The Digital Entrepreneur

When your website delivers the right piece of content at the right time to the right person — and in the right format — you create experiences that pull people in and increase your chances of compelling registrations and driving sales. In this 33-minute episode, Brian Clark and Jerod Morris discuss: Why responsive design is... Listen to episode

Today, we begin our five-episode series breaking down the elements of the modern marketing website. We begin with an element that remains incredibly powerful, despite still getting overlooked far more than it should. In this 25-minute episode, Brian Clark and Jerod Morris discuss: Some impressive to stats to remind you of email’s omnipotence Why email... Listen to episode

Danny Margulies went from “wantrepreneur” to digital entrepreneur. First, he taught himself how to succeed as a freelancer. Then, he turned those lessons into a basic online course that taught others how to succeed as well. In January of 2016, his online course generated over $25,000 in revenue. (And that s not even the best month... Listen to episode

What are the essential elements that a website must have to create a user experience that leads to successful digital commerce? We introduce them in this week’s episode. In this 19-minute podcast, Brian Clark and Jerod Morris discuss: Why email still isn’t dead The important benefits of adaptive content (and why mobile responsive is no... Listen to episode

Are all entrepreneurs really digital entrepreneurs? A recent research paper posted this idea. We decided it would be the perfect jumping off point for the newest show on Rainmaker.FM: The Digital Entrepreneur. In this 20-minute episode, Brian Clark and Jerod Morris discuss: The big idea for this new show How we define the term “digital... Listen to episode

The dream of building a business around digital products and services is as old as the Internet itself. Unfortunately, the early days of “digital commerce” were overpopulated with snake oil promises and “Online Cash Machine” hype. Fortunately, things have changed: Sales of ebooks exceeded $5 billion in 2014 Online education is now a $15 billion... Listen to episode

In case you missed it, the company formerly known as Copyblogger Media is now Rainmaker Digital. This rebrand has been in the works for a while, and it became more obvious in the last year or so that we had outgrown our own company name. Even back in 2010 when we formed the company, I... Listen to episode

“Storytelling” and “empathy” have become business buzzwords, which is either hilarious or sad depending on your perspective. These two words, however, are at the root of what it means to be a human being. And yes, these two words are also the key to effective marketing of any kind. When you add in a strongly... Listen to episode

It s taken a while, but the startup world is starting to recognize the power of building an audience before building a product. That s music to our ears. That s the way our company grew out of a one-man blog. Back in 2012, while chronicling how that happened, I coined the term minimum viable audience, effectively tying... Listen to episode

Last week we talked about the concept of native commerce as a way to create content, build an audience, and ultimately find out what people will actually buy. It s about creating a unique experience for the right type of person, but how does that happen? I realized shortly after last week s episode went live that... Listen to episode

This podcast began with the mantra “media not marketing.” In other words, valuable online content does the job that marketing is supposed to do, but instead of people avoiding it, they seek it out. Once you have an audience, you can intelligently determine what people want to buy. Not with random ideas and guesswork, but... Listen to episode

Copyblogger.com started it all on this particular crazy portion of the journey. It s constantly evolved over the years, and it s about to take another giant step forward. When you strip away the fact that Copyblogger has historically been the mothership platform for our company, you realize that it s essentially a membership site with free and... Listen to episode

We’ve been talking a lot about the benefits of the “logged in experience” when it comes to email list building and marketing automation. There’s even more to it than that. Birthday boy Jerod Morris joins me for this episode to talk about interesting things we’ve spotted in the endless content stream related to digital commerce.... Listen to episode

We know about the power of content marketing to build audiences, inform what products and services to develop, and ultimately connect the two together. And whether you call it blogging or not, text remains a cornerstone of the online content mix. Darren Rowse is one of my favorite people. He’s been an inspiration, a business... Listen to episode

Digital + Recurring Revenue = Win. Easier said than done, right? As we discussed last week, digital products and services plus subscription revenue are The Two Components of The Perfect Online Business Model. Let’s talk a little more about the subscription side of things. This week, author and entrepreneur John Warrillow joins me as co-host,... Listen to episode

Many dream of starting a profitable online business. And that dream is more attainable and legitimate than ever. As digital commerce becomes the norm instead of an outlier, more entrepreneurs are attracted to creating purely digital products and services. More importantly, your prospective customers want the convenience and on-demand access that digital allows. Digital allows... Listen to episode

The need (and desire) for on-demand education has intensified, and will only continue into the future. But can you really make a living from it? To further our ongoing discussion about online education as a viable career and business model for content creators and entrepreneurs, I brought in a special co-host today. It’s Sonia Simone,... Listen to episode

There’s a huge shift happening in the world of on-demand online education. It’s commercial enterprises and savvy small businesses that are filling the demand for courses and lessons, rather than the typical institutions of learning. I saw an interesting article in Fast Company recently about jobs of the future. One job description caught my eye... Listen to episode

Here’s the too long, didn’t listen version … Authority Rainmaker was awesome (if we do say so ourselves). Especially Henry Rollins. We’re launching a whole bunch of new shows on Rainmaker.FM. This is exciting. Robert Bruce is leaving the show. He makes Benedict Arnold look like Arnold from Happy Days. In this 34-minute episode Robert... Listen to episode

The biggest myth around about Millennials is that they don’t use email. Fact is, the average young person checks email more often than most older people. But that doesn’t mean Millennials are reading your email. Rather, there’s a good chance that your email is getting deleted unread, prompting an unsubscribe, or worst of all, marked... Listen to episode