If You Read Three Books on a Subject, You’re Probably an Expert

So you decide that you want to learn a new technical skill, trade, or craft. Doesn’t matter what it, but for the sake of this article, we’ll use the example of starting a website for profit. A niche site.

You wake up and decide you’re going to buy a book about making websites for profit. A week later, you finish the book, but you still want to learn more before you register your first domain. So you buy another book.

A few concept are the same, but about half of the book is brand new concepts. Oh, the keyword research strategy is different. Once again, you want more information, so you find another book.

You read this one, and by the end of it, you realize there’s nothing new to learn. At this point, you might as well pack up the reading and start doing.

Becoming an Expert

Before anyone gets mad at me, I don’t mean an absolute expert. You’re not going to have the equivalent to a bachelor’s degree after three books (unless it’s gender studies), but you’ll know more about the subject that 99.9% of the population.

I’m a nerd. The first niche website I created was to learn about SEO.  No matter how many YouTube videos I watched or articles I read, white hat SEO comes down to three very basic things: keyword research, content, and backlinks. No matter how much content I consumed, it all came down to those three basic things. Anything else was a gray or black hat method, which isn’t worth it in the long run.

Stop Trying to Consume

So, recently I put out a half-hearted ebook about starting a niche website. It’s free, and always will be free, because it’s made up of articles I’ve previously written and posted on this site. Today, I decided to do a little promotion, which wasn’t needed, by posting on a bunch of “free shit” subreddits.

Well, it gained a whole bunch of downloads, woohoo. It also earned a 1-star review. Also woohoo.

I’m not mad, but here’s what the review said:

Absolutely nothing of any worth in this “Guide”. Honestly, I thought it was going to have something, anything, that might be helpful or original. Boy was I disappointed. It basically breaks down to 1. Make a website. 2. Drive traffic to your site. 3. ?? 4. Profit.

Terrible.

First things first, that’s not the content of the book. A few chapters are comparing different styles of niche websites, whether you should even try anymore, what I learned, a few methods of driving traffic (I’ll give him that one), and creating a product. My best guess is he didn’t read the book.

But let’s say he did. He’s probably the type of person that doesn’t attempt to do what he’s learning about. Just by him making that second sentence I know how spends more time finding something new than finding it out for himself.

Takeaway

Key takeaways from this are to stop consuming the same shit over and over again and start doing something. Take what you learn and apply it. Once you start noticing a trend in the things you’re consuming, it’s time to move on to the next subject.

Big dawgs gotta diversify