This might be slightly off topic but once I talked with this old gentleman sitting on a bench at my school for an hour or so. It was indeed a pleasant conversation. He talked about WWII, watching the power of the atomic bomb on some screen (I won't forget the frightened and astonished tone with which he told me this), how he came very close to recording "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," his time in playing in a band in many locales, and more. It was a very old-timey conversation. I liked it. And I think I made his day by focusing so much on him. On a side note, I felt a hint of awesomeness when he was boasting aloud of his time in the war while some kids were looking at us like, "Hell, that sounds like a cool story."

I know he didn't exactly have boobs, but I can relate to your relating haha. It works with men and women!

@crazyhorse: Yup... the only time I've ever been recorded in field was back in 2009, I was recorded by Mehow for his Infield Insider. I pulled a girl my very first set. And what did they say to me the next day?

"We can't use it. You didn't say anything. You just bought her a drink and listened to her for an hour, no one wants to watch that."

@Traindom: One thing I've learned the past few years is that talking to old people can be AWESOME. If you get them to open up, they almost always have the coolest friggin' stories and anecdotes.

I think it's Brian's leaving. He was nearly half the non-Mark activity on the forum.

Quote:Not sure what to do about this...

Sell adspace on your site for extra revenue?

I noticed that there are not many FRs or LRs on this forum. Not sure if its because of the distancing from the Pickup community you've done, but those tend to get people involved more. One advantage of local forums is that people can meet up and post about it. I think the more general the advice gets the less participation you might get.

Also on another note did Brian leave the forum or get kicked out? I remember he used to be on the DC lair forum when I lived in DC, and had a falling out there. Then some people there mentioned that he had a falling out with another forum or two. Too bad I always thought his posts were fairly entertaining.

He has not been banned. He's chosen to stop posting. I heard he had problems with Casanova Crew (the forum out in LA) and even was run out of PUAHate of all places. This seems to be a recurring problem for him.

But yes, say what you want about the guy, he did stir up activity.

Matt T Wrote:Sell adspace on your site for extra revenue?

Money's actually not the issue right now. In fact, money is great. The problems I have are actually the opposite problems of going broke: 1) I'm not making as much money as I should be, based on my traffic; and 2) now that I have money, a loyal base of customers and fans, a site with a lot of potential, what do I do with all of it? It's a very good, yet highly stressful place to be right now.

Getting back to what Tim said about having a foundation... the past four years I spent mostly building up a pick up business. I did that pretty decently, something hundreds of people have tried and failed to do. So I'm happy about that. But I've turned that into a foundation to create something much larger and much different. But there are still some major question-marks that need to be addressed, mostly revolving around the brand and future direction of the site.

Primarily:

1. How much of the brand should still be attached to me personally... and how much of it should be attached to a philosophy and vision? Or both? The loyalty and activity from the PP days came because people resonated with my experience and my writing. Diluting that loyalty with other writers has had various effects, both positive and negative. On the one hand it's brought in more publicity, more readers, and more varied content. On the other hand, it seems loyalty and enthusiasm has dropped off. Sales and activity have flat-lined. As Tim said, there's no clear vision of the site for people to grapple on to right now and become emotionally invested in.

2. I *DON'T* want to just become an AskMen knock-off. In a perfect world, I'd like to be the Apple to AskMen's Microsoft. I'm convinced there's a very wide opening somewhere out there for a smart, sophisticated, somewhat counter-cultural men's website that isn't full of the same old crap about how to tie and tie and how to buy the right wine and oh yeah, here are 7 quick tips to get a six-pack. And it has something to do with emotional awareness and expression, transcending classical masculinity, becoming assertive, and living independently and fearlessly... but for some reason I can't seem to put it together coherently into a business-model or even a single website.

3. The two things that differentiated me in the pick up industry and led to my success were 1) the blunt honesty and 2) the quality of the written content. Both of which I think are missing in a lot more areas than just pick up -- but in self-development in general, in lifestyle design, etc. I like what The Good Men Project does in terms of sharing honest experiences and analysis, but I think they get too lost in the gender riff-raff and ultimately don't have a very unified goal other than "Hey, men don't (always) suck." AskMen is obviously gigantic, but their content for the most part blows. Even someone like Tim Ferriss is really tapping into something more than just internet business, but taking control of your life in a new and dynamic way.

This is all public brainstorming. Feel free to comment... agree with me or tell me I'm completely off base. We've got a start of something really good here, and you guys are part of it, so I'm all ears to hearing any ideas or visions you may have of where the site could go, what it could be, etc.

Reader survey going up tomorrow morning as well.

Also, I would like to post more often in the Goals thread, but it seems that I'm the only one regularly updating, which basically makes it so I'm bumping my own post lol. Kinda looks bad haha.

Amen to all that.

I notice that I don't feel the same attachment and loyalty to this site that I felt with your site in the past, even if I agree with the direction and thinking more than ever.

I think you don't have to be a big part of the brand to succeed, but I think you can be. Strong personalities have created brands entirely around themselves, and that's something I believe you can do. The challenge for you is to not build up yourself in some mythical, unaccessible way, because that's exactly what your content is against; idolization of people and of a certain way of living. I know you don't want this for yourself, and you wouldn't aim to do it, and that's what is challenging. Big personalities (Trump, Steve Jobs, almost every sports/pop star ever, even the PUA crowd, etc) have been willing or aimed to achieve legendary status to build their company up. Not doing that is going to be a handicap, but it's also going to make what you're doing genuine and more effective. Bringing other writers though? That seems to me to be a bit of a must. Your company has to grow beyond you at some stage, even if you're it's CEO, because otherwise you'll be CEO of nobody.

I think the world is getting more and more ready for real dating and life advice, and for real people who deliver it. Sometimes I wonder about this, and think about whether people are always going to look for the shortcut in life; whether it's for getting a six pack, or getting girls, and whether it's not possible to become huge without giving people that shortcut. But then I also think of what Tyler Durden says in Fight Club: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

I think as the digital ages advances, and more and more people are forced to confront the reality that they will never become famous, or rich, or incredible casanovas, they're going to become incredibly disillusioned by the inauthentic, and turn strongly against it. And they're going to listen to those who give them the real answers. If you look at how strongly ex-PUA guys distance themselves from the PUA community (including myself), you can see how people react when they realise they've been lied to. I think that's going to become more and more common over time.

What I'd do is get amongst the kind of guys you'd like to have as customers who have no affiliation with PUA or this site and just spend some time around them. Try and figure out what motivates them to make changes in their life, and how their thinking process works when seeking out advice. I think you can't put it into a clear and coherent package yet because something like that takes a hell of a lot of time. It was more obvious when you were on your big voyage of self-discovery and improvement, and you had an excellent start by working to disprove so much of what PUA said (not consciously at first, it just turned out like that). Now you're reaching closer to what you want to say, but it's how you say it that's eluding you. What's going to work is something that allows the more casual reader/user to become a part of this, and fulfill specific needs (which is why splitting the G3 up should ultimately prove to be a good option). Many of them will become involved beyond that, which is how you're going to get a big and active forum going, but most people aren't going to be interested beyond a certain point. It's figuring out how to include those people that I think you need to consider next.

I don't think you should be in any rush either; just take the time you need to work this stuff out. Maybe settling down somewhere and building a life for yourself in one place for a while might help, because you'll be able to watch people more closely, and get some real insight into the minds of people for whom life is a very different sort of journey than yours. Anyway, just my thoughts. For now.

Brian actually posted a blog comment just after the Approaching Women course came out I think. This was already after he raged on the Ayn Rand thread.

IMO, Apple = static, possessive, good cover image for hipsters but disappointing for people who want to configure, tweak and optimize their computers
Microsoft used to be buggy, but that's changed a lot over the years. You have much more freedom to configure everything on Windows than a Mac -- it's hard to even access the temp internet folder on a Mac when I can do that in about 3 clicks on Windows. The stories about graphics designers preferring Macs were true around the early 2000s maybe, not anymore with super-powerful graphics cards and tablets for PCs. Now this of course isn't strictly relevant to increasing forum activity, but I don't know, it might be food for thought for you in rethinking your brand image.

Tim Wrote:Amen to all that.

I notice that I don't feel the same attachment and loyalty to this site that I felt with your site in the past, even if I agree with the direction and thinking more than ever.

I think you don't have to be a big part of the brand to succeed, but I think you can be. Strong personalities have created brands entirely around themselves, and that's something I believe you can do. The challenge for you is to not build up yourself in some mythical, unaccessible way, because that's exactly what your content is against; idolization of people and of a certain way of living. I know you don't want this for yourself, and you wouldn't aim to do it, and that's what is challenging. Big personalities (Trump, Steve Jobs, almost every sports/pop star ever, even the PUA crowd, etc) have been willing or aimed to achieve legendary status to build their company up. Not doing that is going to be a handicap, but it's also going to make what you're doing genuine and more effective. Bringing other writers though? That seems to me to be a bit of a must. Your company has to grow beyond you at some stage, even if you're it's CEO, because otherwise you'll be CEO of nobody.

I think the world is getting more and more ready for real dating and life advice, and for real people who deliver it. Sometimes I wonder about this, and think about whether people are always going to look for the shortcut in life; whether it's for getting a six pack, or getting girls, and whether it's not possible to become huge without giving people that shortcut. But then I also think of what Tyler Durden says in Fight Club: "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

I think as the digital ages advances, and more and more people are forced to confront the reality that they will never become famous, or rich, or incredible casanovas, they're going to become incredibly disillusioned by the inauthentic, and turn strongly against it. And they're going to listen to those who give them the real answers. If you look at how strongly ex-PUA guys distance themselves from the PUA community (including myself), you can see how people react when they realise they've been lied to. I think that's going to become more and more common over time.

What I'd do is get amongst the kind of guys you'd like to have as customers who have no affiliation with PUA or this site and just spend some time around them. Try and figure out what motivates them to make changes in their life, and how their thinking process works when seeking out advice. I think you can't put it into a clear and coherent package yet because something like that takes a hell of a lot of time. It was more obvious when you were on your big voyage of self-discovery and improvement, and you had an excellent start by working to disprove so much of what PUA said (not consciously at first, it just turned out like that). Now you're reaching closer to what you want to say, but it's how you say it that's eluding you. What's going to work is something that allows the more casual reader/user to become a part of this, and fulfill specific needs (which is why splitting the G3 up should ultimately prove to be a good option). Many of them will become involved beyond that, which is how you're going to get a big and active forum going, but most people aren't going to be interested beyond a certain point. It's figuring out how to include those people that I think you need to consider next.

I don't think you should be in any rush either; just take the time you need to work this stuff out. Maybe settling down somewhere and building a life for yourself in one place for a while might help, because you'll be able to watch people more closely, and get some real insight into the minds of people for whom life is a very different sort of journey than yours. Anyway, just my thoughts. For now.

Your response is a bit cynical but there's definetly truth to it. Steve Pavlina has a similar quote "99% of the people in personal development are simply never going to be able to achieve their goals". Frankly if you just look around, you'll see plenty of evidence for this. You could call it talent or whathever other quality it is that these people possess, but not everybody can achieve the same things. For me personally what I've noticed is that when I work hard at something I almost always get a great result and I see improvement. But then again, not everybody has this quality, or the optimism or the determination to make it happen.

Serge Gainsbourg said it famously "I don't believe in talent, for me talent is going after the dream". I love this quote, since when you chase after things, you'll discover new things about yourself. But then again, it requires people to have the quality of wanting to make something happen.

note: there are a lot of things in the world that are possible, but I don't think everybody can make them happen.

Mark Wrote:Money's actually not the issue right now. In fact, money is great. The problems I have are actually the opposite problems of going broke: 1) I'm not making as much money as I should be, based on my traffic; and 2) now that I have money, a loyal base of customers and fans, a site with a lot of potential, what do I do with all of it? It's a very good, yet highly stressful place to be right now.

Getting back to what Tim said about having a foundation... the past four years I spent mostly building up a pick up business. I did that pretty decently, something hundreds of people have tried and failed to do. So I'm happy about that. But I've turned that into a foundation to create something much larger and much different. But there are still some major question-marks that need to be addressed, mostly revolving around the brand and future direction of the site.

Primarily:

1. How much of the brand should still be attached to me personally... and how much of it should be attached to a philosophy and vision? Or both? The loyalty and activity from the PP days came because people resonated with my experience and my writing. Diluting that loyalty with other writers has had various effects, both positive and negative. On the one hand it's brought in more publicity, more readers, and more varied content. On the other hand, it seems loyalty and enthusiasm has dropped off. Sales and activity have flat-lined. As Tim said, there's no clear vision of the site for people to grapple on to right now and become emotionally invested in.

2. I *DON'T* want to just become an AskMen knock-off. In a perfect world, I'd like to be the Apple to AskMen's Microsoft. I'm convinced there's a very wide opening somewhere out there for a smart, sophisticated, somewhat counter-cultural men's website that isn't full of the same old crap about how to tie and tie and how to buy the right wine and oh yeah, here are 7 quick tips to get a six-pack. And it has something to do with emotional awareness and expression, transcending classical masculinity, becoming assertive, and living independently and fearlessly... but for some reason I can't seem to put it together coherently into a business-model or even a single website.

3. The two things that differentiated me in the pick up industry and led to my success were 1) the blunt honesty and 2) the quality of the written content. Both of which I think are missing in a lot more areas than just pick up -- but in self-development in general, in lifestyle design, etc. I like what The Good Men Project does in terms of sharing honest experiences and analysis, but I think they get too lost in the gender riff-raff and ultimately don't have a very unified goal other than "Hey, men don't (always) suck." AskMen is obviously gigantic, but their content for the most part blows. Even someone like Tim Ferriss is really tapping into something more than just internet business, but taking control of your life in a new and dynamic way.

This is all public brainstorming. Feel free to comment... agree with me or tell me I'm completely off base. We've got a start of something really good here, and you guys are part of it, so I'm all ears to hearing any ideas or visions you may have of where the site could go, what it could be, etc.

Reader survey going up tomorrow morning as well.

you'll do fine, dude. Seriously, In fact I'm very jalous of what you've already accomplished. For me I'm now in my graduate year, but we'll see were we're headed next.

Something that I've always liked about you is that you come across as very genuinine. I've been told to have this quality as well, cherish it, it's pretty damm valuable.

I'll comment to number 1,2 & 3 when I don't have to work on my thesis

Mark, if you go with the personal blog thing, I kind of like the way slashdot handles it. Everyone is able to have a personal blog (it they so choose to) and then the moderator (you and maybe a couple of other people) decide which stories are more interesting and promote them to the front page to be discussed by the whole community. That can be combined with a voting system like the one digg has, so that top voted threads are too promoted to the main forums.

You could also try to make something in the way of a Q&A site like stackoverflow. Having "reputation" in the site is a game and usually boost the traffic... I've always wanted to see a Q&A site on pickup and personal improvement anyway and, at least given the results of the entire Stack Exchange community, it kind of suggests contribution gets a boost just by the reputation thing, as we men use to be pretty competitive and turning writing in the forum to a competition seems to have that effect.

[url="http://scifi.stackexchange.com/"]http://scifi.stackexchange.com/
[/url]http://stackoverflow.com/

As for the vBulletin software for the forum... well is not one of my favorites so I don't really know what options does it have.

I filled out your survey and put some thoughts into my answers. I hope my answers (both,in the survey and here in the thread) will help you a bit.

If I have the time tonight, I'll write my personal vision for this site as I really identify with it and wish it and you the best in the future. I think it's a great concept, but the vision isn't complete yet.

Hey. I also filled out your survey. I wrote some things about using mediums like Twitter and Facebook as extensions of your brand, the feelers that constantly interact and entertain the curiosity of readers.

But yeah, I'm also somewhat jealous of you like crazyhorse. You were able to dive into the bullshit, cut through it, bring some clarity, and launch a brand from that. You've found your place in the world and I feel like I can't keep up with the awesomeness, although it seems you're still finding yourself in terms of marketing the brand and appealing to audiences.

Oh and no offense, but I did almost get an AskMen feel from the influx of the variety of topic and authors. It didn't bother me, because I am pretty loyal and open-minded, but it's definitely something to consider. New readers may be slightly put off here.

Perhaps you need to get out there more and sell your brand?

Thanks for all of the responses guys...

Breaking down point #1 a little more from above, Tim you're probably right that I could go either direction in terms of how to brand the site. Although a couple other factors are that 1) writing has turned into the one aspect of the business I absolutely love and I sincerely don't ever want to completely give it up, and 2) despite having talented guys writing for me and I like what they're putting out, coelescing them into a clear vision has felt a bit like herding cats.

As you probably know by now, I don't care about fame or status or becoming a "legend" in the eyes of my readers. It actually makes me uncomfortable. That's something I learned a long time ago. But what I have learned the past six months is that it's much easier to create loyalty, enthusiasm and sales when I'm the bulk of the brand.

I like some of the crowd-sourcing ideas Jorge puts out, but implementing those kinds of features may be beyond my technical paygrade at the moment.

One website that I think achieves an excellent balance between a single person brand, while having other writers and crowd-sourcing content is Andrew Sullivan's "The Daily Dish."

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/

It's a US politics website, that's extremely smart and informed. It's mostly Andrew just riffing on the news of the day, but hundreds of readers email him, and he reposts selected comments and his responses to them. Often large debates or discussions will erupt between dozens of readers with him as kind of the moderator. He does have interns. And not all of his posts are written by him. And he's by no means a self-aggrandizer (he often gets proven wrong by his readers or comes out and takes back a position or stance that he had). But similar to what I'm going for, the appeal to him, and loyalty to him are that 1) he's smart and overlooks a lot of the bullshit out there, and 2) he's honest, and when he's wrong, he'll come out and say he's wrong... something that's almost completely void in American political discussion today.

Now, obviously PM is not a politics website and will not ever be putting up 50 blog posts in a single day like he does, but I like the balance he achieves on this, between personal brand and overall philosophy and style.

The other factor to consider is that the current trend that the internet is causing is it's fragmenting content to a much more personal level. This is something Gary Vaynerchuk talks about all the time, but that as more and more time goes on, people are interested in finding and relating to PEOPLE they respect and look up to, not companies. I haven't seen any hard data on this, and I don't know how true it is, but it is something to consider. The internet allows for much more intimate conversations and connections between content-provider and reader... My guess is that a large amount of AskMen's traffic does not come back frequently. Almost half of my traffic does. And it used to be more.

I guess both can be viable routes, it just depends on priorities...

Or hell, maybe I just miss writing a lot, and this is me rationalizing my way into doing it again...

AskMen probably has dozen of writers. At some point, it must feel impersonal to the reader. Heck, how often do people even bother to check who the author of an article is? Maybe you could separate yourself from AskMen and become even more personal if you keep your band of writers constant and develop an identity for them. I know how you feel about becoming a "legend" but what if you don't base your brand on yourself but on a band of writers that truly communicate edges of your brand, like fashion, fitness, travel, etc. If perhaps you can create a deeper identity for your writers, you could bypass the immense pressures that come with being the single face of a brand. If people develop individual relationships with your writers and associate them with your brand, you could garner a hefty sum of loyalty. If you yourself do not appeal much to, say, Bob, but maybe Xander's story appeals to him, then heck you still have a loyal reader who might be curious enough to dabble in some other edges of your brand.

Only on a few sites have I seen people actually recognize who the author of a particular article is on a site with many authors and develop a fondness for his writing, person, and future articles. Something to think about.

Ironically enough, the thread "Forum Activity" probably caused a spike in forum activity hehe.

Traindom Wrote:AskMen probably has dozen of writers. At some point, it must feel impersonal to the reader. Heck, how often do people even bother to check who the author of an article is? Maybe you could separate yourself from AskMen and become even more personal if you keep your band of writers constant and develop an identity for them. I know how you feel about becoming a "legend" but what if you don't base your brand on yourself but on a band of writers that truly communicate edges of your brand, like fashion, fitness, travel, etc. If perhaps you can create a deeper identity for your writers, you could bypass the immense pressures that come with being the single face of a brand. If people develop individual relationships with your writers and associate them with your brand, you could garner a hefty sum of loyalty. If you yourself do not appeal much to, say, Bob, but maybe Xander's story appeals to him, then heck you still have a loyal reader who might be curious enough to dabble in some other edges of your brand.

Only on a few sites have I seen people actually recognize who the author of a particular article is on a site with many authors and develop a fondness for his writing, person, and future articles. Something to think about.

Ironically enough, the thread "Forum Activity" probably caused a spike in forum activity hehe.

I've thought a bit about this as well, and I'd be down for it. But one thing that is proving hard about having a stable of writers is their reliability (or lack thereof) both in producing content, and in the quality of content (a couple of the articles I've received were clearly rushed and I had to go in and touch them up quite a bit).

I like the writers I have now, but honestly, I'd like to take the quality of content on this site to the next level, a very professional level, and I don't think many (or any) of the guys I have now would be up to that task without me paying them full-time. The other issue is that they all have day jobs and other priorities, and so getting consistent pieces out of them has proven to be difficult, despite the fact that I'm paying some of them a little bit on the side.

One thing that I'm very serious about having, is longer, more thought-out pieces than most other sites. I want them to be written extremely well too. Unfortunately, it's hard to find people who can churn out fascinating and well-written 1,500-2,000 word pieces consistently without paying them quite a bit of money. Anybody with a brain can slap a 500-word article together for AskMen about tailgate parties or something. I want something deeper and more thoughtful than that.

I think what needs to happen is:
1. Decide the overall brand and vision for the site. Define it in concrete terms.
2. Decide if that brand/vision is best conveyed through my writing, my writing + a few others, or a whole bunch of people's writing.
3. Stop screwing around with out-sourcing, freelancers and interns and hire a few people full-time to get this shit done the right way.

And this would all start happening fairly quickly after I get this group of products released... which would be April/May.

Well, the search won't be boring, that's for sure. You mentioned as well that you would dive into the marketing soon after you churn out your remaining products and that fashion guide you're sitting on. I imagine the marketing will have to wait a while until you gather what you need to make 1, 2, and 3 happen. This must be an anxious but nevertheless exciting year for you. I wish you the best of luck. This sounds like it'll be quite a whammy of a year, if the Mayans weren't right haha.

It is exciting... and very stressful... hahaha...

Screw the Mayans, 2012 is the year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar. That's supposed to be a special year. I can't help but feel it's going to be also... I feel like so many exciting things are coming up for myself and many people I know to different degrees.

Mark, write more articles if you want to! If you decide they can't be published because you need to make room for other writers on the site then just post them in the forums. I honestly thought your production had slowed down because you'd pretty much said all there was to say, but if you're still vomiting content then just put it here.

I think it's time for you to get bigger and spread what you're saying to a wider audience. I have a number of ideas on how to do that, and how it might look, many of which I've already expressed, and so will the rest of us. But I think it's up to you to look at the long-term vision of what you want to achieve, and start writing out a story in your head of how that might look. The one thing that I would emphasize is that you should be looking at a wider picture. Just having a better SEO and good affiliates is too small a picture right now. There's an enormous conversation going on about dating and self-improvement, and it's incredibly repetitive and unhelpful. You need to go in there and shake it up.

Oh, and why are you complaining about not making enough money (relative to how good things are going), when until last week you only had ONE source of income and that was an ebook?! To paraphrase Roger Ebert; your monetization strategy sucks!

I'd also like to see you shake it up as well. Crack open those peoples' heads and tell it how it is!

This is an exciting year for me as well. The year I'm to rely on myself, discover my passions (which really takes years haha), explore the world, girls ;p, and get that much close to finding my place in the world. Not to mention all the killer games that are coming out. On a side note, they are filming Paradise Lost this year, so I guess that's something too. Bradley Cooper, make us proud!

I hope you aren't getting your panties twisted based on the comparison between models and your new program. Dating is a spectator-consumer industry, taking action scares the shit out of most of us. Besides, when you came out with the book it was unequivocally your voice, coming from your heart. We felt it, it transpired from every post that you wrote in reference to the book. The program... I am sure you believe it, stand behind it but will we take action?

I filled the survey. That question if I wanted to see more posts of you or from the other guys, assuming the same number of posts, it's not really "fair", is it? I mean, anyone giving a toss enough to answer will likely say "I want them all to be from Mark". Do you have to restrain the blog to a fixed number of posts per week?

A small tweak I'd like to see, would be to reset the "new posts" page life-time. Now it lasts like what, 15 minutes? Can you increase the time that the page still lists the last topics? I'm actually considering changing my bookmark to the daily posts page, but maybe this will be of use to others.

Quote:"You're very confident Mark."

You ought open with "Delícia, delícia, assim você me mata"

I've only skimmed this thread but offer a few comments from afar (as I don't post much and live far away anyhow :

1. People need time to absorb the new-ness of everything. Don't forget you've changed quite a bit what you're doing in the last few years. You went from EntropyPUA.com to PracticalPickUp.com then PostMasculine in 2 or so years. That's quite a bit.

2. I personally miss the old days of EntropyPUA and PPU. Of course I still read your blog regularly and will do the new dating programme for sure, and have told a few Praguers about you but I think the look of P-M is bland in places. For example, the photos sometimes look very Men's Health. The design looks like you've bought a custom theme. I know you've done a ton of work on the site and I know how time-consuming this all is, but I'm just saying - the design could be amended to reflect the fact that the content IS unique and usually excellent.

3. Pick up and dating is quite an emotional thing, a big journey - as a result there were lots of posts on the previous forum. If this one is in a slow patch it could be because the other topics don't provoke as much discussion.

4. I'd post a LOT more if there was one place for everything. But now I've got a few posts on the PPU forum, several on the G3 forum and a few under the G3 articles, and now this site. Added to this will be the new dating programme perhaps.

I personally would have all content on the one site (eg this one) with special access to premium members who've paid for the Approaching Programme or the Dating one, etc.

I say this for a few reasons: I don't like to log in and out of sites and I like all my posts to be in the one place partly as a record of my own thoughts. If for example I'm on the Dating Programme and then notice a post which catches my eye in the public section, I'm more likely to stay logged on and read the post or reply to what others have said.

Hope this helps - as I'm sure you know you're the only writer/coach I'm following from a year or two ago and I support your products

D...

ps I also got timed out writing this - can you add a few minutes for us slowies

Hey, look on the bright side - at least I'm back

Tim Wrote:But I think it's up to you to look at the long-term vision of what you want to achieve, and start writing out a story in your head of how that might look. The one thing that I would emphasize is that you should be looking at a wider picture. Just having a better SEO and good affiliates is too small a picture right now. There's an enormous conversation going on about dating and self-improvement, and it's incredibly repetitive and unhelpful. You need to go in there and shake it up.

If anything, my problem has always been that ALL I look at is the big picture and long-term picture... and as for monetization, I still make money off the old PP products (traffic still goes there and I still promote to that list). I also have a couple non-PU internet sources of income. I'm not hurting for money, although my marketing could be doing better... it could have always been doing better... it's always just been "good enough."

Alvar Wrote:I hope you aren't getting your panties twisted based on the comparison between models and your new program. Dating is a spectator-consumer industry, taking action scares the shit out of most of us. Besides, when you came out with the book it was unequivocally your voice, coming from your heart. We felt it, it transpired from every post that you wrote in reference to the book. The program... I am sure you believe it, stand behind it but will we take action?

You absolutely nailed it here. And I'm surprised I didn't think of it earlier. But I kind of freaked out last week because the Approach Program sold about 1/2 as much as I expected to. But in the survey I just put up, for every person who responded "I already signed up," over two people responded "I plan on signing up, but am not ready yet." It occurred to me that the way the program is structured -- forcing people to be so accountable -- actually causes people to DELAY signing up. Sigh... yet another case of me prioritizing "what works" over "what sells."

BTW, the survey is showing that people by and large prefer multiple writers. It appears my c0ncern about this was somewhat 1) projecting my own biases, and 2) a case of a loud minority complaining.

Alvar Wrote:You ought open with "Delícia, delícia, assim você me mata"

The Brasileiras are treating me REAL well since I got here... in fact, I just sent one home... Carnaval bloco party straight to my bed. I seriously may end up living here for most of the year.

Prague Wrote:1. People need time to absorb the new-ness of everything. Don't forget you've changed quite a bit what you're doing in the last few years. You went from EntropyPUA.com to PracticalPickUp.com then PostMasculine in 2 or so years. That's quite a bit.

This is a good point.

As for everything in the same spot. I understand... I've been evolving quickly the past year or two, and unfortunately my ability with technology has not kept up with that.

Davey Wrote:Hey, look on the bright side - at least I'm back

Thank God.

Ok, fair enough, but clearly if you're looking at what is long-term and you're not getting any closer then you're not really looking at it as a reality. Seems like it's something you keep putting off with being happy to grow a little more each year. I know that's not what you really want, but you haven't attacked growth like it's now or never. Of course it's not, but it seems like now would be the best time. You've reached a certain point with your content, and while that will continue to grow in the areas you've chosen to expand to, the dating part seems pretty solid now. Publish your book, hire some full-time staff, or get appearing on news media. Those are the kind of moves that suggest a real thrust of momentum.

Hmm, I'm going to start sharing some more of your content around and see what response I get. I know that a lot of people out there and looking for the level of thinking you're putting out here.

I voted for multiple writers because I think it's the right thing for the site and I want to give them a vote of confidence. Personally I'd rather see more from you. Overall I think they're doing a decent job, and certainly aren't dragging the site down.