Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

I was thinking the other day about the niche of Internet marketing. It’s one of the most crowded niches on the Internet, yet so many people generate an income selling products related to making money on the world wide web. The reason is obvious - there’s a hungry crowd out there eager to make money and more and more budding web entrepreneurs are born each day.

You can segment the market into many sub-niches. There’s the AdSense expert, the pay per click expert, the affiliate marketing expert, people who buy and sell websites, email list builders, and of course the professional bloggers who use blogs to earn a living - and that’s just small handful of the areas people are making money in.

The laws of marketing dictate that these crowded industries will further segment into smaller sub-niches with the hope that you can carve out your own little piece of the pie by breaking things down to distinguish yourself from the rest. For example there’s no specific expert I know of who focuses on being the expert at affiliate marketing just with blogs or the professional website trader who only focuses on buying and selling a specific type of site, like forums.

For beginners, the issue of choosing what to sell, or in the case of blogging - what to write about - is the hardest choice. I know the thoughts that go through your head -

• I’m not good enough at anything to be an expert
• That guy or girl already dominates that market
• I’m not entering the make money online niche - it’s too crowded

The problem is about positioning and until you get comfortable with what you want to be to other people, it can be a very confusing time in the life of a young start-up business or a new blogger.

What Really Is Unique?

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At the start of March I bought a bunch of new products, including Product Launch Formula from Jeff Walker ($997), the Dot Com Secrets Free CD from Russell Brunson ($7.95 for shipping) and paid half of the $997 fee to attend the World Internet Summit in Melbourne. On top of that I subscribe to Perry Marshall’s Renaissance club and Rich Schefren’s private business systems coaching program.

I think I spent at least half of the money I made from blogging in February in the first week of March, but I consider it money well spent.

Top Bloggers Are Thought Leaders

If you read many of the top blogs written by one specific individual you will notice that they know a lot about a certain topic. They usually have spent a significant amount of time working and experiencing the things they write about. Consequentially they can blog with the authority that only comes from experience.

On top of experience, many bloggers tap into the industry they write about, reading other blogs, following industry leaders and buying books, magazines and information products. They realize the necessity to stay up to date with current events so they don’t get left behind. The is especially important if you want to be a consultant or establish authority in your field.

Good Ideas Are Not Enough

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My business, BetterEdit.com, offers two services - essay editing and thesis editing. When I originally set up the business, which was nearly six years ago now, one of the hardest things to do was come up with pricing points.

Back then I wasn’t all that clued in to how important perceived value is and how closely pricing ties into you market targeting. My goal was simple, I just wanted to come up with a pricing point that met three conditions -

• I could pay editors to do the work
• Clients would pay the fee
• And of course, the business could make a profit from the transaction

If you think about it, those three conditions are the foundation for business. You need people to buy what you offer and you need to be able to produce the value at a profit. Back then it was simple maths and whether I could satisfy both groups of constituents, editors and clients, could only truly be determined by testing the market. So that’s exactly what I did - tested the market by setting up a website, hiring an editor and sticking up some prices.

How Did I Choose Test Prices?

I’d like to say I had some form of scientific method for coming up with my very first pricing scheme, but I didn’t. All I did was use some intuition and my own perception of the going rate of pay for contract editing work to come up with price. I figured that editors would be happy with anywhere from $15-$30 per hour and I hoped the market (the clients) were willing to pay more than that for the service.

I didn’t want to charge a “per hour” fee to clients because I knew that would get fiddly to negotiate and hinder sales. When a person comes to a website they want to know how much something costs immediately so they can make a value judgement instantly and not have to wait for a quote. You will lose customers if you force them to apply for a quote. Just knowing that they have to do something in order to find out a price is enough for a website visitor to surf away - remember that!

Whenever possible, if you can, come up with commoditized pricing for your products or services. By that I mean solid numbers you can display on a website pricing page. Some complex or high cost products and services must have a quoting process, including some form of contract, but if you can avoid these steps, do so. Certainly in my case with an editing service it should be possible to come up with a commoditized pricing structure…

…and you know what - I didn’t quite get it right first time. I had some good assumptions about not wanting to charge based on a per hour rate, but I still made it too difficult to calculate a price.

The first pricing structure I used was this -

$0.04 per word.

This meant that potential customers could calculate the price of their job by multiplying the number of words in their document by 0.04. This was still too many steps and I had created a sales barrier and made more customer support work for myself too, since I often had people emailing me for quotes because they didn’t understand how to calculate the price on their own or were too lazy to bother.

Nevertheless, for the first year or two of operations this pricing method was the foundation for the business. For the editors, how much they got paid depended on how quickly they could produce the service. If they were paid $50 for editing one essay and they could do it in one hour, clearly that was a good rate of pay. If it on the other hand they took four hours to do it, the rate of pay was not so good. Through the years we have had one or two editors drop out since it just wasn’t a profitable exercise for them.

Over time the best editors who worked quickly rose to the top. While not every job was ideal (every now and then a nightmare job came through which takes a long time to complete due to the very poor quality English), on average editors who were speedy and maintained a high level of quality could earn a good hourly rate. This would also result in greater client satisfaction because we could meet very tight deadlines and of course I was happy too, since the pricing structure was profitable.

The foundations for a business were laid and all I needed to do was increase the volume of work coming in and make sure there were always great editors available who were eager for the work.

The Pricing Structure Evolves

Over the next few years I played with the pricing structure by increasing or decreasing the per word rate based on the size of jobs and how quickly the client required the document back. However I was still doing too many quotes manually because many clients were confused, which wasn’t that surprising given most of the clients had English as a second language - hence they needed BetterEdit - but it also made it difficult for them to decipher the text on the website.

I knew if I was doing so many manual quotes there were probably other potential clients not even bothering to ask for a quote because they didn’t want to make the effort. People want instant gratification and having to wait for a quote to come back from an email address or even send an email or fill out a form in the first place is just too much to ask. You don’t have a very big window of opportunity when someone is in a buying mood so you must make sure the process is smooth, easy and as barrier-less as possible. In my case it had to be something that a ten year old could do given some of my clients had the equivalent level of English fluency.

The problem was when a person came to the pricing page they didn’t actually see prices, they only saw a formula for determining the price. That meant they had to do work. What I needed was an actual list of prices so it would take one glance to figure out how much the service costs.

Using a “per word” system was the best format because generally the amount of words in a document dictated the amount of time an editor had to work, so that wasn’t going to change, I just needed it to be easier to determine the price for a given document size. I used the same pricing system I had in place, broke down the job sizes into 500 word blocks and slapped a price on each “word bracket”.

While the prices have changed over the years the structure hasn’t and you can view it online here -

BetterEdit Editing Prices

Thesis Editing - Higher Prices

While there have been numerous tweaks to the BetterEdit pricing system since then I have been very happy with how it functions. After I instigated the block prices I rarely received quote requests except for one situation - large thesis jobs. Thesis projects can cost anywhere from $500 to $1500 per job and as a result I originally thought it was necessary to have a quoting system in place.

Previously I listed on the website pricing page that clients need to send through a sample or their entire thesis if the word count was above 10,000 words so we could determine a quote. This system was working well enough and I didn’t have to do too many quotes because we simply didn’t get that many thesis jobs.

Over time I realized that generally there were two types of thesis clients -

1. Those who wanted a quote because they were price sensitive. These clients almost never purchased the service.
2. Clients who were willing to buy but since we didn’t have a set pricing structure they had to go through the quoting process because I forced them to. These clients almost always ended up purchasing and were not very price sensitive (within reason of course).

The obvious thing to do given this situation is create some concrete prices for thesis projects. Once the prices are solidified the price sensitive clients simply won’t buy and we won’t waste time doing quotes for them and the clients who are the right target won’t have any resistance to make a purchase. It seems so simple now!

I’ve only been able to do this in recent months because I have had data available on thesis job pricing from previous year’s work. With the experience under my belt I knew what pricing points worked for all the usual constituents - the editors (adequately paid), the clients (willing to pay for the perceived value) and BetterEdit (make a profit) - so I could come up with pricing brackets.

Perceived Value

Nowadays we do more thesis work than ever before and it’s amazing to wake up to emails where a client has purchased thesis editing and sent through $900+ for a single project. Previously I thought spending that much money without at least asking a few questions over email to check out the business was not realistic. Of course, with a better understanding of perceived value it makes perfect sense, plus it certainly helps that 99% of thesis clients leave happy - it’s not *just* perceived value - providing real value does count as well, but doesn’t impact price as much as you would think.

If a person has been referred to our business by a friend or they have spent time reading the testimonials on our website or simply are comfortable spending money online for a service they need (or any other justification within the client’s perception), there is no difference between a person spending $100 or $1000 on our service. It all comes down to perceived value and target markets.

With hindsight this all seems very obvious to me now, but it took over five years of running the business, tweaking the pricing system, interacting with clients and editors and coming to understand the supply and demand marketplace for academic editing services, to reach this point.

Lessons For You About Pricing

The main lessons I want to get across to you are the following:

• Don’t make it difficult to determine a price, especially if it’s not a complex service or product. Reduce the number of steps to finding a price to 1 - a single page/mechanism for prices, if possible.
• When you attract the right target market to your website and you have the appropriate sales techniques/psychological triggers in place (testimonials, direct response copy, sales funnel, etc) then pricing is not an issue. Of course you need to be aware of market conditions (supply and demand) for your industry but in general if you have a niche and you position yourself well and your pricing reflects this, your clients will pay whatever you charge (within reason).
• If you are just starting a new business and you don’t know how much to charge start by looking at what the competition charges, assess their strengths and then use that data as the basis for your pricing. Don’t replicate the competition - be different - but use their experience in the marketplace to start with since it’s the only guide you have until you make your first sales.

  Ultimately the only way I knew how much to charge was to do some basic maths. The end result of this pricing structure was a system that worked and could produce a profit, however it was not necessarily the best system and certainly not the most profitable. That’s okay during the early stages when perhaps you are still figuring out exactly what your niche and positioning are (teething process). Over time you will have a better understanding of how much you can charge. The only way to find out initially is to start charging.

• Perceived value will determine price. Perceived value is a perception - it is not reality (but what is reality?) - you can make this stuff up! By that I mean if you can establish the perceptions in your prospect’s mind and at least deliver enough value to meet needs, distinguish yourself from the competition and have barriers to replication in place, then you have the formula for a highly profitable business.
• Experiment with your pricing structure. Try raising your prices and see what happens. I’ve raised prices as much as 20% in one go and noticed no decrease in sales volume. Sometimes my sales actually increase after raising prices and I have less “problem clients” because they aren’t as price sensitive or likely to expect miracles.

Pricing is an interesting topic because it crosses over two distinctly different disciplines. You have maths - the numbers - which never lie and are straightforward, and you have the psychology behind perceived value, which is by no means clear-cut - we are talking about human emotions after all. When you can work these two elements together the business potential is significant. There is not a single successful business operating today that doesn’t understand and leverage the delicate relationship between pricing, target markets and perceived value.

Yaro Starak
Perceived Valuer

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By Jon Symons from Art of Money.

It’s ironic but in the whole deluge of textual information presented on the web, the skill most sorely lacking it the ability to write. We’ve seen Yaro and others write about how AdSense (I’ve nicknamed it Crack-Sense) is ruining the Internet and it certainly is true. Not only has the fact that Google will pay you very well to put crap sites online contaminated the global well of information by spawning infinite spam sites, but it has also changed the nature of that information as well.

Thanks to the magic pill of search engine optimization (SEO) we have a new bizarre skill set that is dominating the online world: SEO writing. SEO writing is the art of writing like a search engine thinks - only backwards. Keywords are important, keyword density (the number of times, represented as a percentage, that a keyword appears on a page), tagging keywords in bold or italics, placing keywords in the first and last paragraphs; and on and on it goes.

With these shackles iron locked to their wrists the SEO writer is now given the task to write quality articles on a given topic keyword phrase. It just isn’t possible. Why? An essential ingredient in effective writing is to understand the audience that you’re writing to. SEO writing is the art of writing to the GoogleBot. Real writing is the art of writing to someone in your target audience. You get to pick only one or the other.

The choice should be fairly obvious (this coming from a reformed SEO writer) but you still see a surprising amount of effort and money put into finding the magic on page SEO factors.

The Arms Race

Google is constantly trying to make its search engine algorithm more and more organic. What this means to an SEO writer is that you are in a constant “arms race” with the Google algorithm. The algorithm shifts and you must shift your mental keyword stuffing pattern. The problem with being in an arms race is that there is no improvement factor, the best you can do is to just keep up with the formula: not a very satisfying position to be in. There is no business synergy in an arm’s race with a search engine.

What’s a poor webmaster to do? Write well and wait for Google to evolve. As the algorithm refines, it is becoming less and less productive (meaning the return on time invested is deteriorating) to attempt to consciously manipulate the search engine results. In my online business I’ve found this to be a very refreshing fact. I’ve taken “SEO” off of my business card and begun to focus on the craft of writing for humans.

Writing is to Evoke

Whether a child’s bedtime story or an online sales letter the point of the most writing is to persuade. It may be to empathize with the perils facing a curious teddy bear as he attempts to quench his appetite for fresh honey, to sell an set of e-books, or to express your perils when trying to balance your checkbook on your personal personal finance blog.

Whatever the topic or purpose, the result is accomplished by skillfully tickling the reader’s thoughts and feelings like a conductor coaxes sounds from his orchestra. As your writing skills progress the melodies can become more complex and incorporate more suspense, misdirections and delayed expectations which will increase the the level of resonance with your visitors.

The Three Most Important Writing Factors

1. Organization
2. Clear Intention
3. Empathy

God knows that rambling is a perfectly acceptable writing style on a blog and I indulge in the practice regularly, but when it comes to business you would be best to dig out your lessons from grade school, because your 10th Grade teacher had it right. A good essay, sales letter, magazine article, or an effective online article has a clear structure. The first paragraph introduces what is to come, the paragraphs flow into one another and at the end is a summary. There is a reason for this; our brains like this structure. It corresponds to the cycle of life; being lead along it by a skillfully written article or story is satisfying on many levels.

Getting Organized

How to achieve an organized writing style varies from writer to writer. The first method I use is to start with paper and pencil to scribble notes or even draw pictures of the story outline (pictures can be great for stimulating the writer’s imagination…they are like gasoline on the creative process).

The other method I use it to just start writing and pour every thought out onto the page without much concern for quality or organization. Then I’ll print out a couple copies double spaced and get away from the computer (don’t worry you’ll survive!). Heading to a café or some other place of refuge and with a pair of scissors and some tape and lots of markers, I’ll read and reread the article until I start to recognize the best structure for the material.

The best part of this method is that you can relax and really let it all hang out when you write the first draft. You can take risks and express things in creative ways and experiment with styles and even syntax; knowing that you’re going to thoroughly go over it before any other humans ever get to see it. By letting it all hang out you’ll often find a more powerful writing style that will be more compelling to your readers. And you can always tone it down a bit if necessary . On the flip side, there is a danger with this method and that is that when you do the first draft, you’ll get lazy and think you’re done, or half way through the first draft you’ll shift into final draft mode and call it done. Neither of these shortcuts will likely produce an effective article.

Your Intention Matters

Hand in hand with being organized is to have a clear intention when you are creating an article. If you are writing an article to submit to eZine sites then the intention might be to have it re-published on as many websites as possible, in which case you are writing to eZine publishers to get them interested in your article. If you also want get the eZine article readers to read the article all the way through and then get to the resource box and click through to your site, now you have a more complex intention: part one to attract the publisher and part two to seduce their readers away from the eZine and to your site.

Another possible intention would be to have someone click on an affiliate link from your site and go to the merchant site and make a sale. This style of writing is called pre-selling. It is like having a hungry person in your house, as an affiliate you don’t feed them, you just have a bunch of food on the stove so the delicious aromas whet their taste buds, then you send them to your friend’s restaurant and hope they will spend money because of the excellent job you did in stimulating their appetite.

The sales letter page or product sales pitch’s intention is to cultivate a need or want and to simultaneously remove the prospect’s resistance to commit. These pages have become a pretty standard formulas with the only real difference being how small the vertical scroll bar can become (shorter pages work better by the way).

One of the best research tools for this type of writing is the Clickbank product directory. Since it is organized according to performance you can see examples of effective sales pitches just by looking at the top products on any category. Read through a few and notice the intention as you go. They usually include: stress the benefits that the purchaser can expect (stats work great here: “Lose 10 pounds in 7 days!”), the testimonials to prove that others liked the product and so you will too. Then there’s the money back guarantee to remove the possibility that you’re getting ripped off. The last element is the email grab which allows those who aren’t ready to purchase yet to let you know that they’re willing to possibly convinced in the future.

Whatever the intention you are working on, having it clearly defined before you begin writing is fairly necessary. It doesn’t mean that you have to be obvious in directing your reader towards the intention, but taking the time to craft a strategy and understanding the elements the will affect your intention will increase your likelihood of achieving your goal dramatically.

Get in to Their Skin

By far the most important skill of a writer is the ability to get inside the head of her reader. It is to be able to march in lockstep with the experience of your reader as they make their way through your copy. You are writing for them after all. You can write solely to express yourself, but if you want to make money in your business you will need to write for an audience.

To know how to create a response in a reader by really understanding them is the most powerful form of writing. The further you’ll move into understanding and satisfying your readers wants and needs and imagination not only will your writing improve, but your business will improve in general. The key elements of this skill are to respect you reader, put their needs above your own agendas and to anticipate their experiences within your words.

The Business of Writing

Writing is a craft, you get better at it by paying attention, trying new things and practice and following the three guidelines above. There are not really any shortcuts, with the possible exception of paying a professional to write your business copy for you.

I’d be bold enough to say that if you’re doing business online, you’re in the writing business, no matter what your product, service or business model. Writing is about connecting with your customer or site visitor and building their trust in you by demonstrating to them that you care about them. It is this expression of concern that will really draw people in to your writing and your business in general. I’m hoping that you’ll join me in taking SEO off of your list of writing concerns and focusing your efforts on respectful communication with your visitors.

Jon Symons is a full-time Internet Entrepreneur blogging his brains out on Art of Money.

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By Adnan from Blogtrepreneur

When Yaro asked for readers’ contributions for July, I decided that I should really dig deep into my entrepreneurial spirit to ask myself How Do You Become A Successful Entrepreneur? Now this article definitely is not the be all and end all of ways to become a winner in business online or offline, but some of the points I will make should help you to firmly establish yourself in the world of entrepreneurship, and should hopefully distinguish you from the huge crowd of money-making hopefuls.

Successful entrepreneurs need to see success. Many of the top businessmen around have seen a product and the associated success that could possibly come with it. Take Michael Dell for example. He believed in the potential of computers way ahead of his time, and built a business from his dorm room. Once you have managed to visualize your success, planning the road to this achievement is a must.

If you don’t plan extensively about your new idea or concept, without thinking ahead, you might encounter unforeseen difficulties with management or cashflow. I recommend using a business plan which incorporates:

• What your product/idea is.
• How does it differ from other products and how will it make you become successful.
• Who your audience is.
• What money you need to spend in terms of product cost, advertising, shipping, staff, and so on.
• What profits you are hoping to make.

Perseverance is also key in becoming a full-time entrepreneur. For me, this is essential especially in the blogging field, as in order to maintain a good readership and a good income if you are using ads on your site, you need to post regularly and with quality content. Bloggers in particular are more likely to experience burn-out if they work too hard, and can also experience a drought in terms of traffic if they slacken the pace. A true entrepreneur will be able to prevent the feeling of being “burnt out” if they know what their goals are, and if they love the task of always having to meet deadlines. Discipline is also the key in this field, as an entrepreneur must work hard in order to achieve. We often see “Get Rich Quick Schemes” and let me tell you that in 99.9% of these cases, obtaining money quickly is just not possible. I have finally learnt (through many financial losses) that only discipline and hard work can result in rewards.

Tied in with this is the recognition that you, as an entrepreneur, never consider failure as an option. Too often these days, have I seen businesses or individuals deem themselves failed if they have not achieved a set of targets. Failure simply is not a word in the dictionary of an entrepreneur, as even if a project is not going well, an entrepreneur will find new ways of coping with the situation and will adjust his aims to fit in with the task in hand.

Entrepreneurs also need to manage their time properly. There’s no point in spending a whole day over a task, when in reality it will be cheaper and more effective to hire someone to help you with a certain task, thus enabling you to produce more profit. Delegating jobs and staff and being able to manage as well as bringing in the bucks is a true mark of an entrepreneur and one who knows what he is doing.

A successful entrepreneur must have an air or a grace about him that will demand respect from other individuals. I would like to say that I am a very friendly person, always looking for new contacts and always trying to network with others who share similar skills and attributes. At the same time, you must also conduct business in a very formal way, being punctual, polite and remaining cool under pressure.

Even with all these points, I feel that I have only scratched the surface on the make-up of a true entrepreneur. You may have other qualities which you might deem important, so please let me know if you think I have missed any out. Successful entrepreneurs are never secure in their field, although this may be the same with other “bog standard” jobs, however the rewards that can be obtained from having the mentioned attributes can be really substantial. By working hard and never giving up, you are bound to become a successful entrepreneur, all you have to do is believe.

Adnan
www.blogtrepreneur.com

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