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Archive for the ‘How To Make Money’ Category

Lots of people have an abundance of ideas. You’ve probably got so many ideas that you don’t know where to start – and all the ability you need in order to implement every one of those ideas, too.

But, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. When you’ve got so many ideas that you don’t know what to do, you will half-do everything.

The key is to focus on the one or two ideas that can really bring in the big wins for you. Putting your time, energy and talent into those ideas will step up your business by enabling it to run more smoothly and be more productive.

Here are some rules to live by to help you choose which ideas you should implement.

Follow the 80-20 rule.
80% of your revenue will come from 20% of your assets, meaning that 80% of the money you make will come from 20% of your clients.

When you know this up front, it is much easier for you to plan. You should be following through on the ideas that will appeal to your top 20%. Design products and programs and solutions for those clients, because that’s where four-fifths of your income is coming from.

Worry about the lower priced stuff later. Most people do this the opposite way, thinking  that starting with low priced offerings and then building up to Rolls-Royce or VIP programs is the right way to plan. Don’t miss out on the big opportunities because of that way of thinking.

Look at your time.
The primary reason most people can’t follow through on an idea has to do with the way they allocate their time.

Put your time into ideas that can and will produce income. Part of achieving a new revenue goal is about allocating your time differently. You’ll have to stop spending time on certain things and start spending time on other things.

As obvious as that may sound, it’s amazing how many people ignore or overlook that. Listing your assets and listing the differences in the 80% of your revenue coming from 20% of your assets will show you how much time you can spend per idea or project, essentially telling you what you need to spend your time on and what you need to stop doing.

Think in terms of project income.
Don’t just think in terms of monthly income anymore. Instead of planning your year month by month, try planning quarterly, from a financial aspect, but also plan around big projects. Three or four big projects should be sufficient.

The income streams from these projects will help you decide which ideas to pursue. If you’ve got a revenue goal of $250,000, which projects will get you there and at what times?

The key is not to do all of them at once. There is a connection. What you want is to have one project build momentum for the next project, which builds momentum for the next project, and so on. It’s important that you plan strategically, that you’ve got a long range plan and that all of the elements make sense.

You can’t help but come up with ideas; it’s how and why your started your own business in the first place. Just choose which ones you will follow through on, and when, to make the absolute most of them.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

When it comes to marketing, every single thing that you do to generate leads should have a purpose. Without a purpose, you can end up with an advertising blitz campaign that saturates the market but doesn’t have any real direction.

And where does something without direction end up going? Nowhere.

We call this “spray-and-pray” marketing – advertising your business anywhere and everywhere, hoping that people will notice you, praying your hard work pays off.

You’ll do a ton of things because you think you need to be doing them. You’ll get on Facebook. You’ll start to Twitter. You might host a teleseminar or write some articles. Don’t get me wrong. These can all be very good leads for your business, but if you don’t know why you’re doing them, they are just busy, random activities. Unless they are consciously linked to your end point, they will simply exhaust you and your physical resources, like your energy and time. Some of them will exhaust your money as well because they cost money to apply.

Be more intentional with your marketing techniques to avoid becoming frustrated by the amount of time you’re spending on lead generation. Instead, your time will be well spent because your marketing is on purpose. What you really want is to be engaging with your clients in your specialty, and that is where intentional marketing will lead you.

But, if do you reach a point of being overwhelmed or disillusioned, where you’re putting out a lot of energy but aren’t getting the returns, don’t be discouraged.

Do not give up. That would be a tremendous waste of your talent.

Part of my own purpose is to support and encourage you to pursue your own path. I know it’s easy to get discouraged if things haven’t been working out the way you’d imagined. Don’t blame yourself, and don’t assume that what you are offering has no value because you haven’t been able to get people to buy it. That would be a critical mistake.

What you are offering to clients absolutely does have value. You may just be missing one or two of pieces on how to promote it. It’s time to tweak your approach and get focused. A tweak or two could be all you need to make your approach more intentional, to turn things around and help you start attracting the clients you want.

You will probably find that you don’t need a major overhaul in your business, and that some of the approaches you are using do work quite well. It’s not about giving up on what you’re doing, throwing it all out, and saying that it was all a terrible waste of time. It’s not about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It’s about evaluating where you are and looking closely at where you want to be.

There are almost certainly pieces of what you’re doing that are working. But, that spray-and-pray part of marketing is just not smart marketing. And if you have been doing that, at least you’ve been taking action. If you look on the positive side, you’ve been doing something. It may not have been the most effective thing, but you are working, trying and doing the best you can.

Now you know that you need to be more deliberate, more purposeful. And you now know it’s time for you to address your business and your marketing with intent.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

No matter what you’re selling, whether it’s a training course or a marketing seminar or a physical product, you’ve probably spent a long time agonizing over price. Sellers almost always spend more time than they need to thinking about and setting a price. In reality, sellers think price is a lot more important than it actually is. The next time you’re pricing a product, keep these things in mind.

Price Isn’t as Important as You Think
Sellers almost always spend far too much time thinking about the price of a product. They agonize over whether they’ve priced their product appropriately for their market. In most cases, sellers actually under-price their products. When I work with people one-on-one, I almost always find that sellers are charging too little for what they’re offering. I spent a lot of time telling people to raise their prices.

While sellers may think that price is the most important aspect of marketing an event, that’s simply not the case. Research has shown that less than 10% of buyers are actually influenced by price as a primary factor when they make a decision. Realistically, it isn’t the price that matters, but how well you market the event.

Present Your Price Effectively
Many sellers think that if they price a product low enough, it will virtually sell itself. Sellers think that low prices are easy to justify in consumer minds, so consumers will want to take advantage of the low product and make the decision to buy or register. In reality, it isn’t the price that influences peoples’ decisions to buy; but rather, how well you present that price. If you don’t present your price effectively, the sale is over before it’s begun.

Beware of Sticker Shock
Sticker shock is a phenomenon that occurs when people present their prices too early. You don’t start off a presentation by telling people how much something costs, because then they’re fixated on that price. If they feel that the price is high, they’ll stop listening to whatever you have to say, and you’ve lost the sale. Instead, present the price toward the end of the sales presentation.

Build Your Product Value
To effectively sell your product, you must establish your product’s value. You must spend time showing your potential buyers why your product is a must-have product. Explain what they get from buying your product. Show them how your product solves a problem they just can’t seem to resolve, or how it does so better than anyone else’s product. Once you’ve established that your product has value, you can present the price of your product; after your buyer is convinced enough of your product’s value to listen to your value proposition.

In Summary …  Charge More, and Present Your Price at the Right Time
Don’t undercharge for your product. A low price won’t sell your product – good sales copy will sell your product. Price your product appropriately, and spend time establishing the value of your product before you reveal the price to your sale prospects. With the right value proposition techniques, you can increase your conversion rate and let your product sell itself!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

How many of you are in search of client utopia? You know what it is, because you’ve dreamed of it: an abundance of clients, knocking at your door, more than willing to pay for what you’re offering.

I’m here with another secret to arriving at that place you want to be.  It’s a real, honest-to-goodness strategy for getting interested parties to give up the money you want.  The plan is simple: you must ask for money.

When you learn to ask, you will receive what you’re asking for.  The shift in thinking occurs when you shed the fear of asking for money, and abandon the belief that if you simply make your product visible, people will come to you with open wallets and blank checks.  As nice as that would be, it will never be true.

You can do all of the right things:  the marketing, the web 2.0, the teleseminars, the presentations, the guest appearances; but just as important as all of this is asking for permission to share your product or service, in exchange for a monetary fee.  No one is going to volunteer.  You must recruit from a pool of people whose problems you can solve.

Confidence in asking for money comes more easily for some than others.  But, much like anything else, when you practice asking for money, your requests will start becoming easier to execute.  Every time that you receive what you ask for, your confidence will build, and your fear and misgivings will diminish.

Consider these points when asking for money:

• Place your request well. Disclose your pricing right after you plug the biggest and brightest benefits of what you’re selling.  You will feel excited about your product and secure in asking for money.  Your prospects will pick up on that enthusiasm, and will want to take part in it.

• Don’t dice words. State your price in a straightforward manner.  Keep it simple.

• Don’t make excuses. If you believe that your price is fair, so will consumers.  Believe in your price, and its value will shine.

• Be confident. You know that your clients get every penny’s worth from you.  When that assurance comes through in your words, your confidence will be contagious – prospects will mirror that confidence and more willingly part with their money.

• No pricing prologue necessary. Don’t give a big introduction explaining how you came up with your pricing.  Just put it out there and allow the benefits of what you’re offering to back up the price.

Asking for money can seem difficult as first.  But with my help, I feel confident that only the first time will be the most difficult.  As the money starts to flow, it will seem easier, and you will begin to grasp the concept of asking and receiving.

Often, confronting those things which you fear the most will deliver the most lucrative results (in this case, lucrative in the monetary sense).  Know that your product solves problems, make it evident to your audience, and when you present them with the price that you so richly deserve, you will be answering a question that they were already asking: “How much, and where do I sign?”

Bernadette has attracted a loyal following who rave about her down to earth yet inspiring approach. If you liked today’s article, you’ll love Bernadette’s marketing and success training products and programmes to help you develop a business that suits YOUR preferred lifestyle.

There’s little point in driving people to your website if you’re not able to capture their business once they get there. So, before you try to draw the crowd, make sure the fundamentals are in place.

There are three foundational things that you need in place before you try to get your business name in front of potential clients.

•    A List Manager.

Because I didn’t have a list manager when I first started, I had to manually send out the free report I had offered to a hundred people. You don’t want to do that. A list manager is your database – the place where you store all the names you’re going to collect – and it enables you to handle the “subscribes” and “unsubscribes” automatically. You don’t have to spend any time on it, or hire an assistant to do it.

Some examples of list managers are 1ShoppingCart.com, Total Business Cart, Constant Contact and  AWeber.

•    An Ethical Bribe

What are you offering that is interesting and enticing to the clients you want? You need to present something so tempting that people will be eager to hand over their name, their email address, possibly even their mailing address.

Consider using a free report, a teleseminar, or an audio. These can all work very well in helping to build your list. If you don’t think you have enough expertise, consider interviewing an expert, and use that as your giveaway.

Spend some time thinking about what that enticement is going to be. Make sure your offer is congruent with the people you want to attract. What will have those clients flocking to you?

For example, high-end marketing clients probably won’t be interested in a program titled “Marketing on a Shoestring.” Psychologically, you’re going to attract the cheapskates with that title, when what you really want are the money people. So make sure your pitch fits the people you’re pitching to.

•    A Squeeze Page

It used to be enough to have a box on your website that says, “Sign up here for our free newsletter.” These days, you will find that less than 10% of people who visit the page actually sign up.

A squeeze page is a standalone page that has one goal – to get people to join your list.

For example, use a squeeze page to promote a teleseminar. That page will contain the teleseminar topic, the details about the teleseminar, and a box where people can sign up. There is no navigation bar leading to another section of the website. There is no other information.

Here’s an example of one of my squeeze pages:
www.clientmagnets.com/steppingup

I’ve found that about 70% of visitors say yes, compared to the 10% who click on that box somewhere in the corner of your website. This is where you will capture the person’s details.

Once you have these fundamentals in place, you can begin to focus on the promotional things you need to drive traffic to your site.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

The most effective marketing materials speak directly to your audience. Effective marketing materials are developed with your audience in mind, and they answer your audience’s questions, solve their problems and overcome their reservations about attending an event. In order to create the best targeted messages designed to speak directly to your audience, you must know your audience, and you may need to develop multiple marketing materials.

Identify Your Target Audience
When you begin planning any marketing campaign, you must identify your target audience. Many people find when they begin this process that they don’t have a clear idea of who their target audience is, in which case they must begin to identify a target audience. If you don’t know your audience, your event may not be as well-attended as it could be, or you may find that there’s not a high demand for the product.

If you don’t have a target audience, make one. You may need to tweak your product or event to appeal to this audience, but you’ll always have more success with a targeted marketing campaign than a campaign that isn’t addressed to anyone. If you don’t have a target audience, your product or event may need more refining, which gives you a good opportunity to define your scope or re-evaluate your product to make it more effective.

Target Your Message to Your Audience
Once you’ve identified an audience, target your marketing message to your audience. Dan Kennedy calls this “message to market match.” Answer your audience’s questions, and develop a call to action that speaks directly to your target audience. You can use a general marketing campaign, but a general campaign won’t give you the same success as a targeted campaign. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the same techniques in multiple campaigns; particularly techniques that have brought you success; but tailor those techniques to each marketing campaign that you run.

Consider Creating Multiple Marketing Materials
If you find that you have multiple target audiences, consider creating multiple marketing materials to more effectively reach those audiences. For example, if you’re conducting a dating event that may appeal to both men and women, you might want to create targeted marketing materials for both groups; one for the men, and one for the women. If you’re creating a business event for people in different industries, you might want to create a set of marketing materials for each industry.

By targeting your specific market, you can ensure you create a clear, compelling message. If you use a general marketing message, you may find that your message becomes diluted, or lacks the clear call to action you can create in targeted marketing materials.

Remember that developing a clear call to action is your key to great success with a product or event. You can create a highly successful event! You have the tools at your disposal, so all you have to do is create a targeted marketing campaign to reach the right audience, and you can realize success beyond your wildest dreams!

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Are you making as much money as you want? This is a simple yes or no answer. Just be honest. You either are or you aren’t.

Do you have as much time off as you want? Again, be honest. You either do or you don’t.

Are you having as much fun as you want? Are you doing big, bold things that really excite you?

Are you living the lifestyle you want?

If you’ve answered “no” to any of these questions, don’t be disheartened. Just decide to do what you need to do to change your answers to “yes.”

Decide is the key word.

The very first thing you need to do is make your decision. Achieving your goals – making the money you want, having the time off you want, living the lifestyle you want – everything starts with the decisions that you make right here and now.

Decide what your goals are. Name and define them, so that you are clear about what you’re going after. If you want to spend more time with your family, hire a nanny, get a housekeeper, or bring on a personal assistant so you can have more free time, make the decision to make these things happen.

Once you decide to name your goals, your next decision is how to achieve them. The means and methods you implement to grow your business are external decisions. They are obvious and noticeable. Deciding to create a product, do a promotion to your mailing list or conduct a teleseminar are examples of outward decisions you can make to help you accomplish your goals.

But, even before you can decide how to go about achieving your goals, you have a bigger decision to make, one that is much less noticeable.

This is an inward or internal decision, and it’s an equally big part of achieving your goals.  It’s about daring to dream the things that you once believed you didn’t deserve.

You have to make the decision that you do deserve them.

Give yourself permission to be daring; to dream bigger and think bigger. Decide that you deserve to respond “yes” to every one of those earlier questions.

You are entitled to make as much money as you want. You are at liberty to take as much time off and have as much fun as you want.

You have to decide that you deserve to live the lifestyle you want.

Decision is the key.

Once you clearly decide to make your business and your life what you want them to be, you will take the first big step toward achieving your dreams.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Consider all of the systems that surround you: traffic systems, media systems, religious systems, family systems, political systems.  All have enjoyed relative success, thanks to trial-and-error, careful planning, and dependence on a number of people.  Not one of these structures could exist if managed by one person.  That same principle applies to your profitable business.

In other articles, I’ve discussed ways to reach your ideal client abundance, including aligning your product with the market, targeting those prospects who have raised their hands with interest, and converting those raised hands to incoming cash.

Once you have mastered all of these principles, you’ll probably find the next step to be a welcome one.

Once the clients are rolling in, you might find yourself becoming haggard, stretched too thin, stressed, and wondering if you really wanted what you were wishing for.  This is not your signal to back off.  It’s your signal to systematize.

Systematizing involves delegation and outsourcing, but more importantly, it requires using your creative skills and resources to design a method for getting things done.  All aspects of your business should not be dependent on you.  If they are, something is certain to suffer.

I know the benefits of systemizing first hand.  I once wrote, formatted, and emailed my newsletter all on my own.  I didn’t enjoy it as much as other tasks necessary to my business, but I had to do it.  That’s what I had convinced myself, until…

I realized that I could be spending my time in different facets of my business – ones that I would enjoy more, and that would better showcase my personal talents.

When I decided to recruit other people to my team, to format the newsletter from archives and send it to my readers, I realized a new level of accomplishment.  I could write the personal newsletter introduction in ten minutes.  My new team members could then do the rest.  I found myself liberated from an aspect of my business that was holding me back from my true calling.  Because the newsletter was less dependent on me, I no longer felt that it was holding me back.

It’s rare that every aspect of a business aligns with the gifts of its proprietor.  Some people thrive as prudent business managers, other shine in public relations, and others revel in the creative process.  Success doesn’t involve developing the skills to be a one-man-band, but in pooling resources to get things accomplished more efficiently.

Here are a few points to keep in mind when systematizing your own business:

• Don’t rush to systematize. Work all the bugs out of your products, marketing, communications, and conversion processes first.  Shortcomings will not disappear inside of a system, but will poison the rest of the process.

• You might think you can do it all, but consider how much better your business could be if you concentrated on your strengths. When different people’s gifts are pooled together, the result is the dynamic sum of those talents.

• Choose an aspect of your business that you dislike. Find a person, or a team, who specializes in that task.  Results will improve, and you can concentrate on what you do best.

• Identify your strengths. Survey the aspects of your business that you can delegate so that you can allow more time to use your talents to their highest degree.

• Be creative about ways to automate your business. Focus on how to arrive at the highest quality result in the most efficient way.  Proven business models can help, but don’t forget your own freedom to innovate.

• Don’t sweat the small stuff. You can find people to do that for you.

As you become more successful, there will be a call for your business to become less dependent on you.  This conversion in thinking can seem difficult at first, but if you honestly examine your strengths and choose team members who share your vision (through differently-colored glasses), you’ll not only systematize your business, but you’ll maximize what that business can do for you.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

When you consider the meaning of the term “stepping up” in the figurative sense, it means to increase, improve and intensify.  It means saying “yes” to propelling yourself and your business forward in a BIG WAY!    If you want this to happen for you and your business, you need to understand the steps behind stepping up.  You need to know the valuable key to staying motivated and excited.  While it’s not always a smooth process, each step you take will move you closer and closer to your ultimate goals…

•    Master your inner game. There are always going to be challenges. That’s part of growth. Know that you have the strength to handle whatever comes your way.

•    Dare to dream the things that you right now think you don’t deserve. You can’t move forward or step up if you don’t think you have the right to.

•    Make the decision to raise your game. Feel the burning desire that caused you to begin your business in the first place.

•    Focus on your vision of what your business is supposed to look like. If you didn’t start out truly visualizing, do it now. Commit it to paper so you can remind yourself: How much money do you want to make? How many hours do you want to be working? What kind of lifestyle do you want to lead? What difference do you want your business to make?

•    Develop your plan. Seeing your vision of your business is one thing, making it a reality requires purpose and preparation.

•    Evaluate your assets. Your resources are likely right in front of you.  Look to your existing clients for feedback, referrals, sales and product upgrades. Build your prospect lists to increase exposure. A good team that gets your business going, products developed, and website running goes a long way in stepping up your business, as do joint venture partnerships which help to increase exposure.  Products are probably your best asset as an independent source of additional revenue that can really step up your business.

•    Design your products, programs and solutions for the top 20% of clients because that’s where 4/5 of your income will come from.

•    Think in terms of project income, not monthly income. Plan for the year, instead of planning month by month. Plan around big projects.

•    Remember:  just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If you try to do everything you think of, everything that you know you can do, you will do them all half-way. Choose only the best of what you can do and you will step up your business.

•    Take the first step without knowing what the next one will be. Take the leap of faith without a safety net. You can only see the next step after you take the first one.

•    Grow bigger than your obstacles or problems. Move forward in spite of the challenges. They are inevitable. Everyone who has experienced success has experienced obstacles. They just chose to move past and overcome them.

•    Recognize that the changes you experience when you are stepping up, in your life and in your business, won’t always feel good. They can be uncomfortable at first because they will be unfamiliar. But, they will be worth it.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

“Knowledge will not attract money unless it’s organized and intelligently directed through practical plans and action.” Napoleon Hill, from Think and Grow Rich.

I love this quote. It’s true that all of the knowledge, skill and expertise in the world won’t make you money and turn your vision into reality unless you have an actual plan for how to use them.

Before you can formulate your plan, however, you need to start first with your vision. You have to really see where you want your business to go.

The following questions will help you to plan to reach your business goals by first giving you a clear mental image of what those goals are.

How much money do you want to make?

Name your revenue goal for this year. You have to put a figure on it. When you voice that goal, don’t phrase it in the form of a question. You’re not asking someone’s permission to make that money. State, out loud, what you want to make.

If that figure is in your head, if it’s in your heart, and if it’s something you’ve been dreaming of, it’s absolutely achievable. Doreen Virtue says that God doesn’t give us our dreams without the ability to make them real.

So whatever the figure is, you have to name it to claim it.

Rather than naming a general, round figure – 100,000, a quarter-of-a million, or a million -  be more specific.  Round figures aren’t real enough for you.  Calculate what your dream life would cost you, and then cost it out. It’s rarely going to be a round number. So, get really clear on your revenue goals.

What kind of lifestyle do you want to live?

Think about your lifestyle goals. How much do you want to be working? For example, do you want to take extended vacations and not work for a couple of months?

I decided last year that I didn’t want to work more than three days a week. And now, I don’t. There are plenty of things that will test your decision. You have to decide what’s right for you, and get it down on paper. Remember, the point is to visualize how you want things to be.

Will your business make a significant impact?

Finally, your vision is probably not solely about serving yourself. I’m willing to bet that it’s not only about money and a nice lifestyle, although these are great to have.

I believe that all of us are here to make a difference.

What are your impact goals? Know who the people are that you want to serve and what contribution you want to make. What do you want to be remembered for?

Mapping out your vision of your business, in your mind’s eye and on paper, will give you a good idea of what you want your business to look like.

The mental image and visual reinforcement will help you to develop a plan for making your vision a reality.

Bernadette Doyle is a marketing specialist who helps entrepreneurs become client magnets and attract a steady stream of their ideal clients. She publishes a free, weekly newsletter for trainers, speakers, coaches, consultants, complementary therapists and solo professionals. If you’d like to receive invaluable tips and advice on how to attract clients with ease, register at http://www.clientmagnets.com