10 ways to be successful continued

FAIL
A fear of failure is probably the number one thing stopping someone from succeeding. If you think you will fail you are not likely to even start. This even applies to activities you are currently engaged in. When I first started Listverse I created five blogs all on completely different subjects. After a week none were succeeding. At that point most people would give up thinking it was a failure. And it was: for four of the blogs. In week two Listverse took off. I closed the other blogs and focused all of my attention on Listverse alone. If I had let the fear of failure stop me, you wouldn’t be reading this right now and I would probably still be programming software for other people instead of spending my days doing what I love most: sharing fascinating facts with friends.

FOCUS ON YOUR FOLLOWERS
Facebook. Love it or hate it, it is a huge part of the Internet. We have always had Facebook like buttons on Listverse to help promote us but recently I noticed something. Every day around eight hundred thousand pages are viewed here. And the Facebook likes each day number in the low hundreds. This isn’t because we aren’t popular: it’s because most of our readers aren’t the type of people who click “like”. It takes roughly two seconds for the social sharing buttons to load on a page. For the sake of three hundred people who clicked like, we were making 799,700 people waste two seconds of their precious time. This is not focusing on our followers: it is focusing on marketing. Two days ago I removed all social sharing buttons from our articles. By removing these sharing buttons we improved the experience of our followers at the risk of reducing our marketing to a bigger audience. It was well worth it. Focus on the people who follow you—don’t try to create a new market. If you do you will lose your biggest asset: your fans.


BE TINY
We all have a tendency to think big. But that tendency can actually inhibit our success. If you want to write a book or create a product or the next big thing on the net, focus on attracting a small audience of very dedicated fans. Don’t be put off if your idea only appeals to a few. If you work hard for that few they will reward you by sharing your passion with others. It is far better to have 1,000 devoted followers than 100,000 take-it-or-leave-it customers. Famous jewelry store Tiffany & Co. were an exclusive brand. They were exclusive and they were small. But they decided to grow. They launched a new product line aimed at the mid-price jewelry market and the end result was near bankruptcy. They have now returned to their original niche. Calvin Klein isn’t so hot now that you can buy their underwear at most department stores; but when they started out they were exclusive. Who wants to rave to their friends about having CK underwear now?