creating content Archives - Monetization Magic

Put Your Wallet Away: 3 No Cost Ways to Promote Your Business

When you start your business, you’re excited about it and you’ve told all the people close to you about your business. Maybe you’ve had a few sales and some interesting conversations about what you do and how you can help others. There comes a day usually within the first month or two of launching your business that you will realize that your business has encountered a lull and you’ve used up your warm market. You now need to begin to promote yourself and your value and speak to strangers about your new business.

There are many ways that you can promote your business. As you look around in your day to day life, you will see businesses promoted by billboards, TV commercials, radio commercials, direct mail pieces that you receive in your mailbox and internet advertising.

Why did you launch your business? You want to serve others and yet at the end of the day, you realize that you need to make a profit because everyday items need to be purchased in order to sustain the business. You may not have created a large surplus in which to pay for advertising and yet you still need to promote your business.

Rest easy, my friend, because my clients and I, myself, have created amazing amounts of money from my business while utilizing no cost ways of promoting business. Using no cost means of promoting your business frees up your funds to provide for you obviously more profits but also the ability to help others and from the tiny amount of value that you put out into the world, the ripples of your influence will radiate out from you and return to you in the form of people recognizing your value and needing your assistance.

All of the ways I will be introducing to you involve speaking to others. Speaking to another person is a great way to promote your business without incurring a cost. While you’re speaking with the other person about the value you have to offer you can also determine if you wish to invest your time in this person’s business to create value for them and move them to the next level in their awareness. This type of a conversation is often called a discovery session because you get to discover the person in front of you, either physically or virtually, and they get to discover you and what you have to offer. It is best to have no less than two of these meetings each week. This gives you the opportunity to start out in a low risk arena. We’ve all had one on one conversations and that’s all this is. No cost with the potential of great return. The medium you can use to have these conversations would be your own telephone or perhaps using Skype so that you don’t have to pay international telephone charges.

Once you have had the opportunity to have some one-on-one conversations, you may realize that you are now working more hours than you would prefer so the rest of the ways of speaking will move you from one-on-one conversations to one-to-many conversations. You can begin to hold your own teleseminar on the topics that will bring value to your ideal customers. While you’re bringing value, many who are attending your teleseminar will want to continue their studies with you and you would be doing a disservice to them if you didn’t give them an opportunity to continue their studies with you. You can also be interviewed by others and give their audience value. Generally, the host will allow you to provide their audience a way to connect with you further in the form of a gift that you would provide for them. A great no cost medium for teleseminars is FreeConferenceCall.com and it will provide you with your own teleseminar platform that can and should be recorded.

If you have content that lends itself to being presented in a visual manner, a third way is to create your own webinar. You can use Powerpoint slides or once you feel comfortable enough you can simply video record yourself for your webinar. You will still be providing value and an opportunity for your attendees to connect further with you just as you would with the teleseminar. The no cost platform that you can use for your webinars is called AnyMeeting.com and this platform will provide for 200 seats in your webinar. As you would with the teleseminar, you will want to record your webinar for reuse at a later date.

Once you begin to speak about your business outside your friends and family, you will receive great rewards in the form of feedback and clients. You don’t have to have it perfect when you begin! Just get out there and do it! Money is no longer an obstacle! Just as a baby learns to walk by trial and error, I would encourage you to call three people today and let them know when your first teleseminar will be held and ask them to attend. Whether or not they attend, hold the teleseminar anyway and record it. Once you’ve decided when you’re going to hold your teleseminar, I would love to receive an invitation. Really! Just reply to this ezine to let me know when you’ll be holding your first teleseminar. I love to hear about when a member of my tribe is taking action!

To find out 7 more no cost ways to promote your business, register for the upcoming no cost teleseminar to be held February 15th at 10 a.m. Mountain Time.

From Employee to Lifestyle Entrepreneur

By SoftwareGirl

What is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur? A lifestyle entrepreneur is one who makes a living doing what they want, where they want, with whom they want, any time they want.

The book 4-Hour Work Week touts escaping the 9-5, live anywhere, joining the new rich. When I read the book, I realized that Tim Ferriss definitely looks at problem solving differently. Different isn’t always a bad thing.

Pros

Work anywhere with an internet connection
No need for physical storefront
Income only limited to your own belief and choices
More agile than big business so your business can change directions quickly when needed

Cons

Requires a mindset shift regarding “security” and freedom
As you make more money, you will question your motives and spirituality
Friends and family may look at you differently

Why people are making the jump?

As more and more corporate businesses cut costs by outsourcing jobs overseas, American workers are realizing that their education, hard work and experience cannot guarantee that they will always have a job. As the cost of doing business increases, layoffs are occurring and workers are finding raises becoming few and far between while they are being asked to do their jobs and sometimes the jobs of 2 or 3 other people as well. They are being told to just be thankful that they have a job.

Entrepreneurship is not taught as an option in American schools. Being an entrepreneur is generally seen as a “risky” endeavor. The only thing risky about being an entrepreneur is making informed decisions. Just as you would ensure that your vehicle was road worthy before making a cross country trip, you would want to do your due diligence and have backup systems (like a spare tire) in place before starting your trip. The rest is an adventure with awesome people to meet and experiences to enjoy.

What is the #1 need of a lifestyle entrepreneur?

The #1 need of any lifestyle entrepreneur is having marketable content. Without marketable content there is no reason for your customer to buy from you. The easiest way to create marketable content is to determine the top problems of your ideal client and provide content that solves those problems. The problem you solve doesn’t need to be something that no one else is doing. In fact, it’s better if it is something that someone else is doing so that you don’t have to spend so much time explaining to others why they need your service. Your ideal customers will already know that they need your service!

You do not personally need to gain the skills to do all the work. You can outsource what you do not know how to do or do not have the desire to do. For example, I own a vehicle and I know that I need to change the oil in my vehicle every 3000 miles to keep it in top running condition. I know how to change oil. It’s not that difficult and I’ve done it several times before. It does require that I get a little dirty and there is the potential that I could mess up my manicure. I choose to go to Jiffy Lube to change my oil because they can change the oil faster than I can and the cost is just slightly higher than what I pay when I do it myself. They also top off all the rest of my fluids, vacuum my car and usually do it faster than what I could do it myself. I pay for the time savings in my schedule and my peace of mind.

Do you notice in the example above that what I choose to pay for is not the service that is offered? Determining your value to a customer may require you to look beyond the product or service that you offer.

First steps of making the jump from employee to entrepreneur

Deciding to make the jump
Determine your niche
- Who is your ideal client?
- What are their top 3 problems?
- What make you different than others offering the same solutions?
Determine your pricing
Determine your marketing ability

Your About Page Template

By SoftwareGirl

Your “About” Page gives your reader very basic information about you and your business. This is also an area that gives you an opportunity to tell a bit of your back story here. The basic information you want to include is a picture of you out in nature, if you have pets, it’s ok to feature them here as well. That being said, if you happen to be the crazy cat lady, just choose your one favorite cat to show people that you enjoy animals. Your audience will get the idea.

The next area is the Who I Am section where you give your name, why you’re qualified to do what you’re doing. Basically you want to tell your audience, why they should listen do you. Do you have degrees or certifications? Go ahead and list those here. If you don’t have degrees or certifications and you just happen to be passionate in this area, let your audience know how long you’ve been doing work in this area.

After the Who I Am section, the What I Do section will tell your reader what exactly it is that you can do for them. You can tell them in a very general way how you will produce results for them when they choose to work with you. For instance, you might say something such as “I do live in-person events, teleseminars, video courses, streaming live worldwide events as well as eCourses via e-mail”. Make sure you incorporate exactly what it is that differentiates you from everyone else in this area.

At this point, you’ll want to get a little personal and tell folks why you’re doing this. This area is call the Why I Do It area. You can use the DIP method to present your case here if you’d like. The DIP method goes like this:

What you’re doing today
“But it wasn’t always this way…”
How you changed your stars
Tell them about your road to recovery
Why you choose to work with your clients. What is your paycheck of the heart?

The Why I Do It area is only one short paragraph so you’ll want to just use one sentence each for the bullet points above to create your paragraph.

Finally, you’ll want to give your audience information on how they can contact you in the How to Connect with You area. Be sure to include your links to social media here along with a reminder to sign up for your incredible free offer and your newsletter to receive regular updates.

That’s it! Your template is below. Enjoy!

<Insert Picture Here>

Who I am

What I do

Why I Do It

How to Connect With Me

Write Your First Blog Post (Part 2 of 2)

By SoftwareGirl

In the first part of this article, we discussed finding and using keywords as well as how to utilize the Six Servants to give your post a structure so that the reader can determine if the post is appropriate for them. We will now discuss how to move your reader forward as you lead them to your desired destination.

Lay Out the Path to Your Destination

Your reader will need to know how to get from point A to your desired destination. Lead them step by step to the finished product. Point A is simply where on the path your reader is now. Your desired destination is where your reader will be once the information you have is transferred to them. At the end of reading your article, you will want to include direction (hopefully to more of your content) to more information or the next logical step to take to get to the next level in their journey. As your blog post unfolds, your reader may need specific tools/information to take them to the next step along the way. Equip your reader as you proceed just as the Google Keyword External Tool was introduced at the beginning of this blog post. Your blog post takes the reader on a journey from Point A to your desired destination with you leading the way. The question you want to answer along the way is “The reader will leave with an understanding of…”. If this question is answered with “I have no clue”, that’s a great opportunity for your to rewrite that area to gain clarity for the reader. Here is a simple outline for you to follow:

o Answer the Six Servant questions for the reader. Give them a reason to want to read your article.

o Describe Point A

o What tools does the reader need at this point? Where do they find the tools? What is the tool used for?

o The reader will leave with an understanding of…

o What is the next logic step along the path? Describe the next logical step.

o What tools does the reader need at this point? Where do they find the tools? What is the tool used for?

o The reader will leave with an understanding of…

o Summary

o What are the next possible steps once the desired outcome is achieved? Where can the reader possibly go from here? Why would the reader want to revisit your blog?

Key Points to Keep in Mind

Use the rule of 21 W’s. You will want to create a template with 21 W’s to determine how wide to make your posts for easy reading. A good rule of thumb is to put 21 W’s on your page as your guide to how wide to make your post.

Keep your posts to about 300-350 words. Anything long can be broken up into a series for easier reading. That way the reader can choose if they wish to continue reading or not.

At each point along the way, you will want to give a subheading to describe what that section of the article is about.

Summary

You now have a framework around which you can structure your blog posts. By using the Six Servants and Laying Out the Path to Your Destination for your readers, you will have a well written, concise blog post that creates value for your reader.

Now that you have your first blog post written, you will want to publish it. I will describe publishing a blog post in my next posting, Publish Your First Blog Post, with a video example.

Write Your First Blog Post (Part 1 of 2)

By SoftwareGirl

This post series describes how to write your first blog post and gives you a two-part structure to use so that your blog posts convey your intended message. This will help you to organize your ideas and focus on your topic. You can write your blog posts using any word processor such as Microsoft Word, Wordpad (free), Open Office Writer (free), Notepad (not ideal, but useable). You want to center your blog posts around keywords so that Google can drive traffic to your website. You can obtain your keyword list from the Google Keyword External Tool. It’s very simple and easy to use. Refer to your keyword list and simply pick a keyword. As you write your article, you will want to utilize your keywords in your article. A good rule of thumb is to make no more than 10% of your words keywords. So if your article is 300 words long, you will want no more than 30 key words.

This article will give you a plan so that you will have a two-part structure upon which to build your blog posts. Within your structure, you will refer to what I call the Six Servants. These Six Servants are concepts which are likely very familiar to you. They are: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How. Yes, you probably know these servants well; however, we will be expanding these concepts to assist you. Just as you use a map when taking a long trip, so too, we will build a map for you to follow. Only this map will become a tool for you as you learn to insert and delete items to guide you to your desired destination which is to have a well written article that is of interest to your readers.

Utilizing the Six Servants

The Six Servants can be enhanced to assist you in creating the first part of your structure. The information obtained from answering the following questions will assist you in creating the foundation to your article. For example, upon writing this article, I may have used the following questions:

Who will be reading the article? Bloggers who either haven’t written their first blog post or bloggers who have written blog posts that are not receiving the traffic that they would like to realize on their blog.

What tool/new information will be transferred in the article? I’m introducing the Google Keyword External Tool and a two-part structure to create a structure for the blog posts.

When will they be reading this article? They will be reading this article when they have a blog started and need more information on how to create blog posts in an orderly, organized fashion.

Where on their path will they be when they use this tool or knowledge? Blog writers will utilize these tools every time they create a blog post. This information can also be used in product creation.

Why will this information be important to them? This information is important to them if they wish to drive more traffic to their blogs from the search engines.

How can they obtain more information about this topic? How can they integrate this knowledge to their particular situation? I’m currently giving an example of how I’m using this tool and structure to write this particular blog post to make it easier for my reader to see how to put it into use.

Next we will discuss how to create a logical path for your readers to follow as they read your blog post.