Revisiting The 80/20 Rule and Why It Is Even More Critical To Your Business In 2009
The year 2008 for me was dominated by a long trip overseas, which meant I was away from home and in a constantly changing environment.
Although I boast I was able to run my business while traveling a circle around the globe, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t experience more pressure on the time available for work.
The way I chose to travel resulted in planning the details for my next stop a week before I arrived - sometimes just 24 hours before arriving or even after arriving! This included booking accommodation, flights and figuring out things like how to get from the airport to the apartment or hotel I was staying at.
Once landing in a city and settling in, the next “pressure” was determining what was worth seeing and doing, and ensuring the time available for fun was used on the best sites and attractions. This involves research and planning, reading reviews online at sites like TripAdvisor.com, buying tickets for tours and figuring out how to get to places using public transport.
When at home in Brisbane my time is quite fluid and I have few commitments or deadlines. With just my mother now living in Brisbane, I rarely have family events on and I’m not married with children, so I’m pretty much looking after myself.
Traveling dramatically changed how I live. What is normally stable in my life - where I live, what I do during the day and what I eat - became dynamic, with the variables changing every week. Suddenly my free time was gone and I was forced to live in perpetual inconsistency.
As a result of the constant changes in my life, I had to become very focused with how I used my working time. I didn’t want my blog to die, I had customers to support and I wanted to work on new projects so my business continued in a positive direction. This was no easy task, but I’m proud to say that I was able to achieve all my business goals in 2008 despite the changes to how and where I lived my life.
Revisiting the 80/20 Rule
If you’ve never read my article on the 80/20 rule, go do so now. It’s one of the most powerful concepts available today that can truly make a difference to your life and your business. My article introducing you to the rule has been one of the top 10 posts on this blog for years. You can find it here -
If I look at the metrics, this was a great year for my business. I more than doubled my revenues, my blog readership and email lists grew significantly, I had successful product launches and released some fantastic free resources like the Conversion Blogging video, not to mention publishing many articles on this blog that I know will continue to bring in traffic for years to come (the true essence of a pillar article).
None of this would have happened if it weren’t for the 80/20 rule.
Information overload has always been a problem. In 2008 it became even more of a problem. Although a great enabler and empowering tool for education, the world wide web has created a situation where it’s as important to be aware of what you need to know and do as much as knowing how to do it. If you don’t learn how to ignore 99% of what’s out there, you never get the clarity to learn the 1% that you should focus on.
I Want Your Attention
If You Can’t Write Words That Sell You Don’t Make Money
As you likely know, Gideon and I wrapped up the opening marketing campaign for Become A Blogger Premium a couple of weeks ago. During that period we both wrote lots of emails to our various subscribers, email being the primary communication method and also the distribution channel for delivering resources like the Roadmap report.
Most of you haven’t met Gideon or myself in person, but if you did, you would see we are both down to earth and soft spoken - not your typical extroverted, in-your-face marketers. Of course what you perceive as over-the-top might be different to another person so you may not agree, but I’m pretty comfortable saying that Gideon and I are way below average when it comes to the hype-o-meter.
One interesting observation I made during our launch that you probably weren’t aware of, was Gideon’s email marketing style (his writing style when promoting), compared to how he is in his videos.
Gideon has difficulty doing any kind of “sales pitch” in his videos, he much prefers to focus on content, and if you watch the few parts at the end of his videos where he was promoting our paid course, you could tell he wasn’t pushing very hard at all.
However, when Gideon wrote emails, he wasn’t afraid to use his marketing skills. He knows the triggers, is quite comfortable pushing all the right buttons and isn’t afraid of saying whatever it takes to convince you that you need to do what he suggests.
This is important because if Gideon couldn’t sell the premium course when it came time to sell it, then our results would have been negatively impacted. At some point in business you have to be prepared to sell.
The same goes for anything else we promote through email, whether it’s to convince people to watch a free video, or download a report or read a blog post. It’s not always about eliciting a purchase, it’s any time you want people to click a link or even just open an email in the first place - any action at all is impacted by your ability to “sell” the benefits of taking that action through the words that you use.
I asked Gideon if he had studied copywriting - and he has - which explains his ability to talk in marketing speak when communicating via email when necessary, yet it doesn’t show up in other forms of communication with him. Gideon has learned skills that are vital to his success as an Internet marketer, and you can too.
Be Your Self
X-Factor Video: Get Audio On Your Blog And Even Host Your Own Radio Show
Last week Gideon released another free X-Factor video. This time the subject is audio and how an amazing service, that’s free, can be used to produce audio for your blog and if you are serious, you can use it to do interviews and host your own radio show with callers and all kinds of cool features.
I’ll let Gideon show you exactly how it works in his video. As with all Become A Blogger videos, this is for beginners.
You can watch the video and leave a comment here -
X-Factor Video - An Easy Way To Get Audio Onto Your Blog
Enjoy!
I’m Back Home In Australia After One Full Circle Around The World
Just a short post as I’m pretty drained after flying home and having a cold.
I made it back home to Brisbane today after 8 months traveling. The trip took me completely around the world and included these major cities (in the order visited)…
- Brisbane (home)
- Fiji
- Hawaii (Waikiki)
- Vancouver
- Toronto (spent summer here)
- Las Vegas
- Chicago
- New York City
- Niagara
- Montreal
- Quebec City
- Winnipeg
- Glasgow
- Edinburgh
- London
- Brussels
- Amsterdam
- Paris
- Rome
- Venice
- Florence
- Napoli
- Vouliagmeni (beach near Athens)
- Athens
- Dubai
- Singapore
- Brisbane
It was an amazing experience and something I’ve never done before. Obviously I have lots of photos and videos, most of which I simply haven’t had time to upload. I’ll slowly add them to my Flickr and YouTube accounts over the next few months.
During my travels I was able to run my business and of course blog too. This included completing two six figure product launches and generating six figures in affiliate sales. This is definitely a good thing because I can tell you - Europe is expensive for us Aussies!
Now that I’m back home my immediate priorities, besides getting over a cold, is to support all the new Become A Blogger Premium students and the Blog Mastermind students, clean up the email I’ve let pile up a little during the last couple of weeks and then just chill out for a bit before getting into 2009 project work.
I look forward to catching up with the Aussies and I hope everyone has a great holiday period wherever in the world you are.
Yaro
Become A Blogger Membership Discount Ends Thursday At 6PM
Update: Looks like Gideon did the old switcheroo on me without telling me (to be fair I was on a plane from Dubai to Singapore at the time), so the deadline is actually 6PM now, not 4PM. You’ve got two extra hours.
I’ll make this brief since you have probably made your decision already, but I want to make sure you don’t miss the deadline if you still haven’t decided…
Become A Blogger Premium, the video training course presented by Gideon Shalwick and myself, is open for new members at the special introductory rate of $27 a month until 6PM EST US time, Thursday 11th of December 2008, one week since we opened the program. After that the price increases to $47 a month.
You can find out all the details about the course and sign-up here -
www.becomeablogger.com/signup/
Welcome To New Members
I’d like to welcome on board the 600+ members we already have and all the new people who join in the next few days.
For the past few months and in particular during the last two weeks Gideon and I have been focusing our energy preparing this program. As is the case with many information products released online, we spend a lot of time on marketing initially, however now that our opening period is almost over, we’re turning our focus on to the members.
The first group of members are special because they help frame how the program evolves. We have a basic roadmap ready to go (no pun intended), however with feedback from the active membership we will be modifying the program as it progresses. We are also inviting members to request videos on any topic they want covered.
The first run through of the program is definitely the best time to do it because you save money and you get to partially dictate what is taught.
Plus don’t forget, you have 60 days to decide whether this program is right for you thanks to the mandatory Clickbank refund period (our payment processor). Try it for two months and if you don’t get your $27 bucks work, cancel. There’s no risk here.
If you can afford $1 a day and you are ready to build a successful blog by following along with Gideon’s clean and easy to action videos, here’s the link to join -
Don’t Forget About The Free Stuff
Although it’s pretty obvious I’ve been promoting a video course on this blog and my newsletter for the past two weeks, you shouldn’t take that as an excuse to stop paying attention even if you never intended to join.
The Roadmap To Become A Blogger report, which is nearing 10,000 downloads, is free and will remain free. It’s full of great content and regardless of whether you join our membership site, there’s a lot to take away and action from the Roadmap - so don’t ignore that resource (in both text and audio downloads).
Gideon has also been releasing a few X-Factor videos, which contain real tips that you can use. Yes they promote our program, but they do so by giving you ideas you can use. This is intended as a content launch that helps everyone - you don’t have to give us money to benefit.
And let’s not forget, watching a launch unfold is interesting in itself from an Internet marketing perspective. I hope you have been monitoring what Gideon and I get up to with your marketing hats on too, if you are nearing the stage where you are ready to release your own product online.
Thanks To Gideon
I’d like to thank Gideon especially as he has been working his butt off for the past month getting everything ready. This is his first major launch and as is often the case, he’s really had to put in the hours to keep things going.
Without Gideon you wouldn’t have all this amazing free content and for those special people who joined the Premium site, you have lots more from Gideon to look forward, and of course from me too!
Both Gideon and I look forward to meeting all the new members in the forums and the live teleconferences, which will begin in earnest starting next week once all the new members settle in.
Don’t Forget The Thursday Deadline
Make sure you mark Thursday at 6PM if you are going to join and want the $27 a month price. The course goes for six months long, and after that you enjoy lifetime access to all the resources and any future upgrades we release at no extra cost (you pay for six months only).
That’s a concrete deadline that we can’t change because it wouldn’t be fair to the members who acted quickly and signed up early. Join now or be prepared to pay more for the videos from Thursday night onwards.
Yaro Starak
Still Blogging 4 Years Later
