Welcome,
my name is Robin Good and my mission is one of supporting those who want to realize their entrepreneurial dreams without selling their soul to marketing and to profit for the sake of profit.

I like to help those who want to open and explore new roads, experiment and discover alternative paths, those who want to leave a mark of their passage while truly helping others along the way.

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

There are also two formats:
a) the short synthetic version published on Substack you are reading now 
b) the full uncut version (28 pages) - inside a Google Document.

To unsubscribe click here.

To get in touch with me, Robin Good, just email me at:
RobinGood@substack.com 

I am here to make friends.

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

Robin Good

Read the Full edition Gdoc

1) How To Create Real Value

Go Beyond Blogging

There is an alternative to blogging and traditional writing to create value online. It’s called “digital gardening”. Instead of writing articles, you sow ideas, collect and annotate resources in an open format that keeps getting updated over-time. Learn more about digital gardens and what they are: “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden”

Source: Maggie Appleton - “Nerding Hard on Digital Gardens…”

Compile Florilegia

In the Middle Ages, some of the most appreciated publications were “florilegia”(gathered flowers). These florilegia were nothing else but beautifully illustrated anthologies of great writings from different authors. Wise written snippets taken from great authors of the past as well from contemporary writers.  

Source: @Brian Klaas - “​​Dear Writer: Advice on Conjuring Good Ideas”

Organize by Topic

Not by the latest or by type. This is a common error made by many. People look for solutions to specific problems and needs. Not for resources by type or date. Organize what you publish based on topics, applications, usage, so that people can easily find what they are looking for. 

Robin Good

2) How To Cultivate Relationships

Organize Learning Events

Having a long list of emails or having a bunch of your subscribers join an online forum does not make a community. What helps a community to take shape and to grow its own fruits are rituals and events. Without those I must admit that there’s no real community you can speak of. Here are 15 event ideas to learn together, to cultivate and grow relationships within the context of building a real, vibrant community of passionate fans.

Source: KP - “Build a World Class Community”

Pick Successful Dreamers

More often than not I forget to realize how important it is - for my future - who I spend my time with, now. “When you are seeking to bring big plans to fruition it is important with whom you regularly associate. Hang out with friends who are like-minded and who are also designing purpose-filled lives. Similarly, be that kind of a friend for your friends.” 

Source: Darshak Rana - “3 Toxic Relationship Habits People Think Are Acceptable”

Remember the Why 

How can you remain "in love" with something you have in front of our eyes every single day? Remember the *why*. Why did you decide to take this path, when you first started it? Forgetting little by little why we came to take a certain path rather than a different one is a common, very popular mistake. This is how we become slaves of our own choosing. Think back and remember the why you are doing what you are doing.

Robin Good

3) How To Communicate Effectively

Make Your Slang

Be human. Differentiate your communication style from anything that could come out of an AI bot. Develop and use habitually creative language quirks, dialects, memes, and jargon that characterizes you. Using neologisms, jargon, euphemistic emoji, unusual phrases, ingroup dialects, and memes-of-the-moment will help signal that you are a human and not an AI.

Source: - Maggie appleton - “The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI”

Get Inspired 

Looking for a browsable and well organized catalog of all the best layout alternatives available? I have spent a few days pulling together the best web design inspiration collections already available online, and I have picked from each one, the best selections I found. Web Design Inspiration Examples Collections - 70+ free inspirational collections showcasing over 55,000 best design examples. 

Robin Good

Be Clear

Score how effective you are communicating via your newsletter. Check how many of these items you have in place: 1) A well-crafted, recognizable logo that can work and be recognized also at “favicon” sizes. 2) A name that is unique and easy to communicate (no need for spelling). A newsletter tagline that clearly says: …

Read More in the Full Gdoc

4) How To Market  Yourself

Curate Stuff

The road to gain both authority and trust from your readers is to curate content.
“Every single time that you curate you build trust. And with trust comes authority.” The best strategy overall to do effective inbound content marketing.

Source: Hubspot - Is Curation the New Inbound Marketing?
[Video] (3’:30”)

Do Research

“Leverage your research skills. One of the best ways to stand out in a corporate setting, even as someone with less work experience, is to develop unique knowledge that makes you a go-to resource for your colleagues and clients. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to use your research skills to synthesize and master industry specific knowledge, trends, and information.”

Source: Harvard Business Review - “How To Gain Credibility When You Have Little Experience”

Get a Great Headshot

There is a slur of new interesting apps and services that specialize in generating a professional set of looking photo-portraits of you, while starting from a few casual pictures you have of yourself. The results are pretty impressive and the cost is more than affordable. Check out: 

• Headshot Pro (from $29 - 40 headshots)

• Arible ($12.99 - unlimited pics)

• Khama ($34.99 - for 500 images)

5) How To Get More Visibility

Invest In Reputation

Last year, Moz, the SEO-focused tool builder / online magazine / blog / newsletter, released an extensive list of key visibility factors to prioritize. Among those visibility factors, there are three that I deem particularly strategic for indie entrepreneurs, trusted advisors, consultants, teachers, and coaches:

1) Establish Author Pages

2) Create FAQs

3) Conduct Reputation Research

Source: Smart Google SEO Tips

Create Blockbuster Content

“Research of the data by Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse shows that blockbuster content is receiving a larger percentage of the attention pie than ever…  Why? The higher quality something is in terms of the underlying ideas and how it is packaged, the more likely it is to be shared over and over.”

Read more in the Full Gdoc

Source: Michael Simmons - “Blockbuster: The #1 Mental Model For Writers Who Want To Create High-Quality, Viral Content”

Be In the News

“The online hub where journalists and verified experts connect”.  Newly discovered service allows indie entrepreneurs to intercept journalists' requests looking for experts' opinions on specific topics. Experts are all vetted (at a cost of $79 each). When you get quoted you pay something in between $350 and $600 depending on the level of distribution of the media mentioning you.

Vetted

6) How To Monetize

Create Resource Marketplaces

Monetizing through directory sites, marketplaces, or listing sites. Platforms like Airbnb and Upwork are very hard to compete with and to disrupt due to the perfect balance of supply and demand that they have been able to build. Can you apply the same principle to other sectors and niche fields where you could collect and organize people, resources or information that other people are constantly looking for?

Read more in the Full Gdoc

Inspired by: Vasco Monteiro - “Monetizing On the Sharing Economy”

Create Directories

Directories are easy to build and scale up, especially with the help of AI writing tools right now. It’s easy to build a list of companies to contact to list on the directory (I was able to find a list of 27,000 leads for my latest one). The napkin math is incredible: …

Read more in the Full Gdoc

Source: Chris Osborne - “Why I Am So Bullish about Web Directories”

Charge To Feature

Check the story of this startup which has created a directory of tech tools. 

• Brings in 1.3 million views a month

• Costs $130/mo to be on the featured page

• With 106 featured listings, that's $13,780 per month in revenue

Please note that most of the content seems to be user generated. SaaS companies submit their products by filling out a form, and can opt-in to pay to be featured. Here are the details inside the section “Key Curation Trends”. 

Source: Niall Doherty - “2 Directory Sites Earning $10,000+ Per Month”

7) How To Stay Ahead

Befriend Those Ahead of You

“You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Be wise and spend time with people that are ahead of you and [who are already] making a living by creating digital products.” 

Source: Aimee Groth - “You're The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With”

Fight To Find Them

We become like the people around us, so it’s hard to sustain ambition in a complacent environment. This is why actors move to Hollywood, musicians move to Nashville, etc. When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Fight to find your kindred spirits, even if it means moving across the world or staying in on Saturdays to write on the Internet.” 

Source: Davide Perell - “Ambitious People Need Each Other”

Have a System

Work on systems, not on goals. “In the world of dieting, losing twenty pounds is a goal, but eating right is a system. Goal-oriented people mostly fail. If your goal is to lose 20 pounds, you will constantly think that you are not at your goal until you reach it. If you fall short, you’re still a failure. The only way to reach your goal is to lose 20 pounds. It’s a state of near-perpetual failure.”

Source: Farnam Street - “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big”

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Web Design Inspiration Examples

Discover 70+ free inspirational collections showcasing over 55,000 web design examples

A super-collection of web design examples of:

• Websites

• Portfolio Websites

• One-page Websites

• Landing Pages

• Pricing Pages

• Contact Pages

• Testimonials

• About Us Pages

• and many more (25+ different page types in total)

Subscribe now.

From the Heart

Story of the Two Buckets

And the restaurant of Mistaken Orders.
Always include humanity.

Duration: 1’:49”

via Storythings - “Being Bored, Being Bad, and the Restaurant of Mistaken Orders”

Read more on these topics by checking out the extended edition of this newsletter.

Read the Full Gdoc

If this newsletter did help or inspire you, please do let me know.(email me at robingood@substack.com)

If you like what I do, please consider supporting me.

Follow a path with a heart.

The time is NOW.

From sunny Holbox,
Robin Good

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