It’s Friday, which means this afternoon you’ll be doing your best to pretend to work while secretly wishing you were somewhere else.
I’m here for you.
Our tool of the week is WhatFont. I’m working on spiffing up this website and wanted to steal James‘s font type.
But trying to figure out what font type and size he uses was a major pain.
Then I found WhatFont. You just click a button, then click on the text, and it tells you the exact font family and a ton of other confusing-looking stuff.
Happy stealing.
On to your questions….
STARTUP PROCESS: If you were to launch an “Authority Site” in a niche other than video/internet marketing, what would be your process, and reasons why?
Hoping to gain insight into how you might change/keep strategies knowing what you know after a year of doing this site.
-Derrick
Let’s assume a few things.
- Your primary goal is to grow your email list to 10,000 people.
- Your secondary goal is to make $100,000 per year by selling products and services to that list.
To accomplish that, I followed these 10 steps:
Step 1: Pick an industry you are interested in.
Step 2: Find your unique teaching angle and style.
Step 3: Write 2 expanded guest posts per week.
Step 4: Write 1 epic article for your blog per week.
Step 5: Use Content Upgrades in every guest post and epic article.
Step 6: Repeat steps 3 thru 5 every week for 12 weeks.
Step 7: Find a product in the data.
Step 8: Start building the product in public.
Step 9: Launch the product.
Step 10: Rinse and repeat.
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READING: What are all the blogs you follow and what do you read regularly?
–Kimberly
I read a lot. And I do my best NOT to read too much in my industry. It becomes incestuous.
If all I read was Noah Kagan, Neil Patel, Brian Dean and LeadPage articles (people in my industry), I would start sounding exactly like them. Why? Because we have a tendency to take on the characteristics of the writers we read.
- Content type
- Voice
- Tone
- Frequency
Because of that, I try to do the majority of my reading OUTSIDE of my industry.
Here are a few blogs I regularly read:
1. AuburnSports.com (Specifically Jay G. Tate)
2. Monday Morning Quarterback (Peter King)
3. Nashville Severe Weather (Great animated GIF usage)
Books that I’ve read recently:
1. The Martian
3. Wool
4. Essentialism
I do read internet marketing-related blogs still. Here are some of my favorites:
1. Backlinko
2. Okdork
3. LeadPages
4. Nathan Barry
5. WP Curve
I’m always looking for content piece types and ideas I can steal from an outside industry and inject into my industry.
For example: This mailbag feature (which has been extremely popular) was ripped directly from Outkick The Coverage and MMQB.
No one else in my industry has done anything like it, but it’s commonplace in the sports world.
Unique Content + Proven Popularity = Success on Videofruit
Note: Another content type I love right now is weekly Q&A shows like Gary Vaynerchuk is doing.
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WHITEBOARD: I´m a big fan of your work and your ideas are helping us expand our database. So thanks for that!
Just a quick question, what whiteboard software do you use to create the images on Videofruit?
-Joe
Joe is referring to the image.
I’ve been testing several different types of imagery lately and the whiteboard style is one of my favorites.
I also used it in this guest post on Jon Acuff’s blog.
If you want to make one yourself, it’s a simple 3-step process:
Step 1: Draw your image on a white board.
Step 2: Take a picture of it.
Step 3: Send it to Swiftly.com and have them digitally reproduce it.
BAM! You’re done.
Question: What do you need personal help on? Traffic? List building? Sales?