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Selling on Your Blog Ain’t Hard (The Art of Asking for the Order)

By Christian

Asking for the order is a key sales principle. In fact, it’s a key life principle! If you don’t ask, you don’t get! This can often come off as a “duh” kind of statement. If you want someone to buy from you, you should probably ASK them to buy from you! Agreed?

But year after year, study after study show that salespeople will often perform an entire sales presentation and fail to ask for the order at the end. Bottom line: it’s scary for many of us to ask people to buy something. So we leave them to figure it out for themselves. We do this in the name of politeness, but really we do it out of fear. As I probably don’t even need to tell you…it rarely produces the desired result.

Internet marketers and bloggers are big culprits of this as well, not just sales people in a classic, traditional sense. Most often, as much as I hate to say it, bloggers. So many bloggers want to make money yet fail to ever ask for it. They don’t want to be pushy. It’s understandable. But the sentiment is misplaced. I’ll explain in a sec…

First, it’s important to understand that asking for the order goes for making sales but also for many other things as well.

Do you want your readers to comment your posts?
Do you want people to tweet out your articles…
Link to your site?
Download your free ebook?

Tell your readers what you want. Ask for the order. If you don’t, you’re expecting them to telepathically figure out what you want, and well frankly…why should they go through the trouble? If you want to get good results as often as possible…make it easy for them!

Where to Get Confidence to Ask for the Order

Asking for what you want requires confidence. Confidence comes from three places:

Genuine Value
Technique
Practice

I’ve trained over a thousand sales people, and I can report that very few people are good at sales starting out. I sure wasn’t. Selling simply does not come naturally to most people. It is a skill set you acquire through hard work and practice. One thing about sales is very cool. If you follow the rules, you get the results, period.

Employ these three principles, and you’ll get the results you’re looking for!

Genuine Value

Genuine value is the element I mention first, because it’s the foundation. If you don’t create genuine value for your readers, everything else is a farce. There’s a difference between selling via confidence and simply trying to make money.

Selling is not the act of extracting money from people’s wallets. Selling is the act of freely and voluntarily exchanging real value. Give your reader something very valuable, and then they reciprocate. It’s a win-win. It all starts with value. If you skip this part, the exchange is empty, and you won’t be in this business for long.

This is why I mentioned earlier that the fear of being pushy is misplaced. It’s pushy to try to get something for nothing. It’s pushy to expect someone to pay for something they don’t need. It’s pushy to pressure someone to do something that’s not in their best interest. You’re not doing anything of this sort.

What you’re doing is providing highly valuable information to people who have specifically sought you out, because they want what you’re offering. And as it happens, you’re good at what you do, and you’d like to be able to keep doing it. In order for that to happen, you simply need to get results. It’s fair and necessary to ask for what you want. And your readers aren’t going to know unless you tell them what that is.

How do you create genuine value for your readers? Be good at what you do! Study your business like a mad man. Write quality, helpful content, put out good stuff. That’s the first step.

It’s important to understand that this step doesn’t work all by itself. It’s just step one of three. Many bloggers put out awesome content and still fail to make money or get results. It’s not just about genuine value, but it’s a necessary first step.

Technique

Technique is simply a matter of making sure you’re very clear on what results you need and expect from your blog, and then systematically going through to make sure every element of your site, from the opt in boxes you use to the way you manage your email marketing, is arranged in such a way that it is clear to your readers what you’re offering and what you want them to do.

There are a number of ways to ask for what you want when it comes to managing a blog. As I mentioned before, it’s not just a matter of selling products when it comes to blogging. You want people to comment on your posts, subscribe to your email list, buy your affiliate products, etc. There are likely a number of actions you want your readers to take. It’s important to ask! Try these specific steps. They are all ways of asking, and getting:

Put a line in your theme so it displays at the end of every post, asking visitors to comment.
Make sure you have 2-3 opt in boxes per page. Your opt in box should be visible from anywhere on your site.
Use a pop-up to build email subscriptions as well
Use a free gift to further entice people to subscribe
Your outgoing email messages should give valuable information and offer interaction with your subscribers, but they should also regularly offer something for sale

Use a plugin like TweetThis that makes it easy for people to share your content with others, and make sure to remind people on occasion…”Hey, if you like this post, please retweet it…” you get the idea.

Clearly, different blogs have different goals, but this list is a start. The idea is to have your goals in order, and then simply make sure your site and the way you manage it is conducive to getting the results you want.

Practice

This element is crucial as well. The fact is that when it comes to business blogging, turning your readers into advocates, customers and clients is an ongoing process. The more you practice the better you get.

I’m surprised sometimes at how often someone will ask me why they’re not making money from their blog when, with all due respect, all they’ve done is put up a dozen posts or so and install an Adsense module. Maybe a couple affiliate links. That will make you some cash…if you’re getting several thousand visitors a day. Short of that, you’re going to need to be more aggressive and tactful in your approach.

Think of your blog as a small retail shop. You’re not WalMart. WalMart puts a bunch of stuff up on it’s shelves, sells everything really cheap and then brings in massive amounts of people through. That creates sales. You’re not WalMart, so don’t follow their business model!

What happens in a small retail shop? There are fewer items for sale, and the prices are higher. But things are also very clean. There is character, and when you walk in, a friendly person walks up, smiles and warmly says “Hi! How can I help you?” Personal service. One-on-one engagement. Details…these things matter. And they also add up to you being able to make a fine living off any niche you want. But you gotta ask for the order 🙂

The Breakdown

Here’s the bottom line: sales is simple. It’s hard work getting results on a day-to-day basis. But the process is not hard to understand. It’s just a lot of work 🙂 It’s why you’ve got guys like Gary Vaynerchuk yelling at us to get our hustle on. You have to believe in what you’re doing. And you have to LOVE what you’re doing, because to build a small business that makes bank…is a lot of hard work. No magical web design, no plugin, no kick ass turnkey business opportunity is going to save you from that reality.

That said, if you’re willing to really work it, there is massive opportunity out there! And the fundamentals of sales are steadfast. They are simple, and they remain simple.

If you’re not getting results from your site…there is something broken in your implementation of the steps I just outlined. You’re either not asking for what you want, you’re not asking often enough or *gasp* you’re not creating genuine value for your readers. One way or another, your fortune lies locked behind door one, two or three! All you gotta do is go figure out which one and smash down the door!

How to Obtain World Domination in 5 Simple Steps

By Christian

If world domination is your goal, as it is mine, you need to be on track. You need to be a machine. You need to be a champion. Being a champion is a struggle for everyone, even champions! There is no easy victory when you’re at the top of the mount.

It’s a long way to the top, if you want to rock n roll. –Bon Scott

But is it worth it? Is success worth the effort and sacrifice? Most people decide that it is not.

If you decide not to decide, you still have made a choice. –Geddy Lee

I get points for gratuitous rock references, right? 🙂

A Word on What Success is, and What it is Not

Success is not a state, nor is it an achievement. It is not an acquisition. And it certainly is not a Ferrari or a Cribs house. It is a decision. This is what makes success deceptively simple, yet elusive. It is a decision made daily, hourly, by the minute. By the second. The perception of success, importantly, is relative.

The people we perceive to be successful are simply those people who have made the decision to succeed more often than most. We ALL have the power; some of us just choose to exercise that power more often.

A Word on Failure

Successful people fail as much or more often than anyone else. But they choose to blow right through their failures and not slow down. They succeed because they decide to do so, despite what happens. Decisions have the ability to do that. They give us focus. The decisions we make come about in an instant. And we have thousands of opportunities daily…to be a success.

Success and How it Relates to Achieving World Domination

When you make the decision to be successful…the world and any obstacle it can throw at you becomes nothing but a din…mere background noise. At that moment, everything in the world serves only to either advance your mission or your education. Every single thing that happens to you, fuels you onward. You no longer have to worry about success, because it is yours…the world works for you. In that moment, the world is officially your bitch.

That, my friends, is world domination!

A word of caution: do not mistake half-hearted wishes as decisions. If you say something like “Yeah, that would be pretty cool if I could make my blog successful” this is NOT a decision to succeed. It is merely a wish. A wish is not a decision. It is not even related. A wish is not even a distant cousin of the decision. A decision is when you say “I’m going to do this, period” End of sentence. That’s it. Notice how committed it is. There are no conditions. There are no ifs ands or buts. Say it with me now…“I’m going to do this, period.” There is power in there you cannot measure. The good news is that you don’t HAVE to measure it…all you need to do is ride the wave!

Failure is Not the Opposite of Success

Do you fear failure? You needn’t. Failure is merely a result. It is a static event. It is an outcome. Successful people are not concerned with any result or event or outcome that is not in alignment with their goals. That focus comes about as the result of a decision that is made over and over again. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Success is decision. Remember when you said “I’m going to do this, period”? You can’t just say it once…you have to KEEP saying it. And you have to mean it. You have to stay on task. Failure and success are simply not related to each other.

How to Obtain World Domination in 5 Simple Steps

5 questions, when asked of yourself consistently throughout each day, can transform your business and enable you to grow to any level!

Take your business, your blog, your sales, your income to the next level by asking yourself these 5 simple questions. Introspection, brutal honesty and follow through are required! Obviously, you cannot just ask the questions. You need to answer them and work aggressively to improve.

Running through these questions will keep you on task. Remember, success is a decision you make moment by moment. And you do not just want one moment of success! You want an uninterrupted succession of them! You want to stay on the wave. Most people have ridden the wave for a moment or two before, but they allowed themselves to get distracted, and they wiped out. They let their power get away from them. This doesn’t mean they weren’t successful. They were. They simply got off the wave…and failed to get back on.

In the moment you decide to succeed, success is yours…wholly and completely. But if in 5 minutes you steer in a different direction, you get off course. Use these questions to stay on course.

What am I doing right now?
If I do what I am doing right now repeatedly, daily, with intensity, for 5 years, what will be the net result?
Is the net result in alignment with my goals?
What can I do instead that will create a better or larger net result?
Who can do this better than me?

The Fantastically Simple Principles of Achieving World Domination

There are fantastically simple principles hidden here. The first is that in order to start accomplishing things on a larger scale, you need to make larger decisions. Base fewer of your decisions on immediate concerns and more of your decisions on long term results.

Instead of asking yourself “How can I get through this day?” or “How can I get this problem off my plate right now?” (these are decisions that get you off course), put things in a long term framework. “How is this consequential to my long term plan?” You’ll be amazed at how much time we spend on things that literally have little or no long term consequence at all!

If we spend our lives tending to details that don’t ultimately matter, what do you think the net result will be? World domination? I don’t think so!

The second principle is simple. Letting go of the details empowers you to take things to the next level. #5 speaks to this directly. As business owners, we often try to do everything because we think no one can do it as well as us. The fact is that there are likely a LOT of people who can do things as well as you, and there are likely a few people who can do things BETTER than you. An ego check is essential now and then. Letting go of the need to do everything is mandatory if you hope to be able to focus on anything of consequence.

When you tend to every single detail yourself, there is no time to step back and focus. Staying on task, staying focused is impossible, and that is when success takes a back seat to the minutia of the day. That’s when you lose your power.

Step back, focus, let go, and take over the world!

Is Email Marketing a Fad?

By Christian

In a recent post, I indicated how essential email marketing and list building are to your success online. I was challenged by a reader that email marketing and list building are only hot trends right now, because email clients simply haven’t become sophisticated enough to filter everything out. I found that interesting. Seriously?

It seems to me that if one person feels this way strongly enough to send me a message about it, surely others do as well. I do not feel email marketing is a fad. I want to examine this for a minute and see if I can shed some light. Maybe further clarify my point.

Many Small Business Owners Do Not Use Email Marketing

This is clearly a fact. I work primarily with small business owners whose main business is NOT online. You know, store owners, Realtors, attorneys, etc. Many of these professionals and business owners may have a website, but in many cases they do not proactively build an email list, and even when they have a list it is often outdated and underutilized.

One client I work with originally had over 10,000 email addresses…and hadn’t emailed ANY of them in two years! Oh my, what a waste!

Why?

So why is it that so many small business owners fail to recognize how powerful email marketing is? There are two main factors I’ve seen:

Not understanding the power
A belief that selling is rude

There are other peripheral reasons, but these seem to me to be the two biggest culprits. It surprises me how often business owners in sales-based businesses like retail, real estate, etc…are averse to involve themselves with sales!

It’s why I’ve written more than once on this blog how essential it is that we understand that we are all salespeople!

Let me cover both of these two concerns in just a bit more detail…

Not Understanding the Power

If you’ve not ever effectively worked an email list before, it’s easy to understand that you may not realize just how powerful it can be. Consider these benefits:

Personal, effective interaction with your customers
Communicate effectively with a large number of people, very inexpensively
Establish entirely new income streams
Test new product and service ideas
Get hugely valuable feedback from your customers

And this is just a FEW of the powers email marketing contains :). If you haven’t done it before or haven’t had much success with email marketing and building a list for your business, consult with someone who has. Hire someone like me or talk with a friend or colleague who is very competent with it.

Success in business does not come from skipping the fundamentals. Email marketing and list building are fundamental!

A Belief that Selling is Rude

Email marketing and list building are often associated with spammers. This is an understandable association, but it’s completely inaccurate at the end of the day. Of course you do not want to come off as a spammer with your customers. But this does not mean you don’t sell to them!

The best way to not come off as a sleazoid salesman to your customers is not to skip selling…it means you need to do it skillfully! The belief that selling is rude and distasteful is widespread, and I feel it’s one of the main factors that causes many business owners to miss out on a lot of great opportunity. As a result, they don’t sell at all.

What Happens When You Don’t Build a List?

So what’s the alternative? It’s important to look at your options. I mean, you’re either going to build a list and work it…or you’re not, correct? As a business owner, you need to make sales. That’s a given. But if you have the mentality that selling is rude or that email marketing is unnecessary, you’re going to have to use other means of building your business.

Traditional marketing and advertising still work to a certain degree, and you can also just sit back and assume that everyone will come seek you out because you’re so awesome 🙂

Candidly, if you don’t use email marketing, the results are simple…you just don’t get the benefits of it! In other words…

Less personal, less effective interaction with your customers
Communication with your customers is more expensive and less pervasive
You do not have as many income streams at your disposal
Product testing is more guesswork; market research is much more expensive and time consuming
Getting valuable feedback from your customers is more difficult and expensive

I try to be as careful as possible in saying you HAVE to do something in business. Do what works…if you’re meeting all your goals and do not need to grow, then there is simply no need to change what you’re doing.

But beware of assuming that your business and market share are static in nature. If you have competition…they will be happy to squeeze you out. Are THEY using email marketing? If they are, then they are getting all the leverage and power of this tactic, and you are not. Are you cool with that, and can you survive despite the fact that your competition is engaging all their customers on a much more personalized and helpful level than you are? It’s something to consider.

How Do You Use Email Marketing Tactfully and Effectively?

Of course BAD email marketing is not helpful…in fact it can be done so poorly that it does more damage to your brand than good. Perhaps this is what my reader was just referring to, and I’ve blown this whole thing out of proportion!

That said, I do see a number of business owners not doing this, so it’s a point worth making regardless.

So how can you create an email marketing campaign that’s well-received, highly valued, even anticipated and yearned for by your customers? The answer is quite simple. Give them what they want! Not to oversimplify, but this really is the key.

Sending your prospects email is not spam. Not if you follow these guidelines:

They’ve specifically requested it
You respect and cultivate the trust they’ve extended to you
You do not email them too often (few people want to hear from your business every day, no matter how great and targeted your information is)
You keep your messages targeted and not overly commercial
Your focus is on creating a valuable resource for your prospects. Selling is kept as a welcome byproduct of the information you provide
Use an email marketing platform like Aweber to handle your double opt ins, bounces, opt outs, etc. It’s not only much more efficient for you, but it keeps your list clean, efficient, and the deliverability is much higher.

If your outgoing messages follow this blueprint, it’s really pretty hard to screw things up. Look, if you’re providing a valuable product or service to people, and they’ve told you they want to hear about it…don’t let them down!

Is Email Marketing Just a Fad?

The assumption that all selling is spamming is still out there in a big way. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am. Is email marketing a fad? Will it fall out of vogue at some point? I won’t argue that it will never be replaced, but SELLING will not ever be replaced.

Bottom line, if you want to succeed in business, you have to sell, and email marketing is a highly efficient, personal way to do it.

It’s true that spam filters will continue to get more sophisticated, but consumers are still going to consume. And in order to do so, they’re going to need information. Internet marketing is highly competitive. I consider this a really good thing. It means in order to stand out, you have to actually be good and provide a lot of value to people. Yes, SEO factors into it, but it’s mostly about…all always will be about…creating something valuable for people.

As long as you’re doing that, your email will always be welcome and appreciated by your customers.

What about you…do you feel email marketing is something that’s optional? Is it going to blow over? Have you found anything more effective in your own business?

I Am a New Contributor on RENewsBlog

By Christian

As many of you know I have a bit of real estate experience. I am still licensed to practice real estate. I help friends and family, as the opportunities present themselves, buy and invest in property. I am a big advocate of owning rental property as well.

The reason I mention this is because a lot of readers here may not necessarily be inclined to read RENewsBlog, a blog about real estate sales and investing. I wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I will now be a weekly contributor over at RENewsBlog.

The content I publish there will be focused on internet marketing and blogging, just like here, so if you like this blog, I encourage you to check out my articles over there as well 🙂

The fact is that most real estate professionals, like all small business owners, have a real need to market themselves effectively online. I will be the guy who covers online marketing and sales strategy over there on a regular basis. The concepts I cover will at times have a little bit of a real estate spin on them, which is cool because I know many of you readers of Next Level Blogger are in real estate!

But also this is great for everyone else as well, because the sales and marketing concepts I cover on RENewsBlog will directly apply to YOUR business as well, no matter what industry you’re in.

I invite you to swing by and say “hi”!

How to Make Money Online Without Being a Schmuck or a Spammer

By Christian

One of my readers asked the other day how to “sell without selling”, which I think is a great way of describing the art of salesmanship. Obviously, you can’t sell without selling…if you don’t sell, then you don’t make sales! But the sentiment came through loud and clear. No one wants to come off as a schmuck. No one wants to be a sleazoid salesman, but the concern remains; we all have to make an actual living. So how do you get it done?

I’ve written before on Next Level Blogger that if you want to make money online, you need to learn how to sell. This is the art of asking for the order. You have to do it, but if you want to survive, you need to learn how to do it well. Do it poorly, and you’ll be a schmuck. Do it well, and well…the results are like magic.

Lessons from the Trenches

When I was doing sales training for door to door sales professionals, I would take trainees in a home with me to watch me do product demonstrations. Watching the real thing is the best way to learn. I would go into a home and put on a huge demo for the homeowners. I was Richard Simmons. I was Billy Mays. The homeowners and I connected; we were laughing together, shaking hands…we were best friends by the time I was done. And when we left the home with an order, I would ask the new salesperson what they thought, if they learned anything about how to sell. Seeing as how they just watched a sale made, it stands to reason that maybe they learned something, wouldn’t you say?

Often, the response from the person I was training would be something like “Well, I don’t feel like you really sold them anything. They just bought it. You showed it to them, and they bought it. I didn’t learn how to sell.” And therein lies the lesson. Good salesmanship is not forced or uncomfortable. It’s friendly, genuine and to be perfectly honest…a lot of damn fun.

Most people think selling is manipulative and underhanded. The fact is that the only time sales fits that description is when the salesperson is manipulative and underhanded. Unfortunately, it happens a lot, and the misconception of all salesman being sleazy is understandable, but it’s just not accurate.

Good selling is honest, transparent and helpful. No one has a problem solving one of their own problems for an affordable and reasonable price. What people don’t want is to be manipulated or duped. So if you don’t want to come off as sleazy…it’s easy; just don’t be a sleaze! And if you don’t want to come off as manipulative, don’t manipulate people.

Is it really as simple as that? Yes, actually.

So how do you make a sale without being manipulative?

Follow these steps:

Meet with qualified prospects
Discuss the prospect’s problems in detail
Have the prospect decide for themselves which of your solutions works best for them

Let me elaborate a bit…

Meet With Qualified Prospects

There is something about blogging that I find fundamentally beautiful. It is the fact that by it’s very design, it attracts qualified prospects. Think about how someone comes to visit your blog. Perhaps they found you in Google while searching for information they need. Maybe they follow a link that they believe will take them to information they want. Perhaps they received an email from a friend saying “hey check out this article”. In nearly all cases, a visitor is on the pages of your blog for one reason…because they’re actually interested in what you’re selling.

That does not mean that you don’t need to be good. You do. Your content needs to rock. And what you sell has to be top notch, because people can sniff out crap from a mile away these days. But if you’re the real deal, and you have something of actual value to offer your readers, blogging automatically attracts the right people to you. This takes care of step one automatically. By blogging, you’re already meeting with qualified prospects.

Discuss the Prospect’s Problems in Detail

If you’re trying to be helpful, what do you do? You meet people at their level. Discuss their problems. This is how people are going to find your blog to begin with. They have a problem. They are going to specifically look for someone talking about that problem in the hopes they can find a solution. This is simply how it works. So, talk about their problems.

This is where real expertise comes in. You have to actually know your business. If you’re just doing something to make some cash, it ALWAYS comes through in your content. However if you really know your subject, and if you really do have a valuable solution for people, you will have no problem writing at length about the problems that your product or service can solve.

Don’t talk about yourself or your product. Talk about your prospect and the problems they face.

Case in point: have you been reading this post this whole time thinking “man this guy is such a sleaze; he’s just trying to sell me on why I should hire him as a consultant, to help me take my business to the next level by improving my sales and marketing tactics online”?

If you’ve read this far, I’d wager that’s not what’s on your mind! You’re most likely reading the post because it connects with an issue you’re having. Why in the world would you be reading this post if you weren’t interested in learning how to make more money online or market your business more effectively on the internet? And as luck would have it…if you happen to want a more personalized and one-on-one solution for your business, I can help you with that. Big coincidence, huh? 😉

Have the Prospect Decide for Themselves Which of Your Solutions Works Best for Them

Online, asking for the order is simple. All you have to do is make your solutions easily available. By focusing on the prospect’s problems, you’ve drawn them in. You’ve attracted qualified and interested visitors. And now, consider why they’re there. To solve a problem, correct? And your entire page happens to be filled with links and additional resources that they can explore. All of which solve their problem, and all of which add to your bottom line.

Perhaps your article is all they needed for right now. Or perhaps they’re not quite ready to purchase anything just yet. That’s totally fine. That’s why you give them many opportunities to easily subscribe. And that’s why you offer enticements and invitations to revisit your blog regularly. And that’s why you keep your content coming regularly. And that’s why you keep the quality high. If you know your stuff, and if you continue to connect with them, at some point one of your solutions will connect with them as well.

5 Idiot-Proof Ways to Make Money from Your Blog

By Christian

I’m a big advocate of sticking to the basics. These 5 things are what I focus on in my business. Keep in mind that I come from a direct sales background. I believe personal interaction and real relationships are the key to success long term.

This paradigm leads me to look at blogging and internet marketing a little differently than a lot of my peers. I do not focus on traffic, at all. I do keep my site fairly well search optimized, because I’m hardly one to say “no” to free traffic, but I refuse to depend on Google for a variety of reasons.

I would be the last to argue that my way is the only way, but this is the game as I play it. As with all things on Next Level Blogger, this list is focused on what it takes to build a highly profitable niche business online. Stick to these business basics, and you will be on track to achieving your goals…

Build a list: This is the foundation of your business. If you’re not building a list, you’re not building a business. For the foreseeable future, email marketing is still king, and if you want to make money online…learning the art of list building and selling through email is mandatory.
Ask for the order: This is a key sales principle. This often comes off as a “duh” kind of statement. If you want someone to buy from you, you should probably ASK them to buy from you, right? But year after year, study after study shows that salespeople will often perform an entire sales presentation and fail to ask for the order at the end. Internet marketers and bloggers are big culprits of this as well. Most often, as much as I hate to say it, bloggers. So many bloggers want to make money yet fail to ever ask for it. Asking for the order goes for making sales but also for other things. Do you want your readers to comment your posts? Do you want people to tweet out your articles…link to your site…download your free ebook? Tell them what you want. Ask for the order.
Ask for referrals: This is something I see applied only rarely online. The masters do it, but few others even think about it. It’s one thing to make a sale. It’s a whole next level thing to tap into that customer’s entire base of friends as well. Your paying customers should not be on the same list as your prospects (the people who have yet to buy from you). If someone has purchased from you, they have entered the fold. They are on a new level with you and your business, and they should be treated as such. They are easier to sell to in the future, and it is reasonable for you to ask them to refer you to their friends and coworkers. Deliberately seeking referrals is one of the most cost effective ways of significantly building your business online, and few people even try to do it. If you have a customer list of even just a few hundred people, you REALLY have a customer list of many thousands…if you know how to work referrals.
Identify your advocates. Use them, and treat them like gold: Of course, not everyone will refer you to their friends. Not everyone is going to connect with you enough to become an advocate of yours. But when you have an advocate, even if you just have one advocate at the beginning, you better treat them like a king or queen, because an advocate is something rare and powerful. I’ve seen powerful real estate brokers sell several hundred houses a year with a list of only a few hundred people. This type of efficiency is not possible if you don’t know who your advocates are. Can you build a very profitable blog with only 10 subscribers? Yes! If those 10 subscribers are advocates.
Multi-tier product and service development: There really isn’t such a thing as one size fits all. In this day and age we need to connect with your readers in as personal a way as possible. Many internet marketers will come out with a single product and then simply proceed to drive as much traffic as possible to that offering, and rack up whatever sales they can. I can’t argue that it’s a way to make money online; I just don’t think it’s nearly as personal, efficient or profitable as it could be. The beauty of blogging is that you have an awesome opportunity to interact with a large number of people in a personal way. Ask them what they want. Believe me, your readers will tell you what they want if you just ask! Build your audience and your list, and then proceed to interact with them often. Have them tell you what products and features they’re looking for. Use their feedback and come up with products and services based specifically on that feedback. By “multi-tier” I mean specifically that you should have options for people. One Blogger that does this very well is Michael Martine at Remarkablogger. He offers one-on-one blog consultation for an hourly rate, and you can also get group consultation at a much lower rate. You can also invest in one of his very reasonably priced products like WordPress SEO Secrets to get specific solutions at a great price. He doesn’t just do one thing. He offers multiple solutions, so that he can connect with his readers in any number of different ways. That’s smart.

Each of these 5 steps deserves a post of it’s own. And they will get one. They are already in the works! I encourage you to bookmark and/or save this page and visit back, because I will link them up as I publish them. Or, subscribe to Dangerous Tactics, and I’ll make sure you get an email with the new articles as they come out!