KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays (8 page)
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Authors: Joel Comm,Mark Victor Hansen
BOOK: KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays
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Eventually, there comes a time when you just have to act, ready or not.
Back in 2006, I teamed up with my friend Eric Holmlund to create an online reality television show. We wanted it to be something like The Apprentice, but focused on Internet marketing. In each episode, a group of rising entrepreneurs would be set a task related to one aspect of building an online business, and the worst-performing candidate would be eliminated. The idea was simple enough, but the implementation? That was another story.
Eric had dabbled a little in film production—although nothing on this scale—and it was all completely new to me. We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. We spent months doing the research. We had to know what the program should include, what sort of people we’d want on it, what sorts of tasks we wanted to give the contestants, how to distribute and market the finished program, and of course, how to raise the funds and bring in revenue. It was a massive undertaking that took a huge amount of time and effort.
At some point though, we just had to dive in and see if we’d sink or swim. We swam.
I wish I could tell you it always works out that way. But it doesn’t. Not every action will bring success. Entrepreneurs take risks. You have to be willing to put yourself out there, and you have to learn to fail fast.
Failure to take action is usually a result of FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real. It’s what happens when you believe a lie, when you’re afraid of what might happen. You overcome fear when you take action.
There’s a reason that I mentioned the value of community building so early in this book. It’s vital to your success, and it’s very easy to forget.
Being an entrepreneur, especially an Internet entrepreneur, looks like a lonely business. When you’re starting out, it will be you, your computer ... and that’s all. Maybe you’ll send e-mails to contractors—copywriters, designers, and programmers. Maybe you’ll make the odd phone call to explain in more detail what you need, but you won’t have the kind of face-to-face meetings that cement relationships in brick-and-mortar businesses.
That will be fine ... for a while. But if you want to
succeed-really
succeed—it can’t stay that way. The Internet, like every industry, is still about relationships. I found that out myself in the best way possible.
succeed-really
succeed—it can’t stay that way. The Internet, like every industry, is still about relationships. I found that out myself in the best way possible.
By 2005, I had written the first version of my AdSense e-book, a guide to all of the strategies that had worked for me in using Google’s advertising program. The e-book sold a lot more than I expected, and I was looking for the next level. Both my wife and my friend Jeff Walker suggested going to Armand Morin’s Big Seminar in Los Angeles. That didn’t sound like a good idea to me. It’s true that I had given AdSense a second look only after seeing someone’s results at a workshop, but I’m really not one for sitting in a lecture hall and taking notes. In fact, I’m not really one for sitting at all.
But I listened to their advice and showed up. I discovered that I was already a celebrity of sorts. People knew about my book, and because my picture was on the web site, they knew who I was, too. I was part of a community and I didn’t even know it!
The people I met at that conference have helped me ever since. They’ve told me about strategies that would have taken me years to discover and learn. They’ve introduced me to their audiences, as I’ve introduced them to mine. They’ve inspired me, taught me, and enhanced my understanding of every aspect of online business building. The relationships that I’ve built with the people I’ve met at conferences and workshops might well be my most valuable asset of all.
Forget about competition. There’s enough to go around for everyone. Make contacts. Build friendships. Provide value without expecting any payback. In time, you should find that those investments in human relationships pay you back in spades.
When you’re looking to enjoy success, you want to enjoy it right now. You can’t do that. Unless you win the lottery, wealth—and the freedom that wealth and success bring—come only as a result of investment of time and effort. Still, there are things you can do to reduce the amount of effort and time you need to invest.
One of the most important—and a vital aspect of your preparation—is looking at what other people have done.
There’s very little that’s completely new in the world. Growth tends to happen incrementally rather than in giant leaps. When someone else has achieved success, there’s nothing wrong with looking at how they did it... and copying them, adding your own unique touches.
Once I’d achieved success with AdSense, I was happy to share what I’d learned so that others could do the same thing. It’s a pattern I’ve followed myself, so it’s only fair to give back.
Even when I sat down to create that book, I was following a model. It’s the model that we use now in helping others publish their first book via my friends at Morgan James Publishing. The credibility that individuals garner by having their book published helps them to become the leading specialists in their fields, to create their web sites, and to benefit from exposure.
If it works, do it. And if someone else is achieving success, copy them.
Mentors are hugely valuable in providing models for your own success. They provide knowledge, they provide connections, and they provide relationships.
They also provide another key to your success.
One of my first mentors was a professional business coach. Back in 2005, he gave me a piece of advice that was so simple and so unwelcome, I wondered if he knew what he was talking about.
He told me to get an office.
I was working from home then, which I liked, and an office seemed like an unnecessary expense. But he was right.
I rented an office and hired an assistant. My stress levels dropped, my productivity went up, and the extra income more than covered the extra expense. Since then, every time I’ve hired someone, they’ve made money for me.
One of the toughest things that entrepreneurs have to do if they’re to achieve success is to let go. You have to fire yourself from doing the things that you shouldn’t be doing. You should be doing only the things that suit you best, the things that bring the most revenue to your business.
The rest you can give to someone else.
Outsource your tasks. Hire employees and freelancers. Form joint ventures with people who can bring skill sets you can’t supply yourself. Sometimes, you can even find volunteers who will work in return for free software, experience, or publicity. If you want to grow, you can’t stand still—and you can’t do everything yourself.
In this chapter, I’ve tried to reveal the value of your uniqueness, and I’ve explained the seven keys that you will need to open the gates of your success. In the course of the next five chapters, you will learn the most powerful, proven methods for turning that uniqueness into money on the Web.
Let’s begin with the foundation of online success: content.
3
Content Is Not King ... It Is KaChing!
You might not be able to hear an actual KaChing sound as you’re building an online business, but there is one sound that you’ll come across so often it will remain stuck in your head like a bad pop song.
“Content is king.”
It’s the Internet’s chorus, what everyone says when they give advice to new publishers, and what everyone believes as they build a web site.
And they’re all right, of course. The Internet is made of content. It’s what web sites are built to hold and it’s the reason that people open a browser and type in a URL. Internet users surf to learn and be entertained, and they learn and are entertained by digesting content.
What they see will vary tremendously. Some people are just hoping to learn the latest football scores. Others want to read a report that explains why their team lost that match. And some people want to learn why some football tactics generally work better than others so that they can become football coaches.
Whatever you want to find online, whether it’s information that’s vital and important or trivial and entertaining, and however far you want to take your reading, the Internet is capable of delivering content that tells you what you want to know.
To build an audience online, you have to create content. The better the content, the bigger your audience, and the more influence you’ll have over your readers. The more readers and influence you have, the more advertisers will pay to pitch to them, and the higher your click-through and sales conversion rates.
Your ability to earn online then is limited only by your ability to create content that people want. And that’s not necessarily just content they can read. Although most Internet content is delivered through words, almost from the beginning, the Web has thrived on its ability to deliver content in all sorts of different ways.
However you deliver your content, as long as it’s informative, entertaining, or both, you can build an audience and create value.
In this chapter, I will explain the principles behind profitable content. I’ll first discuss how to create content that can generate income, and then I’ll reveal no fewer than a dozen different ways to turn that content into cash.
This is when people start to get scared. Once they’ve played around with Blogger or a web site template, they realize that actually there’s nothing to creating an Internet site. It’s just a matter of checking a few boxes and playing with menus. At the beginning, it all feels very strange and new, but within a few hours, it’s as simple as using a pocket calculator.
But the web site only provides a structure. It’s as though you’ve been given a store that contains nothing but empty shelves. You still have to fill it with stock. On the Web, that stock means content—and usually, that content means writing.
There are few shortcuts here. There is free content available that you can put on a web site—things like old books that are past their copyright and now in the public domain, and even old photographs and movies. But such content isn’t original, and you’ll be competing with all of the other sites offering exactly the same product. You might be able to make a little money with public domain works, but they’re rarely the foundation of a successful, ongoing Internet business.
That demands original content ... and that, in turn, requires original writing.
For people who have never written anything longer than a shopping list, that can sound terrifying. If the thing you hated most at school was writing essays and compositions, if you never got more than a D any time you had to put words on a page and give them to a teacher, I can understand that you’re not going to like the idea of putting words on a web site for millions of people to read.
The good news is that writing for the Web is not like writing for school. It’s not like writing for college, and it’s not even like writing for work.
It’s like writing for you.
That’s crucial. Obviously, if you’re a great wit and can crack jokes and tell killer stories, then you’ll have it easy. But you don’t have to do any of that. All you have to do is transfer the knowledge that’s in your head to the heads of your readers.
So don’t try to impress anyone with your writing skills. Don’t go flowery or use long words to show that you know how to use a thesaurus. There are no bonus points for pretty writing. There are, however, extra users and additional income available for clear writing—and that comes down to two things: information and style.
Of those two, information is the more important, so know what you’re going to say before you say it. On Twitter, you can write whatever’s going through your head at that particular moment, but when you’re writing an article or a blog post, you need to have a plan. That will ensure that every sentence communicates something important and that every word has a use. You won’t wander all over the page until you stumble over a good point.
The plan doesn’t have to be anything too detailed. It’s unlikely you’re going to be writing more than 1,000 words—attention spans on the Web are fairly short, and very long posts can put people off—so you won’t have to worry about creating long lists of subsections. But you should have an introduction, approximately three points that you want to discuss, and a conclusion.
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