As you may know, I’m long done building affiliate sites to rank just so that Google can take them out in the next update.
Over the last few years, I moved into audience and community building.
Going forward, whatever online business I start or am involved in it has to be a real brand.
A brand protects you against Google or affiliate updates and builds a loyal audience you actually own.
Plush merch bro
My filter for whether a business is a good fit for me is whether I would be proud to wear the logo / name at an industry event.
I’ve felt that physical merchandise is really important for brand-building for a while now.
Indeed, back in my
productized services days, I registered the domain kwmarmot.com for a keyword research business as wanted to buy branded marmot plush toys for customers!
Today, I see a lot of newsletter businesses using merch as incentives within their referral programs.
Who wouldn’t want
The Hustle socks? I know I’d wear them.
Show me the brands
In
last week’s (my first) newsletter on Revue, I mentioned how I was wanting to get into the business of poker, a niche I’m passionate about.
Since then, I’ve been doing a lot of research into individuals within the poker community, what the biggest traffic websites are in terms of organic search, and who the media players are.
I’ve discovered that apart from the big poker tournaments and the poker sites themselves, there are very few brands within a multi-billion dollar industry that people would recognize or care about.
I view a lack of branding as an opportunity.
If we meet up in real life in a post-covid world, you can be rest assured that the baseball cap I’ll be wearing will be the business I’m focused on and passionate about.
Cheers!
Richard
