[This is the second of 365 short videos about A Million High Fives, which begins September 1st, 2009, and ends September 1st, 2010. Help us reach our crowdfunding goal by purchasing a card placement for the Business Card Build-Off.]
No bullshit seminar or affiliate program here. You can easily follow this pattern and become successful. Here’s the proof and how to do it.
Video Notes
1. I use comedy examples, but it can work for anyone. Just swap out Digg.com with Tip’d for example.
2. Here are the steps:
The New Way (see: @Shitmydadsays, Stuff White People Like)
- Write for your friends and no one else. Don’t try to please other people.
-Share your material with your friends. Do they like it? More importantly, do they like it enough to share it?
-Have your friends submit your best stuff to Digg.com’s comedy section (and other aggregator websites).
-Do it early in the day (around 6am EST works the best for Digg.)
-With some luck, aggregators like Gorilla Mask will pick up your item (they seem to pick up a few items each day from Digg’s comedy section). From there, bigger aggregators will pick up your item either because they saw it on GorillaMask or because people who visit the aggregators will submit it to them.
-Then, if you’ve made it this far, the odds are high a large national media outlet like Comedy Central or The Huffington Post’s Comedy 23/6 will pick up the item. They want the traffic, so there’s an incentive on their part to pick up funny content for their audience. Hello large traffic, audience, and book deal.
The Old Way (Tucker Max, Maddox)
1. The number of online friends you have is worthless unless each of them read, enjoy, and share your content. Back before social publishing exploded, the thing to do was write for your friends and email it to them (Tucker Max) or post it in IRC chat rooms (Maddox).
2. If your friends passed on your content, it’s likely they will pass it on to their friends. The trick is to have very good content and a large, quality network of friends.
3. You can still go this route today, and the number of quality connections you have (people who read and share your stuff) matters a great deal, so get out there and start networking as quickly and efficiently as possible.
4. Have a big enough network? Good content? Email away.
Director’s Commentary
1. This video is longer than two minutes and un-edited because I didn’t want to cut anything out that could be useful.
2. Some of the sites I reference are not safe for work viewing.
3. I can’t stress this enough: Don’t write for other people, write for yourself, practice, and network. You can have the best content in the world, but if you don’t have a network, you won’t go anywhere.
4. After I recorded the video I found the guy behind @ShitMyDadsays was writing for HolyTaco, which … as you guessed, is featured quite a bit on aggregators like GorillaMask and Digg.
5. Example aggregators: Digg.com, GorillaMax, Topless Robot (sort of), College Humor, Fark, Tip’d, I am bored
