The world has changed quite a bit since 2011/2012. We’re nearing a decade of blogging and thought it would be fun to highlight many of the things we’ve learned over the years. A lot of them are good and some are certainly bad. And. You should be quite entertained by this so it’s a good post for the weekend.
Don’t Underestimate Trolls: It is true, there are a lot of fake rich people out there. You can tell by their emotional reaction to $5-10K. However. There are a TON of ultra rich anonymous people on Twitter. Twitter has become one of the most fun places to spend time due to the number of intelligent people on the platform. If you’re smart you will be able to decipher which accounts are run by wealthy people and which ones are run by frauds. It really isn’t hard once you recognize a specific syntax, tone and oddly enough, sense of humor.
Based on the past decade or so our website is effectively split with a massive bar bell. People who are still trying to make it/just getting started and people who have already made it and follow for both entertainment and updates on the future. To give an example, we’ve received emails from people who have made $1-3M off of our trade ideas and other people who turned their lives around from making $40,000 a year to $200,000 a year. This is certainly not the same. The people who are making millions are ultra wealthy and unlikely need our help. They only follow for confirmation of a suspicion they had regarding some product/service/crypto or what have you. The second group is what we call “forever followers”. If you can help someone double their income, they are not going to care about buying your $10 product, $20 product or even $50 product. You have helped someone change their life and they are smart enough to realize that no one is going to execute the plan for them.
On that note, with the fun/love stories out of the way we’d like to emphasize that the internet trolls are POWERFUL people. We are not kidding. There are many trolls out there who are making tens of millions per year. All they do is troll online, say nothing or drop hints related to the next best thing. If you’re reading this you’re looking for the last item “the next best thing” so we suggest you look deeply into twitter troll accounts with followers in the low 5 figure range. Once someone gets to 100K+ they usually go public as the temptation of fame and “sweeter deals” becomes too big.
Why do they need to have a small/mid sized account? It means that many people have found them and realized they are rich. These people then create automatic updates for their posts. Generally speaking, it’s a lot tougher to add real value as an “anon” as the average person cannot think for themselves. They believe that every rich person should be public because it’s what they desperately want (attention and fame). Therefore, biggest item to remember is to research deeply into an “anon” that seems to be accurate quite a bit. This is usually a clear signal.
People are Generally Good: If you don’t engage in nonsensical arguments on twitter, people will leave you alone. This is a simple rule of thumb. If you spend your time arguing/responding to trolls online all you do is create enemies with no upside. You’re better off ignoring. If you look at our feed 98% of the time we don’t even respond to ridiculous trolls. The 2% of the time we do it’s simply to entertain the real followers. It usually ends after one interaction just for the “laughs” and we move on and ignore people for the next week or so.
Another thing we learned is that if you do help people (generally speaking) they will go out of their way to help you in the future. You’d think that random people on the internet wouldn’t care. Yet they do. It is part of human nature. If someone helps you make $20-50K a year in extra income, it is highly likely that you throw money their way. If you don’t, well you’re just a bad person. You are actually underperforming because the more you give out the more that comes your way over time (for more on that read Felix Dennis – how to get rich).
Another thing on this, people who are good generally take self responsibility. No one shoots 100% and you’ll notice any fan base doesn’t care if you make mistakes. If you have an error rate of 20% that’s insanely low and if you have an error rate of 60% you probably shouldn’t have a website/blog. We’re putting those numbers up there simply for reference. We quasi follow other accounts (not officially on twitter but we click on them frequently) and we’ve noticed that an error rate of around 35% ensures that you will build a following. Therefore, since people are generally good/honest if you have any niche skills you can build a following if you have a 65%+ accuracy rate in your craft.
You Will Ebb and Flow: We’ve considered shutting down this blog at least 20 times. We’ve also considered trying to scale it out at least 20 times as well. This is an emotional roller coaster you will go through and most people cannot stand the test of time. Over time, you’ll find a cadence that works well for you. Over here, it has been about 1x a week and a Q&A session. We’ll try to launch a product every 2 years or so unless there is something significant that needs to be said. Even then, we don’t charge much for it because if we start making real amounts of money we know we’ll go full on “scale” and become mainstream. This remains a hobby.
The other way you will ebb and flow is your social engagement. People who are “all in” on their websites have multiple things they are juggling. Instagram, email lists, twitter, facebook, back-end server work, meeting other bloggers, getting on new podcasts, trying to elevate their “status” in the circle they traffic in. If you’re a longer term reader you’ll notice we’re pretty consistent. Same 1x a week, same every couple of years product launch (to make sure we never lose money on the hobby) and same old twitter rampage followed by silence. If we feel like interacting more and trolling we ramp it up, if we don’t we’re usually busy and that tends to show in the post counts going down to as little as 1x a month in some cases.
To make sure you don’t ebb and flow too much, it is best to remind yourself that it’s simply for fun. We have no idea how big platform guys do it. They literally watch their social status swing on a day to day basis based on website views, likes, etc. This probably leads to a lot of mental health issues down the line (not to mention potential threats if you’re a public figure). Ebbing and flowing is natural and healthy. If you’re too deep in the hole, don’t write, don’t post and simply go silent for a bit. If you are really excited about something ramp it up and have fun while the energy is there. People can tell if you’re excited even through words.
You’ll Lose and Gain Readers Every Day: As you improve in the game of life your writing will naturally change. It just isn’t possible to talk about the same stuff for years and years unless the person running the website has stagnated. You can see the evolution here in real time. Don’t worry about it though, as long as you’re making lives better you will always have a place in the metaverse. No matter what the haters say.
Maybe you were originally a blogger for traveling and COVID hit. Somehow you learned how to do something else like play video games at a high level. Well that’s the beauty of life and the internet. If you’re actually good at it you can pivot your audience over time. Take this website as an example!
Back when we started Wall Street was real profession. Now it is effectively a dying disease/dinosaur that won’t exist beyond M&A. We don’t even recommend people enter Wall Street unless it is for M&A anymore. We’ve pivoted into crypto over the past 4-5 years and it has worked out marvelously. Adapt or Die. This applies to your website and your life. If we were still talking about investment banking at this point our audience would actually shrink! That is how fast the world is changing.
You Will Become a Better Communicator: Over time if you write even one post a week, you will improve. Sure it may not come in handy every single second but it helps. It’s similar to reading. There are many people who read constantly so they can compute/understand new topics quickly. Writing is the same, just in reverse. The more you write the easier it is to get your point across. It is also easier to see what people want/are interested in.
The downside? You’ll see that some people are honestly hopeless! Sorry, it is true. Some people can’t even understand a 60-80 word tweet. We’ve seen some insane comments in our mentions and they are beyond hopeless. In that situation we always recommend the same, learn a trade and live below your means. If tweets are easily misunderstood, competing in a global environment with brilliant people isn’t a good decision. Much better to learn a specific skill and punch away at it for years.
The second part of communication is seeing the big picture. We’ll use Twitter as an example. We’ve noticed that people who have a large twitter following are able to convey complex things in a small number of words. Threads are too long. The only time a thread is useful is when each tweet in the thread can be a stand alone tweet. Then you’ve really mastered the game.
If You Have an Idea Just Start Writing: Don’t bother with putting it off. Take our your phone and just start rolling with it from a stream of consciousness. Even if it is 5 in the morning or 11pm. It doesn’t matter. If you don’t do it, you’ll lose the idea within 24 hours and it won’t have the same feel to it. Everyone can tell.
This type of style will make your writing a lot more unique and consistent/authentic. No one comes up with a brand new idea every single week that is interesting so you’ll have your ups and downs like any normal person. The key is to avoid “dropping the ball”. There are many many posts we’ve forgotten about due to procrastination. Our new rule of thumb is to simply whip out the phone and write the first paragraph or two with the big headlines before it is too late. This allows your mind to hold onto the idea for the rest of the day and you can always publish it later in time.
Example of a New Hobby/Idea/Project: Based on our twitter activity you can gather we took an interest in the hashmasks project. We have even reached out to get in contact with them regarding a free marketing event for them (yes seriously). And. You’ll notice we haven’t recommended anything specific to buy at this point. Why? Credibility. Also. Anyone reading this knows we already own a mask.
What we see is a great NFT project that needs some marketing juice. They are currently doing a competition for some “tribes” to create the best group of masks. While this is cool, we think they are aiming far too low. Far, far, far too low. If you go back in time this is similar to magic the gathering cards. When they came out the big deal was sitting around in these tournaments with other extremely deep in the weeds people playing the game.
For something like this it is better to make a big splash. Again. No one shoots 100% but we try to find good risk reward trades. We’ve lived through many +500% calls and many -50% calls and you learn to identify the better risk reward frame works on a near term basis.
So you’re probably wondering, why are we interested in the hashmarks project? We think the “risk reward” is really just marketing. All the project really needs is a single “event” of global awareness that is unique and brash for the project to become quite interesting. If the awareness remains with the niche NFT community only, the upside is minimal. If everyone in the world knows what a hashmask is due to an *event*, the price of a single one would move up 100x (conversely if it never catches on, it wont be worth much).
As an example, we named our clown Goldman Sachs and now there are several clowns named after banks (clearly there is potential with the NCT token)! Simple idea and resonates with the rich people in crypto but tough to get attention in a bottle. If a tree falls in the forrest and no one is there to hear it, it makes no noise at all.
That aside. There is a good chance that the people who work on the project will read this. So we’re here to say there is a ton of upside here. Just think bigger! If you’re not willing to think bigger, how will it ever become a bigger product?
Take your plan to make them valuable over 10 years and ask “how could i do this in one month?”. There are many rich people in the crypto industry, you only need one event.
Once global awareness is there, it’s tough to put the genie back in the bottle (a good thing). The product is a very high risk call option so there is no need to swing for singles, try to get the home run once and you’re set for good. Swinging for singles is best for established products.
As another example, if Elon Musk or Chamath changed their profile photo to a hashmask for a single day, that would be iconic and more than enough to spark awareness. A single big event is better when it comes to making something go viral.
Make No Assumptions! This is harder than it looks on surface. You really have no idea who your super fans are and who your regular fans are. You can try to guess and you’ll be wrong!
While the haters are obvious (just yelling and attempting to discredit – simply ignore) the tough part is finding the people who really appreciate your work/writing/insight. These people can be loud, they can also be dead silent. You just never know.
If you can live with this fact (that you’ll never now who your real supporters are), you’ll have a much better time living in the Metaverse. In fact, if you simply do your thing you’ll likely get more super fans. By trying to figure out who enjoys your work, you’ll end up pushing more readers away. So simply write whatever is on your mind and ignore the noise.
Don’t Stress Over the Long Run: We’ve had countless typos. Our grammar isn’t correct (sorry 5th grade teachers!). We don’t even bother fixing them at times. Why? Over the long term the only thing that matters is that you’re making life better for someone/anyone reading your information. At this point we really believe it. There is just no way for you to have an unsuccessful time building a website/social media presence while delivering real value. It could be as simple as a website dedicated to yoga (women love that stuff).
Over the long-run you’ll have a ton of ups and downs but if you’re actually living life you will always have something to talk about every single year. There is no doubt that this blog will not be the same in five years. If it is you will know that it is no longer real.
If we were still talking about investment banking you’d know that we were still stuck in… investment banking. So as you evolve so will your website. Some won’t like it, they will leave. Others will come in. It nets out to the same. The key? Don’t stress. Seriously. It doesn’t do any good and you’re not trying to become a millionaire off of words on a computer screen!
Hopefully this post was useful for you and if you have real information that will help people, you should start a website with your free time. The worst that could possibly happen is that you improve your writing skills. No downside and lots of upside.
