How is it that Nords hasn't posted in this thread?
I've been very busy posting to the Yahoo! Finance comments. And my blog's comments. And answering e-mails. And Facebook comments. And Linkedin. And offers for a radio show and guest posts. And dealing with a couple of very creepy Facebook friends requests from the Philippines.
I just heard from a couple of high-school classmates (Franklin Regional in Murrysville, PA, 1978). I'll know that this post has truly gone viral when my daughter checks in from her ship in Spain with a "Dad, WTF?!?" query...
Six weeks ago Jaime Tardy of EventualMillionaire.com asked for volunteers who'd become millionaires without winning the lottery or buying the Google IPO. She arranged an intro to a Yahoo producer who handed me off to their interview team. The experience was terrible-- Skype problems meant that I could only hear audio while staring at a "Yahoo! Studios" logo on my iPad. We had to fiddle with the lighting for a while. Then I had to explain topics to faceless production staff who knew very little about military pensions and active duty and Navy Reserve and savings rates and tracking your spending and frugality vs deprivation, and just about every time I finished an answer there'd be an audio or a video problem. The interview went on for over an hour (and was later edited down to about 100 seconds). I knew Yahoo was interviewing a group but we never interacted with each other, just the production staff. At the end the asst producer pretty much said "K thanks bye!" and I didn't hear from anyone for a month. There was no fact-checking. I never heard from the producer. I figured I didn't make the cut.
Then Tuesday night the producer e-mailed that the post would go live on Wednesday. The next morning I awoke to Varsity's PM (thanks!) and saw all the comments. I also noted that Yahoo! had spelled my name wrong ("Nordsman") in the video and the transcript, but to the producer's credit she quickly fixed this after I e-mailed her.
We've all seen the comments on MMM's Yahoo! Finance interview and his Washington Post article. I knew what was going to happen. I've been posting to Internet forums for over a decade, and I know how to handle those issues. I decided to engage where I could clarify, and then I found out that Yahoo let me post links in the comments. So I've been explaining the military benefits and the retirement system and the costs of raising a kid, and linking to my blog posts on those topics. This is an amazing opportunity to post comments (and backlinks) to one of the world's top websites. Thank you Yahoo!
Now I'm beginning to realize that a bot (or some poor intern) is going back through my comments and cleaning up the links. But the video is pushing 1400 comments on Yahoo (I'm only about 50 of them) and I've had plenty of traffic click through the links that I got in. Unique visits on The-Military-Guide.com were up over 6x on Wednesday, and pageviews were also up to 2.5 per visitor. That means people were clicking through several posts (not just the homepage) and I've received a lot of "Contact me" and e-mail through the blog as well as through social media. All very good blogger indicators.
The producer said that she was pitching the video for their homepage, and she asked if I had any good photos. I'm really glad I bought the photos from the USAA photographer, so I was able to give her another half-dozen surfing photos. Maybe that helped, but the video went on the Yahoo.com "front page" this morning (along with 99 other videos). So today is going to set an even bigger record on unique visitors-- at least 8x-- and more reader feedback.
It'll be interesting to see if this spikes book sales as well. (My publisher doesn't track it real-time so I get partial data each week from Amazon.) It's certainly attracted the interest of new military readers.
Next month I'm joining a live radio (Internet) broadcast with MachoSpouse.com, a site for male military spouses. (The founder is the Air Force's Military Spouse of the Year.) I've scored a guest post on another blog, and of course I'm happy to show up for more podcasts and videos and guest posts.
An overnight success after nearly four years of blogging...
The best part of this is that I'll have more advice & stories from military readers that I can feed back through the blog (for months) as well as more book material. And the buyer of The-Military-Guide.com will soon be making another large donation to Wounded Warrior Project.
Are you interested in doing an interview? Yahoo! is still looking for more "Average Joe" millionaires, and if they're reading their comments then I'm pretty sure they're going to be seeking "Average Joe" early retirees (under a million). Jaime Tardy is always interested in interviewing "eventual millionaires". If you're another blogger and you want to pitch a major blogger or media outlet, let me know and I'll do what I can. I'm only going to be holding this magic wand for a few more days before the Internet's attention span moves on to something else...
How is it that Nords hasn't posted in this thread?
He's out surfing.
The real tragedy of this week is that the surf has truly sucked-- 1-3 feet or less. (#HawaiiProblems.) I have high hopes for next Monday morning...
