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January 5, 2013 Update

Wow! I don’t know about you, but 2012 just flew by for me. Although I hadn’t taken a break from blogging entirely, I hadn’t been actively publishing on SharonHayes.com. I was surprised to realize that almost half of a year went by without an update!

This year I’ll be making an active effort to maintain better communication and provide more consistent updates.

In this update, I’ll be sharing with you a couple of things to help you reach whatever level of success you desire.

Year of a Lifetime Goal Setting Program

If you’re determined to step up your game for 2013 and start reaching your goals, check out my Year of a Lifetime training program. It consists of 3 classes focused on helping you achieve clarity, overcome stumbling blocks and mapping out a game plan to reach your goals. Whether you want to lose weight, change careers, improve your relationships or anything else, this program can help you do it. The first class is today (Saturday, January 5th) at 1 pm EST. If you can’t make it, you can listen to the playback when it is available.

How to Make 2013 Your Best Year Ever

Several years ago, I started working on a framework of a set of success principles. Over time, I’ve modified it based on what I’ve learned. The list currently has 20 different principles you can put to work today.

The first part of the article is available here. Read it, comment and share if you think it may help other people. Have a fabulous day friends!

xoxo

This is the second half of a post I originally wrote in 1997. Click here to read Part 1.  It was published in several dozen print newsletters and on even more websites. I received literally thousands of emails and letters from people who said it had impacted them in some way. I thought it would serve as a good initial first post for this website since it’s a perfect demonstration that many core principles never change. I hope you enjoy it!

How To Make 2013 Your Best Year Ever – Part 2

11. The Moral & Ethical Being Principle

You must come to understand that what you expect from circumstances and people must be in tune with your own morals and ethics. If what you are working towards is in disharmony with this, you can never be truly happy.

Action Step: Don’t take actions that are conflict with your morals and ethics.

12. The Priority Principle

Life can be overwhelming for many of us. There are only so many hours in a day and each of us have the same number of hours to work with. Successful people know how to distinguish between priorities and focus on those activities of a higher order. When we start to prioritize activities by order, we find that only doing those higher order items will easily fill our days.

It’s especially important to note that time for revenue-generating activities and creative thinking should always rank at the top of your list of priorities.

Action Step: On a monthly, weekly and daily basis, prioritize your activities based on higher order and then act upon them based on the highest order of personal satisfaction. Doing this will mean you will get more of the important tasks done first since we find it easiest to work on those items we enjoy most.

13. The Time-Value Principle:

As we all know, time is money. We need to know how much our time is worth. We need to also know that we should delegate whenever the cost (both monetary and otherwise) of someone else doing something is lower than the cost of doing it ourselves.

Action Step: Evaluate your personal involvement in activities based upon the opportunity-cost. Where appropriate, delegate.

14. The Knowledge & Skills Principle

Getting and improving upon knowledge and skills should be a high priority. A short-cut is to find a mentor, a coach or a mastermind.

Action Step: Determine the knowledge and skills you need to acquire to reach your goals.

15. The Assumption Principle

Most of us have learned this principle the hard way, yet few of us do anything about it. Simply put, this principle says never, never assume anything! I think that the biggest mistakes I have made in life have come from making inappropriate assumptions.

Action Step: Make sure all parties involved agree about the meaning of something, and if necessary, get it in writing.

16. The Duplication Principle

This principle is probably the easiest to understand yet the one that most people have the hardest time with. Simply put: when you find something that works, do it over and over again as long as it continues to work and continues to help you achieve your objectives. In essence, create a system of things that work.

Action Step: Log your activities so that when you hit on something that works, you’ll know exactly what you did to achieve the results you did. Fine-tune this so that you make small changes until you have created a perfect system.

17. The Do Unto Others Principle

Never, ever do anything to anyone that you would not want done to you. Karma, baby.

Action Step: On a small scale, put this into practice on a daily basis by returning phone calls, make only those commitments you can keep, don’t make excuses to cover things up, etc. Think of how your words and actions will impact others.

18. The Being Common is Uncommon Principle

Common sense. Common courtesy. We’ve all heard these terms quite frequently. “Common” means it applies to the masses. Unfortunately there’s never been a time when common sense and common courtesy have really been adopted by the masses. To act with common sense and common courtesy is uncommon. By actively practicing both, you’ll automatically find yourself becoming more aware and your life will become richer.

Action Step: Exercise common sense and common courtesy in your every day life.  Simply make an effort to be more aware of what is going in your own life and those around you. Make an effort to be more aware of those you come into contact with.

19. The Viability Principle

Life is a series of trade-offs. There are opportunity costs associated with everything that we do. When I explained ‘The Priority Principle,’ I mentioned that it is easy to fill our days with only seemingly high order activities once we start to focus. What I didn’t mention then was that it is also easy to incorrectly choose what higher activities we should be focusing on and the reason why. This is where ‘The Viability Principle’ comes into play. Without it, we can find out that success just doesn’t happen in spite of making our best effort.

This principle suggests that you ask when setting goals: “What has the highest probability of working?” Let’s say for example you are an interior decorator and you’re trying to drum up new business. You have two marketing ideas to reach new people. The first is to approach local real estate agents to get referrals. The other, which you think is simply brilliant, is to approach accounting firms to get referrals. The reason for the latter idea is that if someone can afford an accountant, they can likely afford an interior decorator. Given you have only limited resources for marketing yourself, which do you think would have the highest probability of working?

This principle also covers your choice of business, career or educational pursuits. All other aspects being equal, it is a lot easier to realize success when you focus on things that have a higher probability of working and are more viable.

Action Step: When deciding between different actions or goals, do a viability check and ask which option has the highest probability of working.

20. The Keep it Simple Principle

The more complicated the various aspects of your business become, the more difficult it becomes to expand. Consider companies you are familiar with that generate hundreds of millions a year in annual revenue or more. Most of them have relatively simple business models or their company owns multiple companies that each have simple business models.

The more complicated a business model is, the more parts that can break down and the more difficult it can be to systematize it. Systematization is a key to developing a large business.

Action Step: An easy way to determine if your business model really is simple is to come up with a 1 minute/1 sentence elevator pitch. Can you tell someone in one sentence what your business does? If not, then consider retooling what you are doing to get there.

That wraps up my 20 principles to help make 2013 your best year ever.

I’d love you to share your thoughts on these principles. Is there anything you’d have added to this list?

If you’re determined to step up your game for 2013 and start reaching your goals, check out my Year of a Lifetime training program. It consists of 3 classes focused on helping you achieve clarity, overcome stumbling blocks and mapping out a game plan to reach your goals. Whether you want to lose weight, change careers, improve your relationships or anything else, this program can help you do it. The first class is on Saturday, January 5th at 1 pm EST. If you can’t make it, you can listen to the playback when it is available. 

Photograph by Melody Campbell

Sharon sends out daily updates via email so you can stay on top of her latest news, blog posts and more. What follows is one of her daily updates.

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Monday, July 9, 2012 Update

Another new week! I’m getting back to a pretty tough training program given I’ve taken the past few months off. I just registered for Run For Your Lives, a Zombie infested 5k obstacle course taking place in Southern California in late October. Fun fun! If you’ve ever done one of these, let me know! Would love to hear about it!

Why Giving Away Knowledge Isn’t Always Good

So you want to help people and believe that by giving away your best stuff, you’ll be able to help more people right? That isn’t the case. In my latest post in the free to paid series, I look at the psychological aspects of why giving away knowledge isn’t always good.

Converting Free to Paid Bonus

I’m going to be throwing in a bonus to participants of “Converting Free to Paid.” The bonus will be focused directly on helping you create informational products. Eventually I’ll be offering this as a standalone product but you can get this at no extra cost if you purchase my CFTP program now. We’ll be starting the program on July 11th, so check it out now.

Have a fabulous day friends!

xoxo

I’m probably going to ruffle a few feathers with this post. Some of you are going to read this and, even if intellectually you understand the point I am driving at, on an emotional level, you’ll have issues.  I know this because I have issues with it myself.  Let me start off by making a simple blanket statement:

Giving away your knowledge/expertise isn’t good when it comes to your core areas of competency.

For the purpose of this post, the “free” I am referring to comes in the form of information – be it blog posts, videos, webinars, teleseminars, e-books or any other method of packaging knowledge.

What is comes down to is this: we need to rethink our idea of “free” when it comes to sharing knowledge.  To explain the reasons why, let me start off by going back in time a bit.

The Evolution of Free

From the 1960s through the 1990s, free was either junk or it came attached to conditions – usually involving purchasing something else. Here are 3 of the most common free “pitches”:

• Buy 1, get 1 free (and you knew that the price of the first was generally inflated to take into account getting the 2nd one free)
• Get it free – pay only shipping and handling  (you knew that s&h would be inflated to cover the cost)
• Provide personal information to get it free

Today, free stuff of real value is often given away. Not just knowledge, but actual physical products. Increasingly, we’re seeing this being done with no strings attached. But the consumer mindset still hasn’t changed.  The perception that there is not real value to things we get free is still there.

The Evolution of Free Online

There’s a saturation of free content available online. The expectations of many people are not to pay. Most people don’t go to Google to perform searches to get information expecting to pay for it.

The challenge becomes that we don’t value what we get for free. Not really anyway. And this is especially true when it comes to things related to making changes in behavior or improvements in business.

At the same time, the sheer volume of free available tends to mean we snack more than absorb and consume information. I’ve written about how we have become snackers when it comes to information before.

The Dilemma if You Want to Help People

So you’re creating this fabulous content, maybe people are reading it, commenting on it and sharing it but how much action are they taking? You create it and give it away because you genuinely want to help people. But are you really?

At this stage of my life, my own focus is on helping people. I’ve learned a lot in my 20+ years in business. I’m no longer interested in the big payday. My own life success is now measured by the number of people I can positively impact. But I’ve long learned that giving content away – giving the big stuff that will produce real results – is not necessarily the way to go about it.

People may appreciate free stuff – at least for a little while – but without a price tag associated with it, the value isn’t there for them. Free content is consumable but in the same vein as watching a sitcom on TV. It becomes positioned as entertainment more than actionable, life-changing information.

Conversely, when there is a fee associated with content, people will value it more. There’s some deep-rooted psychological aspects to this.

The Psychological Aspect of Free – Behavior Drivers

People act for different reasons. There are many different models on what motivates people. One thing we absolutely know is that loss is always a stronger motivator for people than gain. People will work harder to avoid losing something they already have than to gain something they don’t have.

How exactly does this apply to giving knowledge away? Consider this: if you are giving content away for free with the intent of your audience gaining something, once they have consumed that content there is little incentive for them to take action. There’s little motivation for them when what they have gotten is free. By contrast, loss is always stronger than benefit. If people pay money for knowledge, they are more motivated to make use of it otherwise they are often left with a feeling that they have lost something.

If your knowledge/expertise involves people making changes in their behavior or taking some kind of action, the best way to ensure that more people do this is by charging for it.

What Do You Charge For Knowledge?

The subject of pricing informational products would require an entire series of posts to adequately cover.  I do want to touch on a few points regarding pricing and the things you want to balance out:

• Can people get the the same information for free elsewhere? If not but it is available at a price, what is the cost and what is included?
• There’s a direct correlation between value and price paid, but too steep a price can turn people off.
• If people actually read and act on the information you provide, what is the minimum amount that the knowledge is worth to any buyer?
• For some people, there’s an expectation correlation: the more they pay for information, the more they expect to get. It’s not always about the value of results.
• Value proposition makes price almost irrelevant when you provide a solution to a problem people have and they feel that what you have to offer is superior to anything else they could get (free or paid).

Myth: You Need to Have a Lot of Content To Charge

Big isn’t necessarily needed for paid. In fact, some of the most successful informational products I’ve seen sold online have been “light” in terms of the amount of content provided but they directly provided a solution to a problem.

One of the big blocks many people have with transitioning from free to paid content is feeling they need to spend a lot of time putting something together. It’s not needed. I know some of the best content producers who offer as little as a couple of pages for a few bucks. Micropayments, membership site with regular content, MP3 downloads – these are just some of the ways to deliver paid content on a smaller scale.

For content that has already been published for free, there are 3 options for converting it to paid:

1. Charge for archive access

2. Repackage related posts into standalone products

3. Repackage your archives into products

The Exceptions – Yes There Are Some

There are 4 times when giving away content is a good thing:

1. When you are establishing yourself in an area and/or want to build up credibility and trust. This could be through your own site or through opportunities available through others. (For example, guest blog posts, being a guest on a radio show, speaking at an event, etc.)

2. When you have a path to greater coverage of a topic via a paid product. One thing to consider here is that the higher priced a product is, the more you may need to give away (both in volume and quality) to get the sales.

3. When you have an opportunity to capitalize on viral buzz about a topic and get more exposure from it.

4. When it’s outside the scope of your core area of competency but you have above-average knowledge and the content would reach your intended target audience.

Wrapping Up

I’m not suggesting that giving away knowledge is a bad thing. If you are marketing online, you must give away at least some knowledge to show your stuff.  Most of you aren’t likely skilled copywriters and probably can’t afford a professional… having quality content offered for free is a great way to pre-sell your paid work. But if your objective with sharing your knowledge is to genuinely help people, offering everything for free isn’t necessarily going to help more people.

If you feel you could use some help on how to convert free to paid, check out my upcoming training starting on July 11th.

Sharon sends out daily updates via email so you can stay on top of her latest news, blog posts and more. What follows is one of her daily updates.

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Thursday, July 5, 2012 Update

Back home in Canada for a couple of months before I’m off on my next adventure! The next 2 months are going to be super busy as all of the projects I’ve been working on are rolling out.

I’m grateful to be back home and see my cats, go in my Jacuzzi to soak my aching muscles after a tiring travel day, some food items I love that are only available in Canada, full-size washer and dryer, my incredibly comfortable bed, fantastic water pressure, my gym right in my house… and loads of other things. What I’m not so grateful for? Humidity. Ugh. Give me San Diego temperature please!

Lots of stuff to share with you today so I’d best get to it!

8 Situations Where You May Want to Work For Free

In this new blog post in my “free to paid” series, I take a look at 8 different situations where you may want to work for free.

Did you sign up for my “Converting Free to Paid” training program yet? Check it out! We’re starting in less than a week and the Facebook group will be starting before then.

15 Places You See or Hear Domains Daily

We have a new post up at Domainate – “15 Places You May See or Hear Domains Daily.” It’s amazing how much domains have become a part of our lives!

Blogging Today Going Live Soon

If you blog (for personal or business reasons) or want to start, you may enjoy my upcoming site BloggingToday.com. We’ll be going live with a soft launch on Monday. I’ll send you a reminder at that time. In the meantime, our Facebook page is set up, you can follow us on Twitter and circle us on Google+

Have a fabulous day friends!

xoxo

This is another installment in my “free versus paid” series. I also have an affordable training program called “Converting Free to Paid” starting on July 11th that will help you get a better handle on free versus paid.

In previous posts in this series, I’ve shared “7 Reasons Why I Can’t Do Free” where I shared how being established as a professional and with limited time I can’t provide unpaid assistance and then in “How to Give and Get Paid” I looked at how to give knowledge/expertise away via blogging and other content in order to generate direct income. Depending on where you are in your career/profession, there may be other times you may want to work for free. In this post, I’ll address 8 situations in which you may want to work for free.

1. Unpaid Internships

Although most internships these days are paid, in some industries/professions, unpaid internships are the norm. Not only are they the norm, but they are often the only way to get on the path to paid work. These are typically in areas where competition is fierce and where there may not be a lot of money available to pay salaries for internships. Unpaid internships are common in the arts.

Before considering an unpaid internship, consider whether or not is the best path to your long-term goals. An unpaid internship working for a prestigious organization may carry a good deal of weight on your resumé and be worth more than a low-paid position at an unknown organization.

2. Connections/Networking

Doing free work can be worthwhile if helps you connect with decision-makers who could turn into paying clients. An example may be doing free work for your local Chamber of Commerce.

3. Exposure

Free work can often provide you with a great way to get exposure.  I have several friends who have built up their entire businesses by just being everywhere by doing free work of various kinds. This kind of free work can come in assorted flavors and can range from guest blog posts to speaking at an event.

This topic is such an important one, I’ll be devoting an entire upcoming post to it.

4.  You Have No Work Experience in an Area

You may be all hot and bothered about pursuing a specific career – feeling it is perfect for you – but getting a position doing what you feel you’d excel at and love may not be easy if you have no prior experience. What can you do? Probably once a week, I have someone who offers to work for one of my companies for free in some capacity for anywhere from 30-90 days just to get experience (and hopefully that I’d keep them on once they’ve proven their worth). It’s not a common way to go, but it is a path that some ambitious people follow to short-cut the path to their goals.

Some careers I’ve seen people pursue this route are for positions of project manager, business development manager, joint venture manager, and various outbound sales positions.

5.  You Want To Get More Practice

In the bestselling book “Outliers: The Story of Success,” the author, Malcolm Gladwell claims to the key to success in any field is practicing a specific task for 10,000 hours. I don’t believe there’s a magic number that applies to every field and I believe that every person is too unique. But I do believe that in order to be at the top of a field involves practice. (Read my post on “How To Excel At Almost Anything You Want.”)

It can be difficult to get enough of paid hours of practice in to reach a level of mastery. If you’re brand new to an area, getting any paid work may be a challenge.

When considering doing free work for the sake of getting practice, you’ll want to make sure that it is work that actually moves you forward and where your own competency level makes it difficult for you to charge for it yet. Let’s say for example you are a web designer. You’re wanting to add designing WordPress templates to your arsenal of offerings but you’ve never done one and you are having a hard time finding a paying client. You may want to do one or two for free to get the experience in. Conversely, if you’re already a pro at creating WordPress templates, it may not make sense for you to do one for free for others.

Another example is public speaking. It can be almost impossible for a novice speaker to get paid engagements. You won’t likely need to speak for 10,000 hours for free in order to get paid, but it’s not uncommon to log several dozen unpaid speaking engagements before you land your first paid gig.

6. You May Get an Upside

There have been countless stories in the media about people who did one small thing for a start-up in exchange for equity versus pay and then had a big pay-off day by cashing out or when the company went public.  The odds of this happening are probably a bit better than buying a lottery ticket. But still – if you have time available and it won’t take away from paid work, it can be worth it. Just make sure that any potential payback down the road is detailed in writing so there are no misunderstandings somewhere down the road.

7.  Giving To The Community

I strongly believe in giving to the community or world at large in an ongoing program. This could be by donating time/services, donating money or a combination of the two.

Many professionals and entrepreneurs dedicate a set amount of time each week, month or year to giving time to organizations within their community. It makes the most sense to donate time where you are most proficient and to organizations who can most benefit from your assistance.

I think that the organizations we choose to donate time to is too personal a decision for me to consider laying out suggestions. But I do suggest that you lay out your own criteria so at the end of the day, you’ll feel positive about your choices.

8. Helping Close Friends and Family

Offering free help to close friends and family can be a tough call. In my “7 Reasons” post, I laid out some of my own issues. Although I don’t always say no to all kinds of help with those closest to me, I have my own guidelines I follow. In my “Converting Free to Paid” program, one of the things we’ll be doing is formulating personal action plans as far as helping others for free. I’ll outline some things to consider here:

• You may decide not to do for free for even those close to you any kind of work you charge customers for
• You may decide to set criteria before you help people for free (i.e. that they do some homework/legwork themselves)
• You may establish a barter policy (i.e. babysitting in exchange for free design work)

Wrapping Up

There are other instances where working for free can make sense for you for various reasons. I’ve just tried to cover the major situations people are most likely to be dealing with. If you want to receive the rest of the series via email as it is published, make sure to sign up for my daily updates:

If you need more guidance on putting the pieces together, make sure to check out my training program “Converting Free to Paid“.

Please do share your thoughts on situations where you may work for free in the comments below.

Sharon sends out daily updates via email so you can stay on top of her latest news, blog posts and more. What follows is one of her daily updates.

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Monday, July 3, 2012 Update

Heading back home to Canada today so a brief update.

11 Things To Do After Buying a Domain Name

Buying your domain name is just the first step towards establishing your presence online. Once you’ve bought your domain, then what? The answer depends on what you hope to accomplish with the domain. In this month’s training video at Doma.in, we’ll be looking at 11 things to do after you buy a domain name.

Have a fabulous day friends!

xoxo

Sharon sends out daily updates via email so you can stay on top of her latest news, blog posts and more. What follows is one of her daily updates.

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Monday, July 2, 2012 Update

A belated Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians!

What a crazy week it’s going to be for me! Holidays in both the US and Canada actually mean extra work for me with clients and promo work. On top of it, I’m traveling home Tuesday and will likely lose most of Wednesday between jet lag, going through 3 months of mail and unpacking. The good news is, I’m well-organized right now – or at least it feels that way – so all systems on the work front are “go.”

Give It Away, Get Paid

If you’re having a difficult time transitioning from giving your knowledge away to getting paid for it, you may enjoy my latest blog post “How to Give and Get Paid.” I outline a formula that can help you translate your fan base and expertise into something that can help you pay the bills.

There’s just over a week left before my ‘Converting Free to Paid‘ training program starts.  If you’re interested but have any questions or concerns about it, please feel free to leave comments on the page for it and I’ll make sure to address them. This is a fabulous bargain and I’m determined to help everyone walk away feeling that they should have paid 10 tens the price charged.

Have a fabulous week friends!

xoxo

Many people create content – much of it very good – and give it away. Social media has made it relatively easy to get eyeballs viewing this content. Creating content and getting traffic isn’t the problem; the problem is transitioning from free to paid.

Before I give you the formula, let’s take a look at the difference between paid and free work.

Paid Work Solves a Problem

• You provide specific detail about a problem and offer a framework to solve it
• It is longer and more detailed than free
• It provides opportunity to back-end one-on-one assistance by either actually implementing the solution or offering coaching/consulting on how to implement

Contrast this with free work…

Free Work Gives a Taste

• It identifies problems and offers general solutions
• It gives a taste of a solution but not all of the details
• The best free work offers enough guidance for at least some people to take action immediately
• Builds credibility
• Leads some people to want to know more about a topic and preferably more from you
• Most important: it attracts the right people who can be converted into paying customers

Not every piece of free you create needs to directly relate to something you sell. Sometimes to expand your reach and fan base, creating free content that will reach your target buying base makes sense. You can also use free to create awareness of problems people may not even know they have.

Turning Free into Paid

Now that I’ve laid out the distinguishing factors between free and paid, let me go through the steps of turning free into paid.

1. Build up your fan base first

You don’t need to have a large social media presence, but you should have a core group of solid fans who can get the word out quickly for you

• When you create new free content, are people sharing your content and are they leaving comments?
• Do you have an email list and RSS feed so that your most rabid fans can get your free content soon after it is published?

2.  Character: Be consistent, pay it forward and focus on quality

You don’t necessarily need to write a new blog post each day or be active in social media every day, but having a consistent presence is important. It goes towards credibility and building trust.

Another aspect of demonstrating character is paying it forward. If you want to get traffic and have people sharing, share the content of others. Make sure to only share quality and don’t just share because someone shares your content. The quality aspect has been a huge one for me. Trust me – if I share a blog post that is crap, someone will call me on it.

Not every post you write is worth publishing. For every post I publish on this blog, there is probably one I’ve at least half-written that I didn’t publish because it didn’t meet my own quality standards.

3. Monitor Responsiveness

• What topics are getting the most social sharing, the most traffic, the most comments?
• Follow comments people leave and attach to their social shares to see the direction you should be taking both free and paid in
• Be wary about why people respond. Pushing hot buttons and covering controversial subject matter can generate response and traffic, but this is not necessarily something you can convert to paid. It takes a combination of skill and experience to be able to use this without potentially causing damage.

4. Create a product that solves a problem

Based on the comments you receive and the direction you go, generally products seem to just “pop up.”  Problems you’ve identified in your ‘free’ and given light solutions for where you can dig deeper through offering a paid product.

Bonus tip: A handful of my clients on B2B service side have actually created products almost exclusively composed of repackaging their “free” into another format. Examples: let’s say you have 100 posts on your blog. Putting these into ebook format for the Kindle might be an option. Regrouping and restructuring your content can add additional value.

5. Incentivize purchasing

Give your rabid fans a first crack at access to the product and any combination of bonuses, preferential pricing or other things.  This can help you get the word out even more.

Since I’ve been doing this for a while now myself and with clients, I have a pretty good handle on knowing what to expect conversion-wise at each stage. I try to use incentivized offers to make sure that the odds are in my favor of breaking even on the time/expenses for creating a product.  That makes any additional sales – and back-end sales – gravy.

6. Offer more free

You’ll want to generate continued interest for your product by offering more free.

Once you put a product there, chances are that you’re going to have people ask you questions about it. Some of those questions are going to be about whether or not the product is suitable for their situation and does the product cover x, y or z. Creating more free around these questions (and also updating your sales page to link to this additional free content, preferably via your FAQ) can help you get a nice boost to sales. Why? Simply – people who take the time to contact you with questions are already showing keen interest in what you have to offer. But they aren’t completely sold yet.

Consider this – let’s say your product has a price point of $100. You have 5 people who each ask you almost the same question. It takes you maybe an hour to craft this into a post (which shouldn’t be a pitch for your product but instead offer value on it’s own!). You follow up with those 5 people with a link to the post. You’ll likely find that at least 1 of the 5 will purchase the product

Keep in mind that not everyone who has a question will take the time or make the effort to ask you. So by creating more free around questions you receive, you’ll be helping a lot more than just those who have already asked you.

Another source for more free is to look at the material you cover in your product. What topics can you extract some information from to create content without giving it all way?  You can pinpoint specific problems that your material solves, outline the solution for it and then refer people to your paid product if they need more guidance.

Mini-Case Study: Converting Free to Paid

If you didn’t figure this out already, this post you are reading is an example of how you can give and get paid.

I wrote a post “7 Reasons Why I Can’t Do Free.”  The post received a lot of comments, social shares and more importantly a lot of people contacted me privately about it.

I actually didn’t intend on creating a program related directly on this subject.  But from the questions I received and the comments left, I was able to create a framework for a training program “Converting Free to Paid.” That link gives you an overview of the contents of the program. Every bullet point came directly as a result of feedback/questions I received from those who read the original post. I did not include everything people mentioned; I chose to focus on those items which I know I have solid expertise in and can deliver high quality training on.

It took me less than 24 hours from the time I published the original post until the training program went live.

I have been offering discounted pricing for those who sign up first. The first 10 spots were taken within 8 hours or so – all but 1 to people who subscribe to my email newsletter. Within 24 hours, my time and expenses were pretty well covered for the entire project.

I set the start date of the training program 3 weeks forward. This was to give me time to create more “free” to generate more interest in the paid program, create more confidence in those who are on the fence about it and to provide more assistance to those who may not have the money for the paid training right now. The post you are reading is an example of the “more free” and there are several other posts I’ll be sharing leading up to the program start date. All of these posts deal with questions people have asked or will provide a sampling of what will be covered in more depth in the training program.

Will giving away so much free hurt sales? I’m not sure how that is even possible. Each post will offer solid value on it’s own. But the training program will close the gaps on how to actually implement the strategies. Plus, there is a private Facebook group for participants to ask questions unique to their own situation and homework assignments to create a path to follow.

The best part of this? By the time this live training program wraps up, I’ll have a self-standing training program available on demand for people in the future without much additional work on my side. I won’t be offering the personal guidance as I am on the first go around, but the content will be much tighter than if I went to a finished product right away.

Wrapping Up

In this post, I’ve shared the difference between positioning for free versus paid, gave you a step-by-step plan for transitioning and shared one of my own experiences that’s unfolded on this blog.  All of this is about doing things in a non-sleazy manner where you’re actually offering valuable solutions to problems people may have. If you want to receive the rest of the series via email as it is published, make sure to sign up for my daily updates:

If you need more guidance on putting the pieces together, make sure to check out my training program “Converting Free to Paid“.

Have you used this formula? Any thoughts to share?

Sharon sends out daily updates via email so you can stay on top of her latest news, blog posts and more. What follows is one of her daily updates.

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Friday, June 29, 2012

This week ended up being pretty much a write-off for me on the business front. I really needed to take some downtime to cope with personal life issues. Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to know when we need to step back and let ourselves get some physical, emotional and mental regrouping time.

This weekend will be about reorganizing things since my schedule went out the window, packing for my return to Canada and getting in some more R&R time.  I should be back to normal daily updates starting on Monday.

Creating Awesome in 2012 – Mid-Year Checkpoint

I don’t know about you, but I can’t believe that 2012 is just about halfway over!  I know that this has been a difficult year for a lot of you so if you’ve been struggling, know you aren’t alone. But also understand that there is still plenty of time left to create awesome in 2012!

I typically spend several days around the Christmas holidays mapping out my plans for the coming year. From there, I’ll adjust and add/subtract to plans on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. At the mid-year point, I do a major run through of everything on my plate and future plans. This is where I tend to make major changes.

I firmly believe that one of the reasons I do well in business is because of being able to sit down and plan.

Here’s the simple planning process I go through:

• I set target dates for goals/projects – what date something will be “done” by
• I break down the major milestones for each goal and project and determine when each milestone needs to be started and completed by
• When I’m ready to start working on a milestone, I break down everything that needs to get done in as much detail as possible – including dates, who needs to get what done etc

A good part of the reason I’m able to be productive as I am is because of the amount of detailing I do before I actually get to work on something. I find that the more detailed a plan is, the less I need to think while doing, the faster I can get things done, the less likely it is that mistakes will happen.

If you’ve had experience with planning (and actual implementation), project management and process mapping, following a system like mine makes sense. The problem is that most people really suck at planning. They spend so much time on planning and working out the details, they either are slow to get started or never get started at all.

It becomes a catch-22 situation almost: if you never get started and start racking up “wins”, you won’t get the experience to make planning easier, improve your productivity and hit your goals faster.

If your year so far has left you feeling like you are spinning your wheels or even going backwards, I’ll share with you the simplest technique I know to regroup and turn things around. I call it my “What’s Next Comes First” strategy.

What’s Next Comes First Strategy

1. Get a notebook of some kind. I mean the paper kind. I don’t know why, but doing this type of work with pen and paper seems to make it more real and more of a commitment for most people.

2. Starting on the last page of the notebook and working forward, start to do a mental dump of all the things you want to accomplish.  Include anything from filing taxes to spending more time with the kids to bigger goals like eliminating debt. Things listed could take anywhere from one minute to several years.

3. Starting on the first page of the notebook, you’ll be creating daily checklists. Do this for the next day before you wrap up the current day. Each daily checklist will contain only the following items:

• The date
• The next step required to do something that is the most time-sensitive (ex: if you want to take a family vacation, booking time off from work might be this)
• The next step required to reach your most important long-term goal (ex: if you want to lose 50 pounds, joining a gym might be this)
• Something that can be done in 5 minutes or less (ex: if you want to find a new job, locating your last resume might be this)

4. Each day, before you get into your day, do the 3 items from your what’s next list.

Preferably you’ll be able to do more work on reaching your goals than this each day, but the key here is to focus on bite-sized tasks that can help get you moving in the right direction and to do this before the rest of your day derails plans you may have.

Even with the amount of structure I try to keep in my life, I follow a similar system to this each day. My own daily list has 5 things on it. Even if I get nothing else done in a day, these 5 things are always done.

I do want to stress a couple of points: First, try not to get overly ambitious and put more than a few items on your daily list, especially if you’ve had issues with reaching goals in the past. Second, if you have something to add that is about adopting a new habit – for example, working out 5 times a week – keep it on your daily checklist for at least a month until it becomes a routine for you.

Try this – commit to this system for 30 days and let me know how it works for you!

Why ICANN Needs an Overhaul

We have a new op ed piece at Domainate about the current situation at ICANN and why we believe it needs an overhaul. Check it out.

Have a fabulous weekend friends!

xoxo