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?

Something I’ve found that’s helped me has been music. I’ve found it helps me plough through the more mundane tasks and or just brighten my day and mood. When I’m more upbeat I tend to be able to ‘get started’ on things that I’ve been putting off such as big projects or even just tidying up my desk or inbox. I have to admit though that I’ve tended to grab music from YouTube a lot and have more than once spent way too much time watching videos when I was supposed to be working with the music in the background!

Working online for myself means there isn’t anyone keeping me in check; no colleagues expecting me to pull my weight, no boss asking me to meet deadlines and no clock telling me when I can and can’t knock off for the day. I’m my own boss but quite frankly, without some of those external factors pushing me along, my productivity has been half what it could be and that’s being kind!

A couple of weeks ago though, something happened that has literally changed the way I work. I found me some kick ass motivation at Blogger Beats.

Blogger Beats was launched at the beginning of May by Nathan Hangen and Oleg Mokhov. To say Nathan and Oleg are an awesome combination is an understatement! Nathan’s cut-to-the-chase style inspires, motivates and moves quickly enough to keep your interest but still at a pace and level of detail to understand the points he’s making. Combine that with Oleg’s awesome mix of music that is uplifting enough to get you moving in your seat but not so distracting you can’t concentrate, and the result is powerful!

What exactly does Blogger Beats offer? Well in Nathan’s words:

Blogger Beats is part motivation, part business, part sleeves rolled up and down to business, part sleeves buttoned and down to business.

Let’s not forget about the awesome, original and unique tunes created by the mixmaster himself, Oleg Mokhov.

All designed to help you get in the zone and be more productive than ever before.

All in all, you’ll get 2 brand new shows each and every week. They’re around 30 minutes on average, and they’re all unique.

Every episode I’ve listened to so far has been awesome and I can’t wait to hear next weeks sessions!

I know I’m not the only one who struggles with getting motivated and staying motivated which is why I’m so happy to be sharing this with you and anyone else who hasn’t heard about Blogger Beats before. It’s just the combination I need to help motivate and energise my work time and I hope it can help you too.

You can try it out for seven days for only $1!

Update! You can now try Blogger Beats for FREE for seven days. Get it here!

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In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
Albert Schweitzer

This topic often creates much debate between those who believe all PLR is useless and those who feel it does have its place.

I’ve seen plenty of junk content online, in fact a lot of it I suspect actually isn’t PLR but rather is content that has been spun through a program that spits out complete gibberish. I’ve bought PLR content that doesn’t read well and I imagine very likely to not be well researched either. On the other hand I’ve bought loads of great quality PLR too, some with limited distribution and some in such small markets that no one much else was using it. So from my experience I’ve come to realise that there is low quality PLR around but I can find plenty of quality PLR too when I want it.

In terms of ways to make money with PLR, for me that has been limited pretty much to websites that I build to sell. On a couple of occasions I used straight PLR but decided quickly that I’d prefer to rewrite articles that would pass Copyscape 100% rather than on-sell content that could already be indexed by Google on other websites.

I have certain sources for PLR that I stick to as I’ve come to know them as offering quality in most instances and I feel confident that the content is a good base to work from. On a couple of occasions I’ve included small PLR ebooks in some of the sites I’ve sold too so the new site owner can either sell the ebook or use it to build a list of subscribers by giving the book away via an opt-in form. (Not all PLR can be given away so always check usage rights before you do so.)

When selecting the PLR I’m going to use as research for my content I read over it quite thoroughly and make a judgment as to the quality and accuracy of it. If it’s poor quality I will often do the research myself or look for a better quality PLR pack.

I’ve purchased quality PLR from Peggy Baron in the past and recently Peggy interviewed me by phone and during that 40 minute interview we talked a little bit about the use of PLR in terms of selling websites. I discussed how I really find it difficult to write on subjects I’m not passionate about so having quality PLR as a base to give to writers I outsource to relieves me of the writing task but doesn’t cost me money in outsourcing the research component too.

When Peggy mentioned to me that she was working on a membership site that would help people learn ways to maximise PLR I asked her to let me know when it was launched so I could tell you about it. Well that day has come, Maximise PLR is live. Peggy has teamed up with a gentleman by the name of Alan Petersen to deliver nine modules of content all related to maximising PLR. (And my 40 minute phone interview is included in module 6 so you get to hear my Aussie twang! )

I’ve had the good fortune of peeking inside the Maximise PLR modules and there is loads of content, some of which I’ve had the chance to review and some I haven’t gotten to yet. Peggy and Alan have certainly jam packed in the videos, PDFs and recommended resources! As I mentioned already, there are nine modules and they are all very different. They cover ways to build a list using ‘give away events’ in module one and how to use PLR in your article marketing in module five! There is variety galore so you’re sure to find plenty of new areas to explore when it comes to PLR.

As I said, there are a lot of videos included in the Maximise PLR membership and I haven’t been able to sit down and review them all but I have watched quite a few of them and all were conducted by Alan. I don’t know Alan but what I can say is that he and Peggy both seem to be very down to earth people who are not about to try and wow you with flashy Hollywood style videos, scripted speeches or anything like that. In fact I found the videos quite difficult to sit through in that they were so lacking a script that they felt like they were much longer than they needed to be. My time is so very limited that I prefer things to move quick in very step by step fashion and I don’t want the air filled up with unnecessary words such as um, ah etc. Of course I would be just as critical (as I have been of myself!) if things were too scripted so perhaps Alan and I should mix our two extreme approaches, fully scripted versus no script, and we would have the ultimate video style.

The positive to take out of this unscripted approach is that after listening for awhile you realise that Alan is sharing what he knows, what he and Peggy have experienced at the coal face, rather than theory. They certainly do seem to both offer a ‘what you see is what you get’ style and that can be refreshing in some ways given all the Hollywood style hype we see often. I still would like to see improvements so that people can move more quickly through the videos and if they want to slow down they can simply pause.

There is a lot included and the best way for you to get a feel for whether Peggy’s and Alan’s offer meets your current needs is to have a read through the details of each module that is shared on the sales page. If you do think there are some gems in there that you can learn from, (I learned some things from the few modules I’ve reviewed so far ), then you’ll be pleased to see that I’ve managed to secure a discount for you.

Check out the Maximize PLR offer here and if you feel this is something that could really help you then take advantage of the discounted price while it’s there.

I’d love to hear about the ideas you have to make money with PLR so please leave a comment below.

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1. An expression of panic, that everyone should forget about comradeship and save themselves.

You might recall a post I wrote a little while ago about customer care. In that post I talked about how customer care was a rare breed and people who put their customers’ needs first would do well: this is true today more than ever!

I see endless examples day in day out of people who operate from a mindset that says “What’s the best outcome for me and how can I get it in the shortest possible time with the least amount of energy invested.”

There’s not really a problem with wanting the best outcome for yourself is there? And surely there is no issue with trying to achieve those outcomes quickly without expending more time and energy than you have to. But if there are other people involved shouldn’t you be considering them and how they’ll be affected in your quest for your desired outcome too? Thinking along the lines of “What’s the best outcome for me and my customers and how can we get it in the shortest possible time with the least amount of energy invested.”

I’m not sure what it is that has led to what appears to be an ‘every man for himself’ approach to life for many people. It’s as though we are in a panic and that our very survival has gotten so threatened that we are now willing to trample over our own neighbour to get what we want.

Do you give even a fleeting consideration to what your actions might mean to someone else who is involved in your transaction, your group or whatever it is you’re doing to achieve a set outcome?

I wonder if the ‘buy now pay later’ addiction of today is also reflected in how we view our customers? Take their money today, deal with their dissatisfaction later?

Is it similar to smoking a pack a day and dealing with the emphysema later. Overeating fatty foods today and dealing with the high cholesterol later. Drinking too much today and dealing with kidney disease later. Spending too much today and dealing with the debt later.

Treat people with indifference and deal with their wrath later.

I’ve seen both site sellers and buyers, Internet marketers and other sales people who only seem to really care about what’s happening on their side of the fence. Their consideration for the other person or people involved seems almost close to zero in so many things they do. They work out how they can hype up their sales pitch the most, how they can inflate the value of what they’re selling beyond what they even consider it to be worth, they look for ways to create frenzies and so on.

Never fear, I’m not against marketing, I have done plenty of it myself. What I’m on about though has two components to it. One is a personal preference toward helping people. No not just “And in my spare time I like to read books, ride horses and help people.” No I mean truly help people! Put myself in their shoes. Guess what they might be thinking and ensure their own thoughts don’t convince them of something that’s not real. Think about them and what is best for them and their particular situation.

Someone displayed this type of consideration recently and although I expected it from them I was completely at their mercy to ‘do the right thing by me.’ I asked them whether their service/type of advertising would likely lead to me getting exposure through to my target customer. The answer was no, probably not, and then an explanation as to why. I knew there were plenty of ways they could have ‘sold me’ on their product that costs several hundred dollars but they didn’t. I wish they had something I did need because that’s the type of person I want to do business with, the one who truly has my needs in mind.

This person understands that strategically it’s not going to make sense to convince me to advertise with them and then in the long run not get the desired results of which I might tell others and come back and complain to them. This is the second component to why I prefer to market a certain way, because it’s good for business when you consider things strategically over the long term. I could have handed over hundreds of dollars for advertising that wouldn’t suit me and given that company a short term boost in revenue but what are the long term affects to their brand for not ensuring their client’s needs meet what they can deliver on. It’s not as easy to convey everything in a sales letter online as it is to talk one on one with a customer, but it pays to try and send the right message to help you attract those customers who are a good fit for what you’re offering.

Will you reduce the amount of dollars you receive up front by turning off some customers who are not a good match to your offer? Of course you will which is why some people prefer to use sneaky tactics, make ‘innocent mistakes’ with how they portray what they’re selling, omit details that would be a clear signal to some that the product is not a good fit for them and generally stir up a lot of emotions and so on to get people foaming at the mouth for what they have on offer. I’m all for hungry customers, what I’m hoping you can realise though is that if you make me hungry for your secret menu of goodies you better make sure it’s vegetarian that you’re serving up because that’s the only food I eat. You can’t know everyone’s preferences but you can try hard to make clear what you’re offering and to who it might suit best.

If you’re serious about an online business, and even offline too actually, then you are crazy if you think you can get away with poor service or if you think you can come out unscathed if you mislead, inflate, hype up and pretty much not deliver on your promises to your customers.

Have you thought about the customer who actually might live around the corner from you who could have their AdSense account banned because of a questionable website you might sell them? Do you stop to think about anyone but yourself when calculating the multiple you might be able to get for a site you’re thinking of selling if you can just get the traffic and earnings to spike? Would you take a moment to think that a spike in traffic and earnings can lead to the site coming to Google’s attention? Are you thinking about the fact that the site could get deindexed and the associated AdSense account banned should a human review occur where it’s discovered that the scraped content is all that’s on offer and nothing much more.

When you decide you need $80K do you even think twice about promoting a $2000 product as an affiliate or are you just really excited and focused on the calculation you can make on what your list converts at, what date you can expect the affiliate commissions to be paid and how much interest you’ll save by rushing down to the bank and paying off a big chunk of your mortgage? Or are you having a nagging feeling in the back of your mind that says 99.9% of your subscribers don’t actually need what you’re about to send them to? Do you even take the time to do the due diligence on the person you’re promoting or do you just take them on face value because their face is pretty? Do you think you’re followers don’t see what you’re doing?

One thing I’ve learned about myself, about you and about most other people is that we’re not completely blind to what’s going on.

We’re not oblivious to the fact that someone said I should watch a sales video as it was full of great free ‘content’ when in fact there was not one piece of free ‘content’ in it, it was all pitch and they wasted my time. Did that marketer truly think I didn’t realise this was a referral for a new kid on the block and that they clearly had not watched the video themselves or they would have known there was no free ‘content’? It was obvious that they really didn’t have my best interests at heart at all otherwise they wouldn’t have sent me to that piece of rubbish – twice. They must have thought I was stupid because they sent me to the same offer a few days later only this time with a very lucrative bonus. I now finally gave up on this marketer who I’d somewhat grown to like but now realise they don’t care a flying banana about their subscribers and I don’t trust them anymore.

If you want to be someone like that, someone who employs short term tactics for quick rewards, whether that be for $500 or $80,000 then go right ahead, you will most likely win in the short term, even the long term if you can generate enough cash to pay for everything you need and then keep a low profile so you don’t get pelted with rotten eggs (oh what fun). If you don’t want to be looking over your shoulder, feeling sick at the site of your inbox because of nasty emails from irate customers, see your name up in lights for all the wrong reasons and generally end up being miserable, then try putting yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Try considering that you’re dealing with a person, a person who is no different to you, a person who wants to achieve things, a person who is parting with hard earned cash in the hope to reaching a goal. You never know, you might win them for life and actually build a sustainable business for the long term. Are there people with bad intentions? Of course there are but in the main, people are good. You might be able to help others realise that it’s not about being on one side of the fence or belonging to this type of group or that particular tribe. Whether we’re the buyer the seller, the coach or the student or the avenue that brings those things together, we are all just people and we have the power to help each other achieve by working with each other not against each other.

Michelle Adams
One Tribe Marketing

What are your thoughts on why we should take our customers into consideration more?

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