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Nothing Doing
What’s that Red Panda doing? Posting in his sleep. LOL.
Me too.
One of the great things about a blog is that I can write stuff ahead of time and have it magically appear on a given day and time while I’m actually doing something else like sticking my tools and protective gear in a locker, grabbing my lunch bag and clocking out of a factory about 17 miles away after working a 12 hour shift overnight.
If you’re an eager beaver and you’re reading this as soon as it pops on the site, you’re probably going to imagine I just hit the publish button. However, I just told you what I actually did, so I’m not sure why you’d think that. In any case, I’m jumping in my van and heading home for a jolly good sleep in preparation for a long weekend of mind-bending, ultra-productive work.
Say what?
You heard me. I’m doing nothing but sleeping at this point. I’m plumb tuckered out! Time to recharge the batteries so I can do my real work.
What is my real work?
Well, honestly, I’m busier than a one-legged man in an arse kicking competition. I’ve got a bunch of sites that have a rather urgent need for me to be awake and creative. Unfortunately, that ain’t happening today. After two days at the factory, I’m gonna be shagged out like a 70’s carpet. Today’s the day for woozy-snoozing, zizz, zizz, zizz, zazz, zuzz! However, when I do finally arise from my labor-induced mini-coma, I have to deal with the following properties:
I have a site in the Christmas niche that is waaaay behind on its content calendar. By golly, Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat…
I have a demo site that I set up as part of a how-to course that I will be selling at another site of mine that has been languishing in obscurity these last couple of years. I’ll tell you more about that in future posts.
I have an extended rights site with virtually no products! Gasp! I’ve got to get a store built and stock the virtual shelves. Luckily, I’m friends with a lot of talented PLR vendors who have been there and done that. They’re kind and smart and ready to give a hand. Shout outs include:
- Kunal Barthakur
- Arun Chandran
- Sue Fleckenstein
- Charles Terrence Harper
- Dina Hyde
- Tiffany Lambert
- April Lemarr
- Trish Lindemood
- Kate Rieger
- Alice Seba
- Sharyn Sheldon
- Patti Stafford
- and many others
I have a matched pair of other demo sites that I was going to include in my how-to course but then I realized I couldn’t teach all the skills necessary to make a site like that in a short course. I’ll just run them as a niche site as I had intended to describe and mention them in the bonus material of the how-to course.
Once I make enough money on my sites to replace my factory income, I need to get back on TV. That was the absolutely, bar-none, most fantastic experience of my entire working life. I have never enjoyed any job as much as I enjoyed being an extra on Billions.
Not to mention my long-term goal of finishing and self-publishing a variety of novels and non-fiction books…
Ah, so many ambitions, so little time. Particularly when you’re dead tired from running around a factory for 12 hours a night…
Some more rules
Rule 11: Even if it’s free, you can always buy it cheaper
The Ferengi are ruthless bargain hunters and hagglers. This is a worthwhile skillset to develop. With any product release, you’re going to see a lot of affiliate salespeople who are promoting for the product creator. It pays to shop around and see who’s got the best bonus package on offer. You can get a lot of interesting content for a song when you shop around.
Rule 12: Anything worth selling is worth selling twice
Well, from the Ferengi standpoint, this means you should sell something to somebody then steal it and sell it to someone else. That’s unethical arbitrage. LOL.
We don’t need to roll like that. With information marketing, digital products don’t need to be stocked. You have an infinite supply of your eBook available 24×7. Even if you want a physical copy of the book, print on demand services like Amazon CreateSpace and Lulu make it possible to have as many copies of your book as you can sell as soon as you sell them.
Rule 13: Anything worth doing is worth doing for money
This is a crucial point of information marketing. It’s all well and good to spout everything you know about your subject of interest on your blog, vlog, podcast or whatever your favorite medium is, but when it comes to really helping people solve their problems in that venue hand-holding and personal mentorship are the most valuable and most time-consuming solutions.
When you’re doing something personalized, customized, one-on-one, classroom teaching, workshop or in any way non-generalized information delivery, it becomes cost-prohibitive for you to do it unless there’s some income to be had from it.
You can give a free workshop at your local community college, hotel banquet hall, town hall, band shell, public park or wherever but it’s not going to be worth it unless you get something back (particularly money for your time and the cost of renting the space). Whether it’s political action, civic engagement or just earning a buck for passing on valuable knowledge, your end goal should be somehow profitable to your business.
At a local hotel, they used to have the Amway rah-rah sessions in one conference room and right next door was a guy doing a slideshow about UFO cover ups. Totally free. However, the back end of each funnel, so to speak, was designed to somehow be profitable to the organizer. For the Amway presenter, the hope was that some members of the audience would sign on to be part of the presenter’s business opportunity. The UFO guy was selling books and videos at his merch table.
Rule 14: {Not Cited}
Between the shows, movies and books, not all of The Rules have been cited. This is one of them that has yet to be mentioned. However, in one of my absolute favorite episodes, the one Ferengi consults The Rules of Acquisition and finds the statement, “When no appropriate rule applies, make one up.”
This speaks a lot to the entrepreneurial mind. There’s really no fixed guidebook for any given business. There are plenty of best practices and success stories to emulate, but when surprises arise it’s up to you to bring your own brand of brilliance to devise a custom solution for your business.
In the episode I mentioned, Arridor (being a true Ferengi who sees his source of unlimited profits being infringed) makes up his own rule which says, “When the messenger comes to appropriate your profits… kill the messenger!” We don’t need to be that drastic, but it certainly shows ingenuity.
Rule 15: Dead men close no deals
I mentioned the concept of Churn and Burn marketing before. This can be very profitable in the short term. It takes advantage of people in Get Rich Quick (GRQ) mode.
A lot of times, when people first discover online marketing they are bombarded with tons of GRQ opportunities, magic buttons, loopholes, tricks and so forth. People get caught up in the fantasy. They are taken advantage of by Churn and Burn marketers selling them BS products. They become discouraged and quit.
Sooner or later, you run out of suckers. Your practice of burning newbies reaches the wrong ears and you get called out. Your reputation is shot and so is your business.
Long story short: Don’t kill your customers.
There is a concept of lifetime average value when examining potential profits in your niche. Lifetime average value is the anticipated average expenditures by a customer of your information.
If you have a lot of value to bring and a lot of love to give, customers are a long-term asset with a steady flow of earnings. If you’re a Churn and Burn marketer, “it’s a numbers game” and you’re churning through massive quantities of pipe-dreamers until your business comes to a tragic halt. Good Lord, why would you even?
Well, that’s it for now. Rather a lot from a guy who’s asleep, wouldn’t you say? Be wakeful, my friends.