I don’t sell things very often on my blog at all, whether this may be a product or a service from a trusted business or friend or a product or service of my own. While this post may come at a strange time because my next post will be an announcement telling you about the release of my 60 minute video I have to offer, I think that is ok, because the history of my blog will back me on this. I simply don’t sell a lot of things on my blog.
With that said, I want to talk to you about some of the reasons why I don’t sell things very often on my blog. You see, I am who I am as a person. I understand that I am gifted in many ways and I have some extraordinary talents. However, who doesn’t? Everyone has their own gift that makes them unique. And my gift is not any more extraordinary than your’s.
What does that mean? …
Well… the answer is simple. It means, that my perceptions of other people and how they run their blog are the same as your perceptions and how people run their blog.
Let me give you an example of my thinking on this, and this is totally true story.
I have an online friend who runs a blog and I subscribe to his blog. I think the person who runs the blog is a great guy. He is someone I enjoy talking to and someone who I don’t mind offering my advice and lending a helping hand.
Even though we have a great online — and at times, business — relationship, when I visit his blog and read his articles a few things happen:
- Every single post written was created for the purpose of making an attempt to sell me an affiliate product that I know for a fact hasn’t been fully tested and approved by my friend. Yet, he expresses his approval of this product and insists on me purchasing it. I make a lot of money; however, I am not blessed with enough money to purchase a new affiliate product 7 days a week and 365 days in a year.
- Every single post written explains to me why I need something. How the hell can someone really know what I need unless I tell them what my problem is? Secondly, how can someone know what my problem is unless they have asked me if I had a problem in the first place? Never tell me that you know me better than I know myself.
- Every single link on the blog, I have trained myself to look at the status bar on my browser to inspect the link to see if it is either an affiliate link or a masked one. I’ll be honest too, because of how thoughtless this individual is, I purposely strip out the URL and or do a Google search for the home page, either case cheating him out of his commission if I so choose to purchase.
Ok Ok Ok, so maybe this is just his game and all these sales pitches don’t apply to me. Then I say to myself, “Well… ok, you’re right Garry, indeed he is a fellow Internet Marketer, so I am excluded from his wishy washy sales pitches. He is selling to his own list and I am just an equal standing next to him within the business of Internet Marketing.” That should make me feel better, right?
{ … wrong … }
… It doesn’t, because this then creates a new problem.
The new problem is the fact that I disapprove of how my online friend is running his blog. How it upsets me to see how he is attempting to lure people into purchasing products that — and without any hope — falsely claim that they help people learn or perform in a way that will enable them to make money online. This all of course is being done while he shapes and molds his online identity as being a good guy. He uses his offline credentials towards enhancing his online superficial and manifested one.
So, I’ll share a story about my life working in the corporate world as a manager and shed some light on my OFFLINE credentials.
Before throwing away my job as a successful regional manager and making the decision to work for myself, I learned a lot about customer service and managing people. As a regional manager I found it very interesting to see how each store performed differently based on the store level management.
Of course when I would pay a visit to the poor performing stores, things would be right as rain. I would be fed the normal BS and often I was lied to or my questions being asked would be answered in ways that would mask or cover up issues that needed to be addressed.
No one tells the boss the truth. It’s just like asking a 13 year old teen to tell the truth about whether he smoked a cigarette or left the house late at night to be with a girl. So knowing this, and knowing that it was very unlikely that my awkward presence in the poor performing stores would actually reveal the truth to the problem, often I did something a little different that enabled me to figure out why the various stores were performing poorly.
Most of my stores were located in various shopping malls. Frequently I would take advantage of my salary wage and do my own shopping in the other stores in the mall. While I shopped, I understood that the employees and even store level managers had no clue of my position with my own company. I used that to my advantage and allowed them to service me while I evaluated their own skills.
Often I would create situations that caused employees to think out of the box, often these situations would require the assistance of a manager and for the manager to also think out of the box. The plot always was geared with the same objective: To see how well the manager dealt with the situation I created. And the situations created were typically things that would require the individual to think for himself rather than seek resolution found in a store managers operations manual.
In the situations where I was impressed with the manager, I would thank him for providing the service and then mention to him who I was and what my position was with my company. Once revealed and the store manager knew who I was, I would then compliment him on his abilities and skills as a manager. Often I would also make a file on this individual for future recruitment. However, the purpose to all this isn’t recruitment, although, that is always a possibility at any given time. The short stream of the reason behind all this is simple.
I needed someone to accurately evaluate my poor performing store. I have already proven to myself that the staff in my store act differently around me. When this happens, I can’t get a true reading on why the store is performing poorly. The solution: I need a skilled equivalent to go into the store and observe what I can’t observe myself in its natural state. And what better person can you find to go in undercover than a top performing manager of another store?
And so that is what would happen. A favor would be returned to me and that favor would be in getting the top performing manager from another store visit my poor performing store — for free — and secret shop it while I would eat a very leisurely lunch in the food court while surfing the Internet using my corporate laptop on public WiFi. Often I would day dream about ways I could end my job and start making money online.
A few hours later I would meet back up with the manager who secret shopped and evaluated my store and we would discuss his findings. Often a written report was made and handed over to me, which gave me the synopsis as well as the blueprints to correct the problems. In most cases I would keep the action plan as is without change. Executing the plan was always the simple part. In the few cases if the plan suggested to find a new manager for the store, well guess what? I already had my replacement.
What Does All That Mean?
Well, this story all ties into how my friend is running his blog and also how he has the desire to make money online. The problem is in how he is operating his blog and how there are similarities with the way he is doing it in comparison to how a few of my former managers were operating their poorly performing stores.
My free secret shopper and store evaluation reports usually revealed the same thing. Lack of customer service, lack of employee accountability, lack of customer service training, and lack of leadership ability in the store manager. Often the report provided to me by the top performing managers of other stores expressed that they had the perception that their best interests weren’t being kept in mind by the staff as well as the managers within my store. In many cases, it was communicated to me that my staff was overaggressive, displayed lack of personal interest, and failed to connect with the manager who was secret shopping my store. In summary, the volunteer managers who secret shopped and evaluated my few poor performing stores often felt treated as if they were numbers rather than individuals with needs.
Show Me The Money…
The money does not come by running a blog where every post published promotes a product. The money is not in the list that constantly distributes fictional situations that attempt plant seeds into the minds of subscribers in hopes that it will germinate into profitable sales.
Show me the money and show me how to make money online! Ok, so consider this… in order to make money online you must figure out a way to utilize the strengths of your people. Rather than treating your readers, list members , and RSS subscribers as calculated numbers of units sold, treat them like the unique and super talented individuals they are.
What The Heck Does That Mean???
It means that in many ways, you may be looking at your people, your readers, your list members, and RSS subscribers as if they were customers, where in reality they are actually more like your volunteer employees. If you channel and embrace the powers of your followers and find the hidden skills and talents within, you can then foster that power into your business model.
For me, my business is in search engine marketing. My business is very simple. I need content so that I can I target traffic in search engines and convert that traffic into money. I earn money online primarily by using Google AdSense. In order to make money online with Google AdSense, once again… I need content. The more content that I can get streamed into the search engines, the more money I make.
How Do I Get More Content?
Well, you’d be amazed with how much free and high quality content I can get in exchange for a one hour phone call. Typically, I get around 8 to 16 hours of free content in exchange for a one hour phone call. What is 8 to 16 hours worth of content? This is content that would take me 8 to 16 hours to write myself. Time is money and one hour invested towards helping someone and offering my advice is an excellent trade for receiving 16 hours of free labor.
One of the mainstream strengths within my people is the fact that they are all very skilled and highly motivated writers. Most are writers who want to learn how they can apply their skills on the Internet in a way that can earn money. When I provide them with a solution towards learning, they are willing to volunteer their time towards providing me with content, therefore making the exchange well worth both our effort.
Money is a form of merit. Value comes in many forms and it also comes in indirect ways. To find success online, you must learn how to see the alternative values in elements that many people commonly overlook. In order to gain a better understanding of who I am and my background, you have to realize that I am not rich. I have a job just like everyone else does. Some people are plumbers while others are home builders. I happen to have a self made career with online business, specifically with search engine marketing. With that being said, this business doesn’t and never has afforded me the option to invest money into any of my projects. In order to achieve what I want, I have to manufacture my own currency to use towards the project.
If you have played the popular board game, Monopoly, you would know that the game involves having “play money”. However, even though in the real world this “play money” holds no value, in game play it means everything. With that said, a huge part of what I do online is in printing massive amounts of this “play money” that represent value to interested prospects.
A large part of being successful in online business as well as offline business is in extracting alternative currency and exploiting the value in it to use towards getting the results that you want without having to spend your own money doing it. If you can successfully do that, then you can do anything.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Hey Garry;
This is a great post. I liked it very much. It made me think (like many of your posts.)
To make sure that you were not talking about me, I went back and counted my posts for this month.
I have done about 12 posts this month. Of those 12, 2 of them are pitches for products in the form of a review (I use both of the products myself).
A few of the other posts are informative, but have soft sell affiliate links somewhere in the post.
About half of the posts are informative or give something away with no affiliate links.
So, my question are:
1 — were you talking about me? If you were, we can discuss it here.
2 — what is the right mix of promotions and informative posts? How does one best strike a balance.
3 — is it possible that you are leaning too far in the opposite direction? What I mean is, should you promote more? I have bought several products based on your recommendation, and every one has been fantastic. You know what you are talking about, and people value your opinion.
Just some thoughts.
Mark
Ha ha… no Mark, the he is actually a she. Why do you ask though, do you feel guilty of something?
“What is the right mixture?”, you asked. That is an excellent question and a topic that I had the intention of talking about in the article itself. However, somewhere among the 2400 words I lost focus on that.
Jokingly, in my article I was going to call this the Q2S ratio, meaning quality to sh** ratio, which measures the number of high quality posts in against the number of, ah… crappy posts a blogger can publish without causing harm to their reputation and effecting their authority. There indeed is a certain tolerance level that readers can withstand. However, that level is unique to every blogger and their network of followers.
Crappy posts would be something that doesn’t provide much substance for your readership. Kind of like going to McDonalds on an empty stomach and eating a few burgers. Quickly you no longer FEEL hungry, but shortly after, your body expresses a different opinion simply for the fact that you have tricked it by ingesting something with little to no nutritional value. Quickly after your body realizes what has happened, you lose energy and feel almost ill, just as you did prior to eating.
I’d like to take this moment to direct people to Jennifer’s site, PotPieGirl.com. Now, in my opinion, this lady has class. Jennifer (aka PotPieGirl) in my strong opinion is someone who I would personally recommend that anyone follow who wants to clearly start from the ground up and learn the true and honest business, of INTERNET MARKETING.
She breaks barriers in this business and has also proven that Internet marketing can and should be a business that is based and founded on a trust relationship among followers and readers. She is a lot like me — in female form of course. The line of difference between her and myself is that she is more into Internet marketing, while I am more into building my own internal private network of niche sites.
Earlier, when I published her guest post here on my blog it generated explosive results in sales. It also allowed our two separate networks to fuse a connection. Many of my readers were able to connect with her readers and vice versa. That one guest post on my blog, I believe created quite a few new friendships among the community. And in my opinion, that’s what it’s all about.
If yours or any blog fails to experience that element of blogging, that should be an indicator that the author is not only failing in their ventures of blogging, but they are also failing their readership towards being an authoritive and strong leader. Again, blogging takes on the simple rules of the game, “Follow The Leader.”
Followers don’t follow other followers. If you as the blog author fail to deliver what your readership needs, they will flock somewhere else. So, in my opinion… a blog author should have it in their best interest as well as the interest of their followers to keep the quality under control.
If an author runs a social blog where they have a good handful of regular readers who typically are very active in the comments on many other blogs but rarely comment on that author’s blog, then that too is also an indicator that there may be a problem with the blogging leadership of that blog author.
Your last question, “Is it possible that you are leaning too far in the opposite direction? What I mean is, should you promote more?” My answer is simple and mentioned in the article, “My perceptions of other people and how they run their blog are the same as your perceptions and how people run their blog.” With that said, without a doubt I am not leaning too far in the opposite direction. But, it is awesome to know that if I were to produce and sell more of my own products and service and or endorse and promote more third party products and services that I can count on you purchasing.
Concluding all this, I am happy to have come to a decision to release my 60 minute video which will be available in my post tonight that goes live at midnight. Back to back, tomorrow night I will unveil The Secret Sauce of Search Engine Marketing, which is a premium article that was made available a few nights ago to my private mailing list subscribers.
I had a lot of excellent feedback delivered to me and I look forward to making that available to my readers here on the blog directly.
This is the first time ever i have read a big post fully from starting to ending, without just reading the headings. Your thoughts really have something to say about people who try to make money online, but fail most of the times because of their bad ideas or good ones which they don’t implement correctly.
Not sure if this relates to the post, but i would like to share my views about advice giving:
A friend of mine was fond of learning things related to MMO, and used to ask me a lot about it. I like sharing things and give advices to my friends who ask about it. I expect nothing in return, but just appreciation. That friend actually took my advice in a wrong way, and thought it was easier to make money online with affiliate programs, he too created blogs and used to post affiliate links, thinking that traffic would automatically come and referrals would follow!
I explained him every part of it, but still there are many greedy people like him who think the person giving advice is wrong.
That friend of mine totally failed in making money, and still keeps trying to do something that would help him make easy money on the web.. and i always say to myself “You are a big fool who wasted your time without judging what kind of person he was!”
And the last paragraph of your post was meaningful and explained most of what you were trying to say
Great post Garry.
Sure your comment relates! And an excellent comment too I should mention.
I say that you can beat a dead horse back to life. If you try your best to help someone see the light and the person is to narrow sighted to see it, then the only option is to allow the individual to fail on their own terms. If the friendship is true, they will come back to you and volunteer their acknowledgement that you were right. Time is such a wonderful element of life, and the time will come one day when he will admit that he should have listened to you.
GREAT POST!!! I love reading about your “former life”.
Thanks for the insight into the REAL secret to making money online!!!
Thank you!
You might then be interested to read about how I was a lawn mowing guru as an early teenager making money mowing lawns.
http://www.garryconn.com/make-money-online-with-peel-away-ads.php
One of the few substantial, insightful posts I’ve read on this subject. I especially liked the lines:
“Money is a form of merit. Value comes in many forms and it also comes in indirect ways.”
Well put, sir.
Thank you so much. It is very cool that the article captured your interest. It’s been awhile since I have written on like that.
I know what you’re saying is absolutely right because I just bought your Secret Sauce report based purely on a few factors:
The sheer bankability of your content. I know the real mccoy when I see it.
Your offline and online white glove customer service via your personal response to comments on your blog and newsletter quality.
Lastly, the fact that since I’ve been a subscriber for about 30 days or so, you have not attempted to sell tangible products to me in every post.
Bloggers have to know it isn’t necessary to aggressively jam products down the throat of their readers at every turn as if the reader will never return, so they’d better strike while the iron is hot.
It’s important to at least be somewhat attentive whether it’s a brief response to a blog comment or a question via email from a subscriber. All quality relationships there’s give and take. Not just selfishly take, take, take.
One of my mentors Henry Gold mentioned this a few years back and caused havoc online.
There’s definitely a balance to be struck when dealing with readers in the make money online niche.
When you’ve truly served your readers believe me they will buy most of your recommendations when you make them because you’ve shown readers/visitors quality content and actions in more ways than one.
They’ll practically beg to spend money with you. I’m sure you can attest to this:)
I make most of my money online with affiliate products. I use products that I know and use and have respect for.
I have tried to be discreet about it and just slap a banner ad up and wait for the Brinks truck to make a delivery, (I guess he can’t make the hill.)
Anyway, I found out that no one, “NO ONE” ever clicks on a banner without a nudge. So on niche sites that I have affiliate ads I hump the hell out of them and it does pay dividends. But in those cases I have generally made a connection with the reader and they buy because I tell them to.
I only have a very few sites that I use Adsense on and for the longest time they never paid much at all, until I looked at some Blog posts on some site about Best Deals Online and I thought, what the heck? This person doesn’t sell ANYTHING! They just talk about stuff.
Imagine that. Just talk about stuff and let the readers click on associated Adsense ads. What a concept.
By the way Garry, you did tell your manicurist not to show up today right? After that post you shouldn’t need her.
Rich Hill
Garry! That was a fine post my friend, and then adding a “follow-up ebook” in the comment section was a nice bonus. lol
This post made me think of something that I remind myself of with everything I do online –
There’s a “person” on the other end of the blog post, review, promotion, sale, transaction, etc.
Sound simple? It’s not!
You’d be surprised at the crazy feedback I get when I offer a buyer an extra helping hand when it wasn’t “part of the deal”. They’re so used to a “cold, digital handshake”, that when you actually reach out, chat, and help out of the goodness of your heart, they’re literally floored by the experience.
@Mark Mason’s comment: I agree that you do not lean too far to one side by promoting too little. You’ve built the reputation and trust by having a killer “Q2S ratio”. By not taking advantage of that trust, you’ll probably make more money by selling higher amounts of whatever it is you do promote.
What’s awesome about you is, even if you knew you could make more money by pimping a bunch of crap, you choose not to because of morals, high standards, and the genuine enjoyment you get from helping people. That’s why you’re successful and other’s aren’t.
Cheers dude!
Jay
Garry, Great post. Very long, but good. I think you are right on the money with your strategies. The only 2 blogs I return to on a regular basis is this one and bloggingquestions.com. I have signed up for other people’s “free ebooks”, etc and then get a daily or close to daily email about some new product they say I just have to have and I immediately consider all emails from them to be spam. When I receive an email from you, I read it and try to take action on your advice if I am in a position to do so.
I have never bought anything “make money” related online. I research, read and always figure I can find all of the “secrets the pros don’t want you to know” somewhere online for free. When I received your email about the secret sauce I almost bought it and if I was a little further along with my blogging and just needing SEO help I definitely would of bought it.
The question is what do you think being successful is? Someone may think that lots of traffic and visitors to your website is successful while others think that the fact they have a website is being successful. Another way to calculate your success is whether you feel you are making a difference with the content you’re creating. If you have the need to keep creating content and creating ideas, that in my opinion is being successful.
In general it all depends what your focus is and what you think being successful is.
Hello Garry.
This is a nice post. Like Chetan, this was my post that I fully read also. lol. I couldn’t stop.
So is this like your first post on Hostagator?
Very nicely written, and quite accurate also. When I decided my blog was going to be kind of geared towards making money, I did set some rules for myself, and one was to not push something too strongly that I didn’t believe in myself. I’ve stuck to that, though I have mentioned a couple of things that I was high on early on that, later, my interest waned in it. Otherwise, I’ve stuck to my guns and my rules, and it at least makes me feel pretty loyal to myself, even if it’s taken away from potential money I might be making.
What a fantastic post! In the online business world, its very easy to exploit alternate currency and get the resources you want. I have and I am already using this technique as I have a source which gives me something free in exchange for something else. No money is involved here. But the service is great.
I sometimes get the urge to share this with others and to help them a bit. But I’m worried that it might create some unnecessary competition or it might simply be a waste of my energy. Garry, in my opinion, you usually share a lot of very-valuable info with others, something that can help make lots of money. I feel that many other bloggers (or internet marketers) do not give away valuable knowledge. What do you feel about giving away information to others for free? I would love to know your thoughts.
Fantastic post Garry !
I think that more than explanation on “technicalities” on how do you set up an Adsense ad, or which is the best affiliate network (stuff that is available on every MMO blog), we need to learn the right mindset of a succesfull entrepreneur/marketer.
Sharing this real life analysis and examples of your lateral thinking as a regional manager was an eye opener. Please keep posting this kind of stuff.
Thanks & ciao
alex
Nice and unique insights. Your writing style alone already reflects the values you promote such as ‘treating customers like people who are gifted and talented rather than just numbers’.
This is one ‘business-post’ that read very much like a personal journal but it doesn’t stray away from the more serious points on making money effectively online.
Good stuff dude, you’ve always had a great q2s rating in my book!
I could never get into the “promote something new everyday” type of thing….it just wasn’t my style. I promote stuff that I use, I’m not the type to just browse clickbank and find products to promote.
I do think there is a difference between a personal blog like this one, and a smaller more impersonal niche site.
While my personal blog is more about sharing my experiences, the smaller niche blogs exists for the sole purpose of generating traffic, providing decent content, and making money…period.
They are not as personal, at least not for me. They are there for people searching for particular information.
Another great post dude, I always love reading your blog.
This post was certainly a great read. I had emailed the link to myself along with a few of your other posts when it came in my RSS reader but your DNS updates hadn’t gone through, unfortunately I’m just getting to reading these posts.
Thanks for helping people see that they don’t need to constantly shove affiliate products into their posts in order to be successful as I also get quite annoyed by this.