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How to Get More Money

By Christian

When I was selling vacuum cleaners door to door (yes, I did!) there always came a time when my demonstration was finished, and it was time to show the customer the price sheet. It was a stressful time. In sales we have a high tech name for this. It is “asking for the order”. If you want someone to buy something you need to usually ask them to buy it.

Duh, right?

Could it be simpler?

Well, most people don’t do it. In business, you’re probably actually very good at what you do. After all, you do it all day every day. You have skills that are valuable to others, and you’re probably comfortable giving a customer a brochure, responding to emails with questions or any number of other things that demonstrate your ability to give the customer or client value. But do you take the next step and actually ask people to buy?

Working with sales people, marketers and business owners in tons of different niches, I’m regularly confronted with this basic step being skipped. It’s essential to remember that people rarely take action on their own. Their needs to be a precipitating event. Something needs to happen to prompt their action. They need to be shown the next step. You’re the professional, no? Well if you’re the professional, you know when it’s time to make a buying decision. Of course, sometimes that decision is going to be “no thanks”. That’s part of being in business. But ASKING FOR THE ORDER is also part of being in business. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

If you don’t ask you don’t get. Really!

How to get more money

Sometimes business owners stress on what to charge. Especially when it comes to consulting, we often feel pressured to sell our time much too cheaply. Back to my vacuum sales example…the price I charged back then (this was many years ago at this point…I’m certain the price is higher now) was about $1600. Yes, $1600 for a vacuum cleaner. You may think that is a very high price, and you’d be right. Importantly, I believe in the product, and I will only ever use that type of vacuum cleaner to this day. I only ever sell products or services that I believe in 100%. That said, it’s very expensive.

So who in the world pays that much for a vacuum cleaner? The answer is no one does…with one exception. Those who are asked. Of those who are asked to purchase a vacuum cleaner for $1600, approximately 1 in 3 say yes. 1 in 3? Yes. 1 in 3. Is asking for the order really that effective? In my experience, yes it is.

It appears that if you ask, you just might get what you want…not every single time, but pretty darn often.

It’s expensive to be inexpensive

Why would you sell your time (or anything for that matter) too cheaply? What ends up happening? You end up resenting the work, don’t you? And clients still complain that you charge too much, don’t they? How much is the right amount to charge for your product? Charge the amount that makes you feel good about doing it. Pricing is an element of marketing much more than it ever reflects actual value. Actual value doesn’t exist. Pricing does exist, so charge what you’re worth!

Does this mean you have to charge $1000 an hour? Of course not, but I know many consultants who do. Even more. The point is not price. The point is that there are plenty of clients who will pay basically whatever you ask them to pay. You have to position yourself, and then simply ASK FOR THE ORDER. That’s how you get more money.

Make Your New Blog Look Awesome Easily

By Christian

This video is part of the “How to Start a Blog” video training series for new business bloggers. If you like this video, you can see the first and second videos also. Please subscribe to get access to all 12 training videos at no cost 🙂

Today’s video goes over the important concept of making your business blog look awesome. No one wants to have their business blog like a piece of junk! Yes, if you want me to create a blog for you, I’m happy to do so. It’s not rocket science, but if you want to skip the learning curve altogether and just have me do it for you, then visit this page for details.

If you’re short on cash and/or want to spend some time on your own, then this video series will show you everything you need.

Questions? I’m here to help!

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How to Grow Your New Blog and Get all the Traffic You Need

By Christian

This is the second video in the “How to Start a Blog” video series for new business bloggers. If you want to fire your business blog off quickly and simply, this video blog training will show you everything you need to know to get great results with your business blog. If you want to check out the first video, it’s here. You can get the entire series by subscribing for free 🙂

Why am I giving away free video training instead of charging for it? A couple big reasons:

You’re awesome.
If you find the information I give for free to be helpful, the chances are better that you’ll feel comfortable buying consulting or products from me in the future.
If you like the video, I hope you’ll share it with your friends and coworkers. Win-win.

Have any questions? I’m here to help.

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Essential First Steps for a New Business Blog

By Christian

I put out a video series for beginning business bloggers recently that has received a lot of great feedback from readers. This was originally put out on my last blog “Next Level Blogger”, but since a lot of my clients and readers are new to blogging, I want to share some of the key videos from this series with you here.

If you like this video and want to see the entire series, please subscribe, and I’ll make sure you get all 12 videos. It’s several hours of video training, and I’m not charging for it, because before you hire me to help you take your business marketing to the next level, I want you to be able to judge for yourself if I have valuable ideas to share with you.

If you have any questions, let me know!

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Why I’ve never read Seth Godin’s blog

By Christian

I spent years not reading Seth Godin’s blog, and there were good reasons for that. At least they were reasons I thought were good at the time.

His design is horrible.
His posts are all short, with no pictures. No attempt to be professional.
He doesn’t interact with his audience there.

I could go on, but you get the point. He breaks rules. He even breaks his own rules. And that all added up to show me he just had this massively popular blog…only because he was already popular anyway. It wasn’t because it was an awesome blog. It’s popularity was simply a byproduct of his success in other areas, namely speaking and publishing.

I recently started reading Seth’s blog very often, because I’ve found his insights very helpful and realized he’s actually one of the few bloggers out there who can post almost daily and maintain high quality at the same time. There really is no filler on his blog that I’ve seen so far. He’s a really authentic dude. Not just in his books but on his blog also. Day in and day out. He’s just a guy who’s doing this for the right reasons. He just doesn’t happen to care whether or not I like his blog or not.

Seth seems to have learned some things a long time ago that I just learned very recently. Namely:

It’s not your job to get people to like you.
It’s not your job to always put your best foot forward.
It’s your job to innovate and provide value, in whatever capacity that is consistent with your competencies.
Innovation does not require optimization. Innovation is often quite raw.
Even if your true audience doesn’t get you at first (and if you’re a real leader they probably won’t), they will get you eventually. But you have to stick around. You have to still be there when they’re ready, or it’s all for nothing.
Breaking rules is necessary, but it also has a cost.

Seth just published a post today which proves my thoughts on this. The non-optimized life shows that he’s been operating on these principles for a long time now.
I wasn’t going to make this blog live for a little while longer, because it’s not complete. It’s not ready yet. But I’m going to publish this post anyway, because actions are key. When is your blog complete anyway? What matters is doing what matters.

The biggest myth of “making money online”

By Christian

disappointed — I don't mean to disappoint, but there are some "internet marketing" myths that really need to be cleared up 🙂

Do you want to “make money online”? Do you want to “make money blogging”? Do you want to “build an internet business”? Well, forget about it. This article describes why the whole “make money online” thing is completely misunderstood by most business owners!

I’ve spent some time thinking about the whole “internet business” thing lately, and this is part of what originally caused me to start this Dangerous Tactics blog. I’ve read articles recently like this one from David Risley, where he talks about his feelings on why some people make money online…and why most people don’t. Derek Jensen unloads on us here on why people need to stop talking about how to make money online. Sonia Simone has also shared some awesome thoughts with us about why you can’t make money blogging…ironically enough, her post appears on one of the most profitable blogs in existence. Bottom line, the internet is a misunderstood place. It’s a new frontier, and there’s a lot of opportunity here, but let’s not lose track of what the internet is…and what it is not.

The biggest myth of “making money online” is that the internet has somehow changed how business works. It hasn’t. Here’s the truth:

The internet is a place, not a tactic. The internet has changed HOW people buy, not WHY they buy.

On the surface, this may seem like a minor difference, but the difference has massive ramifications. If you take some time to absorb this truth, it will affect how you approach your business on many levels. It will make you more profitable, because you’ll realize all the flash-bang, snazzy products and courses on “how to make money online” are built on a false premise. They are built on the premise that the internet is some magical place that YOU don’t understand. And of course once you “get it”, you’ll be able to “leverage the internet” and make millions.

How to really make money online

To be completely fair, there ARE some things you need to learn about marketing online. There’s some jargon and some moderately techy stuff that you need to learn, but once you “get it”, you’ll realize the internet is just another place where people hang out. You’ll realize that technology has changed…quite a bit. But people…haven’t changed a bit. Most of us are a bit crazy, mixed up, emotional, awesome, a lot of fun…and we buy LOTS of stuff, spend TONS of money on things, and we buy things for the EXACT same reasons as we did a million years ago.

This is what we need to learn how to do: we need to learn dangerous ninja selling tactics, so we can be highly effective and sell lots of our stuff. And yes, we’re going to do it online. We’re going to run blogs and squeeze pages, and we’re going to build email lists and sell things on the internet, and I’m going to show you how to do it. But we’re NOT building an “internet business”. We’re building a “real” business. Does that make sense?

Real Tactics for Selling to Real People

On this blog I share with you many of the ways I’ve made money…both online and offline for the past decade or so. The tactics are solid. They work on the internet. They work off the internet too. How could it be the case that these tactics are so powerful? One reason: people buy for the same reasons, both online and offline. At the end of the day, you’re either running a real business or you’re not.

If you’re running a real business, you will make money. If you’re not, you can use all the blog formulas, make money online formulas, launch formulas or any other type of formulas, and it won’t matter. Formulas don’t make money. Businesses make money.

Now you can choose to market your business online, and that would be a smart decision, seeing as how so many people are here. But don’t think of your business as an “internet business”, and don’t think of your marketing as “internet marketing”. It’s business. And it’s marketing. Just plain old business and marketing.

Screw the internet

The internet could implode tomorrow, and I’d still be rockin, because I don’t run an internet business. I run a business that I happen to market exclusively online right now. If something happened to the interwebz, I would just change my marketing plan. Problem solved. I bet the chances are good that you want that type of flexibility and security in your business as well, no?

If you think of yourself as an “internet entrepreneur” or a “social media marketer” or whatever, then go visit your local shopping mall and try to find a business that considers itself a “mall business”. Try to find a “how to launch a mall business” ebook somewhere. Yeah. Just because a business is located at the mall doesn’t mean it’s a “mall business”, and just because your business is engaged primarily in marketing online shouldn’t define you either. Most internet-based businesses have a LOT more in common with their brick and mortar counterparts than they realize. Figure out your business, and I bet you will see you’re not an “internet entrepreneur” after all. You’re simply an entrepreneur. That’s pretty liberating, no?