make money

How to Make Money with a Crappy Product or Service

By Christian

Are you under the impression that you need a great product in order to get a lot of sales? Hogwash I say!

You don’t need a good product to get sales. You need good marketing. The world is full of crappy products that people buy in high volume.

Just visit your local Walmart. You’ll find shelf after shelf of thin, scraggly, scrawny, skeletal products, devoid of nearly any value whatsoever. Yet people buy this shit all day long. Why? Because we love it. Why do we love it? Because we’re slaves to our passions. And what directs our passions more than any other force in the universe? Marketing! None of us, including myself, like to admit this. But it’s just the way it is. Marketing works.

Some Finer Points on Making Money with Crappy Product…(or a great one…your choice)

Marketing and product development are completely separate things. Treat them as such.
Marketing is what sells stuff. Don’t pretend the quality of your product or service somehow overcomes the need to sell it.
The quality of your product is your responsibility to your customers. It’s your ethical duty as a human being to over-deliver awesomeness to your customers. But it’s not a marketing tactic.
Customers don’t buy your shit because it’s high quality. They don’t know any better until they’ve already bought it. They may believe it’s high quality, but that’s only because you or someone they trust has told them so. In other words, they’ve been sold.
When you learn to sell stuff, that’s when your whole business changes. Selling is what makes you recession proof, and it’s what makes your business viable. You can sell a totally crappy product or a totally awesome one…that’s your choice. But if you know how to sell stuff, you’ll always be able to earn a great living. The reason most business owners struggle is because they flat out refuse to learn how to sell.
When you deliver flat out epic value to your customers, that’s when they say positive things to their colleagues. That’s when they spread the word and send you referrals. That’s when they come back to buy from you again and again. When you take the approach of delivering high quality, it doesn’t help you to make that first sale. Instead, it leverages every sale you make into 20 more. But you still need to make that first sale. Learning to sell is what makes your business viable. Repeat and referral business…that’s what makes you wealthy.

So IN CONCLUSION…

Do you need an awesome product to have a viable, profitable business? No. You really don’t. All you need is to know how to sell stuff. When you know how to sell, you can sell anything to nearly anybody at any time. That’s the power of marketing.

Thing is, if you fail to deliver high value in return for the sales you earn, you’ll always have to hustle to earn more and more sales. You’ll never earn any advocates that way. You’ll never get repeat and referral sales. And it’s a really big missed opportunity. Some may argue it’s our ethical responsibility to deliver high value in exchange for the money our customers send us. I agree 100%. But regardless of any ethical issues, let’s get one thing straight:

It doesn’t matter how good you are at what you do. It doesn’t matter how valuable your product or service is. If you don’t know how to sell, you’re dead in the water. But as soon as you learn how marketing works, everything changes. As soon as you learn how marketing works, getting those first sales and building your client base stops being this nebulous, intimidating monster problem. It becomes easy.

And if you follow up on those sales with ridiculously high value, then you’ve changed the entire outlook of your business forever. Learning that marketing is actually a good thing is the rarest and most important lesson any small business owner can learn. If you already know this, please share this idea with your colleagues. You and I both know at least 20 people you know could use a reminder 🙂

How to Really Screw up Your Business With Social Networking

By Christian

As spamming continues to grow on Twitter and other social networks (I’ve been noticing it a lot this past few weeks more than ever), I’m compelled to mention again how easy it is to do more damage to your brand than good when using social networking tools.

Twitter and Facebook are great networking tools, but they’re being treated more and more like get rich quick platforms…as if such a thing really existed. I’m seeing a lot of ads for programs on “How to Use Twitter to Make $10k a month Starting NOW”…and other B.S. like this.

Does anyone actually subscribe to this mentality? I’m taking care not to mention any users or companies specifically. You’re not going to catch me bad mouthing anyone, but you and I both have seen this activity. Here’s the thing:

I think most of these users are more concerned with making money than anything else. They’re not worried about damaging their brand, because they’re not even trying to build a brand. They’re not even TRYING to build a business. They just want to make a few bucks.

I think this kind of shortsightedness is a shame. But the more I see this kind of activity, the more I think this is true. I hope the readers of this blog can see further down the road. Building a real business is NOT that big a deal! Anyone can do it. I hope you can see the truth…spamming out affiliate links and offering no value to your contacts is not a way to build a business. And ironically, it’s also not a good way to even make a few bucks!

When was the last time YOU clicked on a blind link in a piece of spam email you received? When was the last time YOU bought a product through an affiliate link that someone blasted out through an auto-DM on Twitter?

Sensible people don’t buy things this way. It’s just not how it works. If you’re building a real business that you want to be profitable and sustainable, this is the absolute last type of activity you should be involved with.

If people would stop looking for fast money and start actually getting to work, there would be a lot less crap out there. That’s for sure. And they would also learn that making REAL money is not all that difficult.

Have you seen this spamming activity or is it just me?

Do you subscribe to the idea that simply blasting out affiliate links is a way to make money?

5 Ways to Create Urgency

By Christian

Urgency is a staple for anyone who sells anything, anywhere. As anyone who follows this blog knows, my career started in door to door sales. In that environment, you learn immediately that the time to make the sale is NOW. Not later. Later never comes. No one ever calls you back when you’re selling stuff door to door, so you have to make the sale on the spot or just move on to the next appointment. So the ability to create urgency is mandatory.

Selling online is very much the same, but the approach is very different. If you try hard selling people online, you will be wasting your time in a big way! You will turn them away and you’ll never see them again. Yet at the same time, you need to sell things in order to make money, so what’s the solution? How can you create urgency to buy your product or service now?

How to Create Urgency

Here are the ways to get prospects to buy your product now, as opposed to later…or never:

Limited Supply – This needs to be used very cautiously. In other words, be truthful. Honesty is absolutely essential with internet marketing. If you expect people to trust you that is. And remember what we’ve said about trust. If you’re product is a digital product, how can it possibly be “only available to the next 100 people?” It is this type of claim that will make your buyer leave immediately, thinking poorly of you and your brand. This type of urgency is easier to use well when you apply it to a service. For example, I do consulting for business owners who want to get better results marketing themselves online, and it’s easy enough to say at any given time that I can “only take on 3 more clients”, because it’s true. My time is very limited, so I really can only take on a few clients at a time. If it’s true, make sure your buyers understand the supply is limited. It creates urgency.
Limited Time – Placing a time limit is one of the more common and effective methods of creating urgency with both products and services. Placing a time limit on a valuable asset (like an ebook or a service you’re offering) is very reasonable, especially if you back it up with detailed information as to why you’re doing it this way. People respect authentic boundaries and expect you to charge for valuable things. They understand you need to make money. But keep one key point in mind: make sure to follow through. Stick to your word. If you’re offering an introductory price for an information product for a specific time frame, when that time frame closes, it closes. If people catch you going back on your word just to make another sale, you’ll regret it. Remember, everything you do has a ripple effect!
Reduced Price – Price is always one of the first things people want to do to entice sales. I’m including it because it works, but it’s not one I recommend. I usually avoid it and prefer to do business at full price. I always offer full value and then some, and I expect to earn what I’m worth. I feel that if someone is only buying something from me because it’s cheap, then they’re really not an ideal customer. In other words, if the value is actually there, the real customer would have bought it at the higher price anyway, so why drop the price? This is a personal choice. It’s not an endorsement for over-charging, mind you. Charge what something is worth and leave it at that. That’s my take on it. Dropping the price and making it cheaper just cheapens the product. I prefer to increase the value. If your product only sells well when it’s cheap, you have a problem.
Added Benefits – This flows nicely out of my argument about pricing. Instead of dropping the price of something you’re selling, add more to it. And leave the price the same. I’ve always believed that people are not nearly as cheap as Wal-Mart makes them out to be. Of course if you put two pairs of jeans together and one costs $150 while the other is priced at $20, most people are going to go the $20 route. But that’s just where your business differs, right? You’re offering a unique service that no one else can compete with, right? If someone wants to get what you’re offering, they pretty much need to go to you, right? So why cheapen it? Instead, add MORE value. Constantly add to your products and services. And of course, blog about the improvements you’ve made. Tell the world. And leave your prices alone. People want value, and they are willing to pay for it, because they know it’s what enables you to keep working your tail off.
Create an Overwhelmingly Compelling Value – This is the holy grail of urgency. Create a product or service that speaks directly to your buyers’ needs in a powerful way. Create massive value, and show them in detail how you can help them create huge pleasure or avoid pain in their lives. Do this, and market it with passion, and you will create urgency by default. We’ve all experienced it…when a marketing piece connects with us in just the right way, at just the right time…it’s almost magical, and we have no choice but to pull out our credit card. Any time this happens, it is not luck. Behind that sales copy and product that reeled you in at that unexpected time is an entrepreneur who was up very late for days or weeks…or months, researching and planning, writing and rewriting, getting every detail right. And then it all came together.

Creating urgency is an art that balances reason and emotion. The successful internet marketer understands that people buy because of emotional reasons, but they back up their decision with analytical data. The successful internet marketer uses both of these elements in sales copy to make sure that the buyer has everything necessary to make a buying decision…now.

Is Your Niche a Good Niche or a Bad Niche?

By Christian

I’d like to take just a minute to dispel, as well as I can, the myth of there being such a thing as a “good niche” or a “bad niche”. Do you think there is such a thing as a “good niche” or a “bad niche”? I’m going to argue that there is not. You’ve either done adequate research or not. That’s all there is.

No Such Thing as a “Bad Niche”

There is no such thing as a bad niche! You can make money on nearly anything. The point of this post is to hopefully get you to look past the niche and to look at what really matters. What you sell doesn’t matter nearly as much as how you sell it. Look at all the millions of dollars being made around the world by selling substandard, crappy products. I’m not advocating low quality of course, but I’m saying that your business plan matters much more than what you’re selling.

Thinking about whether your niche is good or not puts the focus on the wrong place. The focus needs to be on research and planning.

Is there strong demand for what you’re selling?
How have you verified this?
What are you offering to fill this demand?
How much is your target market willing to pay for this?
How do you know?
How do you plan to reach your target audience?
What sites do your target buyers visit most regularly?
Do your visitors prefer text or video content? How do you plan to engage them?
Are your buyers more inclined to respond to a free ebook as a premium, or are they more responsive to a physical product, or perhaps a service of some sort?
Again…how do you know?

These are questions you should be able to answer. You don’t need a “good niche”. You need a good business plan!

No Such Thing as a “Good Niche”

Just as there is no such thing as a bad niche, there is also no such thing as a good one. There is no magical niche that will make you successful. If you’ve done your research and found that you have an actual, valuable solution to a real demand that exists, and you have a solid plan on how you’re actually ready, willing and able to supply that solution, you will be successful, period.

Likewise, if you have an awesome product that people really would like, but you fail to connect to the right people, or if you fail to market the product properly in any number of ways, you will fail, period. So it’s entirely possible to have a “good niche” and still fail. Your niche doesn’t matter. Your plan matters. Research matters. Do the work up front. It’s worth it!

How Should Business Owners Approach Blogging?

By Christian

Most business owners I talk with will tell me something like this, “I’d like to start a blog, but how can I know I’m going to get an immediate return on my investment?” OK, maybe they don’t say it exactly like that, but that’s the idea. And as a business owner myself, I understand that mindset. But we have to get past the idea that starting a blog is the same thing as placing an ad in the local newspaper. That’s what we WANT blogging to be, but that’s not what it is. We want to fire it up, put in very little work, and proceed to watch the phone ring off the hook and our inbox fill up with orders, right? If you want to place an ad, place an ad 🙂 Blogging works differently. It requires an ongoing effort.

Is Blogging a Good Marketing Investment or Just a Waste of Time?

So if blogging requires an ongoing effort and does not produce any immediate benefit, how could it possibly be perceived as a good investment for a business? Good question! Here’s the thing: marketing works differently now, in case you haven’t noticed! Consumers respond to things differently, and we need to learn to engage them in entirely new ways. Placing ads in print media has become one of the biggest wastes of money you can imagine. Yes, you can see an immediate result, but that result is getting smaller and smaller. Immediate, yes. But significant? No. Not anymore.

Yet as business owners, we’re hooked on that immediate result. We want to know that every dollar we spend on marketing is producing a result. It makes sense. But continuing to spend more and more money for less and less of a result doesn’t make sense, does it? And that’s exactly what’s happening with traditional advertising. Traditional advertising has become SO ineffective, that I know many small business owners all over the world who have discontinued ALL print and television advertising, and many of them report that it has had little or no negative effect on their business. That’s how ineffective it has become!

Blogging is the New, Cost-Effective Alternative

So what is the alternative? The alternative is to embrace the rules of blog marketing and learn to engage your market in new and creative ways. Yes, it will require that you learn new things and learn to think about your marketing differently and measure your results in new ways. But doing this will enable you to engage a larger number of people than ever before, for less money than ever before. You’ll be able to engage prospects in new places you’ve never thought of before and make money in ways that you’ve never considered before.

Many business owners feel they don’t have time to blog. That’s very understandable, but I’d encourage you to not think of it as an extra effort. You’re likely already producing all the content you need for your blog. You’re already an expert in your field, right? You just need to channel your expertise in new ways. The memos you write to your team, the content you cover at sales meetings, the questions you answer for customers every day, the conferences you attend, the employees you hire, the new products or services you release…you’re doing ALL of these things already, and they are all AWESOME content for your blog. It just needs to be channeled in an efficient manner.

Yes, it WILL take time. It’s not completely free, and I’d be the last one to say blogging can be set on auto-pilot. The point is that it’s a simple extension of what you’re already doing as a business owner. The more engaged you are with your blog, the more engaging you’ll be with your readers, and of course that’s the whole point. Why would you ever want a blog that didn’t take any of your time? The POINT is to take some time…connect with your people. If you do it consistently, you’ll be rewarded.