fact, I think you could argue that the side he doesn’t agree with has benefited more from his work, which is interesting. It’s not particularly a book for one side or the other of the political spectrum.

It is a really fascinating book if you are interested in the psychology of persuasion and how that works its way out in the real world. Lakoff is a linguist, I believe his cognitive linguist is his particular specialty over at UC Berkeley, which is my alma mater, so I think that’s cool. The ideas that he talks about are actually quite simple. They’re also quite deep in the sense of being very much underlying so much of what we do, so much of what we think about, and since all of us have situations where it would be useful to persuade other people, I thought that these ideas would be interesting and fun to kind of explore and maybe even play around with.

What a Frame is, and How it Shapes the Information We Take in

The first idea is the idea of a frame and this is what I would call a fairly common sense idea. This is something that every one of us sees every day and we tend to think when we see it, Why is the other side so weird? This is not just about politics, this is about, really any aspect of human life. You see it with nutrition, with parenting, exercise, art, entertainment, work. It doesn’t matter what it is, you see this at work, this idea of frames.

I’ll give you his description, “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world.” For example, if your frame is low-carb, that eating carbohydrates makes you fat and unhealthy, then sugar is always going to be the devil, full stop. No matter if there was a massive new study that came out tomorrow that said that eating a small amount of sugar every day was critical to health, you wouldn’t believe it, because it wouldn’t work within your frame. If right now, you’re saying well that kind of study wouldn’t come out tomorrow because it’s not possible, and in any event, I’m sure it would be fake science. I’m sure it would be funded by the sugar industry. That’s a sign that that’s your frame. Right? Your frame is that sugar is destructive.

Now we don’t get to opt out of these. These are sometimes called cognitive biases or confirmation bias. It’s what we believe to be true and so then the more we hear of that, the more we accept. But it goes deeper than cognitive bias or confirmation bias. It’s not just what you believe about climate change, it’s why you believe what you believe about climate change. When Lakoff is talking about frames, for the purposes of our conversation today and for the purposes of his book, we’re talking about very deep and broad landscapes for cognition.

Why Facts Aren t, by Themselves, Persuasive

A couple of things that are really interesting about how these frames work. Possibly the most interesting and the one that we are all seeing a lot of right now, is that if you take in a fact and it doesn’t fit your frame, that fact will just bounce off. That is confirmation bias. If you get a mountain of evidence that says that we live on a comparatively tiny blue-green rock that orbits the sun, but your frame is that the earth is flat, then that mountain of science is just going to turn into a conspiracy theory. There is no evidence that’s ever going to convince you that the world is round because your frame needs it to be flat.

Just to be totally clear, because we have seen political spokespeople talking about alternative facts with a straight face, I want to make it clear that I do not believe that this belongs to one side or the other side of the political spectrum. I have seen lots and lots of confirmation bias and every single point on that spectrum and others beside. It’s not a left thing, it’s not a right thing. It’s just how we operate.

If we get a fact and it doesn’t fit the frame, it’s gonna be incredibly difficult for us to incorporate that fact into how we see the world. There’s simply too much stuff in the world for us to go through every single fact, every single thing we learn, and then weigh it for its truthfulness. I would also pick up, speaking of good books, Daniel Kahneman’s, Thinking, Fast and Slow. It’s really long. I got through a good two thirds of it. I felt pretty proud. He’s another UC Berkeley alum so, go Bears. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics. It’s a very interesting read about quick mental processing and slow mental processing.

Frames are one of the things that enable that quick processing, where you can just take in a piece of information and essentially immediately decide, Is this relevant, is it credible, am I going to add it to my store of information or not? Human brains use frames and since I’m just going to guess that you are issued a human brain, that’s kind of what you have to work with and what I have to work with. We might as well get some clarity about how they tend to process information. Both for ourselves, but also when we’re talking to other people.

Why You Must at All Costs Avoid Using the Language of Your Competitors

The second thing Lakoff talks about in terms of frames that I found was super interesting was the observation that negating the frame reinforces the frame. Here is an example that is fairly easy to understand. When Richard Nixon tried to defend himself by saying, “I am not a crook.” In fact, he repeated it, “I am not a crook. I have never been a crook. I don’t even know what a crook looks like.” We had Nixon and we had crook. We had Nixon and we had crook and everybody walked away from that thinking, yeah, that guy’s just completely a crook.

For a much more recent example, we can see that many people who have very controversial voices will tweet something on Twitter and it gets retweeted like hundreds of thousands of times by people who say, Look at this. This is terrible, it isn’t true. It’s bad. It’s wrong. All of that retweeting, all of that restating the frame, even though you’re stating it in a negative context actually helps that frame solidify in people’s mindsets.

For this reason, Lakoff has a recommendation and I think it is sound, I think it makes sense, which is, Do not use your competitor’s language. Don’t spin off clever versions of their catchphrases, or their taglines, or their slogans. Don’t use their language to talk about what it is that you’ve got to offer. Use your own language that’s rooted in your own frame. Otherwise you’ll actually reinforce their message even if you’ve just piled up a magnificent mountain of evidence against their point of view.

The Two Big Frames that Inform Culture and Politics in the U.S. (and are Active in Other Places as Well)

Continuing with Lakoff; he identifies two big frames in United States culture. I don’t, for a moment, think these are the only two frames at work, but I think they’re important. I also think that they definitely play out to a significant degree in Europe. One of the frames that we see play out in quite a few different walks of life, different spectra is the strict father frame.

Here are some of the tenets of the strict father frame. Human nature is fundamentally evil. There is a concept here of original sin. People are basically born bad, and because people are born bad, kids need a lot of discipline so that they can learn to be good. That kids are not naturally good, they need to be taught how to be good people. The strict father model, as the name implies, is very hierarchical. You might know the name of that television series from the 1950s, Father Knows Best. That’s kind of the tagline for this model.

The head of the household, who is the father, makes the rules and then everybody else needs to get in line and obey those rules because he’s the one who knows best. He’s the one who takes care of everybody. Discipline is a really key concept in this frame. Discipline is created by punishing wrongdoing and part of wrongdoing is questioning authority. Okay, so that’s a frame that’s important in our culture, the strict father frame.

Another frame that’s important in our culture is what’s called the nurturing parent frame. In this frame, human nature is fundamentally good. Kids are fundamentally good people, and if you don’t wreck them, then they’ll grow up to be good people. That’s what this frame believes. The family structure is much less hierarchical. One of the cornerstone values is empathy. The family’s job is less to discipline and punish and more to just create a space where children can learn and grow by making mistakes without making major problems. That kind of idea is in the nurturing parent frame.

What to Do With an Audience that Has Both Frames Installed (a Common Scenario)

For me, one of the more important things to notice about these two frames is that there are people that are nearly all one frame and there are people who are nearly all the other frame, but many people have both frames What Lakoff calls activated at the same time. They have some strict father beliefs and have some nurturing parent beliefs. Both of those frames are active and which one is gonna get used to make a decision is going to depend on the context. That’s where most people are.

Just as an aside that I found actually bonafide amusing, I taught nurturing parent, like I used those words, for quite a few years as a particularly solid, particularly reliable archetype to use when creating content marketing. Thinking of the nurturing parent as the archetype for an authoritative figure, but in a different way with a very different flavor from that strict father figure. I kind of chuckled when I saw that in Lakoff’s book, because again, clearly it’s probably not a massive surprise to you that would be the frame that is much more activated in my worldview.

Another thing to notice about these is that … Again, many people do have both frames activated and often one will be activated in one context. So, like, one will be active at work, and a different one will be active at home, or one is active in the political sphere, but maybe not in a hobby, or in health. People will tend to activate these frames differently depending on where they are, the context they’re in, and what’s going on around them. People who have both frames installed can have one or the other triggered, depending on your messaging.

That’s where it starts to become quite important about how we communicate. We’ve already talked about facts. If they don’t fit the frame, will just bounce off, just like meteors bouncing off the atmosphere. Messages, apart from just dry recitations of fact, are going to activate a frame of some kind. They will probably activate one of these two frames most of the time, for most of the things that we do.

I think it’s really critical, if you are in the business of persuading people, that you know what your frame is, which most of us tend to recognize it fairly immediately, and then really study the language, and more important, study the ideas of your frame, because these are going to inform everything you say and everything you do. They’re going to inform the kinds of stories that you tell. The kinds of language that you use. The images you use on your website. Your pop culture references. Everything is going to come out of that frame.

You may have noticed, if you’ve been reading Copyblogger, we talk a lot about this. This is the Unity principle from Robert Cialdini. This is belief. These are our values. Where I think the frame model comes in handy is just giving the whole thing, like a framework, to sit in. That it’s not just that I have the value of integrity, or have the value of empathy, but that those values sit in a frame. They relate and connect with other values.

One other thing that Lakoff stresses … He gets asked by political parties, Could you please come up with a tagline that’s going to be the next great political tagline? Could you please give us two words put together that are going to change everybody’s mind about an important concept? It doesn’t work that way. It’s not about a catchphrase. It’s not about a tagline. It’s the idea and it’s the framework of values that that tagline activates. You can’t just zoom in and go right to that skimming off the top and come up with a couple of cheap words that convey what you mean. It’s really about the whole message resonating properly within the frame that is the correct frame for your organization or your personal communication.

Some Parting Advice

I’ll leave you just with the advice that is his advice very much, which is that the time to start is now. Because repetition strengthens the activation of the frame. Literally every word of your content, every syllable, every pixel should be consciously chosen to fit within a frame. You have to know your frame. Now, I’m not saying that you necessarily, wholesale, take the frame from Lakoff’s book, or from this description.

These frames have flavors. These frames have exceptions. They’re not tied to a single group. They’re not tied to a single religious group. They’re not tied to a single part of the country, but each of these frames has flavors. You need to understand the specifics and the nuances, the deep beliefs, the family beliefs, those dinner table beliefs that your frame implies. Then work with that as your ground level and construct it from there.

I would be very interested in hearing, if you would drop a comment. Swing on over to Copyblogger.FM and leave a comment. Let me know, what’s your frame for your organization? The communication that you’re doing right now, whether it’s your own blog, a podcast, work you’re doing for your company, which frame is it? Is it a strict father frame? Is it a nurturing parent frame? Or do you think it’s a blended frame or maybe a flavor of one of those frames? I would be very, very interested to know.

The book is by George Lakoff, L-A-K-O-F-F, it’s called Don’t Think of an Elephant. Again, you don’t have to be a political junkie to just find this take on communication and communication strategy really fascinating. He has a million interesting little linguistic insights. If you’re not turned off by politics, I definitely recommend picking it up. It’s a fascinating, fast and fascinating read. Thank you so much and I’ll catch you next week.


Source: CopyBlogger

SPOS #555 – The Social Organism With Oliver Luckett

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Welcome to episode #555 of Six Pixels Of Separation – The Mirum Podcast. 

Here it is: Six Pixels Of Separation – The Mirum Podcast – Episode #555 – Host: Mitch Joel. When it comes to celebrity and athletes winning at social media, many point to Oliver Luckett. Oliver Luckett is a technology entrepreneur and currently CEO of ReviloPark, a global culture accelerator. He has served as Head of Innovation at the Walt Disney Company and co-founder of video sharing platform Revver. As CEO of theAudience, Luckett worked with clients such as Obama for America, Coachella, Pixar, and American Express. He has helped managed the digital personae of hundreds of celebrities and brands, including Star Wars, The Chainsmokers, Steve Aoki, and Toy Story 3. He recently co-authored the book, The Social Organism – A Radical Understanding Of Social Media To Transform Your Business And Life, with Michael J. Casey. Now, Oliver has left Hollywood behind as we chat from his new home in Reykjavik, Iceland. Enjoy the conversation…

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels Of Separation – The Mirum Podcast – Episode #555 – Host: Mitch Joel.

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Source: Six Pixels of Separation

Is WordPress the Right Solution for Building Your Online Business?

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Is WordPress the Right Solution for Building Your Online Business?

When it comes to creating a profitable online business, there are many options to consider. But is WordPress the right way to go?

As some of you know, we are pretty big fans of WordPress. But is it the best way to start?

And if you are committed to using WordPress, can you build a profitable business around it?

It may come as a surprise to you that there are thousands upon thousands of digital entrepreneurs that have created a thriving business not only using WordPress but selling themes and plugins that support the product.

And in this episode, we cover the full spectrum with our very special guest, Andrew Norcross from Reaktiv Studios – a VIP WordPress studio specializing in WordPress custom development.

In this 39-minute episode, Sean Jackson, Jessica Frick, and Andrew Norcross cover the spectrum of the WordPress ecosystem, including …

  • Should you use WordPress if you are just starting out?
  • How a person with no programming skills to start with created a hugely popular, and profitable, WordPress plugin
  • Why building a WordPress product is the easy part, and what the real challenges are in profiting from WordPress
  • And of course, our question for the week – Does SEO still matter?
  • To sign up for free to the Digital Commerce Academy, send a text message to 313131, with the keyword DIGITS (if you are in the continental USA). If you are outside the USA, email digits@rainmaker.fm. As a special bonus, we will subscribe you to our newsletter when you text or email us

Listen to The Digital Entrepreneur below …

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The Show Notes

The Transcript

Is WordPress the Right Solution for Building Your Online Business?

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

You’re listening to The Digital Entrepreneur, the show for folks who want to discover smarter ways to create and sell profitable digital goods and services. This podcast is a production of Digital Commerce Institute, the place to be for digital entrepreneurs. For more information, go to Rainmaker.FM/DigitalCommerce.

Sean Jackson: Welcome to The Digital Entrepreneur. I’m Sean Jackson.

Jessica Frick: And I’m Jessica Frick. Sean, last episode we were talking about whether you need to use WordPress if you’re just starting out or whether you can get away with using something like Squarespace, Wix, or Medium. What do you think?

Should You Use WordPress If You Are Just Starting Out?

Sean Jackson: Ah, well, it’s interesting that you ask that question. I’m going to give you my honest opinion. I think that if you start small, you will be small, but if you start big, you’re going to be big. Let me explain that.

Jessica Frick: I was going to say, I hope you do.

Sean Jackson: What I mean by that is this. I think that if you’re going to take the time to learn how to be a digital entrepreneur — if you’re going to take the time to really go out there and start putting out content, start selling digital goods online — then starting with something super easy means that when you get bigger, you’re going to have to learn something new. And you have to almost repeat the process over and over and over again.

So in my opinion, you should go ahead and start with WordPress, by default, and take the time to learn how to use that platform. Or if you’re really into digital goods, you go to something like Rainmaker Platform.

In other words, you go to the platform that is going to sustain you when you find that success that learning will come from. If you start out really small, if you go and, “Oh, I’m going to put something on Medium. Oh, I like Medium. Oh, look somebody liked it,” then you’ll learn how to use Medium really well. But as your business takes off, then you have to learn something new and something new.

So why not just take the learning curve upfront? Go to something like WordPress first or Rainmaker, and just learn it inside and out so that you can stay there for the long term. That’s my opinion. What’s yours?

Jessica Frick: Well, I disagree with you. Shocking. But not everybody needs the power of Rainmaker, and not everybody needs the flexibility of WordPress, I guess, for lack of a better term. Something like Squarespace may not be as flexible.

But as far as pricing and support is concerned, if you’re just starting out and you don’t know how to do any of this — you just want a website. You want to get your content up. You want to be done with it for a super low price, and you don’t really care about all of the bells and whistles that are offered through WordPress — I think something like Squarespace is totally fine, or Wix, or Wubu, or I don’t know. They’re all these dorky names, aren’t they?

Sean Jackson: Yeah, but you really made the point, though, if you don’t care, and I think that goes to the heart of it. If you care to do something, then I say go into it full force. Learn everything you can about it because it’s going to take time for you to master the subject. If you ve finally figured out content — let’s say you do a Squarespace thing or you throw something on Medium — and you start to figure that out and you start to see what’s working — then you want to say to somebody, Now, radically transform all that and hope that you can take it with you, by the way.

That you don’t have to redo it all from scratch through a massive copying and pasting to go over to the next platform, and the next platform. When people ask me, “Should I use Rainmaker, or should I use WordPress?” It comes down to this: “What is the end goal that you have in mind?” Because whatever that end goal is, might as well be on that platform from day one so that over time you become a master of it.

And while I like reading on Medium, are you really going to build a digital business on Medium? Are you really going to build it on Squarespace? No.

Jessica Frick: But Medium’s not for business per se. Medium is for content distribution. I think for that purpose it’s totally fine.

Sean Jackson: Yeah, but they have Medium for Publishers now. Granted, you got to remember, Medium right now is facing some unique challenges, to say the least.

Jessica Frick: Yeah, I don’t think I’d want to be on that team right now. The ax flying around there withstanding, there are some benefits. With other opportunities that are not WordPress, I think for some people it’s just what you want to do. That said, obviously, my paychecks come from a WordPress-based company. I firmly believe in the benefits, but I don’t know that it’s necessary for everybody. I’m a Honda girl, but I don’t necessarily think that anybody who doesn’t drive a Honda is wrong.

Sean Jackson: Right. It really comes down to your learning philosophy. I think it also comes down to your risk profile. And that’s where the decision really has to be individualized. If you want to start out with the least amount of risk possible — just to see if what you’re doing is resonating, just to put your toe into the stream — then I would definitely say Medium for Publishers is probably not a bad way to go.

Buy a domain. That’ll probably be the most expensive thing you buy. Buy a domain, and put it on something light like a Squarespace, like that medium, and just test it knowing that your risk profile is, If it fails, I bail. If it fails, I bail. Done. But if your risk profile is a little higher — if you are truly committed to the cause, if you’re really going to jump off the cliff — then might as well go to the endgame. That, I think, comes down to a very individual decision.

I tend to think, though — and this is why I would push back to you — if you’re just dipping your toe in the water, the moment that water feels at all uncomfortable, you’re out. You forget about it. You’re done. But if you’ve committed time to build in a WordPress site or committed time to putting in Rainmaker, you’re not going to vacate it just because you ran into a little bump in the road, if the water didn’t suit your temperature needs.

So I do think at the end it comes down to the individual and what their appetite is, but for me — if you’re committed, if you really want to be what you internalize that you can be — then might as well start using the platforms that you’ll be using in the future.

I’ll leave you with the last word.

Jessica Frick: I’ll agree that you do get what you pay for also. If you have a regular business, you’re going to pay physical rent. People will look at hosting and say, “Oh my gosh, $12 is obviously better than $30,” but you do get what you pay for. A $12 hosting plan is going to do different stuff than a $50 hosting plan, or more.

So I will agree with that, and I think if you are serious about business, you should probably have a serious business option. I will also say that I can see benefits for some brands that choose to have a presence on Tumblr, for example.

Sean Jackson: Good point.

Jessica Frick: There is a certain level of discovery that comes with that and Medium. Back in the day, you remember Blogger, that you could find people that way. It really depends, like you said, on the learning curve and really what you want to do. Is it a real business? Is it just content? And how much do you care about future planning?

Sean Jackson: What do you think, folks? What do you think about what we just said? Is it better to start out small — dip your toe in the water, take a little less risk — or should you go ahead and bite the bullet and go for the big-boy stuff? Let us know what you think by sending an email to Digits@Rainmaker.FM or sign up for our text messaging at 313131 with the keyword ‘DIGITS.’ Either way, we’d love to hear what you have to say, and we’ll be right back after the short break.

Voiceover: The Digital Entrepreneur is brought to you by the all-new StudioPress Sites. A turnkey solution that combines the ease of an all-in-one website builder with the flexible power of WordPress. It’s perfect for bloggers, podcasters, and affiliate marketers — as well as those selling physical goods, digital downloads, and membership programs. If you’re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why over 200,000 website owners trust StudioPress. Go to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress right now.

How a Person with No Programming Skills to Start With Created a Hugely Popular, and Profitable, WordPress Plugin

Sean Jackson: Welcome back from the break, everyone. We are joined by a very special guest today, aren’t we, Jess? Would you please introduce him?

Jessica Frick: Well, he’s a personal friend and someone who has helped me personally and professionally with WordPress. We have Andrew Norcross. Andrew is a WordPress developer based in Tampa, Florida. He is also founder and president of Reaktiv Studios, which is one of 13 WordPress VIP consultancies that you could get to work with you on WordPress. He also created the very popular Design Palette Pro, which is a paid WordPress plugin that helps you make WordPress sites beautiful.

Sean Jackson: Hey, Andrew Norcross, thank you for being on the show.

Andrew Norcross: Thanks for having me.

Sean Jackson: Well, I want to get into this because I started my journey, if you will, with the Copyblogger, Rainmaker ecosystem because I had an idea for a plugin. That plugin idea became Scribe, and it was funny because I had really not used WordPress up until that point. But then when I started getting into it, seeing its deficiency, I had this idea, and I managed to cobble together something. I’ve actually built a plugin with, obviously, developers.

You, however, have been building plugins forever. Let’s give our audience a little bit of your history first in the WordPress plugin ecosystem, what you’ve done, and more importantly, why you have done it.

Andrew Norcross: Sure. I’ve overall been doing this for coming up on 10 years now, and like many people, I sort of fell into it. I worked in finance for close to 10 years before I did this. I started doing this just because I was bored, and I was unhappy with my job at the time. What I did initially was simply, actually, funny enough, I kept a column in TweetDeck searching the phrase ‘WordPress help.’ That was how I found my first clients, but that was where I got going with it. Interestingly enough, I had never used WordPress before I developed on top of it.

Sean Jackson: I know how that is.

Andrew Norcross: I don’t write much, and it was simply one of those things where actually I learned it because a friend of mine is an author and needed his site to be moved. I’m like, “I’m sure I can figure that out.” I’d never even seen PHP in my life at that point, and I just assumed I would be able to figure it out. I did, but it took a while. And I made a whole lot of mistakes along the way. Through a chain of events that I didn’t anticipate, nor could they be duplicated, I ended up doing this full time.

I started making small plugins that solved, again, one or two problems because I was finding that I was having to repeat myself all the time. So I would just make the plugin. I would actually get it into the repository, and then I could just install it on client sites as I was working. It’s kind of snowballed from there. I built one or two that got bigger. At this point, I’ve got somewhere — between the repository, GitHub, and a handful of other places — probably 50 or 60 plugins maybe.

Sean Jackson: Wow. Well, let’s talk about that for a second, though, because here’s the thing. You, obviously, being self-taught, you went through the discipline that was required to really learn through it by refactoring, by looking at code, by applying what you were seeing, and putting it to work. It was definitely an arduous journey to be certain, but then over time, you started to get into it more.

Obviously, Design Palette Pro, if you were to have a claim to fame, anyone in the WordPress ecosystem, Design Palette Pro would probably be a brand they recognize. But I want to talk a little bit more about the economics of it. You’ve gone through a lot in the development side, but you also had to figure out, “Okay, I built this thing. What do I do now?” because some of it is just client work. It was pretty easy. “Hey, I need it for a client. I’ll build it. I’ll put it out there. If anyone else uses it, great, but my client is paying me.”

I want to talk more about how you look at the business side of the WordPress plugin ecosystem.

Andrew Norcross: Sure. With Design Palette, I was working for a marketing company for about a year or so, and I built it for them to use internally. It was a much, much stripped-down version of what it is now. It was on the older version of Genesis — I think like the 1.7 or the 1.8 era — and again, I put it up there and kind of let it do its thing. I updated it once or twice and just let it go from there.

What we kept seeing actually on the agency side, on the client’s side, was there was a gap of people. There was people that were fine taking a theme the way it looks, installing it, putting up whatever they wanted, and going about their day.

Then there were people that clearly needed a designer and a developer to build exactly what they needed because they needed something very particular and very specific. But there were a lot of people in the middle that needed a little bit of design. They were comfortable doing it themselves. Whether or not they were qualified, that’s not my business. But they needed a coat of paint. They wanted to personalize it and make it their own, but they didn’t need to move things around. They didn’t need overhaul code.

So for folks that have a job. They have a life. They need a website for whatever they wanted to do. They didn’t have the patience. They didn’t have the capability. They didn’t know where to even start to try to learn when seemingly all they wanted was, “I just want colors and fonts. I want it to look like my own.” Then they couldn’t afford a designer/developer because, again, what they needed really wasn’t in that caliber. This kind of came out of that.

Why Building a WordPress Product Is the Easy Part, and What the Real Challenges Are in Profiting From WordPress

Sean Jackson: Let’s go through this because you spent a lot of time on it, but then you said, at some point, “It’s ready.” So you decided to put it up for sale by yourself — what did you do thereafter? We said this earlier in the run-up to this show, that sometimes building the product is not the hard part. It does take a lot of time, and you do need to think through it. But there’s a whole other aspect to it.

So you built Design Palette Pro after doing numerous plugins. Really learning through seeing where you saw the fit for it. Building on the Genesis Framework, which is part of StudioPress. So then, at that point, you’re like, “Okay, I’ve got it. It’s ready.” What did you decide next? Where did you come up with the pricing? How did you come up with the distribution? What was that point that you said, “Okay, I’ve got it built. What do I do now?”

Andrew Norcross: Sure. The first thing was I knew that it was going to be large enough that it warranted its own site. I already had the name on that first version of it that I built like two years prior, so I used that. I went and got the domain. They were all available. I did the standard get a couple of misspellings and just make sure everything’s set up.

Built the site, and sold it using EDD, Easy Digital Downloads, because not only did I know that it worked because I was using it for something else, I knew that it solved the problem that I wanted to solve, which was selling digital products, creating license keys, and doing all that stuff. I didn’t need to worry about shipping anything. All that extra stuff that comes with some other e-commerce. Also, I knew the developer. I knew Pippen. So I knew that if something came up, I could ask, and I could get an answer.

That’s always been a big thing for me. The stuff that I use that I don’t build, I want to be able to know that I could ping somebody and get it solved. Initially, I had it up on my site, and most developers — and I will put myself in this category — are horrible at marketing. I built it. I released it. I tweeted about it. I did all the things that I thought I was supposed to do.

What I didn’t actually really figure out was any sales channels other than just it existing. I reached out to people that I knew. I reached out to some folks I knew both in the Genesis space and just in the overall WordPress space. Again, gave out some free copies.

I put up a live demo, which I think helped a lot in the beginning because then people could just go click around and see what it did, and made myself available to people who wanted to learn about it. We did some sponsorships with WordCamps. I spread it out. Then we had actually had the discussion with you all — with StudioPress — about some partnerships stuff. We went through all that, and that was another like six to nine months by the time all that was set up.

Then, by that point, I had worked out some of the initial bugs. I worked out some of the edge cases that, again, I never thought about until somebody used it, and it went from there. Then it took off because, obviously, there’s sales channels available that I myself would never have.

Sean Jackson: Sure. Let’s go through that because, again, when you said you’d launched it out there, and I think everybody kind of does the same thing, “I’ve built it. Now, world, come en mass and buy it from me.” You get it out there, and sales, I assume, were fairly slow in the beginning, right?

Andrew Norcross: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah.

Sean Jackson: So you had to work a little harder. You had to put a demo up together, so people could play with it. You try to get more word out there, so people would sit there and stop scratching their head and say, “What the heck is this?” so that you have some context to what you were selling. Then, it was really through a partnership, and were we kind of your first big partner for Design Palette Pro, or did you have others? Or did you have an affiliate program? That was something else I wanted to cover.

Andrew Norcross: Yeah. You all are the only partner really. We do have an affiliate program. We can obviously jump into that in a little bit, but I’m not one to just partner for the sake of partnering. I would never want to partner with someone that adds liability to what I’m doing without there being any sort of there’s obviously risk/reward.

But I felt comfortable with you all knowing that you’re not going anywhere. You’re not trying to bleed every dollar out of somebody. There’s other companies and stuff you’ve seen, I’m sure, both in WordPress and everywhere, where they’re trying to make as fast money as possible because they know that in a year or 18 months, it’s going to be gone, or they’re going to move on.

I knew I wasn’t going anywhere, so I knew that the fact that it could be more of a long-term thing. That’s why we had all those conversations. Furthermore, you all are Genesis.

Sean Jackson: Right. That helps.

Andrew Norcross: Yeah. My product works on Genesis. It was a natural fit for what I was doing because it solved the problem that you had, and you solved the problem that I had, which was marketing channels and reaching a wider audience.

Sean Jackson: I think that kind of gets to it because, much like you, when I had built the technology behind Scribe, I went to Brian Clark. I knew Copyblogger. I was a fan of Copyblogger. I literally met him at a conference, pulled him aside, showed him what I was working on, said, “This would be a perfect fit for your audience.”

I think that story that you shared, that I’ve experienced, that I think is very common — much more common — is probably something that a lot of people who are building products now don’t always think through. The product is maybe the easiest point because you can at least solve it. If there’s a bug, you can fix it. It is those extended partnerships and finding them that may be the inflection point to a product gaining wide success.

But I want to continue on with this. Let me give you my argument against the WordPress plugin ecosystem. Because I’ve got your story down, but WordPress is under GPL, which technically means if I download something, I can tweak the heck out of it and use it for how I see fit. How can anyone make a living in a WordPress plugin GPL system? Seriously, how can anybody make money from doing that?

How to Use License Keys to Make Your Plugin Profitable (If You’re Prepared to Follow Through)

Andrew Norcross: Well, the easy answer is we’re both basically on the clock right now having this conversation, so it works. But the whole idea, like Design Palette has license keys, and they get a year of support and updates.

Sean Jackson: Stop there right for a second. A license key — so what you put into your product was, “I’m going to put some way of identifying that this product belongs to this person. So if this person asks for support, then I know they’ve bought it, and they are entitled to support.” Is that essentially correct?

Andrew Norcross: Correct.

Sean Jackson: Okay, so if they don’t renew or if they don’t have a key, then that means you’re basically not supporting them. Is that the demarcation of value, if you will, from the free open-source to the paid version?

Andrew Norcross: Correct. Yeah, and mind you, it’s still open-source. It’s still GPL. If someone wanted to take it, fork it, whatever, I legally could not stop them. Obviously, I could make them take out any sort of trademarks, branding, things like that. The amount of effort that it would take for me to try to police that is not worth what little payoff there may be. My time is better spent doing other things.

Sean Jackson: I want to go on that because this is a very, very important point. We have seen this repeatedly, which is why I asked you the question. I think when people come out into this space, when they are really thinking about the WordPress ecosystem, what they fundamentally do not understand is that, in the paid market space, it is as much about what the product does as the support that you to provide to it — because there will be times you run into a problem.

You want to know that somebody is there willing to fix those problems, to address those problems, to continue to iterate on the product so that it continues to get better. I often find that in WordPress, people are like, “Why isn’t it free? Why isn’t it free?”

Well, do you want to have these benefits? Because if you don’t, then you’re fine. But if you want to have more features and improvements, and addressing the issues that you’re facing, there is a cost that is associated to it, which factors into the pricing that you put for the product.

Andrew Norcross: Exactly. It’s one of those things where, yeah, there’s always going to be some people where they complain about the price. Or they don’t like that it’s not free. Or they want support and updates lifetime. I understand where they’re coming from — I don’t agree with them — but my feeling on the whole thing has always been I either release it for free or I charge for it.

Personally, we don’t do any freemium products. I know that works for other folks. Some folks have the extension model where the core or whatever it is, is free, but then all the other stuff is paid. Those models work for more ecosystem-type plugins, especially like, again, an e-commerce and things like that.

For me, and it kind of goes back to that thing about the partnership, my face is on the website, and I’m sure that there are some people who buy it because they know who I am, even if I don’t know who they are. There’s a level of trust there.

I have zero problem paying for plugins, themes, or obviously, hosting. I have no problem paying for things if they provide value, if they fulfill a need, and I can look at it and go, “Okay, I’m going to spend X amount on this, but I’m going to save 3X time because I’m not having to build it myself. And I’m not having to do all those things” — so there’s always that trade-off.

I think what some people who get into the product space think that, well, again, once they build it, then they’re done — and that’s when it starts. Building it is pregame, and then the day that it’s live, that’s when it starts because now, yeah, I have to support it. I have to handle tickets. I have people on my team that help me with those. I have to continuously do all the marketing, the updates, adding features, and streamlining things along with keeping up-to-date with WordPress core to make sure that if they change anything that my stuff goes with it, or in your case Genesis as well.

There’s obviously that ongoing work, which I knew that signing up for it. I had built and released enough plugins, and enough of them had gotten popular, to where I had a decent idea as to what the expectation of support would be.

Sean Jackson: Right.

From Filling the Void to Gaining Traction: How to Get Your Plugin Built and Selling

Sean Jackson: Let’s go through this because now you’ve got me excited about building plugins again. I do think there are a lot of digital entrepreneurs out there who are much like I was, who saw a void, if you will, in the ecosystem. This is the other thing. There’s a lot of plugins out there, but not all of which are supported. They make a lot of claims that they cannot fulfill, or if they do try to fulfill them, they don’t do it very well.

I do think that, if anything, in the WordPress plugin ecosystem, there is an active market. Trust me, I’m the actual guy who writes the check that we send to you every month, so I know there’s an active, viable market for WordPress plugins. I want to step back into the role of a digital entrepreneur. I see a void in the market for X. I think the WordPress ecosystem is a place that I want to be a part of because I have, for whatever reason, some experience in it.

If building the product is truly easy, what are the key things that a person like me needs to focus on when thinking about hiring an outside developer? Because I will tell you right now, my first blush, Andrew, is just to go into Upwork and put a thing out there and say, “Hey, I got this idea. I’ll spend $1,000 on it. Will somebody build it for me?”

So really walk through the idea of someone like me coming to someone like you, and really trying to think, “I want this to be a real, viable commercial product.” What are some of the things I should thinking about from the get go? Because, trust me, you’re right. It’s a pregame show for this. The whole game is once it’s built, but let’s get the damn thing built first. Talk to me about that.

Andrew Norcross: Yeah. The first thing is actually trying to figure out if what you think is a void actually exists. I say that because the first paid plugin I ever built did ratings. It would give you little stars, and on the front-end, people could rate whatever they wanted. I sold, I think, maybe 20 copies of it.

At the time, there was like one plugin that was out there that did that, and it was garbage. It as bloated. It was really old. A lot of the architecture was supporting WordPress before custom post types. It was a nightmare to work with. I saw that, and I had to set up something similar on some client’s stuff for them. I go, “Okay, well, if this is the best one that’s out there, I know that I can build something better because I have, and there must be a market for this” — and there was not, at all.

Then I built another small plugin that I literally built in a weekend because Carrie Dils asked how a particular function worked in WordPress. I’m like, “Oh, well let me show you,” and I wrote just some real quick code sitting in my recliner with my laptop. I sent her the thing, and she’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, what about this?” Then it turned into a plugin over the weekend without any intent on doing so. I did zero research, obviously, because I was just answering her question. That one sold a pretty decent amount.

So I saw both sides of it. I saw that, “Okay, I had no idea what the market was, and it worked.” I was convinced of a market that didn’t exist. Because there’s so many plugins out there and most of them are free, not only is it having to solve the problem, but you have to solve it in a way that someone is willing to spend money as opposed to getting 80 percent of their problem solved for free.

Obviously, there’s some amazing free plugins out there, but there’s many out there that do most of what you want to do. It works but it’s not exactly the way that you want, or it’s a little more heavy-handed than you wish it was, things like that — but it’s free. So people will still be like, “Well, I’m willing to deal with this inconvenience because I don’t have to spend any money on it,” as opposed to spending money and then, “Am I getting what I want? Am I getting what I expect to do?”

As you alluded to, there’s some out there that make claims that nobody could ever back up. I notice that more on the theme side than on the plugin side, but it’s obviously moved over as well. I think a lot of plugin developers get into the mindset of trying to solve every problem that their product possibly can, and that has never worked for me.

One of my most popular plugins, I have a huge refactor that I’m afraid to release because I don’t want to break 50,000 sites. So the idea that you can just walk into the space and be like, “Hey, here’s a new thing,” it’s not going to get a lot of traction.

The other thing is, when people who are not part of the WordPress community come in immediately with a commercial product, having never done anything with anybody, there’s a lot of skepticism. And it’s warranted because there’s people that, “Oh, I can make a quick buck off the WordPress space. I’m going to do that.” Those often don’t work either because there’s no community. Nobody knows who they are. It’s like, “Yeah, are you going to be here in six months? Are you going to be here in a year when I have a problem with this or when WordPress updates something?”

It’s not like you make a product, put it in a store, then the store sells it, you get your money, and that’s that. Software’s a living thing, so it’s making that deeper commitment to maintain the product, work with it, work through all the bugs, edge cases, and people that were like, “This Jeep would be really awesome if it would float and then go 100 miles an hour.”

Sean Jackson: It’s funny because what you said there, I think there’s a lot of wisdom, and I’m going to kind of sum it up because we’re getting to the end of our time together. But you said something right off the bat that I think if you are looking in the WordPress space, you have to have some appreciation for it to begin with because there are known players in there.

You mentioned Carrie Dils. She’s a known player in there. You’re a known player in there. There’s a lot of people who are known personalities with proven personalities, proven developers that already are well-respected. I think that’s the first step that any digital entrepreneur really needs to think about once they start looking at it and saying, “You know, I do think there’s something here,” and talking to someone like you. Talking to someone who is known in the space so that they can bounce these ideas off.

I would definitely think, in your particular case, if I came to you with some crazy solution — let’s say I want to do a new SEO plugin. I saw a Yoast’s plugin, but I want to do something a lot better. You’ve been in this space long enough, you’re like, “Well, what do you really want to do?” I think part of that initial side from the digital entrepreneur is talking to someone who knows this space, who develops in this space, who is known as a professional developer in this space, and really using that as the first filter point.

I don’t think you’re going to waste your time with somebody crazy unless they’re going to write you a giant check, but even then you may say no because they’re an idiot, right?

The other aspect that you said, too, is that by working with known commodities in the space, then they will probably be around. Their reputation is going to extend far beyond the work that they just do for you. That’s also important.

I will say that when we built Scribe, I had someone who actually came from a computer science degree. He was not as well-known in the WordPress space, but he was making a living in the WordPress space. In fact, he was going after ‘WordPress developer’ was his primary keywords that he was targeting. I knew that he was going to have to be around because that’s where his career path was leaning towards.

I definitely think that right there is probably something that our audience, as digital entrepreneurs, if they’re thinking about this, is to spend time not only researching the void, but researching the people who are filling the voids as they are there and talking to people that are known and reputable.

Andrew Norcross: To be able to market anything, free or paid, there’s got to be some trust and some credibility there, and that has to be earned. Whether it’s earned on your own by ‘getting in the trenches’ and doing the work there, or if it’s co-opting with somebody else who already has that standing and is willing to put their name on you. Without that, I think it’s just dead in the water. You might sell 20, you might sell 50, but it’s going to be discouraging.

Sean Jackson: Yeah, and to end up this interview, I think you’ve said it best — building the product is really just the pregame. It’s the practice. It’s getting ready for the real game. Once that thing is built, there are a whole host of other issues that make coming up with the product seem so easy in retrospect.

Hey, Andrew Norcross, thank you so much for being on our show today and for your insight and wisdom to share. I can’t thank you enough.

Andrew Norcross: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Sean Jackson: Hey, everyone, this is Sean Jackson, the host of The Digital Entrepreneur. I want to ask you a simple question. What is your business framework for selling digital goods online? Now, if the question perplexes you, don’t worry — you are not alone. Most people don’t realize that the most successful digital entrepreneurs have a framework or a general process for creating and selling their digital goods in the online space.

One of the best free resources is Digital Commerce Academy. Digital Commerce Academy combines online learning with case studies and webinars created by people who make a living selling digital goods online. The best part is that this material is free when you register. Are you interested in joining? Well, I’ll make it easy for you. If you’re listening to this show on your phone and are in the continental United States, I want you to send a text message to 313131 with the keyword ‘DIGITS.’ When you send that text message, we will send you a link to the registration form right to your phone.

Are you outside the United States? Don’t worry. Just send us an email to Digits@Rainmaker.FM. Either way, we’ll send you a link to the registration form so that you can sign up for free for Digital Commerce Academy, and as a special bonus, we will also subscribe you to our newsletter when you text or email us so that you can stay informed with the latest insights from the show.

And don’t worry — we respect your privacy. We will not share your email or phone number, and you can easily unsubscribe at any time. If you want to start building or improving your framework for selling digital goods online, then please send a text to 313131 with the keyword ‘DIGITS,’ or send us an email at Digits@Rainmaker.FM. You won’t be disappointed.

Question for the Week: Does SEO Still Matter?

Sean Jackson: We’re back from the break, everyone. Jessica, what is the question for next week we are going to talk about?

Jessica Frick: Okay, this one’s going to have people lining up with pitchforks. Sean, does SEO still matter?

Sean Jackson: Okay. You do know my history, right?

Jessica Frick: I know, but I want to know what you think.

Sean Jackson: You do know that I actually am a patent holder on some SEO-esque type of things, right? I’m going to answer that with an affirmative response. What would you say?

Jessica Frick: I would say sometimes, not always.

Sean Jackson: Oh wow. Can you be any more non-committal?

Jessica Frick: I would say it doesn’t always matter.

Sean Jackson: Well, we will have a very interesting back and forth on that particular response on the next episode of The Digital Entrepreneur. Have a great week, everyone.

Jessica Frick: Have a great week.

Content Marketing: 10 easy tactics for beginners with James Norquay (NEWBIE)

by

Listen to PODCAST by The Recipe for SEO Success

So today we’re talking all about content marketing, how to use blogs, videos, graphics and other media to increase sales, improve customer loyalty, drive awareness and get a better return on your investment.

it’s a pretty big subject and can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, but don’t worry we’ve got ten simple tactics you can start using today.

So if you want to learn and how to stimulate more interest in your products and services and build rapport and authority with your customers, this is the show for you.

  • What content marketing is
  • What benefits content marketing has for your business
  • Kate’s five favourite content marketing hacks
  • James’ favourite content marketing hacks
  • Content marketing tips and advice

 

Website: http://www.therecipeforseosuccess.com

 

https://therecipeforseosuccess.libsyn.com/content-marketing-10-easy-tactics-for-beginners

Thriving Freelancers and Clients from Hell

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Thriving Freelancers and Clients from Hell

What’s a freelancer’s biggest nightmare? Clients from hell! Guest Bryce Bladon shares his experience on how to cope — and how to avoid problems from the outset.

If you haven’t checked out Clients from Hell yet, you’re in for a treat. This entertaining blog pulls together anonymous stories about those clients who give us aches and pains.

In this 28-minute episode, Bryce and I talk about:

  • Why Bryce sees freelancing as an amazing opportunity — for the right people
  • What’s great (and not) about freelance life
  • Bryce’s problem with “aspirational freelancing,” and what he did to combat it
  • Two recommendations for staying out of problems with clients
  • Bryce’s thoughts on the wisest way to get started with freelancing

Listen to Copyblogger FM below …

Download MP3 Subscribe by RSS Subscribe in iTunes

The Show Notes

  • If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — swing by StudioPress.com for all the details
  • For our freelancing friends — I wrote this for you to share with potential clients and help them see why they need you! 5 Situations that Demand You Hire a Professional Copywriter
  • ClientsFromHell.net — be sure to check out the resources and podcast as well
  • Bryce’s free email course answering the question, Is freelancing for you?
  • I’m always happy to see your questions or thoughts on Twitter @soniasimone — or right here in the comments!

The Transcript

Thriving Freelancers and Clients from Hell

Voiceover: Rainmaker FM.

Sonia Simone: Copyblogger FM is brought to you by the all-new StudioPress sites. A turnkey solution that combines the ease of an all-in-one website builder with the flexible power of WordPress. It s perfect for bloggers, podcasters, and affiliate marketers, as well as those of you who are selling physical products, digital downloads, or membership programs. If you re ready to take your WordPress site to the next level, see for yourself why more than 200,000 website owners trust StudioPress. You can check it out by going to Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress. That s Rainmaker.FM/StudioPress.

Well hey there, welcome back everybody. It is so good to see you again here at Copyblogger FM, the content marketing podcast. Copyblogger FM is about enduring content marketing trends, interesting disasters, and enduring best practices, along with the occasional rant. My name is Sonia Simone, I’m the Chief Content Officer for Rainmaker Digital and I like to hang out with the folks who do all the hard work over at the Copyblogger blog. You can always get additional links, resources, the complete archive for the show by visiting Copyblogger.FM.

I am super tickled and delighted today and I would highly recommend, if you would like to raise your blood pressure with something other than politics, just kind of make a refreshing change of pace, I have to recommend you check out ClientsFromHell.net. The stories are … They’re engaging, they’re enraging, they’re hilarious, they’re painful, and I’m so glad that we managed to convince their Editor in Chief, Bryce Bladon, to come today and talk with us about Clients from Hell. So Bryce, thank you, thank you for being willing to show up, and we would love to hear more about your site.

Bryce Bladon: Sonia, thank you so much for having me. The site is, it’s all in the name there. It’s anonymously contributed stories of horror and humor from people working on the front lines of the freelancing industry.

Sonia Simone: It’s amazing. I haven’t been a freelancer for a while and it’s amazing how viscerally these stories hit you. It’s just highly recommended. How did you get started with the idea? It’s such a great idea. What sparked the idea and then how did you kind of get it rolling?

Bryce Bladon: You know what? To be perfectly honest, and this comes up every time I talk about the site, I was not actually the original creator. I helped the original creator basically grow the site and I’m still with it. It is built on that foundation of commiseration and these very universal experiences freelancers of all shapes, sizes, and colors have to endure in their … Well, hopefully not their day-to-day life, but some of us aren’t quite so fortunate.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s even stories about contractors, like building contractors, it’s really fascinating how the same issues come up again and again for people who do very different things in their freelance life.

Bryce Bladon: Mmm-hmm. (affirmative)

Why There s Still Room for More Freelancers, Especially Copywriters

Sonia Simone: Well, let’s … I want to talk a little bit about freelancing, because although your site does focus on interesting disasters, you’re a big booster for freelancing. You see it as a model that’s on the rise. I certainly see, I mean, in my own experience, when I was sitting around thinking about … Thinking, in my job that was not going particularly well for me, “Wouldn’t it be great to go out on my own and go freelance?” which I eventually did. I believe that you said that freelancing really is the future, especially for copywriters. I was just curious about why you think that is and do you think there’s enough work to support increasing numbers of people who are coming into that market?

Bryce Bladon: Well, oh, so many questions there.

Sonia Simone: So many questions.

Bryce Bladon: Yes, to almost all of them, I’m sure. I’m sure that will come to bite me in the butt later, but I think all of those things are things that I believe. I absolutely do think freelancing is the future. The typical nine to five, 40 hour work week … I mean, that was just basically built out of one guy s car factory and it just became ubiquitous practice, because it made the most sense at the time. Year after year, there are just more tools empowering people to work for themselves in some way, shape, or form. Now, for most of us, and the reason we care about it is because it empowers a lot of us to write for who we want, when we want, and all that fun stuff.

When you talk about the amount of work for writers, I mean, that is always a difficult thing to quantify and I’m not even sure how you’d go about measuring that, but it s at least been my anecdotal experience and the experience of people I’ve spoken to, that the kind of work that blends creativity and technical knowhow, like copywriting for example, is the kind of work there’s really no substitute for at this stage of where we are as a society, as a world, all that fun stuff. There’s a lot of talk about automation stealing jobs, and tools to make certain things you can do easier, but there’s really no substitute for a good, original copywriter in any shape or form.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: It was a few years ago where I came across the idea of pitching my services to agencies that were trying to hire a full-time writer, but pitching to them as a freelancer. There’s a whole anecdote I can tell here, but basically, I was just finding agencies. Companies, they are so, so hungry for writers of … Quality writers, at the very least.

As a result of that, it’s not a job … Typically, their needs don’t qualify for a full-time employee, but for a contract employee, for a freelancer, and in some cases even a consultant, it fits such a perfect need and I can’t overstate how good its been for my career to explore that space and to … I feel like kind of a jerk saying it right now, but to kind of take that work away from full-time people and instead of one full-time employee, who’s sitting on his hands for half the 40 hour work week, a place would hire me. I wouldn’t be quite as available, of course, as a freelancer, but I could be a very useful resource and it’s … Again, anecdotal experience, so take it with a grain of salt, but every client I’ve had like this over the years, they’ve wanted to hire me on as a full-time employee.

Sonia Simone: Right.

Bryce Bladon: They’ve wanted to keep me on. Sorry, that comes across as very braggy, but what I’m trying to underline is, if somebody wants to work with me that much, it’s probably not me. It’s probably the actual demand for the work I do, let’s be clear on that point.

Sonia Simone: Oh, Canadians.

Bryce Bladon: You’re not wrong.

Having a Good Relationship with a Client is a Two-Way Street

Sonia Simone: It’s a good quality, it’s a good quality. I will say, I have been on both sides of that desk, the freelance desk, and I think sometimes good freelancers don’t realize that it’s not only necessarily the clients who are from hell. There’s a lot of terrible freelancers, unfortunately. There’s a lot of copywriters who are not good with deadlines and there’s quite a few writers who are not too good with client briefs. They don’t deliver what’s required.

Now that’s always a dance, right? Because, sometimes what’s required is insane, so then we have a conversation. Yeah, I think for people who are professional, they approach their craft and their profession in a serious way, they have good skills and good work habits, good work ethic. Yeah, I do think the company that wants you really, really wants you and it’s usually multiple organizations. I want to … Yeah, go ahead.

Bryce Bladon: I was just going to say, I’m sorry, we’re both being too polite now, and that s the worst. But you’re so right that there are freelancers who are from hell. I run a site called Clients from Hell, and a lot of people just assume that I must hate clients. Absolutely not, and to be perfectly honest, in my own personal decade of working as a freelancer, I’ve really only had one or two, or maybe as many as three clients I would qualify as from hell. It’s one of those things that I don’t want to quite elevate it to a rite of passage, because that legitimizes people acting like jerks, but it is one of those things that once you’ve been burned you kind of know what to watch out for.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: If you do read the stories on my website, you will absolutely know what to watch out for. Perhaps, to a comical, like Batman villain-esque degree in some cases, but you get the idea. The other aspect of this and the part that I really try to bring up whenever I talk about the site. Yes, the site is a lot of fun and we poke fun at silly clients, ignorant clients, and sometimes just anger inducing clients, but a lot of the time it is very much a two-way street.

A client from hell emerges from a set of circumstances that the freelancer absolutely has a hand in shaping. There are certain characteristics a client can have, where they’re probably just going to be bad to work with and you know how to watch out for those. Things like ambiguous expectations for what are they expecting to come out of the work you’re doing for them, they’re unappreciative, they’re disrespectful, they devalue good work, things like that.

I could go into way more detail about each of those, but there are things a freelancer can do that contribute to those ambiguous expectations. There are things freelancers do where they don’t do the work they promised to do, or they burn a client and as a result, that client is less trusting of the next freelancer they work with. It creates this really sort of hostile relationship and … It’s my opinion that freelancing, what makes it such a great thing, is you get to do the work you want to do the way you want to do it.

The catch-22 here being, you have to do the work and you have to do it relatively well. If you’re creating an environment, if you or your client are creating an environment that isn’t built on respect and trust and mutual benefits, it’s probably not going to be a terribly positive experience for either of you, and no one, either of you, is particularly at fault. It is a two-way street a lot of the time.

Sonia Simone: Actually, let’s talk with you a little bit more about that. I think that fear of a horrible client does kind of stop some people. It’s always like the people, the good people who get stopped, right? The bad people just go right forward. The people who do have a good work ethic, they’re very talented, and they could actually have a really nice freelance career, but they’re worried about getting burned on money and they’re worried about these terrible clients that we hear so much about. Do you have … I mean, I know what I’ve seen come up again and again. Do you have some, maybe one thing that you see come up again and again where a good freelancer gets taken advantage of because they’re not wise about a particular area of that life?

Bryce Bladon: It’s hard to limit myself to just one-

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Two Recommendations for Staying Out of Problems with Clients

Bryce Bladon: To be perfectly honest. I’m going to give you two.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, go for it.

Bryce Bladon: Kind of related. One mistake I see a lot of first time freelancers make … I run a course, by the way, called Start Freelancing, we have a few hundred students, so I’ve conducted a bunch of surveys, I’ve reached out to people that ask after this stuff and one of the things I asked was, “Why haven’t you gotten into freelancing up to this point?” A lot of people are scared of those variables, those ambiguities of working with clients that can bite them in the butt. The fear of … I compare freelancing to dating a lot of the time. At least working with clients as a freelancer. That fear of a bad breakup.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: That fear of entering into a relationship with someone and then finding out they’re someone else. It all boils down to this fear of the unknown, this idea that something could go wrong, so why even start? Again, I’ve been freelancing for ten years and over that time I’ve had, at best, a handful of bad clients. And that is pushing the definition of what a bad client is. I’ve had projects I didn’t love how they turned out, I’ve had clients I’ve chosen not to work with in the end, but I’ve only had one or two bad clients, really, truly awful clients. And it was less them being an awful client and more of them being an awful person.

Which brings me to the second mistake, and the mistake I see a lot of those very nice people making. That is, just a failure to stick up for yourself and to ask the potentially hard questions. This can be as innocuous as not bringing up your rates earlier on in the conversation, and it can be as extreme as a client continually expanding the scope of work and putting unfair expectations on you that were wildly outside of your agreement, and you not wanting to shake the boat, you just wanting to be a pleasant person to work with, you just being too polite and not pushing back and not saying, “Hey, great idea. Unfortunately, it’s not what we agreed upon. It would take me X amount of hours more.”

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: Just having that conversation, and that conversation does not need to be rude. That conversation, bringing it up, does not make you a bad person. In most cases, it makes you a professional, and that’s what professionals do. They talk about this stuff, they bring it up. Yes, you know what? I still get awkward talking about money with my clients. I still feel weird pushing back sometimes, but as long as you’re polite, as long as you’re professional, only the worst kind of people are going to have a negative reaction to that, and if you run into those people, it is just a great litmus test for, “Hey, I don’t want to work with you anymore.”

Sonia Simone: Right, right. Because it’s not going to get better.

Bryce Bladon: No, no it isn’t.

Sonia Simone: It’s not like they’re going to blow up when you set reasonable expectations and then later they’re going to be great. Yeah, and that would be, I’d say, the thing I see over and over, is not setting proper expectations. Everything from not working with an agreement, so you’re not spelling out what’s actually going to be delivered, to just that very point you mentioned where you have to have that conversation and say, “We talked about project A and what you’re asking for now is project Q, so would you like me to work up a proposal for the additional costs, or do you want to put that on … What do you want to do with that?” Yeah, it’s a …

Bryce Bladon: The worst thing I see is when the freelancer lets it go from A, to B, to C, to E, and then all the way down to Q.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: During that time span, they’re just kind of hoping to themselves that the client realizes their mistake. At the same time, they’re becoming bitter.

Sonia Simone: Right.

Bryce Bladon: They’re becoming annoyed, but they’re not bringing up these issues, and as a result, it’s allowed to fester and the client’s expectations are going in a completely different direction. Whereas, your expectations are going in the complete opposite direction of them. The more you allow that dissonance, the worse that eventual conversation is going to be, so sooner always better than later.

Bryce s Problem with Aspirational Freelancing, and What He Did to Combat it

Sonia Simone: Sure. I know you mentioned, when we were kind of setting this up, a phrase, aspirational freelancing, and I thought that was a compelling phrase, and I would love you to explain what it is, and then what can you tell us about it?

Bryce Bladon: Quick admission I need to get out of the way, real quick. That is, that I often work as a communications consultant, which means I often work in the realm of marketing. Which brings me to my next point, which brings me eventually to the point we’re going to try to make here. One of the first things you learn in marketing is what you’re trying to sell to a person is not the product or the thing, it’s the person this product or thing is going to make them into. It’s that brighter tomorrow, it’s that grass is always greener on the other side concept. When I talk about aspirational freelancing, I mean if you ever see those little articles that appear on a monthly basis in Forbes, or Fast Company with that very just delicious sounding headline of like, “Work for yourself. Work 15 hours a week from home freelancing. Do it. This guy does it. It s never been easier.”

It has never been easier to get into freelancing and that is a life you could potentially have, but it really undercuts the journey that the guy had to take to get there. Again, been at it for a decade, I love my career, I love where I’m at with it. It’s still not perfect, it’s still not where I want it to be, and even if I had been a lot more targeted in everything, even if I’d done everything absolutely right, even if I had a much clearer idea of where I wanted to be, I still would have had to put in the time, I still would have had to put in the work. What I’m getting at here is when … An idea that irks me is the idea that freelancing is an easy ticket to happiness. Again, I love freelancing. I think a lot of people would enjoy freelancing if they do it. I also think freelancing isn’t necessarily for everyone.

It requires you to be a structured person, to be self-motivated, to do the work even if there isn’t immediate work in front of you. To handle deadlines, to organize yourself, to even do a little bit of business and marketing, and those unsexy things that a lot of us writers just turn up our nose at, and understandably so. Don’t expect me to get off my high horse as a marketer a lot of the time. I miss my bourgeoisie days. What I’m getting at here is the idea of aspirational freelancing. Freelancing is something you can absolutely aspire to and it’s something that can lead to a better life for you. It can absolutely do that, but just don’t confuse the destination, oh God, I can’t believe I’m dipping into this cliché, with the journey.

Sonia Simone: Right.

Bryce Bladon: Freelancing, your career growth, it never really stops, and you’re not going to get to that dream life within your first week, within your first month, maybe not even within your first year. And even if you do, there are going to be aspects of your job you don’t like. It’s still a job sometimes, even if you’re doing the work you love. There is still the business upkeep. There are all these little unsexy things. You still need to put in a little bit of time, of effort, of that oh-so-unsexy sweat. Yeah, that’s where I get a little irked with aspirational freelancing.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, absolutely. It’s funny how these same tropes come up. The four hour work week, which was a great tested Google AdWords ad, but it’s not really how it works. There’s not a four hour work … If you have a four hour work day maybe, that might work. My favorite part of the four hour work week is when Tim Ferriss kind of outlines what his typical day looks like and realize that his work week is quite a lot longer than four hours long.

Bryce Bladon: Very true, very true.

A Wealth of Resources Available at Clients from Hell

Sonia Simone: Well, cool. You do have a lot of resources on the site. I think a lot of people would’ve launched a site called Clients from Hell and just kind of monetized it with advertising and called it good. But you have a lot of resources for freelancers, or people who want to know more about freelancing. Feel free, if you want to … If there’s some resources you want to let people know about, I would love to share those with people and let them know what you might have available.

Bryce Bladon: Oh, for sure. Yeah, no, the site itself, if you go to ClientsFromHell.net, it is being entertaining, giving you content that you find fun, or charming, or humorous, or even anger inducing if you want to punish yourself like that. We got all that good stuff and that’s what 98% of our audience is there for. I 100% appreciate that I’m never going to try and force this other stuff down your throat.

That said, a lot of the time people end up on our site because they’re having a terrible client experience, they’re having a frustrating time getting started as a freelancer, so as a result I built up all these resources. If you just go to ClientsFromHell.net, you’ll see a handy link at the top that says resources. Things like, I built a free course, pretty much based off of my frustration with those aspirational freelancing articles, and courses, and books, and products.

It’s called, Is Freelancing for You? and it’s free and it just goes over the realities of freelancing, and the things you need to actually do it. It makes you take a hard look at yourself and ask the real questions before you drop a bunch of money and make some serious life choices that may not be for you, sometimes. They may absolutely be for you, but one way or another you’re going to know.

Earlier, when I talked about that mistake, one of the two mistakes freelancers make with clients. This one is trying to address those ambiguities that scare us so much when starting something new. Speaking of starting something new, I also run a couple courses, Start Freelancing, which is a complete guide to, I’m sure you can guess it, and Find Freelance Work. Just trying to provide resources that hit on a lot of the pains I had when I was getting started as a freelancer. Is Freelancing for You? Start Freelancing. Find Freelance Work.

I also wrote a book called Hell to Pay, which is all about freelancing finances, stuff like how much you should be saving for taxes, to how you should be charging your clients, to how you can calculate your rate. Yeah, I also run a podcast, Clients from Hell. I have great conversations like I’m having with Sonia here. Our host isn’t nearly as charming as she is, but besides that …

Sonia Simone: Cool. Yeah, no, that’s really cool. The Hell to Pay thing, I think is genius because a lot of people do, especially the copywriters and the design professionals, we get into it because maybe we weren’t math majors, but there’s still math. So I love the title.

Bryce Bladon: Mmm-hmm. (affirmative)

Bryce s Thoughts on the Wisest Way to Get Started with Freelancing

Sonia Simone: I love the idea of it, so I highly recommend. All right. Well, you know I’m going to ask this question, because everybody probably does, right? If there was one piece of advice … So you’ve got somebody listening to this, they’re thinking about taking the plunge, they’re thinking maybe they’ll do a little freelance work on the side, or maybe they’ve got some money saved, but they’re not quite sure. I’d say, let’s go ahead and say, go ahead and pick up the free course, because I think that’s just smart. If there’s like one little piece of advice that you would give somebody thinking about going ahead and jumping in, what would it be? It can be something from the course, it’s okay.

Bryce Bladon: Oh, it almost will be. Almost all of my advice is in the course in some way, shape, or form.

Sonia Simone: There you go.

Bryce Bladon: That’s why it’s in the course in the first place.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: It’s good stuff. I guess my main piece of advice always circles back to, take your time getting into freelancing. If you have a full-time job, if you have a part-time job, hold onto that, keep trying to save up some money, three to six months of all your living expenses is what I strongly suggest. So many people are in debt right now, and it’s super unfortunate and it will just add to your stress and anxiety if you’re in debt when you make a big life change like starting to freelance.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: Getting started does not need to be a giant leap forward. It can be as easy as just trying to find those first few clients while you’re working your regular job. Maybe try and negotiate a few extra hours off each week so you can spend that time on work, whatever. What I recommend is you try to start in a very sustainable and very easygoing way. This way you don’t have a lot of the stress, the anxiety, the confusion that comes with starting something brand new completely from scratch.

You get to ease yourself in, you get to pick and choose your clients and the projects you’re going to work on, you get to take the time to focus on those first few projects and learn what it is to work with clients. If you want to take it a step further, and this is I think the best advice I give out, that would be to take the time to try and research who your ideal client is and why they’d want to work with you.

By this I mean, just send freelancers you admire, creatives you admire, professionals you admire, companies or clients that would be potential clients for you. Do a little research on them. Maybe even reach out with a short email and when I say short, I mean like 150 words short. Do not create work for this person, but personalize the email, thank them for their work, and maybe ask one or two questions related to freelancing that would be relevant to you. Like, “What do you look for in a freelancer?” Or, if you’re talking to a freelancer, like, “How did you find your first few clients? What advice would you give?” Little things like that. It gives you the best knowledge you can get, it tells you who you might want to work with, what they actually care about, how to speak to the things they care about.

It also sets you up with a budding network, which is built on sincerity, and mutual benefit, and caring about the other person’s work, as opposed to … Something that scared me as a freelancer when I was first getting started was that marketing aspect, was that networking aspect. I hate the idea of the slimy used car salesman. It’s funny that I consult on marketing now, because I’m just, I’m such a big believer in, if I genuinely think I can provide value to you, I have no problem speaking to somebody like that now. Likewise, if I reach out to you, it’s because I like something you’re doing and if I want to work with you, it’s because I genuinely think you’re doing good work.

If you build up your network with that same principle in mind, the principle of, Don’t reach out to a person because they might give you money, reach out to a person because it would be good for both of you. You’ll just get so many more positive responses. You’ll have potential referrals coming down the pipeline in the long term. I’m basically giving you a lot of advice for planting seeds. It’s super easy to plant these seeds, it doesn’t need to be something you do all at once. You don’t need a forest to grow over night, you just need to be taking the time to plant a couple seeds every now and then.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Bryce Bladon: Wow, that was a little corny, wasn’t it?

Sonia Simone: Oh, I love corny. That’s my favorite thing, because people who are corny are not cynical and I like that. All right. Well, this has been so much fun. Thank you so much. The site is a delight and I really think your advice is … Both in my own experience, and then lots and lots of conversations with freelancers on my side of the fence, I think it’s all spot on. I just want to thank you. Thank you so much. The site is ClientsFromHell.net. Check it out, it’s fun, it’s entertaining, and there’s good stuff there.

Bryce Bladon: Absolutely. You know what Sonia? You’re a delight.

Sonia Simone: Oh.

Bryce Bladon: If you guys like conversations like this, check out the Clients from Hell podcast. That’s probably more up your guys’ alley, but otherwise check out the site and check out all the other stuff. Sonia though, she’s great. Isn’t she great?

Sonia Simone: All right everybody, thanks and take care.

Bryce Bladon: Thank you so much.


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