Remember what it meant to be the “teacher’s pet” in school? The term describes a kid who is sucking up to the teacher, a kid who is more interested in pleasing their teacher than their peers.

Being the teacher’s pet may have gotten you ahead in school, but it can be hugely detrimental to the success of your blog.

When I switched gears to social media consultancy, I decided I wanted to start a weekly newsletter as a marketing vehicle for my business. Knowing the important of consistency, I was fully committed to never missing a single week so I decided to plan out an editorial calendar ahead of time. (You should do that for your blog as well, but that’s a whole different post!)

As I started to plot my calendar, I quickly saw that generating content every week was going to be no easy task! How could I come up with some kind of novel, innovative social media strategy every week?

Walking along the beach (my favorite thinking spot) it suddenly came to me – the answer to my problem was NOT to focus on the innovative and cutting-edge. Instead, I should focus on the basic, the boring, the totally elementary.

At first, when this idea hit me, it made me uncomfortable. I wouldn’t be winning any social media awards explaining what a retweet was, or how to send a message on Facebook. No one would invite me to their conference to speak about that.

But who was I really writing for? The conferences and award committees? No. I was writing for my customers. And what seemed “basic” to me and my fellow social media gurus was EXACTLY what my customers wanted most!

This is a huge mistake almost every blogger makes. They want to be known, they want to be innovative, they want to be daring. The problem with this is what is most exciting to you is likely WAY over your reader’s head! Of course this depends on the industry. If you’re a heart surgeon blogging for other heart surgeons, have at it!

But if you’re a heart surgeon blogging for patients, the most brilliant theories will leave your patients bored and confused. Your peers won’t be too impressed by your entry explaining in layman’s terms what a heart attack really is, but your patients will love it.

Blogging for your peers is being the teacher’s pet – you might win industry awards, but will it gain you any customers? Will it speak to the people that you really want to reach?

Here are a few tips for making sure you’re not a “teacher’s pet” blogger.

Run your posts through the “jargon checker”.

Ask a friend outside your industry to read your posts. Are there words they don’t understand? My favorite example of this is a friend who had a blog for business owners to become better writers. She had a headline about writing better “copy”. The problem with this is that “copy” is a writer’s word – some of her readers though she was talking about photocopies! It’s hard for us to see our own jargon because we’re so used to it. Go to someone who is unfamiliar with your topic to get the real story.

Stop thinking your ideas are too simple.

The topics that are “too obvious” to experts are often the topics that no one else has written about, because all the experts assume everyone must know them already! This is excellent fodder for your blog, the questions that your audience is afraid to ask for fear of looking dumb. To find these topics, start looking for the steps or concepts that come BEFORE what you’ve already written about. If you’ve written about how to set up a chart of accounts in QuickBooks, what about writing about how to open and save a new file? It sounds super basic to you, but I promise you people are out there Googling it, thrilled to have found your blog post.

Remember who you’re speaking to.

This is where you go back to the goals with your blog. If you’re blogging to promote a business or digital product, who are your customers? Chances are they’re coming to you to learn more about a topic that they’re new to. So try to remember when you were first starting out, before you knew all the terms, before you knew all the theories. Embrace the “beginners mind” in everything you write, and your audience will thank you for taking the time to explore topics everyone else has glazed over.

About the author: Laura Roeder is a social media marketing expert who teaches small businesses how to create their own fame and claim their brand online. She is the creator of Zero to Wordpress Website and Zero to Wordpress Blog.

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See, the other day I was talking to somebody. This person was in the advertising business. This means she saw a lot of clients and was busy. VERY busy. We’re talking 15+ hour days. Sitting in the office until 2AM. Sometimes up and at it by 4AM.

Overwhelm. No time. Busy.

These days, people seem to wear the “overwhelm” badge with pride and I don’t know why.

We want to look really busy. Tell people we’re busy. Talk with pride about our long work hours and how we burned the midnight oil to get something done. We talk on our cell phones during the day in order to look important. Or worse, we wear the Bluetooth headset in our ears all day. The message we tell others? “I’m busy. I’m important. I don’t have time for you.” When somebody asks how we’re doing, we say “Busy!” without even thinking. It is a habit.

When did this become a badge of honor? Are we supposed to honor your sacrifice?

Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? If what I just said describes you, then you’ve got a problem. It means you’re grossly disorganized. It means you don’t have any systems set up to deal with inflow and outflow. It means you’ve mistaken rapid movement with accomplishing something. It means your life isn’t your’s anymore.

It means you have to stop working on stuff and instead work on yourself. It means you better get organized.

It goes for everybody, really. Including bloggers. See, one of the most common frustrations I hear from aspiring bloggers is that they don’t have time to blog. Regular life gets in the way. There is the J-O-B that takes up most of the day. Then nighttime is usually taken up with life’s logistics. If you carve a little personal time for yourself late at night, you sit down to blog only to get quickly overwhelmed. Hence, you make no forward progress.

Unfortunately, if you run your life in a state of overwhelm, you will unwittingly carry that overwhelm into everything else you do. Because you crave it, whether you’ll admit it or not. We like being busy. The problem is that many have mistaken being busy with getting things done.

The simple truth is that it is all a state of mind. Which fortunately means you can change it all by simply changing your mind.

The first step is to decide that overwhelm isn’t a sign of success, but a symptom of doing it wrong. Like, REALLY DECIDE THAT. I’m not kidding.

Secondly, start to put in order. If you look at all the things you’re doing, it probably feels like a bunch of randomness going in every direction. In other words, a confusion. The simplicity of stopping a confusion is this: Pick one thing, make it still. Then, pick the next. Put it under your control. Then move to the next. And so on.

For example, perhaps random incoming emails and calls are a huge source of confusion for you and you don’t really like it. Well, put some control in on it. Declare email bankruptcy if you have to. Turn off your phone’s ringer and change your voice mail greeting to tell them the two times a day you will check messages. Make people wait if you must! The world will get along just fine. People won’t complain as long as they see results.

Perhaps, if you really look at it, you see that you spend too much time reading other people’s blogs and not enough working on your own. Perhaps you see that every time you read somebody else’s blog, you get distracted and pulled in yet another direction. Perhaps after a week of this mental vibration, you look back and realize you didn’t accomplish anything at all. So, put some discipline in on yourself and limit your reading time. Check out these 21 tips on managing your time.

It really comes down to just taking control again. It starts with changing your mind.

… Because moving really fast isn’t a badge of honor. The rat on the rat wheel does that, too, and we’re not putting him on a pedestal, are we? Last time I checked, that rat is in a cage. Pretty ironic, huh.

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In fact, last night, I sat in the dark on my Ipad and worked on mind-mapping some ideas of mine. Yeah, I know, I’m such a romantic.

So, I decided to hop on my laptop tonight, go out onto my back porch, sit in the dark, smoke a cigar…. and post something.

… Along with a survey.

See, I had some ideas last night on some things I want to make for you.

Here’s What I Want You To Do…

If you’ve found my blogging helpful to you, then I’d be tickled if you could take a minute and give me your opinion on some things.

It’ll literally take you a few minutes. Maybe 2 or 3.

The first question has to do with what free product you want me to make for you.

A few minutes, then you’ll be right back to your weekend. And if you happen to not see this until you’re back in your office chair on Monday, that’s cool, too. I’d still like your input.

Thanks, guys.

P.S. My cigar keeps going out. Ugh. [pause for relighting before publishing.]

P.P.S. Yes, I know its a nasty habit. My wife already told me.

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Obviously an attractive concept. Then the gold rush mentality took over. People sold a lot of crappy ebooks. People also bought a lot of crappy ebooks. Just look at Clickbank’s Marketplace and you’ll find a LOT of really stupid ebooks – all of them claiming to be the secret to something.

Ebooks have lost their shine.

Perception Is Reality

An ebook might contain a treasure trove of knowledge, but the problem is that the perceived value of an ebook is low.

Look at a printed book. The average price of a book at the bookstore is, let’s say, less than $30. No matter how awesome a book is, if you charge much more than that, you’re going to have a much harder time selling it. The perceived value is around $30. It is just a book.

The problem with e-books is that it is just a PDF (usually). A simple file that anybody can make for free on their computer. People only place so much value on the knowledge within. There is knowledge everywhere. No shortage of it. So, your ebook is just another echo in just another PDF file. The print book might sell for $30, but we’re at a point now where the initial shine of the ebook doesn’t exempt it from the problem of perception.

The perceived value of an ebook is low. Besides, most people will download it, scan it really quick, close it and never open it again. It sits there lost in their hard drive’s file system.

What can you do about it?

Doing Something Different

No matter how good your product is or how good you are at marketing, perceived value is something you have to deal with. So, the FORM of your offering should take this into account.

Why do you think internet marketers so often sell things in physical format? They call it the “thud factor”. When the customer opens the box, it looks like they got a lot of stuff. The perceived value is high. With digital products, you don’t have the same thud factor.

It is purely a psychological thing. At the end of the day, after you’ve gotten that huge pile of DVDs, you wish it were in digital form so it would take up less room. But, still, you most likely experienced that little “thud” when you opened the box and got that nice fuzzy feeling.

So, what can you do to add higher perceived value to your offerings? Well, there are several ways:

1. Use videos. Videos have a higher perceived value than an ebook. You can add to it by providing a way to download the video. So, ask yourself, can you take what you would put into an ebook and, instead, communicate the same information using video?
2. Use membership sites. Membership sites are great platforms because they don’t have a real-world comparison in terms of pricing. So, you don’t have the perception problem when it comes to pricing. You, as the marketer, CREATE the perceived value. So, can you take what you would have put into an ebook and put it into a membership site instead? Realize, too, that you don’t necessarily have to charge money for a membership site. You could even use it as your bribe to earn list opt-ins.
3. Make it an Event. People love participating in live events. You can add perceived value to anything by putting a live component into it. This is why I love webinars so much. If you haven’t thought about doing webinars yet, give it some thought.
4. Go Physical. Even though you have to chuckle sometimes at the length some marketers go to to add as much “thud” to their stuff as possible, it is clear why they do it. It is the thud. I once paid $1,000 for a course which came in the form of 20 DVDs. Nice thud, but when you opened it, it was just a really bad recording of a live event. But, going physical adds perceived value and, usually, you can charge more for a product simply because you’ve made it physical.
5. Rethink your terminology. What you call something adds to (or subtracts from) the perceived value. For example, calling something a “white paper” means more in some markets than the word “ebook”. Words like “worksheet”, “blueprint”, “manual”… these things might increase conversion because they have a better perception than “ebook” As usual, you would need to split test it to see how your audience responds.
6. Pile on the proof. Powerful social proof adds perceived value. While it might just be a PDF, if you’ve got several notable people in your niche saying how awesome and groundbreaking it is, then you’ve moved past the “ebook” thing and into the value of the contents.
7. Put it on a reader device. Realize that the perceived value thing applies mostly to PDF ebooks. However, e-books that are bought via a site like Amazon and read on a Kindle or an Ipad – that has higher perceived value. Of course, it is usually earned value, because Kindle books are just as well put together than a typical physical book – WAY beyond what you find in the typical PDF ebook.

Brainstorm Your “Thud Factor”

What can you do to add a “thud factor” and higher perceived value to your offerings?

The FORM of your product is an important part of the marketing, so it is worth thinking about.

Free access to a membership site might work as a much better incentive for a list opt-in than yet another e-book. A video training course will probably work much better than an ebook.

Let me know your thoughts.

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His voice mail, though, was rather passive aggressive. A bit of a threat that I needed to call him back otherwise he’d have to take it to another level (which I guess means dispute the charge).

Today, I canceled his charge for him and sent him a quick email letting him know it was done. Half an hour later, he leaves me another voice mail. I was ignoring him, not returning calls, and apparently being a bad guy.

Sigh. So, I called him.

Immediately, he was the nicest dude. He thanked me for canceling his membership. Told me he loved the program, but he just didn’t have time for it anymore. He was actually trying to make me feel better about canceling!

The lesson?

Always err on the side of more communication than less. And…

People want to be acknowledged.

This isn’t the first time that’s happened. It must be something about the Internet. People automatically assume the worse when you’re just a website. The moment they get a personal acknowledgement or a personal communication, it brings the whole dialog back to a point where it is just person-to-person.

I often get people who are surprised that I reply to my emails personally. Don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me to have my VA deal with my email. It has. She does handle my support desk, but I feel people should get a personal reply from me if they email me. Sometimes I’m delayed on replying, but I sure give it my best.

A couple weeks ago, I had a person tell me they wanted to buy my course because they were put off by the lack of personal treatment by another big-name blogger. I won’t name names and it happens to be a blogger I have a lot of respect for. That said, it puts people off when they email you, only to get a response from somebody else who is trying to keep you off their boss’s plate. Not a good way to keep an open line of communication with your readers, is it?

We all get pissed when we try to call a company only to get caught in the call loop of death. Yeah, I’d rather press 1 to kick their ass, too.

Always err on the side of more communication than less. Don’t stick blockages on the line, because that only tells them that you don’t want to talk to them. And if you’re doing that, they’re probably right.

And make sure to acknowledge people. If you don’t, it leaves an open loop. Not good.

OK, stay awesome.

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It is easy to see bloggers like me talking about making full-time livings online and assume we’re just living large, eating caviar and wiping our butt with twenties.

The reality is that it takes money to make money. We don’t keep all the money we make.

So, today, I thought I would give a report card on my business in a revenue sense, but provide both sides of it. Income and expenses.

Income

First, here is a percentage breakdown of my income sources for 2010 YTD. I’m still torn on whether to divulge actual income figures (hello IRS!), but I will say that I publicly stated that I brought in about $204K in 2009. Well, I’m well on my way to breaking that barrier for 2010. I’ll just leave it at that.

As you can see, advertising is now only 17% of my revenue. The “PCMech” segment is from my membership program over there. Affiliate promotions represents affiliate marketing that I’ve done on both this site as well as PCMech.com. Blog Masters Club has generated the largest share of revenue so far.

Now, onto watching the money disappear.

Expenses

This split is much more segmented than my income split because I have a lot more things where the money goes.

Once again, I’ll not divulge the actual amount of expenses, but I will say that the business is definitely profitable. The business expenses are a bit less than half of the gross revenue. Being that I am an S-corporation, the remaining revenue carries over to my personal income, where (of course) my family spends the rest. Wife and kids are good at that.

A few notes about this breakdown:

• Credit card fees are any fees associated with charging credit cards. This includes gateway fees, merchant fees, Paypal fees, etc.
• Education is stuff I have purchased for educational purposes. Things like courses, membership sites and books. You have to continue to learn.
• Travel is business-related travel to conferences, including hotels, food, flights, and cost of the event. I’ve only been to 2 events this year, but I pre-paid for another two. Conferences are an expenses, yes, but the networking value of these events is tremendous and it is an important part of the business.
• Yes, I pay for one of our cars directly out of my business.
• Commissions are money I have paid affiliates.

Looking Ahead

My business is doing well. No complaints. The year was a bit front-loaded in terms of revenue, but I have some things planned before year-end which will hopefully do well.

It takes money to make money, though. That’s for sure.

August is shaping up to be a pretty average month for me. I’m getting ready to ramp up things with the membership program over at PCMech (making some interesting adjustments, actually), and will be prepping to relaunch Blog Masters.

Will check in with it again soon and let you know.

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If you have been around the web long enough, you have seen that everything has already been said, done and hashed out time and time again. There are a few light bulb style new ideas that hit every now and then, but for the most part…we are operating in a “me too” environment, and that makes it difficult to stand above the rest and realize success through this medium we call blogging. So there you sit…with your blog…looking for attention. Where do you start and how do you get it?

How To Stand Out In A “Me Too” Society

I have found the best way to explain this theory is to use my own personal experience with Bike198.com. For the longest time, I fought the need to report on the news of the industry. With multiple press releases hitting my email inbox a day, I didn’t want to be another cookie cutter site online that provided the same content as everyone else. I wanted my site to stay unique in its content and value as that is ultimately what grew my business.

However, these same news reports and press releases were generating a ton of pageviews and unique visitors for the other sites, so…unless I wanted to be left behind…I needed to find a way to capitalize on this highly searched for information while not stepping too far outside the ideals that had brought my corner of the web so much success over the years. Then I remembered the one key to blogging that most bloggers know, but often forget…

Blogging is successful because of the 1-on-1 relationship between blogger and reader.

That personalization and personal attention to each and every one of your readers is what makes a blog successful and profitable when backed with solid business foundations. I needed to bring that personal touch to bland content to see the best of both worlds.

So what did I do?

I started providing the same press releases and news information, but I started every single one of those articles with my thoughts, short reviews and general information before the press release or news story. I didn’t just copy, paste and publish. I brought my personal touch to the information that everyone else was just rehashing.

The result…

• Higher search engine visits.
• Higher pageviews from current visitors.
• More affiliate sales from product-centric articles.
• Increased exposure from companies looking for product reviews.
• Retained respect of my readership.

With those results…it is quite obvious I achieved my goal.

But How Does This Apply To Your Blogging?

In the blogging world, across all niches, we see bloggers who start off unique and then give into temptation and become just another “me too”. I started my blogging experience with the goal of becoming a blogger that others would want to become a “me too” instead of being seen as just another copycat.

By staying true to the unique qualities that you bring to the table and transforming content into that uniqueness, you can build a brand and a readership that begins to rely on your opinions, thoughts and guidance. That is a foundation and audience that not only generates revenue, but inspires growth over time.

The trick to successful blogging is to bring your own, unique, personal experience to your content. That is what people are going to connect with and that is ultimately what is going to grow your real estate online. If you are planning on being the next David Risley, Darren Rowse, or John Chow, you are going to be constantly living in a shadow. Wouldn’t you rather have other bloggers want to be the next you?

About the author: Robb Sutton blogs about blogging and how to make money online, through his experience with Bike198.com, at RobbSutton.com. He also teaches people how to get over $100,000 per year of free review products with blogs in Ramped Reviews.

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I’ve talked a lot on this blog about creating and marketing your own product. And I’ll continue to. However, there is little doubt that affiliate marketing is also a great way to make money with a blog. I just haven’t talked about it a whole lot.

So, I sat down and prepared a live presentation for my Inner Circle members. In this workshop, I cover some strategies for accomplishing wide distribution of your affiliate promotions. I also go over a critical factor in affiliate marketing that many people just plain forget about, but can make or break the success of your promotion. It has all to do with attracting the right mindset.

This workshop was held on August 12, 2010. The recording is about 52 minutes long, presented here for the benefit of the Inner Circle.

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Not too long ago, I quietly launched a consulting offer on this blog. You’ll see it there in the top menu. I don’t promote it much and I have reasons for that. Obviously, consulting is a pretty time-consuming thing to do and it isn’t scalable.

On that page, you’ll see that I (currently) charge $250/hour to hop on the phone with you.

Obviously, not everybody can afford that. Quite frankly, that’s by design.

But, I want to talk to you. Or at least, some of you.

Here’s my take: There is no better way to get a feel for your audience than to talk to them on the phone. I can learn more about what issues you guys are facing, where you need help, what the confusions are, etc. And that allows me to do my job better. While I can “walk the walk” with my audience, I can also help you. After all, I’ve been at this for many years now so I’ve picked up a thing or two.

So, here’s what I want to offer today for a smart few of you.

I’m going to do a 30 minute live 1-on-1 workshop with you. We’ll do an audit of your current business, your offers, your marketing, your blog. Whatever we can fit into 30 minutes together, we’ll make a go of it.

We will do this using my virtual meeting room, powered by GotoMeeting. Just you and me. You’ll be able to see my screen and we’ll talk. It is like a 1-on-1 webinar.

You can save your spot on my schedule for a one-time payment of $90. Here is a direct link to my shopping cart:

Click Here To Reserve Your Spot

Obviously, this is 1:1 time with me and I value my time. So, I’m going to severely limit the number of signups. This isn’t some new product I’m launching, or a new service I plan to do regularly. This is really a limited thing I’m going to do so that I can get a chance to talk to some of you guys. Once the number of signups gets to a point that I’m happy, I’m going to disable the thing.

As for timing, please don’t expect our call to take place in the next few days. It could take a few weeks before we schedule our call, but we’ll start scheduling next week. Once we agree on a time, I’ll have you fill out a short pre-call survey where you’ll tell me what you most need help with.

Here’s my guarantee. If you implement the things that we discuss and you don’t see any substantial results from it within the next 3 months, I’ll refund your money.

I think we can accomplish a lot together in 30 minutes. I look forward to helping you kick some butt.

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I figured I’d write one. The interesting thing about this code is that it isn’t just an ethical code. It happens to be a success code. If one applies this code at all times, their chances of success increase. Success gravitates to ethical people, for the most part.

It also happens that this code would be true for pretty much anybody in business. But, since I’m a blogger, I like to talk about that. Naturally.

So, here it is:

1. Be thankful.
2. Be and act kind.
3. Be and act generous.
4. Help people.
5. Be honest.
6. Be transparent.
7. Only sell what is in absolute best interest of the customer.
8. Don’t require approval or praise.

What do you think?

Let me offer a few comments on this code.

Be thankful. Never take for granted that you have readers or that people pay you money. They made a choice to invest a small part of themselves in you. Thank them for it.

Be and act kind. You like it when people are kind to you, so always be kind back. It comes naturally for most of us. The biggest challenge might be when somebody goes after you in a negative way. When you get snide comments, it might be hard for you not to counter-attack. The quest for rightness is the path to nowhere. In most cases, you’re better off just deleting the email and walking away than to respond in kind. You don’t owe replies to people who don’t deserve one.

Be and act generous. Give more value than you take. Try to help your readers with personal email replies.

Help people. This is the foundation of this entire business. Help people solve problems and they will pay you back in spades.

Be honest. Always always always. Don’t promote something you don’t believe in. Don’t write anything that doesn’t come from a place of honesty.

Be transparent. People like to bond with real people. So, be a real person. Social media is the best tool for transparency. Also, bloggers have often seen how readers respond to posts which are most transparent. This doesn’t mean you have to tell your readers everything (that’d be stupid), but don’t be an impersonal faceless person, either.

Only sell what is in the absolute best interest of the customer. Pretty much a no-brainer.

Don’t require approval or praise. This is a biggie for many bloggers who just have a hard time taking it. Some bloggers have their whole day ruined when somebody decides to unsubscribe, leaves a bad comment, or requests a refund. Why? First of all, this is a people business and not every person is going to click with you. Don’t take it personally. Just realize that that person is not your ideal reader/customer, and part ways. But, under all that, just make it a personal policy that you don’t need approval. It you required approval for everything, you could never rock the boat in any way.

Do You Agree With This Code?

If you do, then spread the word by retweeting this post and sharing it with your friends.

More importantly, follow it.

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