Former chairman of MySpace speaks about Demand Media

Rosenblatt, former chairman of MySpace (sold to Rupert Murdoch), is on to something. Something big. Interview HERE.

He mentioned their recently launched site, www.wehow.com.

The key is what he told Business 2.0 magazine: "It's no longer about what you show, but what you know."

My take is that the user-generated content model is shifting to an emerging expert-generated content model, where people who know stuff that's valuable, can make a lot of money.

Of course, a lot of experts who write often and update a blog, have been making money for a while with Google's AdSense.

However, I think Rosenblatt is aiming at expert people who might have difficulty converting their tacit (i.e. in their head) knowledge into explicit knowledge (i.e. knowledge on paper or on a blog that is clearly understandable to readers and learners).

I've been thinking about this model for the last two years, and I call it the knowledge-to-cash business model, or K2$ model. Now, Rosenblatt has created, with 200 million dollars, a mega business that is exactly expressing that idea.

Anyone who wants to benefit from this trend, has only to answer two questions: what valuable knowledge do I have, and who would value my knowledge enough to pay for it?

Make money by teaching

Anybody can blog. Not anybody can teach.

This is the challenge posed by Slideshare.net, which allows people to easily, free of charge, upload their PowerPoint presentations.

I think most people will find it easier to make money with Slideshare than with Blogger, for the simple reason that instructional materials are usually more valued and valuable than a blog.

Note: you can access all my teaching materials by searching, on Slideshare.net, for "superpeter."

I plan to create a Personal Library of Useful Knowledge (PLUK). I use that sonorous acronym because "pluck," in fact, means:

To pull off or out from the place of growth, as fruit, flowers, feathers, etc.

That is, I read tons of books and magazines, and extract the best knowledge which I then share with subscribers.

One great thing about Slideshare is that you can see WHICH presentations of yours are most popular, by looking at the number of views. At the same time, the number of views will reveal the truth about whether your uploaded knowledge is useful or not.

Some readers may ask, "Why not use YouTube, where you can hear sounds or a voice?"

Actually, you can use Gcast to create the voice-over for your PowerPoint presentations on Slideshare. Just include the link to the Gcast audio clip on the first page of your PowerPoint presentation.

A second reason why Slideshare seems better than YouTube is that visitors to the Slideshare site are in a "learning mood" so they might appreciate your submissions more, whereas YouTube visitors usually are looking for entertainment or music.

Finally, you can't upload a PowerPoint file on YouTube. You would have to use a video capture software to convert the PowerPoint file into a video file, then upload it.

Slideshare will make you rich

Youtube is toy, Slideshare.net is tool.

That's a recent conclusion I came to, after viewing a few highly informative slideshows on Slideshare. I even came up with a few promising business ideas after viewing presentations on "networked collaborative e-learning."

Youtube, on the other hand, is like TV: it's mindless entertainment. A toy may amuse kids, and to a certain degree, we have become kids who crave entertainment. This is why YouTube is so popular: 100 million views per day. It's the single most common time-waster at the office.

Slideshare, as a tool, enables a person to upload valuable knowledge and then to invite friends/allies to view the slides and provide feedback. You can even track the number of views to see WHICH slideshows of yours is most popular.

SLIDESHARE VS BLOGGER

Blogging is great, but unfortunately, most people view it as mere journaling, so they write carelessly without sharing any valuable information or knowledge.

Slideshare, however, is more serious. You have to write in PowerPoint format, and this forces you to engage in serious, rigorous thinking before writing.

A good exercise is to take the best non-fiction book you ever read, and summarize it in the form of a PowerPoint presentation.

Here's an example of an excellent book summary: http://slideshare.net/dongelen/the-long-tail-10352

The bottom line is that Slideshare will, in the long run, generate revenues for people who take knowledge seriously and are committed to teaching other people valuable stuff.

For example, a free agent or consultant (say, on Prosavvy.com) could create slide shows where she shares with potential or actual clients valuable knowledge. Clients and prospects will increasingly see this consultant as an expert in her field and, as a result, she will be considered FIRST when a need arises for her services.

Slideshare, part 2

I mentioned www.slideshare.com previously, and I must say that it is for Talentelle, my company, what Harvard Business Review calls a NGP, or New Growth Platform.

In other words, we (and you, too) can make a lot of money from it. I can't reveal details yet, but consider what world-renowned economist Paul Zane Pilzer says: "intellectual distribution", not physical distribution, is the next big thing.

Excerpt from his website (http://www.paulzanepilzer.com/tnm.htm):

The Next Millionaires explains in detail why the 21st century will be known as the age of the entrepreneur, and how you can stake your claim to being one of these next 10 million millionaires--especially if you are in direct selling, technology, home-based business, product distribution, or an emerging trillion-dollar industry like wellness. It explains how old models of opportunity in physical distribution have given way to new opportunities in intellectual distribution, defined as teaching people about products or services that they didn't even know exist. And, drawing on Pilzer's 33 years of experience as an entrepreneur and employer, it explains how to use your past to find your place in the new economy and your ticket to becoming one of The Next Millionaires.

In addition to teaching people about new products and services, you can also teach them about what you know. The key to benefitting financially from Slideshare is to know precisely what it is about what you know that other people want to know AND are willing to pay for. If nobody wants to know what you know, then it is possible you have been learning the wrong stuff.

However, in my experience, most people DO have a lot of useful knowledge. They just haven't thought about marketing it!

If your career or business is about event management, then consider giving a workshop on event management. Administrative assistants might be a great market, since their cost-conscious boss might ask to organize an event instead of hiring an external event manager.

If you're a graphic designer, create a workshop to teach marketing professionals (managers, VPs, etc.) about how graphic design can impact marketing results.

My point is: whatever you do well, and are passionate about, can easily be taught, thereby increasing your earnings.

And teaching is a lot of fun!

My former marketing teacher used to say to the class: "If you can't lecture on a topic, you don't master it yet."

In short, the ability to teach is REALLY a test of whether you have achieved mastery in your field. Given today's global and supercompetitive economy, people who are not masters at what they do, won't do very well.

This is why I encourage people to create PowerPoint slides summarizing their best knowledge, and share it via Slideshare. Next, invite all your contacts to view your slides and give you feedback on whether the knowledge presented is of value to them.

As mentioned previously, if most people say that your knowledge is not relevant or useful to them, it might be that you have been reading the wrong books or magazines or taken the wrong courses. Or it might be that the way you've packaged your knowledge could be improved.

Whatever feedback you get, you can improve your learning and knowledge mastery. This will increase your market value.

However, people might say that your knowledge is quite valuable, and they might suggest that you start giving a small seminar and charge people, say, $60 a seat. Then, your second "intellectual" will have been launched and, like me, you will feel so good about having valuable knowledge that people WANT and are willing to PAY FOR.

Yes, you will be PAID for talking!

When you reach that stage, I guarantee that your self-confidence will shoot through the roof! And you will be driven to read and learn MORE, so you can teach MORE and make MORE money!

Slideshare, part 2

I mentioned www.slideshare.com previously, and I must say that it is for Talentelle, my company, what Harvard Business Review calls a NGP, or New Growth Platform.

In other words, we (and you, too) can make a lot of money from it. I can't reveal details yet, but consider what world-renowned economist Paul Zane Pilzer says: "intellectual distribution", not physical distribution, is the next big thing.

Excerpt from his website (http://www.paulzanepilzer.com/tnm.htm):

The Next Millionaires explains in detail why the 21st century will be known as the age of the entrepreneur, and how you can stake your claim to being one of these next 10 million millionaires--especially if you are in direct selling, technology, home-based business, product distribution, or an emerging trillion-dollar industry like wellness. It explains how old models of opportunity in physical distribution have given way to new opportunities in intellectual distribution, defined as teaching people about products or services that they didn't even know exist. And, drawing on Pilzer's 33 years of experience as an entrepreneur and employer, it explains how to use your past to find your place in the new economy and your ticket to becoming one of The Next Millionaires.

In addition to teaching people about new products and services, you can also teach them about what you know. The key to benefitting financially from Slideshare is to know precisely what it is about what you know that other people want to know AND are willing to pay for. If nobody wants to know what you know, then it is possible you have been learning the wrong stuff.

However, in my experience, most people DO have a lot of useful knowledge. They just haven't thought about marketing it!

If your career or business is about event management, then consider giving a workshop on event management. Administrative assistants might be a great market, since their cost-conscious boss might ask to organize an event instead of hiring an external event manager.

If you're a graphic designer, create a workshop to teach marketing professionals (managers, VPs, etc.) about how graphic design can impact marketing results.

My point is: whatever you do well, and are passionate about, can easily be taught, thereby increasing your earnings.

And teaching is a lot of fun!

My former marketing teacher used to say to the class: "If you can't lecture on a topic, you don't master it yet."

In short, the ability to teach is REALLY a test of whether you have achieved mastery in your field. Given today's global and supercompetitive economy, people who are not masters at what they do, won't do very well.

This is why I encourage people to create PowerPoint slides summarizing their best knowledge, and share it via Slideshare. Next, invite all your contacts to view your slides and give you feedback on whether the knowledge presented is of value to them.

As mentioned previously, if most people say that your knowledge is not relevant or useful to them, it might be that you have been reading the wrong books or magazines or taken the wrong courses. Or it might be that the way you've packaged your knowledge could be improved.

Whatever feedback you get, you can improve your learning and knowledge mastery. This will increase your market value.

However, people might say that your knowledge is quite valuable, and they might suggest that you start giving a small seminar and charge people, say, $60 a seat. Then, your second "intellectual" will have been launched and, like me, you will feel so good about having valuable knowledge that people WANT and are willing to PAY FOR.

Yes, you will be PAID for talking!

When you reach that stage, I guarantee that your self-confidence will shoot through the roof! And you will be driven to read and learn MORE, so you can teach MORE and make MORE money!

Value co-creation

Value co-creation is hot these days. It's the idea that companies should "partner" with customers to "co-create" value. All the juicy details can be found in the book The Future of Competition, by C.K. Prahalad.

If you're not running a business but are working as an employee or careerist, you might still benefit from this powerful concept. In fact, Napoleon Hill, author of the best-selling book Think and Grow Rich, wrote about a similar concept, except that he called it Mastermind Groups.

A MG is a group of people that you commit to meeting on a regular basis in order to exchange ideas, empower one another, and update each other on progress.

Value co-creation is basically a manifestation of the adage "two heads are better than one."

In fact, the more heads, the better!

At Talentelle, where I'm working as CEO (chief empowerment officer), we recently began to organize PIE sessions (for Partner Information & Empowerment). During these lively, interactive sessions, we explain to business people how Talentelle operates, what our business model is (yes, yes, we show all our secret recipes!), and how they, as free agents or entrepreneurs, can benefit by joining our community.

I believe this is the way business will be conducted in the future: get to know the needs, priorities and concerns of your collaborators or potential partners, and seek first to be of service to them.

You'd be surprised how many people go into business by uniquely focusing on their own needs (making money). This formula rarely works.

The word "BUSINESS", in fact, reveals a powerful clue that should be kept in mind by first-time entrepreneurs. Notice that the letter "U" precedes the letter "I."

As a business person, I should always keep in mind, when I face a client: "U are served before I am served."

Slideshare - more power to you!

www.slideshare.net is a powerful tool I just discovered. It's free and allows you to share (or view) slides.

Of course, you can do the same on YouTube, except that you can't easily go forward or backward on YouTube. Also, you would have to convert your PowerPoint files into a video, which would then be uploaded on YouTube.

But here's my insight: YouTube allows people to share what the EYE can see, whereas Slideshare empowers people to share what the MIND can see.

In other words, YouTube can be entertaining, but only Slideshare can be educational or instructional.

I predict Slideshare will be bought soon for an obscene amount of money, as more and more people become users and realize that the Web is best used for instructional purposes, not entertainment.

Knowledge or Money?

When a man who has experience meets a man who has money, the man with experience gets the money, and the man with money gets the experience.

But here's the thing: the first man still keeps his experience, AND is walking away richer.

This is fundamentally why knowledge is always superior to money.

This is why, for instance, Donald Trump was able to come back, even though he was in debt for billions of dollars. His friends went out of business, but he never gave up. He had the knowledge.

But what is this knowledge? If you have an MBA, do you have this "business" knowledge?

This mysterious ability to see money all around you, with your "mind's eye" and not the physical eye that most people are using, is a rare ability indeed.

It comes from mental acuity that can only be developed by either a self-learning genius of the Leonardo Da Vinci variety, or someone who is coached by a master.

Adrian Slywotzky is one such master. Jay Abraham, Jim Rohn, etc. are other masters to study carefully. Dr. Edward de Bono is probably my favorite. He wrote over 60 books.

I realize that most subscribers won't bother to look up these masters, and it's okay. But I know also that the few who do, will thank me later on.

Here's an idea if you don't have time to read business books. Pick one, and get together with a group of friends, and assign one chapter to each person. Next, get together and let each person present a summary of the chapter's key ideas. This can be a lot of fun. It also allows each person to really master the chapter he/she is responsible for explaining.

I've found that the best way to learn and master a topic, is to teach it to someone.

Entrepreneur vs Inventor

A Far Side cartoon I saw years ago illustrates the difference between an inventor and an entrepreneur: two caveman were standing around what apparently was the first fire ever sparked by mankind. With their hands in the air and a look of sudden surprise on their face, one shouts "Hurray, I discovered fire!" while the other shouts: "Hurray, I discovered insurance!"

Of course, this is not historically true, since insurance was invented in Italy in the 14th century and only became widespread after a major fire occurred in London around 1666 (interesting, isn't "666" the number of the devil?).

The point is simply that it takes a sharp knowledge of human psychology (fear, doubt, insecurity, etc.) as well as mastery of mathematics (in this case, actuarial science) in order to create customer value.

Okay, here's my little insight: The Internet is like fire!

People today, at least in the developed world, take Internet for granted. It is as normal and common as a matchbox or lighter (although nobody has approached me in public and asked, "Excuse, would you have an Internet connection?").

People take the Internet so much for granted that they are missing tons of opportunities for MAKING SERIOUS MONEY FROM IT.

Here's a great example of elegant Internet entrepreneurship: in the mid-90s, two engineers presented a business idea to a panel of venture capitalists, but were turned down. As they walked toward the door, an investor asked: "Do you guys have any other ideas?"

They looked at each other and blurted out that they actually were thinking about offering a free email service to people, who would have to subscribe, and so on and so forth.

The rest is history: they created Hotmail, bought two years later by Microsoft for hundreds of millions of dollars!

Yes, technology played an important part, but isn't email quite simple? The value I think was in the humongous user base which was built almost auto-catalytically, that is, by itself and automatically, through sociological momentum (i.e. a Hotmail user would email someone, and an invitation to join Hotmail would always appear at the bottom of the email, so the recipient of the email would become a Hotmail user too -- sounds very much like viral marketing).

In short, the business design was quite brilliant.

So in your case, how will you make a lot of money from the Internet?