It’s My Birthday! About Me and an Important Lesson

Guess what? It’s my birthday! I am 26 years young and I’m going to take this opportunity to show you that I’m not all about analyzing earnings, online experiments, numbers and charts. I want to give you a peek at the other things I’m about, away from the internet. I want to show you who Pat really is.

1. I am a HUGE Cal fan. I attended the University of California, Berkeley for 4.5 years and graduated with a B.A. in Architecture. Cal sports was my life for 5 years, and it still is. Go Bears!
2. I was in the Cal Marching Band for 4.5 years (the .5 was an extra semester I took just to have a 5th year in the band). In my last year, I was the Student Director. I got to travel all around the country, stand in front of a 200 piece band and direct in front of crowds that approached 100,000 people. The Cal Band is one of the only student run bands left in the United States.
3. I was also a trumpet player in the band in the years before I was Student Director. That’s me resting up before a field show.
4. I love to golf. Not that good at it, but I still love to golf anyways.
5. I also love the ocean. Sometimes to go fishing, but mainly to surf and bodyboard. This is a shot of me on a wave “drop-knee style” in San Diego, California.
6. I am a DJ. I’ve done a wedding before, but I mainly spin at house parties. I mostly play Hip-Hop and R&B music. If you’re in San Diego, I’ll DJ your party, just let me know.
7. I also like to draw. This is a picture I drew with pencil on bristol. It’s a detail of a Middle Eastern Door.
8. This is April (my fiancee) and I walking on an island in Australia. She is my everything, and my motivation for everything I do in life.

So, why am I showing you all of this? The lesson to be learned here is that if you have any kind of website or blog that you’re using to try and convince your readers something (whatever it may be), you have to “show face” – or in other words, you have to show your readers there’s a person behind all the content and information on the computer screen. You have to become a little personal order to earn trust and loyalty.

Our Relationship

As a reader, seeing the person behind the website creates a relationship between you and the author. When you read The Smart Passive Income Blog, do you feel like you’re just reading words on a computer screen, or do you feel like it’s ME that is telling you the information I’ve learned and experienced? My intention is for the latter.

This is why blogs are so popular, because they can be more personal. Do you think you’d be interested in your favorite blog if there was no name behind it? My guess is no. Why do you think almost 100% of blogs have an “About Me” section?

Darren Rowse from Problogger.net has even said:

“Two of the most viewed pages on my blog here are my About Problogger and About Darren pages…”

Darren goes even further to highlight more about the importance of an About Page on his blog.

How I Take It 5 Steps Further

As you know, I have an about me page on this blog, but I go even further to strengthen our bond and hopefully keep you as a loyal reader using the following methods:

1. I’ve provided a picture of my face for everyone to see. It may not be the best looking photo, but its me. Attaching a face to an author’s name makes the information the author is providing more personal and believable. That being said, I always wonder how many people I’ve scared off…
2. I’ve provided other pictures. In my monthly picture section in the sidebar, you’ll see random pictures from my life. This shows you more about who I am and what I do.
3. I have a twitter feed in my sidebar. The twitter feed shows you any conversations or daily tasks that I do. If you’d like to follow me on Twitter, you can do so by clicking here.
4. I post my earnings. Just think about boring my monthly earnings and ehow earnings posts would be if I just simply said, “I increased my earnings and this is what I learned”, instead of “This is how much I earned, and this is how it happened.” Posting my numbers makes what I say believable, and I want you to believe me and hopefully take something away from what I tell you.
5. I give you real life, personal examples. I always make sure to try and include real life examples of what I’ve done to accomplish certain things. This is why I reference my other blog at intheleed.com so much, so you can see what it’s like and how it has worked for me.

Am I Brainwashing You?

No, I’m not trying to brainwash you – but I can honestly say that I’ve implemented all of the above features of this blog on purpose. Why? Again, it’s to strengthen our relationship and show you that I am more than just someone who types on a blog. As a result, the words that I do type on this blog become more believable, and you probably enjoy reading this blog more because so. I recommend that if you’re trying to gain any loyal readers on your site, you show them who you are too.

How Does This Relate to Passive Income?

If you’re going to make any money online, you need to earn the trust of your readers. I’ll give you another real life example from my blog at intheleed.com:

On my about page on intheleed.com, I show my face and tell a story. I talk about how I passed the LEED exam and how I came about starting intheleed.com to help others. This, I believe, gives me credibility and has helped me to become a trusted provider of information, which has helped my ebook sales and with word of mouth publicity. If I were just some random dude selling a study guide, I don’t think that would do so well.

To The Readers

So I hope you enjoyed getting to know me a little better, but now I want to get to know you too. All I want you to do (after writing any comments that you may have about the content of this post) is to tell me ONE thing that I probably didn’t know about you already. It could be anything, just be sure it’s something that is okay for myself and the other readers of this blog to read.

Thanks for sharing my birthday with me! I’m already looking forward to my next birthday post. I hope you’ll be there with me next year. All the best to you.

Posted on : December 7th, 2008

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