InfoPreneurs,

I just wanted to pass along an email from James.  I’ve not modified it one iota.  A huge thanks goes out to all of you…many donated…many promoted.  My thanks (and James) goes out to all of you!

*******************

Brother I just wanted to say a huge thank you for the effort you and the readers made to make a difference.

An update for you and the readers, I’m still getting a lot of treatment and under an ever increasing list of med’s. I honestly think I now rattle when I walk because of the amount of pills.

Am I winning this fight?… well I take every hour as it comes, I keep pushing and fighting all the time, which is what you guys are doing every day, chipping away.

I actually hate that term ‘chipping away’ it suggests to me that it can be done quicker but you lack the energy or motivation, for me in my situation I’m hitting it with everything I have got, which admitadly isn’t much these days, but the more I fight, the more accustomed to fighting I become which will hopefully see me the winner.

For all those who donated no matter how small I want to say a massive huge thank you, those donations went to keeping my family optimistic for a bit longer.

Brandon please let me know if you are kind enough to do anything like this again in the future.

I just wanted to leave you with a final thought for you and your readers,

”You’re already dead, anything you do is a bonus.” – James

**********************************

I look forward to continue serving all of you InfoPreneurs.  I can’t even begin to tell you the happiness that I’ve experienced reading this.  Not pride…but a humble feeling of knowing I’ve tried to contribute in some way to the world that is not about be.  Something bigger….and BETTER.  I thank all of you once again for your support.

Brandon

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Phil

There’s a common myth that when you start out in business (be it full time or part time working around another job) that you have to work long hours, work extremely hard, and suffer from unbelievable levels of stress.

Well in some instances this may be true, but not all the time, and to be honest working longer and harder probably won’t make any more of a difference.

In actual fact, there are plenty of ways in this day and age that you can actually work less and earn more. Sure, every new venture will require a good amount of work to be put into it to get it off the ground, but don’t forget that one of the reasons most people choose to go into business for themselves is to have a bit of flexibility in their life.

To be successful in business it is very much about working smarter, and not so much about working harder.

Probably a good example is my blog – Major-Business.net

I decided that rather than spend a huge chunk of my time coaching on a 1-2-1 basis that I would put together a resource that could reach a wider audience. I opted for a blog, and decided to go with offering the content free of charge, monetising it with advertising once it became established.

I did my research, set up the blog, and started posting content.

I found that even though I was able to reach more people I was working twice as long and twice as hard! I was posting once a day, sometimes twice, and spending the rest of the day promoting the site and working on more material.

The idea behind the blog was a step towards working smarter and not harder, but as a result of being “smart” I ended up working extremely hard… not quite what I had in mind.

So, I analysed what I was doing, what it was achieving, and what I could do to change the situation. And I ran a few tests in order to gauge the effect it would have on the results I was achieving working all hours god send.

I dropped from posting on average once a day to just once a week, and I stopped the mass promotion of the site and instead concentrated my efforts on a few key online places – Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Stumble and Delicious. This immediately cut my online promotion hours from around 4 a day to just 30 minutes. My traffic grew by 300% in less than two weeks as a result.

I then thought about the time I was spending every day on the promotion, and how those now just 30 minutes added up over the course of a week. And so I decided to give some online services a go that allowed me to schedule posts, tweets, status updates etc in advance. Now, I spend just one hour a week, on a Monday, scheduling for the rest of the week.

When I made this further change my traffic continued to grow, yet I was doing less!?

I then decided to take the plunge and monetise the site. I made no attempt to hide the fact from my readership, and added two sidebars reserved specifically for “Sponsored Ads”. There is no other advertising anywhere else on the site… just those two designated spaces.

The first week saw absolutely no response from the advertising, but just as I thought all hope was lost, my visitors started to get used to seeing the Ads and then the pennies started to add up. Now, in a very short space of time, I am earning the same as I did working 8 hours a day through face-to-face coaching, except I now spend just a few hours a week working from the comfort of my own home!

I guess the moral of today’s story is that there is ALWAYS an easier or more effective way of achieving your goals. It’s all about analysing what you have and what you want to achieve, then creating an action plan that will allow you to reach your goals in the quickest time frame, with the least amount of effort.

No one gets it right straight away. It’s all about understanding what you have done and the effect your actions have had, and fine tuning what you do until you achieve your goals.

Look at me, Major-Business.net became a full time job on top of a full time job! But with a bit of analysis and trial and error I was able to reduce my blog hours to just a few each week, yet still achieve the same end results.

This post was never intended to tell you how to work smarter and not harder. It was intended to give you a little “food for thought”.

How could you adjust what you do to free up some time but still achieve the same results? And think of what you could be doing with that time!

——————–>

Phil has had many other businesses including Coaching, Marketing and PR, Graphic and Website Design, and Online Learning. His current venture is Phil Johnson Business Services, providing low-cost essential services to the newly self-employed and small and medium enterprises. Aside from this Phil runs Major-Business.net, a free source of quality help, advice, tips and tricks on many business and personal development subjects, catch Phil on Twitter

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Matthew

Last week we talked about discovering your niche which is the first step in creating a profitable business as an infopreneur. This week, I’m going to talk about how you can start to build your business around your niche. I was going to put all the elements in starting your business into one post, but as this stage is so important, I thought I’d just focus on the first one:

Here’s the most important tip in starting a profitable business as an infopreneur.

1. Have a plan

Once you’ve defined the niche that you’re planning to be the basis of your business, the next step in making money from your niche is to have a plan. You can call this a business plan if you like. But importantly it needs to set out your objectives – ie what you’re going to do, how you’re going to do it and by when. This will be the foundation and the guiding light for your business. Here’s a really simple business plan on a page.

Once you’ve started on your business plan, you then need to are the questions that your business plan will need to answer:

a) How are you going to serve your niche?

Think about how you going to serve your niche. How often are you going to post? By video, podcast, written text? Are you going to write all the content yourself or enlist the help of others – where are you going to find the inspiration for your posts? Off the top of your head could you think of 50 post ideas?

b) How are you going to monetise your niche?

This is the question that most people fail to answer. Or at the very least they have a vague or fuzzy idea that they will probably make money by writing an eBook. However, at the top of this post I referred to ‘your business’. Without sales or income, you don’t have a business.

This is the most important element of your business plan – you need to think about how you’re going to monetise your site – are you going to produce your own information products, promote products of others (affiliates) or use advertisements or Google Adsense?

If you’re looking to use affiliate products you could go over to Clickbank and search for products in your niche. Clickbank is a giant market place of products which you can promote as an affiliate. (ie. you earn a commission on every sale).

When you go to Clickbank and search on any category or subcategory page, at the top of the page will be the highest selling product. You should note the GRAV number (this being the product gravity) – the higher the number, the better as it reflects the more sales it’s making.

You might also want to look at ‘future’ in the stats as this is the money on the table that you can make if visitors who buy the product you are promoting go on to buy other products from the seller – such as a membership website or training course.

Personally, I’d only promote products that I had bought or used myself – but that’s up to you.

Whether you make money from day 1 or day 450, it needs to be built into your plan – but you’ve got to have a clear idea where the income is coming from.

So, what do you think about your monetising your niche?

Matthew Needham, is a UK based professional interim manager, qualified accountant and consultant. He is the writer for The Big Red Tomato Company and member of the Infopreneur.net TIP Team. You can connect with him on Facebook or on Twitter or subscribe to his RSS feed. If you have an business problem or idea you want to chat through you can hire him for a one hour brainstorm/consulting session by Skype or Email.

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Note: This is a Guest Post from Sean Ogle at Location 180.  I can honestly say that this site has had an impact on me over the past 2 months.  It has changed how I’m going about my life.  No, I’m not moving to Bali, but I’m trying to live more passionately.  So, Enjoy this great piece from Sean and absolutely check out his site. Brandon

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The New Career Model

If you haven’t realized it yet, the business world doesn’t exactly work the way it used to.  Gone are the 30 years of service followed by a gold watch and a fat pension.  These days you’re lucky to last a fraction of that time at a single company.  Historically, security has always come in the form of a paycheck.  If you have a decent paycheck from a large corporation, you perceive that as more secure than if you’re doing something “risky”, like being an entrepreneur.

However, these days there is a new security model that is a more accurate representation of where the world is headed. No longer should you be relying on one entity to ensure that your daughter has food on the table at night.  The fact of the matter is that the barriers of entry are now so low, that it makes absolutely no sense not to have a little something on the side.

If you got laid off tomorrow, would you rather have to start over from scratch and rely on your alumni association to find a new gig, or already have a nice income stream and a legion of contacts to go to for support?

That’s what I thought.

I’m not suggesting you go out and create some massive global empire on the side (although many have), rather, I believe that there has never been a better time to start a small business around something you love.

Let’s use photography as an example since it’s such a popular hobby. There are a million ways to make money off of your love of photography.  You can sell your photos through a stock photo site for instance.  If your photographic chops aren’t up to par you can start a blog specializing in whatever aspect of the trade you find most compelling.  You can include ads, affiliate links, product sales, the options for creating an income are unlimited.

However, this isn’t even the most compelling part.

A large portion of the hour or two a day you put into the new venture will revolve around building your site and networking with like minded people.  You’ll be meeting people that you never would have known otherwise and forming relationships that both parties can benefit from somewhere down the line.

This forms the basis of the new career model and job security 2.0.

You create multiple income streams from something you enjoy, combined in tandem with meaningful relationships based off a shared interest. I’d take that over nothing but a traditional paycheck any day; and if you can have that and a paycheck, all the better.

All that said, entrepreneurship doesn’t have to be as risky as society makes it out to be.  You and your new business could be completely self sustaining after a few years (or less) of moonlighting.  Not only have you increased your income and security, but now you are able to do it doing something you’re passionate about.

I’d even go as far to say if you wanted to pursue the new job security model from a completely entrepreneurial perspective, you’d be better off as well.  Devoting ten hours a day to relationship and business building rather than just a couple will show results in much less time.   There are thousands of examples of success with this all over the internet.  Chris Guillebeau turned his love of travel into a business. Leo Babauta turned his passion for minimalism into one of the most successful blogs out there.

Point is, there’s never been a bigger opportunity than there is right now to give yourself real “job security”.

Passion and necessity breed action.  By forcing yourself to build and network, you’ll begin to do things you never thought possible, because you never had to think they were possible.  When you analyze your life from a different perspective, you realize just how many opportunities are out there.

Last year, I quit my job.  I wanted to do something I was passionate about, and refused to continue letting my boss control my life.  When I don’t even have the freedom to go get my oil changed or have a dentist appointment on a Tuesday morning you know something needs to change.

I started building a marketing business and blog on the side, and within six months I decided to take a chance.  Recently this has led me to the Manila, Bali, and Bangkok- my home for the last six months.  I have at least half a dozen small businesses that all revolve around things I love, and are growing every day. Believe me, if I can do it anyone can.  You can see exactly how far I’ve come by looking through the archives at my site Location 180.

Most importantly, I’ve met hundreds of people who are passionate about the same things I am.  I now work from wherever I want, and while I’m not making as much money as I once was as a financial analyst, I feel more secure than I ever have before.

How secure do you feel?  What Holds You Back From Doing what YOU Love?  What fears do you have?

photo credit: Abeeeer

PS.  Don’t forget to Check Sean out at Location 180.  While you are there, check out his bucketlist. 

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Karen

I don’t know about you, but I buy a lot of stuff from the internet. Especially lately as I am learning some new skills when it comes to SEO, creating and selling ebooks, sales funnels, software to use, how to attract traffic, and how to solve people’s problems.

But, throughout all this buying, I’ve come to see that many product creators are forgetting about me – the customer. Some of them are too wrapped up in ’shipping’ the product and waiting for the big bucks to roll into their Paypal account and are forgetting some of the basics.

I know that this is not about you, the experienced info creator, because YOU take care of your customers, but here’s some tips that I have for EVERYONE else.

Do Your Testing Before Launching

I don’t want to be your guinea pig. I paid good money for your product and I expect it to come fully tested before I click on the “Buy Now” button.

Please, oh, please test your products before you launch. Pretend you know nothing about your own product and go through the entire shipping path from start to finish to see what your customer will see and receive.

Remember to proof read all the text and click on all the links to make sure that they work. Typos and bad grammar are unforgiveable in today’s marketplace, especially when there is so much competition. Turning on spell check is not that hard.

Of course you don’t know how everything will proceed once you launch, especially if it’s your first time. So, do a prelaunch or a pre-prelaunch, if you have to.

Work out the kinks in the system before you go live with real customers.

Get some of your newbie friends to go through your buying path and give you feedback on your products.

It’s much better getting that feedback from them before you go live and get flooded with refund requests because you weren’t ready. Test, Test, Test.

Include The Entire Product

I bought an ebook recently and paid the ‘premium’ upsell price for the ebook and the workbooks that cost an additional $20. I really wanted the workbooks because I wanted to see how the person created them and what kind of questions they included. But, lo and behold, the next day I receive an automatic email from the creator of the ebook with a link to the workbooks for free. WHAT? As a valued customer, I got the workbooks for free. Gee, that was nice of them – after I had already paid the additional cost.

If things have changed in your product offerings, then make sure you check all of your product pages to make sure that they are still relevant.

Are your customers being fleeced for extra money because you were too lazy to check exactly what you were selling on your product pages? And, don’t just check the product pages, but check the banners, ads, newsletter offers and all communication you have regarding your products.

Did you sell something in the past that you are now giving away for free? Are you bundling products together for one low-low price, which used to be separate products? Check to see that everything associated with your paid content is not floating out there, now that you’re giving it away for free.

Make Things Easy For Your Customer

I bought a premium Wordpress plugin recently. Many of you know which one and while I’m happy with the product so far, there were some lessons for the product creators here, too.

Oh, they had a wonderful landing page and great testimonials and reviews all around the net, but did they include a FAQ or technical requirements section? Nope. You would think that people would want to know if the plugin is backwards compatible, which version of Wordpress you needed, or any other technical requirements you needed to install the thing.

This goes back to point 1 – Test the Product. After I bought the product and asked about technical requirements and if there was a FAQ, I was told from Support that they were waiting to see what kind of issues people experienced before creating one. Excuse me? Shouldn’t that be part of the prelaunch and testing mode? Waiting until after you frustrate your customers and/or expect them to email you with issues is not the path to a having happy repeat customers.

This brings me to another point – Customers are Stupid. If you are bright enough to include instructions for installation of any of your products, don’t just put it on the Thank You page and expect me to remember how to install something that I have no experience with. Why not include instructions in the email you send with the download link so that I have a reference in case I get stuck? If you are going to include instructions, then you are already expecting that people won’t know how to do something. Why hide or make things difficult for your customers? Make it very obvious and easy for them.

If you have a video that expects a certain bandwidth or certain software, then include that information before your customer buys the product so that they are informed beforehand.

Don’t Make Assumptions About Your Customers

Don’t assume that your customers have the latest and greatest and speediest computers, just because you do. Don’t assume they have the same experience or as technical as you are, either.

If you are offering video products, don’t just include a page where your customers have to have a live connection to view the video. Let them download the video so that they can watch it at their leisure and can take them with them on their own computer and watch when they want.

Also, transcribe the videos so that people who can’t watch your hours-long videos have another way of learning the information. Many people are visual learners who have to see the printed word in order to understand complex concepts. Other people can sit and watch a 90-minute video in one sitting and can grasp the concepts quickly.

Let your customer decide how they want to buy your product from you.

Don’t assume your customer knows how to do something technical or that they will figure things out.

It’s frustrating to buy something and then wait for Support to email you back or have to use my Google-fu to solve a problem that your product said it would solve (if only I could get it to work properly). Have clear step-by-step instructions, clear FAQs, clear support response times, and clear email procedures in case your customer needs help with something.

Be very clear about setting expectations with your customers. If you say that you will respond to all support emails within 1-2 days, then make sure you meet that expectation. If people are expecting a course, then make sure that it’s spelled out very clearly that it’s composed of videos only (or whatever the course is composed of).

No one likes to spend their hard-earned money and then find out that your course or product is not what they expected.

A happy customer is a returning customer who will buy from you again and again and hopefully, again. But, only if you keep them in mind when you are creating your info product (and they are not an after-thought).

What am I missing from your experiences as customers? Share with us some of the tips that you think product creators should keep in mind when selling their products. Thanks!

Karen writes at A Meaningful Existence, a blog devoted to helping others put meaning into their existence through practical personal development strategies. You can subscribe to her RSS Feed and also find her on Twitter at @kruby.

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Alex Whalley

One of my favourite quotes is by an unknown and goes a little something like this;

“If Man is to discover new oceans, he must first have the courage to lose sight of the shore”

What I like about this quote is that the metaphor is a perfect fit for my move to attempt to make a fulltime living online because it translates to the basic idea that if you want success then you need to step outside your comfort zone, but there is another reason this quote is a perfect fit and it relates to the endless ocean of information that is available online.

A friend and mentor once told me about the stages that every business goes through when it starts and one thing that stood out more than anything is this: The average time between the business plan being drawn up and action actually being taken is more than triple in an online business. This fact of course relates to the gamut of information and distractions that are available online. When you decide to start a bricks and mortar company there is not much to distract you from your original idea. It’s not like you are going to open an Italian Eatery, see an Ad for a tanning salon franchise and think ‘Now there’s a much better idea’. If your business is online however, then this can actually happen – as ridiculous as it may sound, so making sure you know exactly what you are getting into and having the staying power to steer the course is THE most important skill to learn if you are to succeed.

I love Greek Mythology (and digressing it seems) and one of the more popular stories is that of the Sirens. For those who are unfamiliar, the Sirens were three dangerous bird-women, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island.  Over the years things have changed a lot,including the mythology of old and these three Sirens are still among us – only now in the form of millions of web pages promising to do what you are already doing online, but better, faster, shinier, newer, and of course easier.

I thought the Sirens sounded quite nice.

I build niche sites around longtail keywords, market them through various means and then generate revenue from Adsense and various affiliate streams. I have been doing this for only about 3 months now but in that time have managed to create my own little system that so far has been working quite well, at least in the sense that I am making money from the sites that I build. So I was sailing along quite smoothly really – following a set course to reach the goals that I had set myself originally and doing a good job of it too, but then I heard the Sirens, and they really did sound quite nice you know.
The Sirens in question were a PLR site that offered niche sites with prebuilt templates so you simply uploaded the theme and then away you went with whatever you would have done previously except with a theme that looks much nicer and is more appropriate to the specified niche. On the surface that looked fantastic and so I spent a few hours playing around with various themes and changing some of the sites that I had to look ‘better’ and only after this did it hit me that I had been suckered into the shiny lights and was no longer sailing my own course.

What’s the best way to avoid the Sirens’ call?

When I installed and tinkered with the themes the problems were not just those of principle that said I should not be distracted from my own course. The amount of problems I had with the backend of these new themes was insane and the changes I made not only took time, they took even more when I decided to put it all back how it was. When you have decided on a course of action it is important that you stick with it and do not get distracted by the Internet Sirens along the way. These are the questions I now ask myself before even looking at something new and shiny.

• Does this fit with the goals I have set myself this week? (because it never does )
• Is this going to fit in with what I am currently doing or will it overlap and contradict? (Am  I going to have to change things – like themes!? Or is this a tool I can try using in tandem with what I already use?)
• Will I feel good about not seeing the current project or goal through to completion? (Because guaranteed, if I try something new it will distract me for a while)
• Is it really worth it to take even more of my time away while I learn and implement something new (especially when I am doing that in at least three places already!)

Obviously these questions are what help me avoid the distractions of amazing claims and pretty lights and may not be the best guide for yourself, but then the idea here is not to give you a guide, it’s to remind you that your online marketing journey takes you through the biggest distraction in existence- the internet. But then you already knew that didn’t you.

Now Click Here.

No Click HERE!!

Alex Whalley is the author of Alex Whalley.com where he writes about blogging, niche site marketing, and keyword research techniques. Alex recently quit his fulltime job to tackle niche marketing fulltime and uses his blog to catalogue and document his experiences with making money with niche sites and search engine marketing. If you’d like to see how easy it is to build, market and monetize niche sites check out his blog. You can also Follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his RSS Feed.

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Joshua Black

Many of us get trapped in the process of creating e-books.  We look at them as a single product, a book just like you would find on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, a book that has a price ceiling that the customer is willing to spend.

Now, for just a second, think of a college course or a seminar. Would you ever dream of only spending $19 to take a college class, or to be taught by a famous marketer at a seminar?

Nope, you would probably go into it assuming that you are going to shell out some money. You had a pre-conceived value in your mind about how much you needed to spend.

Well, your customers feel the same way. They put a much higher mental price tag on systems and courses than they do on a simple e-book. Yes, e-books are easier and quicker to create, but in this article I am going to show you how to create a very valuable course without having to put in too much additional effort.

Here’s what you do:

1. Create the E-book just like you would normally- Find a hungy niche that is willing to buy what you want to sell. Solve a problem that you customer wants solved RIGHT NOW.
2. Record that book in audio format- Now you are offering an additional way that the customer can digest the product without having to read the actual text.
3. Create training videos for the product- Sometime you can do this right alongside the audio, or create entirely separate videos that supplement the book.
4. Develop checklists and forms- These can be very valuable additions to a course. People love checklists, where they can use them to make sure that they are following a system step-by-step.
5. Include VALUABLE bonus material- This is not just stuff that the customer can dig up somewhere else, but stuff that can only be found with your course. Many times, if an infopreneur does it correctly, the customer may purchase the product just so they can get the bonus material.

By taking your e-book as a base and building the rest of a course around it, you can quickly increase the value of your product and have a system that the customer completely expects to pay much more money to obtain.

Of course your product will have to live up to your customers’ expectations, but if you can deliver on what you promised in your sales copy, you could have a winner. Think BIG from the beginning of your e-book journey and you will be rewarded BIG in the end.

What about you? What are some ways that you use to enhance the value of your e-book or services? Have you ever created a course from something that started out as just a small report and grew into a large product? Let’s get the discussion started below…

Until next week,

-Joshua Black

Joshua Black is the creator of the Underdog Millionaire Blog. Having started over a dozen small businesses of his own in the last 15 years, he is small business consultant, copywriter, information marketer and permanent student of small business.  He is also the creator of the Ultimate Information Product Report.  You can also sign up for the daily Underdog Millionaire small business Tip Sheet and not only will you get a wealth of small business, marketing, and sales information, but you will also receive 5 FREE success books (including Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich). Click here to sign up.

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Hey InfoPreneurs,

Just wanted to give a quick update on the ventures I’ve started this week.  Remember my first posts about Building a Million Dollar Business (Million Dollar Part 1 and Million Dollar Part 2), well I want to give you some tips and keep you up to speed on what has been happening this week.

Venture 1…never really got off the ground.  The concept was conceived and written in my journal.  It was originally the concept that led to the Part 2 post.  It is a venture that I think could make about $10-$15,000 per month, for one niche per month, of net income.  There are virtually an unlimited number of these opportunities from what I can tell.

Venture 2…more or less has become my pet project, starting immediately.  I’ve been working hard core the past 2 days.  Why?  Well, I made one sale this week, and have another sale in the works.  This one sale should lead to approximately $350 of Profit.  Here is the really cool thing.  This one sale has the potential to lead to …who knows…50 or 100 sales.  My downfall though is not having an actual product ready to go that I can mass produce.  Dolt!  I guess I need to learn from my own courses, huh ?

Test Your Market First

Always test your market first.  You do not want to run high expenses developing something that nobody wants.  I’ve been there and done that.  Are your ebooks selling like hot cakes?  If not, maybe there isn’t a whole lot of demand.  Or, possibly the market is sooooo flooded with that information…it’s not a premium.

Raving Review

My first customer gave me a raving review.  His friend wants in also.  So, I did a quick test…received feedback, and the market desire seems to be high.

Bottlenecks – Don’t Allow Them to Be You

I quickly see that if I continue down this path after 2 sales….that I’m going to be a bottleneck.  In order to capitalize, I need to really systematize how this business is going to come together.  So, that is what I am pouring my heart and soul into at this moment.

Remember, this is ultimately about building cashflow streams that do not tie us down to a desk and imprison us.  When we are our own bosses…we can be NUTS sometimes, right ?    I’m a lunatic to work for.

After this small market test, my mind has begun to just stream with possibilities….and the possibilities are BIG.  I won’t go into too many details here…cause you never know…maybe the entire venture will flop and I’ll be left looking like a dufus.

I am going to revise my 60 day goal I made in the Part 2 post.

On the low side….I’m shooting for $15,000 of Net Profit.  So, I have 57 days to get cracking.    Should be Interesting.

On the high side…and this is going for the stars….I know…$30,000 Net Profit.

Who knows….I may not even hit $5,000, but it helps to set better goals, and readjust them, after you have a chance to test your market.

BottomLine

Test your market first (maybe it’s a free ebook offering, maybe you hold a webinar …it’s up to you).  Once you test the market…Put it on HOLD.  That is the phase I am right now.  I’m not going to take any more orders for 1 or 2 weeks.  Once you’ve tested and had good results…THEN build a product… whether it is an information product, or a service, or a physical product to deliver to your hungry market.

I am building my backend system up using Nanacast and a Wordpress site.  I’m going to finish the ordering process for it today and tomorrow….work on video stuff, and then get them transcribed and edited….and then who knows….possibly going to check into getting a VA through Chris at Virtual Business Lifestyle.

Anyway.  Think Big.  Think Cashflow.

Who knows…maybe it will only make $10K per month (that would be way coooool with me)…Remember from our example in Part 2….that $7K per month of passive income actually gives you a full fledged business worth $1MM.  Try to start thinking in terms of cashflow for your businesses.  A business that has the potential to be sold.

Making $7,000 per month (is worth $1,050,000 at 8% return on invest) sounds, and IS a lot easier….than going out and trying to sell a $29 ebook and make $1MM in cold hard cash, right ?  Now, if you were able to produce a system that sold your $29 ebooks, day in and day out, and make $7,000 per month in net cashflow….then you technically have a Million Dollar Business that can be sold.  Make sense?

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Phil

Its all about the money…. Right?

Let me tell you a little story…

“Once upon a time in a land not all that very far away from YOU, lived a budding InfoPreneur.

One day our InfoPreneur-to-be decided that it was time to “get rich quick”, and had heard that the Internet was the perfect place to do so.

Our InfoPreneur very quickly jumped in, feet first, with no real idea of how the goal of “getting rich quick” could actually be achieved.

Money was thrown at setting up, and our hyped-up money-fuelled InfoPreneur-to-be started racing ahead, going solid for the best part of a month.

Boredom quickly set in having not seen any real results and so productivity slowly deteriorated to nothing.

Just a few months after starting this sure-fire money making scheme, our InfoPreneur in training threw in the towel, cut all loses, and walked away weeping whilst licking wounds and dreaming up another “fast buck” idea.

The End”.

OK, so it’s perhaps a little far fetched, but actually this is something that I tend to come across day-in day-out.

It’s true… people see the Internet as a great place to make a quick buck, then move on. Unfortunately, this isn’t really the case, than less of course you are going to reside yourself to eBay and the likes.

Making money online is actually extremely difficult, time consuming, competitive, and draining, both physically and psychologically.

Most people try to make money through blogging. Blogging is a craze that everyone wanted a piece of, but no one really understood. And it is still the case today. That is why few succeed and many fail.

But let’s take a look at the successful blogs… the ones that are making money. What did they do that the rest didn’t? Well, actually, quite a bit if we are going to be honest! Read on…

Have a clear plan

If you are going to achieve something you quite obviously need to know how you are going to achieve it. You will need to know about the obstacles that will be thrown in your way, and you will need to plan for emergencies and so on. Yet it’s surprising how few actually do any of this and start by putting their best foot forward.

Set Timescales

Understand from the very start that if you are going to have any success in making money online that you will need to commit to the long haul. Building a blog that is trusted enough for people to start throwing money your way takes time. Map out timescales and when you expect to achieve each of your goals by. Use these timescales to regularly review your progress, and don’t be afraid to adjust as you go.

Be Unique

A successful blog is a unique blog. You may not be the only person writing or talking about a particular subject, but you can make it your own! I guess what I am saying is “don’t follow the crowd”. Do your own thing, and be the one that others follow instead.

Forget Making Money

Sounds a bit silly right? Forget making money online, and focus instead on enriching peoples lives. Give them top quality information that they will benefit from for the rest of their lives. Give them information that they can start using from the word go. THIS gives them a reason to keep coming back. THIS builds trust. THIS builds loyalty. And, most importantly, ALL OF THIS eventually makes money.

It’s easy to sell to someone that trusts you. It’s hard to sell to a stranger. But, once you have gained that trust, ensure that when you do sell to them, that you deliver each and every time, that you deliver what you promise, and that what you promise is worth every single penny and more.

Approach a new blog from the frame of mind that you want to create a community. Keep it fun, friendly and free. Then, once you have some solid foundations in place, start to gently ease in a way of monetising your community.

Don’t pretend!

This is a massively important part! DO NOT, under any circumstance, try to kid or confuse your visitors (that now trust you) into thinking you are something you are not.

If you are going to monetise your blog through the placing of advertisements then do so openly. Create dedicated advertising space and label it as such. Give your visitors the option of clicking on the ads that they know are ads, and not those hidden text links that simply “con” your visitors into making you money.

Or, if you are going to monetise through the sale of eBooks etc, then make sure that they know exactly what they are getting for their money. Deliver the product on time, at the cost you advertise, and be open to feedback, settling any complaints immediately.

Be Customer Friendly

Remember, making money is easier when you have the trust of your followers. Don’t loose that trust. Regardless of whether they are paying customers or not, ensure that you treat each and every visitor with the same respect. Be friendly, be welcoming, be “INSPIRATIONAL”.

Dedication is Key!

And finally, remember that your dedication is the key to making money.

No one wants to come across a new blog that only sticks around a few months or a year or two. If you are truly passionate about making money that will make a real difference to you personally then commit yourself to the long haul.

Don’t think months, think years!

Don’t think years, think forever!

You must love your topic to be able to produce quality content time and time again to continue to draw in your readership, so make sure you get it right from the start by planning ahead!

What next?

Well if you have your strategy and you have your commitment then its time to get blogging of course!!

And TheInfoPreneur.net is the place to find out how to take your blogging further, such as increasing traffic through online promotion. There is a great team of writers posting daily… so my final departing Tip…

Come back and check out the Tip Team every day!

——————–>

Phil has had many other businesses including Coaching, Marketing and PR, Graphic and Website Design, and Online Learning. His current venture is Phil Johnson Business Services, providing low-cost essential services to the newly self-employed and small and medium enterprises. Aside from this Phil runs Major-Business.net, a free source of quality help, advice, tips and tricks on many business and personal development subjects, catch Phil on Twitter

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Matthew

Last week I wrote a post here about Making Money From a Niche Blog where I talked about 2 sites which make good monthly incomes from their niches: Guinea pigs and raw foods.

In this post I’m going to reveal the secret for making money from your niche and ways to discover a profitable niche for your business.

Here’s the secret to making money from your niche:

The best “secret” to making money from the internet is find a under-served niche – and serve them with the products and information that they want. In other words: Find a niche and exploit it.

It really is as simple as that….

How to Discover your niche

This is one of the most common questions that I’m asked by my readers and here are my top ways to discover your niche. In this list you may get best results by combining methods to give you more angles and information on your niche.

1. Follow your Passion

This is probably the easiest of the niches to follow: What hobbies, sports or interests do you have that you can talk passionately about? If you’re into golf or football (soccer), excellent, then you’ve already got a starting point. However, these are too a niche for you to make money from, so you need to look for narrower niches. For example ‘how to play your way out of the bunker’ or ‘how to take corner kicks that get goals’.

Or maybe you have two interests which you treat as completely separate. For example say you’re into yoga and you’re into rock climbing. These are two very different activities! But what about Yoga for rock climbers – where you put together exercises especially for rock climbers?

2. Amazon

When you’re looking for a niche to focus on, look for books in the broad subject area that you’re interested in. Let’s take again the example of golf. Going over to Amazon, type in the address search bar the broad niche ‘Golf’ then select a book like I’ve done here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Golf-Dummies-UK-Alicia-Harney/dp/0470018119/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279533351&sr=1-9#reader_0470018119

And then select the ‘Look inside’ feature. Then check the table of contents and you have a whole host of potential niche topics. Eg Swing, etiquette etc.

3. eBay Pulse

Often overlooked as source of discovering your niche, you could look to eBay to find out what’s selling and make a niche out of the products. To find out what’s hot on eBay you can check out the eBay Pulse.

Say for example you take the niche of Baby products, by selecting the category ‘Baby’ you’ll see that the top selling items are ‘Baby Clothes’ – you could further sub divide that into boys clothes or girls clothes. Or by ages eg 0-3 mths 3-6 mths etc.

4. Google

Google is probably the number 1 way of tracking down your niche, however, not by using it’s standard functionality, but by a couple of little known tools together. The first of these tools is Google Trends which basically does what it says on the tin. It provides a list of the most popular searches on Google at any point in time.

Then having found a potential topic, you could then take the search trend item and then search on the same topic in Google.

So, say a hot topic was ‘Tomato’ you could then go into standard Google Search bar and click the ‘More Search Tools’ on the left hand of the screen – Then click Wonder Wheel – you’ll then see ‘niches’ appropriate to your search.

Which will look ike this:

So you can pick a niche from the sub topics. Or drill into each area by clicking on the sub topic to further narrow your niche.

Another way of discovering your niche from Google is to use the Keyword research tool where you could type in the subject of Tomato like we’ve just done and discover topics relating to that search.

Here you can see that the phrase ‘Pruning Tomato Plants’ generates c.4400 searches a month – could you own a niche like this?

The general advice is that you need to look for the small traffic niches c5000 searches per month and not the big ones as it’s likely that the smaller traffic niches will be less served and you’ll have less competition.

5. Magazines

Another source of discovering your niche is look at magazines. Whilst you could go to your local book store or newseller, they’ll only carry a few titles. But, after a few minutes of Google searching I came across this website listing all the 2000 odd magazines in the UK something similar probably exists for your country. Browse the magazines that are available and look for magazines with paid subscriptions (as these are hot prospects and potential targets for your niche).

There’s a sure bet that if a magazine exists for your niche, then there’s money to be made in your niche.

So, what do you think? Anything to add?

Matthew Needham, is a UK based professional interim manager and qualified accountant. He is the writer for The Big Red Tomato Company and member of the Infopreneur.net TIP Team. You can connect with him on Facebook or on Twitter or subscribe to his RSS feed. If you have an business problem or idea you want to chat through you can hire him for a one hour brainstorm/consulting session by Skype or Email.

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