This is my first post on my newly designed website. We are still making changes to it, and I hope it will be a source of information on a variety of topics. I thought I would lead off with Radio Digital Monetization. It seems to be the topic in every media publication, the headline topic at many Broadcast Conferences, and the inspiration for many posts on LinkedIn.
During my time on the sideline (a very interesting story for another day), I wondered what I was going to do. I enjoy trading a great deal, but radio has been a part of most of my adult life, and I am not ready for it to be a part of my past. I have always believed in what I call my three income theory, which I don’t think is revolutionary. I think it is a good idea to have multiple streams of income, now more than ever. I try to learn new skills all the time, it keeps your brain working, and you never know when that skill will come in handy. I try to learn one new skill every three months. Some require more time than others, so I do adjust accordingly. It didn’t take Stephen Hawking to decipher that radio was going to be more and more a part of the internet and digital age. I kept hearing radio people talk about embracing the digital space for monetization. So I decided to learn everything I could about the internet. Not how to create software, but how to get people to pay attention, and do what you want them to do. There is a lot of traffic on the internet, if you learn to control the traffic, you control your ability to make money. When I began trading, I started reading magazines, and taking some courses to learn information that I hoped would give me an edge. It is not an accident that there are traders that make millions, if not billions. And then there are traders that do nothing more than continue to “blow up” their accounts by making bad trades and not being smart enough to dump the losers right away. You never hear about them again. That is why I searched to find a very successful trader that could be my mentor and teach me how to trade like a professional. Being a professional trader means you will lose money, nobody makes money on every trade. But a good trader will, and does make money. If you meet someone that says he/she never loses(see Lenny Dykstra)….run. It doesn’t happen. The good trader dumps the losers, and let’s the winners run. It sounds easy, but ask anyone that has blown up their account. It isn’t. Of course, there is more to it than that, but that is the one rule almost every trader lives by.
When I decided to learn more about the internet, I originally did it because I thought it would help me when I went back on the air. I thought the best people to learn from would be people that made money on the internet. I figured they knew something most people don’t. And they do. You have to be careful, there are some less than ethical internet marketers out there. The thing I found out was not only do their customers dislike them, the good, honest, ethical internet marketers do as well. It makes their job even harder. I was fortunate to find someone who is both excellent, and ethical. What I started to learn was, internet marketers would kill (not literally, but they would certainly maim) to have access to what we in radio have access to every day. I immediately saw the opportunity for me not only to help my radio show, but to show radio how they could do things like internet marketers and it would be a game changer for them. Radio digital monetization is in it’s infancy, despite what many in the business think. I was shocked when I asked a general manager a simple question about his website. I will talk about that and more, in my next post.
