The Bittersweet Taste of Success

It’s no secret now that the launch of Beyond Blogging exceeded the wildest dreams of Nathan and myself. The last few days have been the most tiring and most exciting of my online career to date. There are few things in life more intoxicating than refreshing your email every few seconds to see another page full of orders, or looking at Performancing Metrics and seeing thousands of people on your website at the same moment.

For two days it was bliss, and it’s still going on! So thank you, thank you so much for all the support and help and to so many of you for buying the book and shouting out such amazing feedback to the world.

And then the difficult stuff started. I was immediately reminded of a post I read on Yaro Starak’s site, talking about this.

Don’t get me wrong, in terms of numbers, the complainers were small – probably outweighed 40 to 1 by people who were praising the book and the concept. But as always, they were quite vociferous, and interestingly none had bought the book.

Some were complaining at the price - $47 was described as “Ludicrous”, some didn’t like our sales page, which was called “MLM style” and “scammy.” The debate raged mainly around Chris Brogan’s blog, which made me feel uncomfortable, although he defended us strongly, and then extended to other sites. Apparently we were also using the wrong shopping cart (despite the fact that it costs $1000 a year) and someone even accused Nathan of being a four hour work week type! As everyone knows, he’s in the US Military and blogs and writes in his spare time, which means he’s about as far removed from a 4 hour work week as you can get.

I have to tell you – these things hurt. They really, really hurt. When you hear words like “scammy” next to your name on the internet, it feels horrible. When you go to bed at night, you don’t remember the 150 great comments, or the email from our designer, who loved the book so much she’s taken up blogging. You don’t lie awake thinking about the money in your account, or the fact that you’ve helped a lot of affiliates make some cash.

You lie in bed wondering how many people think you’re a scam artist, or who thinks you’re a get rich quick merchant. For some reason, the few negatives hugely outweigh the positives.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need any sympathy here, and I’m pretty thick skinned and big enough to defend myself. But I just wanted to warn you, because the same thing will happen to you one day. For a year or two you beaver away safely, surrounded by lovely people like you, and then you pop your head over the parapet, and there are some people out there zeroing their sites on anyone who does so. When it does happen, take Yaro’s advice in the post above – it’s good.

Enough of the self indulgent introversion! Where to next with Beyond Blogging? Well, it’s not going to be a flash in the pan internet launch. We intend to keep sales going steadily now – the feedback has confirmed that it can become THE essential guide for bloggers, and we’ll continue to market it as hard as we can. There will be an audio version and a Kindle version soon, and the paperback is already in the pipeline. We plan to personally market it in the US and Europe, and that starts with a trip we’re both making to Las Vegas next month.

So that’s where we are. Normal service on Mike’s Life will be resumed tomorrow. And thanks once again to all of you.