This is a great question. Many bloggers–myself included–run promotions for both our own and other products on a regular basis. Some blogs are heavily promotional, with an affiliate link in nearly every post, whereas other bloggers make their money mostly through advertising and only rarely include affiliate links in their posts.

First, let’s look at things from a blogger’s perspective. Then, I’ll give you a few metrics to help you decide which marketers to follow online.

From a blogger’s perspective, affiliate revenue is often the only way to make a full-time income from a blog. My blog, as ranked by Alexa, is in the top 0.1% of all websites by traffic. Yet, as you’ve seen from my revenue numbers, I only make about $83/month from placing Google ads on my site.

So, for 99.99% of bloggers and website owners, ad revenue isn’t enough to even cover expenses, let alone provide a full-time income.

Enter affiliate marketing.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

With affiliate marketing, you get paid when you refer someone who buys something. With ads, you get paid every time someone clicks on the ad. Referring someone who buys something is often a better deal all around: the affiliate gets paid more; the product owner only has to pay when a sale is made; and the customer gets a product that he or she will hopefully love.

There are all kinds of affiliate programs: big ones like Amazon pay 4-8% for any product purchased through their site, and thousands of other ones pay out for anything from web hosting to ebooks to coaching programs. Pretty much anything you can think of that is sold online has some sort of affiliate program.

The reason affiliate programs are so popular on blogs is that the commissions on big products can add up fast. Often, information products that sell from anywhere from $200 to $2,000 or more pay out a whopping 50%–and that doesn’t include bonuses. If you’ve seen Internet marketing websites promoting big $2,000 products from well-known names like Jeff Walker or Eben Pagan, they’re getting paid more than $1,000 per sale!

There isn’t anything inherently bad about affiliate marketing. It allows website owners and bloggers to make a full-time income online without having to drive millions of visitors to their websites every month. And it drives a whole lot of sales for publishers, manufacturers, and service companies.

But affiliate marketing does have its dark side. Take my most recent income numbers, for example. I made a list of the top affiliates for Profit Instruments, and immediately my email inbox got pounded by other marketers looking for me to promote their “make money online” products.

The Big Problem with Affiliate Marketing

Right on the heels of a successful promotion, you suddenly become aware of how much money there is to be made. This is where most marketers lose their integrity. I’ve seen it time and time again. Someone gets a nice list going of thousands of people who really listen to his or her advice. The list owner promotes a good product. All of a sudden, 5 figures of income rolls in.

Unfortunately, that income is mostly one-time income. Next month, the list owner starts back over at 0. So what does he or she do? Promote again, of course! And since he’s been inundated with new offers, it’s easy to promote something in the same niche. Rinse and repeat.

The problem with constant promotion is it “burns your list.” People who were used to receiving good content suddenly get hammered with sales pitches. So they stop opening your emails. And now you, as the affiliate marketer/list owner, are in a race. You have to constantly find more people to join your list so you can continue your sales pitches and make more money.

Internet Marketing’s Dirty Secret

Here is the Internet marketing world’s dirty secret: Replicable success is hard. A one-time success–selling something and making 5 or 6 figures–is easier than doing it repeatedly. Most marketers only see dollar signs and don’t have any clue how to build a relationship with their list. And building a relationship with your list–delivering good content again and again, without constantly asking for the sale–is difficult.

The relationship you have with your list is the cornerstone of building a successful business. As a blogger, it’s about learning to say “no” 99 times out of 100 to people who ask you to promote a product. It’s about giving up some money now in order to build the relationship down the road. And if you want to know why most Internet marketers, over time, don’t make it, this is why: They go for the quick buck over the relationship.

Finding the Genuine Marketers

So, to go back to Richard’s question: How do you tell when someone is all about making money vs. truly helping someone? You have to look at the persona they project. When you opt in to their email list, what sort of emails do you get from them on a regular basis? What percentage of the emails that you receive from them contain nothing but a sales pitch? If it’s 80% or more, I suggest unsubscribing from that list.

Yes, what I just said may annoy some Internet marketers. But if the list owner doesn’t take the time to write real content, deliver free teleseminars or webinars to help you, and if every email is a sales pitch, where is the value? You might as well be subscribed to an email list of the latest Google ads. Unsubscribe from those lists. Let’s collectively raise the bar on who we allow to sell products to us.

A good marketer acts as a filter between his or her audience and the product pushers. He turns down most products people ask him to promote. She promotes only the best products–those she truly believes will help her audience. And his emails to you are mostly good, thoughtful content.

There are thousands of bloggers and marketers who fit this profile. A majority of their content is helpful. Some of their content has sales pitches, but the sales pitches show a true interest in the product, not a copy-and-paste “XYZ made 20 zillion dollars and you can too…by tomorrow!” sort of pitch. They don’t promote every “big” launch. In general, they put relationships over sales–without forgetting that sales is what puts food on the table.

These are the people I encourage you to do business with.

Your Challenge for Today

Your challenge for today: If you’re subscribed to any email lists where you haven’t received any real content in months–just sales pitches–I encourage you to unsubscribe. Yes, even if you like the product or person. Raise the bar on who you do business with. Your credit card will thank you.

And if you’re a marketer: Today is the day you should write some real content, or shoot a video, that has NO sales pitch whatsoever. Maybe you can take the time to publicly answer a reader’s question, or share a quick tip you’ve learned that you know will help your list. Tell your list “Thank you” and let your readers know that you honor them. Your readers will appreciate you that much more.

Recommended Reading:

• Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook. Looking to get started with affiliate marketing? Rosalind’s book is the definitive guide. (I’ll be doing a full review soon.) Check it out now!
• How Do All Those “Idiots” Make So Much Money? Does it drive you nuts that some idiot with a terrible product seems to be constantly making sales, when you know your product is better? What’s the difference between you and that “idiot”?
• 20 Scam-Free Ways to Make Money Online Fast. My huge list of real ways to make money online.

Manifest money — even huge sums! Here’s how.

It’s really easy to already be successful in some area of your life and then blog about it, looking back with rose-colored glasses and saying “This is why I am successful.” It’s much harder to blog as you go, trying things, bumping into walls and fumbling around in the dark, and risk looking like a complete fool when things don’t work out as planned.

I wish I would have had the discipline to blog as I was growing my hosting company. Now, though, I have a second chance, and you get to see in from the ground floor as I grow another million-dollar+ business–and learn from my mistakes as I’m making them. This is a rare chance for both of us.

First, something that, as far as I know, I’ve never shared publicly: In 2006, right after watching “The Secret” on my computer, I wrote a check to myself for $1,000,000 and posted it on my bathroom mirror. Every time I brushed my teeth or my hair, I’d stand there and look at that check, and pretty much every day I’d visualize how I’d feel when I sold my business for $1 million. It got to the point where I knew it was going to happen–it was just a matter of when.

This is an actual image of the million-dollar check I hung on my mirror, which I ambitiously changed to $2 million and “or 2008″ when I thought I might not sell my company in 2007.

It didn’t take long: In 2007, I boldly told Bruce, who would soon buy my company, over lunch that I “wouldn’t accept a penny less than $1.1 million” to sell my company. Why $1.1 million? Well, my company had some debt, and I owned 91.5% of it, with the rest of it owned by two loyal employees.

We signed the papers on September 7, 2007, and I remember clearly the euphoric feeling I felt upon receiving Bruce’s first check for $100,000. He said, “How does it feel?” and I didn’t even know what to think. 6 years of work, and it had all culminated in this one moment! Every emotion I could possibly have ran through my head. It was sheer adrenaline.

After My Last Post…

I shed a lot of emotions in my last post. Then I took 5 days off to visit Portland, Oregon, and just got back. During those five days I had a chance to break (gluten free bread with some other bloggers, including J.D. Roth from Get Rich Slowly and Tyler Tervooren from Advanced Riskology. Having good conversations with them really helped me understand that everyone goes through this, and it often happens right before you break through and take off like a rocket. (Similar to the near bankruptcy of my former hosting company four short months before I sold it for $1.1 million.)

Now, interestingly, I have the same feeling of electricity. Here’s what happened:

In June, before I promoted Profit Instruments, I set an intention to make $40,000 per month. I came up with that number based on being able to live on a small portion of my income and having plenty of money left over to do more things I want, like travel–and fly first class! Plus, I want to do really amazing things with my money. I want to become a shareholder of corporations I love, perhaps do some angel investing, and donate to causes close to my heart.

Anyway, after adding up all my monthly expenses and multiplying them out, plus adding in things like first class plane tickets, $40,000 per month was the number I wanted to aim for. So I set the intention.

I kept coming back to it every day. And, in a new twist for me, I didn’t try to figure out how I was going to make it. I simply decided to let inspiration strike.

Inspiration Strikes

And strike it did. The first thing I did was hire a programmer here in San Diego for Best Blogs. Then came Profit Instruments. I kept blogging. Three guest posts of mine ran on other blogs on three days straight (not planned), resulting in a nice influx of new subscribers. I decided I wanted to write a new free ebook for 2010.

Of all that, the most meaningful part for me was Profit Instruments. Buried in the course was an explanation of how to get your sites ranked higher in the search engines by getting links back to them. Doing more research, I discovered thousands of sites that had high PageRank, and a way to add my links to those sites. (Apologies for being vague–it’s probably not what you’re thinking. These aren’t free directories or other “scummy” sites, and this isn’t an “illegal” tactic or something that will get you banned from Google.)

I began compiling spreadsheet after spreadsheet of high-PageRank sites. Then I tested it, first on one site, then another. I watched in amazement as the sites I worked the system on ranked higher in the search engines.

Then, there was a momentous day in late July. My programmer turned to me while we were working together at a coffee shop here in San Diego and said “I know you can only afford for me to work part-time on Best Blogs, but I really need something full-time. I want to give you the first option on that.”

I replied, “Well, I do have an idea for something…” and I started to sketch it out.

I explained the concept. How the sites worked. I showed him the results. (I’ve since started documenting my results on YouTube.)

Changing Direction

I took it to my mastermind group. Out of 6 other people in the room, 4 said they would immediately sign up and try out a beta version. I knew I had something. Excitedly, I shared everything with my programmer. Then I made the decision I knew I had to make: We postponed work on Best Blogs, and went to work on the company I named Whoosh! Traffic.

Here’s how Whoosh! Traffic will work: For a monthly fee, we will build links to your site with keywords you choose, so your site will rank higher in the search engines for those keywords. If you’re not sure how to pick the best keywords that will deliver the most traffic to your site, I’ll have a product for that, too…my new Maximum Clients, Minimum Time will give the complete breakdown of how to get your website working for you and generating leads and sales while you sleep instead of it just sitting there and being a money suck.

My two products–Maximum Clients, Minimum Time and Whoosh! Traffic–will work together. Maximum Clients will take you by the hand and show you how to get your website working for you, and Whoosh! Traffic is a monthly, done-for-you service that lets you have us do the (incredibly boring and time-consuming) procedure of building links back to your site, while being assured we will operate in the highest of integrity and not associate you or your brand with scummy “link farms” or any other below-the-belt SEO tactics that give many SEO firms a bad name.

Here’s How You Can Manifest Money

So, how did I get from meditating on $40,000/month of income to doing it? Here’s what I’ve done so far, and how you can do the same thing:

Step 1: State your goal as if it has already been achieved. I started out by saying “I am making $40,000 per month.” Then I listened to how that felt in my body.

Step 2: Acknowledge, then question, the resistance. At first, I felt a whole lot of resistance. So I asked each part of me that was resisting why it was resisting.

I got back a whole lot of answers! One concern was that I would work too hard and be exhausted. I replied to this concern with, “First, now that I am gluten free, I am not as tired as I used to be. Secondly, I only want to do work that energizes me. I am not interested in money-making ideas that exhaust me.”

Then I asked that piece of resistance if that resolved its issue. If it did, I didn’t feel it any more. (This is hard to explain in words–try it for yourself and see!) If it didn’t, I went back to asking it why it was resisting.

Step 3: Do this consistently. I did this night after night, sometimes spending 20 minutes or more in a question-answer state with my body. After several nights, I no longer felt resistance. I continued every day, sometimes more than once a day, to state “I am making $40,000 per month.” It got to the point where I was really excited to state this!

Step 4: Start making your external reality match your ideal reality. Then repeat all the steps. Once I conquered my internal resistance, I focused on my external world. I asked myself what my ideal reality was when making $40,000 per month. Then, based on that, I started making changes in my reality. My ideal reality included owning a house, so we went and looked at houses. Then I learned that I needed W-2 income to buy a house, so I set up my corporations to do payroll and pay me via W-2 instead of dividends.

I decided I’d be cleaner when I was making that much money, so I started filing papers and getting rid of Stuff. I purged my closet, getting rid of over 2/3 of my clothes. I shredded document after document, scanning the ones I needed a record of into my computer. I donated an entire carload of items to Goodwill. I posted old items I was no longer using on eBay. I donated over 30 books and my entire DVD collection save just three DVDs. I even got rid of Stuff that hurt a little bit, like my Kindle, because I felt inspired to live more simply and purge the house of unnecessary items.

All of this was based in large part at looking at my reality through the lens of someone who is making $40,000 per month. Would I need to hang on to old items, or could I simply buy new ones? I decided it had to be the latter, and acted accordingly.

Slowly, I was pulling my old reality into sync with my new one. And–I wasn’t spending major money to do it. In fact, interestingly, I was making money doing it, by donating so much old stuff and selling items.

Even through the worst times (like the day last week when I wrote my last blog post), my confidence that I would do this never wavered. After I wrote the blog post and took a few days off, I got right back on track, and on Monday I decided to start accepting advertising on this blog. You’ll see a new blog design here soon, with some ads (but not ones that interfere with your enjoyment of my site!)

Is This Completely Insane?

I don’t doubt that some of you think I’m nuts. You might be thinking “Your body actually tells you where you’re resisting financial freedom?” Yep! And yours will, too, if you dare to listen to it.

The real question is: What do you want? Most people fail because they don’t make their intentions clear. Whether it’s money, health, or relationships, anything you can intend can be yours. The challenge then is following through with where your intuition leads you.

It can be pretty scary to go where your intuition says you need to go. You may have to quit your job, move to a new city (or even country!), or break up with a loved one to get what you want. But follow through, and know that even in the darkest moments you are not alone, and you too can manifest just about anything you can dream of.

Recommended Reading:

• Take This Job and Shove It (PDF). Upcoming blog rockstar Tyler Tervooren has written a great free ebook on how to quit your job and live freely (even if you don’t think you can quit right now!) Check it out.
• The Failure Manifesto. My last post…read for an interesting contrast to this post!
• Manifesting a Trip to Tahiti. I wrote about manifesting a trip to Tahiti–and then manifested it, and went to Tahiti!

She doesn’t have to worry about money.
He has a successful business.
She’s really popular.

If you believe that, this blog post is about to flip that belief on its head.

I spent hours crying today.

My accountant tells me my company–the one that’s receiving the residuals from my former hosting business–owes the IRS another $13,000 for tax year 2009. I’ve already paid something like $70,000 in the last 6 months to various taxing authorities.

I thought I could afford to buy a house. Then I had to pay taxes. And then I found out that most banks won’t accept dividend income as “proof of income” for a mortgage. Poof–the house I saw, and liked, vanished to another bidder.

Sold my company for $1.1 million, and I don’t even have enough money for a house down payment.

I am angry.

I can’t bring myself to total up July’s income for my blog. I know it’s going to be bad. $2,000, maybe $3,000. If this sounds good to you, remember that my employee expenses right now are about that. Employees who are, of course, building the awesomeness that will be my new company, Whoosh! Traffic. I’m looking forward to it. But right now, it’s a lot of work and absolutely no money. I am drained. I think I’ve made something less than minimum wage for all the hours I’ve put in to this blog, my business, these information products I’ve created so far this year.

Remember all that income I showed you from Profit Instruments? The first check arrived. It’s gone. All to business expenses. Didn’t see a dime from it personally. The second check will arrive in a week or two. It will be enough to hold my business over for the next few months. I probably won’t take any money from it, either. I hate that.

I am frustrated.

Supposedly, I am “living the dream.” Got a blog. It’s pretty popular. Not the biggest blog in the world. But big enough that other bloggers think that I earn a fair amount of income from advertising. I don’t.

I wanted to do a sale on Guest Post Secrets this week. But I couldn’t bring myself to send the email. Every time I send a sales-y type of email to my list, I get some crazy angry response. Of course, I get more sales than angry responses. But this week, I couldn’t stomach the angry craziness that lurks out there.

I am a coward.

I don’t think this is the life you imagine I lead. Somewhere out there, there is someone who believes I live in a palace, immune to financial problems. Everything I touch turns to gold, right?

Wrong.

We (my programmer and I) stopped development on Best Blogs last week. I was so excited about that site. Still am, darn it. But it wasn’t going to immediately generate revenue. Whoosh Traffic will. Whoosh Traffic has the potential to be a 7-figure business. Bigger than my hosting company. And it has the potential to grow fast. Not so with Best Blogs. Oh, we had a monetization plan…a damn good one. But it would take 6 months to a year to really come to fruition. With Whoosh, we can be making money in a month or two at most.

So we shelved Best Blogs.

This is where I get real with you.

Blogging isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s freaking hard. Whatever you do, you’re going to have some crazy people shouting at you about it. It’s kind of like performing publicly on the street. You’re always going to get someone with their own issues taking them out on you. Only with blogging, the whole Internet gets to see you duke it out. Not so pleasant. If you ever wonder why some fairly high-profile bloggers have stopped blogging, it’s because of this incessant mindf**k of crazy people who live out there on the Internet. The crazy people get in your head. You start second-guessing everything you write. And you have to have a super-strong personality to handle it.

I have a super strong personality. But I am not able to handle it 100% of the time. Today was one of those days where I could not handle it. Could not push Send on the email blast, because I didn’t want the blowback.

Instead, I write this. I break down the walls a little bit between you and me. Underneath the steel armor exterior, I am a person. And the words hurt. The refunds hurt. The refunds are the worst part. I take them very personally. If you’ve ever refunded a product you’ve bought from me for more than $100, I’ve cried about it. About you. I’ve wondered what the heck I ever did to hurt you.

One time last year I threw things against the wall after a couple customers banded together to refund a product I created. I am not sure I have ever been so angry, hurt, and upset all at once.

I am not proud of this. But it’s the way it is.

Do not give up hope. Even from this low point, I will keep going. Day by day, I will continue creating amazing content–and selling some of it to you. That’s all any of us can do. We can take it a day at a time. We can keep going. We can tell the haters to shove it, one blog post at a time, one product at a time. We can fight the only fight we have–to continue just showing up.

And one day, after having been beaten down and having many of these days like today, we will again be on top of the world.

But not right now. Right now, it just hurts.

Increase web site traffic with these simple tips.

If you crank out piece after piece of great content, yet no one reads it, it can be demoralizing. (This, I think, is why most bloggers quit after a few months.)

If you have a great product or service that you know can help a lot of people, but no one knows about it, and you’re on a limited budget, it can seem impossible to get your business off the ground.

I understand. I’ve been in both of those places, and in both of those cases, traffic can help. Today, I’ll take you “behind the scenes” and show you one of the big ways I grew a business in a highly competitive industry to the $1 million mark, and also how I grew this blog to one that gets massive traffic every month–in the top 0.1% of all websites by traffic, according to Alexa.

Then I’ll show you how you can do the same thing…and grow your business by leaps and bounds without killing your wallet by buying advertisements.

The Big Myth: Just Write Great Content, and the Search Engines Will Love You

This big myth gets uttered all the time. It might have been true years ago. The theory behind this is, interestingly, never explained. Basically, it goes like this: Good content gets links from other sites. Those links count as “votes” for that content, which naturally drives your content to the top of the search engines for relevant terms.

There are all sorts of holes in this theory. The biggest problem is that most content creators really haven’t matched their content to what people are searching for in Google or other search engines. You can write a really awesome article about the best hotels for people traveling with dogs, but if your article title is “How Cutesi the Chihuahua and I Traveled the Country In Style”, well, no one will find it through Google because no one is searching for those words!

So, the first step in getting Google and other search engines to recognize your content as “good content” and send you free traffic is to title your blog posts and home page appropriately. Use the free Google Keyword Tool to find what people are searching for in Google, and target those phrases.

The second step is to get backlinks.

Getting Backlinks

What are backlinks? Backlinks are simply a link from another site to your site. You might have heard that links are important, but the real key is the anchor text: the text people use in their links back to your site.

That anchor text on the other site counts as a “vote” in Google for that phrase, for your site. Here’s a real-world example: This site is named Erica.biz. So, when someone links back to my site, they often use the text erica.biz. The link looks like this: erica.biz

Unfortunately, this is nearly worthless for me in Google, because Google is counting this as a vote for the keyword “erica.biz”. I’m already ranked #1 for that keyword. Even worse, people typing in that keyword already know who I am, so it’s not a great keyword to optimize for.

People who have sites named around popular keyphrases have a built-in advantage. For instance, ever wondered how popular personal development blogger Steve Pavlina gets so much traffic? I actually don’t even think he realizes this–either that or he’s pretty coy about it–but he named his site, stevepavlina.com, “Personal Development for Smart People.”

That means a lot of people link to his site with the keywords “personal development”–so much so that he’s ranked #1 in Google for the term! That term gets tens of thousands of searches per month, driving massive traffic to his site.

He’s also ranked #2 for “polyphasic sleep”. Steve’s secret is something I doubt he even realizes: his simplistic blog titles. Instead of some fancy title like “How to get more hours out of your day”, he named his article on polyphasic sleep “Polyphasic sleep.” Then, of course, people linked out to his article, driving it to the top of the search engines.

So, if you really want to rank well in the search engines, stay away from cutesy titles and stick to short, sweet, and simple titles.

By implementing these simple strategies on my own blog, erica.biz now gets over 10,000 visitors a month from Google. About 2% of them opt in to my email list. This means I don’t have to keep posting new content to get visitors and email list subscribers. My “evergreen” content does a lot of work for me.

What If You Don’t Have (and Don’t Want) A Blog?

But what if you don’t have a blog and/or don’t want one? If you just want to sell products online, getting free traffic from Google and other search engines will possibly boost your bottom line by 6 figures or more.

You probably know that I started a web hosting company in 2001 and sold it in 2007. Before that, though, I worked for a search engine optimization company for a few years–from 1997 to 1999. Although my job didn’t require me to understand the intricacies of search engines, I learned them anyway. Back then, Google didn’t exist, and it was mostly about just getting listed in search engines–Yahoo! being one of the more important ones.

I continued my study of search engines and their mysterious traffic-directing powers, and a couple of years into running my hosting company, I decided to run an experiment. I spent 3 hours tweaking my company’s website to optimize for two simple keyphrases: bay area colocation and san jose colocation. Back then, there was no Google keyword tool, so I used the Overture tool to find that these two phrases were searched about 300 times a month total.

Then I started backlink building to my hosting company site using those terms. A few months later, Google did its PageRank update and awarded my little hosting company site a PageRank 7. (For those of you who know how PageRank works, you know how rare a 7 is.)

We ranked #1 for those two search terms pretty quickly.

Keep in mind, I didn’t blog or do anything “fancy” to get those #1 ranks. My site was static HTML, built by hand. I rearranged the text on the pages every couple months, but didn’t do anything else–except build backlinks.

I always asked our customers where they found us, and about 30% of our new customers said “Google”. But the real gold mine was one customer who found us through Google and started out with colocating one server. His company grew by leaps and bounds, and every month, he colocated a few more servers with us to keep up with demand.

When I sold the business, he was our largest customer, paying us over $12,000/month! Including the other customers who signed up with us from that ranking, that’s over a quarter of a million dollars a year of verifiable revenue from the initial 3 hours of work.

Here’s How To Do This Yourself

Here’s a summary of what works when going for a #1 rank in the search engines:

• Don’t overlook “tiny” keywords that get a few hundred searches a month–if you can easily convert those visitors into buyers.
• Backlinks are more important than great content. Good content with great backlinks trumps great content with no backlinks or few backlinks every time.
• What you put in your homepage’s title and what you title your blog posts or site’s pages is of paramount importance.
• Screwing up search engine optimization or not understanding its importance can cost you 6 figures a year or more.

Now, the really good news: I’m set to release what will become one of my flagship products for 2010. It’s called Maximum Clients, Minimum Time, and in it, I explain how you can do the same thing I’ve just described above. It’s designed for everyone who is tired of going to “networking events” and doing endless followup to get new clients. It will work for you whether you have a website right now or not–and no matter what you want to sell online.

For those of you who are still struggling with an idea, it will show you which idea to pursue. And for those of you with a website already, it will show you how to spend a little bit of time and get Google and other search engines to send you leads and clients effortlessly, month after month–without paying for ads.

In short, it’s the same procedure I used to grow my last business to a million-dollar business and the same procedure I’ve used to grow this blog to the top 0.1% of all websites on the Internet by traffic (as ranked by Alexa.)

Once you start down this path, you will realize there are a lot of nuances. For instance: Which keywords do you optimize for? How do you optimize your site for them? Once you’ve optimized your site, how do you build backlinks? I’ll be there to help you, step by step, as you get your business working for you, instead of the other way around. Best of all, Maximum Clients, Minimum Time will be easily affordable.

Look for my product launch later this month. Until then, start with the Google Keyword Tool, and figure out what keywords you want to use with your blog or business website!

Have questions? Want more information? Please leave a comment below.

Starting your own business: The definitive guide.

First: I hear from many of you who have heard the advice that business should be about your “passion”. If I hear the words “find your passion” or “follow your passion” one more time, I’m going to stick a fork in the eye of the person who says it.

Starting your own business isn’t necessarily about “following your passion”, and you don’t have to “find your passion” before you start a business. Stop beating yourself up for not having a passion that people will pay you large sums of cash for, and follow this four-step process to starting your own business instead:

1. Figure out who your customers are.

Most aspiring business owners start from the wrong place. They start from “What do I know how to do?” or “What’s my passion?” That’s where a lot of people get stuck. They don’t know what their passion is, or how to monetize it.

I start from the opposite end. I listen to people having conversations, and my most common questions when talking to others are “What do you want?” or “What do you need?” That way, I find out what is missing in their lives, and then figure out if I can build a product or service around that.

I love watching reality TV, but I don’t expect someone to come dump 5 figures a month in my lap for me to do so! Instead, I start out looking at what customers will pay for. Then I create products and/or services that I know people want and charge people for them.

The benefit of looking at business from this perspective is that it’s not hard to find customers. You already know there is a market segment that is asking–no, begging–for this product or service. You don’t have to create a market. Just find the people who need what you have to offer and cater to them.

2. Survey some potential customers to see if they are interested in what you want to offer.

Again, this starts with the customers, not with what you want. Ask them what their thoughts are on your upcoming product or service. (This isn’t the right time to pitch them.) Ask them if they would use it. Ask them what you can do to help them make a decision.

This is your time to write down all the questions they have. “Is x included?” “Would I have to…?” You need to be able to understand what questions your customers have, then answer those questions in your website copy or when you pitch potential customers later on.

3. Once you get some “Yes” answers, sketch out what you have to offer.

Regardless of whether you’re selling a product or service, customers generally hate open-ended offers. You want to be able to offer a few packages of services or products and let them choose.

Imagine going into a restaurant and having the waiter say, “Okay, what would you like to eat tonight?” You reply, “Well, what’s good here?” The waiter says, “Everything, sir!”

At that point, you’d probably be stymied. Do you order a hamburger, a steak, or a salad? You’d also probably never come back to that restaurant again.

Now compare that to your sales process. If you’re a web designer or other service professional, you’re probably used to asking the client what they want first. That’s a good sales tactic. But then most people make the mistake of leaving it open-ended, or worse, letting the client decide what he or she wants. (Hint: Most people have no idea what they want. “Um, a website. That gets us business.”)

After you ascertain what the client is looking for generally, you pull out the menu of services that you provide. If the client wants something outside the scope of your menu, you can figure that out with him or her. But your menu sets up some “ground rules” when working with your client, and it also allows you the freedom of being able to systematize some parts of your labor later on.

Always have a menu.

4. Sign a few clients and make sure this is what you really want to do.

In some cases, you will sign some clients and then feel pulled in a totally different direction. When I started Simpli (my web hosting company), I originally planned for it to be a content management system–like WordPress is today. I developed the system myself, putting countless hours into it, and deployed it for several clients.

My clients all needed a really good web hosting company, and I had terrible experiences with web hosting in the past–including having my server, with all my data on it, stolen right out of a datacenter! I didn’t have a company I felt comfortable recommending, so I started my own.

Pretty soon, the web hosting side was growing faster than my content management system side, even though I was putting 80% of my time into my development work. I could tell it was time to switch gears, so over the course of several months, I wound down my content management system business and went full-time into web hosting. And the rest, as they say, is history.

It’s totally fine if you get a few clients and then say “This isn’t for me.” If this happens to you, find someone you feel comfortable referring your clients to and then refer them out. Then do something else. That isn’t “failure” at all. In fact, be proud of yourself for taking the step most people don’t have the guts to take: starting your own business!

A Totally Different Way of Looking at Business

This procedure is totally different from the way most people start businesses. Most people start with “I”. “I can do web design.” “I know how to knit.”

I challenge you, instead, to start with “You.” Who are your customers? What do they want or need in their lives? How can you help them achieve their goals?

Starting your business from what customers want or need will not only free you from the burden of discovering your “passion”, but it will also help you grow your business exponentially faster. Look around–the answers to which business you should start are right around you, in the conversations of others.

What do you wish you would have known when you were starting your own business? What advice would you give to other aspiring business owners? Feel free to share in the comments!

Choosing a domain name: Your difficult
questions answered!

In this post, I’ll answer these questions and more, and make some recommendations to help you choose the right domain name. Some of my suggestions may be controversial!

Short and Catchy, or Longer?

There are basically two types of domain names: short and catchy or long and keyword-filled. (I define “short” as anything with fewer than 8 characters before the dot.) Which type of domain name you use depends on how you plan to attract visitors to your site. If you plan to mostly attract people by word of mouth, use something short and catchy.

I tend to build sites that get most of their traffic from Google. In that case, a keyword-filled domain is preferable. What do I mean by that? Let’s say you own Snazzy Sandwiches in Saskatoon. You’d probably lean toward snazzysandwiches.com or snazzysandwiches.ca (since Saskatoon is in Saskatchewan, Canada.)

But you may also want to consider buying a keyword-driven domain name. In this case, more people are probably searching for “sandwiches in Saskatoon” or “sandwiches Saskatoon” than your business name. Unless you are the only sandwich shop in town, one of the best ways to capture this traffic is to also pick up the keyword-driven name–in this case, sandwichessaskatoon.com or .ca.

The key here is to find out exactly what people are searching for in Google and other search engines, and picking up the “exact match” keyword domain name. That means no “the”, “a”, hyphens, or any other extraneous words. So, if people are typing in sandwiches Saskatoon, you want sandwichessaskatoon as the first part of your domain name.

How Do You Find Out What People Are Typing Into Google?

I’m a big fan of using the free Google Keyword Tool to figure out domain names. Find a keyword that is searched between 10,000 and 50,000 times per month, and see if the exact match domain name is available.

Every once in a while, you’ll hit a home run. I had a client once who did marketing for a certain type of business. He paid me for consulting time to figure out how to get more business from his website.

I ran the Google keyword tool for him and found out that business owners were actually typing in the type of the business followed by “marketing” about 800 times a month! Better yet, the exact match .com domain name was available! With some savvy tricks, I helped him conquer 2 of the top 3 slots in Google for those keywords. It added 5 figures a year to the bottom line of his business…and took about three hours of work.

What if the .Com Isn’t Available?

But more often, the exact match .com is not available. It’s either in use or for sale for hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Let’s say you’re setting up a site to sell home remedies. You hit up the Google keyword tool and see that “home remedies for acne” is searched 40,500 times a month. (This is true, by the way.) That’s a huge avalanche of traffic if you get ranked #1 for that keyword, and domain names with the keyword in them naturally rank higher than domain names without.

But all the domains are taken. The .com, .net, and .org are all parked–meaning they don’t have any real content on them, and may be for sale. You know the owners will probably want hundreds of dollars for them. The .biz looks like a scam site.

So what do you do? This is a pretty common quandary. Do you go for one of the weird extensions like .cc or .tv, or try to buy one of the more common domains like .com or .net? Or do you just start over from scratch?

First, let’s talk about what all those weird extensions are. Any two-letter extension, like .cc, .ws, and .tv, are actually country codes. Some countries, like Tuvalu, a tiny island nation of just 12,000 people, got extraordinarily lucky in the “domain name lottery”. Tuvalu licensed the .tv extension to Verisign, a top domain name registrar, for “not less than $1 million per quarter.” Wow! (Here’s the entire list of country codes.)

I tread very carefully with these two-letter extensions. Except for ones that have been widely adopted, like .tv and .us, I tend to avoid them. I also tend to avoid .org, unless you just want to set up a blog on it and you’re not selling anything, because .org is, in many people’s minds, still associated with its original purpose of serving non-profit organizations.

In order, I prefer: .com; .net; .biz; .us. Since none of those are available, if you were my client, I would advise you to go back to Google at this point, and search for similar keywords. Sure enough, a similar keyword, acne home remedy, with 27,100 searches per month, has the .biz available, and in this case, I’d advise you to buy that.

But Don’t You Need a .Com?

There’s a myth floating around that you need a .com to rank better in Google. That’s a complete myth, I assure you. For Google, it’s more important to have proper keywords in your domain name than to have the .com.

The reason to get a .com is because people tend to assume that your site is the .com. So, if you don’t have the .com and someone else does, that other site will pick up some traffic that would otherwise go to your site.

If the .com is available for registration, go ahead and get it. I recently found a keyword that had 27,100 searches per month, and the .com was available. I immediately snagged it and plan to use it as an advertising-driven niche site. But more commonly, you’ll find the .com is for sale for a few hundred dollars.

In this case, I recommend that you use an alternative extension, set up your website, and then reinvest your profits. That’s what I did with Blog Set Up. I used the Google keyword tool to figure out which domain I wanted, and then bought the .us. The site was profitable immediately, and I reinvested the profits back in to buying the .com version of the domain name. The acquisition closed this week, so blogsetup.us is now blogsetup.com!

In conclusion, I only recommend buying an expensive domain name if you’ve already launched your business and are making money. It’s perfectly acceptable to start your business on a .biz or .us, especially if you’re getting most of your traffic via Google. Then buy the .com with your first profits. If your business isn’t profitable, then, you’re not out hundreds or thousands of dollars with the .com. But if your business is profitable, I recommend snagging the .com as soon as you can afford it.

Do you have thoughts or suggestions on choosing a domain name? Let me hear them in the comments!

Recommended Reading:

• Namecheap. I recommend Namecheap as a good domain name registrar. Never use Go Daddy to register domains.
• Go Daddy. The link here is to a site called nodaddy.com, which was set up by a friend of mine after Go Daddy screwed up his entire business by shutting his domain name down for days. I know another person this happened to, as well. Never use Go Daddy for anything–not hosting, not domain name registration, anything. Again, I recommend NameCheap (above).

(If you’re new here, welcome! I set 3-5 major goals every year publicly on my blog and update my progress every quarter. Here are my goals for 2010.)

Let’s see how I’m doing!

Goal #1: Create and Release 10 New Products in 2010

This one has slowed down a bit–you’ll see why as you read the rest of this post! I’ve released four products: Guest Post Secrets, Best Blogs, my first one-day workshop, and Blog Set Up.

I did hold my first one-day workshop with four participants on June 26, and it was a huge success! I gained confidence in what I want to teach, which I plan to release as a product later this year. And all four participants gained great insight into their businesses.

I also learned that my projector, which I bought a few years ago, wasn’t up to the task…so I bought a new one! (Note: 1100 lumens is insufficient for anything but pitch black. I upgraded to a nice 4000 lumen Epson projector!)

I plan to hold another 1-day workshop later this year here in San Diego. As my blog readers, you will be the first to know about it.

Three of the products I’ve released have now made over $3,000 in revenue each: Guest Post Secrets, the workshop, and Blog Set Up all crossed the $3,000 threshold.

But what about Best Blogs? Let’s talk about what happened with it in the second quarter:

Goal #2: Create and Launch my Startup

The original Best Blogs prototype was developed in PHP by a developer I hired in Romania. There wasn’t anything wrong with this setup, except that I had to manage him, and I burned out on that pretty quickly. The prototype was (mostly) functional, but I kept encountering bugs, and it seemed like every time my developer added a new feature, something else broke.

The site stagnated. In early June, I realized no development had been done on the site since April. I had to make a critical decision. Either I needed to hire a developer who could be mostly autonomous, and pay him accordingly (U.S. salary), or I needed to scrap it and call it quits. Paying a developer would mean about $20,000 of my own money spent on development costs over the next 6 months with no immediate payoff. It was a big decision.

I thought about it for about a week, ruminating over possibilities in my head. Eventually I came up with what I believe will be an astoundingly profitable revenue model, and mentally let the $20,000 go in preparation to hire someone. (In other words, I promised myself I wouldn’t fret over paying someone $20,000 to develop the site.)

I found a local developer here in San Diego who agreed to redo the site from scratch. Best Blogs will re-launch later this year (probably August or early September), built on Pylons and being far better managed. The interface will be largely the same. I reviewed the revenue model with my developer and he “gets it.” I’ll talk more about that as we re-launch the site, but suffice it to say, it’s a common yet oddly overlooked model. And it has nothing to do with banner or display ads.

I’m again excited about Best Blogs, and having someone work on it with me that I trust makes it so much better. Since he’s local, we meet at a local coffee shop once a week to go over anything that needs to be talked about regarding the site. Next year, assuming all goes well with the launch, I will spin off Best Blogs into its own corporation and give my developer some equity. The business has huge potential, but probably won’t start showing revenue until Q4 2010 at the earliest. It’s a startup, so it’s still a gamble, but I like the odds!

Goal #3: Get 20,000 Blog Subscribers

I’m still plugging away at this one. My Feedburner count shows nearly 11,000 people. As we’re over halfway through the year, I’m going to have to pick up the pace. This will be a close one!

I had a nice week where three of my guest posts ran on three consecutive days on other popular blogs. I signed up over 450 new email subscribers that week. (If you’re one of them, welcome!) A few more weeks like that would do me well. It will take some more guest posting to really get those numbers up, though!

And now, the exciting part…my income numbers!

My Income Numbers!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that my goal was to make $10,000 a month blogging in 2008.

That didn’t happen.

Then, in 2009, I lost most of the year to being sick, and was eventually diagnosed with Celiac disease. By the end of the year, I was feeling better, but I still didn’t meet my goal.

In 2010, my blog began to really take off and I started posting income numbers. But I still hadn’t hit my goal.

Well…I am proud to announce that in June, 2010, I finally hit the goal I originally set in December, 2007!

It took me longer than I expected, and I had some setbacks, but I persevered.

And I not only hit my goal…I blew it out of the water.

Here is my income breakdown:

Most of the income came from my Profit Instruments review. 183 people signed up through my link for Profit Instruments. What an amazing number! I thank all of you who signed up, and definitely understand what you (my readers) want now.

Marketers always send me programs to review. I go through 2-3 programs a week, and decline to promote 99% of them. (A reader recently asked me to go over why I don’t promote most of the programs people send me…I will write about that in the future.) Profit Instruments was a program I felt comfortable promoting. And while it hasn’t been without its snafus–mostly regarding Paypal–overall, people have been happy with the program. I’ve even heard a few reports of people taking action and using the Profit Instruments system to make money. Good! That’s what it’s all about!

I wasn’t expecting so many people to take action and invest in Profit Instruments, and I was humbled and pleased that so many did! The deluge of emails–both questions about Profit Instruments and people emailing me receipts–was quite a handful. There was one day where I sent something like 160 email replies. I think all I did that day was hit “Reply” and type out responses!

I quickly realized I needed to hire someone. It just so happened that a friend who is in college was looking for a summer job and not having any luck finding one. (She lives in Portland, OR, which I hear is a difficult city to find jobs in.) I agreed to hire her part-time as my virtual assistant, and she became my savior, sorting out all the receipts, getting everyone on an email list, and generally cleaning up my inbox!

(Note: I always have someone ask me when I write about virtual assistants: “Is the email I got from you really you?” The answer is yes–every email with my name on it is written by me.)

She’s also now doing the blog setups, so if you order a blog set up, you’ll get a reply from her! Thanks, Alonna, for making my life easier!

I’ve so far written about two people I hired last quarter. This week, I hired a third–my first full-time employee here at Inspiring Innovators! His name is Matthew and he lives in the Philippines, and he’s doing full-time SEO work for erica.biz and my other websites. So far, he’s on a 7-day trial and working out well. I found Matthew through Replace Myself’s job board.

It’s been an amazing quarter, and I am so grateful that I was finally able to achieve income levels I didn’t think were possible only a few short months ago! I look forward to continuing to grow my business, as well as being able to share my journey and help you along your path, too!

Recommended Reading:

• 2010 First Quarter Goals Update. Posted in April, 2010.
• 2010 Goals. Posted in January, 2010.
• 2008 Year in Review / 2009 Goals. Posted in January, 2009.
• 2008 Goals. Posted in December, 2007.

I was at a local high-end grocery store buying meat, produce, and a pile of gluten-free goodies. Richard, who has recently gotten into cooking, decided to make organic hamburgers for dinner. We were out of cheese, so I walked over to the cheese section to pick up some cheddar slices.

I was confronted with a variety of gourmet cheeses. And they were pricey–running about $4.50 for 8 slices!

I picked one at random that said “cheddar” and looked at it. And that’s when I noticed something odd:

Right there, at the top of the package, in the “money spot” — the spot where my eyes went right after reading the brand — it said “Rennet Free.”

What in the world, I wondered, was “rennet”?

My brain immediately came up with this image:

(Oops, that’s a ferret!)

I buy a fair amount of expensive cheese, and I love cheese. As determined by willingness to spend $4.50 on 8 slices of organic cheese instead of going to a mass-market store and buying a block of Velveeta, I’m definitely in this company’s target demographic. But I have no idea what “rennet” is or why it’s important that the cheese be “rennet free.”

As cheesemakers, Horizon is probably well aware of what rennet is. But their customers probably aren’t. In that regard, most of us are “stupider” than Horizon.

I looked up rennet on Wikipedia, and it turns out that rennet is made from calves’ stomachs and is used to turn milk into cheese. Killing baby cows to use their stomach enzymes to make cheese is a bit disturbing. But the Wikipedia article also says that “by 2008, approximately 80-90% of commercially made cheeses in the United States were made utilizing GMO-based (non-cow) rennet.”

Surprisingly, the back of the package doesn’t go into any detail on what rennet is. Horizon missed an opportunity to educate their customers on why it’s important to buy rennet-free cheese.

I bought the cheese, but I didn’t become brand-loyal–I won’t go looking for Horizon again. Horizon missed an opportunity to gain a long-term customer with their label.

Are your labels (or your websites) doing the same thing to potential customers? Let’s take a look at the flip side…

The Flip Side: A Great Label

Here’s an example of a product wrapper that encouraged me to buy a product based on the label alone:

This is Skippy natural peanut butter. This jar is a bit old, but shows exactly why I bought it.

The first thing that motivated me to pick up the jar was the award. It says “2008 Chef’s Best – Best Taste.” This is important to me. I can’t tell you how many brands of peanut butter I’ve tried that don’t taste that great–especially the “natural” variants. The award provides fantastic social proof–other people have liked it, so you will too!

The second thing that got me to put the peanut butter in my cart was the big “No Need to Stir!” headline. Another problem with “natural” peanut butters is that they tend to separate. Skippy has managed to (mostly) fix this. I find myself still needing to stir it sometimes, but it certainly doesn’t separate like a lot of other peanut butters.

Skippy’s label has gotten me to buy at least 10 jars of its peanut butter over the past 2 years. In fact, I now look for their brand first when I buy peanut butter.

Getting Your Customers to Become Brand-Loyal

Skippy really nailed exactly what their customers wanted, whereas Horizon didn’t. Skippy’s jar speaks in easy-to-understand language that even small children would be able to read. Horizon’s package doesn’t.

What would I do if I were Horizon–and what lessons can you take from this?

1. I’d survey my customers. In the survey, I would ask what values were most important to them. (Here’s my step-by-step video walkthrough on how to survey your customers for free.)
2. I’d redesign my label to get customers to buy. The top value from the survey would get the most prominent placement on my label. I’d remove “rennet free” (or relegate it to the back of the wrapper in the ingredients.) I would make sure even kids understood everything on my label.
3. I would consider adding a testimonial from a satisfied customer on the front of the package. Of course, this would need to comply with any legal requirements regarding testimonials. (Consult an attorney in your area to make sure any testimonials you feature are in compliance.)
4. As an alternate or addition to #3, I would enter contests to win awards with my product, and then seek permission to display those awards prominently on my packaging.

Even if you aren’t selling a physical product, it’s important to consider what message you are sending to your customers. For instance, is your website reflecting the top values of your customers, or is it all about you and your company?

I went through this exercise a few years ago with my web hosting company and realized I needed to completely redesign our website. I blogged about what I discovered here…it’s worth reading if you’re currently selling products online.

How will you take this lesson to heart and change your website and/or product packaging? Feel free to post in the comments.

Recommended Reading:

• Here’s How to Become Rich: Deliver Value. Change the World. An epic post from 2007 where I apply this concept to my web hosting company’s website. Definitely read this one if you’re doing business online.
• Sharing My Journey To One Million Dollars. Written just after I sold my business, but when I was still in the “embargo period” and couldn’t speak publicly about the sale. I write candidly about the ups and downs of building a $1 million business.
• You Are Worth More Than You Think: Overcoming The Key Reason Entrepreneurs Fail. If you have ever said, “I just don’t have enough time to do [an activity I love]“, this advice is for you…

But all the “how to” information in the world won’t help your business succeed. Your own ingrained beliefs are stopping you without you even knowing it. In fact, the biggest obstacle to your success (I hate to say it) may be you.

We all have a set of beliefs about how the world operates. We form many of these beliefs to protect ourselves: we know that a fire will burn us, for instance. But there are some insidious beliefs–perhaps beliefs we don’t even know we have–that can seriously damage our earning potential.

One belief that is incredibly common is the belief that money is scarce–that there is only so much of it to go around. I was reading a friend’s blog recently and came across this paragraph:

“In the end, there is only so much of the almighty dollar to go around…somebody has got to sit in cattle class and it isn’t always the lazy arses. Quite often it’s those people who are ‘making stuff that matters, even if it seems stupid because it feels good and important.’”

Whenever I read, hear, or see someone say that, I know they’re broke.

Is Money Truly Scarce?

Scarcity happens in real life, and it starts at a young age. Your parents probably told you “no” when you asked for something when you were younger. Maybe you reached for that last can of soda in the fridge or apple on the counter only to find out it was gone. You wanted another helping of dinner, but it wasn’t available…the bowls and plates were empty.

That’s scarcity in action, and it’s easy to think that applies to money, too. For someone to be rich, someone else has to be poor, right?

Not at all.

Money is being created and distributed all the time. (If you want the technical details, read up on fractional reserve lending.) Our world has more money, that is worth more than it ever has been before. We live in staggering luxury compared to those only 50 years ago.

Consider this:
In 1950, only 9% of U.S. households had a TV.
In 1970, less than 1% of households in the U.S. owned a microwave.
In 1990, only 0.25% of the world population owned a cell phone.
This year, in 2010, only 26.6% of the world population will use the Internet.

We are unimaginably rich. And the best thing is that the trend will likely continue. There is no shortage of dollars to be earned (or spent!)

Who Are The Unsuccessful People?

I tried coaching people in a monthly program in 2009. I launched quietly–most reading this wouldn’t even know I did it. I took 20 students. I figured I’d be able to easily help them see their first online success.

Some of my coaching students have done really well. But many floundered. At first I wondered what I was doing wrong. Then I talked to some other coaches, and found out this is pretty normal.

One of my coaching students, J, wanted to set up a blog and be making $10,000/month within 30 days. He stated to me in our first 1-on-1 call that this was his goal. I told him I appreciated his enthusiasm, but that his goal wasn’t realistic. I explained he would have to work hard, probably for several months, before he saw much income at all. And only then, after he pushed through The Dip, would he see any real success.

He dropped out of the program. It wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear.

I now understand why many people don’t make it in business. They assume that they can start with 2 hours a week of spare time and no previous online business experience and be making 5 figures a month online within a month or two.

That’s the extreme case. Then there are many more in the “fat middle” who muddle their way through it for about 3-6 months before giving up. In the first two weeks, they have huge enthusiasm. They’re ready to take this on! It’s going to be great! Amazing! And then they fizzle. Slowly but surely, they stop working on their projects. Their blogs fall by the wayside. They get preoccupied with the “next big thing”. They give up.

I can’t tell you how many people I know who made anywhere from $30 to $100 a month and then gave up. The number astounds me. What they don’t understand is that $30 a month to $10,000 a month or more is about 24 months in the making of figuring out the systems that work and replicating them. They only see $30 a month and give up, thinking it’s a waste of time.

So, the honest truth, is that those who “sit in cattle class”, as my friend wrote it, really aren’t lazy. They just give up too soon.

Or they have another harmful belief: They’re uncomfortable with selling.

“Sales is For Slimy People”

Going deeper, we find a strong concern with many budding entrepreneurs: that if you sell something to someone, they are left with less than what they had before. If you sell them a $20 book, they’re suddenly $20 poorer.

To get over this feeling, you just have to be confident that what you’re selling them is worth far, far more than the money they paid to acquire it. Perhaps the knowledge in the $20 book you sell them will enable them to make far more than the $20 they paid for it. Perhaps it will help them find the romantic love of their dreams, or lose weight, or be happier.

It’s that confidence that many of us are lacking. We write the story for our potential customers, making assumptions and judging them. We assume they can’t afford something, so we don’t bother trying to sell it to them. Or we remember other stories similar potential customers have told us about how they can’t afford it, and assume this potential customer is similar.

Here’s an extreme example: Your friend is dying from a disease. Coincidentally, you happen to have had this same disease earlier in your life, and you’re now cured. It took you a lot of time and effort to find the cure, but you finally found a $2,000 pill that worked.

Could you convince your friend to part with the $2,000 to save her life?

That’s selling.

If you wimp out on this question with an answer like “If it really worked, I’d buy it for her!”, I suggest you do not start or attempt to run a business. I’m serious about that point. Go find someone who wants to sell and work for them…or make it your #1 priority to learn how to sell to someone who truly needs your product.

Sales: The Key Ingredient to Success?

When you start a business, it’s your job to sell like your prospects’ lives depend on it. And, to take this even further, it’s an equally important job to only sell products that are really worth it to your prospects, in order to engender goodwill.

To take a recent example from my own playbook, I was comfortable promoting the crap out of Profit Instruments both here on my blog and to my email list. I personally reviewed Profit Instruments, thought it was worth it, and even offered amazing bonuses to those who bought through me to help people succeed. I really believe that if you follow the system in Profit Instruments, you can be successful online. (Note: I’m not selling it right now, because Profit Instruments is sold out. I write this because I truly believe it.)

As a result of my genuine belief in Profit Instruments, 183 of you bought it through my link. That is an incredible number. It’s so huge in part because I don’t promote something different every week. I pick a few things that work well and promote them hard.

I was a driven salesperson in the web hosting industry. The more commoditized and cutthroat the industry you are in is, the more sales skills matter. Contrary to popular belief, though, sales isn’t all about skeezy convincin’ and fast talkin’. The biggest sales skill is also one of the hardest to learn: listening. The key is getting to know your prospect’s story first and then fitting what you’re selling to their needs…and being honest if what you’re selling doesn’t fit their needs.

You must be a closer in order to succeed in business. That means, if your prospect really needs what you have to offer, you have to ask for the sale and then get them to take action. Sell something that matters and that will truly help your prospects. Get your friend in the hospital to buy the $2,000 miracle pill. Get creative if that’s what it takes. But close the sale.

Using Your Business Skills to Make a Difference

Lydia, one of my four foster kittens. I sell people what I believe in and what they want to buy. Then I use that money to do awesome things in the world, like help foster kittens. I partnered with a nonprofit no-kill shelter here in San Diego: The Rescue House.

Rescue House gave me four kittens that had been abandoned by their mother. I bottle-fed them, took them to the vet, and loved on them for hours at a time. I’ll have the foster kittens for a few more months, at which time they will go to a permanent, adoptive home. My goal is to foster another set of kittens again next year when “kitten season” comes up, as well.

The foster kittens are just one of my nonprofit, charity activities. Without sales skills, and without believing that what I offer is the best, I wouldn’t be able to fund these charity activities. (Kitten food alone runs $6-7 a day!)

The market speaks for itself. I wouldn’t get paid a lot of money to foster kittens all day. But the market pays a lot for products on how to make more money, so that’s what I sell. I don’t fight the market or beg for it to be different. I don’t whine about inequitable distribution of money. I simply sell what works, and use the money I make to feed four hungry–but very cute!–kittens.

Did you fail the “friend test” above? Buy this book and read it cover to cover: Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition by Jay Abraham. I’ve read it and it’s one of the few books I go back to again and again for business advice.

Her response: “Well, these people are just starting out…they don’t have a whole lot of money, right?”

I replied: “Be careful. Don’t write the story for your potential customers.”

What Does “Writing the Story” Mean?

We all have a story: a compilation of thoughts and beliefs that got us to where we are today. Where we go wrong is that we tend to assume that everyone else’s story is the same as our story. Case in point: my friend started her business from basically nothing, and wouldn’t have had thousands of dollars to throw at a workshop teaching her how to start her type of business.

But there are plenty of people out there who have several thousand extra dollars and want to use that to create a sustainable income doing something they love. Some of those people will become her customers. She can’t write the story that everyone starting her type of business doesn’t have the money to invest in a workshop on how to run a business the right way.

We often “write the story” for others when we are afraid of doing something. Here’s one that happened to me recently. As you know, I’ve been helping review Profit Instruments. I’ve also been guest posting a lot, and as it happened, two guest posts of mine ran this week on two other popular blogs, resulting in a huge influx of new traffic and brand-new subscribers.

As I sent the launch emails yesterday and the day before, I wondered if I should somehow not send the emails to people who had just subscribed to my list. Here was the story I wrote for them: “They just subscribed in order to receive great content, and the first thing I’m going to send them is a pitch. My long-time subscribers know pitching is incredibly rare for me, but new subscribers won’t, and I may alienate them.”

Wow…that’s quite a story! Ultimately, I realized I couldn’t, and shouldn’t, write this story for them. It may be true that I alienated a few subscribers. However, it would probably also be true that I would lose sales by not sending that email to new subscribers. When in doubt, do what’s best for your business. I sent the email even to new subscribers.

Where Are You Writing the Story?

Are you “writing the story” for potential customers of yours? Are you afraid to send out a pitch for something that’s amazing and would help many of them, because you fear you may alienate a few of them? How about writing the story about how they wouldn’t be able to afford increased prices?

Ultimately, all stories have a root in your own fears–rejection and/or not being liked by others are two of the most common ones. It’s true that when you pitch a product (any product!), some people will complain. But others will buy it. Same with raising your prices…there will be some complaints, but most of your customers will stick around, assuming they enjoy doing business with you and you deliver great value to them.

Overcoming the stories we write in our heads is one of the most difficult tasks in any business. We all want to be loved and accepted, and the stories we write are an “easy way out”–a way to tell ourselves it’s okay to not rock the boat. But rocking the boat, making pitches, and raising prices are what you have to do to run a successful business.

Even seasoned entrepreneurs struggle with this, so you’re not alone. I catch myself writing the story constantly. Once you’re aware of the fact that you’re writing the story, however, you can stop the process in its tracks, recognize your inner fear behind it, and boldly do the right thing anyway.

Where has writing the story for your customers held you back in your business? What are you doing to overcome it? Let me know in the comments!

Recommended Reading:
Here are the guest posts I wrote for other blogs recently. Read them all; they’re all worth your time:

• Video: How to Get Thousands of Visitors from Google. A how-to video blog post I wrote that ran at Daily Blog Tips yesterday. Step-by-step instructions on how to get Google to send your website tons of traffic.
• Struggling With Your Blog? Try These Three Simple Tips. This post ran at JohnChow.com. Straightforward tips, but many bloggers, especially new ones, don’t do these…
• Would You Hire This Freelancer? Another controversial post. This one ran at Freelance Folder and has over 100 comments that debate my conclusion.

My friends Pace and Kyeli wrote a whole book about how we assume everyone else’s story is the same as our story. I own it and it’s a great read. Check it out: The Usual Error.