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Small Business Blog Tips

Blogging is Not for Quitters

By Christian

These are my blogging tips for the day…quitting too soon is one of the most common tragedies in business today. Whatever stage you’re at, there are frustrations. Here’s a secret: when you get to the next level, there will be MORE frustrations, not fewer frustrations. Your frustrations will be bigger, not smaller. Success has a cost. When you’re small, revel in it. Enjoy where you’re at. You have more than you think! Keep at it, and don’t discredit yourself for not yet being where you think you’re “supposed” to be. Where you’re at, right now, rocks. Don’t quit! Keep at it…live your mission.

If you’re having trouble viewing the video in a feed reader, click here.

An Undeniable Traffic Building Tool for WordPress Blog

By Christian

If you happen to be reading this in a feed that doesn’t support video, click here to see the video! I really do appreciate this plugin and recommend popping it into your blog at your earliest convenience. I get great traffic every day as a result of using it. It’s automatic, and it’s free. Let me know what you think!

You can download it for free here: https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/global-translator/

As you know, I rarely recommend “automated tools” really of any kind, but I have to admit this one has always worked for me. It’s not perfect. Nothing is. But it gets traffic to your site that you would never be able to get otherwise.

Are you using Global Translator? Have you heard of it? Criticisms?

UPDATE: just a heads up everyone. After a nice run, I will most likely be taking this plugin down. Unfortunately there seems to be no support at this point, and I’m having some caching issues. This is unfortunate, because it’s been a great tool for making this site more accessible and visible. It’s brought a lot of traffic, and I hate to take it down. But it’s started failing on a number of translations, and it’s causing some sitemap errors. Nothing remains the same forever of course, and without support, this plugin seems it may no longer be viable.

This is a great lesson in the use of plugins actually. You have to keep an eye on them! If anyone does have a solution or even knows of a custom replacement for this function, I’d love to hear from ya. Peace.

-Chris

Basic Tips to Monetize Your Blog Without Ads

By Christian

One of the biggest concerns people have about their blogs is how to make money. That’s fair. It’s reasonable to want to get paid for your time!

Yet this is one of the biggest challenges for most bloggers. You may have noticed, I spend time focusing on sales strategy, because that’s my foundation. The thing I like about sales is the simplicity of it. If you follow the rules and work hard, you get paid. Period.

Making Money from Your Blog is Not Black and White

Many people are convinced there are only two types of blogs out there:

  1. Low traffic blogs that live out their days in obscurity, making no money.
  2. High traffic blogs that enjoy high income, tons of comments, etc.

It’s not black and white. Yes, there are these two kinds of blogs. No doubt. But there are also many types in between, including my favorite…low to mid-traffic blogs that make a high income. They quietly make a killing. To me, this is ideal.

If you want to be a well-known blogger, get several hundred thousand visitors a month, etc…go for it. I’ll be honest with you…that’s not my forte. If you were to look at the back end of my sites, you’d not find a single one that gets more than 10-20k page views a month. But they are profitable. And they are duplicable. They offer a range of valuable services to highly targeted customers. To me, traffic is over rated. It’s all about quality. That’s my focus.

Success Hides a Multitude of Sins

It’s easy to make money with a blog that gets a ton of traffic. Sort of. As the saying goes, “Success hides a multitude of sins”. In other words, if you have traffic pouring in every day, it’s hard to not make some money. Unfortunately most bloggers are not in the “more traffic than I know what to do with” club.

This isn’t to say that even high traffic sites don’t need to optimize and carefully watch what they’re doing. They do. And please don’t assume, as we’re so often tempted, that a site that’s getting a lot of traffic is doing well financially. It’s just not a safe assumption to make.

Running a business on any level is a lot of work. But many A-list bloggers out there are still giving the old stand-by advice when it comes to making money with you blog. And it all boils down to putting ads on your site. This just isn’t a good solution for most bloggers.

There are various types of ad services and various techniques to optimize them, and I won’t argue that advertising isn’t a good way to make money, but unless you’re getting mad traffic, you can optimize your ads all day long, and you’re still going to be making $5 a day.

Sales Basics are Where to Start!

If you want to monetize your blog, and you don’t have a ton of traffic, here are a few very simple ideas to keep in mind that will help you monetize your blog. After implementing these basics, there are many ways to tweak and optimize what you do, and I will be going over these principles in later posts, so make sure to bookmark this page or subscribe, so you can get the following posts on this topic as well!

Make sure your visitors know what you do! This may seem like a complete no-brainer, but when I’m working, I come across blogs left and right that offer great, helpful information, but I don’t see any products or services offered in any clear way.

If you want to make money with your blog, make sure you’re following these basics to start:

  • Do you have a clearly visible services page?
  • Where is your “products” or “shopping” page?
  • Do you tell your buyers about what you do on occasion and why they should buy from you?
  • Do your blog posts occasionally mention your services, products, etc?
  • Do you email your list with offers from time to time?
  • Have you asked your visitors point blank if they are interested in what you’re selling? This is easy to do with a simple survey from Survey Monkey, and it accomplishes two very valuable things. One, it tells your visitors what you’re selling. Two, it helps you gauge whether you’re offering something people want to buy or if you need to make changes to what you’re selling.

I’m just sayin…there are a ton of bloggers saying they want to make money…and there are also a ton of blogs that have no clear offerings. I believe this is because many, many bloggers are still trying to figure out a way to get more traffic and make money with advertising.

Forget SEO, forget page rank, forget traffic…learn how to sell, and address these sales basics! More tips in more detail will follow in future post… but don’t forget the basics will always work! Remember, if you’re making no money with 1k visitors, you’re going to easily make 100 times that much when you get 100k visitors. Do the math 🙂

If you want to get your blog kicked into the next gear, I encourage you to hire me for a consult. In one hour, we can erase months of the learning curve and get down to business, so you can do what you love and start actually getting paid to do it!

Are you struggling to make money with your blog or website? Tell me what you’re struggling with, and I’ll make sure answers are included in future posts!

Who are Your Advocates?

By Christian

Every business has them. Most business owners are oblivious to them. That’s where you and I need to be different.

What is an advocate? An advocate is a fan of your business. Someone you’ve worked with or someone who has bought from you. They know what you do, like what you do and truly believe you bring real value. They have no problem sharing their belief with their friends and peers. When someone has a question about something that relates to what you do, they don’t hesitate to say “You should really talk to so-and-so. They’re the best in the business.” You gotta love an advocate!

But ironically most business owners DON’T love their advocates! Mostly because they don’t know about them. This is a step we cannot afford to ignore.

Identifying Advocates

I mentioned every business has advocates. Is this true? It really is. If you’ve done business for any length of time, you no doubt have some real fans. See if you really sucked and everyone you work with is disappointed, you’re simply not going to be in business for very long! So if you’re in business, yes you have advocates. And it’s essential to take measures to identify them.

How do you find them? There is a highly specialized technique I use that I was taught by a guru many years ago. I ask. You should too!

When someone buys something from you or subscribes to your newsletter or works with you as a client, etc…ask them how they found you. This is old school, and oddly enough many businesses just don’t do this.

Are you going to get an answer 100% of the time? Absolutely not. It truly is impossible to get perfect results with this. The beautiful thing is that it doesn’t have to be flawless. You just need to make a concerted effort. It will pay off for you.

The Power of Advocates

The reason your execution doesn’t need to be perfect is because just by catching up with a percentage of your advocates can have a beautiful effect. You don’t have to snag all of them (although the more the better); you just need to snag SOME of them. Do this, and you’ll be writing me a thank you letter at some point. I guarantee it!

The cool thing is that an advocate can be turned into a real asset. Let’s say you get a new client. You ask them how they found you, and they give you an interesting answer. They tell you that their coworker had worked with you about 6 months ago, and they told them you were the person to call. You’ve officially received a referral client. That is an awesome thing.
You’ve already done one great thing. You asked. Now you have an answer, and you have a name. The next thing you need to do is contact that person who referred your new client to you, and you need to thank them personally. I recommend even sending them a gift of some kind if appropriate.

Reward this behavior. Don’t let their gracious behavior that led to you getting a new paying customer go unnoticed. Let them know in a very clear way that you appreciate it. And let them know that you want MORE!

It’s easy to see that big companies are understanding the power of advocates more and more. Referral programs are growing in number. Vonage offers a month or more of service for free to every customer you refer to them. That’s just one of many examples. Vonage understands that word of mouth advertising is powerful, and they want to harness as much of it as possible. That’s smart.

Like I mentioned, this kind of activity is most likely happening behind your back. If you believe in letting things like that go on without you having any control over them, then that’s up to you. But if you can harness and encourage and make it worth their while for people to continue referring business to you, do you see how powerful that can be?

Are you asking your customers how they found you? Are you taking this (or any other steps) to identify your advocates?

Selling Without Selling

By Christian

David Risley is one of the bloggers I read regularly, and if you’re not completely familiar with his site you should get over there and subscribe right away…if you’re interested in marketing yourself effectively online that is 😉

I run this “make money online” blog from a very different angle than David and most other writers in this space. I’m not a media guy. I’m not a marketing guy, and I’m CERTAINLY not a tech guy. I’m a sales guy.

I’ve spent years in the field selling and training others to make money for themselves. I’ve spent the last three years adapting all that experience to internet marketing, and it’s been a beautiful journey. That’s my angle…direct sales. It’s what I do, and it’s what I teach.

An article David Risley posted a couple days ago speaks to how essential direct sales is to blogging. I highly recommend you check it out. I love seeing a well-known blogger like David Risley talking about this, because it makes me feel like this very important idea is catching on. Unfortunately it has a long way to go before being mainstream though.

Stuff is Changing, but Not the Way You May Think!

I am convinced a fundamental truth is coming out more and more, and it’s essential to pay attention to it…here it is:

The WAY people search for information and buy things is changing. This is a permanent, global change. However, the REASONS people buy things haven’t changed at all…and aren’t going to.

What does this mean to you…the business owner or professional who wants to thrive throughout this economic downturn and all these paradigm shifts that we’re witnessing? It’s simple. It means you need to become a competent sales professional. You’re in sales! You need to become very good at engaging people and selling to them.

Social Media is a Tool, Not an Excuse

As a sales trainer, I’ve trained over a thousand people to go out and make more sales. What do you think is the biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome?

  • Lack of sales talent?
  • Time management?
  • Teaching others how to “close, close, close”?

It isn’t any of these. Fact is, sales is pretty damn simple. And you know what? It still is. There are absolutely some things to learn, but it’s not rocket science.

The biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome with my sales training clients is EXCUSES. Here’s the brutal truth: people avoid sales like the plague. Even sales professionals avoid it. It’s called “call reluctance”. They come up with all kinds of creative ways to avoid selling.

In fact, people pride themselves on their aversion to sales! CEO’s talk openly about how they hate to sell. People talk about how they avoid selling as if it’s a good thing. This is such a misplaced mentality, and it shows clearly how misunderstood the art of selling is.

But here’s the rub…more and more people are realizing they HAVE to learn how to sell. Because if you don’t sell, you’re out of business. You have to make sales to stay in business, yet most business people hate sales. See anything wrong with this picture?

Here’s something I hope will offer some comfort: It’s not sales you’re afraid of, it’s BAD sales. Good sales is simple, natural and fun. And high-paying! You have to learn how to do it. It takes training, and it takes practice, but anyone can learn it. People misunderstand what sales is because they’ve spent their whole lives avoiding it…they’ve never learned it.

As Risley mentions in his article (if you haven’t swung out to check it yet, please do), many bloggers out there are still fixated on making money with advertising. Thing is, that works to a certain degree. If you’re getting a lot of traffic (I mean a lotta lot of traffic), you can make some scratch with advertising. But there is SO much more opportunity out there. The bottom line is that not all niches are high traffic niches. So if you’re niche isn’t a high traffic niche, are you S.O.L.? Well, if you aren’t willing to learn direct sales, then yes, you’re S.O.L.

There is No Such Thing as “Selling Without Selling”!

So many gurus and “experts” out there are touting social media as a way to “sell without selling”. Screw that noise. If you don’t sell, you don’t make sales! Let’s call a spade a spade. Sound fair?

“Selling without selling” is another way of saying “making sales on accident”. When it comes to my business, I want to know what the heck I’m doing. I don’t want my success to be accidental, because if it’s accidental, then I can succeed one month and totally suck the next month, and I won’t know why. That’s no way to live.

Here are three steps every business owner or professional needs to make right now:

  1. If you don’t have passion and excitement for what you do, do something else.
  2. Embrace that you’re in sales. Take your excitement and passion for your business and use it to put yourself out there and get good at selling.
  3. Study with a professional who knows how to teach you to sell (ahem), and get good at it. Sales is your lifeblood. Always has been. Always will be.

Highest Paying Hard Work; Lowest Paying Easy Work

We’re entering a new era at full speed, and it’s an era where job security is non-existent, opportunity is huge and risks are high. More and more people are coming online to market their wares. Business is highly competitive. To succeed you have to be good, period.

That’s the world we live in. If you are willing to do the work, you can thrive and live very well here. All you bloggers out there looking for a quick buck or some turnkey “automatic” or “automated” solution to making money…go on and keep looking; let me know how that works out for ya!

Almost 10 years now I’ve been in sales and training/coaching people to make more money. Most people are looking for a way to chillax. Why would you want to kick back and chill when you have a BUSINESS that excites you? You wouldn’t. You’d want to go out a raise hell every single day. That’s why I consider it so vital to absolutely LOVE what you do. Because when you LOVE what you do, you can’t wait to get at it every day. You push hard every day for results, because you just really like what you’re doing. That’s where you want to be. That’s where you have to be!

I read in a book years ago that sales is “the highest paying hard work and the lowest paying easy work”. I’m pretty sure it was Brian Tracy who wrote that, but I’m not positive. But it’s true.

I’ve known sales people (in all different kinds of fields) that are barely getting by, and I’ve known sales people who make an absolute killing. What’s the difference? I know many people are still convinced that successful sales professionals have a particular sleazy charm that just comes naturally to them, and in order to be good at sales you need to be born with the “shyster gene”. But it’s not true. First of all, selling is not sleazy…at all, when it’s done well. Second, sales can be learned. And it can be taught. That’s what I do.

The difference is not some innate talent or ability. The highly-paid, successful sales professionals of the world all employ an ancient and proven technique that works every time. They work their tail off, and they love every minute of it!

There is Stuff to Learn

So, quick recap:

  • The way people buy things is changing, but the reasons people buy things are NOT changing. You need to learn to engage people and sell to them.
  • Social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc) is a tool for selling. Don’t use it as an excuse for avoiding sales. It’s not “selling without selling”. It’s selling.
  • Embrace that you’re in sales. Study sales. There are a million books. Plus, subscribe to Next Level Blogger.
  • Make sure you’re in a field you love and that excites you.
  • Get coaching.
  • Work hard, every day.

Sales comes naturally to very few people, but it can be learned by anyone. It is the art of engaging people on a personal level and helping them to solve a problem. When done well, it is a invaluable service to others.

Of course when used poorly or maliciously, sales is the same as any other powerful weapon. It can be used for both good and evil. It is the evil use of sales that everyone fears and wants to avoid. The solution is simple. Don’t be evil. If you’re not evil, then learning to sell will not make you evil. It will just enable you to help you customers on a much deeper and more meaningful level. It will also make you rich. Nice secondary benefit, no?

At the end of the day, sales is nothing to be scared of. It is simply a skill set you learn. You learn it through training, study and practice. And when you learn it, it makes your income and livelihood impervious to any changes in the economy. A good thing!

How do you feel about selling? Do you avoid it? Does it scare you? Do you think I’m full of it and that learning to sell is not necessary? I’d love to hear your thoughts!