Branding - Part ?

These last 12 days of Christmas I managed to pack on 12 pounds, watched at least 12 Christmas movies including faves such as Bad Santa and Christmas Vacation and shovelled around 12,000 pounds of snow. There was also a trip the mall, gifts, a play, visiting a Christmas light display, skiing, sledding, snowshoeing, nerf gun battles all over the house with my kids, neighbourhood strolls, lazy mornings playing newly acquired board games, afternoons passing the new Oculus VR around and of course meals and socializing with friends and family. These last 12 days weren't all rosy. An outdoor tap pipe burst thanks to unusually cold weather. We endured a horrendously long traffic jam on our way home from snow shoeing thanks to a sizeable pothole on a local bridge that pretty much shut down traffic in all directions. I sat through a couple of stinker Christmas movies on Netflix. At this point you're probably wondering what's the point of all these seemingly irrelevant details? So far you've learned I'm a fan of the movies Bad Santa and Christmas Vacation. You also learned I live in a neighbourhood (Canadian spelling, not a typo), have kids, live in a place where it snows, and a variety other seemingly mundane facts. What those seemingly mundane facts do is give you a glimpse of who I am, the author of these emails. My emails are not penned by an AI machine or a group of writers generating content on behalf of a corporation. Over the years I've dropped tidbits about me here and there. I believe the Fat Stacks brand is stronger because of that. Given what Fat Stacks earns, I can tell you that this works. It's also a fun way to blog. It's not the only way but it is A way Most of us don't have the resources of a CNet, Forbes, Car and Driver, People Magazine, Martha Stewart or similar publications. What many of us do have is the opportunity to provide our readers some of our personal flare. It's a way to shine through all the competitive noise out there. You might not be able to publish 25 articles per day but what you do publish you can make resonate with your readers so they get to know you and your brand. An interesting thing happens when you put yourself out there and that is a motivation to provide better content. Great content + personality + consistency + time = brand. It's definitely not the only way to grow a brand but it is a way. It's worked great with Fat Stacks. Fat Stacks made a quantum leap the week I started doing this. I distinctly remember that week. Until then I did what so many other folks did and that was send a paragraph with a link to a blog post. That week I switched it up with an email much like this - a mix of business and personal. I received many positive replies. Open rates quickly grew. Subscriber rates grew. Revenue grew. I more or less restrict this strategy with Fat Stacks in the emails and you can too. In other words I publish posts on the FS blog that are pretty dry. Admittedly, it's not easy to have your personality shine through all content. Some content is purely informational; visitors just want the info. So, if you're running an email newsletter and you want it to stand out, put a little bit of yourself into it or do something with it to make it stand out. Your newsletter will stand out in any niche. Even if you struggle monetizing your email (as I do with niche site emails), I believe going forward having an engaged audience visiting your site, even if it's a small audience, is important. Those folks will come to trust you and will become "regulars". Grow those regulars and you have a brand. I get you might not want to do this which is why this is not the only way. It's one way and a pretty darn easy way. It's also fun but be warned that with a little bit of notoriety in your niche, you'll be criticized. Folks will disagree with you or worse. At first it's a bit jarring but you'll get used to it. You can't please all the people all the time. But if you please some people some of the time it's worth it. Much much more about branding niche sites will follow. Branding is a focus for me in 2023, bordering on me becoming fanatical about it with my niche sites. I have a great deal in the works to bolster brands. Some stuff I do will work. Some won't. Stay tuned. A helpful ad rev tip to kick off the year Lightbox with image galleries - use with caution: If you publish image galleries, it's tempting to have the images expand into a lightbox. It's a nifty feature but it can kill ad revenue. The lightbox makes it possible for visitors to click through to each image horizontally within the lightbox. When visitors can click from image to image in a lightbox your ads don't display meaning you don't earn nearly as much revenue. You're much better off to have visitors scroll down the post to see the photos because that's where the ads are. I learned this the hard way. FYI, I have some email ad slots available in January. Book an ad in this email newsletter [here](). Jon Fatstacksblog.com P.S. I subjected this email with Branding - Part ? because I've lost track how many emails I've sent so far about branding. P.P.S. Happy New Year! [Unsubscribe]( | [Update your profile]( | 2016 Hill Drive, North Vancouver, British Columbia V7H 2N5