You’ve put a lot of investment into your website and marketing to drive traffic. Now you need to turn those visitors into subscribers – it’s the only way you are going to make money from your online efforts!
The secret? Put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. Here are five steps to help you do just that.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.” True. But you can surely increase your chances if that horse is thirsty in the first place!
You want your website visitors to be thirsty, too. Getting lots of traffic isn’t the point; you need traffic that is potentially interested in what you have to offer, and hence willing to subscribe. In online marketing, building a responsive list is how you are going to make money. It’s also the most time-intensive task, but extra effort spent on this step will also pay off handsomely. Read the rest of this post »
Here at Solo-E we often talk about how important it is, as a home based solo entrepreneur, to have support. We need the support of our family and friends; we build a support team for our business; and we actively seek out the collaborative support of colleagues.
Michelle Shaeffer, The Small Business Muse™, makes a great distinction between the support of people who are at about the same level of success as we are — certainly a source of comfort that we aren’t alone! — and working with and around people more successful than ourselves. The latter, scary as it may be, is how we stretch, grow, and leap to the next level.
MarketingSherpa published a wonderful list of seven free (and one paid) search engine optimization tools, most of them user-friendly and valuable for the solo entrepreneur as well as small businesses! I love this list not just because it’s a great collection of tools, but because of the ideas they share for HOW to use the tools, too. For instance I’ve had SEOQuake for months and didn’t know you could use it to sort your search results!
No one can ever say that having a home based business is boring! Between quieting barking dogs, refereeing your children’s fights, and answering the phone and the doorbell, it can sometimes be hard to get anything done — no matter how well you visualize, set goals, and plan your day.
And it can be equally easy to be too hard on ourselves, blame ourselves for not being more organized, focused or motivated. But that just increases the pressure — it doesn’t solve anything!
We dream of spontaneous trips to the beach, month-long vacations, all while making six or seven figure incomes. Sure it’s possible…but the probability is that in your journey to “home based business nirvana”, you’ll log some serious hours in the office.
Packaging your knowledge, skills and methods and giving it away for free is a wonderful way to market your business. So how do you give it away effectively and profitably?
Use multiple channels and formats. For instance, give away information on your blog, in articles posted on other sites, in free giveaway ebooks, in audio teleclasses and excerpts.
Get something in return when possible. Encourage blog visitors to sign up for blog updates via email. Put a subscription box to your newsletter on every page of your website (particularly where you post your newsletters, etc.) For bigger “chunks” of information like ebooks and audios, require that they sign up for your newsletter to get these freebies. In ebooks, make a link to your website prominent at the bottom of each page.
One of the best ways to generate more income is to stop selling your expertise by the hour. Your expertise — knowledge, skills, methods — are your most valuable assets. By taking your expertise and packaging it in various forms, you can sell your expertise 24/7/365.
So if your knowledge, skills and methods are your most valuable assets, why in the world would I suggest that you give it away as a marketing strategy?? Read the rest of this post »
In Part I of this series I shared five critical elements of setting up a good working relationship with your support team — getting things off on the right foot. Now I’ll share my secrets for building and strengthening the relationship over time.
Pay on time! If the terms say pay within 10 days — why not pay in five? Your support team is the lifeblood of your business — what better way to let them know you appreciate and value their contribution?
Put away the fine-tooth comb. If you’ve done a good job of hiring a team member, you don’t need to fuss over how many hours for this or that. If you don’t trust them, you shouldn’t have hired them.
Four years ago this month, Solo-E hired its first contractors: 3 fabulous VAs. Between them they handled the details of hundreds of items of content for the website, scores of newsletters and uncounted correspondence with subscribers and clients. Two of them still work for me (the third took time off with her third child and is now pursuing a career in financial planning!)
Having a long and successful working relationship with a team of contractors is somewhat of an anomaly among solo entrepreneurs. In many ways I’ve been very fortunate to have such talented and caring people working for me. But I also recognize some critical pieces of making it work that can be planned for — because it’s not just luck! Read the rest of this post »
