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3 lessons for your business from the Wright Brothers

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This sculpture at Kill Devil Hill, N.C., commemorates the historic 1903 flight by the Wright Brothers.

We all know that the Wright Brothers are the forefathers of modern aviation, inventing and flying the first machine-powered airplane to carry a man.

In anticipation of visiting both the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kill Devil Hill, N.C., I recently finished reading (for the second time) The Wright Brothers by that expert storyteller David McCullough. I was struck by how much I learned about the entire Wright family that could be applied to modern business. Here are three lessons that stand out for me.

Be curious and read voraciously.

If Wilbur and Orville hadn’t both possessed a deep well of curiosity from a young age, they might never have built airplanes. According to McCullough, their father, Bishop Milton Wright, believed in the educational value of toys. Bishop Wright gave his young sons a tiny toy helicopter made of wood. Orville’s first-grade teacher recalled him playing with pieces of wood and telling her that he was making a machine that he and his brother would fly some day. Neither of the Wright Brothers went to college but that didn’t stop them from being voracious readers and observers. Remember there was no Internet back then. Wilbur spent hours watching birds fly to glean insights. On Decoration Day in 1899 he wrote to the Smithsonian Institution to ask them to mail to him in Dayton, Ohio, all the pamphlets on aviation it had published and a list of any books written in English on the subject.

Work hard to be financially independent.

The Wrights deliberately never sought investors in the early years as they developed and tested their various planes. Instead, they founded and ran a bicycle shop, where they built bicycles and sold them. This was in the late 1800s/early 1900s when bicycles became a popular mode of transportation. The profits from running the shop went into paying for the materials for their flying machines. Both men lived frugally, remained single, and lived at home with their father and sister. I’m not advocating that people shun marriage and having their own families, but there is something to be said for turning away from our materialistic yearnings in order to reach loftier goals.

Keep Sundays sacred.

The Wright Brothers’ father was a minister, so perhaps it’s not surprising that the brothers, no matter where they were (testing planes in North Carolina or France for instance), never worked on Sundays. For many of us, our work life has intruded onto our Sundays for years. I’m old enough to remember when most stores were closed on Sunday and our day evolved around Mass followed by family dinner. (Just like on the TV show Blue Bloods.) The compulsion to check and respond to emails, or spend hours on social media on Sundays has been a strong one for me. But in recent months, I’ve tried to deliberately tune all that out or at  least cut back. I find myself feeling much more relaxed as I focus on being present and slowing down my compulsion to cram too much into a Sunday.

There’s much more to be learned from McCullough’s book. It’s a fast, entertaining and inspiring read.

Let me know what you think of it.

5 ways to make money from blogging

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There are a variety of ways to make money with a blog but you need strong traffic to do so.

Do you blog and want to earn money for doing it?

In preparation for an advanced blogging class that I teach, I read a couple e-books written by people who, through trial and error, now make money from their blogs. The books are How to Make Money Blogging by Bob Lotich and How to Make Money from Blogging by Liam Price.

I’m going to share some of their strategies and tools, but I want you to know that both authors emphasized that it takes a long time before you start to see real income. That’s because you need to spend time building a following. (How to build your following is a topic for another post.)

Direct sales

I do think the best way to make money off your blog is by using it to sell your products that you’ve created (like books or E-books or guides or software or CDs or DVDS) or your services (counseling, writing and editing, etc.). You’re using your blog to share your expertise. I’ve successfully used a blog to sell my books Sutter’s Sodas Satisfy: A Memoir of 90 Years of Sutter Drug Co. Click here to read that blog.

Be a brand spokesperson or ambassador

A lot of companies that make products, such as food items or clothing or electronics, are looking for people to blog about them. The companies provide you with the products for free, and then you also receive money for blogging. In the interest of ethics, please make sure that you disclose you are being paid but that your opinion of the product is your own (assuming that’s the deal). A Rochester-area blogger who does this quite well is Melissa Rosario Bailey, who blogs at Hungry Food Love, and uses food products in her recipes.

Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a free way for you to run ads on your blog. You choose the type of ads you want, such as display ads or text ads. You copy and paste a piece of code onto your site where you want the ads to appear. Advertisers bid for your ad space in a real-time auction. You get paid for ads being seen or clicked on. This is called CPC or cost per click. You get money from Google when you reach a certain payment threshold that you’ve set. You have to apply for this program, and it’s not really known how Google decides whom to accept. Your chances are better of course if you already have considerable traffic to your blog.

BidVertiser, Infolinks and Revenue Hits are other options, and there are more. These probably have a lower acceptance threshold than getting into Google AdSense.

Affiliate links

Having affiliate links on your blog means that you recommend training programs, services, or products. When someone buys that program or service through the affiliate link, you earn a commission. There’s no additional cost to the consumer. It’s best to offer products you use or have used, or that are developed by people you know and trust. This also gives you an opportunity to bring to your readers information on programs, etc., of which they may not have heard.

Here’s a good post from Problogger on affiliate marketing on your blog.

BuySellAds.com

Your blog needs to be getting at least 50,000 impressions a month to qualify for BuySellAds.com, which connects advertisers to you as a publisher.

What’s your best option?

While there are many ways to make money from your blog, I think most businesses are using their blogs to show their expertise and credibility, which can lead to sales of products or services. Still, it’s worth exploring these other options to bring in additional income.

Have you made money from your blog? I’d like to hear about it.

 

 

 

 

Robin Roberts: Make your mess your message

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Robin Roberts shares her personal philosophies in this memoir.
Robin Roberts shares her personal philosophies in this memoir.

I just finished reading Robin Roberts’ fabulous memoir Everybody’s Got Something about her roller coaster ride dealing with a rare blood disorder called myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS).

I first saw Roberts on TV when she was a news anchor for ESPN. “Wow, that’s different,” I thought. I could hardly believe that I was seeing a black woman actually getting to anchor a sports show with the guys, and she was not relegated to the sidelines. Then she moved over to Good Morning America. “Good for her,” I thought. “Someone is recognizing her talent and she’s not being pigeon-holed into staying in sports coverage.”

When I was shopping at the Pittsford Library book sale recently, I saw her memoir, and I passed over it at first, then decided to buy it as I’m always looking for an inspirational read. I’m not a morning TV show watcher, and I don’t think I even knew Roberts had gone through a bone marrow transplant, although I did recall that she’d had breast cancer several years ago.

In her memoir, Roberts writes,

“In Mississippi, where I’m from, there’s an understanding that hard times don’t discriminate. My mother used to say, ‘Everybody’s got something.’ This is the story of my something and my road to something better.”

Yes, everyone has something, some pain, some problem, that they have to deal with. But the saying that stood out to me is another from Roberts’ mother: “Make your mess your message.”

That’s brilliant. If you face adversity, then somehow, some way, turn that into a cause. Roberts certainly did, by being open with her TV audience about her disease, her need for a bone marrow transplant or else she would die within two years. Lucky for her, one of her sisters was a 100 percent match. Roberts’ story inspired thousands of people to join the national bone marrow registry. The majority of people who need a bone marrow transplant never get one because they never find a match. Roberts also has spent time communicating and encouraging people who are waiting for that match.

Her book makes clear that her journey with MDS was no picnic; her mother passed shortly after she was diagnosed so she dealt with that grief in addition to her illness. I admire Roberts’ candor about her feelings and her struggles. Even if you’re a celebrity, it takes courage to share such a personal story.

What’s your mess? What’s your message?