Big Manta » Making Money Online

Using the 80-20 Rule to Maximize Your Productivity & Income

BigManta — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:35:49 +0000

Working on things that produce the highest returns in terms of productivity and income is vital to the rate at which you grow online. You may have heard of the “Pareto Principle” (often referred to as the 80-20 rule) and why you should be applying it to the way you tackle projects and your overall business.

What is the 80-20 rule?

The 80-20 rule as it applies to being successful - simply states that 80% of the results arise from 20% of the effort. It’s not exact, but you will find your numbers to very often correlate with the 80-20 rule.

80% of your income will come from 20% of your work
80% of your complaints are from 20% of your customers
80% of your time is spent on 20% of your projects

As you can see, many of these numbers will probably ring true for you in several facets of your work. Whether you’re writing, selling, marketing, or providing customer service, understanding this principle and applying it to achieve maximum results is crucial to your success.

How can the 80-20 rule help me?

You can maximize both your income and productivity by understanding how the principle affects your everyday actions and results. We often get caught in the trap of spending the majority of our time on things that tend to have very little impact overall on the results we get – when we should be spending our time on the 20% of things that produce 80% of our income or the headway we make.

Once you have identified your core/key areas that provide the most return, you need to then start focusing on those as much as possible. In addition to simply revenue or income numbers – you can look at:

Customer service
Income and revenue
Marketing and advertising
Content creation
Promotion of your services
Time spent on graphic design

The list can really go on and on. When you are working, think about whether or not it’s worth the time and effort to spend 3-4 hours working on a footer design that really won’t enhance or build upon your current offerings. However, it may be worth it to spend a week on product pricing because it can have a huge impact on your business.

I tend to focus on the things that can provide immediate or long-term results relative to their time commitments. The key is to identify the most profitable and results-producing parts of what you do and pour your energy into those things.

Adapting the mindset

Probably the hardest thing about integrating the 80-20 Rule into your daily routine is making it a habit to continuously focus on the things that provide the largest return. While there will be some aspects that you may not enjoy about some of the things that you know you need to focus on (but you don’t really want to) – it will help propel your business, productivity, and income – very rapidly.

Pricing Digital Products: A Comprehensive Guide

BigManta — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:23:04 +0000

Creating your own information product can be one of the most lucrative and profitable ways to make money online. Pricing your digital products (i.e. ebooks, videos, information products) is an important factor that can ultimately determine how successful your product will be. In addition to the value of your product itself, there are perceived values that people place on products when deciding whether or not to buy your digital product – and the pricing model that you choose is one of the most important aspects.

What are digital products?

Some of the things most often associated when mentioning digital products are ebooks, guides, videos, and tutorials which would all fall under the “information products” category. While these make up a large chunk of the digital items that are being sold online, things like WordPress themes, programming scripts, and website templates also fall into the digital product category.

Price points for digital products

Before we delve into what you should actually charge, you will need to choose a pricing model that will accomplish the goals you are trying to reach. There are several different models you can use when selling your products:

Free

Giving away your product can have tremendous upside potential. While you are not monetizing your product on the front-end, you can use free products to drive certain goals on your site. A free product can be used to build RSS readers, gain newsletter subscribers, build links to your site, position yourself as an authority, and gain visibility & exposure. The downside to free is that you are not directly making money from your product.
Inexpensive Pricing

A pricing model that is built around providing an inexpensive product you can gain mass appeal and cater to the highest number of potential buyers. With a lower price, more people can afford your product. The downside to inexpensive products is their perceived value and you will need to reach a large number of people to make money.
Premium Pricing

If you choose a premium pricing model you can sell much less of a product and still make good money. You will charge a higher price and the perceived quality of your product will be much higher. The downside to premium prices is that you limit your potential audience because fewer people will be able to afford your product.

Price models for digital products

While we just explored how you are going to compete with your price, the next step is to determine your price model. Your price model is how you are going to approach selling your product.

Giving your product away (the free model)

In addition to being a price point, free is also a price model. If you are trying to build an audience and gain exposure, the free model can be the most effective for doing so.
One-time purchase

In many instances, a one-time purchase will be the best model for your product. If you are selling a script, ebook, or something along those lines – building your pricing around a one-time purchase will allow you to sell more of your product.
Recurring payments (subscriptions & memberships)

One of the most lucrative ways to build your pricing is around a recurring revenue model. This allows you to generate income that can be more consistent and stable than offering your product for a one-time price. However, there is typically much more work that goes into creating a recurring revenue stream because you must deliver value each month, year, etc. in order to retain the people paying for your product on a recurring basis and make them feel that you are continually benefiting them.

Exactly how much do I charge?

Now that you have determined a price point and decided on a pricing model, you need to figure out exactly how much you are going to charge. There are several different factors to consider when choosing the exact price:

Competition - What are others in your field charging for similar products?
Quality - How does the quality compare to other products that are similar?

The psychology of numbers

When choosing a price you will probably want to stick with the standard practice of making the cost end in a 5,7 or 9 (i.e. $17, $49.95, $79.99) as studies have shown people interpret these as more inexpensive than rounding up to the nearest dollar.

Testing & Input

Often, you will want to ask some potential buyers what they would be willing to pay. In addition, passing out a couple review copies will often help you in determining your price. It is also worth noting that testing your product at various price points (if it’s a long-term product) will help you find the price that is the most profitable. When testing, you will probably want to try starting cheap and going more expensive to find the perfect price.

Inspiring real-world examples

Sometimes it helps to see how others have succeeded in pricing their products and the results the achieved. Included here are several examples of digital products and how successful they have been. Be sure to note that the results are not solely due to price, however, they will give you a good idea of what people are willing to buy and how much they are willing to pay for different digital products:

Successful Digital Products:

Getting Real: The Book by 37signals – 30,000+ sold at $19
31 Days to Build a Better Blog by ProBlogger - 16,000 sold at $19.95
Affiliate Theme for WordPress – $90,000 its first month at $97 – $297
Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin – 1,000,000 copies distributed for free

A Guide to Making Passive Income

BigManta — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:05:13 +0000

Passive income is something that many of us dream about. The ability to do what you want, when you want, and how you want is an appealing proposition for most people. Getting to the point where you can rely on passive income can be an arduous journey – but the rewards can be well worth it.

A couple years ago Collis Ta’eed of FreelanceSwitch created a mini-site/guide to walk you through some of the aspects of generating passive income. While the guide doesn’t focus solely on making money online, it provides a great overview of some of the ways that you can get started making some extra (passive) income for yourself.

The guide is completely free with no hooks or strings attached, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t take five minutes to hop on over and check it out.

In addition to the site, there is also a free download of the report in a PDF format that you can download here: A Guide to Making Passive Income.

I always love coming across these types of things because you know that someone has put a lot of time and energy into creating something of this caliber. Check it out and start making some money!

Guarantees Are Only as Good as the Quality of the Product

BigManta — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:00:24 +0000

It’s funny to note how companies or marketers feel that by simply placing a guarantee on a product – they will make more money and sell more stuff. While guarantees or “risk reversal” tactics have been proven to remove hesitancy and doubt from customer’s minds, you must have a quality product to begin with in order to take advantage of the benefits of offering a guarantee. You may have come across a product or service that offers a 100% money-back guarantee – only to read reviews from people that the product is garbage and it’s near impossible to get your money back.

Develop a long-term strategy instead of chasing a quick buck promoting or creating inferior products – because even guarantees can’t save bad products.

I believe Chris Farley in Tommy Boy said it best:

Tommy: Let’s think about this for a sec, Ted, why would somebody put a guarantee on a box? Hmmm, very interesting.

Customer: Go on, I’m listening.

Tommy: Here’s the way I see it, Ted. Guy puts a fancy guarantee on a box ’cause he wants you to fell all warm and toasty inside.

Customer: Yeah, makes a man feel good.

Tommy: ‘Course it does. Why shouldn’t it? Ya figure you put that little box under your pillow at night, the Guarantee Fairy might come by and leave a quarter, am I right, Ted?

Customer: What’s your point?

Tommy: The point is, how do you know the fairy isn’t a crazy glue sniffer? “Building model airplanes” says the little fairy; well, we’re not buying it. He sneaks into your house once, that’s all it takes. The next thing you know, there’s money missing off the dresser, and your daughter’s knocked up. I seen it a hundred times.

Customer: But why do they put a guarantee on the box?

Tommy: Because they know all they sold ya was a guaranteed piece of shit. That’s all it is, isn’t it? Hey, if you want me to take a dump in a box and mark it guaranteed, I will. I got spare time. But for now, for your customer’s sake, for your daughter’s sake, ya might wanna think about buying a quality product from me.

Customer: …Okay, I’ll buy from you.

Using Contextual Links to Boost Your Affiliate Marketing Income

BigManta — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:00:04 +0000

When promoting affiliate products, a great way to greatly increase the money you are making is to link words or product names in your content with your affiliate links. While banner ads are decent at making money with affiliate products – I have found that text links far outperform their image counterparts. The reason why text links tend to work so well when promoting affiliate products is two-fold:

People are becoming increasingly banner-blind and clicking on images less.
When promoting affiliate products via text links in your site’s content you are referring them to relevant, related products, that they have a high chance of being interested in buying.

Take a subtle approach

The key to using text links in your content for affiliate products is to take a subtle approach. Your content is first and foremost, with the affiliate links providing some context and an additional way to generate some income. If every page you have or post you make, has affiliate links plastered all over them – your readers will start to notice and your trust factor will start to diminish.

The links must be relevant

When using this method, you want to only promote or link to products that are extremely relevant to the content on the page and could be helpful or interesting to your visitors. If you’re talking about convertibles and place an affiliate link to flat-screen televisions – you will start to lose your credibility.

If you have products with a more mass appeal, then you are probably better off placing banner ads that are displayed on every page of your site compared to inserting random text links.

Don’t overdo it

You don’t want to bombard your readers with content that has every few words hyperlinked to an affiliate offer. A great example of how to effectively link is by taking a look at a page on Wikipedia and see how words are linked there (take a look at this page on Wikipedia about “Affiliate Marketing“).

Let your content determine your links

While there are times when you will create blog posts or pages that are primarily designed to promote affiliate products, you don’t want them to start crowding out your content. If each new piece of content you produce is filled with affiliate links (with blogs in particular) your readers will come to trust you less and less because every post or page feels like a sales pitch.

Build trust for higher conversions

The most effective affiliate links are those that are built based upon trust. You don’t want to abuse this trust by promoting sub-par products or unrelated offers. Focus on things that could be beneficial to your readers and you will have a more satisfied audience – and higher revenue-generating site.

Looking Back on The First 30 Days of Blogging – Stats & Insight for BigManta.com

BigManta — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:11:53 +0000

Today celebrates one month of blogging for BigManta.com! As with many things, the getting started and taking your first steps are the keys to becoming successful. Looking back on the first 30 days I am very pleased with the results and look forward to growing the site further as each day progresses.

Since this blog is about how to make money or grow your business online, I thought sharing my results would help others who might be interested in the types of results to expect when you’re just starting out. After looking through my stats I have found that BigManta.com’s progress so far is similar to other sites or blogs I have started in the past.

An overview of the first 30 days of BigManta.com

While there are many things that tool place during the first month of blogging, I wanted to outline some of the major steps I took to get BigManta.com to its current state:

Purchased a Premium WordPress Theme

This site is powered by WordPress and one of my first steps was to purchase a premium theme in order to give it a professional design. There are dozens of premium theme designers and sites that you can choose from – but I purchased a theme and then modified it to suit my needs.

Set up plugins, social profiles, RSS, and mailing list

I am running about a dozen different plugins that allow me to have various features and functionality on my site that make administrating and managing my content easier, as well as optimizing for SEO and promotion. In addition to the plugins, I also set up a Twitter account, Feedburner (for RSS subscribers), and MailChimp for building a newsletter.

Content & Features

As the first month always tends to be the hardest to push through – I forced myself to push out a lot of content to get started (113 posts in the past month), I may have gone overboard on the content creation – but I’m pleased that the site has a lot of content when people come across it. Also, I integrated two daily features: “Quote of The Day” and “Tip of the Day.”

Looking in my Google Analytics reports, the 5 most popular articles by views are:

Some of the most popular content was a little surprising and it’s interesting to see what people are visiting the site are interested in.

Promotion & Socializing

For promoting BigManta.com I have become somewhat active in a couple internet marketing forums that pertain to the subject that this site revolves around, as well as done about $20 in StumbleUpon advertising (which I will post on later), and have tried to interact with other bloggers and sites in my realm.

BigManta.com by The Numbers

Alright, on to some of the numbers and statistics. Since I am not currently focusing on monetizing the site, we’ll take a look at some of the traffic statistics and other performance indicators.

Visitors - 976
Page Views – 1,781
Referrals from other sites – 568
Search Engines – 231
Direct Traffic – 177
RSS Subscribers – 5
Blog Posts – 113
Comments - 71

Wrapping up the first month

So far, I am extremely pleased with how the site has come along in the first 30 days. As each week and month goes by, the results should get better and better in terms of revenue, visitors, and overall performance of the site. I would like to thank those of you who have helped promote the site and please feel free to tell your friends, subscribe to my RSS feed, or join my newsletter to stay up-to-date.

Going forward there are a few things that I’m working on to enhance the site (a professional logo, enhanced features, etc.), so be sure to check back often!

Additional resources

One of the main reasons I put this post together was to share with others a little insight into what they can achieve in a month’s time. I’ve also collected a few other posts of people that recapped their first month of blogging. Hopefully, with these examples, you can see the type of results that you might be able to achieve in just one month’s time. But please keep in mind that each site and topic is different, so your results can vary wildly compared to mine and other sites:

Let me know what you think, and if you have just started out it would be great to hear how you’re coming along as well. Leave a comment below so that others who have just started a blog might benefit from hearing your results, or if you have any questions – please feel free to ask.

The 5 Keys to Success – A Free Guide to Succeeding Online

BigManta — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:57:10 +0000

I’m very proud to announce my free guide entitled “The 5 Keys to Success.”

There are several essential components that I believe every business owner, marketer, entrepreneur, and aspiring online money-maker should be aware of in order to really be successful online. This guide outlines those elements and explains the reasoning behind why some people do very well online, and others end up with mediocre or disappointing results.

It’s a great guide even for those outside of the internet marketing and making money online world, so please feel free to pass this page on so other people you know might be able to benefit from it.

While the guide is completely free, all you need to do is join my newsletter and you will receive instant access to the free guide in a link via email.

In addition to the guide, with the free newsletter you’ll also receive exclusive content, free tips and tutorials, and a bunch of other really cool stuff to make your journey to making it big on the internet – easier and more profitable. Simply enter your name and email below to sign up and gain instant access to the guide:

Success is Cumulative: Take Things One Step at a Time

BigManta — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:59:55 +0000

A recurring theme that seems to appear frequently with those trying to either make money online or build their business, is the desire for instant gratification or immediate results. Becoming successful online (like most things in life) requires a methodical process that you must go through to achieve the results or goals you are aiming for.

The allure of the internet has given many people the belief that you can simply launch a website or blog – and it will immediately become popular and become a money-printing machine. While it would be great if that were the case (and in rare instances it is), to be successful you must continually work and put energy into your endeavors. Just as babies crawl before they walk – building your online empire requires taking baby steps before you eventually start running.

What is great with the internet, is that your work is cumulative and everything helps contribute to your goals. With each new post you create, tweet you send, or person you befriend on Facebook, these steps are all helping you move in a positive direction with your site or blog and laying the stepping stones for future success.

Laying a foundation

You must have a solid foundation that you plan to grow your business, site, or blog around – a foundation to build upon. Your foundation can be everything from your idea or business model to the technology you use to run your site or blog. These things are the fundamental aspects that you must have in place so you can start the building process. Taking the time to ensure you have a strong base will help you distribute your content and allows your message to reach more people with less efffort.

Taking your first steps

Once you have everything set up and a plan of attack, you can start taking your first steps. Write articles, connect with other people in your topic or industry, be useful and informative, and try all of the various ways to distribute your message – social networks, video, tutorials, the list goes on and on. Each piece of content you create moves you one step further towards success.

The power of compounding

Just like compounding is one of the most powerful ways to build personal wealth – the same principle can be applied to being successful and making money online. With each new piece of content or connection you make, you are increasing the chances of being successful. If you write just one blog post a week, you will have accumulated 52 pages of content at the end of one year – do one each day and you can see how quickly things can add up. The more outlets and content you create – the more places people will be able to find you and the more likely you are to succeed.

The Top 3 Reasons Why People Fail at Making Money Online

BigManta — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:38:00 +0000

As much as I would like to tell you that there is some magic secret to being successful and making money online, I’m afraid that’s not the case. There’s no quick road to riches, if that were the case then everyone would be millionaires and we would all spend our days relaxing on the beach.

I believe that if you approach making money on the internet with a systematic approach, you are virtually guaranteed success. Once you get in the groove, it can actually become quite easy to succeed and generate a lot of income. If this is true, then why do so many people fail at making money online then? In my opinion, it boils down to 3 main reasons:

Failing to start

In order to make money online – you must start somewhere. Whether it’s blogging, creating a website, promoting affiliate offers, whatever method you have decided to use to make money – you must actually get started. Many people scheme up grandiose ideas and the next thing that’s going to catapult them to success… but never lift a finger to start. If you don’t start somewhere (anywhere) – you have nothing to generate income.

Failing to take action

Right after “failing to start”, we have a failure to take action as a large reason why many people have not been successful online. Although you may have launched your site, blog, or campaign, it needs to be continually enhanced to keep growing. Just like a garden needs sunlight and water – you’re online endeavors need to be fed with marketing, new content, and direction so that they can thrive.

Imagine a business opens in your city and they go and build a huge new building and announce their grand opening to the public, place ads in the newspaper, and have a spectacular opening. You then walk into the store only to see the shelves nearly empty with just a few products in the back corner. This is similar to how many blogs and sites end up – as shells with only a few pages or posts that were never fully developed.

Failing to persevere

The final reason why I think many people fail to succeed is their lack of perseverance. You must admit to yourself that you will face tough times and face obstacles that you need to push through. If you’re a blogger, you may not have an audience for months, but if you stick with it – you will start seeing results.

Staying Focused: Create a Strategy Checklist for Your Site

BigManta — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:04:12 +0000

A big factor why many people fail to succeed online is a lack of focus and discipline. It’s easy to bounce around from site to site reading and learning, but accomplishing very little for your own site in the process. I believe that persistence and consistency are the two traits that separate those who are successful and those aren’t. I even find myself doing it – sometimes wandering aimlessly and then wondering how I spent those few hours accomplishing very little for my sites or blogs.

Something that I have found that works very well at keeping me on task and focused is to create a checklist of things that I need to accomplish each day, week, or month. This allows me to continue to learn, but also inches my site or blog forward each day so that it continues to grow.

Creating a checklist for your site

Whether you scribble it down in a notepad, type it up, or stick it on a post-it note next to your computer, you need some way to stay focused in order to reach your goals. I have found that having a checklist that clearly outlines your goals and strategies will really help your site or blog blossom.

A sample checklist

While everyone has different goals for their site or blog, there are action items that you probably do (or should be doing) on a consistent basis. Here, I’ve provided an example of what a checklist might contain:

Daily

Participate in a forum
Create a blog post
Write one article and submit it to directories
Leave 2 comments on other blogs

Weekly

Create a video that relates to your topic
Conduct an interview and post it on your site

Monthly

Send a newsletter to your subscribers
Hold a contest or giveaway
Analyze your statistics to determine why people are visiting your site

This is a very basic outline of what your blog or site’s checklist might look like. What it does, is keep you focused and keep your site growing. You will find that creating a daily plan of attack can work wonders for growing your site.