Yesterday I presented my 10 Reasons Why I Won’t Outsource and they are great reasons not to have anyone involved in my money making activities, but of course, following them would be stupid.

As I can clearly see they are based on the belief system of a 2 year old. Imagine the founders of UPS or Dell trying to execute their business plan by doing everything themselves.

While I don’t have any current aspirations to grow into a multi-billion dollar company there are, even for a very small-time entrepreneur some important advantages to hiring out work.

Here’s my objections from yesterday and what I believe to be a sound response to overcome the objection:

#10 What if it takes more of my time and effort, to tell the person what to do than to just do it myself?

The onus is on me to give clear instructions, which is a great skill to develop. For tasks that are more complex, especially ones that are done over and over, use a screen capture video tool and create videos as recommended in freedom business systems.

#9 The Employee Won’t do a Good Job

Being a control freak and a perfectionist are both inhibitors to making money. There is a quote in Guy Kawasaki’s book Art of the Start which goes something like; “If you aren’t embarrassed when you first launch then you waited too long.”

I can learn to get my ego out of the way and realize whether the stuff I do is valuable, is the important factor. Are you playing to the reviewers, or to the audience?

My experience has been that by giving people space to breath, most people I have hired will exceed my expectations.

#8 It’s Too Big of a Job to Set Up My Systems

It is possible, if you find an experienced person to perform that tasks, to have them document the procedures as part of their job. That way you don’t have to actually spend too long setting up the initial procedures, and you have something in place that the next person can follow (allowing you to hire someone with less experience.)

#7 What if I Can’t Communicate Properly With The Employee

Get a different person to work with; plain and simple a mesh in communication style and abilities is essential.

#6 Can I Trust Someone Hired Online?

No way to know at first. The best is to have a system of graduated trust. Start the person performing tasks that don’t require high trust levels, then as you get to know them and they prove their integrity, and they understand your business better, move them to higher trust positions.

#5 I Don’t Actually do Tasks That Can Be Clearly Communicated to Another Person

Time to de-clutter you working habits. This is a tough one for me, as I don’t think that I’m performing straight-forward tasks, but I know that I need to make an effort to break my business down into easily communicated processes and procedures.

Start small and take out the obvious ones first, is the best advice I can think of for this one. Also tasks that are repeated are easy to document and pass along to another person.

#4 What if a Person That I Train Quits?

This one is inevitable, so you must plan for it. Outsourcing services like Get Friday have a team structure designed to minimize turnover costs.

#3 What if the Employee Drives Me Nuts Asking Questions?

The goal should be that you hire people who know how to think, and follow clear instructions.

Ideally, if the instructions are clear, the procedure should be able to be done without asking any questions. Screen capture videos are excellent for this. With my own Real Blog Videos I have sold almost 200 copies and I receive very few support questions.

The videos cover setting up a blog, from keyword research, buying a domain, hosting, installing WordPress to making the first post and the target audience is people who are not experienced technically. The low question rate (less than one a week!) demonstrates the power of the screen capture video as an effective communication tool.

#2 What if I Don’t Make Any More Money?

Like starting any business, getting Cashflow is the primary step. Identify the tasks that will have the most and quickest impact on the bottom line and outsource them first.

First priority has to be to increase Cashflow enough to pay for the outsourcing! Once you know you can do that then set up a way to track the return on investment for the outsourcing.

At the very least make sure you are tracking profit in your business, if it isn’t increasing with the addition of someone else working in your system, then there is a flaw in your business model.

#1 Bosses are BAD. I Don’t want to be a Boss! Having to tell someone what to do is bad enough, what if I have to give them sh*t or heaven forbid fire them, I can’t handle that.

If you grew up in a family that came from generations of blue collar workers (like me), you may have thoughts like this lurking in the back of your mind. These attitudes can trigger all sorts of resistance to outsourcing and moving into a position of responsibility and power.

To others, this step is not difficult at all. Either way, being able to pull the pin on the guillotine is an essential leadership skill and I know I’ll always have a big limitation on my earnings and personal growth without that ability.

Why It’s Worth It to Outsource

In conclusion to my 2 part outsourcing Q & A, it is clear that for anyone wanting build a real business and to move beyond the scope of a regular salary, there must be other people’s time involved.

I’m pretty sure I’ve talked myself into hiring a virtual assistant and to committing to outsourcing a major portion of my tasks. Here are the benefits that I expect to realize:

The ability to scale. If you believe what you are doing is profitable, wouldn’t it be better to create 3 or 10 profit channels, even if they only produce 50% of the income of the one you could complete by yourself?

Freedom. How can I ever go on a real vacation if all of my businesses are completely dependant on me for day to day operations. Isn’t freedom the reason that I wanted more money to begin with?

More money and more freedom, pretty good motivation to work my way from the limitations of a one man show to having a complete systematized business.

10 Ways of Overcoming Outsourcing Objections is a post from: Art of Money

This is the next action post in my $100 a day blogging series. Up to this point we have reached the point where you should have a basic list of high level keywords that you may want to target with your blog. Today we’re going to move on and take the step of gathering specific information about the theme that we’re interested in blogging about.

Competitor analysis is really a key for many different reasons.

1. Understanding what you’re up against.
2. Gather monetization ideas.
3. Frame your competitive advantage.

For each high level keyword in your list (you should have no more than 7-10) do a Google search and take a look at the top 10 or 20 results for each of them. Create a spreadsheet and make notes under each of the above 3 categories.

TIP: When you’re checking these keywords in Google, make sure sure you’re not logged in to your Gmail account (or any other Google account, like Reader) because you’ll get different results if you are. I usually use Internet Explorer for Google searching and then Firefox for my real browsing and checking Gmail etc.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

What Is the Quality of my Competition?

For each site you find in the search results:

1. What is their Alexa ranking and Page Rank?
2. How many pages do they have in Google?
3. What is it that they are good at (their competitive advantage)?
4. Is their site a good match for the keyword term?

As I did some of this research I was surprised to find that in quite a few cases, there were sites in the top 5 of Google that weren’t a great match for the keywords.

For example, for the term “make money online” ProBlogger.net comes up in the top 5 results. Now ProBlogger.net is a great resource for “make money blogging” but it really isn’t nearly broad enough to cover any decent portion of the “make money online” topic.

That tells me that Google doesn’t really have any enough sites that it considers authorities for that phrase, therefore it has put ProBlogger into that result, since it is a pretty good fit. If I can convince Google that I am a better fix (primarily with more diverse thematically related site content) then I may be rewarded with a great ranking for a high traffic keyword.

How Are My Competitors Making Money?

Make notes in your spreadsheet about ALL the ways that your competition are making money. Some possibilities include:

• AdSense
• Private ads
• Affiliate Links
• Text Link Ads
• Private Link Ads
• Sponsorships
• Pay Per Post
• Review Me

There are lots of others, of course. Make a list of them, but pay special attention to the prominent ones. Which ones are above the fold, promoted front and center…likely these are the big profit makers.

Look for a Competitive Advantage

As you are scanning these sites, remain open to find your competitive advantage. What are these site weak at? What can you do better than they are doing?

Make sure you read comments on these sites. Are commenters pissed off about things on the site? Or is there a theme in the comments that can give you ideas about what the readers of the site are wanting that the site isn’t providing.

Keep reading (or take some time to reflect once you have read them all) until it becomes clear what you can bring to this market that doesn’t exist already.

Other Ways to Scope the Competition

If they have a mailing list, sign up for it as well as downloading and looking at any free e-books, whitepapers etc.

Who do they link to in their blogroll? Check these sites out as well. There are usually lots of highly valuable sites in any niche that don’t show up in the search engine results.

When you do your searches for your competition, are any of these sites buying traffic on AdWords (look at the URL field on the ads on the searches you are making)?

One thing I discovered in my research was that John Chow has a promotion that encourages people to review his site and link back using the keyword phrase “make money online.” That’s a great idea. Not only as a technique for me to borrow (ie. do the same; encourage my readers to link to me using a targeted phrase), but also I could write a review of his site and be exposed to his readers (who are exactly my target market.)

Don’t forget, your profit potential is largely determined in the market research stage of blogging, so don’t rush or if you have already started your site, don’t neglect it.

Blogging Competitor Analysis is a post from: Art of Money

I am immersed daily in the community of people who are trying to make money online. And besides trying to carve out my out little piece of the pie, I like to occasionally sit back and observe the lay of the land.

If you asked me what the one thing is that separates the big earners from the ones who struggle to get a monthly $100 AdSense check, it’s strategy. Big earner have and follow one, strugglers don’t.

Goals, ??? & a Plan

You’ll hear a lot about goals (The Secret) and planning (Goal Mapping) when it comes to manifesting dreams in your life, but the one thing that I see overlooked, neglected and undervalued is a strategy.

The three points of the success triangle as I see it:

1. goal
2. strategy
3. plan

All three are essential.

Let’s take an example. Now I don’t know Darren Rowse personally so I can’t claim to know what went on in his head, but here’s my best guess at the process of a successful Blogger:

Darren started blogging as a hobby but I remember reading that at some point he made a deal with his wife that he would take 6 months to create a full-time income from blogging.

Goal: Create a full-time income from blogging.

Plan: Post 20 stories a day of valuable content to various blogs.

The part that is so often overlooked…

Strategy: Online advertising and commerce were just beginning to mature when he went pro, blogs were exploding in popularity and search engines were in love with blogs as a constantly updated sources of information. Therefore each blog post would have a present and residual value. Put enough little flakes of value online and the sum total would amount to a passive income system equal to a full time job.

The Easiest Strategy is To Follow Long Term Trends

The easiest way to make money or succeed at anything is to make a plan based on a long term trend.

Darren identified a trend and built his plan on top of that trend. If he had the same goal and the same plan 3 years earlier, he wouldn’t have made his full-time income goal in 6 months.

BTW, it is my belief that the same trend is still in effect. Meaning that someone with the same goal, strategy and plan could produce the same results as Darren did. However, since competition is higher, secondary factors like market research (choosing a profitable topic), communication ability and quality, and technical factors (search engine optimization) are now more important.

Take at Look at the game Monopoly

Who’s going to win most often in a game of Monopoly? The person with the best strategy. Typically you can win most of the time, just by having any type of strategy. For example: buy one high quality matching set of properties and develop them fully to hotels.

Monopoly is perfect for learning strategy since it rewards the grouping of properties of the same color.

A good strategy has a compounding effect on your efforts.

In the real world buying any property, over a long enough period of time and you are likely to make money. But buying a property in a great neighborhood or a city about to boom and you’ll make a lot more money.

If Darren had written 20 articles a day and submitted them to traditional publications rather than posting them on his blog, he’d probably still be a starving artist rather than a 6 Figure Blogger.

3 Reasons Why Strategy Matters so Much

1.) A well chosen strategy allows you to leverage the trend. An expression from my Grandfather, “when the tide comes in, all the boats rise.”

In short, it is easier to have success if you have a trend working in your direction. Identifying major trends is important.

2.) Strategy takes guessing and, more importantly, emotion out of the working of your plan. When you have built your plan on a strategy that aligns with a long term trend, all you have to do is to work your plan and pay attention to the macro events which may cause a change in fundamentals.

Your hunches and the day to day emotions should never influence decisions in your plan.

3.) Takes the guesswork out of it.

In my investment club, macro trends are always used to base decisions on. For example, about 2 years ago we asked the question…”how can you make money from the shortage of fossil fuels?”

The leaders of the club passed the question to a team of analysts who concluded, by proper research, that Nuclear, given the restraints of time and money and global warming concerns, is the most viable alternative to highly polluting fuels currently used to produce energy.

The best play on the solution to global warming trends = Uranium. Here’s a look at the chart of a typical junior uranium stock from the last year or so.

Some Trends that You Can Use to Build Wealth

• Near my city (Edmonton) there is $115 billion committed for expansion of an Oil Sands project over the next 5 years, which is driving housing prices up and up due to a huge demand for labor.
• See the uranium example above, as a response to global warming.
• More and more commerce is moving online, but if you look around, especially locally and in smaller businesses, you’ll see that there is a long way to go before e-commerce reaches its full potential.
• While approximately 1 billion people world wide have Internet access, that still leaves 5 billion plus, who are yet to get online.
• The middle class in China and India is expanding rapidly, causing huge demand side pressure on everything from concrete to autos to designer clothes.
• The United States government continues to be fiscally irresponsible, piling up a huge and possibly irreconcilable debt. Hedgers have reacted to this by driving up the price of gold from $290 in 2000, to $648 an ounce in 2007. 

There are probably many others that I haven’t listed, especially in smaller niches. Leave any you can think of in a comment!

Summing Up

Strategy is the key to big and easy wealth. Most people don’t stick to their plans because the plan is not built on a solid strategy, therefore once the emotion of hope and greed or discomfort come into the picture, they doubt, question or abandon the plan.

Every blog post is a little piece of revenue potential, feed them into the right strategy and they will compound to meet and exceed your goals.

The One Factor That Most Determines Success is a post from: Art of Money

Domaining is the online equivalent of a real estate investor speculating in raw land. Even though it can be one of the most lucrative and the simplest and easiest forms of Internet businesses it doesn’t get that much attention.

My guess about why that is would be that it is too simple. It doesn’t really take a guru to package up a $150 oops $147 eBook to tell you what to do. You can understand the basic concepts in about 20 minutes; from there it just takes a few tools a bankroll of some kind and you can be up and running in an hour.

In my own experience I once purchased the domain name rivercity.ca for about $10 and sold it 6 months later for $1500. That’s a killer return on investment. If you can do that with any kind of consistency, domaining can be very lucrative.

What is Domaining?

The most basic form of domaining is simply acquiring potentially valuable domain names. These undeveloped domains are then monetized in one of two ways:

1. By providing ads to people who visit the domain by typing the domain name directly into a browser (known as “type-in traffic”.)  You’re probably thinking that very few people would ever type most domain names directly into a browser, well it happens more than you think and with a domain name costing about $7/year, your domain only has to make about 2 cents a day to give you a positive cash flow. Once you can consistently pick up sites that more than pay for their registration fees, then you now have a money-making machine, requiring no maintenance.
2. By reselling the domains once they appreciate. Since it is unlikely that any established niches will have many new and valuable domains that haven’t been registered, domainers look for new ideas and breaking trends and register keyword rich related domain names. From there it is a matter of waiting for your new trend to break big into the popular culture (imaging you registered podcast.com 5 years ago.) Just on the Earth, there is a limited amount of prime Internet real estate (namely short .com names) and serious developers know the value of this real estate and are willing to pay for it.

Skills Required

The ability to understand the concept of type-in traffic and what sorts of domains or words that people type directly into a browser.

The ability to spot new concepts that are emerging in the world and to quickly turn those ideas into keyword rich domain names.

Tips For Buying Domains as Investments

• .com or other top level country domains to a lesser extent (.ca for Canada will receive some type in traffic).
• no hyphens
• no numbers

Often domains are sold in ‘portfolios’ which is a large (often 100s or 1000s) of related domain names. It is best to focus on niches and batch your purchases around your topic rather than buying many unrelated names.

You can buy existing sites that are expiring. If you do, make sure to check whois.sc and Archive.org for the history of the site. It is possible to completely trash a domain name (with black hat spam for example) so badly that it may never get indexed in a search engine again. A site like this might look like a great domain, so will even have a high PageRank, but beware.

The Pros for Domaining as an Internet Business

Low barrier to entry as far as skills go, all you need to do is pay attention to what is new in the world around you and attempt to snap up domains related to these topics.

The Cons for Domaining as an Internet Business

Profit on each individual name can be tiny and equity increases can be hit and miss. Which means that you could need to buy 1000’s of domains to make any type of substantial income or to begin to have a large enough portfolio to stand a decent chance of hitting a home run with a high-demand name.

Lots of competition from serious companies.

Some gray areas around trademarks can lead to being sued a lot. The more aggressive you want to be by cutting into trademarked words or phrases, the more risk you run, but the more potential profit as well.

Build out your Internet Real Estate

Build out your real estate a bit, create a page, or a WordPress blog, point a couple links at it and add AdSense or an affiliate offer to it.

As opposed to simple domaining where you use a monetization service (see resources below) you’ll require hosting (I use Hostgator because it me to host unlimited domains and has one-click WordPress installs for about $10 a month.)

Getting Serious about Domaining

If you are going to get really serious about domaining then you are going to get set up with a registrar, or become one yourself, so that you can practice “domain tasting.”

This procedure, of registering a domain for up to 2 weeks and then canceling the registration if the domain doesn’t receive any type-in traffic, allows the serious domainer to know that any money they spend on domains will result in a positive return on investment. It is a very serious tool for professional domains as it almost guarantees a profitable buy on every name they purchase.

Also, if you are going pro, you can begin to purchase domains that have already appreciated, hoping for further appreciation. In 2003 the domain men.com sold for $1.5 million. It was purchased in 1997 for $15k.

My Case Study – Think Like a Domainer

Here’s an example of the thinking that I go through with domaining. A while ago I was reading my copy of Wired magazine. I do a quick scan of it the day it arrives. I came across a story of a high school student who, at a science fair, was able to create about half the power of a regular AA battery by harnessing the power produced by “magnetic bacteria.” For about 10 seconds, I thought to myself, “wow is that ever cool…that could change the world by reducing the need for fossil fuels.”

Then I IMMEDIATELY RAN TO MY COMPUTER and registered magneticbacteria.com.

That’s the life a domainer. Fun life, get it right and you’ll be rich and it really is almost completely maintenance free business…just don’t forget to renew those domains

Domainer Resources

• Find trends – trendwatching, WordTracker hot searches, Yahoo Buzz, Wired magazine
• Sedo - learn what domains are selling for and understand why they are valuable. Not recommended as a parking service due to low payouts, but a decent place to list domains for sale.
• Hitfarm – parked domain monetization service.
• SnapNames – for backordering existing domains that are about to expire
• Domain Hunter – domainer’s domain name brainstorming tool
• Ultsearch who sold his domain portfolio for $164 million.
• Domainer Magazine

Domainer – The Perfect Internet Business? is a post from: Art of Money

Last week I attended a great presentation about goal setting. It was presented at the local business resource centre and was given by Dan McDonald of Business Improvement Solutions.

The presentation was specifically targeted to business goal setting and it was based on Dan’s extensive experience coaching businesses to set and reach their goals.

My past experience with goal setting books or talks has been that they didn’t sell the concepts well enough to my mind. In other words I was always left with a voice that could say, “that wouldn’t work, because of x, y or z.” But with Dan’s presentation, I couldn’t poke a hole in it. I was convinced that if I followed the twelve steps with honest and sincere effort, I would succeed in anything that I applied them to.

Here are the 12 steps for goal setting. Take your time and let them sink it a bit.

1. Make Your Goal Personal

You must make goals that come from you. I stumble on this one all the time with my blog network. I get caught up in the success of other networks and start to want those things (venture capital, millions of uniques a month etc) but they aren’t necessarily what is really right for me and my business.

Honesty is required since having goals that don’t align with your talents, skills and true desires will decrease the likelihood of manifesting the goal.

2. Make Your Goal Believable

Your mind has a certain sweet spot where it feels like the challenge is completely engaging, but entirely possible. If your goals are too easy or the odds are too remote the mind won’t engage fully in its pursuit.

Go over the goal in your mind and pay attention to your response. Try a few different ones to see what the various reactions are. For example, if you currently earn $30k a year.

1. 1. I will earn $30,200 next year.
   2. I will earn $3,000,000 next year.
   3. I will earn $60,000 next year.

I’m not trying to say that one is more possible than the others but #1 is not really a significant accomplishment; basically a waste of time. Roll up the coins in your change jar and you’re done.

Number 2 will be too much of a stretch for most. I believe it is possible to multiply your income by 10, but most people will lose interest or tune out the challenge before ever take significant action; the mind won’t engage if it feels the odds are too slim.

Number 3 will likely engage you because it is in the sweet spot of what is possible. It gets you busy!

3. Write Your Goal Down

Most people aren’t even brave enough to allow a dream or goal to clarify in to a thought in their heads.

Why?

• Fear of failure
• Fear of change
• Fear of success

Then to take the goal and actually write it down requires an even greater leap into the possibility of discomfort. But writing it down begins to activate the belief system.

A recurring theme throughout the talk was Dan’s emphasis on actions that “trained the brain” into believing that what you were doing or wanting was important enough for your brain to begin to devote some of it’s massive energy and power towards making it happen.

4. Ask Why You Want the Goal

“So I never have to feel pain,” or “so I can be in control of everything,” are not the best reasons for wanting to be rich. Your brain is smarter than that, it probably won’t co-operate with thinking that is that limiting. In my experience you’ll get infinite support for goals and activities that increase your overall life’s capacity, but very little support for ones that decrease it.

A lot of people think that they want to be rich but it is really a misguided belief that being rich will mean something else.

“Why do you want to be rich?”

…To have more friends

…To show people that I’m important

…To prove I’m not a loser

etc.

Honesty is required to get to the real reason but it is a necessary step since the planning and actions required to achieve a goal are unique to the goal. Having more money won’t get you more friends, but meeting more people and taking an interest in other people may.

5. Analyze Your Current Position

This is a surprisingly easy one to neglect and vitally important. I struggled for months trying to build my passive income up to the point where I felt I could afford to work full-time on my blog network.

Then one day I sat down and took a good look at where I was at financially with everything in my life. I realized that I could actually afford to go for a year just from my current savings. I never would have guessed it, if I hadn’t sat down with the cold hard facts.

The other part of current position analysis is that it has a big impact on the plan you will develop to achieve the goal.

6. Set a Deadline

Take advantage of “the final exam effect” where most of the results (studying) will happen right before the deadline.

There is also a power in working within an enclosed or limited amount of anything. A restriction focuses your inner resources. A lump of coal, lying on the ground isn’t going to turn into a diamond.

7. Identify Obstacles

List out all the obstacles that could keep you from achieving your goal.

Order them from largest to smallest impact on your success. Now forget about all of them except the one at the top of the list. Work only on that one until it is overcome. The reason is that it is quite likely that a number of the others are pinned to or dependant upon it. Once it is removed it is likely that your obstacle list may not require any more attention.

Important clue…it is likely that the biggest obstacle is inside of you (an attitude, belief or fear that prevents you from completing you goal).

8. Acquire Knowledge

In the workshop I really liked the reason that was given for making acquiring knowledge as part of your goal process:

It re-enforces your commitment and trains your brain that you are taking this seriously.

The real secret to the law of attraction is not dreaming or thinking about what you want, it is in taking focused action.

9. Find Your Customer

Since this was a business goal setting workshop, there was a component about clients and customers. The key point from this section was market research. Don’t assume you know what your customer wants. There is often a disconnect between what someone says they want and what they really want.

Take the time to ask questions. One of the most successful moves I ever made was when I decided to go back to school (my second career) for computer programming. There were 4 schools in my city offering similar training, all with slightly different lengths or options.

My goal was to come out of the training and easily get a job. I was clear about what I wanted, but all the schools promised that I would achieve my goal.

Not that I was skeptical but it was important for me to get it right. My wife was going to support me while I went to school and the last thing I wanted was to end up going backwards financially.

So I did market research. I called 6 companies and asked which school’s grads they preferred to hire. It was a slam dunk which one they would choose…they all told me they preferred grads from the same school!

Sure enough after my two year course I easily found an excellent job.

10. Make a Plan

Planning is another vital part of goal setting. I really liked the emphasis that the workshop gave on this section. All Dan said was that a plan needed to be filled with concrete ACTIONS.

When we think of a business plan especially, there is a lot in there that doesn’t really contribute to getting the business goals met. Pull out the real plan, the actions steps, and use it as a checklist of tasks needed to get to the goal.

11. Visualize

Seeing it in your mind can reduce fear.

Like the picture of the puzzle on the outside of the box, take time to create the picture and you can finish the puzzle faster.

This is another brain training step. What will it look and feel like when your goal is reached? Consider every detail in depth. It isn’t uncommon for professional athletes to spend as much time visualizing as they do playing their sport.

12. Determination, Drive & Desire

The keys to achieving goals is not talent. In the workshop Dan told a story of a study that was done on people who had achieved great success, and every single one of them said that they had met someone who had more talent than them, but didn’t achieve as much success.

The researchers speculated that the people with more natural talent, because success came easily to them, were eventually surpassed because they didn’t develop determination, drive and desire.

Achieving success is usually a long term process and during that process it is inevitable that you are going to feel completely hopeless, or become disillusioned or feel like a complete failure at least once, probably often.

Having the ability to get up, dust yourself off and continue on towards your goal is the most important factor to achieving something truly worthwhile.

Wrapping Up the Goal Setting Process

Like I mentioned off the top, this is by far the most comprehensive, in terms of covering all the mental loop-holes, guide for goal setting that I have encountered.

The only thing it doesn’t cover, which will doom most people is that you actually have to do the 12 steps to accomplish any goal.

Like I mentioned above the real secret is that focused action is required to move forward.

- Jon Symons
Goal Setters Anonymous

12 Steps to Set and Reach Your Goals is a post from: Art of Money

One of the highlights of the Rich Dad weekend was a 3 hour presentation by Tom Wheelright of Pro Vision Wealth.

Tom shared a lot of material with us about creating wealth, but one nugget that made a very large impression on me was this formula, which was developed by Buckminster Fuller

“r” represents the number of relationships and “N” is the number of people that are involved in your company (or any other team).

Here’s a walk through of a typical situation (I’ve reduced some of the groups, like employees to one person for this example).

R in the example above ends up being 64 – 8 / 2 = 28 Relationships!!!

Geez, no wonder I’m not getting any work done.

In the example Tom presented the team he outlined was a wealth building team but the example of a business sure fits for me.

As anyone who has read the E-Myth Revisited knows the key to solving this time crippling situation is to get “You” out of the center of the picture.

In Tom’s example the new picture looked like this:

By placing someone who’s job it is to manage relationships into the center of the picture, you now have gone from managing 28 relationships to managing 1; the one between you and the coach or manager.

I’m seeing that this is a key strategy for building a real business and having success in almost anything.

Decrease Complexity by Reducing Relationships is a post from: Art of Money

Since there are now so many domain names registered, it becomes harder and harder to find a great top level domain name for a new site. Since most webmasters won’t have the big bucks to purchase an existing high quality domain a new industry has sprung up: professional domain namers.

Usually these folks/services charge pretty big money to find a brandable quality domain for your business/website idea, but Picky Domains has applied the Web 2.0 spirit of collaboration to the concept of domain naming and created a brilliant business where you can get a pile of great domain name suggestions for only $50.

This is how the service works. You deposit 50 dollars and tell us about the site you need a name for. What the site does or will do. How many letters or words in your domain you want max. What keywords absolutely have to be in the domain. Dashes or no dashes. Dot com only or not. If we can use slang or not. Etc.

We dispatch this information to our contributors and you start getting a list of available domain names via e-mail. If you see a name that’s a perfect match for your website, register it and let us know the domain name, so we can pay the person who came up with the name. If you don’t like any of the domain names we suggest, we’ll simply refund your 50 dollars upon your request. Our domain namers get paid ONLY if we can find a domain that you register.

Now that’s a very cool idea and a great way to leverage the power of the connected world to provide a low cost solution to a problem.

If you are at all serious about you project or business, then $50 seems like a very nominal fee for getting a team of domain namers to spit out a bunch of cool ideas.

- Jon Symons
Finding meta services, so you don’t have to.

P.S. This was the second of a three part series about choosing domain names. We’ve covered keywords in a domain name, this article which is about domain name brainstorming and in part three I’ll show you a tool that claims to actually score domain name (and complete URLs to tell you which ones are most profitable).

How To Choose a Domain Name – Part 2 is a post from: Art of Money

I need a new logo for my city blog network, and I was going to use a traditional logo service like My Logo but I thought it would be fun to get the network bloggers involved in the process so I decided to go the SitePoint Marketplace and run a logo contest.

The process has been really interesting so I thought I would share my experience and the tips of what I’ve learned:

1.) Wide Variety of Entries

You’ll get a wide variety of entries, which is mostly a good thing. You can expect a wide range of quality too, but traditional logo companies often charge by the number of concepts that you will receive, so to get 25 or 30 original designs presented to review is a fantastic luxury.

2.) Put Up Enough of A Reward to Attract Good Bids

The base reward for a logo competition on SitePoint is only $100, but My Logo charges $199 minimum so I was afraid that if I went with the minimum that I wouldn’t attract any real pros, so I made my competition $160, which seems to have done the trick, as I have received some great entries.

3.) Review Existing and Past Contests

Check out the other current and past logo contests. While you look at them, take a look at the quality of entries (especially in relationship to the amount of prize money offered).

Look at the summary and detail descriptions of the project…borrow heavily from the ones that are really well done.

Pay attention to the feedback give to the designers, as this is a key area to getting a logo that is a good match to your business.

4.) Give Clear Instructions

Vague or loose instructions will ruin the contest. I could have spent more time defining what I wanted. It’s good to have a basic idea of colors, and even some examples of styles of logos that you are wanting.

The more you can narrow down the focus for the designers at the begriming the more energy they can spend refining design rather than struggling to figure out what you want.

5.) Communicate With the Participants

It seems like the designers are very eager and by providing updates as to your thinking and by quickly answering questions, you will encourage more and better quality entries.

Creating a logo is a process that involves the logo contest sponsor and the designer working together to hone in on a winning concept. The designer can’t do it without your participation.

6.) Get Other Eyeballs Involved In Your Decision

With the large number and wide variety of entries that you’ll get, it’s easy to dismiss a good concept based on your first impression, so get some other people to take a look and give you feedback.

I’ve had the bloggers on my network and my wife take a look at the submissions and I definitely discovered that a fresh perspective helped me see potential new directions that were valuable.

7.) Be Grateful

These people are doing quite a bit of work purely on speculation, so even if some of the entries are really lame, be kind.

It is likely they are students or even young kids involved (alongside seasoned pros) so really attempt to keep this in mind and offer constructive criticism.

Summary

The major thing to realize in comparing having a contest like this versus hiring a traditional logo designer is that you are going to have to be much more involved in the process, which means a lot more of your time.

The advantage of paying the price of more involvement is that you’ll get a much wider variety of concepts and points of view on your ideas than any one designer could ever provide, at a much lower cost.

The ideal I guess would be to use a contest like this to create and build a relationship with someone that works in a way that you can rely on and use over and over. I’m not sure that this method of getting work done is efficient enough to be used consistently, but it is fun and I’m sure that the quality of the final design will be much better than if I had use a traditional service.

You can see my logo contest,which is still in process and I’d love to hear any thoughts that you’d like to share about the logos being presented (which one would you pick?) or the process in general.

- Jon Symons

7 Tips for Running a Logo Competition is a post from: Art of Money

I’m writing this post to outline my efforts to find and implement an ad serving solution for my blog network. First I’ll take a look at what an ad server is and when and why you and I might want or need to implement a centralized advertising management system.

Then I’ll try and match up the offerings with my needs by taking a look at some of the common ad server companies and their products.

Hopefully by the end I’ll have chosen a server to install for testing purposes and created a plan for testing and I’ll present the reasons for my choices.

What’s an Ad Server?

In my mind, an ad server is a way of managing the advertising on one or many websites.

2 Types of Ad Servers

1. Ad Serving Service

This is what Google’s AdSense is. A service that supplies ads (and advertisers) to your site. You drop in a piece of code, anywhere you want and AdSense provides an ad every time someone requests your page. Most people think of AdSense as a way to monetize a website, which it is, but it is really an ad server, with built in advertisers.

2. Ad Server Software

Imagine Google’s Adsense system without the advertisers in it. What you’d have left is the code which calls a centralized location everytime a page is loaded. The ad server knows what page is calling it, what size format the adspace is, where in the world the person viewing the page is and much more information that can be used to determine the best advertising to present to the visitor.

The other component of an adserver is the back end which allows you to create and manage advertising inventory. Every conceivable type of ads can be thrown into the mix: pay-per-click, cost-per-impression, localized ads, site targeted ads, private ads and of course your own ads to promote your own sites.

Is an Ad Server Right for You?

If the only form of advertising on your site is AdSense, then you don’t need an ad server. But as soon as your needs get even slightly more complex or your traffic increases past a few hundred visitors a day, you may see advantages to running some type of ad server.

Another great reason to have an ad server is to centralize the advertising across many sites. If you have 10 sites and you’d like to change from AdSense to YPN, you could do it without having to change anything on the 10 sites…you just drop in the YPN code and disable the AdSense campaign on the ad server.

Things you can do with an ad server:

• easily manage advertising on multiple sites from one place
• easily split test on colors or ad formats without having to modify the code on your site
• rotate CPM and CPC ads on the same site without modifying your site’s code
• sell your own private ads
• track your own private ads – impressions, clicks, split tests
• geo-target your ads
• time target your ads
• optimize profitability

Advanced ad servers can really ramp up web site profits as they employ algorithms that match the most profitable ads in your inventory with the specific set of variables being presented by each page request on your site (ad serving):

For example if a web site has 10 different advertisers that have paid for a big square ad, the ad server must decide which one to serve (or display). One advertiser may have only agreed to pay for ads from 9am – 5pm. If it is after 5pm, then the Ad Server must not serve that one. Another advertiser may only have paid to show one ad to each user per day. The ad server must therefore see if a user has seen that ad before, on that day and not serve it again if the user has seen it. Another advertiser may have agreed to a high price, but only if the person watching the page is in the United States. In that case, the Ad Server needs to check the IP address to determine if the user is in the US and then decide which is the highest paying ad for that user, in the US, at that time, given what that user has seen in the past.

My Ad Server Needs

As my network become bigger and larger the needs will become more complex. Currently, with 14 sites it is mostly about having the ability to centrally manage ad code and to be able to easily test on ad color.

One of the long term needs is to be able to offer ad buyers a diverse set of targeting options. With an network of city based blogs I can foresee larger advertisers wanting to upload different ads to target a national audience and other ads for a local readers. Ford Motors when they introduce a new line of car, and also promoting the local neighborhood car dealer. An ad server is necessary to provide this type of flexibility for private ad sales.

Ad Server Offerings

I identified 3 ad server companies to compare for this initial investigation.

1. AdSpeed

• Offers a free 10 day trial.
• Reasonable monthly fees starting @ $9.95 a month for 100,000 impressions, which makes it affordable to try out an adserver, even for a small site.
• combines two solutions, a web analytics and an ad serving platform, into one comprehensive solution. You will be able to see more details about your visitors than just impressions and clicks.

2. Zedo

• ZEDO supports surround sessions where users can see just one advertisers’ ad for a day.
• ZEDO also offers state of the art opt-in targeting that increases the value of your inventory
• Don’t have an mention of pricing on their website – a bad move in my mind…their service looks interesting but with so many other options, I’m always skeptical when someone won’t tell me their prices up front.

3. OpenAds

• Open source software – free, but of course you need to install and maintain it yourself.
• Support for AdSense
• Section Targeting -Display advertising on specific pages of your site.
• Geo Targeting – Viewers from a certain country, region, or city.
• Time targeting – Only display ads at certain times of day, or days of week
• User agent targeting – Just show advertising to viewers with a certain browser or computer operating system
• Referral targeting – Advertise to viewers who have just come from a search engine, or from another site
• IP address targeting – Just show an ad to your computer or your office to see what it looks like on your site
• Frequency capping – Only show ads to a viewer a certain number of times per day or per session

Summary

This is just a preliminary exploration of the rather large topic of ad servers. The 3 presented represent only a small slice of the ad server universe. Primarily, these ones were picked based on simplicity and clarity of their presentation; some of the solutions were costing what would amount to a significant percentage of advertising revenue, so these were dropped straight away.

From this list I am drawn to Open Ads, but I’ve been around software development enough to know the hidden costs of using free software – they do have a forum setup with people who are willing to help out and even people for hire…a good sign. I will investigate further and may run a trial of all three services to get a sense of what they are all like.

It’s a steep learning curve, but for any kind of serious online endeavor an ad server is essential as it accomplishes two major tasks: centralized advertising management and maximization of advertising revenue.

If your business is advertising based you may want to look into this type of set up.

If you know about ad servers, please leave a comment regarding what I should look for and any other servers which may match my needs.

- Jon Symons
Ad Server Surfer

The Fascinating World of Ad Servers is a post from: Art of Money

There are some websites dedicated to the humble “To-Do” list where you can find all kinds of tips and even samples of real peoples lists.

I’ve never found an online or web-based to-do system to be effective for me. I guess I like the tactile nature of a paper based system.

I have played around quite a bit finding a system that seems to be flexible enough for anything that I throw at it, but still simple enough to be easily used and understandable at a glance.

My Latest System

Since I good to-do system can make a big difference in terms of productivity I thought I’d share my current system, since it has been working really well for me.

The Elements

Like I said I like paper based systems, and the magic of this system is the humble sticky-note. It affords my paper based system to have many of the flexibilities of a digital system. I can edit, sort, shuffle and recombine or mash-up items from my lists and then put them all back if need be.

Advantages

As you finish a task, you remove it. I love the feeling of seeing the papers get more empty as opposed to previous to-do lists that get messier as you finish tasks. This clearing up space is a subtle but powerful metaphor; and it more accurately matches the process of getting things done.

Visually pleasing. If you have a bit of discipline, and create the sticky notes with a system of colored notes and pens, the pages end up with a visually appealing look. This reinforces a sense of calm and order which can be important when tackling a big list!

Scan-able lists. Related to the previous point, but if the pages all contain only 10 or 12 items maximum, they are scan-able, which is important when deciding which one to tackle next and for prioritizing.

Mix and match. The best part of this system is that you can mix and match your lists. I usually go over all the lists each night and create a “Today” page for the next day. I just grab a few tasks and then prioritize them onto one list as my next day’s most important things to get done.

Here Is How it Looks

Above is the basic with my four sheets of letter size paper. I sort them according to priority. Then I can select individual sticky-notes tasks and create a “today” sheet.

These are my monthly lists. They allow me to begin to see what I want to accomplish a couple months out.

Here’s a close up of a current month sheet. If one of the projects on here [like the "New Theme Ready" one above] has a lot of sub-tasks then I’ll create a separate sheet for it and remove the stickies from that sheet. When they are all done, then I’ll remove this one.

The goal is to remove all the stickies, before I run out of month!!

Any comments on this system? How about your own to-do systems, please share, I find that they are a fascinating form of personal archeology

- Jon Symons

My To-Do List System is a post from: Art of Money

Getting back to my series of lessons learned while making money, it is time I dove in to the biggest lesson provider and money making adventure of my life so far.

It was in 1991 when I got started making primarily one of a kind pieces of artsy furniture. A couple years later, fed up at making $5 an hour making art and sick of working in restaurants to pay the bills, I began to transition away from making high end furniture to making small and more affordable home decor objects.

I began to learn the basic lessons of retail commerce. For example, I found that the lower the price the more units I could sell. This was partly due to the economics and partly due to me being the worst natural sales person in the world; therefore I began to specialize in low priced items which were in the impulse purchase price range of below $30.

One of the ideas I had was to make photo frames [don't forget this is the early - mid 1990's when people still printed out photos]. Photo frames at the time were all pretty much brown stained wood. The ones I came up with at first were my own hand whittled versions of what was already available.

Lesson Number One – Market Feedback

The first big lesson began to occur when I first displayed the frames on my table at the Vancouver Public Market. The lesson is that there is nothing in the world fantastic as market research with a live audience for product development.

All you have to do is listen and they’ll tell you exactly what you need to do to be successful. I guess you also need a thick enough skin to be able to handle the people who are abusive or insensitive and to be able to carry on when it feels bad…but if you can weather that, then the feedback is awesome.

As soon as I put my frames out for public consumption, people began to buy them. They would beg me to sell my prototypes and half-finished duct-taped samples. They practically wouldn’t take no for an answer!

The other amazing thing that happened, over and over, is that they kept asking me if I would paint them bright colors. They wanted bright red, yellow, green and blue photo frames!

How bizarre I thought, but having the paints already at hand I from my artsy furniture period, I began to comply.

Sales went through the roof. I remember at a craft show in Toronto, the biggest and most competitive one in Canada I believe, I had a line of 15 people, each with an arm load of my frames. I couldn’t resist, even though I was sieged trying to take payments and wrap purchases, to just stop for a minute and drink in the feeling of that crazy demand for my product.

During one 30 day period I worked 14 hour days, 7 days a week and made over $30,000 in sales. Not bad for a one man operation.

Could it Get Any Better?

It turns out it could. At a major craft show there are not only public buyers, but store buyers who are looking for cool and new merchandise for their stores.

One after another, small shop owners approached me wanting to order my photo frames. That was great, but then a buyer for a major retail store came a long and wanted to place an order to put my frames in 50 stores! And that was just a starter, or trial order!

In my head I did the math and that was a really nice big number she was offering to purchase. However I also did the math of my time, and that’s where my mental circuits began to fry. It just wasn’t possible. I had to pass up on the bonanza.

The Result of Saying No

In the next year funky photo frames exploded into retail stores and companies like Umbra stepped in to fill the need. Three years later Ikea was selling knock-offs and another year after that I saw a reasonably similar version of my original photo frame at a dollar store for $2 [mine had been $20].

Through some magic of luck and timing I was at the absolute exact right place at the exact right time with the exact right product, but I couldn’t cash in.

What’s the Real Lesson?

Looking back of course I wish that I had borrowed money, fired up a factory and begun to pump out as many of my frames as possible. Being the first to mass market a new product concept like that would have been a huge money making opportunity. No doubt about it.

But was it reasonable that a young guy with training as an artist and no business experience and no contacts could scale up something like that?

I don’t think so, that isn’t the lesson. In my reality it really was impossible to go from were I was at to a company of the kind of size that would be needed to fully leverage that opportunity.

The lesson learned, and it is a big one, was that I should have asked for help or advice. In my brain it was impossible, because I asked the question:

“Can I quadruple my production when I’m already working 14 hours a day?”

Clearly the answer to that question is no.

The right question was:

“How can I quadruple my production when I’m already working 14 hours a day?”

If I had asked myself the second question rather than the first, then I would have answered, “I don’t know.”

Then I could have asked other people, people who had experience with things like that. I could have kept asking it until someone helped me move forward…but I didn’t and now looking back it is sad to me that I chose to retreat from that opportunity.

The big lessons in this story are, ask the right questions and ask them to the right people. If you are creating a product, ask your customers what they want.

If you have a business opportunity, ask business people.

A valuable set of lessons, even though I continue to struggle when it comes to seeking help, I can say that I do get it now and that it is impossible to accomplish very much while hanging on to the concept of being an island.

What questions do you wish you had asked?

Have you ever missed out on a killer opportunity? If so, what lessons did you learn? I’d really like to know I’m not alone on this

Story Links:

• See the River City Decor website in Archive.org – images of my products included. No, I don’t have any clue where the yellow “Click Here Now” stuff came from. My site had a white background.
• One of a Kind Show – Canada’s largest craft show.
• Granville Island Public Market

- Jon Symons

P.S. this article is a part of my “Ways I’ve Made Money” series.

Lessons Learned – The Make or Break Decision is a post from: Art of Money

A couple weeks ago I took aim at Pipeline Profits. Just to clarify it wasn’t because I thought what they were selling didn’t have value, it was because the way they were selling it was designed to create false hopes and liberate people from their money; whether the system was right for them or not.

I found out about the Pipeline Profits system from Andy Jenkins of StomperNet fame who earned an “unsubscribe” from me for the way he pumped up the hype on this latest Internet Marketing flash in the pan.

A Good Marketer Sees Opportunity in Everything

John Reese must have felt the same as me, but rather than opening up his blog and pounding out a post taking shots at the Pipeline dudes, he thought, “Even though this thing is being over-hyped and people are getting more and more skeptical about being fleeced by Internet Marketers, what if there is good material in there. How can I pass that value on to my clients and not be affected by the backlash?”

Here’s a few clips from the email that John sent out:

And you’ve most likely seen a few of the videos by “Buck
and Brock” who allegedly brought in over a million bucks
in 90 days using some new ‘twist’ on list building.

(I’ll reveal what they are actually doing in a moment.)

Anyway, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t mentioned
them or promoted their upcoming course…

Well, there’s a good reason for that…

I THOUGHT THEY WERE FULL OF CRAP!

And it continues…

Well, I just found out *I WAS WRONG* about ALL THREE
of those things and feel a bit silly now…

This past weekend, I met Buck and Brock (the guys everyone
are talking about) at an invitation-only seminar in San Diego….

Buck and Brock seemed very nice and I asked them if
they’d have lunch with me so I could pick their brains –
I was really ‘curious’ to see what they were up to and
what they were really doing.

and then…

Essentially what they’ve done is identified three major “kinks”
in the usual process that needed to be overhauled:

1. All co-registration suppliers are not created equal — not
by a long shot. They started running test campaigns
with a lot of different suppliers and found the small few
that provide the best leads — i.e. the ones that buy stuff
at a much higher rate than the others.

2. If you don’t know what content and ‘approach’ to send
the new leads *INSTANTLY* when they request your
information you might as well as kiss your advertising
dollars goodbye.

3. By knowing how the real co-registration industry works
behind the scenes (tons of brokers involved) they figured
out how to eliminate the usual “$10,000 minimum buy”
so new lists can be quickly generated (and more importantly)
TESTED for much, much less — i.e. without much risk
before you ‘ramp up’ the overall process and generate
a HUGE number of subscribers.

So the bottom line is, I’ve checked these guys out and
they’re OK. They’re legit, they know what they’re doing,
and you’d benefit from what they can show you.

That’s how a real pro handles a problem, turn it into an opportunity. John realized that maintaining the trust he has built with his email list subscribers is the number one priority.

You do that by not just pumping something because it can make you big money but rather you actually check it out and make an honest recommendation. John Reese just took all the hype and insinuations of easy wealth and tossed it out the window; where it belongs.

Then he rolled up his sleeves and found the real business value in the product and, knowing that it would only be interesting to a small percentage of people on his list, he focused on getting the value into the hands of the folks who would benefit from it…not on making as many quick bucks as possible.

If you are going to check out Pipeline Profits <– this is John Reese’s affiliate link…he deserves the commission. You may also want to hop on his list at Marketing Secrets.

Pipeline Profits – Let’s Take Another Look is a post from: Art of Money

I’m finding the transition from an employee or even self-employed mentality to a business building mentality to be a bit like dancing underwater.

What is relatively simple to do as an employee or one man shop becomes a whole new ball game, with layers of complexity in a real business.

A Real Business is all about Scale

An example is setting up a simple WordPress blog. In the last couple days, I’ve been training someone to do the setups for me on the blog network.

I could set up a blog, including modifying the header and hooking up all the plugins and accessories [FeedBurner, StatCounter etc] in less than an hour, maybe half an hour if I had performance enhancing substances.

Instead of doing that I’ve been creating a document that someone who has never heard of WordPress can use to go from site concept through to finished and tricked out Home Turf Media city blog; without having to ask me any questions.

It will probably take me about 25 hours work to create one document for this. I’m trying to roll out 10 new sites, which means that it has taken me about 3 times longer to produce the document than it would have to just do all the work myself. Then I still have to pay someone to do the actual work!

That’s what scale is about though. Scale shifts most of the costs of the business process up to the front, and then pays [hopefully] huge dividends when the process is repeated over and over at a much lower per unit cost.

The break even point of my document is roughly about 25 sites; but everything after that, is virtually free.

Why Building a Business is Like Dancing Underwater

My blog roll out document is one quick example. Now imagine EVERYTHING you do and apply the same thinking to it. Even creating a document needs a process behind it; a document template, a naming convention so you can find it when there are 200 of them, etc.

What it comes down to is the everything you do is probably 5 or 10 times more difficult and time consuming than if you were just to go and do the task.

Why There are So Many Self-Employed People

It takes discipline to not just “get it done.” Currently I have 10 bloggers waiting for sites and the only way I can make any money is to get them online and writing. Needless to say I like money; especially for things like paying my rent and eating, so there is a very real pressure to move forward.

Experience tells me that it’s a dead end street to give in to that pressure. To maintain my discipline and stick to creating systems that can scale beyond my own efforts goes against a life time of behavior patterns, but I think it is worth it.

I would guess that most people will bend, like I did in my first couple businesses, to that pressure and dive in and begin to work “in” the system rather than “on” it. That will relieve the pressure, bring money faster and severely limit the upside potential of any business.

My Goal

Here’s the thought that motivates me:

If I died, could someone, with no special skills, be able to read the password for my computer from my will, log on and run my company without missing a beat.

I admit is sounds like a pipe-dream, but really it is an essential target to hit. Since I now have 4 [soon to be 14] people who rely on me to get paid. That means that everything must be automated [yes, you can automate using people] and documented, and there needs to be a map of how to navigate and apply that documentation.

Does anyone have any tips for documenting processes in a way that is easy, yet comprehensive?

Is it possible to reach my goal in a small company?

Is it a waste of time to even try for something like that?

Should I just focus on trying to make money and sort out this kind of stuff after I have actual earnings?

Leave a comment an let me know what you think.

- Jon Symons
Feeling like an underwater dancing fool.

Building a Business is Like Dancing Underwater is a post from: Art of Money

My cousin is a real estate agent in Vancouver and he asked me to help him get more traffic to his real estate website.

“Start blogging!” was my immediate reply.

Then my little internal business systems conscience said, “who’s going to teach him to blog?”

Yikes, good question; I’d better send him a book or I’ll be spending hours writing e-mails getting him up to speed.

That’s how the battle of the business blogging books was born. The book needs to do two things:

1. Convince a person in a traditional off line business of the benefits of blogging.
2. Give them enough information to actually be able build a successful online presence using a blog.

The Business Blogging Book Candidates

I’m sure there are more books about business blogging, but due to time limitations I decided to go with these 2 for my short list. The primary reason I chose these ones was that I am familiar with both of the authors.

I chose Andy Wibbels’ book because he is the guy behind Easy Blake Weblogs and is a partner with Darren Rowse on the Six Figure Blogging Course.

I am familiar with Jeremy Wright from a couple years ago when he had a blog called Wealthy Blogger, which he sold, and more recently from his personal site Ensight.org; and of course he’s the CEO of b5media.

In the Orange Corner

Blogwild!:
A Guide for Small Business Blogging by Andy Wibbels

with a tag line of:

1. Get Online
2. Create Your Blog
3. Grow Your Business

ISBN: 1-59184-117-8

List Price: U.S. $ 19.95

Quantity: 174 [small] pages

Published: 2006

Table of Contents

What I liked about Blog Wild!

The style is fantastic. It is a small book, everything is clear, well laid out and easy on the eyes; which I really appreciate.

The author is obviously knowledgeable yet he presents the information so that a total novice will get it. No detailed in depth discussions, just quick to digest tidbits of practical and philosophical information related to business blogging.

Here’s an example on the topic of finding topics:

Where is the twenty-four-hour news cycle in your industry or profession? How can you take current events and developments in your industry and put your own personal stamp on them?

How can you take events from other industries or fields and apply them to your business? What are the dirty little secrets of your industry—those “elephants in the room”— nobody likes to talk about?

By focusing on these key areas, a blog can really shine. Be controversial. Be passionate. I often tell clients, “If nobody is commenting on your blog, you’re not being honest enough.”

What I didn’t like about Blog Wild!

The first thing that I didn’t like about Blog Wild! was…err, it was written like a blog. Sounds strange, but when I’m reading a book I expect more flow from section to section.

On a blog we don’t expect the previous story to lead into the current one and there to be a continuing thread of thought, but in a book, since the pages are all bound together in a linear fashion, I do expect that format for presentation of information. I suspect this book was culled from the archives of Andy’s blog and it needed one more re-write with an eye to creating more narrative.

The Big Mistake

Unfortunately the lack of flow in the book was only a very minor flaw compared to the next one.

[disclaimer: I'm a die-hard WordPress lover. I think WordPress has pretty much won the battle of the blogging platforms and that TypePad has been forever relegated to niche status.]

The big mistake in this book is large sections of it are presenting detailed instructions about how to blog in TypePad. In software development we call this tightly-coupled and it is a huge no-no. It is written the software bible something like “thou shalt not permanently bind too objects that do not need to be bound.” This creates massive problems down the road.

Andy has bound the idea of business blogging with the blogging platform of TypePad, which only a small percentage of potential business bloggers will use.

This is a big waste, the clear and simple presentation of information would have been perfect for my cousin, but since about a third of book covers details in TypePad, I’d never recommend it.

If Andy had presented platform-agnostic guide to all the blogging details then the book would have been a winner as a basic business blogging guide.

In it’s current form, Andy has mixed his roll as evangelist for TypePad and business blogging expert and the only real use I can see for this book is as a promotional tool to be distributed to current or potential TypePad clients.

In the Slightly Weird Green with a bit of Black Corner

Blog
Marketing by Jeremy Wright

With a tag line of:

The Revolutionary New Way to Increase Sales, Build Your Brand, and Get Exceptional Results

ISBN: 0-07-226251-6

List Price: U.S. $ 24.95

Quantity: 322 pages

Published: 2006

Table of Contents

Foreword………………………………………………….v
Acknowledgments……………………………………..ix
Introduction …………………………………………….xi
1 BLOGGING BASICS……………………………….. 1
2 GETTING INTO THE BLOGGING MINDSET…………………………. 15
3 THE POWER OF BLOGS FOR BUSINESS ……………………………………..45
4 HOW YOUR COMPANY CAN USE BLOGS…………………………………..69
5 WHAT TYPE OF BLOGS ARE BEST FOR YOUR COMPANY…………………93
6 USING BLOGS TO INCREASE INTERNAL COMMUNICATION …………123
7 LEARN WHAT’S BEING SAID ABOUT YOUR COMPANY AND PRODUCTS….. 147
8 PARTICIPATING IN YOUR BLOG………..179
9 DEALING WITH NEGATIVITY……………211
10 HOWTO SUCCEED IN BLOGGING……237
11 THEFUTURE OF BUSINESS BLOGGING…………269

APPENDIX SAMPLE BLOGGING POLICY………………….295
GLOSSARY…………………………………………..301
Endnotes………………….307
Index………………….309

What I liked about Blog Marketing

Quantity and quality of the information. Blog Marketing is a comprehensive book about blogging as a marketing tool for your business.

Like Andy, Jeremy is obviously very experienced in building a business using a blog and one of the real standouts of this book are the detailed examples and case studies that are used to back up the points made.

I found it fascinating reading and it really went far beyond being about blogging and covered many basic business principles that are at the roots of why a company would be blogging or participating in any other form of marketing.

Blog Marketing really becomes a reference book for a small business in the online world. Need to know how to: monitor conversations about your company or business area online, deal with negative comments, how to deal with bad press or if you screw up in public, how to participate in other people’s blogs, and much more [check out the TOC above]; well just open your textbook and let Jeremy walk you through it, with enough detail so you really get the why of it, not just the how to.

What I didn’t like about Blog Marketing

If I was Jeremy’s editor I would have taken his manuscript, stuck it in a soup pot and put it on simmer for a day or two. Not that there is extraneous or unnecessary information in the book, it really is all good stuff, but I just don’t think that his target audience – who if I understand correctly would be all overworked, stressed and likely already overwhelmed by the idea of starting a blog, will have the time to wade into the topic in such detail.

When I think of sending this book to my cousin, I have a hard time actually imagining him getting the most out of it, for the reason that it is too detailed for a novice. It’s a good read if you’re interested in blogging for business, but I kinda wish it was broken into two parts or even two books.

One would be an essentials of blog marketing and the other would be the details and background knowledge. My cousin would devour the essentials because he only really cares about getting a site up and getting more clients as easily and quickly as possible.

If or when he’s ready to get the theory of what’s going on then he could grab the blog marketing deep dive edition and go from there. As it stands, I think the current version makes it a bit tough for a complete rookie, to extract the “just the facts please, mam” version out of this book.

Summary

There’s no clear winner in the choice for which book to send to my cousin. Blogwild! would have been perfect if the detailed instructions had been about WordPress or I was recommending he use TypePad for
his blog [I ain't].

If you’re wanting to get the basics of blogging for business in an easy to digest manner and you either don’t care about the how-to instructions or wanting to use TypePad, then

Blog Marketing would have been perfect if it had an executive summary version. As it stands I’ll send my cousin Blog Marketing since it does have a lot of great information and it will be easier for him to get the basics by skimming. Who knows he may even dive and read the whole thing.

Unfortunately he’ll still need a guide to blogging on WordPress…I guess I’ll need to include something like the WordPress 2 (Visual QuickStart Guide) with the parcel.

Business Blogging Books – Which one is Best? is a post from: Art of Money

I just ran across an interesting thread on Digital Point forums that is essentially a nicely detailed description from a 21 year old university student describing how he built a website that currently is earning him about $800 a week.

Even though he is using AdSense to monetize the site, there are some good take-aways in his post.

Don’t get obsessed with SEO, but follow the basics:

• Giving each article an individual highly relevant page title.
• Using meta descriptions and keywords, but not abusing them.
• Using H1 and H2 tags.
• Using good keyword density and specific phrase targeting.
• Using good quality, unique, original and focused content.
• Building some well anchored backlinks.
• With a good navigational system between articles.
• Using an aged domain with good TrustRank.

From there he touches on a couple areas that are where I made my biggest mistakes when I first started trying to make money online:

Another issue that is often brought up is the issue of creating lots of sites for high paying niches. Personally I have never wasted my time with such things because I’m focused on providing good quality expert content and if I’m going to do this I need to make sure that I’m knowledgeable in the niche that I’m creating the site on, and unfortunately for me I’m just not that knowledgeable on mesothelioma, cancer, debt consolidation or lawyers, nor do I have any passion towards developing my knowledge on such niches
so creating a site for such things would just be a waste of my time and any visitor’s time that came by my site, because the information on it would be next to useless.

What is a much smarter idea, that I believe I got from one of Shoemoney’s posts was that you should establish a good quality site in an industry that you are familiar with and knowledgeable of then when you have built the site to close to its potential and you are looking to make a new site to diversify, you should look to make a site that is still in a similar industry but has only a degree or two of separation from your original site.

And another mistake that I made was being cheap and thinking that I could figure it all out on my own to save myself a bit of money. Chris, the post author says:

The reality is [forums] don’t have it all and a $20 book from Amazon on AdSense or SEO could make you thousands of dollars. Let’s face it, if you aren’t willing to part with $20 at bare minimum to extend your expertise, chances are you aren’t going to be the next person here making $XX,XXX/month from anything online. That said there are definitely exceptions to that but it’s extremely rare. Plus you can certainly fast track your development and earnings if you are willing to shell out a few dollars to increase
your knowledge, or get a good quality design made, or some special feature for your site. Plus if you have invested money into your projects chances are you will be a lot more committed to gaining a return from them which will only further contribute to your development.

Making Money Online Tips

These are the basics of making money from a website presented clearly.

• Stick to a subject that you have expertise in
• Get good quality information from someone who has done what you are trying to accomplish
• Be persistent over a long period of time. It took Chris 64 weeks to get to $800 a week

Read Chris’ story on Digital Point forums and make sure you take a look at the sketch of his page template that he embedded into the post, it is a good example of a web page that is nicely optimized for advertising.

How To Go From $10/Week to $800/Week is a post from: Art of Money

Kind of a morbid topic for the holiday season, but since Darren brought it up [What Happens to Your Blogs if You Die], I’ve bumped it up on my “to blog about” list.

My wife and I have been systematically working our way through a review of our entire financial situation lately and of course the topic of wills and living wills and estate planning has come up.

Sad to say it is something that we have completely ignored until now and to be honest I find the whole topic a bit overwhelming. Not having the resources to just hire out the job, but having enough resources to make it necessary is a bit of a sticky spot. We’re trying to do our homework and with the help of a d.i.y. kit, we will at least get something in place soon.

Now back to Darren’s post, which is more of a nudge in the direction of business succession planning. He provides some excellent tips, “she” is his wife since that is who would be taking on the blogs in a worst case scenario:

• Contact details for partners – I have a number of blog partners that would be able to help her navigate some of the logistics of managing my blogs
• Contact details for trusted other bloggers – a few others who know enough to be useful
• Passwords and Contact details for Advertising Programs and Affiliate Programs – to be able to access and manage income
• Contact details of bloggers who work for me – a number of my blogs are written these days by others.
• Contact details for web hosts – without these the blogs fall over and income disappears
• Passwords for Paypal accounts
• Backup details – for blogs and computers
• Blog and hosting passwords – to give her (or those who help her) access
• Instructions on what to do – a few notes on what I’d suggest she does. Which blogs she could sell (and who could help her sell them), which to allow to run (and who to write on them), what my agreements are with different people etc

I would add to this list is to have a significant other as a signing authority for your business bank account. I have set my wife up for my business so at least she can write a check to get money out of the business if necessary.

In general the tips Darren has outlined are much more than just “worst case scenario” planning. Since the goal for any business should be to run and grow without the owner’s involvement the information outlined above must be laid out in a set of guidelines so that basically anyone could step in and continue with the business.

I wish I could tell you I had mine laid out in the manner that is laid out above, but my wife and I are spending a little time each weekend on this important planning activity. Hopefully not too far into 2007 I’ll be able to rest in peace I mean sleep easier, knowing it has been taken care of.

Useful Resources:

• Suze Orman Will & Trust Kit
• Prepare Your Own Will, 6th Edition: The National Will Kit (Prepare Your Own Will)
• Prepare Your Own Will: The National Will Kit (Legal Self-Help Series)

Also, check your local library, you may be able to pick up a copy of a do it yourself kit there and only need to purchase the forms.

What Happens to Your Web Business if You Die? is a post from: Art of Money

Last week I went to a free seminar put on by the local Business Link.

Quick tangent: in my city there is an excellent resource for entrepreneurs called the business link…probably deserves its own post, but you may want to be on the lookout for small business support from you municipal or state/provincial government. Micro business has a huge impact on the economy and government is beginning to recognize that impact in the form of powerful support tools for small business.

The talk was called “How To Work ON Your Business, Rather Than IN Your Business.” Now as someone who practically sleeps with Michael Gerber’s, The E-Myth Revisited under my pillow I was very familiar with the concepts presented in the talk. Even though I have read the book numerous times, getting lost in “technician” tasks remains my number one challenge in my business.

Definition of A Successful Business

I liked the presenter’s definition of a successful business:

1. has predictable profits
2. doesn’t require the owner to be present

My personal definition left out #1, but of course it is a very good one as it touches on all kinds of management and budgeting issues that are essential for a great business.

We heard about all the activities that the owner of a successful business should not be doing and why…all stuff that can be found in the E-Myth.

But there was a couple take-aways that I’d like to share that made the seminar very worthwhile for me.

Systems

A manager creates and manages systems, not people. A manager always needs to keep this in mind. Any problem in a business needs to blamed on a system, not on a person.

The manager must spend their time improving systems, not dealing with individual problems.

Expertise

When you are looking to get technician tasks off of your plate, think in terms of hiring expertise rather than hiring a person.

This is one that has caught me recently. I have struggled to find a “clone” of myself to help me with my blog network, but really I should be defining a roll that requires a specific expertise and then someone with that skill set to fill the roll and perform the task.

Building a Business is Like a See-Saw

There is a strategic business activities on one side and technician activities on the other end. In my business, I’m sitting on the ground, playing see-saw with only a few grams of weight on the other side of the board…I’m on the technician side…natch.

So the goal isn’t to look for and try to hire a perfect clone of myself to sit on the other side and take all the technical tasks off of my plate. The goal is to gradually identify and then find someone to take responsibility for, the tasks which have the greatest return on an outsourcing investment.

The speaker suggested that I identify tasks and categorize them in a couple ways:

• how much pain they cause – for me I hate bookkeeping, so it is completely worth it for me to pay someone else to take that headache away.
• the direct effect on the bottom line – if a task costs x dollars but brings in xx dollars then it is an obvious one to outsource.

For my blog network the break even point is probably around 30 sites. With the pilot project well underway with 4 sites, it isn’t that tough for me to see all the things that I will need to get off of my plate if I’m going to manage a network of 30 sites.

It is one of the advantages of thinking big…you can’t fool yourself into believing that one person can do everything. To be honest it has been overwhelming at points, even with 4 blogs.

Like a good see-saw game there needs to be a balance between the two business forces of production and strategy. It often feels like production is the most important because it seems like that’s where the money comes from, but if you look as successful businesses, it’s the strategy that has made them great.

Related Reading

• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by Renée Mauborgne & W. Chan Kim
• Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

Jon Symons
Playing see-saw in my business…so you don’t have to.

Working On Your Busines – Rather than In It is a post from: Art of Money

When I was in Grade 8, due to a weird quirk in my schedule, I ended up taking Phys Ed with a class of Grade 10 boys. Now, I had already, in elementary school, been moved ahead a grade. That combined with the time of year of my birthday and the net result was that I was playing hockey, soccer, football and everything else with boys 4 or 5 years older than me.

Even in my own grade I was relatively short and skinny; don’t get me wrong though I wasn’t the a stereotypical geek. I was the leading scorer and captain of my hockey team: but that was when playing with my peers.

In the end I did fine, basketball was the biggest struggle, but I more than held my own in hockey and was far from ever being picked last when we chose teams.

At the end of the semester the teacher [Mr. C] called me into his office. For some reason [maybe a different story] the female phys ed teacher was there too. Mr. C told me that because of the fact that I was so much younger than the rest of the students in the class, he didn’t know what mark to give me for the course.

His solution was to ask me what mark I thought I should get, actually he put it more like, “You can have whatever mark you’d like…so what shall I put down?” His pen hovered above his marking book.

I knew he meant what he was saying and I got extremely uncomfortable. In my heart I knew that if I took Phys Ed with boys my age I would have received an A or A+ and I completely felt justified receiving that mark for this class.

Paralysis gripped me. I couldn’t speak at all except for, “I don’t know…uh…mmm,” and probably more ambiguous noises.

The other Phys Ed coach, who also coached the track team that I was a member of, was standing behind his chair. She started silently making an “A” symbol with her hands, to encourage me to ask for the best possible mark.

I just couldn’t do it, I couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t let what I really wanted verbalize. I’ll spare you the psycho-babble of what was behind it all, but the end result is that I walked out of that meeting with a C+ in Phys Ed, which not only really hurt on many levels, but also brought down my grade average and meant that for the only time in school I didn’t make the honor roll and all the things that came with it in my family…like love.

With 30 plus years of time in between, the letter grade has become insignificant of course, but the sting remained and I can see now that the same thing in me that made it impossible to ask for and receive what was in my heart has shaped my life ever since.

History Repeats Itself

Really the point of this story is that life really is exactly like that gym teacher. God, or whatever you want to call it sits waiting, pen at the ready, to give you exactly what you’ll ask for. There is a small catch…you have to ask for what is right, in your heart, to ask for – no fear though, your heart is free of all limitations. If you ask from your head, for something that isn’t real for you to receive, it will be ignored. But that is stuff you don’t really want anyways…you’re just pretending
to ask for it to fill up space.

I confess that, I only read about 3 blogs on a regular basis and one of them is James Brausch’s site. Last night he had a very simple and interesting post:

What Would You Like For Christmas?

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

I have no idea what to get you for Christmas.

Help me out here. What do you want from me for a Christmas gift?

-James D. Brausch

James makes a lot of very useful products for Internet business owners [you'll see many of them in my "Tools I Use" section] but I still wasn’t sure what the post was getting at. Was he really sincerely asking?

Then my mind flashed back to Grade 8 gym class and I realized that history was repeating itself, you can see for yourself how it played out this time.

Shocking to realize that the only limiting factor in my life has only ever been what I am really willing to ask for.

Thanks Mr. C and to James for the very valuable lesson,

Jon Symons

Ask and Ye Shall Receive is a post from: Art of Money

Take a look at this 2 minute commercial for an Argentine political candidate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

An Example of Very Clever Copywriting is a post from: Art of Money

I’ve been in charge of my long desired “real” business for the grand total of about 7 days and I thought that it would be fun to be journaling my experience of trying to run and grow this beast.

Currently, I have 5 contract “employees” and enough work for about 5 other positions that I am solely responsible for. This leaves me about 20 minutes a day to engage in visioning or strategic thinking. What follows then an overview of the thoughts that I engage in during those magical 20 minutes.

#1 How the Hell Will I Ever Take a Vacation?

Sorry to make number 1 all about me but, right now it would be impossible for me to take a vacation. It actually isn’t about me and my vacations; it’s about having a company that doesn’t depend on me, which, in my mind at least, is the very definition of a “real” business.

In order to fix this situation, I need to outline the tasks and responsibilities that I handle and find a person[s] who could take them on and somehow get them involved in the business. At this early stage it would probably be a “jack-of-all-trades” type. Ideally someone who has some business sense and could contribute on a high level as well as at the day to day task levels.

#2 How can I Make Sure that the Bloggers Make a Lot of Money?

From one week on the job, it is clear to me that if you take a blog network, stick it in a pot and boil it until all the fluff is gone…what you’d better be left with is a whack of bloggers who are making money.

When I identify my biggest fear it is that my bloggers won’t make money and I know the whole ball of wax rides on me making sure that they do. Everything from pro-blogger training tips, to new site monetization schemes to creative ways to attract local advertisers, it all comes down to ensuring that it is profitable to be blogging for Home Turf Media.

Bloggers making money = network making money = more people wanting to blog for our network and around it goes.

#3 How Can This Process Scale Big?

Right now my job involves a lot of one to one emails and one-off problem solving. It is sooooo tempting to just send that email or fix that line of code, but it is almost always bad business for me to be doing that.

With every task I do, I ask myself, “is this how you would handle it if you had 300 blogs rather than 3?”

I start manuals and task lists for everything I do. Yes it seems like it takes me longer to do anything right now, but I know in the long run it will pay off.

It already has. When I rolled out the first site on the network it took me 2 days as I documented every step and continually tweaked the template to get it right before I pronounced it ready. Following my document I was able to do the next 2 sites, from domain name to finished WordPress blog in about an hour and a half each of actual effort.

#4 Create a Great Culture

Every employee survey I’ve ever seen shows the wage or salary is a secondary consideration when deciding to change employers or stay in a current job.

Money is great, but it isn’t even close to a sense of being appreciated or respected and belonging in importance; as far as our core needs goes.

I know, from working for many employers, what a huge difference it makes to have a company or boss that communicates well and often and will tell me what is going on and why things are being done the way they are.

Don’t you find yourself secretly wondering, when you watch a politician or company CEO on TV, “why don’t they just tell the truth?”

It’s the same with bosses and companies in general. I know that to create a culture that is enjoyable to work in; it all starts with truthful and effective communication from me.

I already experience a feeling of love for all the people that I’m working with and I know nurturing that love is the real key to creating a great company.

That’s it for my 20 minutes these days. I predict that what will happen is that I will continually work on these four items for the rest of my career, but I’m hoping I’ll be working on more of the subtleties rather than the broad strokes as I presented here.

Jon Symons
Building a blog network…so you don’t have to.

4 Thoughts for Building a Great Business is a post from: Art of Money