Firstly, what a surprise finding you here on the net. We used to go to school together (Gary Potter’s mate – with the surname “Strydom.”)

Anyway, I logged onto MyGenius a few months ago and found it gave me very little value in actually making business. All I keep receiving are mails from other people asking me to sign up for their “free” daily/weekly newsletter, or asking me about writing, or just promoting their product. Perhaps I need to become a paying subscriber to MyGenius to really find the benefits, but I have honestly garnered more business from my simple website than ‘networking’ with guys on MyGenius who are also just hoping to network with me. I just haven’t seen ACTUAL business come my way; just guys who like to network.

A friend of mine invited me to join MyGenius, and he said it was a “brilliant opportunity.” I tend to feel that most of the subscribers there are just ‘talkers’ but not really ‘workers’ (if you know what I mean…) The idea is excellent, but I think it would make more sense if you could post (perhaps) portfolios, and make your profile into more of a ‘website’ (with some decent copy and call to action) than just a profile page with a little bit about what you do, and your contact details etc.

I have spent quite a lot of time on MyGenius but not so much now.

You are unlikely to find much business there, you may find some alliances, I found it a good place to meet people, but it battles to keep giving value, and dumbed down recently.

There was recently an update to the functionality and its also adopted a new payment model and I think it may hemorrhage members – interesting move.

I know the owners well and I hope that I am wrong and that it will continue to be successful.

I recently joined…not sure why but that site makes me feel exposed in some way. Especially to people selling cheap things…I dont like that – reminds me a little of a pyramid scheme kinda thing. Maybe I am not being fair.. [very possible]. Its a little ‘in your face’ for me…but I will continue to give it a try and see what happens.

Very good post Mike and I don’t want to comment to just to agree with you, but you’re so right that we often find ourselves to cute and then simply cannot comprehend why others don’t find us as cute.

On WineCountry I try to stick to basics mostly. I can only hope I succeed in it, because my mind is obviously also entangled in this 2.0ism as well.

I use widgets, but simply to position value added banners. I try not to assume that people know how blogs work, so I don’t publish ‘n monstrous tag clowd, weird widgets from other sites or confusing banners from Amatomu and Afrigator. (Sorry guys) But most readers have no clue what they are and I think it’s kudos enough that I have their code running in the background.

It’s been an arduous task to sort out my menu structure, simply because I’m used to blogs and think the same of my visitors. But what do visitors like to read on my blog? Wine reviews, recipes etc. Last week still there was no way for them to find that easily on my blog. (Shocking!!!)

Anyway, I’m not trying to self promote, but the point is, I too neglected MyGenius for its tediousness (lack of a better word), but your post has managed to make me think differently of it, which I guess is a kudos to you

Good list Mike. I’m sure they’ll oblige. Keep it up.

PS: Niche is King.