Hello,
welcome to issue #15 of TRUST-able. 

This newsletter is written for independent authors, creators and consultants who want to become trusted advisors in their market niche. Share it with your friends.

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To get in touch with me, Robin Good, just reply to this email or write me at:
RobinGood@substack.com  I am here to make friends. 

N.B.: This newsletter you are reading is the super-short, synthetic version of the full newsletter. If you want to get all my thoughts, comments, links and images, please check out the full Google Doc edition.

There are also two language editions of this newsletter: The original English language edition and the Italian version. 

Hello, and welcome back.
I am writing you with high fever and after being in bed for 36 hours non-stop. I do not feel my very best but I am committed to bring you my best discoveries for these month as always.

If you are creating new revenue for the content you create online, consider checking out the newly born “Curation Monetized” newsletter that I have started publishing. It contains insights, resources, tools and real-world examples of how to create new revenue channels by organizing existing resources and information.

Still in the garage for a few final adjustments is the other newsletter I have announced last month: Good Tools. This is a newsletter about hard-to-find, little-known, rare *free* tools for indie entrepreneurs and communication professionals. The goal is to help you communicate, market and monetize better while saving you hundreds of dollars in subscription costs. I am planning to release the first issue in January. Sign-up now not to miss the first one.

Follow a path with a heart.
The time is NOW.

Robin Good

1) How To Create Real Value

Be Vulnerable 

Very few people are willing to do so.
That’s why the few who do get such a great advantage over the others.

“The only way to stand out is by choosing to share the imperfect parts of your journey, the scary bits, the human messy parts, anecdotes you’d share with your close friends and build trust with your audience deeply. 

Which means: 

• more screenshots from your computer

• more behind-the-scenes content, 

• more building-in-public. 

It requires showing a bit more skin than normal. 

You have to be more vulnerable than previously. 

Only then, people will resonate with your content and stand by you.. otherwise your work has a great risk to be ignored…”

Source: KP - “I asked ChatGPT about building in public and here's what came out” 

Niche Down

Niching down means strategizing a business to focus on a specific problem (how to get x) for a specific audience (eg: lawyers).

“Niching down creates a connection with the reader. 

When you write about specific topics that are hyper-relevant to an audience, they’re more likely to appreciate and value your content.

Niching down positions you as the expert. 

When you focus on a specific topic, you have the opportunity to really dive deep and share your knowledge in a way that’s helpful and informative. Which means, more readers and followers who are interested in what you have to say.”

Source: Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole - “7 Simple Ways To Niche Down”

Remix 

To increase the value of anything, rearrange it . 

To rearrange: To create a new order, updated to a new specific context and purpose (made of a specific audience with a specific need). 

“Growth comes from remixing.

Paul Romer, an economist at New York University who specializes in the theory of economic growth, says real sustainable economic growth does not stem from new resources but from existing resources that are rearranged to make them more valuable. 

At this point in our history, sharing something in a new way, is the surest way to increase its value.”  

Source: Kevin Kelly - “The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological…”

• Sponsor

Discover how indie entrepreneurs create new revenue by organizing existing information.
Real-world examples, insights, tools.

Curation Monetized - The Newsletter

Real-world examples of online services, apps, info-products that generate a profit by gathering, organizing and packaging existing information.

Monthly edition.
Subscribe now

2) How To Cultivate Relationships                

Don’t Hide Behind Your Brand

People are genetically wired to like and empathize with other people, not with brands and logos. 

When people feel a personal connection to someone, they are more likely to become a fan or follower of that person.

Let people know who is behind your company name.

“People connect to other people.

The number of brands that attract true fans is relatively small…

In general, people are more likely to become a fan of another person than they are a brand, so use that to your advantage.

Even if there’s a brand behind your creations, don’t hide yourself behind it — do the opposite. 

Look for ways to let people know who’s actually behind your creations and connect with you.”

Source: Josh Spector - “How To Get More True Fans”

Choose a Platform

Yes, you may have a growing following on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, but these platforms have not been designed to help you grow, manage and monetize your communities.

Here is a recent good review of seven interesting community-building platform alternatives available out there. 

1. Mighty Networks

2. Thinkific

3. Tribe

4. Discourse

5. Vanilla Forums

6. Hivebright

7. Facebook Groups

Source: Simon Hilton - “7 Best Online Community Platforms For Growing & Monetizing Audiences” 

Publish a Newsletter

To create lasting relationships you must be able to connect and to freely communicate directly with your prospects.

Something that you cannot do by using social media.

“Building an audience begins with attracting people on public platforms like [your social media platform of choice] which act like public squares where you can reach people at scale, for free. 

Even if public platforms are the top of your marketing funnel, they come with a tradeoff. 

What they give you in free reach, they take away in the lack of a connection to your audience. 

Their terms and conditions state that they have a right to kick you off the platform. Since they own your data, you can’t download your followers and move them to another network. 

I like Naval Ravikant’s line on this: “Building an audience on a public platform is like building a castle out of sand.” 

Don’t let a public platform control your audience relationships. 

Find people on public platforms. 

Build a relationship with them on private ones.

Source: David Perell - “The Ultimate Guide To Writing Online”

Check the full Gdoc edition (free)

3) How To Communicate Effectively      

Improve Your Website

According to Jakob Nielsen, top usability and website design expert, the top 10 mistakes being made are these:

1. Website layout when viewed on a big screen

2. Only image-hero in the above-the-fold

3. The page layout shifts during page load

4. Icons without labels / titles

5. Can’t select and copy paste

6. Inflexible input forms

7. Low-contrast or tiny text

8. Misleading links and expectations

9. Slow response time

10. Pop-ups and overlays

Check the video. (duration: 21’)

Source: NNGroup - “Top 10 Web Design Mistakes”

Keep Your Lines Short

To make any text highly readable you must pay attention to the size of the characters and to how wide your line length is. 

The smaller your text and the wider your line length the more difficult to read your text becomes.

While many are pretty much aware that the size of their online texts may be too small, most absolutely ignore line length.

“The optimal line length for body text is 50–75 characters. Shorter or longer line lengths can hurt readability.

Our large-scale testing reveals that text line length often makes product or service descriptions unnecessarily difficult for users to read.”

Source: Baymard Institute - Readability: The Optimal Line Length

Storytell

Easy to say, hard to do.

Until you start to practice.

Best way to start storytelling is to take note of little stories that happen in your life (right when they happen) and to extract a valuable morale that can be useful to your readers in their specific quest.

To spice up your storytelling style consider testing these two writing tactics that provide strong character and differentiation to any story.

1. Do “cold opens”.
   Cut the fluff, and jump right into the action. Like you were in a movie that starts right into the action scene.
   

2.  Bring readers into your world.
   Use your language and terms.

Source: Nathan Baugh - Twitter

4) How To Market  Yourself    

Refine Your About Page

“First impressions matter.”

Your one-liner description (tagline) and your About page are the first two places where readers will find more about you. 

That’s why it’s so important to invest time in making them as good as possible.

Your one-liner should clearly state what you do/who you help (in less than 7 words), while your About page should provide as much - non marketing - information about you that helps build connection and trust with the reader (this requires direct and informal language, transparency, tangible achievements, testimonials).  

If you are wondering what to write in your one-liner and what content sections you could place in your About page, find some truly great advice and numerous real-world examples here.

Source: Substack - “How to polish your publication's About page and one-line description”

Be The Same

Beware of those using social media to portray an always successful and glamorous image of themselves.

Those individuals end up being recognized for what they are: fakes looking for a shortcut to becoming of real value to others. 

The more you are able to share through your communication channels who you really are - not just a glamorous and always shining facade of you - the more opportunity you will have to be found and appreciated by those who are most in tune with you and your way of being.

“Effective digital branding is all about translating the flesh-and-bones-you into the bits-and-bytes-you. 

Then whether someone meets you in person or online, they’re having the same experience.”

Source: Q&A with “Digital You” author William Arruda

Become Irreplaceable

ChatGPT is taking the world by storm. In the first five days from its release over a million people have started using it. 

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence engine capable of generating content, ideas, answers to just about anything you can ask it to do.

How are you going to stand out online when everyone has access to such powerful technology?

The answer is simple: You boost and make visible what makes you unique and which cannot easily be generated (at least for now) by a digital AI.

“Don’t write generic content [on your topic of interest].

The more generic your content is, the easier it will be for you to be replaced by AI.

Get personal and authentic!

This is what makes you irreplaceable.”

Source: Alex Lull on Twitter - via Daniel Hunter - Hunter Labs

Full edition (Gdoc)

5) How To Get More Visibility

First Deep Then Wide 

Focusing on one social media venue at a time, instead of spreading oneself too thin across multiple ones right from the beginning, is the best strategy for indie entrepreneurs. 

Out of the gate, and having already a basic personal website, I’d go at it this way:

a) first build a newsletter 

b) then consider podcasting or video 

c) then add a social channel like Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIN. 

“A recipe for success on social media: First go deep, then wide. Focus on only one channel for one year. Use that time to grow there, test ideas and find your voice. Once that’s done, move to other platforms by repurposing tried and tested ideas.

Your growth there will be 10x faster.”

Source:  Kieran Drew - via Alex Lull - The Steal Club Newsletter “Is Twitter a Ponzi Scheme” 30 Nov. 2022 

Make Them Link You

Visibility it’s all about who you connect to. Both in real life as much in the digital online world.

The more you connect to other valuable resources and people, the more visible and relevant you become. Both if you are a website or a human being. 

Here's the type of contents I’d create if I wanted to extract the maximum benefit from interconnecting to others.   

1. Helpful resource lists

2. Vertical directories and search engines

3. Expert roundups

4. Case studies of clients successes

5. Book collections

6. Shareable templates

7. Checklists

8. Deep-dives

9. Learning paths

Source: Robin Good

Send Them Away

Part of my inspiration in becoming so passionate and interested in content curation, has been ignited by a post that appeared in 2004, on Robert Scoble's popular tech blog. 

In it, I read: 

"It's the new marketing... Instead of being desperate and saying "look at me look at me" you tell your readers to get lost.

Go someplace else.

What's the philosophy?

Those sites will take you to the coolest stuff on the Internet. And by doing that, Engadget and Gizmodo have BECOME the coolest places on the Internet. Just like Craig's List, Google, eBay."

Takeaway: The more valuable resources, info and tools you share with your audience/community the more trustworthy and reputable you will appear in their hearts and eyes. 

"Send your visitors away" is a simple but valuable content marketing advice and it is at the heart of what a good content curator does. 

Finding and sharing great resources that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. 

Source: Robin Good

6) How To Monetize

Monetize Newsletters

“no platform offers the return on investment that email does.”

There are five big categories in the indie newsletter space, each of which corresponds with specific business models. 

These top newsletter categories are:

1. The Analyst

2. The Curator 

3. The Expert

4. The Reporter

5. The Writer

Understanding which category you belong to and what are the ideal business models to use should be a strategic priority.

“... matching the right newsletter to the right business model.”

In this in-depth report Alex Hazlett and Dan Oshinky reveal what they have discovered by interviewing hundreds of successful newsletter publishers and specifically:

• How they have grown their audience

• What business models they have utilized to monetize

Source: Alex Hazlett and Dan Oshinsky - “The Five Types of Indie Newsletter Business Models”

Monetize Podcasts

“Selling ads ain't the only way.

Many podcasts are used more as a marketing channel, providing stand-alone value with regular reminders that they have related products or services for sale.”

Some of these podcasts make some pretty serious money through fans that support the podcast via Patreon or similar crowdfunding platforms. 

Here a few good examples of how much a podcast can make from its fan base:

For Crying Out Loud: $10,680+ per month

Doughboys: $11,390+ per month

True Crime Obsessed: $247,325+ per month

There’s literally a podcast making over $2,000 per month giving commentary on every single episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (Actually, it's more like $5000+ per month now).

Another way [for podcasts] to monetize is via Glow.fm, which seems to be the Substack of the podcast world. (Glow itself reportedly sold to Libsyn for $1.2 million a year ago.)

Source: Niall Doherty - eBiz Weekly #182

Monetize Directories

Directories are comprehensive catalogs of resources on a specific topic.

Directories map the territory of a specific niche and provide a panorama of who is there and how it differs from all the others. 

You could create directories for:
- Top lawyers in New York specializing in…

- Best website templates for Auto Dealers

- Ideal films to be inspired morally

- Top books about learning how to learn

- Key experts on nano-technology in Italy

Find a niche where you can find, gather and organize such information and you have a potential business in your hands. 

Those who have done so, have monetized their creations by offering paid features and complementary services like: 

• being featured, 

• getting listed when you are not, 

• sponsoring an associated newsletter, 

• affiliate commissions

P.S.: There’s a small group of indie entrepreneurs, guided by Chris Osborne, where to share ideas, projects and useful tools and resources to build monetizable directories. (To get in send a direct message to Chris Osborne on Twitter saying that I have sent you and that you’re interested in Directory Builders.

Source: Curation Monetized

7) How To Stay Ahead

Write

Most entrepreneurs I know have not yet understood the power of writing. They see writing as a chore needed for marketing purposes. They do not see it as a personal opportunity to learn and to increase one’s own reputation by sharing one’s own discoveries. 

But indeed it all starts from there. 

Writing (and ideally publishing) your ideas, thought processes, discoveries and know-how helps you crystallize what you think you know. 

It also helps others grow and understand stuff in ways they had not considered before.

“Writing clarifies your thinking. 

Thoughts and feelings are nebulous happenings in our mind holes, but writing forces us to crystalize those thoughts
and put them in a logical order.”

Source: Leo Babauta - Why You Should Write Daily

Take Note

Kendrick Lamar once said:
“note-taking is the closest thing we have to time travel”.

Taking notes is what distinguishes great artists, thinkers and creators of any kind from the average Joe.

Taking notes forces you to analyze what otherwise touches you for a second and then disappears forever.

Taking notes it’s your internal movie camera built to analyze and better understand the things you see, live and experience.

My experience is: the more notes I take, the richer I feel. Writing notes helps me live a more meaningful life and supports my desire to learn and improve constantly.

Notes also provide me with great ideas on what to write as well as a growing stash of reflections that I can build upon.

Watch the video.
Duration: 13’:36”

Source: David Perell - How to Take Notes like Kendrick Lamar

Read the full edition (free)

Go For the Long Haul

This old thread by Julien Smith is a great reminder that it’s far too easy to waste time on projects that only impress the wrong kinds of people.

Example: reading 52 books a year. “It looks impressive but it's insanely useless.”

What is actually difficult and worthwhile instead is to do ONE single thing for a very, very long time. 

It's much harder and much rarer.

Source: Julien - Twitter - via Jakob Greenfeld - Business Brainstorms 

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 • From the Heart

Off Track

"In the stillness is the dancing.

In the silence are the answers."

Source: Joseph Kennedy Jr.

Personal Notes

In the photo: With a great, truly lovable friend Alex Castanon. It warms my heart everytime I see him. He is always friendly and warm but very discrete and delicate at the same time. It doesn’t brag or show off. It just likes to share his positive feelings like a friendly bear would.

Please support this newsletter, by becoming a paid subscriber.

Follow a path with a heart.

The time is NOW.

From sunny Holbox,
Robin Good

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