Small Business Marketing Strategies

Make Money Online by Selling More to Fewer People

By Christian

This is a post in a series which begins here. We’ve talked so far about the 3 Simple, Killer Steps to Improve Traffic, and then we moved on to how to Use a Sales Funnel to Blow up Your Blogging and Internet Marketing Sales. Today, I’m going to talk for a minute about how a tip I learned to make better use of the traffic you’re already getting.

High Traffic Ain’t all That…

We’re all understandably concerned with getting more and more traffic. This makes sense. But look, if you’re getting any traffic at all, and you’re not making money…you’re doing something wrong. If you’re not making ANY money with low traffic, you’re not going to be doing much better with MORE traffic. We’ve already talked about this briefly, but this will come up again and again here: you don’t need massive traffic to make money online. You just need to be smart about what you’re doing! In this post I’ll give you a simple tweak that will help you get better results from the traffic you’re already getting. Make more money without increasing traffic at all…that’s gotta sound at least kind of cool, right? 😉

The Sales Funnel, Again

So here’s the deal, everyone of your visitors is at a certain place in your sales funnel. It’s essential to stop looking at your traffic as just “traffic”. First of all, they’re all prospects. They’re all individual people. Everyone who hits your site is there for a reason. Why? What’s their motivation for being there? How did they find you? What problem can you help them solve? It’s your job to be able to answer these questions. One of my goals in writing this particular series of posts is to hopefully help you with some sales training tips that will help you zero in on these concerns and make better use of your traffic.

It’s important to consider this: not everyone is on your site for the same reason. Your friends, your colleagues, people you’ve never met, people who found you on Twitter, through Google…they’re all likely there for different reasons, and you need to tweak your site to make the best use of this information. You cannot use a blanket sales approach and hope for good results. It’s not going to work. You need to sell, as best as you can, to each individual visitor.

Look at where your visitors came from and use that information to make the page they land on as conducive to moving them along the sales cycle as possible. In this post, I’ll give you an example of how to do this with organic traffic (visitors that come in from search engines). In later posts, I will cover more sources of traffic and how to tweak your site out to monetize on those as well.

Tweak Your Page to Monetize on Organic Traffic

Do you have a page that’s getting a lot of traffic from Google or some other search engine? Use your analytics to see what keywords they’re using to land on that page. Search engine traffic is usually pretty targeted, good quality traffic, but if you’re not converting that traffic, what good is it? If they’re landing on your page through a search engine, think about what they means…

They typed in specific keywords for a specific problem they’re looking to solve. They’re looking for an answer, and your site showed up! They’re on your site because Google has told them you likely have a good answer for them. This is a fantastic opportunity to monetize! Yet many sites have a 60% bounce rate or higher. In other words, you have all these targeted leads hitting your site, and 60% of them or more are immediately leaving without even reading a single article, filling out a form or even asking you for more information in any way. Fail! Let’s not let this happen anymore, okay?

Let’s say you have an article on how to grow blueberries on your back porch. Cool. I like this site already! Now let’s say you look in your analytics report and see that people are finding that page by searching “how to grow blueberries”. Here are a few things to think about:

Maybe it’s time to add a free ebook, specifically on this page, called “how to grow blueberries” and offer it as a free download for any new subscribers.
Maybe you can even effectively SELL an ebook on that page.
Perhaps you would do better to increase the size and scope of that particular article and make it more engaging…people are hitting this article for a reason. There is obviously demand for it. Give them tons of information to keep them there longer!
Link the page up really well to OTHER pages on your site or related sales pages you have up elsewhere. They’ve hit your site as a targeted lead. Now, lead them on to a place that will show them even more value, and give you a better opportunity to make a sale. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!
Maybe you can try cutting back on the information you give! Require an email subscription to access the page.

See the point is this…there are a LOT of things you can do to respond to this demand for information. But the WRONG thing to do is to simply appreciate the hits you’re getting and then proceed to wonder why you’re not making any money! Unfortunately this is what most people do! Be deliberate in your approach and keep this fantastically simple rule of blogging for business success always in the front of your mind:

Success comes in tiny increments!

You can always wonder why you’re not getting the huge results that other bloggers and internet marketers get, or you can go about the business of making the small tiny tweaks that make all the difference. It’s up to you! Let’s say you have 100 pages or so indexed on your site. Make a tiny 1% improvement to each page, and you create an overall massive increase in income! These small changes add up; trust me!

A Lesson from the Trenches

When I was out in the field selling face to face, I learned how important it was to dress well. On the surface, and to the untrained sales professional, it doesn’t seem like it should matter so much. I mean, if my product was indeed the best, all I should have to do is show it, and the customer should buy it because it makes sense…because it’s a quality, affordable and necessary product, right? It doesn’t work that way. Presentation is everything. Little tweaks to your presentation make all the difference. A clean, well-tailored suit, a slightly different inflection when you make a certain point or ask a certain question of your prospect, effective body language…it all requires extra work and attention to detail. But when you put all the elements together, it becomes nearly impossible to NOT get the sale! You become a force to be reckoned with. But you must do the work! Internet marketing is no different.

Perhaps you’re blogging or social networking and trying to get better results. Maybe you’re selling real estate, or ebooks, or affiliate products of some sort…you’re in the right place, but always remember there are no short cuts!

Make small incremental changes, and critique the results you get. Go back and tweak more. Lots of work, I know! You can complain if you want, or you can go make a killing…it’s up to you 🙂

Upcoming posts…I will be covering more sales training tips for tweaking and getting better results from more traffic sources. As the series continues, feel free to comment and leave any ideas for future content you’d like to see covered. Thanks and talk to you soon!

Harness the Ultimate Niche and Destroy Your Competition

By Christian

This post is about value. Creating value is powerful. It is the ultimate niche. It always works. Value defeats your competition every time.

The way you create wealth is by creating significant value for many other people. Whether that’s through creating jobs for others, providing hugely valuable content for others to learn from, selling valuable products that enhance the lives of many people…the net result is the same. Value leads the way to wealth.

As Zig Ziglar has said so many times, “You can have everything you want in life, if you can just help enough other people get what they want.” I’m an advocate of pursuing wealth over profit. It’s important to know the difference. This means pursuing value first and foremost in your business. When you do this, your niche will reveal itself automatically.

But there are roadblocks, aren’t there? When we actually go about the work of setting up a home based business, we run into on all-to-common situation. We see other people…those jerks…who are already doing what we want to do. This is what we refer to as “competition”. I know, it’s a highly technical word 🙂

Competition is a Reason to Pursue a Niche, Not a Reason to Avoid It

Know this: competition is a good thing. It is the foundation of value. It fortifies value and encourages us to create more and more of it for others. And wealth for ourselves and others in the process. If there were no competition, value would be very low. Without competition, there is no motivation to improve. So why do we look at competition so negatively?

So many would-be successful business owners will look at high competition as a reason to not enter a specific niche. To this I have a few questions:

What is your motivation for starting this business to begin with?
Are you focused on creating value for others or simply making sales?
Do you really believe there is an ideal niche out there, one that perfectly aligns all your talents, is fun and exciting, highly profitable and has no competition?

Let me respond to the last question first. The is no magical niche! Look, if you’re looking to start a home based business or want to take your existing business to the next level, you’re signing up for some hard work. To the others, let me say this: long term success in your business will come from creating value for others, and this may mean taking the long view from time to time.

Get Far Away from the “Make Money Fast” mentality…

So much home based business literature out there is focused on “making money fast”. Get over it! We all know get rich quick schemes are a bunch of crap. You can make great money, and you can achieve some fantastic goals, and the social media concepts I cover in this blog are awesome ways of making this a reality for you. But if you are requiring your business niche to be some instant miracle cure to all your cash flow woes, it’s time for a reality check.

You Can Prosper in ANY Niche…Go Make it Your Own

Look at my niche for example. Next Level Blogger is a blog about blogging. Do you know how many powerful blogs I’m up against in this niche? We’re talking Darren Rowse, John Chow, Michael Martine, David Risley, just to name a few. Now that’s competition! But why am I writing this blog? Why am I not running away with my tail between my legs? Because I know what I have to offer is distinctly different that these other writers. My focus is on sales training and business principles…and how to translate those skills directly to social media. I know there is significant demand for this content, because the success of these other blogs is obvious, and it’s equally obvious the content I’m going to be covering here is not covered in depth anywhere else. Now this does not speak to a fault of anyone’s existing blog. It just speak to how opportunity works, and it illustrates how niches work. This is important.

I know you all know how great, talented, good-looking and important I am, and of course I’m going to use every strength I can muster up to make this blog as successful as I can make it, but my point is that YOU have exceptional strengths, a unique story and huge value you can add to a niche somewhere as well. You need to develop that and tap into it.

Be Passionate…Success Comes from YOU, not Your Niche

I want to encourage you to pursue the niche you’re passionate about, and don’t spend so much time researching keywords and trying to find the perfect niche. The magic is never going to come from the niche. The magic is going to come from you. At the end of the day if you want to be successful, you’re going to have to be great at what you do, and you’re going to have to create a lot of value for others. If you want to chase the get rich quick gurus for a bit more, I won’t hold it against you. But one of two things is going to happen. You’ll either become disillusioned and decide you don’t have what it takes to be in business for yourself, or you’ll decide that if you want to do it, you’ve gotta do it for real. There are no shortcuts.

The Real Deal…this is How Niches Really Work

The more a niche develops, the more it opens up to new opportunities. First there were sites on how to make money online. That led to sites on how to make money blogging. Now there are sits on how to make money blogging in real estate…see where I’m going with this? What can you add? Maybe you can write a blog about investment real estate, or maybe you can focus on something even more tight…multifamily investment property in Orlando, FL. What’s up? That’s a blog that could dominate the Orlando Florida real market right there. Then someone else could come in and niche that out even further. They could focus on providing a particular kind of financing for that type of real estate, or they could come in and focus on a particular neighborhood…the opportunities are endless. See how it works? There is no end to it. The more niches there are, the more opportunity for NEW niches there will be.

Is it too late to start a blog or get into a niche market and make your mark? Are you kidding me? It’s the perfect time.

Don’t compare your business to anyone else’s. Do what you’re passionate about, and focus on creating value. It is the only constant. If you see competition, that’s a good thing. It means there’s a lot of demand. Your business will ultimately be as unique and valuable as you are. Get in touch with your market, and ask them what they want. Believe me, if you have a market…they will tell you! If your focus is value, not sales, not making money, your niche will take care of itself, and it will evolve along with you, with value leading the way.

One side note. My recommendation to do what you’re passionate about cannot be divorced from the rest of what I’m saying. Don’t take this all to mean that you can do whatever you want and expect to be successful. What I’m saying is that any niche that you want to tap into, can be tapped. You can develop it and own your own portion of it. You can take it to the next level. It’s probably going to be a lot of hard work, and you’re going to have to get good and produce awesome content. But you’ll love doing it, and you will be successful if you go all the way.

Blogging is a Business and Most Businesses Fail

By Christian

Failure is a part of life, and it’s surely a part of business. This really isn’t news, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. So what can we do about it?

The assumption I’m making here is that you want to succeed. And with that, I’m assuming that you want your blog or web pages to get adequate traffic to meet your goals. You want a sufficient number of people to convert into subscribers and paying customers. You want to travel the world with a margarita in your hand, hardly working a day in your life and living like a jet-setting lifestyle without a care in the world. With me so far? So how do you do it?

How to Succeed

The way you succeed in blogging, internet marketing and social networking is the same way you succeed in any other business. This is why I created Next Level Blogger to begin with. I want to get this point across to everyone in my network. Here’s the problem: there is a general mentality that comes with internet business that needs to be dismantled. Bloggers and internet marketers work at home in most cases. It’s not like you really need a corporate office or even any employees starting out. All you need is a functioning laptop and high speed internet. This is where the trouble starts. Given the low point of entry, internet business gives us some false impressions, and it’s essential we dispel these falsehoods once and for all. Here are a couple:

Internet business/home based business means “small”: this couldn’t be further from the truth. There are entire real estate firms operating entirely online, with no corporate offices. There are huge newspapers (the Christian Science Monitor was the first I believe, and there will be more and more) that are moving their entire publications online…and DISCONTINUING most of their hard copy newspapers. Internet business is HUGE business, not small business.
Working from home is easy: taken at face value, I bet most of us would be inclined to believe we don’t believe this. But look at the facts. The work-at-home industry is inundated with get rich quick schemes and frauds of one sort or another. At the end of the day, most people are looking for a quick fix. People want to make money fast. Want to know how I know this? I study keywords. I look to see what people are actually looking for, and “how to make money fast” is one of the top keyword strings in Google, consistently month after month.

Next Level Blogger is a business blog. I am creating products and services to sell, and I will certainly make sure you all know about them as they come out. That said, this is NOT the place to come for the quick fix. I come from direct sales. Door to door sales. Real estate. I learned how to sell in the real world. Face to face. I know what works, for real. I understand that web traffic doesn’t buy squat…PEOPLE buy stuff. Page views cannot be monetized in any meaningful way. If you want to make money consistently, hand over fist, online, at home, you need to run your business like a business. You need to know how to sell stuff. That’s what this blog is about.

How do you make money online? You have to adopt the habits and systems of others who are successful. This means hard work, consistency and creativity. If you happen to have the attitude that online business is easy, means quick money, can be fully automated or any such nonsense, you are setting yourself up for failure. My goal for Next Level Blogger is to fully destroy any myths surrounding how to make money online by showing in detail how to run your business like an actual business. It means more work, but it also means success. Predictable, money-in-the-bank success. Are we on the same page?

Why Most Fail

Most businesses fail. We know this. Most business blogs fail also, and failure to monetize is the reason. If you’re serious about taking your blog or other online marketing to the next level and ensuring success, it’s time to take your sales plan and make sure it’s up to snuff. This, interestingly enough, applies to Next Level Blogger as well. I’m up against the exact same standard. If I fail to provide meaningful value to you as a reader, and if I fail to monetize properly, this blog will fail. The principles are the same across the board. If you learn the basic sales and business principles I talk about here, I honestly believe it’s impossible for you to not see a dramatic improvement to your sales.

In upcoming articles I will be covering why to write a plan for your blog, how to identify your most profitable niche market and a lot more. If you have any specific topics you want covered, I always welcome input and will make every effort to make sure all questions are answered.

Thanks for reading my very first post on Next Level Blogger. I look forward to a lot of awesome conversation with you 🙂