Are there ezines that you receive that you just can’t wait to read? I know I have 3 or 4 that I read as soon as they hit my inbox, and others that I print and put in my "reading box" next to my desk.
What do you think makes me want to read those few right away?
It’s the personal connection I feel to the author, even if I don’t know that person (some I’ve met, some I haven’t yet). Besides the valuable content I get each time I read their newsletter, I am most interested in finding out what’s happening with them, personally and professionally.
As they share more about themselves and their lives, I get to know, like and trust them (and their products or services) over time (and you know that people only buy from people they know, like, and trust, right?). And eventually I tend to make the investment in them and their offerings.
For example, I was a subscriber to Chris Barrow’s "More Profit in Less Time" ezine for about a year when I learned through it that he was holding a live event in NYC. I signed up (at $200), attended the event, and left as a client (for $450/month). Do you think I would have invested that kind of money if I hadn’t gotten to know, like, and trust CB and his materials? Of course not.
So, how can you put more of YOU in your ezine to make that connection with your readers? Try some of the following:
1. What’s going on with you?
Can you think of two or three things that are happening in your life right now that you could share with your readers? You only need to get as personal as you feel comfortable with, so don’t feel that you need to share everything, by any means. Just a couple of things that you can share comfortably that your readers might find interesting as well as help them feel more connected to you.
For example, are you going on vacation soon or did you just get back from a trip? This is usually an easy topic to start with, and don’t be surprised if your readers write to you to suggest hotels, tell you their experiences when they visited the same locale, etc.
Or do you have a pet that you can relate stories about? You’ll be amazed at how many of your readers will feel like they really know you if you share your latest "adventures with Rover" stories.
2. Ask for help.
If you are trying to make a decision about something, ask your readers for suggestions and feedback. To continue the vacation example above, say you are considering taking a cruise. Ask your readers for suggestions as to their favorite cruise line, or which ones to avoid. They’ll be happy to help!
3. Add photos.
I try to add a photo every week if I can (it’s not hard when I take a lot of pictures of my kids!). A photo of yourself is also a really good idea. It goes a long way in helping your readers see you as a real person.
Try to incorporate these ideas into one section of your ezine, either at the beginning or the end. You can call it anything you like: A note from you, personal reflections, from the desk of_______, etc. Personally, I like to see it at the beginning since it’s usually the part I read first.
Remember not to take up too much space, though. You still want the majority of your ezine to contain quality content for you reader, since that’s why they signed up in the first place!
If you’re reading this ezine, it’s likely that you’ve participated in a teleseminar, whether it be mine or one of my colleagues. You’ve probably been on some that have been very good, where you got tons of really valuable information. And you may have found yourself on a few that were nothing but pitch-fests for the host’s latest product.
But I want to share something with you. Hosting content-rich teleseminars for my target market is some of the quickest and easiest mo^ney I’ve generated in my business.
Holding F.R.E.E. introductory teleseminars are a great way to promote your business, increase your email subscriber list, make more sales on your products, and enable your potential clients another way to connect with you. By being on the phone with you, they get to know you through your voice, adding the human touch that can be so hard to cultivate online.
I offer a f.r.e.e. monthly teleseminar that gives people an introduction to what I teach. From each of these calls, I get more ezine subscribers, more members for my group coaching membership, and more sales of my products.
Holding PAID teleseminars helps to promote your business and generate revenues as well. I do one paid teleseminar at least every two months on a different marketing topic, and I gross a minimum of $2000 for each of these calls.
Another way to offer teleseminars is to do “intensive” or “bootcamp” series of multi-week teleseminars. I’ve offered 10- and 4-week ‘”workgroups” on the topics of listbuilding, creating a successful business online from scratch, and search engine marketing that have been very profitable.
1. The Right Target Market and the Right Topic
Here’s the secret for producing and profiting from a teleseminar: It must be designed for a target market AND it must solve a problem that that target market is struggling with. If you have those two keys in place, you’ll be sure to attract enough sign-ups and make money from your topic.
2. A Bridge Line
There are several good no-cost bridge lines available for you to use, but the one I’m currently recommending is FreeConferenceCall.com because you can record the teleseminar for free as well. This is a nice benefit to offer your participants and to anyone who had to miss your teleseminar for any reason. I use it as a back-up recording for all my calls. You can have up to 100 people on the line with you.
3. Recording Service
You’ll need a way to record your teleseminars so you can provide the audio for people to listen to later and for you to make CDs from if you decide to package your teleseminar into a physical product later. I use AudioAcrobat to record all my teleseminars, with FreeConferenceCall.com as a back-up.
4. Automatic Registration
You’ll want to be able to have people sign up for your teleseminar without you having to do a lot of work. I use Aweber for all my teleseminar registrations, but you can also use your shopping cart’s autoresponder service if you have one.
I’d like to invite you to start offering f.r.e.e. teleseminars to promote your business, and once you get more comfortable with both the format and the technology, start offering paid teleseminars. Even if you only have a handful of people on your first call, it’s great practice. And I guarantee your numbers will increase as you continue to build your email list, and you’ll be profiting from teleseminars in no time.
Now that the fall is upon us, I’m already gearing up for 2011 – planning, organizing, strategizing, visioning, and more. There are many transitions and transformations on the horizon for me and my business, and much to do to prepare for them, so I’m making space and opening the flow.
Here are some of the ways I’m doing this in my business that you can do too:
1. Clean Up Your Business Time
Time is your only non-renewable resource. If you’ve ever experienced days when you don’t know where the time has gone, but you do know you haven’t accomplished much, then you need to take a serious look at just what is eating up those precious minutes.
My coach’s request of you is to track your time for the next two weeks. Like a food diary makes you intensely aware of what you’re eating, a time log will allow you to quickly and easily identify where you’re frittering time away.
Most likely culprits?…
Email and TV (yes, I know some of you are ‘watching’ TV while you’re online, and no, that’s not multi-tasking, that’s just pure distraction).
Once you are aware of where your time is going, make a conscious effort to redirect it to more productive – or even more restful – activities. Turn the TV off (or TIVO/DVR whatever it is you must watch and give it your full attention later). And don’t leave your email open all day long! Allot specific time to read and respond to it instead.
You’ll be amazed at how just doing this simple exercise will free up the time you want for more important (and fun!) things. (Be sure to read Part 2 of this article next week where I’ll share more specific and effective tips for handling email overload.)
2. Clean Up Your Business Space
Now is a great time to go through your files – computer and physical – and delete or organize them for moving forward into 2011.
I spent several hours going through my physical files recently, shredding lots of documents (I love to purge!), and setting up new files for my new Platinum clients as well as empty files for the ones yet to come.
During this process both online and off, I also found a lot of gems I’d forgotten about – pieces of content, systems and processes, tools, resources, audios, and more.
And now that I have a recent visual in my mind of what’s in my files, it’s literally at my fingertips as I move forward in building my business.
As for my computer, I actually went so far as to purchase a brand new laptop, and I’m being very discerning about what gets transferred over from my old PC to the new. Energetically and electronically, I can feel how much more open the flow is by doing this.
3. Clean up Your Business Circle
This one can be a bit difficult, but it’s necessary to prune the people you surround yourself with from time to time. It doesn’t mean you have to completely disconnect from them (unless they’re just weighing you down energetically), but do make a conscious choice to spend more time in the company of those who lift you up.
Let me give you a simple example. If you’re on someone’s ezine list just because everyone else is or you feel like you should be, but you either a) don’t read it or b) don’t feel good when you do read it, just unsubscribe and allow the space for something that resonates with you to take its place.
Or maybe you’re part of a mastermind group that you feel you’ve outgrown. Now is the time to graciously bow out. Once you do, you open the space for a new group to form around you that better supports where you are now.
How are you making space and opening the flow for the rest of 2010 and into 2011?
A few weeks ago, I was playing with Jack in the shallows of our beach at the lake when I caught sight of something flashing underwater. I reached down to find a rusty Magic Hat #9 bottle cap – with this message on the flip side:
“The universe always has other plans.”
Hmmm… 😉
Being open to receiving messages such as these, I knew exactly that this was about for me. I had been finding myself dipping into fear and worry about a few things personally. And I noticed that I was feeling out of sorts because while I was trying to have faith, I was also uncomfortable feeling like I wasn’t in control (can you relate to that at all? ;-)).
I actually laughed when I read the message on the cap, and thought to myself, “ok, ok, I get it…” 🙂
Releasing control, moving through fear and doubt, believing that there’s a bigger plan and that everything is happening in Divine order… I’m a lot further along on that path than I was even a couple of years ago, but I’m still growing…
I guess my message here is that we all come up against our stuff, no matter who we are or where we’re at in our personal and professional life, but to continue to move forward regardless is the simplest key between getting from where you are to where you want to be…
Once you’ve figured out your niche (or you’ve at least narrowed it down significantly), it’s time to figure out what problems they are struggling with, and what they want by way of solutions. Remember, if you will only ask your market, it wants to help you create the products it wants to buy!
How do you find out what your target market wants? There are several ways to get this information and use it to help you create an offering that will solve your niche’s problems and make a profit for you at the same time.
The best way is to do your research. The most critical research to do is to join the conversations that your market is having:
Here are two ways to do this:
1. Simple: Ask them!
Ask your prospects a simple, open-ended question, like “What’s your biggest challenge with building your business online?” or “What’s the one thing you’d like to learn more about that relates to balancing your work and family life?” Tailor the question to your niche and use the information you receive to help spark ideas for new products and services.
2. Almost as Simple: Do a simple survey…
…that asks 1-10 questions using a survey tool like Zoomerang or Survey Monkey. This allows you to ask more specific questions to elicit more specific responses. Doing a survey like this really helps you to NOT waste your time creating offerings your target market simply doesn’t want.
Once you’ve figure out what your niche’s problems are, you can create or find the solutions to solve those problems. Your solution can be packaged in a variety of ways: an ecourse, a PDF manual, an ebook, an audio download and/or CD, group programs, teleseminars, e-manuals, etc.
Here’s a very simple process to follow to create a product to add to you funnel quickly:
1. Do a free or paid live class on your product
Once you’ve done your research and you’ve chosen a topic your target market is interested in knowing more about, offer a 1-hour teleclass on that topic. Cover three points and offer your solutions. Most important is to make sure you record the teleseminar, as this is what leads to a product for you.
As you’re designing your outline for the class, do so in a way that creates notes for your participant. (If you’re a member of my Coaching Cafe, you know that I give very detailed class notes, so you know what I mean by this).
As the end of your live teleclass, you’ll have the recording and notes to then…
2. Package it virtually.
Now you have the audio recording and notes to offer as a bundled product and…
3. Package it into a tangible product.
You can then take it up a notch and turn it into a physical product and offer it that way as another income stream for you.
And here are some of my other favorite tips for simple product creation:
– If you don’t have a list or access to a list, you can offer a free class on a topic and then charge people for the product down the road, or afterwards.
– Another option is to have someone interview you on your topic to create your product. You can offer the questions along with the interviewee’s questions. This is a good strategy if you don’t think you can get enough people on a call.
– You can record any live classes or workshops you’re holding as well, and re-package those presentations virtually or tangibly.
– Try to record everything so you always have the option to offer it at some level down the road.
– Promote your teleclass to your list, via colleagues who are willing to spread the word (especially if it’s free) and at teleclass listing services.
– Promote on the discussion lists and groups that you’re a part of, promote it there with permission and on the appropriate day.
– Pricing: If this is a new process for you, if you’re offering your topic for the first time and sort of feeling out your market, go with the lower end. If you’re putting together a 90-minute class with lots of comprehensive step-by-step information, charge more.
– When it comes to creating your big-ticket item, they can be created from all these little products along the way. So, if you were creating a product a month or every other month, that gives you 6-12 products at the end of the year that can be packaged together into your big ticket item.
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