Finch Sells Premium Posts

Category: Brand Development

Grow A Monster Blog By Manipulating This 1 Human Flaw

| January 4, 2012 | Comments (2)

“Thanks to Google, we can instantly seek out support for the most bizarre idea imaginable. If our initial search fails to turn up the results we want, we don’t give it a second thought, rather we just try out a different query and search again.”
- Justin Owings

This is one of my favourite quotes on the subject of confirmation bias – our tendency to pick and choose facts where they suit us, neglecting anything that goes against our argument. It’s something that should interest all Internet Marketers, and particularly those who run blogs.

I often say that to be successful as an ‘expert’ or a consultant, you don’t need to know everything – just a tiny bit more than your average reader. You can be a successful blogger by validating what your audience already knows. It’s one of our many rational defects that we rarely seek new information, and would much rather find confirmation that our existing views are truthful and valid.

Confirmation bias: The tendency of people to favour information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses.

Successful bloggers are brilliant at exploiting this bias. They roll out content that is designed to look informative, but usually only confirms what the reader already knew. The best bloggers will go one step further. They’ll produce content that validates what a reader can only speculate to be true, thus sealing the role of ‘authority in a niche’, as my fellow Internet Marketers like to put it.

Unlike journalists, bloggers do not have to stick rigidly to the confines of fact over fiction. The secret to success lies in how we are perceived. By feeding readers the right blend of useless crap they already knew, and useless crap they always assumed, we can portray ourselves as figures of authority where it isn’t truly deserved. Some of the biggest and most popular blogs in the world rely on steady diets of ‘expert advice’ that serve merely to nail us to our beliefs.

Confirmation bias is a psychological weapon that allows bloggers to gain followers without having any kind of academic link to their chosen topic. By engineering a steady dripfeed of content that satisfies without challenging, any single one of us can become an expert. The old adage that content is king makes sense, but it doesn’t tell the full story.

If you really want to command a following, stick to telling people what they already know. If you want to become the fabled Mr Big Pants ‘authority in a niche’, extend that content to what they also speculate to be true.

One look at my Twitter feed tells me that the Republican primaries are now in full swing. Have you seen the bickering on political blogs?

You’ll find that the most commented sites are those that rally similar minded folk by enforcing their beliefs and serving a rose-tinted slew of facts to support them. If these sites felt a duty to promote a fairer race, they would paint each candidate in a fair and unbiased light. Of course, to do so would be to ask readers to challenge their beliefs. It never happens. People don’t want to be challenged. They want to feel vindicated, that they were right all along.

Once forming an opinion, we would rather live in ignorance than appear to be ‘flip-flopping’. Ordinary bloggers can grow monster followings by latching on to this weakness and appealing to the confirmation bias in us all.

Internet Marketing doesn’t require years of expertise, neither does blogging. It simply requires the articulation of beliefs and opinions in such a way that readers can pursue them as their own. If you do this, you will always have an audience.

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Monetizing a Blog With Premium Posts: Does It Work?

| November 4, 2011 | Comments (16)

If you’re a reader of my affiliate marketing blog, Finch Sells, you will probably be aware that I’ve introduced paid content over the last 6 weeks.

I thought it’d be interesting to see how many of my regular readers converted in to paying customers, especially given how fellow marketers can be notoriously hard to sell to.

The results from the first 6 weeks have been promising. I’ve taken just under $15,000 in sales, which I’m hoping will double in the next couple of weeks (Volume 2 was released yesterday).

While $15,000 is certainly a nice side-income to go with my usual marketing projects, I think the most exciting development is simply discovering that the premium content angle can work.

I’ve spoken about the concept on Twitter and a few people have quite rightfully pointed out that paid content can only be successful as long as the standard of the posts is kept high. I couldn’t agree more with the need to deliver quality content, but this is one of the reasons I’ve chosen standalone products instead of the currently popular subscription model.

Subscription based Internet Marketing forums are all the rage right now, and I’ve had the pleasure of checking out most of them. Sites like Aff Playbook, Stack That Money and IMGrind all do a fantastic job of delivering valuable content – and I’m sure they make a lot more money out of it than the $15000/month my Premium Posts have delivered so far.

The issue for me is commitment. I could potentially roll out a subscription based service, but it would create an enormous burden of pressure to keep delivering excellent content month after month. There really is little margin for error with a crowd that is so tough to please.

It’s the type of model that is much more sustainable on a forum where you have dozens of different personalities offering their own useful advice.

I’ve gone with the Premium Posts on a themed basis, so users with particular interests can buy information that should hopefully be directly relevant to them. With no subscription deadline, I can take full creative control and spend however long it takes to deliver content that I’m proud of, and that I think my readers are going to enjoy.

I hope that by adding products slowly, and keeping the quality high, I can build up a sizeable ‘passive income’. I’m also hoping that readers who have been converted in to paying customers will become more loyal to the brand.

Ironically enough, after releasing Premium Posts Volume 1, my blog received 6 of it’s 10 highest traffic days in the history of the site. Far from driving readers away, it seemed to generate extra visitors.

Releasing the products has also allowed me to seize a lot of traffic from forums and blogs linking to the announcement, which will presumably help my SEO. Not that I give two shits about SEO, but it’s a nice bonus.

Perhaps the opportunity that excites me most is the idea of exporting the Premium Posts concept and implementing it on other blogs.

It’s constantly preached that creating products is the best way to produce a long-term stable income, no matter what kind of site you’re running. While it will definitely be a challenge to provide the same incentive for purchasing paid content as affiliate marketing brings (who wouldn’t want to make more money?), I believe the concept has legs on it.

It should be interesting to see the results over the next couple of months. I’m definitely looking forward to making blogging a more profitable cornerstone of my business.

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The Best Viral Campaign Ever?

| October 4, 2011 | Comments (2)

Thanks to @paulsavage for drawing this to my attention on Twitter.

I tend not to pay too much attention to auto insurance campaigns. That changed this morning when I stumbled across the excellent State of Chaos mini-site that will shortly be doing the rounds.

This year’s blockbuster on your block, is the gimmick.

Simply enter your street name, load up the video and watch in awe as destruction descends upon your town – courtesy of some innovative and highly effective Google Maps integration.

I’ve included my town below. Anybody who can guess the location wins the right to be referred to as culturally fucking awesome for the rest of the year.

State of Chaos

Oh, the quaint British suburbs…

Chaos in your town

I won’t be taking out an insurance policy with State Farm anytime soon, but this is an excellent example of how to use social media and technology to your brand’s advantage. Very good job indeed.

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How To Increase Traffic When Your Site Hits The Plateau

| September 2, 2011 | Comments (4)

Every website has a plateau which marks the growth of traffic up to a point of diminishing returns.

The plateau is like a glass ceiling. It can be so difficult to crack, and often causes a loss in motivation when your project stalls and loses momentum for apparently no reason. It’s even more frustrating when you increase your workload and still can’t see the desired improvements.

This post is about conquering the plateau, switching gears and blasting your website to the next level. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that it’s the hardest challenge for any webmaster to overcome.

Your patience will be tested, and your hairline will surely recede. Your dinners will disappear in the space of 4 minutes and your children will begin to refer to you as “that angry man” who lives in the basement. Will it be worth the struggle? The struggle is what we live for!

Beat the Traffic Plateau

Let’s take a look at some tips and techniques for taking that next step.

Step out of your comfort zone.

The growth plateau is very closely tied to our personal comfort zones. What are we willing to write about? What are we willing to do to attract publicity? How many backs will we scratch to get that invaluable mention?

I believe that many stalling projects can be attributed to losing your nerve and not fully committing to a vision of success. Maybe you want to become the Internet’s next life coach? This isn’t possible if you live in a shell, blogging fictional stories and avoiding the hazard of actually getting out there and talking to people.

Behind most successful websites, you will find fiercely driven owners who realised the importance of exiting their comfort zones and making themselves heard in their respective markets. If you never volunteer for interviews, never offer to write guest posts, and never spend time looking straight in to the eyes of your peers, how can you expect to earn their sweeping respect?

Whatever comfort zone you have erected is usually built on foundations of fear. Overcome that fear and put your content and voice where it is likely to be judged.

100% praise for your website means you’re not taking enough risks.

Mimic existing blueprints for success.

The fact that you’re reading this post shows that you believe there is somebody out there doing your job better than you. Hey, it might not be me, but I’m sure there’s somebody out there you would interrogate for a winning formula if you had half the chance. This is a healthy attitude to have.

Mimicking the success of your industry’s leaders is the safe way of guaranteeing growth, but are you doing it correctly?

When you analyse your superior competition, what is it that you’re attempting to steal from them? If it’s their mission statement and not their blood, sweat and tears then you’re trying to ride a unicorn to the bank. I see it all the time. Webmasters trying to explode traffic by duping the intention and sentiment, but completely misjudging the application. Look at your superiors not for their success, but for the foundations that success is built on.

How often do they update their sites? How active are they in the comments? What forums do they post on? What social networks do they utilise? How can you replicate their backlink profiles? Who do they outsource to? What plugins and incentives do they run? What type of coffee do they drink?

Duplicate the entire work flow! Don’t just publish similar content and hope it enjoys the same success. You’re dealing with finely tuned and well-oiled profit machines. What you see on the homepage is just an afterthought.

Invest in brandable assets.

When you become as big as Facebook or Google, you don’t try to be the best at everything. You simply stick to your strengths and invest in the best that other people can muster. MySpace went down the shitter because it internalised every aspect of it’s business and was left with a half-baked final product.

So learn from Facebook and Google. Look to invest in high quality websites, scripts and services that could be integrated with your own product. I have purchased websites on Flippa with the sole purpose of re-branding them under my own site and merging the traffic. It costs money, but it provides instant momentum and growth.

Demand attention by stroking the ego.

I can’t think of a better example of innovative linkbuilding than Dukeo’s “Who is…” series using caricatures as the bait to get high profile bloggers to take notice.

I didn’t know too much about Dukeo until I received a link to a post that had my name in the title. There I saw myself depicted in caricature form (incredibly accurately), along with a lengthy biography detailing my background in the industry.

The biography alone would normally be enough to get a link. But the caricature, excellent as it was, meant that I had all the more reason to link to his site and to really force my readers over there. Take a look for yourself.

I was even more impressed when I discovered that the caricatures were not actually drawn by Sté, the owner, but by a hired artist.

It shows how taking a little initiative can really produce something memorable and effective if you think outside the box. Even if, like Finch, your own drawings look like arse.

Check out the weird and wacky jobs on Fiverr to devise a similarly ruthless link building strategy.

Adapt to new forms of media.

Webmasters often forget that audio and video content can open up a whole new realm of possibilities for generating traffic.

Again, it comes back to stepping out of your comfort zone. Are there parts of your website that could be adapted and re-issued in video or audio form? Maybe as podcasts, YouTube videos or even a mobile application? Not only will doing so reach new corners of the market, but it will open up valuable new income streams.

Wake up and smell the coffee. It’s 2011 and the traditional ‘words on a page’ approach is just one form of media.

Sharpen your prose.

I believe far too many bloggers sit on the fence when they would enjoy much more success by committing to an opinion and lighting a fire under it.

Read through your posts. Does it sound like the author believes in them? You will find people are much more happy to link to you if you’ve taken a stand, in a big way, and your thoughts reflect their own. This is often the intention, but it can fall apart if your writing isn’t sharp enough. Become a sharp opinionated writer who doesn’t understand the meaning of neutral vocabulary.

Being in the Internet Marketing industry is a big help. We are blessed with enough pantomime villains, who legitimately don’t know shit about their craft, to chug out a giant scathing FU every day for the rest of our lives.

Give your visitors a hero to believe in.

So here’s a quick tip. People buy in to personalities.

Imagine yourself inside your reader’s head. What do they aspire to become? What are their fiercest dreams and ambitions? Now look at your site. Are you positioning yourself as the man who controls the gateway to that lucrative future?

If you can position yourself as simply one step closer to the dream lifestyle that your readers are desperate to attain, you will find yourself in a position of power and influence. Wedge yourself where the dreaming ends and the glamour begins. Traffic will surely follow.

I’ve already written a meandering piece on this very subject called how to brand yourself and your blog. Go take a peek.

How To Increase Traffic: Some final tips

Spend some money on paid ad campaigns. I know how much a jolly webmaster hates to spend money on exposure when there are 101 free methods of generating traffic!!1! but you get what you pay for. And in many cases, as you can see, that turns out to be fuck all.

Has your design outstayed it’s welcome? The more features you add to your site, the more likely it is that your pages are becoming convoluted and the message is being lost. Often a redesign with prioritised content can fix this problem.

Allow visitors to submit questions. This provides endless new material, adds to your reputation and allows you to create content using exact match phrases that your target market are actively searching for. It’s sensible on every level.

Showcase your best post or feature. Pinpoint similar sites in your industry. Outsource the creation of an effective eye catching banner and then use Google Content Network to advertise your very best post. I always prefer to link to a post or feature rather than the homepage. It provides greater focus and control. Be sure to litter the page with incentives to subscribe!

Scale sideways. The plateau can often be overcome by asking “What else is my target market interested in?“. You don’t want to lose sight of your main demo, but you can collect closely related readers by scaling sideways and bringing your perspective to new topics. This also applies to guest posting.

Spread some rumours. Follow the Z List motto that any publicity is good publicity. Depending on your niche, it may be possible to inject some controversial rumours in to the blogosphere. I don’t know, maybe you’re a Pickup Artist who shagged his way to a broken dick and now hasn’t been seen since entering the Thai Red Light District last Thursday. Stir up some shit, dismiss it, and ride the waves of traffic. Why not apply for the next series of Big Brother? Go on, lose your dignity.

Start attending events. Check the event schedule for your area of expertise, grab yourself some business cards, and go make an impression. Offline marketing is not dead. It just requires a shower and the effort to get off your arse.

Get in to bed with your industry’s curators. Sometimes it pays to be friendly with the right individuals. Adapt a social strategy of reciprocating goodwill shown to you, and actively seeking the goodwill of those who run the rule at the top of your vertical. You might not want to brush shoulders with them, but they can help you get what you want. Traffic, fame and fortune comes at a price!

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How To Build A Diversified Online Business

| July 5, 2011 | Comments (4)

Diversify, diversify, diversify.

The three coolest words in an Internet Entrepreneur’s vocabulary. But what does it mean in practical terms?

Most entrepreneurs appreciate that with competitive markets and rapidly changing technologies, placing all your profitable eggs in one basket is a risky tactic.

If you don’t want your online business to end in a flood of tears and bitter resentment, then you better learn to diversify and create several avenues of profit. MySpace has shown, quite spectacularly, that it’s possible to fall from grace in 18 months. And you would do well to assume that so can pretty much any profit spinning website in your portfolio.

What Makes a Strong Portfolio of Online Assets?

In no particular order, here are some of my favourite business cornerstones.

Profitable affiliate marketing campaigns

Who would have guessed it? An affiliate marketer recommending affiliate marketing! Stable it is not, but an important staple of my business it will remain.

CPA campaigns provide enormous earning potential, and although short term in nature, can be used to fund investments in to more long term business models. I advertise affiliate offers using various PPV traffic sources, Plentyoffish and Facebook.

Effective affiliate campaigns require only part-time management, making them key contributers to your bottom line, without swallowing up all of your time.

The information resources for Tomorrow’s Next Trend…

Forget about the monetization, and ask yourself, “What is going to be really talked about in 2012?”, then build a website that provides top quality content on that topic. Does anybody remember the crazy market for backgrounds and add-ons when MySpace peaked? These exploded in popularity, and those who were ready to meet the demand, profited immensely.

Predict what is about to become hot, rather than attempting to monetize yesterday’s news, then build a website that delivers outstanding content on the topic. If you do this well, the monetization will take care of itself. Being first matters.

How about a home bizopp site for Greeks? Smell the demand, jump on it.

Having an online store

Drop-shipping and digital download stores are two areas I’ve been exploring closely over the last few months. I have a turnkey download store that produces a steady flow of revenue, and it’s inspired me to look further afield.

One of the great benefits of selling your own products is a conspicuous lack of anal manhandling by Google if you later decide to use their Adwords platform. Yes, owning your own product takes away the title of Internet Middleman, which Google unfortunately associates with Aids and Rabies.

For those with aspirations of something more legitimate than a digital product store, feel free to get utterly lost in the possibilities of drop-shipping. Sites like Alibaba make it possible to purchase, via wholesale, just about any product imaginable, and then sell it on for [sometimes] healthy profits. This is a step away from simple sideways diversification, but worth a look.

The branded blog

You may have noticed my soft spot for blogging. And you may have noticed my particular style of blog branding. I believe that it’s possible to become an authority in your industry, making good money as a blogger, without selling out in the eyes of your readers.

But the formula is murky.

Some bloggers use their platforms too eagerly to push any affiliate product with a commission attached. Others, I feel, are guilty of under-monetizing their blogs. I prefer to ignore writing about products, and instead focus my efforts on establishing relationships of similarity with my readers.

For my Internet Marketing blogs, I like to use humour, sarcasm and an occasionally self-deprecating tone. These are excellent weapons for building bridges of trust with a notoriously cynical market, but they’re not always as effective elsewhere. If you’re going to diversify in to becoming a blogger, step one is to understand your market.

And no, that’s not just some useless Quantcast demographics. But understanding what makes them laugh, what makes them smile, what content are they known to devour, and most importantly, what do they aspire to be? It sounds straightforward, but is often forgotten. The secret to running a popular blog is to know exactly what the “end goal” is for your average reader…and then to position yourself as the lifestyle rainmaker who can deliver that golden egg.

I have developed a collection of popular blogs that rake in $5-10K per month through direct banner buys alone. Many affiliates would laugh at those numbers, but hey – it’s diversified income. Most of my money traditionally comes from affiliate marketing, but if it were to disappear overnight, I make more than enough through publishing crap like this to live comfortably within my means.

The coupon haven

Consumers love coupons. It’s an addiction that has been passed down through generations and is now more exploitable than ever thanks to the reach of the web.

When people ask me what kind of website would make a good first addition to their portfolio, I tell them to go find some niche coupons for products with affiliate programs, then build a website around them. If you’re smart, you’ll do this in such a way that the website doesn’t die with each coupon period that expires.

Your own personal page

Even if you don’t want to become a blogger, I don’t think it’s ever a bad idea to have a personal presence on the web. Some of the most exciting opportunities I’ve had would never have found my inbox if I hadn’t made the decision to promote myself, and what I do, through a personal site.

Obviously, a portfolio is not going to attract money in the diversification sense. But you shouldn’t underestimate the opportunities that can fall your way if you tell the world what you’re good at.

A collection of mailing lists

They say the money is in the list, and although that statement is being challenged by the arrival of fan pages and enormous Twatter followings, I believe it still rings true. Mailing lists are fantastic assets to have. The ability to land effortlessly in the inbox of 50000 potential customers at the snap of your fingers should not be discounted.

I like to use Facebook and PPV sources to build highly targeted mailing lists that can be sold various products. For a brilliant illustration of how this works, get your IMGrind on and read this.

Understand there are Internet Gazillionaires who make money through no other means than by mailing the hell out of some very large lists. Contrary to popular belief, those lists do not last forever, especially if you’re the kind of prick who buys them from the unsolicited scrapheap. However, put to the right use, mailing lists can deliver lots of return customers and cross-selling opportunities.

The acquisition of good products

As perfectionists, we sometimes doubt what others are capable of achieving. One of the best ways to diversify an online business is to invest in somebody else’s good work. You can’t give 110% of your attention to every brainfart that occupies the mind… but somebody else can.

Stable businesses make a habit of innovating and investing in equal measures. While I enjoy the creative thrill of building websites from scratch, it makes just as much business sense to buy websites and digital products straight off the shelf if the standard is high. You might want to avoid marketplaces like Flippa which are about as buyer-friendly as a fist in the balls for your money back.

I recommend buying re-sellable digital products, or privately seeking out under-monetized blogs for the best chance of adding a nice juicy investment to your portfolio. If you can monetize better than 95% of other webmasters, you can have an absolute field day profiting from their hard work.

What Are The Areas I Don’t Like Diversifying In To?

Are there any projects to avoid? This is likely to provoke an angry response from those who dedicate their careers to the work I’m about to mention, and with good reason. Entrepreneurs are driven by different motives with different objectives. But for me personally, the areas I don’t like diversifying in to include…

Anything driven solely by SEO. I can’t control it, therefore I don’t pretend to understand it. SEO is an afterthought for all of my projects. If you build it, they will come. Only a complete bumberclart wastes his time trying to compensate for Google’s next move.

Web design and programming. I have the skills from my background as a programmer, but it’s far too time consuming to “diversify” in to client work. And it’s not so much a diversification, but rather a complete veering from the racetrack. In short, client based programming work can suck a donkey chode. I always get the shivers when friends or family contact me asking for a “quick website built”. And that’s without the duty of actually being paid for it.

Web hosting services. They will consume your entire working day, unless they’re entirely modularised and outsourced. I’ve seen many examples on Flippa of small web hosting services boasting respectable profits, but when you factor in that time is money, those profits suddenly start to look very small. Committing to be somebody else’s 99.9% uptime bitch would push me to insanity.

Customer subscription services. You will find that once again, unless you outsource everything, another service will usually beat you to the market by dedicating 100% of it’s time and doing a better job. A good example of such a subscription service is the pay-to-access forum. Many of these forums are emerging (PPV Playbook, IMGrind…), and it’s tough to knock the earning potential when you look at the numbers. 500 members paying $60/month is a healthy $30000/month in revenue.

However, forums are also notorious time-vacuums. Unless you can dedicate significant time to them everyday, they will never blossom in to healthy communities. Even once they’re established, you still need to engage and interact on a daily basis. This is perfect if the forum is your primary business. But as a diversification strategy? Be prepared to double your current workload, or get eaten by the competition.

Niches I know nothing about. If I can’t understand what I’m selling, I have no hope of guessing my customer’s next move. I’ve made the mistake far too often of developing websites on niche topics that I don’t “get”, and although I can motivate myself for the build phase, they often sit derelict after the site is launched.

Whatever You Do, Do It Well

It goes without saying that diversifying a business is irrelevant if you do a half-arsed job of it. We can go back to the MySpace example as a prime example of this. The examples above are merely my own professional choices, based on my own skillset and the talents of those I work with. You may have a very different vision.

As long as the vision is clear, and the planning is sound, diversification can only ever be a good thing.

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What You Can Learn From Microsoft And Starbucks

| May 30, 2011 | Comments (2)

Pricing our products, services and time can be a tricky business. I’ve spent many hours scratching my head and wondering what a “fair price” would be for my latest products. In reality, there is no such thing as a fair price.

It’s impossible to set a price point that satisfies the maximum amount each of your customers would be willing to pay. You are always going to have customers who scoff at the price. And you are always going to lose money by failing to ask enough of those who have personal valuations higher than yours.

Most of us try to find a middle ground.

We have to balance the advantages of securing many low value sales against making fewer sales at a much healthier margin. The conventional persuasion suggests that more sales is better business. So we lower the prices. This may produce the increased sales, but how many of those customers would have paid much more had we simply asked them to do so?

If the answer is “too many”, it’s time to start taking price targeting seriously. Price targeting is the art of setting different prices for different markets to maximise profits and increase sales in one efficient swoop.

Sounds Pretty Cool, But Who Else Is Price Targeting?

One of my favourite examples comes courtesy of The Undercover Economist, an excellent must-have book that really sheds some light on the relationship between consumers and their purchases.

The book dissects price-targeting by using the example of a cup of coffee.

How much is a cup of coffee worth? Some people will pay $2, others will happily hand over $3. The difficult decision is how to price the coffee in such a way that it’s cheap enough to attract maximum sales at a profitable margin, but expensive enough to milk maximum profit from those who are less money-conscious about their caffeine fix.

Price the coffee too high and you’ll lose sales. Price it too low and you’re leaving money on the table. To find the middle ground, they would have to establish a price that balances the best of both worlds. But there’s actually a much better way of doing business.

So what does the coffee house do?

Take a look at the drinks menu and you’ll see exactly what they do. They use a staggered pricing model.

An ordinary no thrills latte can be picked up for a couple of dollars. This satisfies the customers who would go elsewhere if the coffee became too expensive. And then you have the shit that my girlfriend orders. The premium chilled white mochawhatever blend at over $3. These drinks appeal to the luxury seekers. Those who can justify spending more because they place a higher value on good coffee, and will pay the premium to get their fix.

Many of us assume that because the lavish coffee at the bottom of the menu costs twice as much as a regular latte, it must be twice as expensive to produce. This is actually a textbook demonstration of price targeting.

Realistically, it only costs a few extra cents to produce the luxury drink. But the mark up value could have you believe that the shop is sourcing ingredients from a distant organic paradise. This is rarely ever the case.

The lavish coffee shows how much the shop WANTS to charge, and the budget coffee is what it can AFFORD to charge. The shop has the means to sell the luxury coffee at a few cents more than the ordinary latte and still make the same margin of profit. But to do so would be to set a uniform price for all coffee lovers, when some are quite happy to pay the premium.

How Price Targeting Can Work For You

How can we spin the coffee example in to something that an online entrepreneur would be familiar with? Well how about we start with the notorious “full support” upgrade that comes with many online services?

How many times have you compared prices for a digital product only to find that the biggest price hiker is 24/7 support?

Your web server might only cost $50/month with the regular plan. This is a price point that is designed to attract the budget brigade. But your hosting provider knows full well that not every professional is budget conscious when it comes to his web hosting. For those who are prepared to pay more, why leave the money on the table?

If throwing in unlimited 24/7 support allows the provider to charge $75/month instead of $50, they have found a way of appealing to both those who are happy to pay more (extra value, peace of mind), and those who can only justify the budget option.

But then you have to ask yourself; What is the true cost of providing 24/7 customer support? Most of the companies who offer this upsell ALREADY provide 24/7 support for their budget customers. But it doesn’t make sense to campaign on this information. You can’t expect your premium customers to pay the extra $25/month if the budget customers are enjoying the same quality of service for less money.

Many companies will actually make a conscious effort to devalue their “starter packages”, knowing full well that they can’t allow the difference in service to become so marginal that a high paying customer would realise there is little to gain in paying more.

Is there really a need for so many different versions of Windows? We have Home, Professional and Ultimate. Microsoft could quite easily bundle all the capabilities of Ultimate in to EVERY installation. But if my Home edition were as powerful as the Ultimate edition, how could Microsoft possibly charge corporate companies through the nose for the same product? So, of course, Microsoft takes it’s carefully designed software and sabotages it.

They remove enough features to create three very different markets that price themselves accordingly. Crazily enough, the cost of rolling out the weaker product is often greater than the premium version. The additional effort of stripping away functionality can incur extra costs. But it’s worth it for Microsoft because the cream of the crop will be handing over an extra $100 per installation.

When you board an airplane in economy class, do you really think your legs are cramped because the massive profit spinning airline couldn’t afford to specify a few extra cms of room when designing the aircraft? The experience is designed to be marginally uncomfortable so that these companies can still milk money from the picky flyers who are willing to pay extra for first class.

Examples of effective price targeting are all around you. From the trains you board, to the groceries you buy, to the clothes you wear. We make decisions everyday on the value of these items. You should give your own customers every opportunity to find a deal they agree with.

Price Targeting Is Just Plain Smart

When you look at your own products and services, ask yourself what could you be doing differently to effectively price target your customers. Developing a fantastic solution gives you enormous control. You may be selling your product at $150 and attracting sales from both the budget spenders and the corporate ties and suits.

Think about what could be added to the product that would allow you to charge $250. And what could be removed that would allow you to capture more customers at $100?

Structured price targeting gives you the ability to place the ball in the customer’s court and ask: “How much are you willing to pay?” If you never ask this question, you will never realise your maximum sales OR your maximum profit margins.

Recommended This Week:

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How To Gatecrash The Title Of Mr. Authority

| April 15, 2011 | Comments (3)

It’s not easy establishing a website when your name counts for nothing. You can have the best content, the swankiest WordPress theme and even the biggest marketing budget. But without gatecrashing your niche’s network of influential people, it’s all going to feel like shoving crap up a hill. A constant struggle for little reward.

This meandering post is going to give you a few pointers for how to attract influential people to your site.

One Follower = One Backlink?

In many ways, I consider people to be the new backlinks. It’s very easy to buy a thousand Facebook “Likes”, just as it’s easy to blast a thousand forum profiles with xrumer. Most people are agreed that where link marketing is concerned, quality beats quantity. And that is also the case with acquiring fans or followers.

Look no further than the self-proclaimed social media experts on Twitter to discover just how irrelevant numbers can be. So you’ve got 15,000 followers, a shiny custom background and a name that rings out to your mother and close friends. It doesn’t mean shit if you’re a nobody in the eyes of the people that matter.

Every niche market has a select group of influential people that exert power over the rest of the marketplace. I would suggest that instead of spending your days preaching to the dumbfounded choir (Hello, WSOs on Warrior Forum), you go after these trend-setters and attempt to get in bed with them.

In the same way that one authoritative backlink is much more valuable than a thousand directory submissions, one influential fan holds considerably more power than a small battalion of “Who The Fuck Are You Again?” Followers.

So how can you gatecrash the party of influential trendsetters in your niche? How can you get behind those closed doors where opportunity awaits? Much has to do with building a brand, as I spoke about in my last post. But you also need to be relentless in your pursuit of the people that matter.

Understanding Who Controls Your Niche

Ask yourself a simple question: Where are my customers or readers likely to be found on the web?

When you know where your audience is hiding, you can begin to draw rings around the people you need to be reaching if you want to crack that network of influence. Let’s say your market is heavily populated by messageboards and forum communities.

Stop Whoring Yourself On Messageboards

The first step, as recommended in every shitty How To guide under the Digital Point sun, would be to register a profile and start posting in the hope that people click your lame signature link. This sucks. It’s not going to do much for your readership. Especially if all you have to your name is seven posts and an introductory thread.

A much more effective method is to hang back and look for the forum’s most popular posters. Find out who has the adoring affections of the community, and approach them with a private message asking how much they’d charge to endorse your site in their signature. Not many posters will turn down the chance to be paid for what they already do.

If you’re going to compromise the value of your time by posting on messageboards, at least make sure you have something valuable to add to the argument. Playing Devil’s Advocate is often a good ploy.

Breaking The Blogger’s Ego

What if the most influential people in your niche consist mainly of other bloggers? It can be very difficult for a blogger to gain status with other bloggers. Especially if his shit is actually good, and deemed threatening by the others.

The best way to breach a circle of influential bloggers is to deceive them with flattery. Comment on their posts, retweet their statuses and do your best to engage them in conversation. If you can squeeze in a guest post or two, all the better. The sooner they begin to associate you as a fan of their work, rather than a direct competitor, the easier you’re going to find it to get them engaging in your site.

Flattery will get you on the good side of your blogging peers, but to really leverage their power, you have to maintain excellent content. It has to be better than theirs, period. This is the only way you’ll earn their respect. Bloggers are much more willing to help others who have already stroked their egos.

An easy way to get an influential blogger to share your work is to namedrop them in a post, lace it with a sweet compliment, and then make sure they find it close to a retweet button. Or you could hand out your own blogger awards – voted by the people, of course – giving the target every incentive to repost it on his own blog in a bid for votes.

There are many ways to skin the cat, but you can’t go too linkbait crazy. Your site has to earn their respect before they’ll see you as anything other than a permanent oral fixture on their balls. Which, at this stage, let’s face it, you probably are.

If You Can’t Assert Authority, Be Happy With Mediocrity

Once upon a time, I ran a pro wrestling news site. If you’ve ever delved in to professional wrestling “news” journalism, you’ll be aware that about a hundred different journalists rely on the same one source for their news. One single whisper in the wind controls what all the websites are able to publish.

Readers would gravitate towards the sites where news broke first. If you couldn’t get the news before your competition, the best case scenario was hiring an overly keen sixteen year old to copy and paste like a whippet on coke. In this niche, the network of influence was restricted to a bunch of undisclosed sources (eg. Hulk Hogan’s makeup girl selling a hearsay backstage rumour for fifty bucks) and established journalists who’d been reporting from the same behind-the-scenes pedestal since the 80s.

As soon as I understood this, I moved on. I wasn’t passionate enough to immerse myself in breaching these sources and getting to the news first. Where would I even start? The Yellow Pages and a wiretap on Vince McMahon’s cellphone? Give me a break, I’m no real journalist. Without the exclusives, I’d always be a step behind the other news sites. If you can’t beat them, join them. If you can’t join them, why are you wasting your time?

Some projects are just too ambitious for one man in his basement. But I learnt something very important that I try to remember before I embark on any new project. You have to understand what your readers want, and be capable of delivering it.

How To Become Mr. Authority

Not every person of influence in your industry is going to have a website or blog. You shouldn’t be drawn in to thinking that you have to befriend every blogger or every high profile Twitter user. Sometimes, it pays to look further afield than rival sites for gaining authority.

I know one successful music blogger who has never given the time of day to linkbuilding or competing with rival sites. She doesn’t bother with SEO, commenting on other blogs or leaving crappy forum replies. She simply sends email after email to new and upcoming artists, introducing herself and letting them know what her blog is all about.

Inevitably, she gets sent a ton of free shit. Passes to a bunch of shows, free festival tickets, signed albums…just about anything she wants. But most importantly, it’s allowed her to establish a reputation as a trend-setter on the music blogging scene.

How?

By understanding where she can add the most value to her blog. The value is in the relationships.

When was the last time you took the effort to introduce yourself to the companies you spend so long writing about? The best bloggers aren’t merely respected by their readers and rival webmasters, but by the very companies they’re writing about too.

The easiest way for you to gain influence isn’t to jostle for supremacy with the guy ranking above you on Google, but to instead chase down the owner of the product you’re trying to rank for. It never ceases to amaze me how much easier it is to build influence in a market, when you have an ear pinned to the ground of the companies that matter.

This could be as simple as building a list of the top five companies, then contacting their PR departments, introducing yourself and stating what you can offer with your website. Nothing has to materialize straight away. But good things come to those who put themselves in the right places.

And I can guarantee, most bloggers are too busy worrying about yesterday’s stats to be actively engaging with the companies they write about. The only relationships they bother chasing come hand in hand with affiliate commission, which is perfectly fine, but selling yourself very short if you want to be a true authority in your niche.

There isn’t a business in the world that doesn’t like a slice of friendly publicity. Get the exclusives that your rivals were too busy waiting to read about in their Google Alerts, and you will quickly discover it’s actually quite easy to gain influence.

Most of us who own websites or blogs are simply middlemen, wrestling with other middlemen for backlinks, search engine rankings and god knows what else. The quicker you turn your attention to understanding your readers, and the companies you write about, the sooner you’ll be able to forget about the other middlemen formerly known as your competition.

Recommended This Week:

  • Help a virginal Finch. Subscribe to my new FinchBlogs RSS feed. And if you don’t already follow me, add FinchSells to your Twitter.
  • If you’re feeling generous, you can also do me a favour by simply retweeting this post or recommending it on whatever hellhole of a social networking joint you use. Every little help is appreciated!

  • If you’re not already registered on PPV Playbook, you are missing a beat sunshine. Easily the BEST place to learn from marketers who are actually making money. It has some awesome case studies. The catch is that you will need to pay some of your hard earned pesos to access it. I swear from the bottom of my black heart, joining is worth every penny

How To Brand Yourself And Your Blog

| April 8, 2011 | Comments (8)

This is NOT a step by step guide for how to become the next Make Money Online guru. I don’t want to be known as the guy who suggested our industry needs a hundred more self-proclaimed experts of the “make money by talking about making money” skillset.

Instead I want to talk about blog branding in general. And this applies to every blog owner, whether you’re a scumbag pick-up artist, a music journalist or just some crazed motherfucker with access to a WordPress.

You see, blogging as a means of making money is a lot more complicated than simply spunking random thoughts in to a journal and hoping your friends click the Facebook link. To make it a viable business, you have to brand yourself effectively.

Step 1: Understand what makes a trend setter in your niche.

Before you can brand your blog, you have to understand the very unique perception of what makes a trendsetter in your niche. For those of us in the “Make Money Online” market, that’s pretty straightforward. You want to portray yourself as a Made Man. A big trousered, fine dining, sunbed lounging, rich, son of a bitch. But in other markets, especially if you’re blogging about topics you’re not experienced with, it can be a little tougher to pinpoint the trendsetter gene.

For example, if you’re a music blogger, how can you create an illusion of importance? You could be exploiting the leaked albums market for a start. Getting to reviews before any of the mainstream sites and then claiming you were sent advance copies. Is it bullshit? Absolutely. But to your readers, you appear one step ahead.

If you can muster photos where you’re posing with the stars after a gig, get them featured in your header banner. To you, it’s a cheesy fan picture where you’re blushing bright red. To your readers, it’s the evidence you get invited to the hottest after-parties in town.

It doesn’t take long studying a Pick-Up Artist blog to establish where the trendsetter gene is at. You need to show as many drop dead gorgeous bombshells hanging off your arm as your page load time can handle. For most of us, this means creating a false blogger identity. Or, you know, going to a Playboy Mansion party.

The point remains the same. Whatever market you’re blogging to, a good brand is one that should be viewed with importance, jealousy or just plain admiration. You win nothing by sounding ordinary.

Step 2: Say what other people can’t put in to words.

Some of the best bloggers in the business, in my opinion, are those who find ways to phrase what their readers simply can’t put in to words. They convey general sentiment as if they’re voices of the people. This is an insanely effective technique that can propel your readership through the roof by viral power alone.

To do it well, you need to become the ear to the ground of public sentiment. It’s necessary to be exploring the very heart of your niche, in the trenches, so that you can write in such a way that appears genuine and honest.

The most successful posts I’ve ever written for my affiliate marketing blog, are those where I don’t give away a single tip that can be used to make money. But rather they’re the posts where I dig down and really get to the bottom of the stresses that come with being an affiliate. It’s effective because everybody can relate to them. If you can have somebody nodding their head while they read, you’re already halfway to branding your blog. Exploit unspoken public sentiment, and your blog will become relevant.

Step 3: Invite readers in to your world.

One of the easiest ways to build trust in a product is to whack your face on the Sales Letter. It’s bullshit logic, but it’s tried and tested. By the same virtue, including your face on a blog can give identity to your work. I personally can’t stand this craze of including cartoonized avatars as blog photos. Are you really that self-conscious?

You’re fighting for individuality in an ocean of rival bloggers. It might not change your fortunes, admittedly. But including a photo – whether it’s the real you or not – can help readers establish an image of your personality.

You’ve probably noticed how I love to flood my blogs with endless invitations to get in touch, to follow me on Twitter, to add me to Facebook. You’re probably thinking, Christ, it won’t be long ’til he’s asking me out for dinner and riding his hand up my leg. This isn’t some cybersleazey attempt of mine to find a BFF. It all boils down to being open with your readers and instilling a sense of trust.

How many of the acai berry floggers took the time to create fake Facebook profiles for their superhero “Before and After” characters? You should have tried it if you didn’t. Just one subtle illusion of openness that completely skyrocketed conversion rates, both for myself and the few other urchins I tipped off about it.

An open accessible brand is much more likely to leave a reader with positive thoughts, especially if you’re in the business of selling something.

Step 4: Remind your readers how important you are.

Listen, there are ways to show that you are a voice of authority without coming out and saying “Hey, you better listen to me, bitch. I’ve got a thousand subscribers.”

It’s always good to refer to emails you’ve received, tweets you’ve been sent and questions you’ve been asked. Instead of writing a huge “How To” post for no apparent reason, explain in the introduction how a highly valuable client recently asked you to offer your thoughts, and now you’re ready to share them for any other listeners. Same content, but conveying a completely different image of your importance.

Through this technique alone, you wouldn’t believe how many actual high value clients have subsequently contacted me. Portray yourself as Mr. Big enough times and shit, people actually start treating you like one. Such is the power of the Internet where people can’t see you scratching your nuts, eating cheesy wotsits, and pretending to be a big deal on your Acer laptop.

Branding yourself and your blog is about more than finding the right Blogger colour scheme. It has to be something you consider with every sentence, every opinion and every post you publish. People are going to judge you by whatever you give them, so give them something good.

Recommended This Week:

  • Help a virginal Finch. Subscribe to my new FinchBlogs RSS feed. And if you don’t already follow me, add FinchSells to your Twitter.
  • If you’re feeling generous, you can also do me a favour by simply retweeting this post or recommending it on whatever hellhole of a social networking joint you use. Every little help is appreciated!

  • If you’re not already registered on PPV Playbook, you are missing a beat sunshine. Easily the BEST place to learn from marketers who are actually making money. It has some awesome case studies. The catch is that you will need to pay some of your hard earned pesos to access it. I swear from the bottom of my black heart, joining is worth every penny

The 1000 Fan Theory

| April 5, 2011 | Comments (11)

Last week, my girlfriend shared a theory with me that, I have to admit, I was pretty skeptical about at first. She runs a fashion blog so Internet Marketing is something we have in common. It’s not simply a topic I inflict on her over the breakfast buffet here in Bangkok.

The theory is simple. Any artist or creative person who has 1000 true fans, has the means to make a living. When you first hear that, it sounds like quite a flimsy theory. Then you remember that your judgment is probably misguided by the poor schmuck you saw selling Facebook fan page “likes” the day before.

True fans, in the blogging world, are those who will listen to your recommendations – whether you get paid for them or not. Those who will praise you when you offer nothing that hasn’t been read a thousand times before. Those who give enough of a shit to retweet your “New post!” and add you to their blogrolls. In short, true fans are hard to come by.

But with an army of 1000 true fans, it’s quite easy to see how a blogger could make a living from his craft. As this article on the Technium points out, the numbers are stacked in your favour.

If you could convince each of those fans to spend just $100 over the course of a year, you’d have a total annual salary of $100,000. That’s discounting the influence of your outer network. True fans are likely to recommend your blog to other readers who share mutual interests, if not always in the exact niche market you’re targeting. This dominos effect completely kills the pain and boredom of link building or marketing your site. Why bother when true fans can handle that for you?

More to the point, what good are 1000 search engine hits if you can’t retain a single user and find yourself forever optimizing for the next? The best way to build an online asset is to develop relationships and acquire fans. SEO can bring you traffic, but it doesn’t add long term value to anything you do.

Okay, so lots of fans can equal earning opportunities. But how do you actually gain fans? That’s the problem for most bloggers, nevermind the theory itself. How do you get somebody to read your meandering shit and actually come back for more?

I think most blogs fail because they forget the vital ingredient that distinguishes a voice from the crowd – personality. The worst crime you can possibly commit, as a blogger, is to take the center ground. If you don’t have opinions, you become a news source. And if you compete with news sources, you’re instantly outnumbered and outgunned.

Oscar Wilde’s famous words, “The first duty in life is to assume a pose…” should be nailed on the dashboard of any self-respecting blogger who hopes for his ramble to be read. It doesn’t matter what pose you assume. You could be an offensive and controversial shit-stirrer in your niche. A deluded but always sweet source of encouragement. Christ, it’s plain to see how many people have already assumed the pose of “guru” (with varying degrees of success).

But to have no pose, no unique appeal and no committed voice…you’re sacrificing the very essence of any successful blog. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. Most people are too dumb to care.

Do you think Pitchfork cares about counter arguments? I’m guessing when their editors sat down to create a business plan, they had the world’s most effective brainstorming session on “How can we be the BEST collective of pretentious Indie-hugging snobs on the planet?” Okay, probably not. That’s just my negative perception. But every negative has a flip-side. And to the Indie-hugging snobs out there, Pitchfork is the be all and end all of latest music news.

How about Nickelback? Nobody loves Nickelback. Never has a band stuck so doggedly to the middle ground and succeeded in sounding so unmistakeably shite. Do you want your blog to be like Nickelback?

Assume a pose, and let people judge you by it. That’s the way to gain fans. If you polarize opinions along the way, you’re probably doing a good job of avoiding the middle ground. The great freedom of blogging is that we have no obligation to report the truth. Invariably, the truth sucks. If people want the facts, they go to Wikipedia. For everything else, they’re fair game to your creative license.

So as you sit at your desk and ponder what to publish next, I would suggest you chuck those imaginary editor guidelines out of the window. You’re probably not qualified enough to merit any. And you’re not writing for a magazine. You can afford to be as wild and creative as your WordPress allows.

A pussy-footing attitude to blogging defeats the bloody purpose, does it not? So mark your ground, fly your colours and wait for fans to find you. When they do, they’ll either love or hate what you have to say. But it’s much better than being ignored. Only a complete tool writes to be ignored.

Recommended This Week:

  • Help a virginal Finch. Subscribe to my new FinchBlogs RSS feed. And if you don’t already follow me, add FinchSells to your Twitter.
  • If you’re feeling generous, you can also do me a favour by simply retweeting this post or recommending it on whatever hellhole of a social networking joint you use. Every little help is appreciated!

  • If you’re not already registered on PPV Playbook, you are missing a beat sunshine. Easily the BEST place to learn from marketers who are actually making money. It has some awesome case studies. The catch is that you will need to pay some of your hard earned pesos to access it. I swear from the bottom of my black heart, joining is worth every penny