Going Commercial?

Got a few angry emails regarding my last post, mostly asking if I was selling out:

“So you’re taking all the stuff you do and making it commercial?”

Not sure how that came through the message but no, actually, quite the opposite. Instead of letting traditional marketing dictate how we run our company and dealing with its money drain and eventual failure, we are going to use the practices that made this blog (and conversely the SBS Show, Vladfire, Vladcast) so popular and worthwhile to so many people.

I am trying to take some aspects of the work I already do on the individual basis, pack it up and offer it up at ownwebnow.com for anyone that cares to learn from it, good or bad. As these discussions are business in nature and so closely tied to the business of Own Web Now, I would think that it would be selling out Vladville to post them here.

On the other hand, I consider this to be a model for how things should be done in this space. I have always had an open IM invitation for all my partners, I have always had a direct dial in number and an extension that is published, I have been blogging for a while. The only difference now is that we’re actually going to showcase some of that activity beyond me <-> partner and hopefully invite more people into the conversation, pick up the feedback which always improves the product which improves sales and improves Timmy’s college fund 🙂 Consider the opposite, which is the traditional community development in this space: 1) Turn off all the extensions except for sales 2) Put up a forum and hope users will support one another out of desperation 3) When the users get critical do some damage control and close up the forum thread and move on. Doesn’t sound like fun. So instead of opening up the doors and saying “Why don’t y’all just build a community for us” we’re actually going onto the court with the ball and asking for others to play along.