Archive for the ‘Business Building Secrets’ Category

You work hard marketing your business, there’s no doubt.

But, do you truly see and capitalize on the most important opportunities for profit leverage when they arise?

Most business owners don’t.  They keep using one (maybe two) methods of marketing their business, never realizing the full opportunity for incredible profits that awaits.

Typical statements from these business owners sound like this:

“Oh, I get most of my business from referrals, I don’t need to market.”

“We’ve been running this one print ad for years, no need to change anything.”

And on, and on…

Do you relate to this?  It’s ok, you’re not alone.

Enter a good copywriter with a marketing mindset.

If you use one, like me for example, I will examine more than just the “one” project you assign me for…in fact, I will reveal some hidden marketing assets you have probably had sitting right under your nose for a long time.

Marketing assets, that when capitalized on, can bring almost immediate and substantial profits right to your bottom line.

In addition, I can help you test your marketing efforts, tweak, and then maximize the profits coming from these new streams of income.  All this, in addition to the “one” project you assigned me to do.

And, the best part is…no babysitting required.

So, after reading this, you really have one of 3 choices to make:

1)  Keep doing what you’re doing, justifying to yourself that you cannot afford a copywriter right now, or don’t need any help.

2)  Think about this post…and always wonder “What if?”

3)  Send an email to joe@josephratliff.com right now (or call 360-438-3632) and at the very least explore this option for profits right now.

Action takers, movers and shakers, and successful entrepreneurs will pick #3.

See you at the top.

People are funny sometimes.

It’s almost like they want something to be hard to accomplish in order to validate the fact they are in an online marketing business (or any business for that matter, but I’ll keep it focused on marketing here).

Folks, this marketing business isn’t hard at all…but you can make it hard if you choose.

Examples…

—> Trying to figure it all out beforehand. This is a big hot button for me, as it represents a large percentage of the questions newbies ask me boiled down to this one topic.

Folks, marketing online or offline cannot (and will not) be figured out before you take risk and attempt to start testing offers to make to a market…there are simply too many variables (copywriting, SEO, marketing, testing, PPC, etc… etc…) to try and figure out, not to mention each variable is WAY too deep.

If you’re trying to figure it all out beforehand, quit doing it and just try to execute something, and keep executing, using the data you get (even basic data) to figure out yourself how to make things better. If you don’t have the resources, find someone who does and partner with them.

—> You already know enough to get started. All the ebooks in the world will NOT, repeat NOT market a business for you. In fact, they can actually steer you off course if you’re not careful.

As grown ups, you already know enough (even if you’re young) to help a group of people solve a problem by marketing an offer of some type. But you have to develop one other thing…

—> You must have the fortitude to put yourself and your offers “out there.” You will make mistakes, you probably will make a type of mistake where you’ll look like a complete fool, so know that, get over it, and go make more mistakes. Eventually, you’ll fail less and less, and succeed more and more. No one said that marketing could be developed overnight, or everyone would do it successfully.

The concern about putting your offers out there in front of people who might give you a hard time needs to be put to rest. Everyone seeks acceptance, but you will not, repeat will not get it from everyone.

In fact, if you don’t reach the part of your market where someone complains in some manner, you aren’t marketing your offers effectively enough.

Quit trying to impress people, and get out there and make some dang offers!

Quit wanting this to be hard, it does take time to develop the skills, but it is all easy to do if you just start testing offers and driving then converting traffic (in other words, quit talking about it, and “researching it”, and start executing).

Driving traffic to your blog.

It’s one of the tasks that sometimes easy, and sometimes not.

Here’s another “weapon” you may not have thought of when getting traffic:

Re-tracking old posts.

When you read blogs on the web, have you ever thought “Man, I have an older post that would fit this conversation pretty well”?

Well, if you do, use your blog’s search function, find it, make sure it fits the conversation…then find the date of the post, and use your admin area to edit (if you have WordPress, which most blogs do).

Link appropriate keyword text if possible to the new post you were reading on another blog, and then add the new link to that post to your “trackback” area, and hit “Update post”.  So long as the blog author allows pings and trackbacks, your post should link to their blog post in minutes to days.

Once you get this process down, it shouldn’t take you but a few minutes to fully execute this strategy.  That’s worth a few extra visitors and subscribers right? Plus, if you get visited by the right blog owners, they may take your post and share it themselves…which gives you even more traffic.

Simple.  If you feel your readers could benefit, please share this post, or link to it…and feel free to comment with more traffic strategies below…

Or the 80/20 rule, and who you REALLY have to focus on to succeed…

All the sales letters out there paint the “rosy” picture of the Internet marketing lifestyle, don’t they?

I am sure that most everyone that reads this article has at one point or another “fallen” for the carefully crafted words of an expert copywriter…and bought into the illusion.

This article contains a strong dose of reality people!

If you don’t want to see the real truth about Internet business, and want to continue to believe that there is some get rich quick, “make $23,594 in 60 days” program out there…keep searching. All of the sales letters will point you the way.

It is that very illusion that will keep feeding you the e-books, courses, and memberships that you will continue investing in until you realize there are no shortcuts to business…and eventually you will come back to this article to get your dose of the hard truth.

Onward…

I was recently visiting a forum I frequent and found a post where the founder of the forum expressed his feelings about some whining taking place by some members in one of the sections within the forum.

To sum it all up, people were bitching and moaning about posts getting bumped etc… the details really do not matter at all.

The point is they were investing time bitching about making money with this one idea, instead of just shifting gears and moving on to something else in their business if they were having a problem. The lesson here is “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

And…

Guess what people? Business isn’t a fair and fluffy world for everyone!  Get over it!

On to another part of this lesson…

One of my coaching students was concerned about traffic to his sites. He was concerned because several of the methods weren’t working within the article marketing he was doing (which still works by the way). Almost frantic to the point of over-analyzing “why” most of his articles were not producing the traffic he would have liked (clicks to his blog).

But, he did produce at least one article that really rocked!

I mean seriously “masterpiece” quality.

This is an asset, or the first thing I look for when I have an issue in my business.

I look for use-able assets that I can convert into traffic, cash, whatever I need. Since I am a “massive action taker” when it comes to business, I am always in the process of creating these assets…and I do not allow little stuff like why articles are not working get in my way, because they won’t if I can just move on to another asset.

(you shouldn’t either, if you’re creating assets)

So I told my coaching student to take what he could from the article that worked, or his asset in this case.

Obviously, his readership liked what it found in this long article.

To date…this article has over 373 views on Ezinearticles.com, 8 ratings, all 5 star ratings, and many positive comments in only two weeks.

If you happen to create an asset like this, find out what you did right, and do it again for Pete’s sake!

Over and over again.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a big proponent of the “fail as fast as you can, so you can succeed even faster” mantra.

But you have to decide when enough is enough, learn from your mistakes and move on. Internet Business life isn’t fair for everyone, and sometimes you might think you are doing the right thing investing hours and hours into writing articles or what not…

But it doesn’t always work that way people!

Learn why it didn’t work that way and move on as quickly as you can!

Now on to the big lesson for today…

Let’s move on to a big secret in business, one that will be hard to swallow for most of you, but I am going to reveal it any how right here (I normally charge quite a bit for this kind of advice).

At first, it won’t sound like any big deal, you have probably heard it a thousand times before, but bear with me…

Ready?

Here it is…

About 80% of your revenue comes from about 20% of your total efforts!

On it’s face, you have probably heard of Pareto’s Principle. You have probably heard it a thousand times…but I bet that most of you have never taken massive action on it before. Honestly, only 20% of the people who read this post ever will take action.

Here is what I mean:

* If you work 40 hours a week on your Internet business…only 8 of those hours of work are producing 80% of your revenue generated. Wouldn’t you want to take that piece of advice and give your business an honest check up from the neck up, to see what 8 hours are producing that revenue, and do more of it?

* If you make $50,000 a year in net profits from your internet business… $40,000 of that revenue came from only 20% of all of the efforts you put into generating revenue for that Internet business in that year. Instead of bitching and whining on some forum about why your posts are getting bumped, why not concentrate on finding out more about that 20%, and do more of that instead?

* Instead of worrying about the 80% of the articles you write that are not generating the traffic you like, find the 20% that are, and copy that structure of article, topic nature, etc…

* If you have 100 customers (for the sake of simple math), and you now know that only 20 of them are making you 80% of your profits, which customers do you want to spend the most of your time with?

And really, that is the big secret here…

• You should spend 80% or more of your valuable time with only 20% of your clients, the 20% who have followed your advice in your products, and used your copywriting skills, to make millions of dollars themselves.

• The same 20% who invest in you again and again without question, who quite frankly feed your family and put a roof over your head.

• This same 20% doesn’t complain about every little thing, because they know that if for some reason things don’t go right, you will make sure that they do…

Because you have created the time to do so by focusing 80% of your time and energy to only 20% of your clients.

Does that mean that the other 80% of your clients suffer?

Absolutely not. They receive polite and courteous attention, and you produce quality work or products for them, so they can benefit. They get 100% of you, for the entire 20% of your time you devote to them.

This concept might be a little hard to swallow for you, I understand that.

You might be thinking “Holy smokes Joe, it sounds like you are asking me to screw over 80% of my clients!”

But that is far from the truth actually.

You see, Pareto’s Principle can be expressed for this lesson in this way too:

80% of your clients really only need 20% of your time!

That’s right, about 8 out of every 10 of your clients are only going to use your services for one project, one consultation, buy one affiliate product from your recommendation etc… and that is it.

That does not require much time at all.

But 2 out of 10 clients will invest in your product or service for repeatedly, need multiple consultations, will invest in you for the 80% of the time you devote to them.

And those are the clients that keep you in business…Period.

There is a scary revelation that applies here as well…

About 80% of all small businesses fail within 5 years.

Which also means…

About 20% of all small businesses succeed after 5 years.

Could the 20% who succeed be the same ones that master the art of focusing on their 20%?

Are you going to at least start to think about who your 20% is?

If you don’t, don’t call me in 5 years when the money runs out.

Who is your 20%?