I deeply value my read­ers and sub­scribers, as much as they value me, my exper­tise, and my rec­om­men­da­tions. For this rea­son, I try to be as open and forth­right as possible.

I’m a big fan of dis­clo­sure. I believe in it. While I will make every attempt to dis­close each time I make a rec­om­men­da­tion on this blog, some­times I can’t or I sim­ply for­get. So I’ve included an abbre­vi­ated form on the sidebar.

How­ever, in an effort to be as clear and can­did as pos­si­ble, I’d like to post a more com­plete ver­sion, which high­lights some of my rela­tion­ships, the ways I am com­pen­sated, as well as the results I some­times show­case on this blog.

Here they are…

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I love social media. And I love try­ing and test­ing new stuff. If there’s some new social media tool, web­site, or com­mu­nity, I’ll be one of the first ones to try it out.

But there is a limit. And I think we need to be care­ful. Because social media is like a drug. It can become dan­ger­ously addic­tive. It can even kill your business.

Social media seems to be the cur­rent fad. Everybody’s in on it like it’s one big cock­tail party you just don’t want to leave.

But the way social media is cur­rently being touted, hyped up, and used (or should I say, abused), is rem­i­nis­cent of some­thing that hap­pened way back in the 90s.

(I’ll come back to this in a moment.)

Yes­ter­day, I watched a bril­liant video by Loren Feld­man. Feld­man has a tell-​​it-​​like-​​it-​​is style. While he may be blunt and use strong lan­guage to voice his opin­ion, he is never afraid to voice it. Regard­less of what I think of his style, his video res­onated with me.

In it, he drove home an impor­tant point. I believe what he talked about is not only right, but also some­thing we need to real­ize and become wise about before we need­lessly kill our busi­nesses. And that’s ignor­ing the most impor­tant place on the web…

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“If you like to gam­ble, I tell you I’m your man. You win some, you lose some, it’s all the same to me.” — Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades”

I’m get­ting fed up.

It seems to me that prod­uct launches of late have less to do with sub­stance and strat­egy, and more to do with tricks and tac­tics. Blame it on the econ­omy. But I think we need to blame it on some­thing else. Some­thing more sinister.

In fact, have you not noticed that a grow­ing num­ber of mar­keters are urg­ing you to join their “club,” as if it’s some secret, back-​​of-​​the-​​room, clan­des­tine poker game?

Speak­ing of poker, busi­ness is some­what of a gam­ble. And admit­tedly, gam­bling can be prof­itable. Very prof­itable. After all, the more you gam­ble, the greater you win, right?

But do we really need to gam­ble with our customers?

What about the long-​​term? What about build­ing busi­nesses rather than just mak­ing money? What about invest­ing instead? What about invest­ing in your cus­tomers that can pay some­times 10 to 100 times more over the long run?

For exam­ple, some­one men­tioned a new pay-​​per-​​follower pro­gram on Twit­ter. (Ugh. How is that any dif­fer­ent than from spam­mers buy­ing bulk email lists?) I responded, and this pretty much sums up my phi­los­o­phy — it should be yours, too — with:

“I’d hate to treat my cus­tomers like pris­on­ers or prostitutes.”

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A lot of peo­ple ask me what’s my blog­ging strat­egy. They want to know, for instance, how I post arti­cles, build a list, and drive traf­fic to my blog. More impor­tant, they want to know how I make money with it. Those are good questions.

The short answer, of course, is to keep offer­ing great con­tent. Fresh con­tent. Con­tent you find valu­able. Con­tent you believe may be of inter­est or value to your readers.

But here’s some­thing you might find surprising…

I don’t use my blog as a busi­ness model like some A-​​list blog­gers out there. Mak­ing money is purely a byprod­uct. Sure, I do have ads on it, inter­spersed through­out, link­ing either to my prod­ucts or to prod­ucts I’m an affil­i­ate of. But they are not focal points.

Granted, those ads do help to pay the bills, keep my blog alive, and incen­tivize me to con­tinue post­ing what I hope is valu­able con­tent for my readers.

But some peo­ple won­der how I drive traf­fic to this blog and build my list of sub­scribers. After all, I don’t adver­tise it at all with any paid adver­tis­ing — other than in my sig­na­ture file on some forum posts, or on my social net­work pro­files like Twit­ter and Face­book.

I’ve revealed part of my strat­egy in some courses, such as Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity, which is our flag­ship train­ing prod­uct. I’ve also revealed it in a few inter­views I gave here and there. I’ve also revealed a hand­ful of them on this blog in the past.

How­ever, there are very spe­cific things I do to help me grow this blog.

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Here at the Big Sem­i­nar in Atlanta, the same ques­tion seems to pop up over and over again. I walk with a cane now, and peo­ple keep ask­ing me, “Michel, What’s wrong? Are you OK? What happened?”

I don’t blame them. My wife told me I was turn­ing as white as a ghost, so we’ve decided to go back to our room to take some time — and pres­sure — off my spine.

I thought to myself, “Maybe I should take advan­tage of this down­time to blog about this — that way, more peo­ple will know what’s going on.”

You see, I have a bro­ken back. Literally.

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(You’re in for a real treat. In this post, I’m pub­lish­ing an answer I gave to one of my coach­ing clients, in which I describe one of my mon­ey­mak­ing strate­gies. I won’t do this often. So sit back and get ready to take notes.)

Some peo­ple, how­ever, wanted a “taste” of what kind of answers I give. Fair ques­tion. So I’ve decided to reprint an answer from a ques­tion I received the other day from a coach­ing student.

Ques­tion: “Michel, I don’t have a proven prod­uct, and I don’t have my own list. What should I do?”

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John Chow recently posted a call to mon­ey­mak­ing British-​​Columbia blog­gers for a news­pa­per inter­view in his province. (Too bad it’s not about Cana­dian blog­gers, since I’m in Ottawa, Ontario, and I would have loved the extra publicity).

Nev­er­the­less, this is an inter­est­ing topic I wanted to cover in this blog because a lot of peo­ple are ask­ing about it. In fact, we dis­cussed it on a call with Clay­ton Make­peace, enti­tled “Blog­ging For Dol­lars.” Peo­ple raved so much about the call that they’ve begged Clay­ton for a sec­ond one. (And yes, by pop­u­lar demand, we’re doing one in March, so stay tuned!)

But let me share, how­ever, some of the things we dis­cussed on the call — along with a few tid­bits on how you can make money with a blog.

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