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Is Your Business Blog Viable?

By Christian

Such an important question, don’t you think? Yet how many of us fail to ask ourselves this question and give it a serious, comprehensive answer? Don’t shortchange yourself. This is something to take seriously. Not every business blog works, and not every idea is successful. Importantly, there are always reasons for failure of success!

Most people who read this site are interested in blog tips, social media for business and generally taking your business to the next level using these tools. Rock on. But is your business blog viable to begin with? Because if it’s not, no amount of blog marketing (or any marketing for that matter) will make it work.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What am I selling?

Psst…the answer is not “widgets”. That’s the product. You know…the steak. You sell the sizzle, not the steak. This is Sales 101 of course, but amazingly most business owners are not truly in touch with what they’re ACTUALLY SELLING. What engages your customers? What gets them to act? Why do they buy from you? What emotionally causes them to tell their friends about you? What is your sizzle? What makes you different? If you can’t answer this clearly and succinctly, you don’t know what you’re selling, and that is dangerous.

Do people want what I’m selling?

If you take the principle of “selling sizzle” you can quickly realize that there are many potential reasons people buy from you other than the actual product (or service) you’re selling. People buy for emotional reasons, not practical ones. Are you struggling to make your sales goals? In other words, are you failing to make the money you know you deserve from your business? Then you are either not selling something people want, or you are not IN TOUCH with why people actually buy from you? Do people buy from you because you’re conveniently located? Because you have a great smile? Because you have the best price? Because they truly believe you can help them with their particular problem more than anyone else can? What is it that’s actually causing the sale? Make sure your marketing is in alignment with that, and you will get beautiful results.

There is a restaurant (I won’t mention the name of the franchise) in my town that is the dirtiest restaurant in maybe the whole city. The service is horrible to an almost comical level. Yet they are the most profitable restaurant in the entire chain. Why? They have a beautifully convenient location. They are horrible in almost every way, except location. When it comes to location, they are invincible. We could discuss the ethical ramifications of this of course, but my point is that they know what they’re selling. They’re not selling a sanitary or enjoyable dining experience, and they make no attempt to do so. They are selling poor quality food at a high price to people who don’t want to drive a few minutes out of their way. Clearly, their are a lot of people who want this, because they rake in the cash, and they don’t challenge their business model. They are selling convenience. What are you selling? And…do people want what you’re selling?

Am I Hoping or Executing?

When it comes to marketing, a lot of business owners simply throw a bunch of stuff out there and hope something sticks. There’s something wrong with this approach of course. First, it’s expensive. Second, when something works, the scatter shot approach isn’t very good at indicating to you what works and what doesn’t. So you have no choice but to continue doing everything, for fear of losing whatever IS working. This is horribly inefficient.

Are you blogging? Why? What is your plan? What…specifically…do you hope to achieve from your blogging efforts? A blog is a fantastic communication tool, a way of creating a powerful community, a way of testing ideas, selling products and services, even creating new income streams that were never possible for your business before. But if you don’t approach it deliberately, you’re simply putting up a blog and hoping it works.

Instead of putting all the effort into blogging and marketing your business and blindly hoping for the best, do the research up front. Do it now. Talk to your people. Talk to your customers. Determine what you’re really selling, the most effective way to engage your audience on an emotional and effective level, and decide how you want to use your blog as a way of reaching people in a helpful and powerful way.

A business blog is not magic, it’s a powerful tool. Like a surgeon’s 10 blade. With deliberate, careful and trained use, it can create results that are amazingly helpful and even life-changing. But the same tool when used recklessly can do a lot of damage. It’s not the tool that produces any magic. The tool is simply a mechanism for producing a result. The magic comes from you. Do the ground work. You know…the boring stuff! It will pay you huge dividends.

Watch Me Steal a Plugin From Lisa Irby ;)

By Christian

Have you ever seen someone using a plugin on their site, but you can’t tell what plugin they’re using? I just grabbed this Twitter plugin for Next Level Blogger, and I wanted to share with you how you can learn what plugin someone is using. Also, check out this Twitter plugin I’m installing here. I hope you dig it 🙂

A Trick to Getting Started Blogging – Listen More Than You Talk

By Christian

time-to-start-blogging — Yeah, it's time to starting your business blog already! If you're on the fence, this article has a couple tips for you 🙂

A lot of you are on the fence, no? Perhaps some or all of these have transpired:

You’ve heard me and others talk about the high value of blogging
You want to get in better touch with your customers
You want to reach out to more customers and broaden your base
You are seeing a significant increase in costs associated with traditional marketing and want to find more cost effective ways to engage your audience
You WANT to start a blog…it just looks like fun (it is, you know!)

So what’s the hang up? After talking with many of you for the last several months, I’ve discerned there are three big reasons many of you remain on the fence. You want to start blogging, but these concerns must be addressed first.

It’s kind of techy…you might not be sure how to install your own blog software, etc.
You can’t imagine always having something new to say…coming up with new posts consistently over time seems quite daunting.
Writing to an audience of zero seems like a drag; you want to be confident you can build a good readership

I will be offering a series of video tutorials on dvd showing you how to research, install and operate a business blog. For those of you concerned with any of these three concerns, this video coaching series will answer these concerns in detail.

I’m doing this for one simple reason: these are the most common things I go over with clients for my consulting rate via web conferencing, so it makes sense to me to create a product which offers the exact same content but costs only a fraction of what one-on-one consulting costs. Does that make sense? So any of you on the fence but who cannot pay for consulting, this will give you everything you need for a very affordable price.

That said, I want to sell you on the power of listening. Listening is the key to building a successful blog marketing campaign. It may sound intuitive to pay attention to your audience, but when you look around, not nearly enough (in my opinion) of it is actually going down.

We worry about SEO, what to write about, what to tweet about, how to make our sites look cool…this is all talking. Granted, you need to open your mouth on occasion if you want anyone to know you’re there, but it’s essential to understand that unless your product or service is grandly original…one of a kind, never-existed-before-on-the-face-of-the-planet-original, there is already a vast amount of conversation already going on around what you’re doing. Tap into it, and funnel a portion of it back to your site. How? By listening.

Why Listening is Key

build-your-blog-by-listening — Struggling to come up with content for your blog? Strugging to get enough traffic? Shut up and listen for a bit! There is HUGE traffic and conversation going all already. All you have to do is tap into it.

There is a simple reason why listening will do you more good than talking. Here it is…if all you do is talk, then all you’ll be capable of saying is drivel. That will do you no good at all. You can only create valuable content in direct proportion to how much you listen. And listening must come first of course. You know those bloggers who post every single day, and the content they put out is actually good stuff? They are dramatically tuned into their audience. They follow a lot of people on Twitter and actually pay attention to what people are saying. They incessantly read good content online, and respond to it. They listen intently. They listen first, then they respond.

Blogging is a conversation. When you go to a party or a conference, do you stress out about what you’re going to say? No. You go and meet people; hang out and have fun getting to know new people. This is how it’s done in person. This is ALSO how it’s done online.

Listening Takes Care of Everything

Have a problem with getting traffic to your blog? Then you’re spending too much time on YOUR blog and not enough time on OTHER people’s blogs. When you’re on your own blog, you can’t listen (unless you already have a strong traffic stream and lots of comments). Spend time reading what’s going on in other places instead. Read other blogs, and when you have something to say…leave a comment. Pay attention, because a lot of your comments will spark quick and easy inspiration for a blog post. I’ve seen it happen over and over again. I leave a comment on a post somewhere, and I find I actually have more to say about it…thus a blog post is born. You don’t have to grind it out…it happens automatically. It happens naturally.

And there is even more value than that…because the post is in direct response to an ongoing conversation. You see? There is already confirmed interest in the topic; this makes your post relevant. Instead of having to constantly tap into your own genius, you spend time listening. Tap into the genius of others.

And when you spend time on other blogs, forums, etc…occasionally leaving comments and interacting with other people, guess what’s happening? You’re networking. You’re engaging people on their home turf, in a place where they’re comfortable and at ease. And when they find they like you…when they find you’re genuine and actually have good stuff to say, what do you think will happen? They will visit your site. They will naturally want to know more about you.

See, it’s not about finding the magic keyword. It’s not about creating the ultimate blog design. It’s not about how often you post or how long (or short) your posts are. It’s not about posting links to your articles on Twitter. It’s about simply finding your audience where they already are…and listening to them. When you spend time doing that first, your content takes care of itself. Your traffic takes care of itself.

So am I full of it? Or am I onto something? Instead of worrying about how to use Twitter and pondering what magical tweets you can send out to get that golden traffic stream, maybe you can seek out and follow people you want to reach out and pay attention to what they’re talking about. By paying attention and actually caring about about your audience, everything else in a very real way, takes care of itself.

3 Ninja Secrets for Those Struggling to Take Their Blog to the Next Level

By Christian

I’m writing today directly to a segment of my readers who are frustrated and/or worried about how their blog is doing. A lot of you are struggling to get the result you’re looking for with your blog. I hear you. First of all, I want to be very clear. If you’re one of the readers here who has expressed frustration to me in the last few months since I’ve been doing this blog, I want you to know a very important (#1) ninja secret…your blog is doing a lot more than you think it is…seriously.

Your Blog is Not a Short Term Engagement

this-is-your-year — It's true...this is your year, and the benefits to starting your blog are significant! But don't think of your blog in the same way as your other marketing. A blog is a long term endeavor. If you go into it expecting immediate results, you're not in it for the right reasons.

A blog is not a short term endeavor. It’s not like placing an ad and then watching for the results immediately. Please don’t put that pressure on yourself. It’s just not realistic. A blog is a long term project that you will ideally maintain for a long time. The principle is quite simple actually…it takes a while to build a significant audience in most cases. Are there exceptions? Of course, and you could end up being one of them. But in most cases, it just takes a while to build a large readership, especially if you’re just doing it part-time and not spending a significant budget on marketing.

Building the result is a long term project that gradually builds up momentum. Before you know it, your blog will have momentum and it will eventually become a force to be reckoned with, but don’t expect that to happen in month one. If you approach blogging as a magic bullet, you’ll be disappointed. But if you approach it for what it is…a long term marketing and community-building endeavor, you’ll see the true value of what you’re doing in the short term.

For all you bloggers out there that have only 50 subscribers…guess what, 5 of those subscribers will likely end up buying something from you and tell their friends about you. Those first 5 advocates are where it all starts. If you write them off as insignificant, you’ll miss all the benefits to come. Yes, it starts small, but your first subscribers aren’t “insignificant” or “small”…they’re the most important subscribers you’ll EVER have.

Bottom line: your blog isn’t nearly as small as you think it is, and you’re doing a lot more right than you think you are!

Everyone Struggles…Struggling Rocks!

Here’s another (#2) ninja secret: I struggle also. No matter how awesome and strikingly fantastic you think I am (joking), I have a million things to learn about sales and marketing, and yes…blogging. 10 years in, and I’m just getting started. I’m a total noobe.

Here’s another (#3) ninja secret: Even A-listers struggle. Yes, even the guys and gals who you think have all the answers and have all their ducks in a row (seriously, who says that? I’m bringin it back!) look at their analytics sometimes and say “what the hell is THAT?” Everyone struggles to get the result. Everyone gets thrown for a loop sometimes. The problem is not the struggle…the struggle is the GOOD stuff. The problem is in thinking you’re the only one. The problem is in thinking you’re struggling alone and somehow not smart enough, lucky enough or talented enough to succeed. Please believe me for god’s sake, if I can make money and build a business around a blog, you can too.

Here’s a fourth and final secret for today: That’s how you get the result…struggling. Believe it or not, that’s the key. Struggling and doing the work, that’s your ticket out of this crummy joint and to the good life you hope to achieve after building your thriving blog community. It will be a beautiful thing, and it will be worth the work you put into it and then some. You will be glad you did it. You will look back and say “Wow, I’m really glad I stuck it out.”

But how do you know you’re on the WRONG path?

When you feel like you have all the answers.
When you call yourself a guru.
When you have an “automated solution” or a “maintenance-free” blog. Haha. Yeah, right. Sucker.
When you are NOT struggling.

The Key to Getting Results…

key-to-blogging-success — The key to success in blogging is a lot simpler than most gurus would have you believe 🙂

Is there such a thing as a beautiful place in business? Can you make it to easy street? Believe me, you can. But you cannot get there by worrying or doubting yourself, and here’s what you cannot achieve: You cannot get to a place where you’re finished. You’ll never be complete. You’ll never be perfect, so therefore there will always be work to do. There will always be something to focus on and improve, and that is a struggle. It requires digging in. It requires work. So dig in…struggle, and do it with confidence.

So when you’re struggling, how do you know what to do? You are already doing it. You read, and you ask around. You execute, make mistakes, learn from your mistakes are make corrections…and then go execute again. Here’s the problem: a lot of you are trying to “figure it out”, and it doesn’t work that way. A lot of you are looking for a blog post or a consultant or a book to instill some bit of knowledge in you that is going to make everything make sense. Ain’t gonna happen. Research is essential, but at the end of the day you have to DIVE IN. You solve one problem at a time. Then you move on to the next problem, and solve that. Then you move on to the next problem. That’s success…as mundane as it sounds, that’s how you do it.

It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. -Thomas Watson Sr.

Many of you feel bad because you’re at the beginning and not sure how to get big results from your blog. I just wanted to encourage you today, because you see…you’re doing it. You’re already doing it. You read this blog and others. You ask questions, and you apply that information to your business one piece at a time. That’s how it’s done. Is building a successful blog really this simple? Yes, it is. Keep going!

How to Make Money Blogging Pt 2

By Christian

Hi guys! Well I promised a follow up on the last post about making money with your blog. As it turns out, I will be doing a few of these. I appreciate the emails I got on the last one. Interestingly also, most of them came in via Facebook. I like that the Facebook crowd is reading Next Level Blogger. Much thanks! I understand that a lot of you are concerned with getting some cash flow coming in from your blogging efforts quickly, so of course I am more than happy to describe what I’ve done and what works well for me. I welcome questions, comments and confused glances. This stuff is actually pretty simple when you look at it!

As a new blogger, you can make money talking with your readers on the phone. Do you truly have expertise to offer? Charge for your personal time. It's the simplest, most straightforward way to monetize when you're new 🙂 It sure as heck beats what you'll make with Adsense!

Making Money with Services

As I described in the last post, the traditional methods of producing cash flow from a site are things I usually avoid. So if I’m not going to put ads up and monetize that way, what are the alternatives? Making money with services is a no-brainer way to get started. This is where the bulk of my income from Next Level Blogger comes from currently. The thing about offering a service is that there’s no set up time. Simply put up a page describing your service, and voila, you’re in business.

I have a caveat about doing consulting, and it is this: it takes a lot of time. It’s not really scalable, so it’s not a long term focus for me, but it’s a great way to get income started right away. I’m a big fan of my time and value it highly. This is probably true for you also. As a result, I do not consider consulting an ideal long term business model. This is why a lot of consultants charge $250 an hour, $400 an hour or more. It minimizes the time commitment and ensures that the time you spend ear to ear with clients is as hard-hitting, focused and as valuable as possible. That said, working for an hourly rate is a way you can get off the ground quickly and getting some income going right away.

There’s an important point here that I don’t want to be overlooked. Many of you think this doesn’t apply to you, but it does. I know some of you have already written this off as not applicable to your business. If so, you’re wrong 🙂 Hear me out. A lot of you are small business owners. A lot of the people I’ve consulted with are network marketers, Realtors, attorneys, etc. You already have a business, and it’s not a consulting business. So therefore, this method of income generation doesn’t apply to you, correct? I’d argue no…you’re dead wrong.

One of the beauties of blogging is that it can open up entirely new income streams that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. Creating a service is certainly an example of this for many businesses.

Right before creating Next Level Blogger, I was doing affiliate marketing exclusively for income (granted, my own flavor of affiliate marketing…I tend to do very little by the book), so does that mean my blog needed to be about affiliate marketing exclusively? Does it mean I can only write about affiliate marketing and only continue making money through affiliate marketing? Of course not! I have 10 years of sales experience and have been selling online in different capacities (PPC, Ebay, Yahoo Stores, ghost writing to name a few) for over 6 years. So why put myself in an affiliate marketing box? I can cover a lot of ground when it comes to marketing.

How does this relate to YOUR business? I see a lot of small business owners put themselves in a box unnecessarily. One of the industries I’ve worked with most heavily recently is real estate. Real estate professionals are really good (no offense guys!) at viewing their business in only one very limited way. List a house, find a buyer, get a commission. Go list another house, find another buyer, get a commission. No problem with that model I suppose, but what the heck is wrong with opening up your opportunity a little bit? Create some new income streams for yourself! I’ve written about many ways to do this, but a great way is by offering a service via your blog. What’s wrong with offering your real estate consulting over the phone? What’s wrong with knocking out a call or two with your blog readers before going on your regular appointments for the day? To me, making $150 an hour (my current rate at the time of this post) is no way to get rich, but it sure is a fine way to fill in some gaps 🙂

What is your niche? Where is the area of your true expertise? Who can you really help in a targeted way? Don’t underestimate yourself!

A lot of professionals I speak with get locked into just working out of their office and ignore the fact that the people reading their site who don’t necessarily even live in their state, could use their help also! Don’t ignore that opportunity!

If you’re truly an expert in a certain area that is valuable to others, you not only have a perfect foundation for starting a great blog, you have a perfect foundation for starting a powerful service. Do you have to do this? Of course not. I’m just sharing what’s worked well for me, and offering a service got income coming in the first month for me. It wasn’t a lot, but it was something. I got an email from a guy that wasn’t even a subscriber. He’d never left a comment on the site or anything. I was barely up and running, and he hired me for a few hours. I was so excited I made something like $500 my first month blogging 🙂

Do you think I would have been hired for that job if I hadn’t made an offer? No way. All I did was put up a page with a service offer, and bam. It’s not a lot of money admittedly, but very few blogs make $500 their first month. And it sure beats putting up some Adsense like most bloggers do. That would have made me maybe $3.

I will write a more in depth article shortly covering some basics tips on creating a service for your blog, so keep an eye out for that.

I’m also not quite finished with this make money from blogging series. There are a few more points I will be covering in the next post or two. In the meantime, I encourage any questions or comments, and I’ll make sure to include any questions in future content 🙂

My Uber-Simple, Proven System for a Grotesque Level of Affiliate Marketing Success

By Christian

When it comes to business, simple is good. Wouldn’t you agree? That’s my take on it anyway. I’ve recently been pouring through a plethora of information on affiliate marketing…people talking about how to make it big by selling other people’s stuff online. First, I’d argue if you really have anything to offer your audience, it’s simple enough to create your own product anyway and make 5 times as much per sale, but I digress.

marketing-strategy — Chess is a very simple game, but the strategy is complex and takes a lot of skill to execute. What's the "trick" to winning at chess? There isn't one! Likewise, what's the "trick" to affiliate marketing success? There isn't one! If you want to win, you have to actually do the work.

There’s so much talk out there about how to optimize PPC campaigns and tweak pages to increase opt-ins and, blah, blah, blah. I see the value in paying attention to minutia to a certain extent, but tonight I’m reading this stuff and feeling overwhelmed. It’s amazing to me how hard people will work to avoid work!

Paying attention to all this technical stuff has value, yes. And to a certain extent I even cover some of these things on Next Level Blogger, but here’s the deal…if you’re not paying attention to the big picture; if you’re not spending 99.9% of your attention on the big prize, then all the other minutia is just that…minutia. It all adds up to nothing if you’re not focused on what really matters.

What really matters when it comes to selling online? One word: Trust.

Trust Makes Rockstars

What makes a rockstar? Trust. Real fans pile into a store and buy records when they could easily get the music for free online. Why? Because they respect and trust the artist…they already know they want what the artist is selling. They want it now. They want the real thing. They’re already sold.

No “magic marketing formula” or “overnight business system” causes this kind of behavior.

Bottom line…if you don’t have trust, then you will always be fighting for the sale. It doesn’t matter how well-optimized your page is, dude! It doesn’t matter how good your SEO is 😉 If you don’t have trust, then you will always be trying to find the “secret” to making your business work more smoothly. Trust is the ultimate business lubricant…it’s makes everything easier. Here’s the catch…it takes a while to earn it. But it’s worth it. Trust changes everything.

With trust on your side, you go from fighting for the $10 sale to being handed multiple $1000 sales without having to lift a finger. With trust you go from schlepping to find business to having business come to you, without even having to solicit it. How do you get trust? By being there and creating value for people over time. Your hard work does NOT go unnoticed. Call it karma…or whatever the heck you want to call it. Trust-building beats link-building any day of the week. This is a really important point:

If you think you’re responding to email inquiries and giving advice for free, you’re not. You’re building trust.
If you think that unwarranted, unfair refund you’re processing is a loss, it’s not. You’re building trust.
If you think all that time you spent with a client is lost because they ended up buying with another vendor, it’s not. You’re building trust.

Trust is your ultimate asset. Trust takes time to build, but all the good work you do over time adds up. It really does. That said, I want to offer you my uber-simple, proven system for a grotesque level of affiliate marketing success.

My approach to affiliate marketing:

Build trust.
Tell the people who trust you what to buy.
Collect checks.

Works like a charm baby!

I’d love anyone to find a hole in this approach. It’s bullet-proof. Problem is, it takes time and work. Do you have a problem with that…or are you going to do what it takes? Play it to win!