Kick-ass social media advice for the real entrepreneur
This is a guest post by Dave Ursillo from DaveUrsillo.com
I recently published my first manifesto as a downloadable e-book for the Amazon Kindle.
I had some reservations about how and when to publish my first e-book — and if you have ever published something for your blog, I’m sure you’ve dealt with the same.
Some of my hang-ups included whether I should self-publish my manifesto on Amazon, release it for free as a PDF download on my blog, or simply post it on my blog for all to enjoy.
Last April was a crazy month for me. I was in Antigua Guatemala for a week, came back to Los Angeles for 3 days, flew to Santiago Chile for 10 days (that’s a 12-hour flight in case you didn’t know), came back to Los Angeles again for a week to finish rushing to Miami for a couple of days.
But that wasn’t all, I did all this in the middle of clients projects and, except for Guatemala, the rest of the traveling was strictly business (when I say business that includes drinks and cigars in the middle… I didn’t say I was complaining). On top of that, my blog has been experiencing some serious issues that required some special attention. Just so you get an idea, every time I publish a post, the entire site goes down, sometimes it will disconnect from the database or it will go completely blank.
This is a guest post by Jonathan Wondrusch from ByBloggers
I’ve known from the day I first hit “Publish” on a blog that I had a lot to learn, so I spend a lot of time looking up as a blogger. Besides sometimes being a pain in the neck, I end up asking questions such as: what separates the folks like of Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, Darren Rowse, and Chris Brogan from the rest of the mere mortals that aspire to achieve what they have?
What I’ve realized is that these supposed, “A-List Bloggers”, aren’t bloggers at all, they are really A-List business people. Sure, they run blogs. They write and produce incredible content constantly. That’s what we get to see on a day to day basis because we don’t get to peek behind the curtain of their operations.
If we had the opportunity to see what their operations really looked like, here’s what we would see:
I gotta be honest and start this post by saying that Affiliate Marketing has always been a topic that while it gets my attention, I’ve never done anything to learn much about it.
A few weeks ago Corbett Barr, author of the blogs Free Pursuits and Think Traffic, launched a course named Affiliate Marketing For Beginners that got me excited about learning this again. Knowing Corbett and being an avid reader of the content he puts out there, I was certain that this was not going to be one of those sensational “Get Rich Quick” products that we are used to seen online.
I wasn’t wrong. I’m currently taking the course and am happy to say that not only is a great product that set the expectations straight about Affiliate Marketing but also is written with great style that’s super easy to understand. Also, while I’m diving right into it and actually enjoying it, I still have some questions of my own and thought I’d ask Corbett for a short interview and hopefully answer those questions for you too.
So here it is, I hope you enjoy!
I’m a big observer of the internet, not the usual trends, but how online marketing moves. What’s working and what is not good enough anymore…
And I have one thing to tell you: The bar has been raised. Again.
If you have been crafting a kick-ass product for the last 6 months and you’re about to launch with a big splash, I recommend you take one last hard look at what’s going on out there. Stuff that use to be premium is now free, in exchange of a simple email address.
So, here is my question for the online marketer: Exactly how much value does your product needs to deliver in exchange for how much cash value?
For a second this thought will go through your mind: Shouldn’t we measure what we deliver? Aren’t we giving everything away for too little?
Well, what else are you going to think, the internet is already way too competitive, too fast and now you need to kick it up a notch. Again…
I wanted to write a post that will let you visualize how much value is being delivered out there, something that will give you an idea of how much creativity and hard work you need to put into the content you publish, free and paid. At the same time, look at the return on investment. So I took the weekend to think about it and try to land a meaningful post.
I stopped by Staples this afternoon looking for a graph paper notebook, I wanted to get something kind of nice. Turns out they don’t have anything “kind of nice”. I got the impression that everything there revolved around how cheap can we build stuff and how cheap can we sell it for. Walked out empty handed, not the first time, but this time I felt like not going back in there ever again.
As a consumer (that tries to consume less everyday) I noticed that have also raised the bar, my expectations are different. Bottom line is that I want to feel good about myself when I give you my cash.
While a headline like “Online Marketing is NOT a do-it-yourself thing, it’s not automatic and it’s not free” seems to be carrying a little frustation on my part, I actually want the content of this post to be a service to companies starting to take their business online.
Despite the economy, I think launching a business idea is easier than ever. We have the opportunity to test them at a low cost, we can measure results faster than ever and we can fail and move on to the next idea easier than ever. At the same time, this does NOT mean we can just throw anything out there with the hopes it sticks. Competition is brutal and the consumer is more educated and more demanding than ever.
Another aspect I love to point out to my clients is the fact that today, thanks to the internet, we have awesome technology opportunities that are no longer reserved for big companies. Small business also have access to them. On the flip side, there is a “Free” culture out there that is very easily confused by these small companies, as guerilla-style entrepreneurs with very limited budgets sometimes we tend to take on this kind of tools or services that are not necessarily the best option if we intend to… gee, I don’t know, HAVE A RETURN ON INVESTMENT!
Hey, my name is Francisco Rosales and I'm the author of SocialMouths. I help entrepreneurs and small businesses turn their vanilla online presence into a profit powerhouse. Read more...
Dear Online Entrepreneur, Stop Stressing About The Daily Stuff
We all have those days. Days when it feels like nothing is going your way. Days when you’re ready to chuck that damn lap top out the window and go get a normal job. Days when you question your ability to succeed at this online business stuff. The pot of gold seems far, far away. You’re beginning to question whether that pot of gold exists at all.
This is pretty normal in the life of an online entrepreneur. Especially when you’re first starting out.
Read more…