Money Money

One of the things I see a lot of online is the tendency to learn and learn and learn online but never put things into action. You can have the most knowledge of anybody online about how to write an email, but until you write a few and start mailing them, you will never make any money.

When you sit down to work online, have an action plan. For example, write 3 emails, write 3 articles, spend one hour posting to forums, or build 5 squeeze pages. If you do not have an action plan, it is too easy to read your email, read about all the newest, hottest ways to ‘get-rich-quick’ online, and 3 hours later you have nothing to show for your time. The biggest source of failure online is probably the lack of action. To become successful online, you must create action, you must create.

Commit to doing something productive online every day. If you choose to use article marketing as your primary source of traffic generation, write three articles a day and post them to 20 directories. If you choose forum posting, do it–every day. Commit to 40 posts a day. If you are paying for your leads with PPC or ezine ads, you must monitor every account every day. Know every day which campaigns are making you money and which are not. Constantly test your squeeze pages and email sequences.

This has been an excerpt from “Step by Step Guide to Building an Online List”, a step by step report on building massive lists. To read more by this author, simply follow this link: Internet Marketing Secrets

Are you interested in learning how to build a responsive mailing list? Click here: List Building

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One of the worst moments in a business owner’s life is that silent moment between when you quote your rate to a potential client and his response. True, that hardly a second goes by, but it can feel like an eternity.

“Will he hire me?”

“Did I go too high?”

And when he says “YOU’RE HIRED!”, a new set of doubts creeps over you:

“Should I have gone higher?”

“Did I lowball the price just to get a client?”

You know the feeling. You’ve got the job, the project, the new client and it almost always turns out to be more work than you thought when you signed up for the task. Be sure that you know your worth and communicate it to the client up front.

1. Know your worth.

If you charge your clients hourly, how do you know what to charge them? Did you pick a number out of the air? What was your rationale?

For those who choose to bill hourly, I recommend the following approach to determining what you charge:

(a) Determine what you want your salary to be. How much will you take out of the company?

(b) Add to that any subcontractor expense that you may have. This is your “labor total”.

(c) List out and then add all your expenses: advertising, promotion, rent, self-employment tax, supplies, etc. This is your “non-labor expense total”.

(d) Add your labor total to your non-labor expense total.

(e) Add in any profit goal you may have for your business.

(f) Bullets (d) plus (e) equal your Total Required Revenue.

(g) Divide your “Total Required Revenue” by the number of BILLABLE hours for the year. Remember that you will not be billing 40 hours/week. The result will be the amount you need to charge per hour to make your salary goal.

If you bill hourly, take the time to complete the above exercise and, if necessary, increase your rates accordingly.

2. No haggling.

It can be hard when you have few clients or need more money, but whatever you do, do not haggle with your clients/prospective clients over your pricing.

You can haggle at a flea market. You can haggle for the price of a house. You can negotiate (a.k.a. “haggle”) for a corporate job salary. As a self-employed individual, you must not haggle over your pricing. To do so immediately lowers your perceived worth with that person and will set you up for a relationship of nitpicking over every nickel and dime.

3. Provide a “solution” and not a “service.”

Insure your clients understand the benefits they will receive from hiring you. You are not providing them a service; you are providing them a solution.

The difference being that people value solutions more than they do services. Whenever discussing price with a potential client, focus on the benefits, the “solutions” that she will receive as a result of hiring you.

Will she have more free time? Will her business see an increase in profits or clients? Know the benefits and speak to them!

4. Be prepared to say “Goodbye”.

Not everyone is going to accept your terms. Deal with it. They weren’t meant to be your clients anyway and would have just taken up the time that you could use for a better qualified client. Save your time and energy for those who recognize your worth - you’ll both be happier and more productive.

Pricing your services is one of the most emotional things you’ll do as a business owner. Be sure to take the time to review the project at hand before just blurting out a price - doing so will save you a lot of time and frustration down the road.

Online Business Manager & Entrepreneur, Sandra Martini, publishes the ‘Effective Entrepreneur’ weekly e-zine. She also coaches small business owners to more efficiently manage their businesses while increasing profits and having fun. Sandra’s coaching programs are available via teleconferencing, emails and telephone calls. For more information or to sign-up for ‘Effective Entrepreneur’, visit http://www.thebostonvirtualsolution.com today.

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Do you spend the majority of your time trying to
convince your prospects that they absolutely must
buy your product? Are you experiencing low conversion
rates and high negative-response rates? Are you starting
to feel like internet marketing success really is
just a myth? Do you think everyone is lying to you?

These are all symptoms of MCN, marketing in a crowded
niche. If you’re dealing with them on a regular basis,
chances are there are just plain too many people
selling a similiar product to your same targeted
customer base.

But don’t worry–this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
In fact, realizing this information may be the best
thing that ever happens to your business.

But now that you do know you are marketing in
an overcrowded niche, you must choose a specific path
for your business if you want to acheive profit.

You must decide if you want to a) prepare for
a long fight to the top (of your niche); b) market your
same product to a different group of buyers; or c) abandon
your product, find a profitable niche, and then build a
new business around it.

Of course, there are pros and cons to each decision, but
as long as you recognize the need to make a decision–and
then create a clear, honest business plan to make money
with that choice–you wont run into trouble.

Let’s start with option A:

PREPARE FOR A LONG FIGHT TO THE TOP

If your niche is so crowded that you haven’t broken into
profit after several of months of marketing, this does not
mean that your niche is unprofitable–it means the exact
opposite: your niche is so unbelievably in-demand and
profitable that everyone is trying to build around it.

You may not be making money with this route now, but if you
stick with it and continually make progress, then
you are almost guaranteed to make an enormous amount
of money when your business reaches critical mass–when
your website has a lot of backlinks from high-traffic
sites; when your webpage is ranked highly in search engines
for your specific niche keywords; when other marketers
in your niche begin to seek you out for interviews and for
joint ventures; and when you begin making your own products
to fill the gaps in your niche. . .

‘Preparing for a long fight to the top’ also means not
relying on your main business as a cashcow–as your source
of income–for the time being. This is always a huge
mistake.

Maybe you can write google adwords for affiliate
programs to make extra cash while you wait for your business
to take off; OR maybe you can budget your main business to
save money; OR maybe you can pick up a part-time or
full-time job to ensure you have enough money in the bank
to live off of while you build your business.

There are a number of viable options, but whatever you
choose, you must remember that your business absolutely
will not earn you a full-time income until you become
a big-player in your niche. You must recognize this
and structure your business plan around it; otherwise,
you are setting yourself up for failure.

If this is not a good option for you, then you must
consider option B:

MARKET YOUR PRODUCT TO A DIFFERENT GROUP OF BUYERS

When you think of your website, you may only be able
to think of a couple words to describe it–the keywords
you have been telling yourself you must use to make money,
to get rankings, to make sales.

If these keywords are not working for you–if you either
have a low conversion rate or poor rankings on search
engines–then you must consider marketing to a different
group of buyers. You can sell the same product to
an entirely different group and radically change your
conversion rate and profit margin.

You can begin by finding new keywords to better target
potential customers. Pay-per-click search engine
advertising is one of the best ways to do this. You can
use overture’s and google’s tools to create a bigger,
more specific set of keywords and then find out
which keywords reach a respectable market and
which ones draw a high conversion rate. Mix and match
until you have the best possible set.

Use ad tracking as much as possible to scientifically
determine which ads are doing the best. Once you have
the best set, optimize your website for those keywords.
Figure out what people are thinking when they type in
those exact words–what solution they are looking for
and for what problem–and then find those people elsewhere
and market to them in different ways.

And if this option wont work for you, then you must resort
to something entirely different–option c:

ABANDON YOUR PRODUCT AND FIND A PROFITABLE NICHE

Sometimes you just run out of options and have to switch
products. I personally would never suggest taking this
route unless it comes down to either a) quitting marketing
altogether or b) giving up on your current situation.

If it comes down to this, just switch your products and
find another one that you wont have to fight so hard to
sell.

This time, when you select your product, make sure you
lazer-target a niche that will undoubtably be more
profitable and easier to break into. Again, you can use
PPCs and adwords to find which niches are overcrowded
and which niches desparately need sellers.

You want to pick a specific product to market to a specific
crowd with specific keywords that will provide a specific
solution for a specific problem.

Be specific.

When you find this specific niche, build your business
around it. Profit will flow in naturally.

—

You may use this article for reprint, as long as it
remains unaltered and the resource box and author
information are included. - Isaiah Hull

Isaiah Hull is a business tips writer, a widely-published author, the CEO of two web-based businesses, the publisher of two ebusiness training courses, and a PTL for multiple affiliate programs. He earns an income by teaching people step-by-step, replicable programs that they can use to make money. One such program can be found at the following URL: http://www.workathomerightnow.net

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