In order to focus more on my business and marketing and less on some of the ‘trench work’ I’ve posted projects on sites like Elance.com. And I’m not a graphical expert. While you can get some good deals and find some great experts, these can end up costing you a fair amount if you post many projects. And each project is separate, requiring repeated posting, evaluation, awarding, monitoring and payment of projects.
One issue that gets reported is that the typical countries involved in technical work can be problematic from a work ethic perspective. Another is having to explain how everything should work over and over to each new project winner. Also you sometimes have issues getting the dedication to your project as many of these workers are juggling multiple projects.
That’s why I was intrigued to see the site Replace Myself. The interesting thing about this approach is that you will hire a very educated person full-time so they are dedicated to your business one hundred percent. This is like having an employee but way cheaper and no benefits to pay. The estimated monthly cost to hire someone from what I was told is $200-500 per month. Not to generalize but being from the Philippines these people are very hard working. And this site provides extra assistance and best practices.
Of course you will have to potentially train this person to do your tasks but once they are up to speed you will at least have the consistency of someone who can take some of the workload off your shoulders.
Right now I’m working on my business full-time (7 days a week) so I don’t need to hire assistance but if I end up working during the day on other things, or start to make some better revenues I will seriously consider the option to replace myself.
The Power of Leverage
By · CommentsI don’t think many entrepreneurs are taking advantage of the true power of leverage as much as they should be. You can leverage attention, technology, the influencers in your niche, existing communities, other people’s knowledge, affiliates, customer data, by taking advantage of what they’ve already accomplished (a large following, loyalty)
Leverage Attention
People used to read newspapers. Then they watched a lot of TV. Then they went online and searched. Now they spend hours on social networking sites. That’s where you need to be because that’s where your customers are.
Leverage the Technology
There’s an incredible amount of technology that you can use to help get exposure for your business. Facebook fan pages (to build a community and interact), Wordpress blogs/websites (to create websites, receive comments on your blog posts), Twitter (to post links to useful content, engage with your customers), Ustream.tv (to do live video streaming), YouTube (to post videos educating your customers), etc. There’s never been a better time to build your brand and get awareness of your company.
Leverage the Influencers
Other bloggers have spent years building a large and loyal following. Can you leverage that following and also provide value to the other blogger? For example, offer the blogger a commission on sales of your product if he interviews you via audio/video and records it, or sends emails to his followers, tweets about it, etc. I see this all the time on teleseminars and blogtalkradio.
Leverage Existing Communities
There are many forums, Facebook fan pages, groups, Linked In groups, and so on where your customers are hanging out. Other people have built these groups and managed to get a large following of engaged people talking about your niche. Go there and be helpful to these people.
Leverage Affiliates/Joint Ventures
There are many affiliates who sell other people’s products online. They’ve learned how to sell, how to create landing pages, how to create Google ads, how to build an email list and so on. Why not leverage those affiliates for your own products/services? You could post your product on Clickbank or create your own affiliate program. Partner with someone who can do more marketing or create the content split the work and the profits/risk.
Leverage Customer Data
You can leverage the information that sites like Facebook and Google have acquired over the years. And yes you can still benefit from advertising. Some of the newer technologies can target what people are searching for (Google Adwords) or Facebook ads can target people with specific interests, ages, geographical locations and so. You can also see what people are buying by checking top selling Amazon, Ebay products.
Leverage is about taking advantage of existing communities, influencers and technology to make faster progress than you can by yourself.
If you can think of other categories not mentioned above please post them in the comments.
Online Income – November 2009
By · CommentsWell I was all set to report a disappointing November income because the sales of Learn and Master Guitar had decreased and I’ve been focusing on add new beginner videos lessons to my Online Guitar Coaching site (which is a membership site).
However, when I checked one of my affiliate sites for membership sites I found that I had made $407.71 in November! I haven’t added any affiliate links to Ryan Deiss’ site recently so it could be from an older blog post or sidebar link. But actually, Ryan does a lot of ‘back-end selling’ where he sells lower priced items to get people into his funnel, then upsells them later. Some of the products are recurring so I might have to try marketing them some more!
Another thing to note is that for the Learn and Master guitar affiliate sales I didn’t do anything new this month. So the existing YouTube videos and blog posts are still working for me (and should for a long time to come). So you put in the work and hopefully over time you get the rewards off of the single effort.
So we have:
$313.22 my guitar product/membership sales
$9.98 back pain site
$37.94 adsense you tube videos
$407.71 Ryan Deiss continuity products
$1.89 amazon affiliate sales (guitar books, ets)
$19.80 share a sale Learn and Master (they have 2 different affiliate products)
$29.10 Wishlist Products (membership site plugin for wordpress)
$1 Sponsored Tweet! (advertiser paid me to do a tweet about Microsoft!)
So the grand total in November 2009 was……..$820.64 there’s been no money spent on advertising these affiliate programs…just sweat equity! This is a new record, yahoo!!!!
Consider Making Money with Advertising
By · CommentsMy new mantra is ‘We are all brands’. No matter what you are doing online the best way to sell things is to create content around your product (or an affiliate product). This could be live streaming videos on Ustream.tv, videos on youtube, blog posts, twitter, articles and so on. If you’re thinking of just sending traffic to offers directly without adding any value than chances are you won’t be very successful.
Just like sports athletes and actors you are a brand but at a much smaller level of course. Sponsors often want to attach their products to the famous people’s brand. With people online there are tons of ‘content experts’ in all sorts of niches which is attractive to advertisers.
So the two main ways to make money are to sell products (yours or others) and advertising. While programs like Google Adsense haven’t been that lucrative (except for my YouTube videos), there are new exciting models such as Sponsored Tweets and Ad.ly. I know a guy in British Columbia, Canada who just got paid $1000 for one tweet!
Social Media = Business
By · CommentsNice video from Gary Vaynerchuk:
Social media marketing is huge because remember, that’s where people are, and so it can make you money online. And customers expect you to be accessible, answering their questions, dealing with their grievances, and so on.
Why do companies advertise on tv, radio, magazines, etc? Because that’s where people are, or should I say ‘were’. As people spend more of their time online, companies need to follow. However, no one likes to be sold to, and most of the ads are highly untargeted, ie. irrelevant.
Here’s the two-pronged approach you can use. Constantly create or repurpose your content, and use social media to let people know about that content, and grow a loyal following that loves your company (because you respond and give away free content). Make them offers and people will naturally want to check out your company.
So get out there and build your community!
Marketing by Sharing
By · CommentsThis is a great video about new marketing – by sharing and educating your following. My new mantra is ‘Focus on building a following first. Monetize later’. While I have courses for sale and am adding new ones, it’s a more subtle approach. You do live Ustream events (webcasts, lessons, interviews, etc) and provide material. Maybe the material is a subset of your product – then you have links in the PDF material for example explaining where they can get more info. Social media marketing is a free and powerful way to get the word out to the masses like never before.
