Accelerators - Part 2

Jul

Why People Start Businesses

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (0)

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In my a previous I mentioned how the most frustrating part of starting a business was simply finding the right idea to pursue. This may sound ridiculous to some people, since “thinking of the initial idea” should be the simplest part of starting a business.

Just about all the media, along with most entrepreneurs they interview, reminds us to “find our passion” and then start a business based on that. Although this is true, for most people this statement is close to meaningless.

If you are considering to start a business you should analyze several different factors to determine whether or not that business is the correct fit for you. Some of these factors should include:

1. Passion For Your Idea

2. Revenue Viability or Cash Flow

3. IPO or Merger; Acquisition Possibility or Can You Sell it for a Profit?

4. Location-Based – Can you Move or Multiply it elsewhere

5. International Or Local

6. Self-Employed vs. Business Owner

Whether you are starting a surf shop in Brazil or developing an advertising firm with your dream of being on Madison Avenue one day, these factors apply to all your start up ideas. Many businesses fail because they do not fully consider and evaluate these factors before they commence their venture. Tony Robbins, the famous personal development guru, has always admonished “ignorance is not bliss” and this is true, especially when it comes to your business life. While entrepreneurs have a bias towards action, successful entrepreneurs show a keen balance between action and planning.

1. Passion For Your Idea

This is probably the most crucial factor when deciding to start a business. Passion is the fire that fuels all of us to make a difference in this world and do whatever it takes to overcome the obstacles, creating business empires from little more than basement walls. Your Passion is what makes you get out of bed in the morning and face each new day. When thinking of an idea, your passion should be number one on the priority list.

Could you see yourself going to work every day trying to work on the same old boring idea, year after year? Probably not. The facts is that starting a business always takes longer than you think it will and unless you have an unrelenting passion for the idea, or your driving “fire” will fade and the business growth will wither. I believe that this is the reason why most new businesses fail. A lack in your passion directly translates into a lack of focus, which causes your company to go downhill.

When it came to starting my own business, I had a passion for 1) building a business around who I am and 2) helping others become successful at doing the same. I combined both of these when developing my consulting business. I knew that this was an industry that I had very little experience in. This business would force me to learn everything from scratch, building contacts out of thin air and trying to develop a product and a system from scratch.

After about a year I came up with my first real idea of exactly what I wanted to do and how I would do it. I was passionate about it and that passion is much stronger today than it was even then. This is a positive sign for you, when your passion keeps growing. It is what is required to keep you going.

2. Revenue Viability

This factor is simple to understand, yet the most critical one to answer. The main question with any start-up is; “how does this business make money”? Your answer to this question will end up becoming your revenue model for your company. It can either be a very simple answer (well give surf lessons at our shop) or very complex (we provide initial loss leader products, combined with premium product upsells to limited segment, and alternative services to the other segments that are not direct competition).

Whatever your revenue model looks like, it should be clarified at the start, and then improved upon as your business grows. Once you have your passion in place, you need a clearly defined method to make money with your idea. Without revenue, your business will cease to exist very quickly. Make sure to write down every possible revenue streams you can think of, and then hold on to them until you determine which ones you will apply in your business.

In our business, we knew that most Web companies simply rely on advertising to pay the bills. In fact, a few companies do not even have an implemented revenue model, and made very little in revenue at the beginning, yet are still successful (Twitter, for example – which only recently added its ad revenue stream) We wanted to be different, and run our company as a real person to person business, including leveraging an online platform. So, we came up with several different ideas for revenue streams, and we are constantly updating them as we go along. Revenue is the number one thing to keep in mind, without it you are not around long enough to test the market and learn from that and from your mistakes, because you need them to succeed too.

3. IPO or Merger & Acquisition Possibility (Exit Strategy)

While this section will not apply to most small businesses, I felt that it should be included after the revenue section for those companies that need it. When starting a company that will require investment from either local or formal investors, an IPO or M&A strategy is important. This usually only applies to Web start-up companies, but can stretch across to other sectors.

An IPO, or Initial Public Offering, is when a company turns public, or allows it’s shares to be traded on a public stock exchange. A perfect example of this is when you or I buy stock in Microsoft, Coca-Cola or Google. We purchase a stock at a price that fluctuates every day based on people buying or selling that stock to one another. Using this method, a company can liquidate, or convert stock to money extremely quickly. On the days where companies go public, every stock holder in that company receives an immediate money value based on the price of the stock. IPO’s have dried up in the past couple of years due to the recession. However, it is starting to pick up a little with companies like OpenTable that have gone public in 2009.

An M&A, or Merger and Acquisition, is when one company is purchased, or bought out by a larger company. An example of this is when Google bought out YouTube a couple of years ago for a huge amount of money (around $1.6 billion). YouTube was now owned by Google, and all of the investors in YouTube got a huge return on their investment. Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors decide to primarily invest in tech companies for this reason. If all goes according to plan, a 5 million dollar investment can turn into 100 million dollars in a couple of years. Not bad, considering most people get around a 2% annual return at the bank. An example of the most famous M&A in 2009 can be found at this link, Amazon Closes Zappos Deal, Ends Up Paying $1.2 Billion

When starting a company, it should be considered whether or not an IPO or M&A is possible. This will make your business much more complicated, but could result in a huge payout at the end of the day.

4. Location-Based

Location, location, location, as the old saying goes. This applies not only to real estate, but also to business. While location may not be the first priority on everyone’s list, it certainly is an important element. Entrepreneurs themselves usually determine whether or not they want to have their business at a fixed location or a portable one.

Many entrepreneurs are opting to choose the “Internet lifestyle” rather than the old 9-5 system with a cubicle. This lifestyle usually includes sitting at home in your pajamas and watching the checks roll in, or sitting on a beach somewhere sipping piña coladas and suntanning. This is very possible, and is happening all over the world. Through the use of Internet Weblogs, (or blogs) electronic-books, affiliate sales and content writing, entrepreneurs are able to generate more than enough revenue to sustain themselves in whatever climate they would like.

The Internet is changing the way that people around the world operate and work. Employees can now work remotely from anywhere in the world, video conferences are beginning to replace old boardroom meetings and mobile smartphones are beginning to replace computers for many businesspeople. However, there is still a huge percentage of the population that work from a location-based business. If you are an entrepreneur and you want to open up a bakery, restaurant, cafe, hardware store, printing business, etc… then you obviously need a storefront. This will limit you to the location that you choose.

So, now while choosing what kind of business, you would have determined that you had a burning passion for the idea, it could make money, and where the business was going to be located. Once you have determined whether the business is going to be an online or an offline business, you then need to determine where to start that business.

5. International or Local

Certain areas of the world are more friendly to certain types of businesses than others. Generally, Internet businesses end up near San Francisco, real estate companies migrate to New York or Chicago, and financial companies target New York, London or Tokyo. That’s not to say that you can’t start any one of these businesses in another location, but it will not have as many advantages. Companies usually migrate to these areas due to an influx of educated workers, high job demand, technologically advanced cities, good working and living conditions and the ability to interact with like-minded individuals.

If you do decide to go into business for yourself and create an “Internet lifestyle” then the location does not really apply to you. You can choose to work wherever you would like! For most people, the location is key. Many decisions are family-based, and require the location to be quite close to the home. This is alright for a local business, where the business owner can decide their hours and where they work.

If you have the opportunity to choose where you work, you can choose to work locally or internationally. Local may be good because of the familiarity, support network and an immediate contact base. International locations may be scary or difficult at first, since you will potentially not know anyone and not be familiar to the area, as well as a potential language barrier. Certain areas in the world, however, present excellent opportunities for starting businesses for very cheap. For example, starting a surf shop would not make much sense in Northern Alberta, but on the coast of Brazil, you would be in high demand. In order to truly run a business that you are passionate about, you may have to move internationally.

Keep in mind the nature of your business, and if you are prepared to move. Some businesses can work anywhere in the world, yet certain locations are more conducive to them. Our business, using it as an example, could potentially be run anywhere, seeing as it is online. However, a location such as New York or San Francisco would greatly increase the possibilities of success, due to the talent that is congregated in those areas.

We are currently researching where the best possible location would for building and developing a team. One thing that we know is that our team will not be housed locally, but rather internationally. We have also realized that the business model that we have selected will eventually allow us to expand with satellite offices around the world.

The key is to realize what kind of business you are trying to run right from the beginning. Making that decision will drive some of the decision making that you make along the way.

6. Self-Employed vs. Business Owner

This section is based off of the ideas presented in the book “Cashflow Quadrant” by Robert Kawasaki, and is extremely important when considering what kind of business to start.

You have to make the decision from the beginning whether you are going to run the business, or if the business is going to run you. There is a distinct difference, and it is crucial that every potential start-up realize the differences. Here is the difference between a business owner and someone who is self-employed.

A business owner creates systems within the business that allows the business to run, even when the owner is not present.

Someone who is self-employed needs to be present for the business to run, and if they leave, everything stops operating. There are no systems present.

Let’s look at the two types of leaders in detail.

Business Owner

A business owner starts a business with a certain mindset from the start. They want to build a company, not a mom-and-pop. The owner wants to build systems that scale, while hiring employees that carry out tasks, solve problems and create opportunity. The owner will purposely hire employees smarter than them, and then manage them carefully. The purpose of starting a business for them is to create a company, not a job. Reread this again, as it is very important. When you start a business, are you doing it to create a job for yourself? If so, that is fine, it will just be a different type of business. Businesses are created to supplement income, but owners must be willing to work for nothing until the business is up and running. When starting a business, the owner is the last person to get paid. When selling a business, the owner is the last person to get paid. To create a long-lasting and successful company, the owner must be willing to work for free.

The business owner runs the business, creates systems that scale and keeps their personal salary in check at all times.

Self-Employed

Someone who is self-employed is also known as a “technician” by the book “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber. A technician is someone who knows a specific skill that they can turn into a business. An example of this is a mother that can bake pies really well.

Mary knows that she makes the best pies in Colorado, and all of her friends and family tell her that she should start her own bakery. So one day, she decides to. Mary raises money from her local bank in order to renovate a building and create a beautiful storefront. She opens “Mary’s Cakes and Pies” six months after she decides to start the business, and she is extremely excited! Mary advertises in the local paper that she is having a grand opening on January 1. That date comes, and with all of her excitement, Mary shows up at 3:00 AM to start baking! She bakes lots of her best pies and cakes, and the whole town shows up to try out her pies! She is a hit! Mary works until 11:00 that night cleaning up, and doesn’t care because she is so excited. She then has to do the accounting for the day, which takes her until 1:00 AM. What a long day! Oh well, Mary thinks, because I am running a business! I am in control of my life! No more boss for me, no more set hours, I pay myself when I want!

Skip ahead six months, and Mary is a different person. She hates all pies, never wants to see a pie again for the rest of her life. She is dead tired, hates getting up in the morning and doesn’t do her accounting anymore. She hired a bookkeeper to do that, who eventually turned into her manager. That manager, Fred, then was given the responsibility of hiring and managing employees. Mary, since she was so busy, never spoke to her employees. She really didn’t know who they were. That was Fred’s job anyway. She was far too busy making cakes, dealing with employees, finding new contracts and cleaning the bakery. Mary wishes she had never started this business, it was taking over her life. Not only that, but she was losing money. Sure, she had her steady clients, but it was hard to attract new customers in this economy. If only she could sell it, and go back to a normal job where she worked 9-5.

Why, you may ask?

Well, Mary is not an entrepreneur, she is not a business owner. She is self-employed. Notice the difference between what we mentioned before versus what Mary is doing now. She does not run the business, the business runs her. She works because she has to keep the business running, not because she wants to. She works incredibly long hours with very little results. She is like a hamster stuck on a wheel.

Mary has never even thought about scaling or systems. What do those words even mean? She hired Fred to do her books, and assumed that he knew how to manage. She has no relations with her employees, because Fred is taking care of them. What happens if Fred decides to leave? Well, Mary is in trouble, because she doesn’t know her employees or what they do. No systems are in place for her employees to follow. If Mary is sick or goes on holidays, the business stops. She is controlled by the business.

Do you know anyone like this?

Overall, the self-employed individual is run by the business, does not create any systems, does not think about scalability and takes a personal check in order to treat the business like a job.

When considering what kind of business to start, make sure you keep this comparison in mind. Mary could have avoided many pitfalls by following the principles of a business owner, but this is obviously easier said than done. Any business can be run with the proper ideals from the start, which will save the owner a lot of grief and anger. Keep in mind what kind of business you are trying to start. Even when creating an online business, the goal is passive income. This means that you earn money while you sleep. This only happens when you have the proper systems in place.

Overall, the six points to consider once again when starting a business are:

1. Passion For The Idea

2. Revenue Viability

3. IPO or Merger & Acquisition Possibility

4. Location-Based

5. International Or Local

6. Self-Employed vs. Business Owner Keep all of these points in mind when you are trying to start a business. This certainly would have focused our business from the start. Many people go blindly into a business that they feel would be fun to start, which ends up being a nightmare. Do your research at the start and you will have a company that will have a much higher probability of success.

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May

10 Steps to Convert Your Passion into Business Profit

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (4)

10 Steps to Turn Your Passion into Business

Passion is business

Our passions are the winds that propel our vessel. Our reason is the pilot that steers her. Without winds the vessel would not move and without a pilot she would be lost. – Proverb

Do you have a dream of what you really most want to do, plus you wish you could get paid handsomely for doing it? Perhaps enough to support your family and your chosen lifestyle whilst still being fulfilled in life?

I always enjoyed watching nature and travel shows on TV. It seems to me that the hosts of these programs were the luckiest people on earth. They would travel around the world, do all the fun stuff and still get paid for it, and loving every moment of it! Now that’s a life!

Sadly I never became a TV host of any of those programs and I am not a celebrity either, BUT now I actually do earn my living doing what I love most! I have been pursuing my passion for many years and eventually I have turned it into a fun business too.

Following your passion is a powerful way to become great at something. It is the most delightful path that thrills and fulfills your life. However I must caution you that if you follow only your passion alone, you are most likely to find yourself broken-hearted person somewhere down the road. Your dreams will just remain your dreams and your life reality will return to boring and unfulfilled again. Deciding to follow your passion requires that you combine it with expertise and connection to people for it to provide you with sustained satisfaction and enduring rewards. Combining these three into your business adds a new dimension to your experience.

What you need to know to turn your passion into a business.

1. Expand on your passion. Look at your passion from different angles in order to see what the real source of it is.I have been a fitness instructor for 8 years and I considered it my passion. However, a few years ago I realized that my true passion lied in helping people perfect their bodies, improve their health and find their life balance. Do not choose a very narrow passion that you might outgrow within a couple of years. Look at the broad picture by analyzing everything that makes you feel fulfilled in life. Do you see a connection?

2. Make sure that you have found your passion and just your hobby. There is a big difference between what we like and what we are passionate about. I like cooking, it is my hobby but I am not passionate about it. The thought of spending the entire day in the kitchen cooking for hundreds of people is horrifying to me. Ask yourself this simple question “Am I ready to do this every day of my life for the next 5, 10, 20 years?” If your answer is “yes” then you have likely found your true passion.

3. Get the support of your family. If you are married then this is a must before you even start thinking about making business out of your passion. Misunderstanding, arguments and constant nagging can kill your passion quickly.

4. Think of all possible ways how you can pursue your passion. This is the opposite of the previous tip. Brainstorm all possible ways how you can pursue your passion. Let’s say that you are passionate about cooking. You can become a chef and eventually open a restaurant, you can write a book of recipes, you can have a blog about cooking, you can give private cooking lessons or cater for private parties. The more business opportunities you see the easier it will be to find the one that will work for you.

5. Be prepared for the boring stuff. Every business has its boring side. Even though your passion will be your business you won’t escape this part of being an entrepreneur. Whether it is accounting and tax preparation, cleaning the dishes, fighting hundreds of spam messages on your blog or dealing with difficult customers, you will have to get used to it. There is nothing much exciting about it. But this boring stuff lets you enjoy what you are doing 90% of the time.

6. Treat your passion like business. A lot of people when they venture out in the pursuit of passion make a mistake of treating it like a hobby. There is a common misconception that when they love something they must do it only when they feel like it. In terms of writing it will mean writing only when you have inspiration (whether it is once a day or once a week). Treating your passion like business means:
– Having a to-do list or some plan that must be completed in a certain amount of time.
– Doing it whether you feel like it or not.
– Getting dressed for your work (you will need this if you are going to work from home. I can never come up with post ideas while I am wearing my pajamas).
– Having regular work hours (do not let your family or friends disturb you during those hours even if it means skipping a cup of coffee with your best friend or missing that great movie at the theater).
– Having an organized uncluttered work space (even if your office will consist of a chair and a table, make sure that you do not have any clutter or anything that will distract you from work).
– Having days-off and vacations (otherwise you will experience burnout really fast).
– Not expecting to earn a lot at once (at first you might even have to do everything for free just to gain the experience)

7. Try a few different ideas. It is important to experiment with several different business ideas to see which ones will work for you. A passionate writer might be great at writing childrens’ books but they will suck at writing personal development articles. Figure out what works for you.

8. Get some critique. You might think that your passion and idea for business is awesome but in reality it might be a disaster waiting to happen. Talk to your friends or family and let them evaluate your business to make sure that your expectations are realistic. Do not get offended when they criticize but rather use this information to come up with better plans for business.

9. for 6-12 months) or have a half-time job that will let you survive even if your business idea fails. Business laws have nothing to do with passion and your business might be a failure. Be prepared for any consequences and be ready to readjust your plans if needed.

10. Do not turn your passion into obsession. When you love doing something you must still be realistic about your plans and expectations. How do you know that your passion has turned into obsession? It is when you start thinking about your passion/business 24 hours a day and when you give up any other opportunities in your daily life (spend an evening out with your friends or take an unexpected trip to the ocean with your family). Always have a backup plan. When you are just starting out it is good to have some funds built up in your account. It is also when you stop noticing any critical comments of your friends or relatives and keep following your passion even when you are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Follow these tips and turn your passion into a successful business. Live strong, play big and enjoy the adventure every day.

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May

Key Solutions Entrepreneurs Need Most – Selling On Price vs. Value

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (1)

Hi. In my conversations with entrepreneurs starting out as well as those who are expanding their enterprises, I have found some common challenges they come up with in our discussions. If you can solve these problems you can change the world, you can do anything and go anywhere and be guaranteed success. So what are these critical challenges that present themselves as roadblocks to success?

Top of their list is undoubtedly this one.

They don’t know how or they don’t believe that they can sell on value instead of price.

Until they overcome this mindset they can never really succeed. Until they understand the true value that their solution is providing to their target market, they will define themselves, their value, the price of their product and all their marketing efforts falsely. How can I say that? Well it’s simple, if you are not clear on the value you deliver, you will promote and price your product or service on the basis of what other people in the market are charging for similar or competing items. By doing that you have automatically opted to sell yourself as a commodity, you are simply selling on price. You are relying on supply and demand, and you will ALWAYS LOSE!

You will have to start with 0% market share, you will have to compete with the established players in the market, you will have to pay your dues to muscle your way into the market the hard way. You will waste a large portion of your marketing spend to just get seen and heard, before you can even sell a product. You will have to prove that your “new” product is better than established competitors who have a longer and better track record than you do. Why should their existing customers change to your product, and take risks with you, when they have a safe bet, albeit with a product that is inferior to yours? There’s a lot of pain right there! That’s a mission all by itself, and for most entrepreneurs, their passion is in their product or service. It’s their new baby they want the whole world to love too. So what do they do? They may dig deep in their pockets to pay marketing experts to do it for them – good luck to you. Or they will try it small scale themselves and in 99% of the cases the results are predictable, small results, slow progress, but better than nothing, but not enough to survive on. Is there another better way?

Yes. Fortunately there is. Stop selling on price and sell on value instead. It’s much much easier and it works every time. What do I mean by selling on value. Let’s look at a for instance. Let’s say I bring out a new “Super Widget” that can instantly sanitize the air in any room. Wow great invention! Let’s say it costs me $50 to make, so I ask all my friends and people that i meet how much they would pay for it, and I average their answers out. To get a number they each think about how much are currently paying for competing products such as air spray deodorizers, special cleaning chemicals or whatever else they are using and let’s say they come up with a number like $100. Sounds good, a 100% markup. No, that’s bad, it’s not going to work.

At $100 they are only comparable, new customers discount what they are willing to pay against the risks of the new widget not working for them they way they expect it to. So you decide to sell it at $90 to create a price incentive to try it out.

Add in the costs of your marketing, carrying inventory, distribution and support and your product is a loser.

What’s a guaranteed alternative that will work? Selling on value will every time. So…

What is Selling on Value?

Selling on value is the process of determining the value of your product not based on it’s built-in value (e.g. fast, long lasting, accurate, reliable) but instead on it’s value to the customer (ease, convenience, saves them time, etc.). To do that you need to interview your customer to find the pain they have that your product can fix for them. What is a driving need the customer has that you can fulfill, and how much is that worth to the customer. Remember people respond more to achieving pleasure of avoiding pain than to features, benefits of the product. They are only interested in what it will do for them.

So selling on value rather than price involves six steps.
1. Determine customer pain that you can fix. Make sure customer is fully aware of their pain (very important).
2. Get customer to quantify the value of a solution to them (not to you), and determine their urgency to solve it.
3. Reveal to customer your unique solution and create belief in customer that this will work to make the pain go away, and make them vividly aware of what good things it will facilitate (e.g. dreams, business targets, growth, happy customers, etc).
4. Re-affirm and re-assure customer based on their own pains and dreams and value they ascribed to each, how this product will solve their problem. Then provide in minimal detail the supporting claims of features that provide benefits and how they give the customer an advantage.
5. Show the customer how they can get the solution as easily as possible – price plans, payment plans, delivery options, product options and extras – then presume the sale and close the deal.
6. Answer “objections” if any by re-affirming the specific personal value the customer will derive from your product.

Can you guarantee a sale every time – No. But remember that people only buy because of the emotion stirred within them about meeting their deepest needs, and not about how wonderful products are or how “cheap” they are. How does your product make your customer feel about themselves?

We teach entrepreneurs how to find the value in their products, but more importantly how to identify the value they can deliver within the customers in their target market. Secondly we show them how to leverage that into more sales, more often. We all love to focus on “our” product, but instead we need to become unselfish and focus instead on helping them find and feel their needs and showing them how they can experience the deep satisfaction of their needs. So remember WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) which the radio station that your customer’s mind is always tuned in to. So go there, they’ll love you for it.

See my other article about the “10 reasons to never sell on price” .
Pierre Basson – Business Mentor Extraordinaire

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May

Unique Value Proposition

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (8)

The True Value of a Unique Value Proposition

The idea of using a unique selling proposition (USP) isn’t unique or new in business.

So what is a USP? Do you have a simple statement about your brand or business that tells your prospects how you are the only alternative for to solve their problem? You have one already that just rolls off your tongue? Not? It is Business 101 yet most businesses simply do not have an answer that pops into their mind for this?. Even worse there isn’t one on their letterheads, business cards or on their website home page! What a wasted opportunity!

By unique selling proposition (USP) I don’t mean a slogan or a phrase that appears in your advertising. I mean that powerful yet concise and memorable phrase that answers the main question in your prospect’s head, “Why should I do business with you instead of somebody else?”

A unique selling proposition is very important. Let’s ask ourselves…

Why should your ideal customer purchase from you rather than from someone else?

So ask yourself, what one single thing about your company, or your product selection, or your customer service or your customer loyalty is so compelling a value, that even if your product was out of stock, or some par of the supply chain was broken (e.g. your website checkout), it would make a customer stick around and buy something anyway? Can you answer this? Why not? If you can’t answer this what hope has your customer of answering this, who has less insight into your business? Nothing closes clients on using you more easily than showcasing a unique unbeatable edge that they value.

Many marketing experts believe so strongly in the importance of having clarity in your Unique Value Proposition, that they proclaim that if you get your unique value proposition correct, you can afford to do many other things wrong and still get great results!

Whether we are helping our clients determine their Unique “Selling” or “Value” Proposition, we still find it is the biggest energizer you can have in your business. It is one of our 7 Business Sweet Spot Keys that enables your entire organization to zone in on the edge that you have over your competition and turn it rapidly into more sales at every level. Helping you find and clarify your unique value proposition for use across your whole organization, gives you a powerful guideline for your marketing decisions.

I was reminded of this recently when one of our shares their most recent success story. He was testing a variation in the wording of a client’s unique value proposition on their website. The result was an increase in his conversion rate of 36.2 percent. What did we do for our client that worked so well? We started by writing several suggested unique value propositions, since this company didn’t have one to begin with. Then we tested several different and unique value propositions, until a clear winner emerged in our testing. Not only did our client see a conversion rate increase, our customer took their new unique value proposition (UVP) and put it on all their stationery and other marketing materials. Within twelve weeks their sales had increased by over 47%, their sales team was pumped and all their staff felt like they had a new secret weapon, part of their not so secret sauce.

Unique Value Proposition Supporting Headlines

Recently we have seen even better results by surrounding their Unique Value Proposition with supporting headlines. These are often derived from the initial brainstorming to find their Unique Value Proposition. They are supporting value statements that paraphrase, or dimensionalize an aspect of the Unique Value Proposition. e.g. In support of lowest price in UVP, you may offer “We will beat the lowest price you can find – guaranteed”. Or in support of guaranteed service quality, a guarantee that if the solution is not 100% then the labor charge is waived. These headlines are great to add to your PPC ads and for enhancing the landing-page consistency. When visitors take their precious eight-second first impression, you want them to know why they should buy from you and not your competitors.

Strengthen Your Unique Value Proposition

Creating a unique value proposition and supporting headlines that are sticky, isn’t for chumps or posers. Your unique value proposition must be clear, relevant, and easy to understand. Here’s a quick, easy process for creating a more powerful unique value proposition:

* Ask your clients or potential must have clients what they value most about your product or service – make a list. Ideally use our use our 5 killer Ideation Creator questions to max the value of your answers.
* On your list, look for repeating themes.
* Review your list and using the answers you gathered write 5 to 10 versions for potential unique value propositions or headlines.
* Select three of the most promising unique value propositions and test them.
* Pick the best-performing unique value proposition and apply it everywhere in your business.

How strong is your unique value proposition? It is the key to conversion rate increase and boosting your business success.

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May

20 Second Marketing Message

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (3)

Have you ever heard of an elevator pitch? That’s when someone casually asks, “What kind of work do you do?” and you give them a brief answer in roughly the time span of an elevator ride.

The people who hear your elevator pitch could be potential business partners or clients, or they could be strangers you meet at a party or on the street. Even when it seems like no serious business relationship is likely to develop, there are lots of people out there that can help advance your career indirectly. For example, they might personally know someone who’s looking for the service you provide, so your elevator pitch could lead to a referral or two.

Unfortunately most people totally flub their elevator pitch, so they’ll typically receive a reply like, “Oh, that sounds interesting.” At best the other person may ask a few follow-up questions, but deep down they don’t really care about your answers. They’re just making polite conversation. They’ll probably never do business with you, and they won’t refer you any new clients or customers.

The Challenge of Crafting a Good Elevator Pitch

I’ve struggled with crafting a good elevator pitch because I do a lot of different things. For starters I’m a blogger, an author, a speaker, and an entrepreneur. But I don’t identify with any of those exclusively.

Often when someone asks me what I do for a living, I’ll say, “Well, it’s a bit complicated because I do a lot of different things.” Then I’ll mention some of the things I do. Typically the other person will give me a strange look while they process this overload of information, and then they’ll say something, “Ok, so you’re a writer?” And then I’ll have to explain some more.

Sometimes I’ll say, “I run a popular personal development website.” That’s usually a good conversation starter, but all too often it backfires — it leads some people (usually people who aren’t very web-savvy) to think of me as a web consultant. A week later I’ll get a call asking if I can help them solve an issue they’re having with their small business website. I definitely don’t want people thinking that I’m their go-to guy for tech support. I have no interest in that whatsoever.

I’ve had great success in delivering elevator pitches that stimulate conversation, but not the right kind. Too often my response leads to a dull conversation about blogging, writing, building websites, or professional speaking. Sometimes those discussions are interesting, but they rarely help me grow my business or attract new readers.

Ironically, I tend to have more stimulating discussions when I talk about the food I eat instead of the work I do. At least then we can get into a discussion about diet and health, and I can offer some value by talking about my raw food diet experiences, juice feasting, polyphasic sleep, etc. This leads to referrals that are actually relevant — such as people who desire to experience greater health and vitality. It’s also led to a few business deals with people who work in the health field. Those deals didn’t make a ton of money, but they did create some new passive income streams.

Attracting Referrals

On the other hand, people that actually understand the work I do are constantly referring high quality leads to me. The main reason my website exploded with traffic is because of so many personal referrals. People told their friends, family, and co-workers about the work I was doing, and those new visitors became long term readers and soon started referring others as well.

To date I’ve never spent a dime on advertising or promotion. My business has grown mainly by word of mouth. Lots of people have been referred here by their friends and family via face-to-face conversations, phone calls, or emails.

The interesting thing about these organic referrals is that they also involve simple elevator pitches, but the pitches are given by someone other than me. More often than not, people refer others to specific articles, not to my home page or main blog page. So they’re pitching specific content, not the overall website. However, when people come and read one article, they often like it so much that they continue to read more and eventually become long-term subscribers.

This gave me a clue as to how to craft a better elevator pitch, but it didn’t bring me all the way there. My individual articles tend to focus on specific, narrow topics. But I write about so many different things that I can’t turn my general elevator pitch into a pitch for a single article. Close… but no cigar.
15 Second Marketing

Eventually I figured out how to resolve these problems, but I didn’t figure it out on my own, so I have to give credit where credit is due. I found the answer I was looking for in an information product called Insider Secrets to 15 Second Marketing by Charlie Cook. In fact, I found it so helpful that I decided to formally recommend it here on my site, so I recently joined Charlie’s affiliate program. Charlie really gave me a critical mindset shift — one of those gorgeous a-ha moments – so I give this product a big thumbs up.

20 Second Marketing is both a book and an audio program — the content of both is the same. It covers how to write your own marketing message and how to use it to effectively attract more business and make more money. Your marketing message is even shorter than an elevator pitch. It’s basically a single sentence — something you can say in 20 seconds or less.

When I saw how long the book was, I wondered how anyone could create a whole book about something that seemed so basic. But Charlie does a great job of explaining why an effective marketing message is crucial to your career or business. I could certainly relate to what he was saying because of my own challenges in this area. At one time or another, I made all the classic mistakes in the “what not to do” section.

The concept of a marketing message is general enough that you can also use it to develop your career, build new contacts, and even to attract new romantic partners. So you don’t have to run a business to benefit from it.

The basic idea is that when someone asks what you do for a living, you want to offer a response that stimulates the right kind of discussion. So if you’d like to grow your business, you need a marketing message that serves as a good lead-in to a discussion that will help you generate new leads and attract more clients. This is not as easy as it sounds.

Your marketing message isn’t just something you say to people. It’s also something you can use on your website, in your newsletter, on your business cards, in your email signature, etc.

When someone asks what you do for a living, imagine they’re really asking, “What are you here to contribute, and why should I care?”

The mistake I made was that I used labels to describe my work (author, blogger, etc), but I didn’t convey the real value I delivered to people. If you tell people you’re a blogger, consultant, real estate agent, or salesperson, most people simply won’t care. Your answer doesn’t do anything for them. There are millions of people doing all of these things, and you’re just another professional with a boring job title. You may still get some business this way, but you could be doing much, much better if you had a more effective marketing message. This is especially true during a recession.
Your Marketing Message

20 Second Marketing provides a 7-step process to craft a strong marketing message as well as a checklist of characteristics your message should have. I can’t summarize the whole book in a single blog post, but I can share the big picture ideas with you.

The overall solution is that instead of describing what you do or telling people your credentials, you should instead share the actual value you provide. What value do you deliver to people? Why do people pay you? Why should I care?

What I really like about Charlie’s program is that it connects the dots between your elevator pitch and your life purpose. Your marketing message is NOT a sales pitch. It’s simply a statement of the value you can offer people. I like to think of it as a statement of your life purpose filtered through your career.

If you tell people that you’re an independent consultant, a realty agent , or a website developer, your answer offers no value. It’s boring. You just drained all the life out of the conversation.

But if you offer an answer that states the value you can offer to people, now you’ve opened the door to an interesting conversation. You don’t have to do any selling because the right type of conversation will naturally get people interested in your service. This can lead to direct business as well as referrals. It can also lead to new relationships.
Crafting Your Marketing Message

Crafting an effective marketing message is tricky. There are a lot of aspects to consider. If you really want to do a thorough job of this, I highly recommend you go through the 15 Second Marketing program step-by-step. It packs in a lot more advice than I can cover in a blog post. But I can give you some tips to get you thinking in the right direction.

My advice is to think about what kind of conversation you’d like to stimulate. Tossing out labels to describe your work is usually a dead end. Instead, think about what kind of value you can provide to people.

As I tried to craft my own marketing message, I brainstormed a lot of variations and eventually settled on this one:

I teach people who are living below their potential how to feel energized and motivated, how to earn lots of money doing what they love, and how to make a real contribution to humanity, so they can finally enjoy the life that deep down they know they were meant to live.

At first I thought that was pretty good. It focuses on some specific benefits, and it has the potential to stimulate the right kind of conversation — where we can discuss the actual value I provide instead of the mediums I use.

A few days later, I had a phone call with Charlie Cook — I like to talk to people one-on-one before I commit to recommending their products — and during our conversation, I shared my marketing message with him. He said it was a good start but that it was too long. He suggested I make it much shorter, on the order of 10-12 words. He said that the goal isn’t to provide a bullet list — that can come later.

Perhaps I should have asked him this before I pasted this marketing message on my home page, Facebook page, Twitter page, etc.

What he said made sense to me, so I came up with some shorter variations, but I quickly realized that I’ll never perfect my marketing message sitting at my desk. I have to test these in the field to see how well they work.

For example, I might test some variations like these:

I help people grow.

I help people live more consciously.

I help people overcome their fears.

… and so on.

The key is that good marketing messages go beyond labels. As soon as someone labels you as falling into a particular career bucket, it gives them the opportunity to dismiss you. They tune out and stop listening to what you have to say. But if you present them with something that defies immediate labeling, you make people curious. You present an enigma they have to solve. You open the door to an interesting conversation.

You can also use different marketing messages depending on the circumstances. For example, I might find occasion to say any of the following when someone asks what I do for a living:

I help people quit their jobs so they can fulfill their life’s purpose.

I help people break bad habits and overcome addictions.

I help people take more risks and live more courageously.

I can imagine many situations where these sorts of replies would make people curious and stimulate interesting discussions.

Are you beginning to see the big picture here?

Using Your Marketing Message to Grow Your Business

A good marketing message doesn’t just stimulate fun conversations. It serves a powerful business purpose too. A good marketing message helps people remember who you are because it gives them a reason to care. When people remember you, they’re more likely to do business with you at some point, and they’re more likely to send you referrals. If people don’t remember you, it’s game over.

When I worked in the computer gaming industry, I learned an important lesson. I discovered that the more time people spent playing a particular game, the more referral sales they generated for that game. The longer people play a game, the more they talk about it. More game play time means more viral marketing. This is one reason the massively multi player online games can generate so many referral sales. When someone spends years playing World of Warcraft, it becomes a safe bet they’ve told everyone they know about the game, and they probably helped Blizzard gain new customers. Heck, I’ve never even played the game, and here I am mentioning it as an example. Now contrast that with a single-player game you can finish in a weekend, and a year later you don’t even remember playing it.

Your marketing message serves a similar purpose. The message itself may not be very memorable, but it can lead to a stimulating conversation that is memorable. If you remember the conversation, you’ll remember the person, and that gives you more chances to engage in business with that person or to send referrals to that person. But if your initial marketing message falls flat, that entire chain of referrals suffers an early abortion.

Do you remember all the times someone offered up a common response like, “I’m a mechanic”? It doesn’t mean anything, so whatever conversation that ensues about fixing cars will likely be forgotten. Your mind won’t retain the details because the conversation fits a pattern you’ve seen many times before, so it just reinforces the general pattern you’ve already stored, and the specifics are lost. We’re far more likely to remember events that violate our expectations because such events trigger our minds to store new patterns.

Now imagine asking someone at a party what she does for a living, and she says to you, “I make people look stunning before special events.” That statement by itself may not be that memorable, but it has a good chance of stimulating an interesting and memorable conversation. This hairdresser is more likely to stand out. If you remember her a little longer, you have more opportunities to utilize her services and more opportunities to refer new clients to her. Pretty soon she’ll be earning double or triple what equally competent hairdressers earn.

Think about the websites and blogs you frequent. Which ones do you remember best? Do they invite immediate generic labeling (like, “oh, not another productivity site”), or do they stand out from the crowd in some way? Being harder to label can be a good thing if it makes you more memorable.

Boosting Your Income

If you’re self-employed and provide some type of service for clients, you can increase your income by attracting more clients. But you can also leverage a good marketing message to increase demand for your services. This means you attract so much business that you have to raise your rates. Then you can earn more money even as you work fewer hours.

Again, the marketing message itself may not be super-memorable. But the idea is that it can stimulate an interesting conversation about the work you do, such that the other person really cares to hear what you have to say.

Think of your marketing message as your conversational opening move. If you use a bad opener, you can stunt the whole conversation. A good opener is no guarantee of success, but it can surely boost your long-term performance.

A good marketing message isn’t all-or-nothing. There’s a whole spectrum from terrible to mediocre to incredible. If your current message isn’t working for you, try something else. Keep tweaking it until you’re able to generate good conversations and create a steady flow of leads and referrals.

You can also use your marketing message on your website, your Facebook page, your email signature, and so on. Even when you aren’t physically present, your marketing message serves as an invitation for people to learn more about you.
Providing Genuine Value

I find Charlie Cook’s advice very refreshing because he offers a way of thinking about marketing that is honest, authentic, and non-manipulative. You’re never trying to sell people something they don’t need. You’re never trying to get people to buy from you. Instead, you’re inviting a discussion about the real work you do and how you can help people. You’re opening conversations at the level of life purpose. This is an awesome way to generate leads for your business and build contacts for your career because it works so organically. The approach meets with zero resistance because it fits our natural conversation patterns.

When your marketing message doesn’t convey any real value, that’s when you have to struggle to sell yourself. That’s when you end up throwing money away on ineffective advertising and promotion. That’s a downhill battle because you’re trying to make people care, and you’re going to meet with resistance because people don’t like being sold.

Once you get into tweaking your marketing message, I think you’ll find that it’s actually a lot of fun to field-test it. The next time someone asks what you do for a living, try out different marketing messages to see what kinds of conversations they stimulate. Do you feel like the conversation is stunted, or did you just open the door to a wonderful discussion about a subject you’re passionate about? Passion makes you stand out. Passion makes you more memorable. It makes people want to work with you. It encourages people to refer others to you. And passion flows naturally when your marketing message is aligned with your life purpose… when you come from a place of abundance instead of scarcity.

In this article I’ve only scratched the surface of how to craft an effective marketing message. If you find value in this topic, I encourage you to get a copy of Charlie Cook’s Insider Secrets to 20 Second Marketing. It’s very inexpensive relative to the value it provides, especially since it can pay for itself many times over by helping you boost your income. It comes with a 90-day money back guarantee, so there’s no risk to try it. I think you’ll get a lot of value from it whether you’re self-employed or not.

Steve Pavlina

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Apr

7 GTD Rules for Bloggers

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (3)

We all know what GTD can do for top managers or busy businessmen, this is what David Allen is doing all day long, training big guys to get things done. But GTD is not necessary a business-only process. It can be used with great results in other activities, such as blogging. If you are not familiar with the GTD concepts, you can start by reading articles in the Implementation category of this blog. Now let’s see how 7 simple GTD rules can improve your blogging effectiveness.

1. Write with a mind like water

Try to keep your main idea inbox at zero, all the time. This means organizing your subjects, your ideas, your thoughts and blog development plans as often as you can, until your thoughts are no longer tied to them. Separate your blogging sessions into several phases: collecting data, processing it, reviewing it and then writing it. Collect your ideas about future posts, process them (identify what they are and where to file them for easy access and how to be reminded of them at a specific time), and never start to write unless your mind is freed from the noise of “generating new posts”. Zone in on one thing only.

2. Renegotiate your writing commitments

Renegotiate your writing commitments each month, if possible, if not at least every two months. As a blogger you have probably established a monthly or weekly goal for the number of posts you want to write. But you’ll soon find that you are either writing too fast, exhausting yourself, or else too slow, and your readers are not coming back. Renegotiating your commitments should be a regular habit, it will also keep you fresh.

3. Apply the 2 minutes rule on your comments

Since you are reviewing your comments regularly and to keep close to your readers -that’s gGreat, but when you do that, try to apply the 2 minutes rule, meaning you don’t spend more than 2 minutes on any comment. In GTD, if you think an action should take more than 2 minutes, you should either postpone doing it and just put in on an action list or move it to your Someday / Maybe tray. Do the same with your readers comments, or you’ll be soon writing more comments than blog content.

4. Use the drafts folder for Someday / Maybe items

The drafts folder provides added functionality to every blogging tool, including the one I use here, namely WordPress. Use it regularly as a placeholder for all your Sometime / Maybe items. Even if it’s just a thought, or a small piece of an idea, put it there, so it is captured while it’s still in your head. Then let it stay until you decide what you’ll do it sometime, or you won’t . The constant habit of keeping a healthy drafts folder has been a great way for me to become more productive, and inspired on demand.

5. Never have the same subject again

Unless you really love that subject… In GTD, they say “Never have the same thought again, unless you love that thought “. Diversity is the queen of content. If you are repeating yourself too often your audience will drift away. People are looking for interesting subjects and good writing, but if you write the same thing in 100 quasi-identical ways, they will eventually realize what you are doing and leave your blog.

6. Do only what is doable

As a blogger you will spend a lot of time surfing the net and promoting your blog through social networking websites. It’s very easy to get caught in new mini-projects like reading somebody’s tags on del.icio.us, or making a new lens on squidoo. That will suck away your time. Identify any doable item in your activities and then do only that. Then and only then do the next single doable item. You can easily postpone dreaming and play after your work session has finished.

7. Stick to it

Well, that’s not directly GTD but it’s pretty useful. And pretty simple also. Once you’ve managed to keep a fairly normal droutine, keep doing it. Over and over again, even if the results are not showing right away. It will surely pay off soon. Discipline is not a state, or a quality you have, it’s a process that you enjoy every day of your life. Don’t get out the wagon too soon, or you’ll lose all the fun in the trip.

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Apr

33 Ways To Get Motivation

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (3)

Being motivated is a wonderful state of your being. In this state your body leverages huge amounts of energy. Your emotional field is totally balanced, and physically you feel able to climb Mount Everest. Mentally you think you can understand the whole Universe. Right, I know you know that feeling. The good news is that you can re-create this motivated state, whenever you want to. Here are 33 tips to help you get motivated now.

1. Ignore The Unimportant

Learning to ignore is a fantastic lesson. Much more rewarding that you think. There must be an art of ignoring and they should teach it in universities. Spanning your focus in so many areas will only weaken you. Ignoring what’s unimportant will free up energy, foster motivation and help you stay focused and productive.

2. Understand What Makes You Bored

And avoid it. Boredom is a nasty place to be. But as any other state of your being can be understood and you can identify the triggers. Once you understand that, you can safely go away from the gray zone. Takes some time but it really worth the effort.

3. Laugh More Often

Watch comedies, read comics. Throw away that ugly seriousness form your face. Laughing is a safety valve for your stress relief mechanism. It actually let it out from your body in bursts. And while you’re laughing you can still learn new stuff, like personal development lessons from Dumbo.

4. Keep A Log Of Your Breakthroughs

Do you remember when you had the first major success of your life? No? I thought so. We tend to overlook this simple habit of writing down our feelings every time we have a major breakthrough in our lives. If you want the shortest path to motivation, just keep a log of your successes. And get inspired by it.

5. Exercise

This is one the easiest and simplest way to summon motivation. Just walk out from the office, start doing some pushups or just go for a short run around the house. It will instantly de-clutter your physical body. Every time you exercise, you produce endorphins. Endorphins are good.

6. Create A Custom Environment

You can’t be motivated if you work in an environment which does not represent you. Make changes, adjust, improve. Doesn’t matter if it’s about your job office or your home. Whatever the space you work in, make it yours somehow, that will lower your unconscious adaptation efforts and you’ll have more time dedicated to the actual tasks.

7. Read Success Stories

Like in other people success stories. Get inspired. Admire them (with caution, but do admire them). Reading about success will make it more available to you and will fuel your efforts towards its achievement. And of course, you can learn how to be successful too.

8. Switch Tasks

You will get bored if you work on the same projects for too long. Boredom kills motivation. Try having several small projects that you can land on whenever you feel you’re on the verge of a burn out. Not to mention that switching tasks will instantly create fresh perspectives, helping you solve problems faster.

9. Assess Your Progress

If you work constantly you will make some progress, that’s a rule. You may have the impression that you’re not going anywhere but that’s because you’re skipping all those little milestones you go through every day. Watching back with satisfaction at what you created will surely boost your energy.

10. Talk About Your Projects

With your friends or family. Let the people know you’re doing stuff. That will often make yourself aware of the fact that you’re actually doing stuff and enjoy doing it. It will also create a certain level of accountability that will most likely push you forward.

11. Avoid Energy Vampires

Naysayers, pessimists, braggers they all are sucking up your energy. Don’t get caught in such power games, avoid at all costs those energy leaks. Even if that means you’ll isolate more often. It’s better to do work in your own secluded realm than to try to resist to a diminishing environment.

12. Write Clear Goals

Most of the time that translates to actually write down your goals, you already have them clear in your mind. But take them out of your mind, put them in a trusted system and move on. Your mind works better when it knows what it has to do not when it spends time figuring what it has to do.

13. Exercise Satisfaction

Once you finished some task, reward yourself. Give yourself a prize. No need to be a huge one, but just enough to create the habit. Look forward to it while you’re working, wait for it, praise for it. In time you’ll become addicted to this fulfillment satisfaction and you won’t stop until you reach it.

14. Accept Failure

As part of the game. Failure, like success, is just a result of your actions, nothing more. One of the biggest motivation enemies is fear of failure. Fear that your outcome will turn bad. Accept it. It may turn bad, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop doing what you’re doing. Give your best and hope for the best.

15. Use Affirmations

Like writing down your intentions, your goals, your current status. Affirmations are a very powerful tool, hugely underrated. People find it awkward to write self-directed messages and read them out loud. News flash: you’re doing this all the time, unconsciously. So why not doing it consciously? Start with a morning phrase.

16. Play Games

Impersonate people. Imitate animals. Pretend you’re Sindbad the Sailor. Playing challenging games will relax your mind and at the same time will gather more resources from secret sources. A good motivation is always blended with joy. You can start with a simple game like how to get from a to b in 5 random steps.

17. Say “No”

Say “no” to distractions, to trolls, to depression. Exercising “no”’s is liberating. Too often too many commitments are making your life a continuous chore. Limit your promises and only get into things you really want to finish. Once you do that, go to a mirror, smile and start to politely exercise your “no”’s.

18. Look For Positive People

Sadness, whining and complaining doesn’t play well with motivation. On the contrary. But positive, optimistic, energetic people will always shift your vibration in the right direction. Search them, find them and become their friend. Sometimes all you need to get motivated is to be surrounded by shining eyed, happy people.

19. Difficulty Is Part Of The Game

Learn to work under pressure. Some things are more difficult than other. Accept that fact and focus on doing what you have to do not on your feelings of dissatisfaction. Difficulty is often what makes things worth doing. No sweat, no glory. Whenever I feel something is going to be tough, I’m usually more motivated to do it. The reward will be higher.

20. Create Personal Challenges

Personal challenges are short term goals, usually from 15 to 90 days. Like starting to exercise, or creating a habit from scratch in 15 days. Using personal challenges strengthen your inner power the same way exercising is strengthening your muscles. The more you do, the more motivated you feel to do even more.

21. Chose Positive Motivation

Whenever you lock in your motivation, do your best to keep it on the positive side, which is rooted in service. As opposed to the negative motivation, which is basically rooted in fear. Negative motivation works just the same, only it lasts significantly less than positive motivation.

22. Release Your Guardians

You do have guardians and some of them are pretty nasty. They won’t let you do your stuff. The bad thing about your guardians is that most of the time they’re working at the unconscious level, really difficult to interact with. Just accept, acknowledge and let them go. You will be much better off.

23. Enforce Your Personal Mission

You gotta have a personal mission. If you don’t, go find one fast. Reinforcing your personal mission at certain intervals is surely one of the greatest motivators of all. It’s like looking on a map and seeing at any moment where you are, how much do you have to go and which path you have to chose.

24. Spend Time Outside

If you can do something creative, like gardening or landscaping, even better. But it’s ok even if you don’t. Spending time outside of your box will clear the air inside. When you get back, everything will be fresher and shinier. And something fresher is always a nice motivator.

25. Keep A Clean Inbox

That’s one of the main GTD concepts I use and it proves to be a great motivator. A clean inbox helps to smooth my thought flow. A smooth thought flow lets me be in the moment without any hidden burdens. 100% of my mind is available to what I am doing right now, instead of trying to remind of what I can’t do now. Being in the moment is usually all I need to actually start doing things.

26. Don’t Aim For Perfection

It will soon drain you out. Aiming to be better is the real game. Perfection is a dead end, nothing really happens after you reached to it. Accepting that you can be better instead of perfect leaves some room for growth. And that means you have a reason to do more. And that’s what we usually call motivation, right?

27. Do One Thing At A Time

Multitasking is a myth. Even computers processors aren’t really doing multi tasking, that’s what we perceive. Instead they have a single frequency and several parallel buses managing information, faking a multi tasking activity. Multitasking is creating internal conflicts, both in humans and in computers. You end up spending more time solving those conflicts than actually working.

28. Keep A Source Of Inspiring Readings

You’re not always completely down, most of the time you’re just average-ish, just one sentence away from your best shape. Be sure to keep around a list of inspiring readings. Quotes, blog posts, e-books, whatever works for you. You can start with 100 ways to live a better life, for instance.

29. Put On Some Good Music

Just let it there, floating around, don’t turn the volume knob. Just enough to recreate a pleasant atmosphere. Music speaks to areas you can’t control with logical tools, yet is so powerful that can completely shift your mood in a second. The only thing better than silence is good music.

30. Don’t Fall Into The Productivity Trap

It’s not how much you do, but how much of it really matters. Doing stuff just for filling up notebooks with tasks won’t make you feel motivated. On the other side, whenever you’re doing something that matters, your planing and organizing activities will just flow.

31. Keep Your Life Lenses Clean

Your camera objective may be blurred but you don’t know. This is why you get the same picture again and again, this is why feel stuck and can’t seem to see any progress. Sometimes all you have to do is to clean up your lenses. It takes a little bit of courage but it’s worth the trouble.

32. Clean Up Your House

I know you need motivation for that too, but believe me, it’s a fantastic way to clean up your internal garbage. Cleaning up your house is not a chore, it’s a necessity. Your action paths may be clogged the same way your floor is sticky. And most of the time unsticking the floor will open your mind again too.

33. Stop Reading This And Get To Work

It was fun reading it, I’m sure. But it won’t get things done in your place. Inspiration is a good motivator, but don’t abuse it. Now, that you are all energized, it’s time for you to get back to work. Of course, you can bookmark this post for future motivation sessions, but for now, just go back to work.

(Oh, but if it happens to still have some free time – and a hard time getting up in the morning – you can try this one: 33 Ways to Start your Day. )

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Apr

100 Tips To Blog Like A Pro

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (32)

This post is a follow-up of my first attempt. This time, for your convenience, I grouped the tips into several areas: content, layout, promotion, plug-ins, networking and money.

Content

Your blog content is the cornerstone of your activity and your credibility. You can’t have a blog without producing good, consistent, quality content. Of all the other activities related to blogging, like promotion or networking, I consider consistent content production to be by far the most importantfactor.

1. Keep An Idea Incubator

Don’t take it easy, take it as it comes. Find a place where you store your ideas. Writing only from instant inspiration is totally unproductive. Besides, chances are that your most valuables ideas will come when you’re not able to blog them. So, create an incubator and let them grow.

2. Make A Mind Map Of Your Blog

Keep a bird-eye of your articles. Putting your blog into a mind-map, with posts, categories, promotion and income sources proved to be an enlightening exercise for me. Not only it offered a totally different image of my blog but gave me a lot of ideas for overall improving.

3. Write Timeless Content

Don’t be caught in the “right now” trap. Writing about hot topics will last as much as the hot topics last. And we all know what’s hot is short. Try to write content that will be easily read in several months or years from now. Even if it’s about a hot topic, put something timeless in it.

4. Use Explicit Headlines

Headlines are the first thing your users are seeing. They are like a bait. If the bait is good, they’ll eventually bite the blog post too, if the headline is boring, common, predictable or not intriguing, they will most likely skip the whole paragraph.

5. Be Specific

Don’t go too far from the specific of your blog. If you do have different skills try to accommodate them on a tight topic. Widening your blog in an uncontrolled way will eventually dissolve your brand and even if you’ll have readers interested in different topics, you’ll be harder to recognize as a monolithic brand.

6. Be Constant

Be there constantly. Create a habit not only for you, but for your readers. Once you establish a connection with them, they will expect you to be there. Whenever you feel the need to give up, remember you will going to disappoint more then yourself.

7. Create And Maintain A Posting Routine

This will need a lot of self-discipline but it’s the cornerstone of your blog. If you won’t update it constantly, there will be no blog. Experiment until you find your pace. Some bloggers are posting 2-3 articles per day, some one per week. I find it easily to do around 2-3 posts per week.

8. Find Your Own Size

Find a post size which fits your habits and skills. Don’t do it like other successful bloggers, don’t copy, do it by trial and error. Seth Godin writes about 6-700 words pe entry, Steve Pavlina does more than 2-3000. My own ballpark is in the 1000-1200 words per post. Find your own.

9. Write From Your Own Experience

Show openly what you know and what you can say about something, without being afraid that you’re wrong. It’s much worse to blindly copy the experts than to assume your own mistakes and publicly learn from them. Your own experience is the most valuable blogging asset you have.

10. Be Authentic

Don’t play the mister know it all, dare to be personal and transparent. Always. A blog is the ultimate expression of an individual. Don’t waste time trying to be perfect, just be better[]. If you’re wrong, so be it. Remember, you’re unique. Nobody can be you.

11. Write For Your Readers

A blog is a personal matter, but if you want to have more than 2 visitors (including your mom) do yourself a service and write for your readers too. Think how your readers will benefit from what your write. If you want to be the only beneficiary of this process, you can safely start a private journal.

12. Create A Blogging Setup

You don’t just write. You must have a strategy, goals, evaluations. You need to have a place in which you can focus on the main goal. Since I created my blogging setup, GTD style, the whole idea of blogging has changed for me. Pick your own specific type of setup, even pen and paper, but do make one.

13. Ask The Readers

Interact. Don’t just assume you know what the readers want from your blog, go ahead and ask them. You can do that in comments, via email, on twitter. Or you can use online communities. Or you can write a specific post in which you ask them. There are ways. Just go ahead and ask.

14. Post In Advance

Don’t be shy about that, or think that it will ruin your authenticity. As long as you’re the author and you do write timeless content, there will be no problem. Posting in advance is a very good strategy exercise, not to mention the relief of always being covered.

15. Your Blog Post Is A Traveler

Once you hit publish, your blog post will live a life of its own. Your blog post will be a traveler. Be sure to give it the needed equipment to survive in harsh conditions and also enough instructions to find his way in this world. Take of him properly.

16. Your Blog Is Beyond Your Blog

Your blog is far more than your posts. You think it’s just a collection of articles, but it isn’t. In order to be successful, your blog must be a presence. It’s made by your posts, comments, your comments on other blogs, your tweets, your stumbles. Make a presence out of your blog, not just a list of topics.

17. Break Your Post Into Edible Chunks

One of the easiest yet most ignored practices in the blogging business. Don’t write like you’re running a marathon. Break the posts in smaller chunks. It will not only help your SEO, but it will create a much more clear writing approach. You’ll actually think better.

18. Link To Yourself

Don’t be shy about what you write and don’t wait for ever that your posts will be discovered by others. Link to yourself as often as you can. This practice, also known as interlinking, is also good for SEO, but its main advantage will be to create a greater awareness of your content. Even for you.

19. Do Writing Challenges

Push yourself into writing exercises. Establish a number of words per each post. Write personal stories. Write a how to. Write a 100 list, like this one. Try to write a specific number of posts in a specific period of time. Try to expand your skills beyond what you already have.

20. Engage In Group Projects

Try to do collaborative writing challenges. I participated in several collaborative projects, for blogs or e-books, and it was a very productive experience. It will be extremely good for promotion, of course, but it will primarily help you try different writing styles.

21. Use A Dictionary

There are a lot of online or desktop based dictionaries. I find this extremely useful when I search for synonyms or related words. Yes, English is not my primary language, but I think a dictionary would benefit even if you’re born as an English speaker.

22. Create A Publishing Filter

Don’t just let the blog posts flow away. Create a publishing filter and apply it every time your write. I have my own filter made up by 7 questions to answer before publishing and so far it worked great. Find your own, based on why and what you are writing. It’s a good thing, trust me.

23. Create Alternative Content

Your blog can contain so much more than just text. Create your own podcasts, video content, or just re-purpose them creativity, like mind maps, PowerPoints, PDF file based booklets or templates. A while ago I added a Downloads page to my blog and I must tell you this page is pretty busy with clicks I’m getting.

24. Link To Authorities

If there are authority sites in your blog niche, link to them. This will help your readers understand your preferences and orientation, it will help them identify with you better. Linking to somebody else it’s a statement in itself. As always, be constant and specific. Stay on topic.

25. Openly Present Yourself

Write an About Me page with whatever type of information you want in it, as long as you feel it represents you. Subsequently, write About Me pages for any other media you are active on. For instance, I created an About Me page for my Twitter

26. Keep It Simple

Blogging is not philosophy. Even if you are trying to explain complicated concepts, do your best to keep them simple and short. Your blog is competing with the overload from a gazillion other sources, so make sure you’re giving them something that is easy to understand.

27. Read Your Own Blog

Too often ignored by bloggers. You must be your first reader! Whenever I have some free time I read some of my older posts. There’s nothing narcissistic in it, on the contrary, most of the time I dislike what I wrote, and think I could have done it so much better.

28. Balance Your Category Distribution

This is one of four important metrics I use and I track it using the blog audit plug-in. Keeping balanced categories will help not only in writing but it will improve your rankings in search engine. Too much content under one category usually leads to a lot of duplicate content in your blog archives.

29. Create A Mailing List

This hasn’t yet been applied to this blog, at the moment of writing this article, because I think it’s a little bit too early. But I successfully create and use mailing lists on my other niche websites, to generate thousands of users. I mean it, thousands. So, I know it’s doable.

30. Use Brainstorming Techniques

One of the most simplest – although pretty scary at the first sight – is this very blog exercise: a list of 100. If you are hit by the writer’s block, just sit down and try to find 100 ways to solve that problem – or at least 10. If you think that’s not possible, you’re definitely completely wrong. You’re actually reading the result of such an exercise. Was it worth it. Yes.

31. Don’t Quit

The most important tip of all. Don’t quit. Breaking through seems to get harder and harder, and in your first six months you may barely scratch the surface. Stay there and do your daily job even the results seem oh so slow to show. At some point in time, you’ll be successful. But if you quit, you won’t. That’s for sure. I can guarantee that.

Layout

The way your content is perceived is critical. You may be creating good and engaging content, but if you haven’t laid it out in a pleasant way, it will be read less. People like to see beautiful things first, and then read beautiful blog posts as a result.

32. Buy A Professional Theme

I cannot stress enough on this one. Since I bought my copy of Builder, it totally changed the way I blog. Bouncing from the regular the-best-you-can-have-for-nothing theme to a commercial one that is totally customizable and bug free, it’s like going from running after a bus to running for the Olympics.

33. Create A Different Home Page For Your Blog

If you use an out of the box setup from a vanilla WordPress installation, you may end up with a home page made up of your latest blog posts. Replacing this list with a home page is usually a good idea, especially since your posts will be visited most of the time directly from search engines or other links. A home page can tell a completely different story.

34. Use Excerpts Or Features On The Blog Home Page

If you created a different home page for your site, that doesn’t mean you won’t have a list of posts. That’s what I call a “blog home page”. Using just one or two full posts in that list is a good thing: usually, it keeps the reader focused. For the other posts I suggest using excerpts to de-clutter and aid with navigation. Visitors typically want to browse before they read in depth.

35. Enable Threaded Comments

The latest WordPress version have this cool option in the setting: enable threaded comments. You can even chose the depth of the threaded comments you want, or choose the standard (I recommend this) which is five. In the old days, you had to look for a plug-in to make that happen. Threaded comments are a great visual enhancement, and they boost the conversations.

36. Identify Your Blog Hotspots

Hot spots are places on your blog that draw more attention than others. Depending on the reader’s habits and your own layout, you can use those places for various incentive offers, from subscribing reminders to advertising or premium content. The following four tips are examples of hotspots in a blog.

37. Use A Greeting Before The Content

Based on their referrer. Just before the content I have this sentence which welcomes my users, based on their referrer and give them specific incentives. Originally I created a Thesis hook for those of you who are running Thesis, but I’m sure you can find a plug-in for that, if you don’t.

38. Keep Them Reading Your Articles After They Finished Your Post

After the post area I set up a retention zone. It features related posts (there is a plug-in for that) and link for some strategic posts. After they finish your post, keeping them around is a very good idea, and that hot spot seems the best place to do it.

39. Put Short But Relevant Content Near The Linkbar

Another hotspot is at the link bar level. I chose to put there the total number of subscriber I get via FeedBurner. For my experience, link bar is not as hot as the beginning or the end of the post, so I just use it as an overall subscribing incentive.

40. Use A Tabbed Zone For Recommended Articles

The last important hotspot is just before the sidebars. I used it for a custom tabbed zone holding the most important articles in the most relevant categories. It gives a bird-eye on what it can be found and it dramatically increase the click rate for the selected articles.

41. Your Blog Header Is Your Identity

Pay attention to your header, that’s where the title is usually placed. People will remember your blog by visually recreating that zone. If it’s too crowded it will be hard to memorize. I Always recommend to keep your header as clean as possible, in order to be easily remembered.

42. Add A Top Posts Page To Your Linkbar

And subsequently create a top posts page. I don’t recommend to have it automatically generated based on the popularity of your articles. Tweaking it according to your own perspective of what’s good is much better.

43. Add A Downloads Page

If you followed tips number 23, Create Alternative Content, having a separate Downloads page for that is compulsory. If properly promoted, many people will land to that page directly, without seeing your home page or any of your posts.

44. Use Full Feeds

People have the freedom to chose which way they are going to read you: via web or via an RSS reader. Keeping partial feeds on the RSS part used to be a common tip for making people visit your site for the full content. I don’t buy it. I have full feeds: as long as they read me, it’s their choice how they do it.

45. Mix Your Twitter Timeline Into Your Blog

Put your latest 5-7 tweets in the sidebar or even in the footer, but do let them know that you have a twitter timeline. Will talk about how Twitter can enhance your presence from a promotion point of view a little later, but from a layout perspective, publicizing your current tweets will make your blog feel much more alive.

46. Focus On The Content

Whatever you do or add to your general layout, keep in mind this simple question: will this help my content to reach my users faster? If you answer “no”, or “maybe” to this question, usually the add-on doesn’t worth the time.

47. Use Excerpts On Archives Pages

First of all, make sure you add or enable the standard archives pages in every wordpress theme. And then, be sure to make the archives displaying only excerpts of your posts, this will create a better user experience and possibly increase the time you readers are spending on your articles.

Plug-ins

Plug-ins are for your blogging what chip tuning is for a street car. The right combination is hard to find, but once you find it, not only it will make your work much easier, but it will also make you look awesome! Or at least it will make your blog look awesome, which is what are we talking about in this post.

48. Akismet Spam Protection

You can’t really do it without this one. Or, you can blog but you would have to completely turn off your comments. Which is not blogging anymore, right? Activating Akismet requires a key, but you can easily generate one in seconds. Once you install it, you’ll forget about it. That’s how a decent plugin should behave, anyway.

49. Google Sitemap

Another must have and also an unnotived one. Once you install it, you don’t know it exists anymore, but it does work heavily in the background. The plug-in does exactly what it says, it creates a sitemap of your blog in XML format and automatically submits it to Google every time you add a new post. Pretty convenient, huh?

50. Recent Comments

A very useful addition and one that your commenters will heavily appreciate it. The plug-in is easy to install, it comes as a widget and is also quite configurable. Highlighting comments usually enhance the conversation, or at least this is what happened to me.

51. WordPress Download Monitor

If you’re going to have alternative content, like mind maps, free or paid ebooks, templates or audio / video material, you should consider using this feature. It will help you organize your downloadable items by category, log the number of downloads and you can even create new posts inspired by those results, like my most downloaded mind maps.

52. Blog Audit

This is a shameless self promotion. Blog Audit is a simple plug-in I wrote, which lets you establish blogging goals and measure your progress. You can set a posting routine, a comment density, even a ping back volume and then watch live how you’re doing with it.

53. CommentLuv

This will also make your commenters shine with happiness. If your commenters enter a web address in the designated field, CommentLuv will go there and extract your latest post link. If you sign up for CommentLuv at their site, you can even customize which post you will want featured. Neat!

54. Recent Posts

Great way to showcase your latest articles in the sidebar. Readers are curious, they want to know what’s on your mind lately and if they are really interested in what you write, they will always want to be updated. It’s simple and good blog real estate use.

55. Similar Posts

I use this plug-in to show a list of (possibly) related posts after each article. It’s not always matching the main idea and sometimes it gives weird results, but even that is much better than manually compiling a list of links each time I publish. Great time saver and good retention tool.

56. Woopra

Woopra is a new analytics tool and I’m kinda fond to it. Tracking your website is done by installing a simple WordPress plug-in, which, a part from helping Woopra gather all sort of data, doesn’t do much. But will discuss Woopra as an analytics service a little bit later.

57. WordPress Automatic Upgrade

Saves me the trouble of doing it manually. I reckon I struggled for years with manual upgrades of WordPress, and even if I got really skilled at some point, I can’t avoid the fact that this is just plain boring – right. Not to mention is time consuming. Better automate the process. .

58. Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools can do a lot of nice tricks for you. It shows your latest tweets in the sidebar, automatically tweet when you publish a new post and can even let you tweet from your own public interface (don’t know who uses this, but it’s kinda cool). .

59. Avoid The Plug-in Hysteria

No plug-in can write content in your place. No plug-in can make you authentic. Spending too much time hunting, installing and testing new plug-ins will shift your focus from your most important task: to produce and maintain a constant flow of quality content. That would make you famous, not the plug-ins.

Promotion

You do have to make yourself known. You do have to get out and let the world know you’re there and that you are writing something important. Not promoting your work would be like showing fabulously creative commercials in Sahara. The ads may be fantastic, but if there’s nobody to see them, they’re useless.

60. Don’t Be Shy About Your Blog

If you really know you wrote good stuff, go out and spread the word. Unless you hired a PR company to handle this you gotta take care of your own promotion, at least until it takes off. And even after. Accept the idea and make time for it in your schedule.

61. Tweet Your Blog

Sign up for Twitter and start to promote your posts there. Already mentioned a plug-in which will automatically do most of the hard work for you, but you can also do it manually. Used properly, Twitter can bring in hundreds or thousands of visitors per day. As in every other social media space, the thumb rule is to be constantly there. Somehow.

62. Stumble Upon

That would be the StumbleUpon website, a community which aims to make the internet content relevant, by using a human powered algorithm. That sounds far more complicated than it really is. In StumbleUpon you must first contribute a lot of new discoveries until you really get the benefits of the game.

63. Reddit Your Posts

Go on and try Reddit , one of the simplest, yet most crowded user generated content places on the net. Usually, Reddit users are in the geeky zone of the internet specter, but if you carefully chose your subreddits (that would be special communities inside the main Reddit) you can have pretty good results.

64. Digg It!

Although I haven’t been very successful with Digg , I recommend it. I personally know bloggers who benefited enormously from it. Digg traffic seems to be the most volatile among all the communities I mentioned so far. Maybe you can help me change my luck on Digg by pushing this post on the front page.

65. Facebook

It’s all over so you must be there. I don’t know any specific technique on how to use Facebook to promote your work other than just being there. Put your blog feed on the wall, so your friends can see it and just wait. At some point, you will be surprised by how many hits you receive just by being there.

66. Follow Your Trackbacks

Constantly keep en eye on who’s linking to you. Visit them and let a comment. If the number is too high and you can’t physically leave a comment on every site which is linking to you (don’t smile, it WILL happen at some point) just be sure to constantly verify that list. You’ll learn a lot about your audience and possible followers.

67. Comment On Other Blogs

Find at least 10-15 blogs you really like and make a habit out of commenting on them. Not only you will get to know a lot of interesting and potentially useful players in this area, but you will generate a lot of links and buzz. Don’t brutally say: “Hi, check out this great article I just wrote”, say something meaningful and they will eventually want to know more about you.

68. Respond To The Comments

Keep an eye on the conversation you generate, if any. Be there for it, support it and make it a normal part of your routine. Behind your posts lies another exceptional line of content, and that’s your comment repository. Respect your commenters, as they are voluntarily creating content for YOU.

69. Establish A Slug Structure And Stick With It

A slug is the link part of your post, the one that shows in the browser. You can tweak what is shown there just with a vanilla wordpress setup. For instance, I chose to have the post title right before the domain name. Other approaches are to put the date between them, to add an “archives” or even a custom one made entirely by yourself.

70. Participate In Blog Carnivals

Kinda slow but necessary. Submit your most interesting posts to blog carnivals in your niche. It might be a little cumbersome to do this in the beginning but in a 3 months time frame you will gather a lot of links and awareness. Don’t be fooled by the somehow awkward interface of BlogCarnival.com , those carnivals are actually real and useful.

71. Use Proper CSS For Headings

That would be, by a wide accepted standard, H3. Make sure your paragraph titles, also known as headings, are styled with H3. This is extremely important for layout (if you change your theme and didn’t use h3, you will lose the formatting) but for search engine optimization also. A different CSS style weights differently in most of the search engines.

72. Select Your Keywords In Headlines

If you used a different CSS selector for headlines, don’t forget to chose specific words for it. If you want your post to be found by specific keywords, putting them in the headings will significantly increase your chances. It’s one of the cheapest promotion technique I know.

73. Use Proper Keywords In Your Slugs

In the same league as headings come slugs. Although WordPress can automatically create your slug, it’s always a good idea to double check for common words or / and for keywords you want to be highlighted. Also an easy one, but often overlooked.

74. Use Title Tag Appropriately

The title of your post can or cannot match the tag. The thumb rule is: the tag is seen by search engines and the title in the post is seen by search engines + your readers. It’s useful to play a little with the title tag, but don’t go too far, don’t chose completely different words for the post title and the tag title, you can get penalized for that.

75. Use Meta tags Appropriately

There is a long debate on the internet about how useful meta tags really are. And the real answer is that nobody really knows, so it’s better to get yourself covered. Thesis theme has this awesome feature which lets me control per each post meta tags like title, keywords and so on.

76. Look For Small Or Emerging Communities

Once you’ve done your job with the giants (twitter, reddit or digg) start looking for small / emerging communities in your niche. At this time, both Ycombinatoror BizSugar are still young and emerging communities, but judging on how fast they’re moving, they may become mainstream pretty soon.

77. Use A Cluster Of Analytics Services

Observe your traffic statistics. You can use any service you want, from Google Analytics, to a server based log analyzer like webalizer. I use Woopra lately with fairly good results. One good strategy is to group 2-3 analytics services together, because usually they have different algorithms and you can have a better idea about your real traffic if you check at least 2-3 sources.

78. Establish (and strictly follow) A Statistics Checking Routine

Don’t go to your statistics page every 5 minutes. I know the feeling, and it’s not good. In the beginning, weekly it.s ok. Once you get to be linked or retweeted, 2-3 times a day is enough. And you will do that mainly to get in touch with who interacted with your content.

79. Identify Forums In Your Niche

Forums are still very popular and they can be a very good traffic generator. Just be sure to keep a fair balance between your regular contribution to that forum and your self-promotion, forums users are typically a little bit more sensitive.

80. Watch Your Comments Density

That’s another blog metrics which I consider extremely important and which plays a big role in shaping your overall visibility. By watching the number of comments per post. per day, per week and their variations from one month to another you can draw extremely valuable conclusions.

81. Watch Your Pingback Volume

If comments density is a measure of your popularity, pingback volume is a measure of your visibility among other competitors. Identify posts with the higher pingback volume and see what you can learn from them. Pingbacks are like a volume switch for your work, the higher the volume, the most popular the article.

82. Talk About It With Your Friends

Like the friends you have in the real world (if you’re fortunate enough to still have some). Let them know who you really are and what do you do. Don’t put your work under the carpet. Make it as visible as you can. Word of mouth is much more powerful than any promotion strategy I know.

83. Make Your RSS Subscriber Number Public

Surprisingly enough, many of the bloggers I met are shy about these numbers, most of the time thinking they don’t have enough followers to show off. In fact, making the number of subscribers public will encourage your potential readers to join. People are attracted to meaning, not numbers.

Networking

Blogging is about connecting. Don’t stay in the same place, you’ll get dusty. Go out, meet new people, contribute or help in different ways. Networking is so often forgot and I think this is a big mistake. Networking is much more than promotion, being able to connect you with people in the real world.

84. Write Guest Posts

Go out and find blogs in your niche. Contact the authors and ask if they accept guest posts. Most of the time, they will. The main benefit of guest posting is not, as they largely promote it, the traffic you get, but the relationship you establish with the host.

85. Write Massive Guest Posts

Massive guest posting is something a little bit different than guest posting (and, as far as I know, is something that wasn’t done so far). Basically, you write an article with several possible developments and then continue those developments as guest posts on other blogs. See massive guest posting.

86. Create And Maintain A Close Group

Identify bloggers with a similar background (they can or cannot be in the same niche, as long as you can get along) and openly propose a cross-promotion. Be careful when you chose them and be sure they are persons you can rely on. You will be in that group for quite some time.

87. Promote The Members Of Your Close Group

Just like any other friendship relationship this must go two-ways. Whenever you see the opportunity to promote them, do it. Retweet, stumble, digg or reddit their articles. Remember, they have to be people you trust and admire. What you promote tells a lot about yourself.

88. Participate In Internet Blogging Challenges

One of the most famous internet blogging challenges is Darren Rowse’s 31 Days To Build A Better Blog . I personally attended (virtually, of course) the last edition and I must tell you it was a really nice experience. This is as good as participating in collaborative projects, only you benefit from the exposure of a blogging icon.

89. Go Out And Meet Bloggers In Flesh And Blood

If you have a hugely diverse audience this may be a little difficult. But even so, you can try it. I did it too and that helped me understand that other bloggers are for real, just like you, they’re not just some numbers in your analytics tool, under the “referrers” tab. Meet them, maybe you won’t become close friends, but you may learn a lot form this interaction.

90. Attend Specific Blogging Events

Like in real world specific blogging events, this time. One of the most famous is Blog World Expo , but there are many other established conferences, not to mention the local ones. Do your best to participate in real events as often as you can.

91. Speak Out

Once you’re at a real life event, don’t be shy. I saw too often bloggers attending to interesting events but keeping an unexplainable low profile. Stand out, speak, give feed-back and let the people know who you are. People are more curious than you think to actually meet the real presence behind a blog. Even yours.

Money

At some point, you will want to make some money out of your blog. It’s natural. It’s your work and there must be some sort of payment for it. Only in this business, you have to take care personally about this problem. And that is the good news, because if you’re careful, the sky is the limit. Literally.

92. Accept Donations

Don’t make a loan and vouch it with your blog donations, it will never be like that. Donations aren’t predictable. But having them displayed is a nice way to let people know that you accept their gratitude. If you really write valuable content, you will receive donations. I know I did.

93. You Sell Authority, Not Goods

Always remember that what you are really selling would be your authority, your expertise, your credibility or your lifestyle. Be very careful when you chose to make money and how you do it. Blogging is not about selling, blogging is about building partnerships. You’re responsible.

94. Promote Only What You Use

Once you’ll become well known, there will be more and more requests for promoting different products or services. One of the rules I followed so far was to promote only what I directly used. People have this tendency to associate your person with what you are promoting and if the promoted product is a mess, that could be really awkward.

95. Use PPC Diligently

Don’t overcrowd your page with ads (and yes, by PPC I also mean AdSense). Pay Per Click is such a size consuming advertising technique, it needs a lot of space and exposure to create sustainable results. It can create a stable source of income, but its golden days are gone.

96. If You Sell Space, Sell It Directly

If you decide it’s time to sell display advertising, sell it your own. Make a separate page in which you are announcing your prices and your conditions. Selling display advertising via an advertising agency is very expensive. Not to mention that you don’t really control the process.

97. Make Your Expertise Stand Out

And clearly state that you are for hire. If it’s consulting that you do, say it out loud, if it’s web design, write it with big fonts. Don’t expect people to dig through your posts trying to find what’s your main expertise and if you could help them. There are a lot of people out there already doing it.

98. Make Long Term Deals

Even if the overall payout is smaller, always go for long term deals. Despite what TV news told you, economy is not predictable. Go for a tinier profit but do it for longer time. One of the best promotions I did was a year long deal with a software producer and I’m totally happy with it.

99. Create And Sell Your Own Products

Write an ebook. Create an online course. Make a suite of videos. Go for what you can genuinely create. Making money directly from your products is always better than advertising. You can totally control the process and even if you use affiliate networks to promote your products, the payout is much bigger than in any other field.

100. Use Incentives To Promote Premium Content

Create free ebooks or other free resources to create awareness. Link to your commercial products in those free products and then spread the word. That way, people will have the opportunity to know more about what you do before actually buying the commercial product.

101. Add Paid Membership

I didn’t actually do it here, but I successfully did it in other projects and all I can tell you is that is really working. But it depends a lot on your niche and audience. As a rule of thumb remember that people are ready to pay from premium content, if that content really solve some real problem for them.

I know, there are 101 ways, not 100, as I promised in the title. I lied. And I also did something that always helped me being successful: under promise and over deliver.

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Apr

Why Hedgehog Position Your Business

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (3)

Know thyself. That was the advice of Plato, and this is also the advice of Jim Collins author of the explosive New York Times best seller, “Good to Great”.

If you have a good business and are satisfied, this article is not for you. Why? Because the very first thing Jim Collins discovered is that the good is really the worst enemy of the great. Jim and his team engaged in an intense five year research project, to study companies that had performed as good companies for quite some time, and then suddenly skyrocketed to measurable greatness. He discovered some rather startling stuff about each of these companies that moved from good to great companies. Of all the things he discovered, one big discovery looms above the rest: “Any company can” greatly upgrade its stature and performance, perhaps even become great, if it conscientiously applied the principles that Jim and his team uncovered.

A few companies I work with, both small and large companies, have embarked upon the adventure of applying Jim Collin’s Good to Great Disciplines. These are good companies with remarkable Visionary Leaders at the top. Every one, without exception, has made remarkable improvements by following these Six Key Disciplines. Whether they become great companies or not remains to be seen. But if you are not satisfied with being merely a good company, and want to break out into the open air of greatness, I advise you to evaluate and apply the Six Key Disciplines yourself.

The first two of the Six Key Disciplines involve disciplined people. The second two involve disciplined thought. The third two involve disciplined action.

THE SIX GOOD TO GREAT KEY DISCIPLINES

A Visionary Leader Is Required To Drive The Breakthrough.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, visionary leaders are not generally charismatic, driving, egotists as you might expect. Collins learned that the most effective leader is an individual with a quiet, driving passion. This kind of person is incredibly ambitious, but not for themselves. He or she is ambitious instead for the company. They do not seek credit for what is done, but quietly let others take the bows for great performances.

Get the Right People on the Bus, get the Wrong People Off.

People are not your most important asset, but getting the right people is – your most important asset. These are people who buy into your core values fully. Don’t waste time trying to fix the other people who don’t or won’t. If they do embrace your values, make sure they are in the “correct seat
on the bus”. Once the right people are in place, then and then only set the Vision and then only go for it. This concept is in contrast to the idea of a genius great leader who sets the Vision and then enlists highly talented helpers to come and realize the Vision. This model always fails when the genius leaves.

Confront The Brutal Facts, But Never Lose Faith.

The primary task of a Great Leader is to create a culture in which all personnel have a tremendous affirming opportunity to be heard. Very few companies have a system in place that permits this. Once people have been heard, the truth emerges, and the facts can be faced. Hit the tough
decisions head-on and you will be a stronger company for it. Have that absolute faith that your company will prevail and prosper in the end, and AT THE
SAME TIME also confront those most difficult facts in your own reality. The best way to de-motivate and lose good people is to put your head in the sand and ignore the facts.

Discover What You Are The Best At In The World… Know Thyself.

This, in my judgment, is the most critically important and hardest to execute of all the Six Key Disciplines. Go through the process of learning what it is you really can be best in the world at, and forget what you would only like to be best at. This discipline is a much higher bar than a just core competency. It is what I call an Ultimate Core Competency, a UCC. You can be good at something, but that is not what will take you over the top. Focus totally fanatically upon your single UCC. I will elaborate on this key to greatness later.

Build A Culture Of Discipline … With Freedom Comes Responsibility.

With the right people on the bus, build a culture of self-disciplined people who have the freedom to take disciplined action and who understand the responsibility that goes along with this freedom. These are also people who understand what you are best at in the world, and who are incredibly intense about their focus on this UCC, or Ultimate Core Competence. They are not diverted into wasting energies on activities outside of this UCC.

Learn To Think Differently About Technology.

Does it Fit into Your UCC? If it does, then embrace it and become a pioneer in the technology. If it does not, skip it. Technology can accelerate your momentum, but it cannot create it. Think of technology as 20% of the driving force, and the culture of your organization as the other 80%. Take your
time with technology… a good philosophy is still: crawl, walk, run – in that order.

REVISITING YOUR ULTIMATE CORE COMPETENCY

Once more I ask the question: what do you do better than anyone else in the world? It took the average Good to Great company four years to answer this question. Fortunately, Collins explains the process by which they arrived at the answer. It is a kind of a mind game that you must play if you want to raise your business to another level.

There is a lot of trash out there. There are management faddists everywhere, wild eyed visionaries, and lots of confusing information in-between. What stands out is simplicity. Passionate focus. Your UCC, or Ultimate Core Competence, is your Brand (if you are successful). It is what you are best at in the world and what comes to mind when people think about your company. Your UCC is what truly drives your economic engine. And finally, your UCC is what lights your fire… identifies and reminds you about what you are most deeply passionate about. If you are not certain about what this UCC is for you, try the following mind
challenge.

Imagine you are free to design the ideal work life you want. This work life must meet three criteria.

FIRST, it must be work that you are gifted at. You must have a remarkable ability to do this work; it must be something you were destined to do.

SECOND, this work must be financially rewarding. “Man, they pay me for this? This is great!”

THIRD, the work must be something you can lose yourself in, you are passionate about, that resonates with every fiber of your being.

(See the Three Circles picture below).
Note how these three circles intersect. Collins discovered that if you direct your life energies to this intersection, and translate this into a touchstone that guides your life choices, you will have found your Ultimate Core Competency.

Understanding what you can be best at, and also what you cannot be best at, is the key to building a great company. The crucial distinction is that your is not something you are striving to be the very best at, but rather the single thing you are convinced you can be the very best at. It is important to
understand the difference. If you are good at something, and focus on that, you will only rise to the level of being good. However, if you
focus solely on what your organization can potentially do better than any other organization, then you can be walking on the long path to
greatness.

Circuit City became the greatest at implementing the “4-S” – Selection, Service, Savings and Satisfaction.
Between 1982 and 1997, they grew 18.5 times the electronic retail market average.

Kroger became the very best innovative, super-combo supermarket store and grew 4.17 times the market between 1973 and 1988.

Walgreen’s became the best at being a super convenient corner drug store, and grew 7.34 times the market between 1975 and 1990. You can see Jim Collin’s book for more examples, but you get the idea.

But, what if you go through the process described and you still can’t define your ? What do you do then? You do the process again… and again. Remember, it took the average Good to Great Company four years to fully define their . It is a process, and while you will continuously improve throughout this process, your ideas will not reach full maturity until you work hard at defining them. It is a very difficult endeavor, but once done,
everything else becomes easy. Collins suggests developing a council of five to twelve of the right people to go through this process with you.

How can you sustain this process? What if you never find the that is your company’s bus to greatness?
Collins tells us we must maintain faith that our UCC is there … we have to keep looking until we find it. Face the brutal facts, but keep the
faith. The process is arduous, but the rewards are spectacular. As you settle on a crystal clear UCC, everything else also clarifies. You have
a magic guide by which everything you do can be measured. Guided by your UCC, you will ask the right questions. Debates and dialogues within the
company will be directed by your UCC. Executive decisions will be measured by your UCC. Evaluations and analysis will be easier and more valuable when tested against your UCC.

There is not, nor has there ever been a magic yellow brick road to greatness. But there does exist within every good company the seeds of becoming even better and eventually great. With the right people, the right thought, and the right actions, the possibilities are truly limitless.
The times are shaking out the dishonest, the fake, those businesses based upon bravado and deception. In time, lies the next great economic boom. My advice is to begin to get ready for it now, so you can hit the ground running when it comes. Plan wisely, and your competitors will be standing around wondering what happened to them while you speed ahead.

The Three Circles
of Corporate Destiny
(Based on the “Hedgehog Concept” of Jim Collins)

Your UCC
(Ultimate Core Competence) must be something you or your organization
is gifted at. SECOND, this work must be financially rewarding. THIRD,
the work must be something you can lose yourself in, you are passionate
about and resonates with every fiber of your being. Note how these
three circles intersect.

Collins
discovered that if you direct your life energies to this intersection,
and translate this into a touchstone that guides your life choices, you
will have found your Ultimate Core Competence…
a “diamond” of great value.

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Aug

Personal Profitability Series

By Pierre Basson - Business Profitability Consultant · Comments (1)

Personal Profitability Series on Wealth Building and Gainful Employment

When the economy is good, the stock market is up, jobs are plentiful and net worth is rising, it is easy to become complacent. Times of economic uncertainty cause people and companies to take a good look at their financial health.

Financial health, according to author Peter Suchy, often can be reduced to cash flow and productive assets. What enables a person to acquire and maintain cash flow and productive assets is the subject of Peter Suchy’s Personal Profitability series. The series starts out by explaining wealth building and gainful employment with an emphasis on the nuts and bolts of true, lasting success.

The first book in the Personal Profitability series, How to Build Wealth, explains wealth building in the context of “spend less than you earn and invest the difference in assets.” The basic premise is that when a person spends less than they earn, there will be a margin of cash that is free and uncommitted. This extra cash can be used to save, invest or pay off debt. The author further explains that by spending less and investing the difference, it will be easier to continue to do so because income will rise and enable additional consumption. The purpose of the book is not to teach scarcity and sacrifice, but to show how any person can build wealth by becoming more aware of the key actions and decisions that facilitate it. How to Build Wealth teaches how to start from nothing and make decisions that bring success in the real world.

To learn more about wealth building and personal finance, download the first chapter of How to Build Wealth for free. Click Here to Download the First Chapter of How to Build Wealth (http://practicaladvice.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/HowToBuildWealth_Chapter1.pdf).

The second installment in the Personal Profitability series is entitled Gainful Employment. One of the most common methods of obtaining an income is by selling personal services to an employer–also known as working for it. So, because of this, no series on Personal Profitability would be complete without an in-depth look at what makes an employee able to qualify for, find, and retain gainful employment.

According to the author, Gainful Employment involves having the qualifications and traits that enable a person to provide the best services possible in exchange for the highest wage that the market will ear. Put another way, the book Gainful Employment explains what is proclaimed boldly on the cover: “learn to enrich yourself while working for others.” The primary focus of Gainful Employment is the four components of a valuable employee and the one lone quality that causes employees to be paid what they are worth. Gainful Employment teaches how to make work a rewarding and profitable experience by detailing what it takes to be valuable and in demand.

To learn more about the employment aspect, download the first four chapters of Gainful Employment for free. Click Here to Download the First Four Chapters of Gainful Employment (http://practicaladvice.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/bookexcerpt2.pdf).

Both of the books are available for purchase on Amazon.com, from Barnes and Noble and from other fine retailers. Visit www.practicaladvice.info for more information and other resources.

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