The Idea Guy is Also a Bean-Counter
The Big Picture is still made of Nuts and Bolts
The Big Picture is still made of Nuts and Bolts
Firstly I want to welcome the bean-counters to the growing ranks of people who just don't care for me much at all.
I don't mean to single them out or imply there is anything bad about being a counter of beans. Their job is one of precision.
Results-driven.
My background is one of sales, and sales are results-driven, also precise, but to a lesser degree.
People look for numbers, performance, and profits. They look for formulas on how to make sales so they can improve on them and teach newbie salespeople how to do it.
So there's a numbers guy in me.
To discover your personal formula, you work backward in dissecting whatever information you have early.
You look at last month's income. You simply divide that amount by the number of times you tried to make a sale. (Prospects, presentations, etc.) That gives you, on a very basic scale, the amount each of your presentations or prospects was worth.
If you decide to change (usually increase) your income, you can figure pretty quickly how you need to adjust that which can adjust — the number of prospects you get in front of.
Simple and quantifiable.
So I like things simple and quantifiable. I like having beans to count.
Medium presents a new set of problems to me, however, or at least a variation on my set of problems.
My success is, to a good deal, determined by my number of reads. By my old method, I could oversimplify and just get more reads by submitting more stories. And on one level, yes, that works.
But then I get into a much less quantifiable area. Was my story any good? Was my title eye-catching? Was the article long enough, or too long? Was it about an interesting enough topic for the day's readers?
A tweak in any of these can produce large results in my bottom line of the number of reads.
Do I submit it to a publication or self-publish or start my own publication? They all make a difference and are variables you must experiment with for yourself.
Baseline.
So here is my suggestion that, for now, satisfies the accountant/sales manager in me. It has to do with establishing the baseline to start with.
As hard as it probably will be for any of us, a 90 day period should probably be used to establish it.
Take those three months and write a slightly more than a comfortable number of stories, and see what kind of results you are getting before you start to make adjustments.
During that period of time, also read hungrily about results other people have had.
I just read a couple of figures this morning. Based on them, I should hope I publish stories that cross the 100-read threshold as soon as possible, though many are from my early writing.
Another concrete figure I found this morning is that having a rolling average of 5000 views might make an author a couple of hundred dollars a month.
These numbers might not work for everybody or even anybody, but at least, I have a couple of real numbers to play with — some targets I can shoot for.
Then after ninety days, I can decide how to tweak.
The bottom line.
So, the bottom line is everyone is different. We are alike only in that we want a quick and easy answer. But this is uncharted territory. You must make your own chart.
Don’t give up during your personal chart-making period, because after that you can really pick up speed.
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