Photo Credit: Bopeepo

I’ve been dieting for 10 days now and Sundays are traditionally a diet cheat day for my wife and I.  So after being good for the last week and a half I figured I’d stop in at a local donut shop and gorge myself on an apple fritter, a custard donut and anything else I could get into my gullet.

After opening my wallet and seeing only $2 cash, I asked the dreaded question:

“Do you guys take cards?”

“No, but you can go to the market across the street and use their ATM.”

So I did, well I tried anyway, but the ATM was out of order.

I then went to the only cashier working and asked if they offered “cash back” on debit card purchases.

I bet you know where this is going.

Of course not!

So I walked back over to the donut shop where I hopped back in my car and left.  Now I may have only purchased $5 or $6 worth of donuts but today 2 businesses lost a customer.

I didn’t really sit down and write this to bitch about not getting any donuts. So here’s why I saw fit to spend my early morning blogging instead hunting down some more damn donuts.

Where these businesses lost their opportunities.

I don’t want to sound uppity, but at any time, either of these businesses could have asked me to build them a website, or start a SEO campaign for them, and I could have accepted a credit/debit card deposit from them right then on my phone.  On the spot. At 7:45 in the morning in a mountain resort town.

I use Intuit GoPayment for all credit card processing.  Either of these merchants could easily and cheaply use Intuit’s Merchant Terminal service for next to nothing.  (Not an affiliate link)  They or their accountants probably already use Intuit’s most famous product, Quickbooks.

For the donut shop to gain my business it would have cost them 1.64% + $0.27.  On my $6 worth of donuts that would have been a grand total of $0.37.  Thirty Seven Cents is what they just “saved” by not offering me or anybody else the option of using a card.

The local market missed out on me buying a soda or an energy drink that I didn’t want or need because they didn’t offer cash back.

The ATM owner missed out on whatever their portion of the $2.00 or more ATM fee.

Make it easy for the customer.  We are pickier and more fickle than ever.

These are the things that I was willing to do to buy a few donuts this morning:

1. Walk across the street in search of an ATM.  Knowing I would have to pay at last $2.00 extra to be able to pay cash.

2. Buy a soda or energy drink, that I didn’t want, for an extra $1.50 – $3.00.

I, as a customer, was willing to pay $1.50 to $3.00 more for those donuts.  Neither business understood this, and probably still don’t.  How many customers a month do you think either of these businesses lose or alienate?

How many customers a month do you lose or alienate by not making it easy for a customer to buy your product or service?

Make it easy.  You have spent so much time and effort marketing, advertising and building a reputation.  The last thing you want to do is alienate the guy who just wants to buy some of your fucking donuts.

So this year I am going to do a few things:

1.) Hire salespeople to expand my business.

2.) Outsource as much as possible to ensure I don’t get overloaded….. again.

3.) Focus on writing and teaching what I know through this blog.

Now I know that setting goals need to be more specific (and measurable) than just the 3 generic things I have written above so I will get specific.

1.) I will hire and keep fully employed at any given time 5 full time, 100% commission salespeople.

2.) I will increase my own personal income to $10,000 per month.

3.) I will hire and maintain a small team of sub-contractors to do ALL web development work for me.

4.) I will post what I know, have learned or feel to this blog at least twice a week, ensuring that what I write is valuable to YOU more than it is to me.

5.) I will setup 3 separate businesses that are largely self running.  (All related to web design so I don’t get away from my greatest talent.)

6.) I will build my Facebook Fan Page to 5,000 Fans, Twitter Followers to 10,000 and Email Subscribers to 10,000 through adding valuable content that helps you build or maintain your business/website.

Those are my goals and I hope you’ll keep my feet to the fire.  Thanks for reading this and if you haven’t already follow me on Twitter, Like me on Facebook or Subscribe to the Mailing List.

-Steve

I started thinking that as long as I have this book I may as well put it out there for as many people as possible. What better place than Amazon.com? Amazon offers people with and ebook a 70% royalty on their ebooks plus you can optimize both your book’s description as well as it’s tags. There are also other services that you can post your book to such as Apple’s iBooks and Barnes and Noble. No use trying to publish for Borders, since they are going out of business.  I used SmashWords to publish my book to several other sites.  You can use them for Amazon as well.  It is a great one stop shop for publishing your underused ebooks.  I’ll report how this book is doing as it comes up.  Check the tag, eBook in my future posts.

In the end, I am going to try and get as much exposure as I can for all of my products.  One of the things I have learned over the past year has been that there is no one thing that will do it for you.  My ability to be self employed and pay the bills has been entirely doing what I do online for local businesses.  I have found a great local niche for small business websites and custom Facebook pages.  It’s worth looking into if you have any design knowledge.  I am still striving to get a few online services moving that provide a passive income.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Also if you have any questions let me know.

- Steve

LogMeIn (Free Version) – My computer in my office is much more powerful than my laptop.  Additionally I have a ton of client info on that computer.

Joomla or Worpress Websites – While these aren’t services they do allow you to edit your website remotely. With your login information you can log in to your website and edit or add pages to your website.  I often edit websites through my android phone.

Filezilla – A free FTP program which allows you to upload files and folders to your server.  I used this in conjunction with LogMeIn to upload some files I had forgotten at the office to my server.  I was then able to download them to my laptop.

My wife and I just returned yesterday from our first working vacation.  We went and stayed at my parents’ house a half hour away from home.  I know, I know, “Only 30 minutes away.  Who cares?”  We did go for 4 days though.  The point of this trip was that we could do it.  We could grab a bag and our laptops and leave the office and still continue to run our business.

I will follow up more on what we learned on this little trip in a later post.  I am still putting my thoughts together.  For now though, I will catch you up a bit on how we were able to use the programs/services mentioned above to work remotely without pissing any clients off.

I have a new niche site that I have set up with an information product which is not yet receiving much traffic.  It’s only been a few days though.  Hopefully those Clickbank.com affiliates will begin coming through though.  In the mean time I figured I would do some research and try to hone my copy writing to get my sales page to convert.  John Carlton was the first guy I went to after bouncing around for ideas on the forums.  Below are my notes from John Carlton himself.

• Unique Selling Proposition: Positioning yourself uniquely in your market in order to sell.
• Persuasion Equation: Problem + Promise + Proof + Proposition = Persuasion
• When you are writing copy you can not write anything that allows your prospect to say “so what” or “I don’t believe this.”
• Every word of your copy must be directed to the passionate sweet spot of the prospect.
• You must learn to tell a story.
• Homework: Take a proven piece of ad copy and rewrite it word for word by hand.  This will let you experience the wording and the rhythm of the copy.  One of the ads that John References can be found here: One Legged Golfer Ad
• A sales piece is a conversation and should allow you to “join the conversation already going on in the prospect’s head.”
• The gist of your piece should have three main points: 1.) Here’s what I have.   2.) Here’s what it is.   3.) How many do you want?
• To reiterate an Offer = Defining what it is that you have, why they need it and telling them how to get it.
• If your ad is good you are pissing the prospect off.  Your ad should present him with a new problem and why he needs your product to solve that problem.
• Take your prospect out of their comfort zone.
• Your copy must get the reader past “that’s really good” to “that’s really good and I want it.“
• DO NOT WRITE BULLSHIT – Be Honest
• Reiterate the benefits as part of the guarantee.  For example: If this product does not benefit #1, benefit #2, benefit #3 etc. then…
• Guarantee Example: If in 30 days you are not absolutely happy for any reason at all (or for no reason at all) then I insist you call or email me and request a refund and we’ll still be friends.
• Your Unique Selling Proposition should be in your headline.
• See the Ad Appeal Graph.  John Carlton calls it something else but I don’t want to swipe too much.  Basically this graph displays how many people your ad will appeal to based on it’s claims.  You need to go as far to the right as possible without lying or false advertising.  See Graph Below
• 4 Things that every ad must portray your product/service as:  Easy – Fast – Simple – Cheap
• Your headline should put your prospect into a receptive trance.  To do this you must hit their emotional sweet spot.  Get inside their head.
• There must be an empathetic transfer of trust when they read your copy.  When they are done they should not even remember your words.  They should only be thinking of your product/service.

There is so much half ass writing being done on the internet that is being done solely for SEO.  Every article you read or page you go to has a few very specific keywords that contain a link.  That link is the only reason that article was even posted.  It was not to teach you anything.  It was not to give you anything.  It is so Google will pick up one more link back to that particular website under those particular keywords.

If you are an internet marketer then you already know this.  If you are an internet user then you may not.  I am both.

I am looking for websites that will teach me things.  I am looking for websites that have value.  I need to create the same.  It is easy to get in the rut of following all of these “Gurus’ ” advice.  Write honestly and openly.  Write things that you would like to sell.  Write things that you think should earn you money.  And give them away.  Nobody gives a shit about your website.

If you can get people to give a shit about your website you will be able to make money.  One of my favorite blogs belongs to Pat Flynn at his passive income blog (yes that is free unsolicited link love).  Every month he gives you an honest and open breakdown of his earnings.  I started to do that but after a few weeks of no earnings it can be discouraging.   Guess what it’s still discouraging.

I am going to start following the advice of some of the best people in the business.   Start doing what is making them money.

The eBook that he sells is found here.

I am getting ready to start using this product and in fact just bought it this morning.  I will begin using it today since I have a bit of a slow day today.

In the mean time I will show you what Pat is reporting for income in June, July and August 2010 so that you can see his awesome results.  Hopefully you and I can do the same.

August 2010

July 2010

June 2010

I will post my update with how things go for me from here on out.

I have been experimenting for the last week or so with ClickBank.com and using PPC on Yahoo and Microsoft AdCenter.  Yahoo is paying off pretty well and I am getting about 1 sale every day and a half or so.  Thus far I have received $145.20 in sales and spent $98.25 to do so.  Which means over the last 7 days I have made a whopping $46.95 or $6.70 a day.  Not much to write home about. See the screen shots below.

So I tried the easy way and now I am going to go the hard way.  However, I have a good feeling about this.  I have been using an awesome software program called MindManager by MindJet.

I have been using this tool to take notes and lay out articles.  Through some research on Alexa.com I have found some of the most popular article submission sites on the web.  They are as follows:

EzineArticles.com – Alexa Rank # 126

Squidoo.com – Alexa Rank # 238

ArticlesBase.com – Alexa Rank # 346

Go Articles.com – Alexa Rank # 1,735

Amazines.com – Alexa Rank #5,074

ArticleCity.com – Alexa Rank # 5,505

InfoBarrel.com – Alexa Rank # 7381

I have uploaded a free .pdf version of my Article Submission “Blueprint” for you to use for free.  You can download it here.

My plan is to follow this blueprint for article submissions.  If I can write 10 high quality articles for my subject and then rework each of those articles so that they are in fact unique articles then by the end of this project I should have 100 articles all working for me.  I will post my progress as it comes.

Steve

The Death of orpheus – Albrecht Durer  - 1494

Pen drawing, 28.9 x 22.5 cm
Hamburg, Kunsthalle

Alright, so I am going to get a bit philosophical right now, so please bare with me.

My kids have been having me draw pictures for them recently.  I draw in black pen and sketch out a pretty in depth drawing.  My daughter got an amusement park yesterday and my son got a skeleton on a deserted island today.  They both liked the pictures and have now begun coloring them.

As I draw, if a line ends up in the wrong spot or shaped wrong I have to go back and sort of scratch out a new line that is more defined.  If I were drawing in pencil I could just flip the pencil around and erase where I messed up and redraw it.

Life is drawing with an ink pen.  You do not get to go back in time, erase and redo what you have already done.  You’re drawing with ink.  You are allowed to go off course, come back and scribble harder over the same lines to change, shape and refocus your efforts.  But you can not erase what has been done.  Recenter yourself and  begin to redefine who you are or what it is you do by making your new corrected course more defined and obvious.

It’s Official – $750,000 in the hole and don’t care from Steve Lennox on Vimeo.

This is a quick video explaining my current legal situation and what I plan to do about it.