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 »
Andy Wibbels interviewed Timothy Ferriss, author of the just-released book, The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s relatively short (just over a half-hour), and imho, a must-listen-to. It includes some really provocative ideas along with a few specific tactics that address what I would call the Solo Entrepreneur Lifestyle.
Some wonderful quotes from the interview:
"I’m not proposing that people choose between money or a less-stressful existence…people feel as though they have to choose between high-stress high-reward or low-stress low-reward…it doesn’t have to be that way."
"Don’t work for the weekend and don’t work for retirement!"
Every time someone asks you how you are doing, your answer includes the words "work" and "busy". Every solo entrepreneur needs downtime: to think, to rest, to recharge. Even if you still fell like you are having fun, if you aren’t getting time for those things, that’s the first red flag that it’s time to start figuring out what to delegate.
You find yourself procrastinating on the same tasks, over and over. We procrastinate for lots of reasons, many of which have to do with the task being difficult, distasteful, or even boring. You have a choice: keep doing those yucky tasks, draining your energy and allowing less time for your "passion" work — or hire someone else who finds those tasks easy, fun, and fulfilling.
Your time spent on various income streams is disproportionate from the ROI (return on investment) from those streams. There are exceptions — like when you are starting a new income stream — but for the most part, percentage of your time spent should match the percentage of income you get from that stream.
When you wake up in the morning (or when it is time to start your usual work hours), you find it hard to get going. If the joy has gone out of your work, that could be a sign that you are spending time on the wrong things. Take stock of your to-do list and see if there are projects and tasks that you’d just rather someone else did!
You don’t seem to be getting the important things on your to-do list done. Early last week, I had one major goal: to get the sales page written and online by the end of the week. And here I am, end of the week, I’ve been working my tootsies off and that page still isn’t done! As I did, you can review what less-important tasks were getting in the way — and figure out how those can be done by someone else!
"I’m starting my own business. I don’t have any money — I need income right away. Can you help me?"
<sigh>
This scenario is all too common, and a bit sad. There are all sorts of get-rich-quick schemes out there that lull us into thinking it is possible to make ridiculous amounts of money right away, with miniscule investment, working just a few hours a day.
I think that as conscientious Solo Entrepreneurs, we tend to think that creating a new product means starting from a blank sheet of paper. Kind of like baking from scratch, rather than from a box.
I don’t know about you but cake from a box is mighty fine to me!
