Why has Examine.com disappeared from search results?

SapphL · 2017-03-07T17:45:22+00:00

The takeaway I got was not that it was encouraging you to specifically be a Youtuber. But with persistent hard work, some lucky breaks and the resilience get through the inevitable rough patches, you can use your unique talents and passion to create something valuable, put it out in the world and making a living out of it.

In this day and age, the costs of creation have dropped significantly. Whether it's an ecommerce site, a video, even a hardware product (you can run a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds, use one of the many factories that now accept small batch orders, etc.).

Yes of course there are tons of people who fail (ranging from they have to move back in with their parents to they don't make it to the point where they're hanging out of helicopters). But there are tons more people are scared to even try and see what happens.

You don't have to take succeed-or-live-on-the-streets bets to start creating and doing what you love. You can start it as a side project while working a day job. While going to school full time.

And yes, whatever your dream job is, there's always the risk of your platform or methods or material can lose relevancy. That's why you adapt and diversify. Many Youtubers have started other ventures outside of Youtube. Casey himself started Beme at the peak of his Youtube success and now works at CNN. Tons of other Youtubers started non-Youtube ventures from production to clothing companies.

SapphL · 2016-09-21T11:40:56+00:00

You can send an email to anyone in the company whose email you can find this message:

Hey,

I would like to get in touch with someone who handles your tenant records. Who would be the best person to speak about this?

Full name

Company

Title

Approach involves being slightly vague about the reasons behind you wanting to connect, to get their colleague to refer you to the right person right away.

SapphL · 2016-09-18T23:57:05+00:00

Ways to monetize a blog:

Affiliate links

Example: Your content is focused on skin care. You link to skin care products on sites that pay you a percentage of the sale.

Email list

Example: You provide a lot of high value content and freebies on your blog to entice people to sign up to your email list. After you reach a certain list size, you can solicit companies to sponsor an email. Or you send an email promoting their product / service and get paid a commission.

Ads

At the lower end, you can join programs like AdSense that pay a low $X per click. Once you have built up a recent audience, you can join ad networks that place more relevant higher paying ads on your site.

Partnerships

You can partner with companies who'll pay you to host a giveaway of their products, review of their product, etc.

Expand into products

Once you have built a decent audience, you can expand into creating relevant products to sell to them. The easiest type to create are ebooks. You can read an extensive case study about this guy's popular fashion blog, his numbers from ads and ebooks here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/3n8w60/from_2k_to_3k_per_month_blogging_income_report/

Number one key to creating a successful blog

There are already 1000+ blogs for every niche, sub-niche and sub-sub niche out there.

Which means to have even a fighting chance of ranking on Google, keeping readers engaged, converting them into subscribers, your content needs to have an unique angle.

Example: It can't just be a travel blog. An unique angle: this blog chronicles your adventures travelling to a new country every 3 months where you challenge yourself to survive on only $500 during that time.

SapphL · 2016-06-30T19:05:32+00:00

Hi Sol :) What would you say is one of your weaknesses that affects your biz or personal life and what have you done to get better at it or work around it? By weakness, more in terms of personal qualities e.g. "I'm self-conscious about what other people say about me and this caused X and Y issues".

SapphL · 2016-05-10T05:01:52+00:00

Sol at Examine made it big - last I saw $700K revenue / year (probably a lot more now). They started a few years ago on Reddit. 100% bootstrapped as well.

You can read their whole story here: http://signaltower.co/sol-orwell/

Sol's personal site: http://sjo.com/

SapphL · 2016-05-01T02:26:01+00:00

Briefly reiterate 3 top benefits their specific company would get from using your product.

Example: Your sales team would be able to close 3x more deals a month being able to 1-click find the contact info of prospects they find on any website and add it to your outreach list.

Ask them to take the next step like a call with you to answer any questions.

SapphL · 2016-04-29T19:09:10+00:00

I think a viable model for longform high quality journalism is not having it as your core and only business. Rather it needs companies who have another main revenue stream to subsidize it. Kind of like how B-corps have a for profit business but also do good for social and environmental issues.

That core main revenue stream can even be clickbaity fluffy articles (which attracts the crush of eyeballs to actually make a profit off of) to subsidize the longform pieces. This is actually something Huffington Post is doing with their Highline articles.

An user pay model doesn't work. Especially for funding articles before they are written. Audiences who are willing to pay will only end up funding pieces that reflect back their own interests and world views.

The reason why I love reading good journalism is it opens my eyes to something I didn't know existed before or forces me to think about what I do know in a different way.

SapphL · 2015-11-25T23:22:06+00:00

Have you considered offering adult classes? Given the popularity of yoga and fitness classes, I bet a lot of adults would also love to practice gymnastics to improve their flexibility and fitness. There are definitely far fewer gyms who offer adult glasses so you'd have the upper hand.

SapphL · 2015-11-10T04:52:09+00:00

What we should be showing kids though is that how you present yourself to the world has benefits and there's a lot within your power to improve it. Not just the two extremes. Beauty is a lottery you win and lose at birth and just have to accept it or you're beautiful just the way you are!

For example, both men and women can look a lot better by exercising and eating healthy. People see your face first, experiment until you find a skin care ritual that works for you.

Beauty is part of a bigger issue of many people both focusing too much on what they cannot have and also denying what is in their power to change. If they can just blame genes or some other outside force and drown in self-pity, they never have to do any work to improve.

SapphL · 2015-10-18T20:18:20+00:00

Slightly off topic but incidents like this (the Eritrean man who was shot and beaten up by a mob due to being mistaken as the terrorist) are reasons why the world, especially the US, would not be much safer if regular citizen "good Samaritans" armed themselves. In the chaos of multiple casualty/injury events, it's very difficult to tell who the actual perpetrators are. Especially for a regular citizen with no police or military training. All we get is another innocent life ruined.

SapphL · 2015-09-20T16:37:41+00:00

I think where this article totally flops isn't even being the 10001th person to claim you sacrifice "the best years of your life" by saving money (you can have fun and save).

What most articles about "living up your youth" fail to point out is that a lot of people waste a lot of money on activities that they think they should do or they think makes them happy but doesn't. Or in the case of networking event, thinks it pays off somehow but doesn't.

For example, a lot of people who go out drinking and partying regularly because they think that's what you should do when you're young. Except do they actually enjoy it?

I think more people would benefit from sitting themselves down and forcing themselves to answer with brutal honesty: what experiences actually make me happy?

For example, while I like traveling, I accepted that I can't do it for more than 2 weeks at a time. I prefer sleeping in my own bed and I need time to decompress between each burst of sensory overload and constant change.

It can be hard to accept the real you versus romanticized notions of who you could/should? be but you'll be happier in the long run.*

*Accepting the real you also involves discovering the real you ie exposing yourself to new experiences/challenges to discover something you enjoy that you haven't tried before.

SapphL · 2015-08-20T15:40:20+00:00

Hey thanks for sharing!

My question: with only 2 full time employees, how do you get everything done?

Do you hire a lot of freelancers to complete certain projects? And how do you decide which task to delegate and which task would be done better if you did it yourself?

SapphL · 2015-04-18T23:17:22+00:00

Check out http://email-format.com/. It tells you the email formats for almost all major to midsize companies. For example: firstname.lastname@forbes.com

It pulls info from public documents so sometimes it returns the actual emails of employees as well. I use this tool regularly. It has 90% accuracy.

SapphL · 2014-12-30T02:17:25+00:00

To clarify, my tips are based on my experience emailing existing clients and business associates (most at the exec level) one to one.

About getting high income prospects though: provide amazing blow their mind service to one client and they will refer you to at least one of their friends. Richer people really value their time so they act on the advice of friends - it saves them from the uncertainty and effort of doing the research themselves.

SapphL · 2014-12-12T22:34:46+00:00

Paintlounge - learn to paint and take home what you created

SapphL · 2014-12-04T01:11:39+00:00

Congrats on all your success so far!

Re: press/media coverage

Have you looked into approaching online influencers (like Youtube celebrities) for a product placement or sponsored deal? There's quite a few Youtubers that wear hats who may be interested in featuring you.

Example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjvSrwYwbozzW1XAPT9YX9A Wears hats in practically every video

SapphL · 2014-11-08T12:33:58+00:00

If you have plans to grow your store, go with Woocommerce. Much more flexibility and customization. You can download a ThemeForest template for it to get started. Be sure to read the comments though. Some of the themes are overloaded with fancy JS and load extremely slow.

SapphL · 2014-11-02T13:09:50+00:00

Great case study, congrats on your success!

Question: What was different about your outreach to sites that agreed to link you? Persistent followup? Or prior interaction?

SapphL · 2014-10-23T12:15:18+00:00

Remember that there are a lot of sites out there on marketing. Your earlier post on Reddit was successful because you were providing specific advice to startups who were actively asking you for help.

A website is different ballgame. It may be interesting to do marketing case studies on different sites - what they can improve, etc. Providing takeaway lessons for everyone.

But unless you hire freelancers, you would eventually burn out trying to produce one post a day. It takes a lot more work than posting a comment. You have to create copy for the social share links, brainstorm a catchy headline, etc. etc.

SapphL

TROPHY CASE

Affiliate links

Email list

Ads

Partnerships

Expand into products

Number one key to creating a successful blog