Leverage is the Key to the Big Bucks
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Yaro from Entrepreneurs Journey has an article that I enjoyed called Kill the Bargain Hunter and Change Your Attitudes Toward Money and Time.
The story addresses a key issue to anyone wanting to transcend regular wages and build an income beyond what is possible trading hours for dollars.
To do this you need to build an asset that has the potential for leverage. Whether that is leverage because you have systems and people that multiply output and get things done without you, or you have access to network effects spreading your message far and wide, meaning one article, in the case of a blog, has the potential to make a huge impact on your bottom line, isn’t important as long as you have some form of leverage so your time-to-income ratio is multiplied.
You want to work with multiplication tables, not additions and subtractions, so you can leverage your time for significant rewards, not just flat discounts.
There are a couple keys involved in using the concept of leverage.
Create a Scalable System
This is the key point of being able to use leverage. You must create a scalable system.
In my previous picture framing business, I didn’t have a scalable system and what this created the very bizarre business situation of too much demand being a bad thing.
If you think of a simple website that sells widgets (acquired from a drop shipping company for example), then you can have a scalable business. It makes x dollars per visitor so the more traffic it gets, the more money it makes.
Once a visitor hits the site, the system takes over and for every 100 visitors the system is able to produce a predictable profit.
Blogging in itself is not an easily scalable business. Blogs require constant updates to retain their traffic. That’s one of the reasons I like information products.
Ways to Achieve Scalability
Blog: outsource content creation and development
Information or Digital Product: run an affiliate program, this offers incentives to others to send traffic to you.
Physical Product: outsource product manufacturing (this was what I needed to do in my previous business).
Think of scalability as an engine, what would it take for your business to go 5 times as fast. To go from 5 stories a week to 25 stories a week, I would need to spend every waking hour writing. But if someone else was writing, I could simply hire more writers.
This ties back into Yaro’s story, that not being able or willing to hire other people can greatly reduce your ability to scale your business and, ironically, lower the earning potential of your business.
Even since my picture framing business I have been aware of this principle, but still it is a difficult concept to let go begin to spend money creating a scalable system, when you are unsure of the returns.
I’ve been trying it out in small doses, allocating a certain amount each month for outsourcing and trying to pick the tasks that I either enjoy the least, or the ones that free up the most time for the least cost.
! Warning
Affiliate Marketing Using Web 2.0 Thinking
What’s the toughest advert to get clicks on?
If you’ve been around the block on the web for a while, you’d probably say, “banner ad.”
And you’d be right.
So how do you get someone to click on a banner ad?
Pre-sell it of course.
Take the pre-sell page concept and condense it to the micro level.
The 4 Level Blog Content Strategy
I’m arranging these into four categories but it is really more of a continuum. The purpose of this is to demonstrate a variety of approaches to content creation and to illustrate the goals for each of the levels of content.
1. News and Current Events
This can be clip and comment type posts where you bounce off of popular topics in your market.
Purpose: To join the conversation and build traffic.
eg: Can you can work an iPhone angle into your topic?
Increase Affiliate Earnings With Pre-Sell Pages
The biggest mistake that most people make when attempting to make money from a website is not using pre-sell or dedicated selling pages for the affiliate programs that they promote.
Dosh Dosh has a excellent case study of an effective pre-sell page and why you should be using them to promote affiliate programs.
It is nice to think that dropping an affiliate link or banner in a blog’s sidebar is going to make you some big cash, but it doesn’t work that way. Affiliate marketing is a lot like love, you just can’t lean in for a big wet kiss 5 minutes after you meet someone; your conversion rate is going to suck, and you’re likely to end up needing medical attention.
Same goes for affiliate selling, the pre-sell page is a way for the interested party to get to know you. Why are you recommending this stuff and why they should trust you? Do you sound credible or like a huckster?
Steal My Swipe File - Improve Your Headlines
Below is one of my virtual swipe files (def).
It’s a Google search of a bunch of the Early to Rise (mulitmillion dollar info product and newsletter publishers) sales letters.
These ones are all financial related pages, but the you’ll get the forumulas and hooks that they are using and be able to transcribe the techniques for everything from blog post titles to sales letters.
Financial Headlines Swipe File
Have fun. Make your next post a Digg magnet!
Art of Money’s July Earnings Up By $10,000
My previous post regarding starting an intern program, which was an entry into James Brausch’s question time, has been selected as the winning question (And The Winner Is…). You can read Answer Time: Intern Program to get all the answers and tips for creating and running an intern program.
The surprise is James says that the prize has a retail value of $10,000!
No word of what the prize actually is, but I love surprises, especially 5 figure ones. The only thing that causes some mixed emotion in me is that James likes to send out physical products and prized based on the Whois information of a domain name and Art of Money is probably the only domain of the many that I own that has “whois privacy” on it.
Regular readers will know that I actually like to have my address on my domains, but for some reason when I purchased this domain, I did it at a registrar that offered free privacy protection and I never bothered to turn it off. That could be costly in this case.
Anyway, if James or one of his interns happens to read the pingback for this post, maybe they’ll be kind enough to send the prize to my actual address:
Suite 240, 10654 82 Avenue
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada T6E 2A7
Otherwise, some miscellaneous privacy office in Toronto is going to receive a $10,000 package that they’ll have no idea what to do with. C’ est la vie, right?
On the topic of James Brausch, since this post is officially a ramble and not at all an article, James published a guest post on Michel Fortin’s site called Michel Fortin Sucks…
The post is fantastic, and it explains why James “must” give out expensive gifts before he can complete his to-do list everyday! (And why you and I should do the same thing.)
Thanks James,
Jon Symons
How To Prevent Google From Ruining Your Life
In a previous post I wrote about the 7 Ways Google Could Ruin Your Life, and well, here at Art of Money we’re not just all about creating link bait.
Therefore, I’ve written this follow-up to guide you through the process of applying a virtual condom between you and that beast Google.
Here’s the 7 possible problems and my best solution for each one. Imagine the phrase:
“You’d be up the creek if Google…”
1. Stops Sending Your Site Traffic
Solution: Diversify your traffic sources and control your traffic.
Part 1. With social bookmarking sites being so popular Google is less necessary for raw traffic, however it does supply the highest quality traffic. The only way to replace it is by acquiring direct incoming links from your neighbors; and lots of them. You can do this by out linking and trackbacking a lot, and by networking with others in your niche.
Part 2. Capture you readers. Feature prominently RSS subscription options and newsletter sign-up forms.
2. Or An Employee Stole Information from Your Gmail Account
Solution: We may have to live with this one?
Short of not storing any private or confidential information with Gmail or in Google Docs, there is no obvious protection here.
Have a good backup plan and use really strong passwords. Pray the food continues to be excellent at the Googleplex cafeteria.
3. Embarrassed The Hell Out of You With Nasty Pictures of You on Streetview
Solution: Request that your embarrassing image be removed from Streetview
Google has allowed people caught in unflattering images to request the pictures be removed.
4. Banned Your AdSense Account
Solution: This requires a few strategies to properly protect yourself.
- For God’s sake don’t make AdSense, or any Pay Per Click you’re only revenue source!
- If your account does get banned, there are AdSense alternatives, you can quickly toss up to replace them.
- My secret weapon…the Google AdSense terms state that a person can only have one AdSense account, but in the eyes of the law a corporation has the same rights as a person. If you get banned you can incorporate a company (or do it before you get banned) and open a new account (advisable to switch up email addresses and IP for signup) and you should be back in business.
5. Killed Your Investment Portfolio (GOOG Share Price Plummets)
Solution: Don’t be a dummy and put too much of your portfolio into a single investment.
There is a simple game called “The Marble Game” that can teach you the art of position sizing or managing risk in your portfolio to protect against massive losses.
BTW. I own TheMarbleGame.com and PositionSizing.com if you’re you become obsessed with these excellent topics and want to build out a website on either, make me an offer. 
6. Makes it Impossible for You To Get Hired Because Someone Slandered or Criticized you on Their Blog
Solution: Own the search engine results for your name. In extreme cases, use a different variation of your name on your resume.
Even if you get someone talking trash about you and it shows up in the top 10 in Google, the solution is simple: get other favorable pages to rank higher than the trash talk…push the trash down the results with superior SEO.
7. Deleted Your Email Account or All Your Google Docs
Solution: Backup your Email & Google Docs.
Email: You can use any off line email application (Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express) to retrieve your emails from your Gmail account and store a copy on your local computer.
Docs: Use this Google Docs and Spreadsheets backup script to backup all your files in one click. It requires Firefox and a special FF extension called Greasemonkey. All details are found on the link.
– There you go then, all your Google inflicted problems solved in about 550 words on Art of Money.
Ever Thought of Running An Intern Program?
I received an email yesterday about a local business incentive package for technical companies that are willing to hire interns.
My first reservation was to wonder whether or not jumping through all the government hoops would be worth any possible compensation that would be paid against the wages of the intern(s).
Then there are folks like Mr. Brausch who claim to have scores of interns who will do many tasks for free, in exchange for learning an Internet business from the inside (by actually doing the work to keep it running).
Well Mr. Brausch is having a “question period” on the topic of intern programs. Ask him a question on your blog and via a trackback, he’ll know about it and then answer the question.
“What is the one question… that if you had the answer to… would allow you to create your own successful intern program?”
My intern program question is…
What do I need to have in place to make sure that I create an intern program that will be a net gain in productivity for my business rather than a drain on my time and energy?
My experience so far is the most people just want to ask question after question and after a while I feel like I am working for my intern (or any other employee) rather than the other way around.
I’d love an answer to that question, because that is what holds me back in growing my business and creating more freedom in my life.
14 Secrets to Success
The following 14 points are taken from a new updated version of the classic book The Magic Ladder to Success by Napoleon Hill. Your Magic Power to be Rich!, pictured on the left is a brand new book and contains three of Napoleon Hill’s originals, which have been updated to include anecdotes and revisions in an effort to make them more relevant to the present day.
They were written in response to a letter that Mr. Hill received asking, “will you show us how to secure the confidence of the public in our work…?”
14 Secrets to Success
- I render more service than I ask people to pay for.
- I engage in no transaction, intentionally, that does not benefit all whom it affects.
- I make no statements that I do not believe to be true.
- I have sincere desire in my heart to be of useful service to the greatest possible number of people.
- I like people better than money.
- I am doing my best to live as well as to teach my own philosophy of success.
- I accept no favors from anyone without giving favors in return.
- I ask nothing of any person without having a right to that for which I ask.
- I enter into no arguments with people over trivial matters.
- I spread the sunshine of optimism and good cheer wherever and whenever I can.
- I never flatter people for the purpose of gaining their confidence.
- I sell counsel and advice to other people, at a modest price, but never offer free advice.
- While teaching others how to achieve success, I have demonstrated that I can make my philosophy work for myself as well, thus “practicing what I preach.”
- I am so thoroughly sold on the work in which I am engaged that my enthusiasm over it becomes contagious and others are influenced by it.
Some interesting ideas there. The most surprising to me is number 12.
I sell counsel and advice to other people, at a modest price, but never offer free advice.
This was written in 1930, long before the information age that we live in now. Wouldn’t it de-clutter the Internet very nicely if all the “free advice” disappeared overnight?
I’m still a little puzzled about his statement. I assume he would make a distinction between advice and information. Advice being more personal and specific and information being impersonal and general, but maybe not.
Do you offer free advice?
Isn’t that a large part of what blogging is all about?
Any of the other “secrets” strike a cord with you?
I can’t help getting the feeling that Mr. Hill is posthumously urging us all to create more products to speed along our success.
btw… This book, Your Magic Power to be Rich! just showed up in my post office box yesterday. Do you have your physical address on your contact page yet?