In The Beginning

As I wandered down the Internet marketing road a few years ago, I got a feel for sales pages, custom graphics, onsite and offsite SEO, AdWords, AdSense, affiliate marketing, blogging and so on. I tried things out and discovered most things worked. A basic AdSense site can work, niche blogging can work, link building works. Up to a point most of what I’d learned and applied worked, and I’d paid very reasonable prices for all that I’d been taught. $5 reports, coaching five days a week, with my coach available for questions around seven hours a day all for under $30 a month, a few ebooks here and there for around $30 and a handful of other really good programs that weren’t pricey.

The Inevitable

Inevitably I ended up following many blogs and subscribing to lists where marketers sell products for hundreds of dollars and some in the thousands. I was all ears but I failed to stop and think about what value I was getting when their promotions started. As a customer I simply went along following the product launch and did everything that the product launch teaches I would do; I bought into it. Stupid me never stopped to ask the question of whether I could get the same, or similar information for less elsewhere. Who has time for that when ‘It’s closing soon! Get in now while you can.’

Meanwhile

Meanwhile back at the ranch I was writing a mammoth ebook on how to build and sell niche blogs. The review copies I gave out blew people away with its sheer size and quality, and the burning question was how much was it going to be. Good question.

At the time, I’d been teaching myself how to use Photoshop and had purchased a book at Borders that was around $80. It came with a disc full of Photoshop actions and styles that were worth a lot to me. (An example of a style for Photoshop would be ‘glass’ or ‘chrome’. So I create a logo for a car and apply the ‘chrome’ style to make the logo magically look like shiny chrome. ) The book is mammoth which is an understatement, written by experts and full colour. The quality of the paper stock alone just makes you want to turn the pages.

So that cost $80.

Some experts studied, worked in and had enough knowledge to put this brilliant Photoshop book together. A publisher wanted their cut, Borders wanted their cut and of course the printer, the CD manufacturer, the CD burner, they all wanted their services paid for with some margin for profit too. Borders had to pay staff to order the stock, ship it to their stores, unpack it, then have someone help me with choosing a book on Photoshop and then finally processing my sales plus a whole lot of other huge costs that brick and mortar businesses have. Oh and then there were the authors that hopefully the publisher had given a few dollars to.

And the cost of creating my ebook?

I studied, had enough experience and knowledge to write the book and managed to pull it together in a few weeks. I didn’t work on it all that time of course, but over a few weeks I got it written. I bought a few software programs to help me with the format of the ebook but I know I didn’t really need those but I still have them and I’ve used them a lot; so much so that their costs averaged over all the work I’ve done has basically faded into insignificance. Costs? Hmmm, let me see. Oh I had some branding done but that was for the brand across the wider business, not just for the one book but a portion of a few hundred dollars could be assigned to it.

Yesterday – Today

I think you’re getting the picture, I mean come on it’s obvious right? Digital costs virtually nothing. Is it any wonder that Amazon are pushing ebooks to a price point of $9.99? There are so many costs that are wiped from the expense ledger when it comes to online business that it’s kinda right isn’t it that ebooks would dip to $9.99? How can they not when people like you and I with brains can see yesterday – the paper, the staff, the rents etc, and compare it to today – no rent, no paper, nothing much but a payment gateway and download.

$97

So how much should I charge for my ebook again? When I compare it to some of the authors and what they write and share for $9.99 at Amazon, I really struggle to see how there can be much life left in milking people of hundreds if not thousands of dollars for an ebook. An ebook with a handful of tutorials or videos or whatever fancy thing that comes with it as an ‘added bonus’.

The general consensus was that I could easily charge $97 for my ebook, and anyway, ebooks had a high perceived value. Yeah, I really scratch my head about that one actually. Oh no, I’m not scratching my head, I’ve woken up!

Do It Because I Can?

I could have done it and perhaps not only made more per sale, but sold more simply because of some higher perceived value. I could have charged more because as others pointed out, most other ebooks in the same and other markets came nowhere close to the detail, quality and quantity of content I’d included in the 200 plus pages.

It crossed my mind.

You’ll probably get to this moment one day if you haven’t already, a moment where you can see the opportunity before you and you will have to make a choice. The choice firstly seems like it’s about price and how much you can ‘get away with’ charging. I realised that for me it wasn’t about that. It was about getting it into the hands of as many people I could that needed it. I wanted to charge a price people could afford and that I felt was a reasonable exchange for what I was offering them. Along with that I looked at the margin, but of course there was very little to look at, I knew my ‘real’ costs were insignificant. And I considered what and who we pay for a similar thing offline. Does it make sense to compare offline to online? In many ways no it doesn’t…especially if you don’t want to talk about zero cost and huge margins online. Sssshhhhhh.

I included a support forum with my initial offer, and I felt fine with a $37 price point given that my one-on-one help was and still is available to this day for the first few hundred people who bought the book. I admit that I don’t feel too great about the subsequent price point of $57 I raised the book to after the launch even though I offered additional resources with it. I just can’t help but compare it to other things you and I pay for, not to mention toss and turn over margins that are so huge it’s outrageous. (The book is not available to purchase at this time.)

Some would say I have a problem charging or that I don’t value what I do enough; that’s why I’m not making any sense here right?

Wrong.

I’ve written other ebooks and charged over $50 for them and sold hundreds of copies. I’ve sold thousands of dollars worth of ebooks and my refund rate was very low. I don’t sell crap. It’s not in my DNA to make things half hearted, I can’t do it. I don’t short cut, I strive for excellence in everything I do and it’s a tough gig but I love it all the same. I have just woken up to the fact that some things just aren’t Kosher. That charging a lot ‘because I can get away with it’ doesn’t sit right with me even if my value equation is considered greater than many others. It doesn’t get the great things I produce into the hands of the most people.

I could say to hell with those who haven’t got the big money, but I don’t want to. I want to share my ideas, my discoveries, my work; it’s what I do, it’s what I love, I want you to have it. Of course I need to pay for food and gas too and you know that, there is nothing wrong with charging for our work. I expect you to charge me for your good work too, but I’m one less customer you’ll have if you think you can ‘get away with’ charging me at rates that just don’t compare in value to what I get from my dentist for the same amount or my lawyer or my accountant. Not to mention when I compare it to a paper book I can get at Borders on a similar if not identical subject, or better still the digital kindle version.

I’m not saying you can’t produce something of high value, for all I know you’re a brain surgeon who is willing to finally spill the beans on the effects of cell phones on my brain. Or perhaps you create art that is so beautiful to me that I’ll do anything to get one of your limited edition copies. But think about. Think about what you charge and think about what you’re being charged when you go to buy things online.

Life Saving

I know that you might argue that surgeons and other professions over-charge, that would only make the argument for charging hundreds for ebooks and a few videos more insane wouldn’t it? I’m not about to get into the professions in any great detail other than to say that their years studying, their level of expertise and the risks they endure are significant to say the very least.

When I’m relying on a surgeon to remove every last sceric of dangerous cells do you think I might consider him worth paying? Do you think that he’s worth a couple of thousand dollars? For potentially saving my life? For having a responsibility so serious that it gets down to life and death?

Was It Greed?

And I paid how much for those Internet marketing related offers? And the grounds on which the price of those things was arrived at was what exactly?

Was it greed?

Deja Vu

I bought an ebook recently, it was not much under $100. I bought it to see just what exactly this thing had in it that must have been so brilliant, so amazing that it was priced higher than that $80 Photoshop book I’d bought from Borders. Granted it wasn’t about Photoshop but it was a relevant comparison.

I got a refund.

Not only did I find most of what I needed in a post at Mashable, I also found the missing bits I was after in an ebook that the author charged, wait for it……….$12.99 for. Now I have to admit, I suspected that the ebook would be more of a report, maybe 20 pages. No, it was almost 60 pages and it was practical, had in it what I know to be one of the most difficult aspects to what I wanted to learn (that incidently wasn’t in the first ebook I’d purchased), it was a great ebook overall! (I’ll tell you about it some day. )

Wolves Dressed Up As Sheep

Everything is not always as it seems. You can have the nicest of marketers sweetly seperating you from your hard earned cash for things that don’t hold the value that their prices might suggest they do.

A Different Perspective

Don’t make the same mistakes as me, instead look around and you’ll discover that there are people from the offline world coming online, and they’re doing business from a different perspective. A perspective that sees and values the low risk, low cost opportunity that the Internet provides to help spread ideas, share awesome work and get products into the hands of more people at a reasonable margin. Everyone wins.

In his TED talks, Ken Robinson talks about enjoyment versus endurance and about creativity among other things. If you haven’t watched his talks I urge you to as soon as you can. Ken speaks about how education dislocates us from our talents; how most of the emphasis is on mathematics and literacy versus the arts, and how this can squander the talents of some children. Ken is very entertaining too, the way he delivers his message is brilliant.

Talk 1 19:29 minutes.

Talk 2 17:57 minutes.

Although Ken speaks with a strong emphasis on shifting the way we educate children now, I can’t help but sit here and think about how you and I went through that very same education system. The same system that squanders talent today, is the very system we endured. We are the living breathing examples of what happens when you crush individuals into a system that, to put it crudely, is designed to churn out either mad professors or machine operators.

Is it any wonder so many people feel like life is something we have to endure, counting the days down to Friday?

TGIF

Thank God It’s Friday

Hump Day

Horray it’s hump day. We’ve climbed the hill of this work week we endure, now it’s a downhill run into Friday at last.

Another Day Another 50cents

The saying is more typically “Another day another dollar.” but this was downgraded to referencing 50 cents (at least with people I worked with), implying that it’s not even a dollar anymore that we endure a work day for.

With unemployment crippling some communities, many people take comfort that they have a job at all, that doesn’t stop them breathing a sigh of relief on hump day and getting really pumped on Fridays. The job they’re thankful for is often times still of little real enjoyment.

Nothing To Bank On

As companies work toward more efficient ways to produce, cutting labor costs and generating higher and higher returns for their investors, jobs start to be replaced by technology. Being thankful for a job we don’t like doesn’t help us keep that job necessarily, there is nothing to bank on so far as having a job now or in the future.

I’m in no way opposed to technology and when a machine takes over mind numbing jobs I’m pleased. When an intelligent human being is reduced to tasks such as screwing lids on jars repeatedly for hours on end, I feel it’s a massive waste. I believe that every human has more to give than that. But when screwing lids on jars is compared to no job at all and starving to death, all of sudden we can make it seem right. Just as you and I not being able to pay our rent or mortgage and getting thrown out of our homes makes it right for us to do jobs we would prefer not to do.

It’s Complicated

We’re all faced with the seemingly never ending need for money to get the basics of life paid for. Rent, mortgage, electricity, gas, phone, food, clothes; these are the bare minimum costs we all need to cover to get by. Anything over and above that needs to be funded too of course. Flights for holidays along with accommodation, events, Internet, furniture, computers and so on are all ‘extra’. Many people struggle to cover the cost of the basics and continually fund life itself with mounting debt. Debt that is being repaid with money from unenjoyable jobs. The tentacles of the debt trap reach right into people’s lives, putting pressure on ‘keeping that unenjoyable job’.

Some of us are lucky enough to not work a ‘job’ but as I’ve discussed previously, we can just as easily get caught up in doing things online that not only are unenjoyable but that also don’t deliver anything of real value.

As unemployment rises, the pressure to find alternatives will mount. People will look to the Internet for advice and of course there is no end to the supply of desperate customers for unscrupulous marketers in the make money online niche. Those most vulnerable will be looking for a way to keep a roof over their head, the heating on and food in the cupboard. We’ll all be competing with more and more people to get attention online, to sell something, anything just to pay the bills. Some will bring existing expertise to this space and others will fear they know so little that they’ll be prepared to do anything; rewrite articles on colon cleansing for example.

There is an opportunity here though. An opportunity for people to bring more than just their existing expertise or their fears.

Unearthing You

There are examples of people who have had the good fortune to unearth their talents early on and follow them through; their passion drove them to it and nothing would stop them. In some cases they’re brain surgeons, in others they’re choreographers.

Others went down the path of getting degrees in law or medicine because they had the ability for it but they didn’t particularly enjoy it. That can often happen, even if we’re good at something it doesn’t mean the ‘logical’ job for those gifts is the way to make the greatest use of them.

Examples abound of people who threw in the towel on their ‘real’ jobs and followed their passions. It’s encouraging to know that no matter how far down a path we are, we can choose to walk away and find our true calling. And what better time than now to start unearthing yours?

With jobs under pressure, more and more people fighting for attention online using the same old tactics as each other, why not discover what you can bring as a unique offering instead?

I’m Not Alone

I have the good fortune of not having to work a full time job right now and what that has allowed me to do is to ponder what I’ve been writing about and more. I started questioning what I was creating online and how I struggled to get things done that I didn’t enjoy doing. I reflected on what I’d done to date and made a choice not to continue down some of the cookie cutter roads I was on. This has left me room to ask the question of what else I’d really love to do, what are my gifts.

It’s one thing to quit your ‘job’, it’s another to know what it is you really yearn to do, what you can do well and what your innate natural talents are. We could simply answer the questions I posed at the end of my last post to find the answer couldn’t we? These questions:

What are you an expert at?

What are you gifted in?

Do you have a serious talent?

What goods can you make and sell?

What products can you ship?

What product reviews can you write on genuinely? You know from actually using a product.

What about solid experience in something?

What hard yakka, back breaking, finger bleeding experience, knowledge, expertise do you have to bring to the table? Did you come up with something? Anything? A serious load of expertise, talent whatever you want to call it…what do you have?

In the comments for that post no one expressed what they felt they could bring to the table and no one expressed that they didn’t know or didn’t think they had anything of value to offer. I was surprised in some ways and not in others. Given the rest of the post’s content was about posing as an expert, I don’t think anyone would willingly put their hand up and say;

“Ummm, I’ve got nothin’. I’m not educated, I have no talents or gifts. I haven’t produced anything and with no talent there is nothing I could produce of value. I don’t have any money to buy products to genuinely review them and my experience is so diverse that I have no depth to anything I know. I’m screwed.”

If you listen to the Ken Robinson talks you will hear him refer to the talent buried in humans as a resource, and just as the earth’s natural resources are buried deep, so are ours. To bring natural resources to the surface there needs to be certain conditions in place to make it happen, the same is for us. For some of us, our talents are buried so deep that unearthing them will be a challenge. Where do we start? We can start by acknowledging that we all have things to offer, and now it’s a matter of unearthing them.

Do you know what your true gifts are?

Do you know how to make use of those gifts to give your life real purpose?

Every man and his dog is a social media expert these days. What do you have to do to be ‘qualified’ as a social media expert? Do you know? I mean seriously? If you were going to ‘hire’ a social media expert, what credentials exactly would you ask them to present? I wouldn’t have a clue what it is that makes a social media expert. I know of high profile bloggers who speak on the subject, that makes me assume that either they or someone who is asking them to speak, considers them some sort of expert in the field. Wow. So a killer blogger AND a social media expert. Does that mean that’s part of the criteria? No, I don’t know either.

What about how many Twitter followers these experts have? Would that be a way to measure it? Surely not, considering that it’s easy to get tens of thousands of followers all kinds of interesting ways if you wanted to. Oh but maybe that’s what makes you an expert, because you know the tricky ways to make it appear as though you’re an expert. Is that it? Seriously frightening if it is indeed that. I mean imagine having an offline start up handbag store and you poured $80K into a full time ‘social media expert’ manager and you use the number of Twitter followers as your measure of their level of expertise?

Look. Perhaps there is some big bad ass university degree you can do these days to qualify as an expert in this field, just like any other. If there is, then sure, I’d be looking for that qualification, looking at who taught what in that course and looking for some practical, at the coal face experience that goes way beyond a person’s personal Twitter account. But that is not really what this post is about.

The Spark

Something I happened upon lately sparked something off in my brain and a lot of things started coming together for me about this ‘virtual’ space we’re in here.

I read a mishmash of posts on various blogs that were all around the issue of giving stuff away for free. Some were expressing that free is a good way to market, get heard, show people what you’ve got to offer and others were freaking out about how so much is given away that their very ‘digital’ lifestyle felt under threat.

You know what? So it friggin’ should feel like that!

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid!

Let’s see. So you’re gallivanting around posing as a social media expert. You know how to use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and have more followers than any of the people in your town. That makes you an expert right? Ummm, well you can probably get away with charging like a bull to your local businesses (online or offline) for a little while longer but you might wanna start thinking about getting some serious expertise. Either that or get out now and do what you are good at, what you can hand on heart know you have a talent for, and or on the ground experience in.

How Come?

Because the experts are coming! Can’t you hear them?

The masses who you and I both know haven’t quite woken up to it yet. You know the ones, the ones who are actually sitting in cubicles pushing shit up hill. The ones with serious talent, qualifications or whatever, they are getting seriously jack of cubicle nation and they are going to bring their expertise to the digital world, and who won’t stand a chance? Those who are not really experts, those who are ‘winging’ it!

Whether it be the ‘business consultant’ or the ‘orchid expert’, you can bet on the fact that if I’ve been growing orchids amazingly well for years, have a passion for orchids like you wouldn’t understand and you’ve been blogging away in this niche with some half baked content….get ready to be bowled over, because I’m bringing my authentic, orchid blazing passion to the world and you’ll be toast. (I don’t have a passion for growing orchids, and I don’t mean to say that one person will knock off 500 half baked niche blogs on the subject but you get the drift right?)

Yes! Older people will get online too. They already are. I’ve been to several off line Internet marketing seminars and the number of what appear to be pensioners in the audience astounded me. These people want cash, they have real life knowledge, expertise and they are starting to see that there is a way to make money too! Tomatoes is one example. Some Aussie woman is making a load of money selling her expertise on growing the best tomatoes! How many killer tomatoes have you actually grown? Exactly…so why are you blogging about it?

Likewise, how many actual businesses have you consulted to? How many REAL businesses, and what results did you get them? And you’re a what, a self proclaimed ‘online’ business consultant? Well listen up. When Mary Joe quits cubicle nation after she realises that she can help online and offline businesses mostly from the comfort of her own home, she’s flashing around her REAL expertise, her actual stats from her real experience. Not the kind that many are getting away with online right now. REAL talent, actual expertise, serious experience!

I’ve read several posts today and I would be seriously and utterly gobsmacked if I was wrong in that the people who wrote them had not basically listened to or read something of Seth Godin’s and simply rewrote it in their own style…ie 30,000 words instead of eight like only Seth can do. Do you know what? I knew I was wasting my time reading some of this stuff because I’d already heard it all from Seth, the master. Ok, so he might not be everyone’s idea of a master but you can bet those reworking his stuff probably do.

Tell me why I would continue to bother reading rehashed versions of Seth’s brilliance when I can just get it straight from the man himself? Did you know about Seth? Did you know how many manifestos he has on the web for free! They are brilliant. If you read his stuff you’ll recognise it when others write it in their own words. Who is the master? Who is the expert? Seth or the rewriter?

I know we all have ‘different’ ways of putting things but please, don’t fool yourself, the degree to which we can stamp ‘ourselves’ on something that we’re getting from somewhere else, it’s negligible.

Don’t Waste Your Time!

I sat here one day recently and almost quit blogging, you know why? Because I was going to write about stuff that I knew others, those more experienced than me, more knowledgeable than me, more succinct than me, were already saying! Why would I do that to you? Why would I willingly rob you of your precious time when you can just go read it at Seth’s blog or get all the motivation you need from Will Smith?

I wouldn’t.

I won’t.

I refuse to.

I’m not going to write half baked, unqualified ‘attempts’ when I can direct you to the ‘real deal’.

You know why I’m not prepared to recommend people who aren’t one of the best qualified, most experienced, most proven?

Because They Don’t Deserve It! And You Deserve Better From Me!

Would I recommend my surgeon to you? Damn right I would. Is he an expert? Of course. How do I know? Well it’s obvious isn’t it? (Yes there are some surgeons who aren’t qualified to be one who pose as surgeons. They inevitably harm people and end up in jail.)

So who are all these people living the digital lifestyle that they’re afraid of losing….. because digital is being downloaded for free on torrent sites and we don’t seem to be able to stop it. Who are these people who apparently just give themselves titles as x?

“I’m a business consultant. What are you?”

“I’m a Facebook expert.”

“Really, what does one have to do to be considered a Facebook expert?”

“Oh excuse me, I’ve got to run. Talk to you on Facebook.”

I realised the other day that I paid a surgeon the same amount to cut me open as I’ve paid a few online marketers. Did I learn stuff from these marketers? Yeah kind of. Does it seem kinda screwy that my surgeon got the same amount? Ummm yeah. Do I see now why people offline think that I’ve been had by those online? Yeah.

Free!

So some people are feeling their digital lifestyle is threatened by all this free marketing that’s going on huh? Yeah, I can see why, because I bought a book recently by an online marketer and to be perfectly blunt, it was weak as water. The start was good and then it was pretty much nothingness. Were there links to some helpful stuff? Sure there was but ummm, if I were choosing in future who I’m going to pay to read, it sure as hell won’t be them! I realised they are qualified in something completely unrelated to what they’re selling online. You know why they’re selling stuff online? Because it’s a shit load easier than doing what they’re qualified to do. It’s much easier sipping cool drinks on the beach than showing up somewhere to do something like, oh, surgery let’s say?

Messy!

This is messy right? I mean the way this is coming out is messy but it’s going to be said one way or the other, forgive me, I’m not a writer, nor an editor. I know both a qualified editor and I know of top selling authors. So you’d guess that I’m not about to write a book on how to get self published. Surely that would be left to an expert? Well here’s the deal. I have actually self published a book. So I could indeed sell you an ebook on it. I’ve done it right? Please, if I ever do that, send me a nasty letter saying I’m not qualified and that I could have helped more people by directing them to the expert in that field instead of kinda, sorta being someone who can speak on it with any kind of authority! I can’t. But I can sure convince you of it right? I mean I could upload a photo of my book, video me flipping through the pages and then sell you an ebook on it. Hmmm, but I’d rather you learn from an expert. I’m sure my self publishing effort did not have to cost me $5000. But you don’t need to know that, can’t I just sip iced drinks on the beach and you buy my shit whilst I sleep already. Come on, I’m feeling threatened here!

Ok.

So we’ve had the good times and they could be over soon. Indeed I am not buying into any program by anyone, who any fool can see, has nothing more than their own self designed, self published, self proclaimed ‘degree in x’!

When I talk about qualified I don’t mean pieces of paper necessarily, although I have to say, I would hope my surgeon has pieces of paper. On the ground, at the coal face experience, knowledge, proven results, sure that is a way of showing the world you know what you’re talking about…so long as none of that is hyped up, white lies.

It Just Doesn’t Add Up

I know not everything in the world is ‘priced’ logically. But I really can’t see how so many of us with a little bit of knowledge about something that essentially boils down to not much, can continue to purport to the world that we are worthy of $97 a month from 1000 people at a time for shit we quite possibly are making up as we go along? (Especially when you compare it to say what a surgeon does, or a Prime Minister or a teacher or a…..)

Some work their butts off in online businesses to bring in big money and that might have something to do with the fact that we’re selling virtual nothings. Sure I know some stuff you might not about html, Photoshop, ftp, css, Artisteer, transferring websites, digital photography, self publishing a book, writing sales pages, using AWeber but I do not have the serious runs on the board that others do. Many people are serious coders, serious photoshop experts etc and they deserve your attention!

Mind Your Own Business

Here’s a thought.

How about you work out what your talents really are, what your area of expertise really is and bring that to the table. It’s all you’ve got when the experts show up. If you want to be an expert in a certain field then go do stuff and come back when you are. Sure, everyone will have varying degrees of what constitutes being an expert in your chosen area of interest but it sure as hell isn’t something like, “I’ve been Tweeting lots, therefore I am a social media expert.”!

I can guarantee you that I won’t be bothering to read about your limited experience, your uneducated opinions and your sheer desire to stay on the beach. Sorry, you might just have to put your suit on and turn up somewhere to get paid if you can’t bring to the virtual table something serious, something tangible, something that does something real for its users.

What are you an expert at?

What are you gifted in?

Do you have a serious talent?

What goods can you make and sell?

What products can you ship?

What product reviews can you write on genuinely? You know from actually using a product.

What about solid experience in something?

What hard yakka, back breaking, finger bleeding experience, knowledge, expertise do you have to bring to the table? Did you come up with something? Anything? A serious load of expertise, talent whatever you want to call it…what do you have?

Please bring it.

Ruth over at Web Career Girl has started selling off her sites and I personally know a few others who are doing the same. I’ve come up with a little idea (well it’s kind of big actually ) of how I can send a few of my sites off to good homes.

Over at Vred Voice I’ve set up a competition that gives people a chance to win four websites. I’ve run a competition there before but not to win four sites! Don’t worry, the four sites are not really intended to be ‘kept’ as such, they are indeed part of a little business that sells sites!

I thought why not create a little business in a box for someone and give them a head start at the same time. The winner could indeed set themselves up with a nice little active income channel if it’s something they’d enjoy doing. The alternative of course is for the winner to sell the lot and cash it all in for as much as they can get! You might not be interested in winning the prize itself but if you’re an early mover and earn 15 entries you get a Flippa.com voucher valued at $19. If you’ve been thinking about selling off some of your sites then here is your chance to get a voucher to list one for free. You can read all about it over at VredVoice.com.

Another thing I’ve been up to over at Vred is that I’ve written a short report. It’s brand new, hot off the virtual press and covers my journey online so far, the insights I gained from those four plus years and what I’d do differently if I had my time again. Anyone who buys a copy gets entries into the above competition too. I have to say, this little report was very cleansing to write. It was a pouring out of my journey to date and the resultant place I found myself at that I wasn’t happy with. To put it in writing and see it laid out sequentially, well it really gave me even more confidence in what I’m doing right now online and what I’m encouraging you to do; to bring your true self, your gifts, your passions, to the table in all their glory. The title of the report is “You Online – The World Awaits!”, you can check it our in the Vred store if you’re interested.

In Other News

Plugin Problems!

I’ve had nothing but trouble with a couple of plugins here. One being the notification of new comments and the other being threaded comments. I will continue to try and sort them out but I’m a tad over the whole technical mumbo jumbo for the moment! I do apologise for any inconvenience you have until I get it sorted once and for all. I’m considering using Disqus but not too sure about it just yet.

Santa Is On His Way

You do realise that it’s only about 14 weeks until Christmas don’t you? Sorry to shock you like that but I have a reason. I want you to ask yourself how much progress you’ve made with some of your goals for 2010? I seriously want to know if I’m the only one who thought that it was March yesterday and that 2010 would go on forever and therefore my goals would eventuate, just not until ‘later in the year’. Oh it is later in the year, and ……………..

Seriously, it will be only a matter of weeks and the television stations will start airing worse crap than they already do, the stores will have their Christmas decorations on display (if they haven’t already!), and we will be teetering close to repeating the same New Years resolutions we had only nine or so months ago!

Perhaps your goals changed mid year or you did a bit of an about face like me, and realised most of what you’d been doing so far in 2010 simply stunk! There’s nothing like slamming your breaks on your goals to see the entire year as a write off. But it really isn’t a write off if it means having realisations of what not to do, of what roads to get off and which ones to continue down.

The 10 Week Challenge

I don’t know about you but I’m not willing to write off the next 14 weeks as useless. It’s way to easy to get into that ‘Oh next year will be better. I’ll have a new focus, I’ll clean it all up then.’ No way Jose! I am not falling for that, besides it’s Spring here remember!

So will you join me in the 10 week Spring clean challenge? I know it’s not going to be Spring necessarily in your part of the world, but I promise to send you plenty of Spring blossom goodness from the land down under. In ten weeks it will only be four weeks to Christmas, that will give us enough time to go out and shop (or do it online), set up the Christmas tree (if you celebrate it of course), and start thinking seriously about building some momentum to take you into 2011.

So what have you got to do to get 2011 started before it even arrives? Time to make way, once and for all clean out the cupboards, brush away the cobwebs and get yourself sorted. Find You, free of all distractions, free of all the cookie cutter blueprints!

The world awaits you in all your glory, please bring it.

Because I don’t want to.

That’s it. That’s all I need to write. But it appears a bit random to just say that right? So I guess I should explain at least a little.

Some bloggers have not allowed blog comments for eons…Seth being one example.

Recently I’ve seen a number of bloggers announce suddenly that they’re turning comments off on their blogs. Each one has their own reasons. Some of the reasons got me wondering, should I be turning comments off so I too can be more productive, create more stuff for you that you’ll really love and to give myself a break from YOU.

Ummm, I have a confession to make.

I love hearing from YOU!

I also love talking and if that means the words flow out the ends of my fingertips due to the platform from which I’m communicating then so be it! (I am SO thankful for my typing classes at school and that I’ve been blessed with the ability to type really fast! )

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who commented on my last post! Who knew that talking about cow pats would generate so much fantastic discussion.

Whilst I was happily reading back over some of the discussion, I had this sudden little ‘oh no’ moment. I remembered that other bloggers were turning off comments and many who haven’t turned them off pretty much ignore those who do leave comments… You know…the old, “I’m so important I don’t need to even reply to you.” type stuff. (I know! I know! Not every blogger who ignores their readers’ comments is like that! Generalisation I know but don’t kid yourselves either ok!?)

Anyway……………

Then I woke myself up!

The Radio!

I realised I had slipped back momentarily into ‘follower’ mode! Into the person who says to herself “I really love chatting to my readers but maybe I should do what x, y and z does too?”

Nooooooooooooooooo!!!! Just when I was enjoying doin’ my own thang, absolutely loving every unbridaled minute! I questioned ‘me’.

What’s the radio got to do with any of this?

The radio is about delay. Jordan Cooper talked about this in a recent guest post he wrote over at ThoughtWrestling.com. He pointed out how just like the radio works on a seven second delay to allow for glitches and regretful comments, so too do many of us delay what we write or say. Jordan suggests that by censoring ourselves we lose confidence each time and start second guessing ourselves. My comment over at the post was about how I think I’ve been operating on a ten minute delay! Always working out what to say that will appeal, what to say that won’t make others uncomfortable, what to say to ensure that I don’t offend. (Well not really always on ten minute delay but way too many times that’s for sure.)

The cow pats post was not on delay at all! I think I edited it in only one or two spots…I wrote it fast and published it. It was well received which by the way I was so relieved from but at the same time, if it wasn’t well received I was willing to say that my current readership had little affinity with me and that would have been ok too. But it was awesome that we could all chat about it and ‘get it’.

On a slightly related note: (Did you know that there are people around the web complaining about the overuse use of the word awesome? So in ‘delay’ mode I would have written something else…stuff that! I love the word awesome and I’ll use it as many friggin’ times as I like! Awesome! That’s awesome right? I mean seriously awesome that I can say what I want and I don’t give a flying frisbee if some people have gotten sick of a particular word!!!! Anyway, if there are any words worthy of being sick of surely it’s ‘social media expert’!)

So I had my AWESOME, wonderful readers come out and chat together about cow pats and I loved it all. You will see that I have a history of writing back a lot in the comments. Not every time but if I have more to add I will. And then, as I’ve said above, I questioned that. I actually thought that ‘someone’ might think that I’m an idiot (or whatever!) for writing so much back in the comments. Perhaps they would be thinking “Ugh, what a tosser. Doesn’t she realise she’s just encouraging them! Get out of there woman, stop wasting your time! Turn comments off!”

Why am I not turning comments off – because I love hearing from you! (I think I said that already but I can say what I want as many times as I want. Awesome!)

Social proof! Awesome!

Do I want you to comment and me comment back and we chat and chat so I get the golden egg of all golden eggs…..SOCIAL PROOF!!!!!!!! NO! I want you to comment because I like talking! I like talking to people who have a perspective on what I’m going on about here! AND it’s awesome to hear from you if your view is the same or similar to mine, but I also want to hear from those who have a different viewpoint.

Viral! Awesome!

Do I want the different viewpoints so I can get a ‘viral’ post going with floods of traffic, people coming from everywhere to take up arms for the affirmative or the negative? No! I want to hear different viewpoints because I have a VERY open mind and love it when I’m surprised at how much I thought I understood about something that I actually didn’t. Often times I’ve made my mind up but I’m never closed off to logic, evidence or good old fashioned brilliant insights that make me go “OH, I hadn’t thought of that!” Granted, that doesn’t happen a lot but I wonder if that’s because everyone is on delay! No one is sharing their true perspective. Please don’t underestimate your own viewpoints, they might just open up other minds to brilliant things.

This is not about whether comments should be on or off on your blog or my blog or all blogs.

This is about each of us doing what we want to do. Those who turn comments off are doing what they want to do and I applaud that (mostly..but that’s another story).

This post is about how easy it is to slip into being a follower instead of being who we are. It is much more fun to let it all fly, to do what we want to do, to say what we want to say and remove the seven second delay! It’s freeing!

(Disclaimer….yes I know we can’t just shoot our mouths off in every situation! But I believe the more unbridaled we are the more likely it is that we’ll choose to think something over when it’s valuable to do so, rather than sitting there frightened because we don’t want to offend.

If people don’t like who we are in all our authenticity then that’s their problem.)

So there you have it. A blog post that was not on delay, was only slightly edited and is totally me.

I’m not turning off comments because I don’t want to.

I don’t think the road I’ve taken online over the past few years has been all that different to most others but I question whether my regret over it is typical.

I’ve never been one to have regrets. I have a reasonably robust philosophical outlook – what’s meant to be will be and in hindsight things always make sense. Well quite frankly I’m sick of looking back and seeing that I took so many detours along the winding road to today, that so much time has been wasted on, well, bullshit.

Not necessarily what you’d consider bullshit but what I consider bullshit (bull for short). This isn’t only about Internet marketing, this is about life as we know it. (Okay a lot of it is about Internet marketing…life is just life…leave it alone, it hasn’t done anything to anybody it just is.)

Bullshit ~ (v) talk through one’s hat: speak insincerely or without regard for facts or truths.

I think it’s safe to say that when we create a bank of niche websites in desperate niches, hot niches, whatever niches, we quite honestly couldn’t give a rats about the niche outside of how much money it can make us. When money is the first goal, the very thing that initiated the development of the site in the first place then it’s unlikely that the content will be written with much sincerity at all. It’s not impossible of course..I know YOU are a saint..but mostly, the content doesn’t flow, it becomes a chore and we start buying into the concept of outsourcing EVERYTHING we don’t like doing.

Do we outsource to experts, those who can write sincerely for our precious niche sites? Rarely.

There is an entire market about how to get full time staff in the Phillipines for $400 a month. Awesome! They can write all the boring shit for your niche sites! Or review sites, or your AdSense sites, or your Membership sites. That is bullshit content, it’s bullshit business and it works. Enjoy if you will.

I’m over the bull.

When I started this blog I was fired up about a product launch whose marketing as far as I was concerned was marketing gone mad. Marketing that was full of tricks and treated people like dirt. That’s old news. There are loads of people going on about that still (thank you).

But what about the bull that doesn’t really look like bull?

Marketing with tricks is obvious to a lot of us. Building a bank of niche websites is ‘good’ right…I mean comparatively…to marketing with tricks.

I’m not buying it.

When you’re outsourcing articles and every other awful task that goes with marketing 5 zillion niche blogs, 27 trillion review sites and so on…well I’m thinking that that’s just bullshit. That’s not content that cares about the facts, the truth, sincerity, genuine care about the person seeking the very information your sites purport to service. That’s bull and I’ve done it and I regret it.

I regret it because not only did it not serve the people well who were reading the bull but it stopped me delivering more facts, more truths, more sincere content at places such as this. Instead of bringing more of me to the table here I’ve been busy with stuff that is essentially cow pats.

Some of you know me well and would probably know that I don’t tend to do things by halves. If anyone is building niche blogs, AdSense sites, review sites and at least attempting to make them useful it’s me. But even I gave way to outsourcing. Not to experts. No. To the cheapest person I could find that can speak and write English to the point where I can copy paste the content and move on…“Ah, Google will love that. Bring on the higher rankings. I’m so awesome.”

Does it work? Can you make money doing this?

Sure can.

That’s the problem.

We spend so much time proving to ourselves that Internet marketing works and then when it does we do more of ‘it’.  We do so much of it to get ‘more’ that we forget that sincerity works, that genuine care about what we’re doing works too.

How about creating something genuine, something that is you?

We all have gifts. Please share yours.

Here’s what I bought recently at Ikea…I made a special trip to go and get these as my current one was way overused!

For only a few dollars, these nifty little brushes help me stay organised (dream come true for a Virgo ). With their suction foot I can place this little guy on my kitchen sink, ready for action.

They come in other colours too!

What’s your favourite nifty thingy?

I cannot put into words how it affects me. Anger, despair, hopelessness are a few of the emotions. But these ‘words’ simply cannot convey what actually feels like a breaking. A breaking in half of my heart, my soul.

The Blood Sweat and Takeaways series was a look into the appalling conditions in which people work and from which is produced huge quantities of food for the Western World. I’ve seen plenty of documentaries on similar issues but this series was particularly distressing.

One thing I found frustrating at the end of the episodes was the lack of solutions I could see to the problem. The show itself didn’t really delve into solutions and of course many of the obvious options are not easily implemented and or have severe repercussions in other ways.

One of the participants who took part in the show, took it upon himself to find Fairtrade products in his local stores once he returned home and he hoped to spread the word about the importance of buying food that is marked as Fairtrade. Of course it’s more difficult to find Fairtrade stock than regular stock as there is so much less of it but we can change that by purchasing it! Seek it out, make an effort and purchase it.

If we can make a difference to the current state of things it’s via our purchasing power, the choices we make. It’s old news I know but I’m committing that I will only buy Fairtrade coffee. What are you committing to? Every little bit counts.

Image by BashaSide7

The power of insights, the energy of action, the reward of progress.

Did you notice I’ve moved the furniture around a bit? Well a bit is a slight understatement I guess from the previous layout and navigation.

Why?

It’s a long winding road the one that led me here, and I will soon share with you my insights from that journey; in a nutshell the why is about me doing what I love. A little abstract there I know but more will be revealed!

Where?

Where to from here? If you read my last post titled The Turning Point, you might recall me discussing the idea of not having so many pots on the online stove. I encouraged you to begin thinking about creating something substantial, sustainable, authoritative online.

I also suggested that you take one step at a time, and to simply start by considering what you have to share and then move forward consciously.

Sounds kinda easy but if you take seriously the idea of creating something authoritative and that you’re passionate about you might come up against a few challenges. Challenges such as “What am I truly passionate about? What do I have to share with the world? How can I create art?” These are tough questions that I’ve pondered too.

I’ve been interested in and done a variety of methods to make money online and they all worked. Some methods I enjoyed more than others. What I found over time though was that each method became a bit of a chore, a ‘job’ if you will. I started out online with a belly full of fire for sharing information I’d uncovered that was health related. I was possessed by a serious desire to ‘get the word out’ and if I could make a few dollars at the same time that would be neat. That was the easiest money I ever made. So why did I sell the business?

I didn’t love it anymore, the passion was gone. The subject was no longer relevant to me and I was happy to hand the baton to someone else for whom it was. This can happen with many things in life, whether it be books we no longer resonate with, clothes that we just don’t like anymore, businesses we create or jobs we engage in that don’t allow us to truly be ourselves, to share our gifts, bring out our innate talents.

Who?

…to truly be ourselves. Many of us don’t actually understand who we are anymore. Me becomes ‘me too’. I’m on Twitter, “Me too.” I follow guru x, “Me too.” I’ve bought the latest greatest AdWords ebook, “Me too.” I led my own way when I first started out online and then I quickly became a follower. Sure I needed some guidance but instead of sticking to being coached on the solid foundations of SEO and online marketing generally, I started to think in dollar terms first – purpose and passion second. Don’t get me wrong, the money flowed from the various methods I tried out, but I worked very hard for pretty much every dollar that came from everything I did. For every dollar that is besides the initial product that I’d created out of sheer and utter determination to share; that money flowed despite me paying zero attention to the business.

So sure, we can create an Internet business that is not necessarily one that we love but at least it makes money right? Well for me no it’s not right. How can I bring out my best, how can I give to the world me and the gifts I’ve been given, if I’m following along like a sheep? Money is not the end game, my happiness is.

What is happiness? For me it’s enjoying what I do, not what I have. It’s being enthusiastic about what I’m doing right now in this moment, not what I did yesterday or what I might be doing tomorrow or next week or next year. It’s about loving what I do most of the time not just some of the time. It’s about me, my creativity pouring out unbridled, not about what I think others want me to be or what others think I should do or say.

I’m taking action to do what I love in every day life and in every day business. Do you want to too, because I’d love to help if you do!

Turns out I had a program on my Mac just waiting to be fired up that would give me a little window of opportunity to have a go at creating my first ever full length creation! What happened was a lot of fun and a not so awesome track but hey, it was my first try and I’m just beaming that I actually created something and my Mac didn’t crash!

Have a listen, it really is a fun little piece where I tried out loads of options just as you’d expect a newbie to.

Listen here.

If you want to hear some really awesome music though you must check out Oleg Mokhov’s free mixes! He shares them over on his blog right here!

I have the cutest little coffee machine that was ultra cheap at the time and I recall asking for a further discount because I was paying with cash! My theory was that I needed to get this el cheapo machine as cheap as I could because no doubt I’d be needing to replace it sooner rather than later. I didn’t mind that as opposed to paying thousands for one machine, so long as the coffee the cheap option produced was more than just drinkable.

Well my gorgeous little machine pumps out a great coffee and is still going strong more than two years later. (Touch wood!)

We get together at least once a day me and my Sunbeam, sometimes twice a day depending on how much sleep I’ve had.

Perhaps the machines worth thousands are worth it, granted my machine does lack a little in the ‘powerful steam’ department so foaming the milk can be slowish, but you know what, I need to slow down and if that means chilling out whilst I warm my milk then so be it. Goodness knows the coffee has me going at full speed ahead for the rest of the day anyways.

Skinny cappuccino anyone?

My gut tells me that, all in all, the idea of putting a lot of energy into one or two medium to long term projects just doesn’t sound that sexy to most.

It’s pretty much across the board in life though isn’t it? A crash diet that promises you will lose seven pounds in a week is much more appealing than the long haul of slowly but surely changing your diet and lifestyle to a more healthy one. Or the idea of saving up for a holiday versus whacking it on your credit card and never dealing with it later.

I like short term goals and quick results too, and if there is a fashion crisis then a crash diet to get into that little black dress might be in order; eventually it all catches up with you though, and you’re back where you started.

To be able to achieve more stable outcomes, outcomes that can see you through more than a month or two, you need to make changes to how you’re approaching things.

Would you like an example of how I took the advice I’m giving you? An example of focusing on something very narrowly and dedicating time and energy to it over the medium term and what some of the results were?

The turning point

Around a year ago I mentioned in one of my posts that I was joining Yaro Starak’s Membership Site Mastermind program which was an investment of over $1200 Aussie dollars. Even though during the course I realised that the membership site model was not something I wanted to pursue, the money I paid was worth every cent. Amongst the many things I learned, there are two things in particular that I took away and applied with precision.

1. Yaro emphasised more than once, that focusing very narrowly on a niche is critical to success and
2. In the area you choose to focus you must build preeminence.

pre-em·i·nent adj.
pre·em·i·nence n.

Superior to or notable above all others; outstanding. See Synonyms at dominant, noted.

It’s one thing to build a website around a particular niche but it’s a completely different thing when you aim to build preeminence in that niche. How can you build preeminence if you’re spread over many niche blogs in various markets and or many different modes of attempting to make money online? It could be possible if you have the time and resources, but for most of us I’d say it would be quite difficult to build preeminence in many niches at once.

Of course there are niches that we actually choose not to build authority in, and therefore we’ll hunt down cheap content, build Squidoo lenses, submit article after article and do as much marketing as we can……..across a variety of niche sites. Harping on about it I know…but….the level of success across many sites will be less than optimum when your efforts are spread thinly and you lack focus.

Yes, you can make money out of many niche sites etc, particularly if you put in a lot of elbow grease, and if that’s what rocks your world then go for it. But what I’m seeing is that most people don’t do the work. They get tired of all the fluffing around and the myriad of niches they have not one iota of interest in. They become masters of unfinished business with a plethora of unloved, weak sites that earn very little, and they do a lot of hopping around from one thing to the next online.

Build preeminence

When I started Yaro’s course, pretty much overnight I narrowed down my niche here to building and selling websites. It was almost instant that I had new people commenting and interacting with me via email and Twitter. These were people who were very interested in the topic at hand.

Previously, the subject matter of my articles was quite random. I was blogging about anything and everything that took my fancy and therefore the audience was rather random too, and I had built no preeminence in anything in particular on this blog (oh except for my initial rants about BS marketing tactics.)

Narrowing down to one topic attracted a very targeted audience like bees to honey. I was writing about something that I myself was very interested in and actually ‘doing’, and that attracted the attention of others who were in the same niche and also those who really wanted to get started in it.

Another interesting thing that happened was, rather than me have to go out and find ways to build preeminence by way of interviews, guest posts and joint ventures, they actually found me! I’m a work at home mum and a lot of the work is the ‘mum’ bit, so with limited time I actually couldn’t take up all the opportunities being offered to me! I was ‘found’ mostly via word of mouth.

What I experienced might not happen to everyone and the niche you’re in will impact how things pan out too as will the quality of your work, your existing level of expertise and various other factors, but the results I saw are pretty convincing particularly when you consider my distinct lack of time! When you share what you know, others will help build your authority for you.

As I said, the results were very quick and it was visible in my traffic stats. Once I narrowed down what I was focusing on here, my monthly traffic was six times that of the monthly average from the previous six months.

The possibilities

So six times the traffic with significant time constraints and these results are most likely a drop in the ocean to what I could have achieved if I’d been even more focused with more time.

There was the possibility of offering a membership to my readers but I decided to create an ebook that would span more than 200 pages and cover, step-by-intricate-step, all the things people said they wanted to know. An ebook meant people could move as quickly as they wanted to through the steps and make only one payment, as opposed to dripping the content out over months and asking people to commit to a recurring membership fee (this is not the ‘right’ approach, it just suited my situation at the time).

That one ebook has generated thousands of dollars in sales since it was released in March. I might add though that this is not your typical ebook. What I mean is that 200 pages is not typical, and the detail and presentation of the book is quite high; so take my results for what I am: not typical!

It’s not rocket science

Are you seeing the light?

Do you think you’re ready to narrow down and focus for a bit? Focus on building authority around something? Are you thinking that you can’t apply this to your area of interest or expertise?

It’s not rocket science, and yes many people see success when blogging on random subjects within a broad market; however if you have the opportunity to focus in on a topic, in particular one you enjoy and can should share with the world, then it’s a place to start.  It’s a place to begin, and perhaps eventually to become known as the most preeminent in your niche, or at the very least one of the most preeminent.

If you create something of interest, of quality and of value then others will reference you, they will send people your way. I do it all the time.

Chocolate: Lindt

Facebook fan pages: Leigh Kostiainen

Buy and sell websites: Flippa

PPC: Jen-PPC Mom

Frugal living: Forest

Green living: Stephen

Running with my dog: PoochTo5K

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ = You!

Not everyone is the dominant player in their markets, but with their niche carved out they have a targeted audience.

One step at a time

So if I can generate these results on limited time and I admit with a somewhat limited focus, what can you do with the time and knowledge you have?

I encourage you to create something that you have some level of fire in the belly for; something that you know others are passionate about too; something substantial, sustainable, authoritative and as Nathan Hangen would put it, create art!

Now don’t all of a sudden go quitting your job, dumping all your domains and registering www.Kumbaya.com (sorry to break it to you but it’s unavailable). One orderly step at a time please!

Start by just getting your head around not stirring 20 pots on the stove and begin thinking about what you have to share and then move forward consciously.

Resources:
You can read all about how to build preeminence, and how to funnel that into a membership site if you want to, by downloading Yaro’s free report. He calls it a report but it’s seriously a bible! This is not an affiliate link, it’s a genuine recommendation for his free ebook.

Looking forward to hearing what you plan to create!

What I’m really trying to encourage is the idea of you building something substantial, something exciting, something you want to live and breathe every day. Something more substantial than spreading yourself thinly across short term active income streams and five, ten, twenty different web properties all offering various degrees of ‘potential’ and promises of passive income.

To build something substantial doesn’t mean you have to build ‘something else’ or ‘something new’, although that could be exactly what you need to do now or in the longer term. You could quite possibly take something you’re doing now and give it your all – look at the possibilities of building a current site or activity into something more than what you might have planned to.

Jack of all trades, master of none

Perhaps creating something with more authority, depth, size, longevity isn’t for everyone and if you’re just starting out online or feel a lack of knowledge generally, you might be hesitant to think ‘big’. Actually to be perfectly honest, I think the less you know the better off you are.

How so?

If you don’t understand about all the ways to make money online, are not sure what all the Twitter and Facebook fuss is about, you can simply focus on one or two medium to long term projects without so many tempting distractions. Whereas if you know how to quickly build niche blogs, MFAs (made for AdSense sites), review sites, re-purpose PLR, flip websites, find cheap ‘unique’ articles, run a WSO (Warrior Special Offer), perform article marketing, provide writing services, design services and a whole lot more, then you can actually find yourself doing all of those things in some way shape of form.

What happens whilst you’re doing all those things? Well it’s less likely that any one thing will grow into anything substantial.

Going beyond the sale

Is it possible for you to take your active income stream and develop it beyond the initial sale? Develop it into a business? Perhaps you don’t want to and perhaps it’s not your active income stream you’d like to develop but rather one of your favorite niche blogs or review sites. Or it’s something new that you just know you’d enjoy working on and building up.

It can be easier to flitter about from one site to the next to the next, building Squidoo lens after Squidoo lens to point at your sites, to submit article after article to your twenty plus sites but is it worth it? Is it worth it for you to spread your efforts across mini-sites instead of digging into something you and others love and apply all your skills and knowledge to a passion or area of serious interest to you?

Maybe knowing what that thing is you’d love to develop alludes you right now but just starting to consider focusing your energy more will help you get a feel for the difference between sprinkling a little bit of you across many things versus giving a lot of focus to one or two things.

Don’t hold yourself back too long though. Don’t be afraid to develop something out a little bit even if it’s not what you sense would be your ‘ultimate’ online business. You can always sell the business down the track if you find something else you want to pursue that you’re more excited and passionate about.

Considering the customer life cycle

So where do you begin? How do you move from the mindset and busyness of stirring 20 pots of broth on the stove to stepping back and looking for a new recipe full of depth and flavour? Begin by considering the customer life cycle.

In a previous post related to site flipping I mentioned:

There is more to this business though than the simplistic calculation of the difference between the costs associated with your site sales and the final bid price.  There are many ways to earn income from your buyers outside of the Flippa marketplace.

Whether you write articles, flip websites, design graphics, build WordPress themes, offer tech support, blog in obscure niches etc, there is opportunity to retain customers.

I see far less focus on retaining customers online compared to my off-line experience and when the focus is there online it’s more often than not very short sighted. It’s usually in the form of subscribing to a list and then the customer being bombarded with offers that don’t logically flow.

The ‘flow’ of offers I’m used to receiving is quite frankly in the order in which the marketer’s friends launch their products. So today’s offer might be on outsourcing and tomorrow’s on awesome video production. Next week might be about making AdSense sites and the week after niche sites. It doesn’t flow and therefore doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me not to mention help me get anywhere in particular. I haven’t been retained as a customer by many Internet marketers.

Focus and consider your customers’ real needs

When you start focusing your efforts in one or two specific areas you will attract and connect with customers who are very targeted to what you have to share. As you pour out your energy and your enthusiasm into what you’re doing, that will be felt and absorbed by those who share your passion. You will quite naturally retain more customers as you deliver what you intuitively know they need.

Of course there is more to it than simply having a passion for something and sharing it but personally, I couldn’t think of a better and more enjoyable place to begin.

Are you up for the challenge of building something substantial?

Do you haves skills, passion and knowledge that you could should be sharing with the world?

Are you ready to start enjoying yourself?

I don’t blame them for thinking it’s hard, I recall when I first wanted a website built. I just went to the phone book and rang someone up as I had no belief I could do it, no way! Only computer geeks could build websites! A quote in the thousands put me off and my husband enthusiastically volunteered to learn html. (Let’s just say we never got much further than the excitement of mastering the marquee tag. )

I did end up building my first website with a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) html editing program that came free with my first web hosting account. It took me weeks to work it out and the end result was not very glamorous!

Create a blog in 4 easy steps!

These days, thanks to WordPress, a complete newbie can be set up with a website in a day, however there are still a few steps to follow that could be challenging for a newbie. So to help them navigate their way through more easily I’ve pulled together a couple of reports, Create A Blog In 4 Easy Steps and Setting the Right Foundations for Your Blog which can be downloaded for free at Vred Voice, so now my friends, and other newbies, can whiz through the reports and they’re up and away.

The thing I’ve found myself asking these complete newbies though is what they actually want to do online, what are their goals? Some of them have a little idea in their head about what they can share with others or they have a unique Internet business idea they want to introduce. Many though ‘just’ want to know a way they can make money online – any way.

I wrote in a previous post about making money from home and how there are so many methods to try. My fear for my friends is that they’re going to end up on the same merry-go-round that so many end up on:

1. Buy a product that promises wonderful things
2. Start the project
3. Discover that the method just isn’t that appealing
4. Move on to the next thing
5. And the next thing
6. Leaving a trail of unfinished business behind them.

Unfinished business

We all have them. I have them. I have tens of projects and sites that are half baked and looking back at it all, I know the time and energy that went into those projects would have been better channeled into one or two main focal points.

What inevitably happens when we have all these loose ends is a need to do something with them, to tie them up. Questioning back and forth, will we finally outsource and get things completed or will we sell them off half done for someone else more enthusiastic to take them forward? Will we go back to all those methods that we know really do work that we ‘just’ need to stick to a little while to get things moving?

Spreading yourself too thin?

What that can all lead to is you trying to pick up where you left off from various projects and before you know it you’re trying to be across many things at once. If you end up spreading yourself too thin then nothing gets completed properly anyway and the cycle repeats itself.

Knowing when to let go

If you’ve got unfinished business that is hanging over your head, that you tinker with here and there or that just haunts you with guilt that you haven’t followed through, then perhaps it’s time to take stock.

Clearing your schedule for the projects that matter to you most, that deserve all your attention, will see you being a whole lot more productive than when you’re trying to juggle a variety of businesses. So could you do that? Could you let go of some of your loose ends to focus, and if you did, do you know what it is you would choose to focus on?

What do you really want?

Do you have a good idea of what you really want to do online? What are your medium to long term plans and does what you do each day support those goals?

If you really did take stock and put aside once and for all those minor half done projects, do you know what it is you want to be spending your time and energy on? What sort of online business you want to be involved in?

Asking yourself what you would like to ultimately be doing online, and giving yourself permission to do it, can bring an extremely refreshing change to your outlook on making money on the Internet. Suddenly you are the one determining the destination on the sign posts not the hundreds of destinations being sold to you every day.

Tread your own path

You can tread the same roads everyone else has, go down the road less traveled or be a trailblazer. Don’t be afraid to carve out some new ground and follow your own path. There are benefits to learning from those who’ve trodden a path before you but many times their path isn’t exactly one you’re going to enjoy.

Is it time for you to take stock, tie up loose ends or let them go altogether and decide what you’d really like to do online and blaze your own trail?

As many of you know, my background is in strategic business development, specifically in retail. You’ve no doubt heard the saying “The customer is always right”, and I’d heard that a lot too. But over time I came to the conclusion that no, in fact the customer isn’t always right. Some customers just shouldn’t have shopped in our stores, simply because their expectations were never going to be met.

If you enter a discount retail store and expect to have staff hanging off your every need and giving you a private shopping tour you’re likely to be quite disappointed. Just as if you walk into Harrods expecting to find a designer handbag for less than $10, not likely! So are you right to complain in these instances? If you were misled about what the store offered, then yes, that’s not really fair is it if you were tricked through the front door. But generally, in the brick and mortar world, you can often glean quickly what you’re likely to expect from certain stores, but that doesn’t seem to stop some customers having unreasonable expectations of what the business offers.

During my time in retail we’d receive complaints that there weren’t enough staff on, that the customer had to wait in a queue ten deep and the store was too noisy, too cold and the product range was too narrow. Some changes can be made to a business model to try and appeal to more customers but ultimately, a discount retailer will keep costs down to keep their sell prices down so some customers just need to shop elsewhere if they don’t like it. We don’t want those customers in our store because their expectations do not match our offer, they’re not who we’re trying to appeal to and we cannot please them: we will not deliver silver service with rock bottom prices so they need to be moved along or get in line to pay for their goods like everybody else.

Aldi is a great example: “No Gimmicks, Just Low Prices”. Shopping at Aldi is a pretty ordinary experience to say the least but with great prices and quite a lot of quality preserved in what they sell it’s very popular. If I go to Aldi I don’t complain that it’s cold and that the stock being stacked on pallets on the shop floor is less than pleasing. I understand what their offer is and if I don’t like it then I need to shop elsewhere.

At the end of the day sometimes you just have to fire a customer.

Sounds harsh but this post is already getting quite long so I can’t be fluffing it all out with niceties sorry, and who’s got time for fluff these days anyways!

So does the need arise to fire customers in the online world too? Yes!

In the online world it’s easy for customers to complain, it’s easy for “customers” to steal and it’s easy for a customer to claim that the ‘item doesn’t do what it was purported to do’. The last point is true when it comes to digital goods where the customer has to actually do something to make the purported outcome actually occur. Hey, I could sell you a book on how to win the lottery but if you fail to actually go and buy a ticket to begin with then what hope do you have of ever actually winning?

I’ve seen countless claims from people online that ‘all’ the products they’ve bought ‘don’t work’. I read comments like “Ugh, I’m so sick of buying all this stuff and none of it actually works! I’d love a mentor, someone to keep me on track because I’m so useless at staying focused and following through.” Is it just me or do you see that the individual has not actually completed the said tasks to even see if the various models actually work or not, yet they claim they’re being ripped off?

When people make these sorts of statements in forums and so forth, in the past I’ve tried to help them and discover what the method was they were trying. Interestingly, when you start asking for urls, article marketing links, where did they build traffic or whatever the key levers were for the success of the particular path they took, the forum poster disappears, or more commonly, rewords ‘what they meant’. They either aren’t motivated to follow through or are distracted sucked in by the latest shiny objects that promise the “Internet lifestyle”. This means they never realise that the model does most likely work, they just haven’t actually stuck at it long enough to see. Or, in a lot of cases, let’s be brutally honest, they haven’t even started it.

(Yes, there are some marketing tactics that cross the line, yes there are plenty of massively overpriced products but at some point you have to take responsibility and unsubscribe from everything and choose one thing and do it until you prove it works or not!)

I find it seriously laughable when people buy ebooks and then ask for a refund the same day saying it doesn’t work, or it’s too hard to understand, or it’s just so not going to suit them. I’m continually surprised at how many people think that other people just came down in the last shower. Both buyers and sellers do it. They do things that essentially insult the intelligence of the person at the other end of the email. The good news is that when customers ask for a refund within the first day (or within the guarantee expiry period ) you don’t have to fire them! They’ve already shown that they are not going to be a good match for your products so you can spend more energy with those people who do resonate more with you and what you have to offer.

Here’s where it gets ugly though.

It gets ugly in terms of a waste of your time and energy, when the customer is a poor match but has nothing better to do than stick around, complain, ask millions of questions yet take no action and pretty much try to ‘disprove’ what it is you’re trying to help them with. Questions right up front asking for ‘proof’ ‘it’ works and so on. You can see it right from the get go, they just aren’t shopping in the right store. You’re never going to please them, convince them and get them to take action. They’ve bought a product, they have to do some work and so they decide it’s much easier to pick on the product, try to find holes in it, try to disprove it and so on. At what point do you tell them “You’re fired!”?

Luckily for me I’ve only had a couple of instances where I’ve had to fire a customer online and generally it’s been done by explaining where they’re going wrong and why they probably won’t succeed, whether that be about their mindset or their unwillingness to do the right thing by their customers. Sometimes you can fire a customer simply by refusing to pander to all their unreasonable expectations.

So what sort of customer are you? Do you have a good understanding of what you’re buying and why or do you just buy everything and ask for a refund and sit back in your office surrounded by all the ‘free’ products you’ve acquired. Does that work in terms of building a solid profitable business?

Are you the type of customer who is so scarred from some of your online experiences that every marketer is a scammer that has to prove themselves innocent first before you’ll take any action on one of their products?

Are you the type of customer who, even though you can see some marketers give away a load of stuff for free, you don’t care, you just want more and more for free and just take and take and take some more. Do you expect an endless supply of hand holding, ‘do it for me’ type help and generally place unreasonable amounts of requests on the people you follow?

I’m often talking about sellers needing to think about the buyer in the transaction and I’ve sacked plenty of gurus I used to follow who I’ve seen treat people like dirt, but I’m just as keen to speak out on behalf of marketers who genuinely offer good products and loads of free information who are quite often attacked for not giving enough, for not replying to things with enough detail, to not offering enough hand holding. We are all acutely aware of just how far the free line has moved but at some point we all begin to realise that ‘giving it all away’ and then being asked for unreasonable amounts of ‘more’ and giving it is downright insanity.

It has to go both ways. Not every person who sells something is a ruthless slime ball so be careful because you could get fired by someone who could have ultimately been the person to help you have the best chance of success.

If you have customers in your business who are being unreasonable, who are clearly not a good match then don’t be afraid to fire them. Focusing on those people who are willing to do the work, who are more in tune with you and what you offer is where you’ll find more success and happiness for yourself and your loyal followers.

Have you ever had to fire a customer?