Infoproducts: Price High Or Low? What Has Worked Best For Me

November 4, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I created my first infoproduct, an ebook showing people step by step how to use Twitter for business, in 2009. I was completely new to the world of infoproducts, and had no idea how to price my product. I was fortunate enough to be chatting with several very successful internet marketers, so I hit them up for advice.  These are people who make in the six figures every year selling software and infoproducts, and they are very deliberate in everything they do, including their pricing strategy.  So here was the advice that I got: Price low – seven bucks or less! And – price high – create a big product and charge several hundred dollars or more! And the frustrating thing was – the people who were giving me this very different advice were telling me what had worked for THEM, but what worked for each person was very different.

Arguments for pricing low: this economy is terrible, people are spending less, and if you price low many more people will buy your product. And if they like your product, they will recommend it to friends and they will buy your next product, too. People are less likely to rip off low priced products, and less likely to ask for refunds, so it’s less hassle. And if you price low, for a great product, people will perceive you as providing fantastic value and over-delivering.  When you price low enough, you increase the chances that people will buy on impulse rather than thinking about it and meaning to come back to buy later, but never doing so…

Arguments for pricing high: Once you price low, it’s hard to convince people to ever pay high for your products. People may perceive low price as low value. You have to sell many more products at a low price then you do at a high price. If you price low, you will not be able to find affiliates who want to promote your products for you because the cut they get from the product will be tiny.  If you price low, all of the customers you get will be cheapskates who will never buy more expensive products.

I ended up pricing low, and sold thousands of copies of my ebook at $7, and literally had half a dozen refunds. The reaction to the ebook was amazingly positive, I got tons of nice comments, and

But some very successful marketers were telling me that I was waaaay underpricing my ebook and I really needed to start charging more. So I created a new infoproduct and charged $19, and I collaborated with some marketers on products that were even more expensive.

And it didn’t work out that well. Way less sales.  I mean, hundreds of sales versus thousands. Way less comments about how wonderful the product is.

This doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to create high priced products; it just means that you have to experiment, try different methods, and go with what works best for YOU. You also need to look at the market, see what other people are charging for similar products, and frankly…charge less.

I am working on some future products which will be released in the near future, and I will be pricing them low this time around.

 

Filed Under: Blog, Blogging For Business, Make Money Online

Resource Roundup

October 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Friday is Resource Roundup day! Why? Because I just officially declared it, that’s why.

Today’s resource roundup: free and cheap ways to get a website up and running. If you have any kind of business, these days, you need a website even if you don’t sell your services online. Your website, at a bare minimum, is your online business card. Although you should also be filling it up with great content so that people can find your website, but that’s another story.

If you are short on cash and lacking in the mad design skillz, here are some  free, easy to use website builder options – some of them have paid upgrades available:

For those who are a little more DIY – I love wordpress.  www.wordpress.org is where you would go to upload your wordpress theme.
I love wordpress for its ease of use…once you get it uploaded and customized.   I use wordpress templates for all of my websites, but  if you want to do this yourself, you need to be able to go get your own domain name,  pay for hosting, upload wordpress through your FTP panel, and tweak the wordpress theme that you upload…or pay someone to do all of that for you. Generally you can get someone to tweak an existing wordpress theme and add a custom designed wordpress banner which results in a good, basic wordpress site for around $500-600…with prices going up to many thousands of dollars depending on level of customization required.
For a list of places that you can find designers to customize your website, read this post:  http://www.danawillhoit.com/make-money-online/list-ofonline-freelance-coders
And there you have it. Your low budget and lack of design skills are no longer a legitimate excuse for not having an attractive website. Get out there and start webbing!
Filed Under: Blogging For Business, Make Money Online, Resource Roundup Tagged With:

A quick primer on hiring online freelance coders, web designers, etc.

October 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I just had a great experience with a freelance coder, and I’d like to share a few tips on hiring freelancers online. I personally find that on a regular basis, I need to tweak my websites, add pages, experiment, etc., and I am not tech-y at all.  I also like to try out new business models from time to time, which involves having a premium wordpress theme customized to my specifications and uploaded for me.

I have used a number of websites to find freelancers, and for the most part my experiences have been positive. I’ve never hired anyone truly awful. I’ve hired a few people whose skills weren’t up to what I needed, and for that reason I wouldn’t hire them again, but I have also hired a lot of people who were extremely talented and worked for very reasonable prices.

Here are some things that freelancers can do for you:

  • Write articles and blog posts
  • Design websites
  • Customize wordpress blogs and other types of blogs
  • Add new pages to your website, like a “products” or “services” page
  • Add plugins
  • Write ebooks
  • Design ebook covers
  • Create apps for you
  • Do social media marketing for you

Here are the sites I’ve used to find freelancers:

www.odesk.com
www.vworker.com (I used it when it was rent-a-coder.com)
www.elance.com
www.guru.com

These two sites are internet marketing related, but they have sections on their sites where freelancers offer their services, and I have had GREAT success hiring freelancers from there:
www.thewarriorforum.com
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/

And here’s a site that I’ve never used, but I’ve heard a lot about: http://fiverr.com/

And here are some tips on not getting burned by freelancers:

1.) Pay fairly. Don’t cheap out. All you’ll get is a freelancer who is resentful and not particularly inspired to give you their best.  Take it from me – I’m a freelancer.

2.) Ask to see samples or a portfolio of their work.

3.) VERY important – check to see how many recommendations they have. I know this makes it hard for people to get started as a brand new freelancer – but I don’t hire freelancers for anything expensive unless they have a lot of positive comments/reviews/ratings. And if that freelancer does a great job for you – help them out by offering to go back on the site and give them an excellent rating.

4.) If it’s an expensive job – sites like elance.com and odesk.com and guru.com and vworker.com have an escrow system – you pay the site, not the worker – and the site holds on to the money until the job is completed to your satisfaction.  With sites like The Warrior Forum and Digital Point – if it’s a big project, I would offer to pay in stages. Maybe 1/3 up front, they finish 1/3, you pay them the second installment…this isn’t for $25 jobs, mind you.

5.) Make sure the terms are agreed on up front. What EXACTLY do you want the freelancer to do for you? Don’t go in and try to add more tasks to the project, unless you offer to pay them for it.  When will they complete it by? What happens if they are late?

6.) After they are completed – consider changing your passwords to the sites they fixed up. Not because THEY are untrustworthy – but who else has access to their laptop? What happens when they throw away or sell their laptop? (or desktop. or tablet). It’s always better to be safe than sorry.

And finally…if they did a great job, consider paying them a bonus! Or at least pay them a little more than you originally agreed to. I do – and it makes for a happy, appreciative freelancer who will work very hard for you the next time you hire them.

Filed Under: Blogging For Business, Make Money Online, Social Media Marketing

How To Make Money With Your Articles

October 5, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I’m a former newspaper reporter, so when I left the daily journalism business, it made sense for me to find ways to make my money with content. Which is how I make my living. Here are five ways to make money with your articles:

1.) The first step, and the most important one, is to fill up your website or blog with well written articles which show your expertise. Are you an expert in show dog grooming? Vegan cooking? Building big biceps? Write blog posts offering free tips. Show people that you know your stuff. This will ensure that people can find your website in the search engines, and when they arrive at your website they will read your blog posts and immediately see that you are an expert in your field.

2.) Sell your articles. Now, I will say flat out – articles are THE lowest paying form of writing on the internet. However, there are some advantages to selling your articles on websites like fiverr, odesk, elance, www.thewarriorforum.com, etc. It allows you to get your name out there and gather testimonials which you can feature on your website, so that you can start promoting better paid writing services – like ghostwriting ebooks, writing press releases, etc. And it can bring in some quick cash if you are hard up for cash flow.

3.) Adsense. I have created adsense sites that earned a few hundred dollars in passive income every month, and then after a couple of years of consistent earnings, sold them for thousands of dollars. How to do that is an entirely different story and would take up more time and space than I have here, but I will address it in future posts.

4.) Advertising on YOUR site. If you have a website full of well written content on a popular topic, and you build up a decent amount of traffic to your site, you can sell advertising on your website.

5.) Use your well written content to write guest posts on other people’s blogs, and drive traffic back to your website, where of course you have excellent products and services ready to sell. Writing guest posts and having them featured on popular blogs is an extremely effective way to expand your audience and reach new customers.

Filed Under: Blogging For Business, Make Money Online

Social Media Numbers That Can Change Your Life. Unfortunately.

September 29, 2011 By Leave a Comment

If you’re employed – or seeking employment – in the PR, marketing, or social media fields, listen up: there are some social media statistics out there that you can’t afford to ignore – because you’re going to be judged by them. It may not be fair that you’re judged by these numbers, but it’s a simple fact of life. People will look at these numbers, and they will make decisions accordingly.

First of all, there’s the new kid on the block: Klout.  Klout claims to be a measure of your social media influence. It doesn’t just measure how many Twitter followers and Facebook friends you have, it measures your interactions with them and how often the information that you post is shared or commented on.

So how can this affect your life? Because employers in the PR field and social media marketing field are checking on people’s Klout and in some cases, they may pass over an otherwise promising candidate if their Klout score isn’t that high. Really. Truly. And in this anemic job market, that means Klout can affect you and your lifestyle significantly.

Find this hard to believe? Here are some articles that back me up:

http://goo.gl/Pwd5V 

http://goo.gl/RUwxL

http://goo.gl/ixb98

But here’s why it’s not the end of the world: because doing what it takes to increase your Klout score involves doing what you should be doing anyway, if you want to work in the PR, social media, or marketing fields: building up your social media following, interacting with your followers, broadcasting excellent content, sharing other people’s excellent content, and so on. I had what apparently is considered a high Klout score before I even signed up for a Klout account, before I even knew Klout existed. Why? Because I am very active on social media sites. So instead of trying to find ways to game your Klout score – and there are ways – you might want to spend time instead ensuring that you are being an active and involved social media citizen, and your Klout score will rise on its own.

More social media numbers that can affect your life: Are you trying to convince people that you should hand their social media marketing? Are you trying to land new PR clients? And do you have only a few dozen followers/friends/Linkedin connections?

It is INCREDIBLY easy for prospective clients to check up on your social media presence online. Anybody with the slightest social media savvy, who is considering hiring you or your company, is going to do some research on what you’re doing, and is going to check your social media accounts, and if you can’t even get 50 people to follow you online, why would they think that you can help THEM get the word out about their company, product, services, etc.? So having a big social media following doesn’t mean that you have more friends, or that more people love you, or that you’re a better person…but it does mean that you are more likely to be the person that gets the job.

Why this isn’t so bad: See the Klout answer, above. If you want to help companies get publicity, you must be able to socialize. If you’re in this field at all, you should be out there publicizing yourself just as much as you publicize your clients. Building up your social media numbers doesn’t mean that you have to care only about the numbers; it means that you have to create a lot of good content that’s worth sharing, and you have to socialize and follow people and send out friend requests, which is how you get a lot of followers anyway.

So be aware that in the social media/pr/marketing world, numbers are visible and numbers matter, but also be aware that the way to get those high numbers  is to go out there and be socially awesome. Which you should be doing anway.

Filed Under: Blogging For Business, Make Money Online, Social Media Marketing

Build Your Social Media Audience: The First Steps

September 23, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Some people may argue that it doesn’t matter how big your following is on the various social media sites, that it’s all a big ego exercise, that a big following is meaningless these days when you can get bots to build your audience, etc. etc.

Here’s what I know, from years of experience in internet marketing and promoting myself and my clients online: Yes, getting a big audience won’t help you if you have nothing decent to sell or promote.  Yes, a big audience is meaningless if you don’t know how to interact with them.  However, assuming that you have quality products or services, and that you know how to communicate with your audience in a helpful, sociable, non-salesy way (more on that in a future post), then having a big social media audience is crucial. Why? Two main reasons:  Because it offers visible social proof of your success. And because the more people that follow you, the more potential customers you have.

The reason that I got my other website, www.thepressreleasesite.com, to rank no. 1 for the term “press release writer” against 12 million competing sites, and the reason that I get thousands of visitors to that site that I very rarely update, is because of my large social media following. I get new inquiries every week from customers because of that social media following, and because of the good content I have on my site (she says humbly).

So you’re convinced? You’re ready to rush out and start finding lots of friends, followers, and connections?

Not so fast! First, there are some crucial first steps you need to take.

1.) Make sure that your website is ready for prime time.  There’s no point in sending people to a website that is half finished, that is riddled with typos, or that has broken links.

Go over it with a critical eye. Is the design attractive, clean, and easy to navigate? Is every link working?  Is there a clear “call to action” on the home page, and every other page, if you want people to take a particular action? Is it easy to sign up for your newsletter, or find the tab with your products and services? Do you have a “contact me” section with current contact info?

2.) Have a blog on your website that is filled with well written posts which demonstrate your expertise. This is crucial for both SEO purposes and credibility purposes.  If you sell exercise videos, feature some short clips from those videos and have blog posts about how to build big biceps, or how to firm up one’s stomach after having a baby, or whatever your focus is. If you sell eco friendly gardening products, have blog posts about natural pesticides, and gardening calenders, and how to make natural fertilizer. You get the idea.

3.) Ensure that your social media accounts look professional. You should get a custom twitter background – they’re generally not more than $100. If you have a Facebook business page, you should get that custom-designed as well.  My friends at www.savvygiraffe.com (not an affiliate link – I just recommend them because they’re good!) have Twitter/Facebook design packages, as do many other designers.

You should ensure that your bio is up to date and describes what you do, and that your contact information is up to date as well.

Now you’re ready to get out there and start building up your audience!

Filed Under: Blog, Blogging For Business, Make Money Online, Social Media Marketing