On November 29, 2018, Vitaly Egorov
Zelenyikot spoke at the Habr “
Content ”
conference . Vitaly is the main popularizer of the space theme in the domestic blogosphere. He shared his personal experience in promoting projects, spoke about his income and gave advice to novice bloggers.

Under the cut - decoding his report.
Probably, many have not heard anything about any "
Green Cat ". I am the wrong blogger. I didn’t manage to become such a blogger, to which different brands would come and pay for promotion of goods or advertising. Advertising is the least I could monetize. I was asked to tell about what I do and how I got to this. I write about space, popularize cosmonautics, talk about space exploration, private astronautics, interplanetary research. In this case, my example is not exactly about business, although, of course, there is a certain activity in space.
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All attempts to interact with advertisers were somehow not very successful. I didn’t want to advertise what I was offered, even for money, and from what I would like to advertise in my area, the choice is small, mostly, this is government activity.
From Mars to the blog
It all started in childhood. In childhood there were books and there was a great interest in space. One of my first books about space is Gennady Chernenko “But we will fly all the same!”. When, after 25 years, I accidentally saw her in a museum, I even took a picture of her as a souvenir.

My departure for blogging and success in general is connected with Mars, and the first step to this was also made in childhood. I came across the book of V.V. Shevchenko "At the call of the mysterious Mars." There were pictures in it that I didn’t like at all, but I was very interested in the content of the book. After reading this book, for fifteen years I had absolutely nothing to do with astronautics. My first blogging attempt was a UFO theme. I sat in a large public VKontakte and was amazed at the huge amount of delirium that was discussed there. Then I began to explain to them what they were wrong about, began to postpone their posts separately. But that was only the beginning.
August 6, 2012 on Mars sat all-terrain vehicle Curiosity. I looked at the animation of the landing of the Mars rover, looked at how those NASA people who were involved in this event were jubilant, and the thought appeared in my head: “I want it too!”. After that, I decided to promote my dream - I visited Baikonur, worked together with the company that launched the spacecraft (although they hadn’t reached Mars yet, they are moving in this direction). The desire to touch the cosmos ruled and led me. Finally, I found an area in which a blogger who writes on space topics could be in demand. Next was the discovery of the public "Curiosity-mars rover", in which I began to describe the journey of the rover on Mars. Now more than three hundred thousand VK users have signed up for this public.
Then there was Habr. Entering Habr in October 2012 was the birth of the Green Cat. Initially, I had a nickname in the zelenyikoteyka mail, and when I came to Habr and I was told “Write about the cosmos”, I began to register and thought that space and the “green cat” were somehow undignified, I had to grow up. So I became the Green Cat. The first post on Habré was not signed by me. The publication aroused interest, in the comments wrote "write more." Then the girl who posted my post, said that in fact the author is not she, and I was immediately sent an invite. At that time, an invite to Habré was a great achievement. At first, I started writing about Mars, then I realized that I’m close to this topic, and in the winter of 2012 I opened another Public Space, where I wrote about space in general.

He quickly became the largest public on this topic, and at some point we even overtook Roscosmos by the number of subscribers. However, after cleaning the dead accounts, we got 417 thousand subscribers versus 460 thousand at Roskosmos.
When success came
Another interesting experiment was when I decided to prove that Roscosmos does not know how to popularize astronautics, while we have something to popularize, and I can do it better. I opened the public "Electro-L". This is a domestic spacecraft that flies and photographs the Earth. We processed photos, made news, and here too, the moment came when a single public of one satellite overtook the entire Roscosmos public by the number of subscribers. At that time there really was an acute lack of information in this area.
Well, my main success, the pinnacle of my popularizing career, can be considered the event that happened in spring 2013, when we found the Mars-3 spacecraft on Mars. And it was we who discovered him: I and another group of people who were engaged in this task. The Soviet spacecraft Mars-3 landed on the surface of Mars in 1971, and since then no one has known its exact location. Plus or minus "two elbows" on the map they knew, but where exactly - no one could say for sure. We took satellite images of this place from the NASA archive, found this device, proved that it was for sure. They wrote about this event on the NASA website, then Pavel Durov repost the publication. But on the Roscosmos website they did not write about it.

It was the only time when I really conducted a small but independent research and made a discovery. In the future, I was engaged only in what I talked about traveling and researching others, and I continue to do it now. Today, my total audience is about one and a half million subscribers. Half of them are subscribers of the Open Space community in My World. 95 percent (if not more) there are bots, and therefore I am not proud of it. However, in LJ, 28 thousand read me, while only 10 thousand are watching YouTube, and Vkontakte will have 700 thousand on two public pages.
Little about income
Then I would like to share an experience that will be useful for those who want to write on their own, and not take advantage of already accomplished bloggers.
In life, you can do anything you want - cross stitch, write about space, interview, and so on. If a person is engaged in something for a long time, at some point he reaches perfection. And then he begins to pay for his favorite work. In other words, "do what you love, no matter what, and sooner or later they will begin to pay for it."
The share of luck in this, of course, is also present. For example, I was lucky with the employer. At an early stage of my business, the private space company Dauria Aerospace, one of the first in Russia, appeared. She gave the opportunity to promote not only the company, but also promote itself. Therefore, the Green Cat blogger developed separately, and Dauria developed separately.
The employer was happy with everything. He understood that I devote a considerable part of my time to blogging, and therefore I treated this activity with understanding, realizing that he could also benefit from a separate resource. First there were VKontakte, then blogs, Habr. And then came the media, who needed an analyst. Few people do analytics about cosmonautics in Russia, and any thought outside of the scant press releases comes at a price. In the list of publications where I published, there are both Forbes and RBC, where there were several articles. The top of my writing career is publication in Kommersant. In general, there is a demand for such articles.
I consider one of my strongest works to be an article I wrote about Dauria company in Popular Mechanics magazine, after which the magazine paid me as a journalist. That is, I promoted the company, received a salary for it, and in addition to this received a fee from the publishing house. This is a high level of PR.
If you structure the sources of my income, you can see that there is no advertising at all. Influence is the main part, that is, the formation of public opinion (by the way, I myself only recently learned this word), beneficial to those who pay. In this case, the private space program pays. I didn’t work with advertisers at all, the relationship with them is short-term, even if they are satisfied. On the one hand, there is interest in advertising, but, on the other hand, I am not ready to advertise something that I never dare to advise sincerely. The only exception is private astronautics, because I deeply believe that astronautics is needed, that it needs to be developed and promoted. In turn, the space program understands that my activity is useful, and thus we have a good union with it.

I regularly write articles for Habr and other publications, there is support for subscribers who are just interested in space activities and my thoughts on this topic. Twenty percent of my income comes from PR. I interact with government agencies and commercial structures as a remote PR consultant, as a small PR agency promoting space projects.
What to do and what not to do
Now a few lessons that I learned from all my activities.
Do not pull a bunch of projects
The first was unsuccessful. The reason for the failure was that it was very hard physically to carry on a whole bunch of brands. When I, for example, compare myself with Asya Kazantseva, I see how well-done she is: she publishes books in tens of thousands of copies, and she constantly travels with lectures, including paid ones. In her case, the ratio in the income chart will be greater than mine. She is developing one brand - Asya Kazantseva. And I am getting both “Green Cat”, “Mars Rover”, “Open Space”, and DAURIA, and even Vitaly Egorov as a separate brand. When you start working at the same time with everything, you get the feeling that you are pulling a heavy suitcase without a handle, and it is hard to drag and throw and throw. In the case of Open Space, it is a little easier for me, because there was already an editorial board that works independently, and I only look after this project from time to time so that there are no big mistakes.

Become a news occasion
Another tip that is relevant for companies is not enough to write about others. In addition, you also need to do something yourself, to write about you. This is a very important thing in terms of promoting your own brand, and in general. My example of this is the work on a project of a spacecraft that we want to launch on the moon so that it can photograph the landing sites of the Americans. The task chosen is the most high that you can find. The most controversial and discussed topics (except for black holes and other problems of the “far space”) are whether there is life on Mars and whether there were Americans on the Moon. If we manage to launch such a device to the moon, then in the future it will be possible to think about launching a satellite to Mars.
A whole complex of factors prompted me to start this project. First of all, this is dissatisfaction with the interplanetary successes of Roscosmos, which in twenty-five years has already launched two of its own spacecrafts, and both times - into the Pacific Ocean. Obviously, I will not live to see the day when Roskosmos creates its own rover, it's easier to make it yourself. In order to realize such an ambitious project, we staged a crowdfunding and collected a certain amount, which, of course, is not enough. When they say to me: “Hey, did you collect the money, but where is the satellite?”, I reply, “Easy! We just need a thousand more such crowdfunds. ” So we will not fly soon, although the work is being done. I add that to become news is not enough. You need to actively work on this, and if you started this business, you need to drag it further.
Write books
Another actual tip is to write books. It is not easy to start writing a book and it is even more difficult to realize why this is necessary. It seems that everyone is sitting in the gadgets and therefore the books are not needed by anyone. I, too, for a long time adhered to this opinion, while a queue of publishers who wanted me to write a book lined up for me. “Sometime later,” I thought. Then I was fired from DAURIA, and I felt free, I had a lot of time, which I decided to spend with benefit, that is, to write a book. I wrote it, published it.

And after that I learned that the children still read books. Books for them is a way to escape from the gadget. You cannot read books through a smartphone, so using a smartphone, they mostly communicate with each other. When they want peace of mind, they take books in hand, and paper ones, because on the tablet there is also access to the Internet and you don’t read it too much. "Paper" is still in demand, so work in this direction is necessary. And it's cool when you come to the bookstore and say: “Well, let me see ... mmm ... They say a good author. We must take.
The situation with television is somewhat similar to what I said earlier. When you become a prominent expert, you can comment on the position of the company or the area in which it works (if you are an official PR person). It is normal for a PR person to be an independent expert or expert in this field. Television is ready to invite such people, to call the name of the brand, 70 percent relates to this quite loyally, especially if you give them competent content and explain what they want to know. That is, you should become an expert for the media. Not just a contact to enter some company speaker, but to become a company speaker yourself. This is if we talk about working as a PR manager.
About the benefits of TV
If we talk about the activities of an expert who writes analytics, then I recently came to realize the real value of participation in television programs. Recently, something is constantly happening with us - then suddenly something will fall, then something will either be drilled, or the head of Roscosmos will not say something. And immediately begin to turn to television with a request for comment. And in Ostankino sometimes you have to go, and on Shabolovka. Yesterday, for example, I was in the studio "Radio Liberty". At first it seems cool - “Wow! I was called to the TV. ”

You immediately agree and go, sometimes even quite far away (for example, I somehow flew to Belarus for a half-hour transfer (of course, at their expense). But then you begin to understand - this is my personal time that I could I would spend it as I see fit. Of course, the interview is a pretentious event, they will pay attention to you, but remember that in this case you are making the content not for yourself, but for them.
Of course, this cooperation is mutual, but the “exhaust” from this is not so great. You have reached a certain level, your name is on TV, but there is no further growth as such. I had the biggest gain when a ten-minute video about Mars-3 was released on Russia24 TV channel. And then about five hundred people joined VKontakte. Otherwise, similar appearances on Echo of Moscow, on Radio Vesti, on Mayak, etc., are given by about ten people who are added to the social network. Although, of course, it increases your credibility and when a person comes to your page and sees the published videos from the TV with your participation, it works positively. In general, the response is small. To change this, you need to do something of your own. Do not just go to different “to visit”, but have your own project, which will be anchor and on which all these visits will bring new people. The simplest is a YouTube channel.
I had an interview on the “Intelligence” from the Goblin - 170 thousand views and 2 thousand who joined on YouTube. As you can see, meetings with YouTube are quite effective. However, you need to understand that today the audience watched a video with you, tomorrow or even half an hour - with someone else, and you have already been forgotten. This video works on recognition, and then this work consists only in the number of people who came and subscribed to your project. And for this your project should be and develop. You will interest people, they will come to you and stay with you if you do something interesting. So it is necessary to go, but without a project that would support all these campaigns, this is a rather inefficient exercise.
Answers on questions
- Have there ever been a threat to your content? Perhaps some authorities did not like what you write?Not. Nobody promised to break the muzzle, but there was talk about crowdfunding, when we were reproached for collecting money, but not presenting a satellite and not launching it on the moon. There were complaints about us and accusations that we are fraudsters. In such cases, I always asked: “Have you ever dropped on this project? If I was thrown off and dissatisfied with the work, I can return them. Yes, we are delaying the deadlines, but the work continues and we are moving towards the goals that we have set for ourselves. ”We regularly publish activity reports. Maybe it would be worth increasing their frequency.
Many did not like my eloquent and hot post "
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