The Spider Web Analogy and How it Helps You Be Everywhere in Your Niche

I do quite a bit of traveling.

Many times I can be spotted in tropical hot spots.

Bali, Fiji, Thailand and Costa Rica.

These places have some big spiders. Like, as big as a small dinner plate type spiders.

A few years ago my wife Kelli and I decided to largely disconnect from the outside world for about 6 weeks. We did a house sit at a hut with no electricity, internet or running water, way off the grid, 3 hours from civilization. Save 1 day a week when we walked back into town for provisions and to check our email - since we both run service based businesses in addition to our passive income streams - we spent almost all of those 6 weeks in a remote, tropical jungle in Costa Rica.

As you may imagine, we saw some monstrously big bugs there. Including golden orb spiders with webs spanning 6-7 feet in diameter, one of which I had to duck under on my way to the outhouse.

Seeing these huge, massive webs made me rethink my online strategy. I finally saw that being everywhere, or omnipresent in my blogging tips niche is similar to watching one of these mammoth spiders build their huge webs from scratch. Although we are not catching or predating anybody

Each little node of the spider web is like a human being.

The spider would start with 1 node - trust me, I had nothing to do during the day, so I'd watch perfect Nature and learn from this awesomely genius presence - then would link that node to another node via a long thread.

These threads are the authentic, personalized connections you build with another human being by helping them in some way. A Retweet, blog comment and perhaps a mention on your blog, all of which potentially lays the seeds for a friendship.

So you have a node/human. And you have a thread/retweet or blog comment or mention.

Then the spider would create another node, and another thread. For you, that means finding another human being and helping them out, promoting them, endorsing them, emailing them asking how you can help them and commenting on their blog.

The spider web grows bigger. So does your friend network.

The spider adds more nodes and threads. You meet more folks and serve more folks.

Eventually, you will have a huge, monstrously large network of friends around you, whom you met, promoted, endorsed, shouted out, whose businesses you helped grow, and whose blogs your retweets drove traffic to.

Kinda like a monstrously big spider web thrown over your niche, meaning that everywhere folks look, they will see your presence, via blog comments and your retweets and your featuring top entrepreneurs (power of association aka social proof) and all that good stuff.

As you appear to be everywhere, you become more familiar to folks, and your site traffic, list and profits will grow, if you keep sharing value, making friends and monetizing intelligently by sharing useful, targeted products and services.

What's even more cool? The friendships you built multiply the size of the web to an even greater, more epic, diameter. Because out of all the friends you made by being generous with your promoting and featuring and supporting and blog commenting, many will start to promote you in return, creating an exponential rate of growth and an even wider web, making you appear to have a viral presence.

This is why after I publish a blog post I get 10 or 20 or 30 comments within 1-2 days when most bloggers struggle to get 1 comment. Or when I publish a post and see 2 or 4 or 10 instant eBook sales. Or when I generate 50 plus Facebook Shares within hours of when my post went live.

My list subscribers are the farthest thing on earth from being passive. Many are my friends. These friends promote me far and wide the second they receive my email. Many invite me to guest post on their blogs, or feature me or interview me. Web gets wider. I appear to be even more all over the place.

Internet marketing coach David Boozer bought over 80 of my eBooks. Then he created a podcast explaining why he did. Then he created a blog post explaining why he did. The web just got wider through 3 channels: Amazon, iTunes and through his blog with his 20K list, or whatever it is at these days.

But I first connected with David (human being aka node aka awesome guy) through the comment I left on his blog and through retweeting that post (the thread).

I found Zac Johnson's blog. I read his inspired posts. I post a thoughtful, 2-3 paragraph, personalized comment on his blogging tips blog, for a few weeks. He likes my writing style. Extends guest posting rights to me. The web grows wider. And wider. And wider. Because I just published my 250th guest post over there.

Ditto with the 250 guest posts I published on the Huffington Post, as I was invited to guest post there by a dear, generous friend, and the web widens even more.

Some folks think I don't sleep and that I am some kind of blogging cyborg who appears to be *everywhere* in the blogging niche. No way. I get 8 to 10 hours of sleep every night. I just build strong friendships, patiently and persistently, one human being at a time, on helpful act at a time.

Be patiently generous guys. Help people. Think of that spider web analogy, one node and one thread at a time. As you meet, greet, serve, help and befriend 5 or 10 or 15 folks today, the web grows. The over time, as you practice your writing or video creating skills or whatever your prime skill is, more friends will promote you, endorse you and help you, in so many ways....and you will appear to be everywhere in your niche. 1 human being and 1 kind act at a time.

Are you using this approach to build your online business?