The Dirty Little Secrets Of An Informer
April 23, 2008
Do you have what it takes to be an informer? If you’re passionate about a particular subject, or if you just enjoy research, you’d probably make a great one. And if it’s good information, people will even pay you for it.
And Here’s A Dirty Little Secret: You don’t have to write a book. In fact, if the information you have is in demand, you don’t need to write much at all.
I first made money on the Internet selling a niche travel guide. It was short - I don’t think it was longer than 11 pages. But each copy sold for the same price as a regular full length book. And I got to keep every single penny as my marketing costs were zero.
You Don’t Even Have To Know What You’re Doing: I certainly didn’t. The research I’d carried out was for my own personal needs. I don’t think I’d even heard of ebooks or information products back then. And the finished item was the most basic thing you ever saw, but people bought it.
So What’s The Catch? You need to spend a lot of time researching your topic. Nobody is going to pay you for information they could find in five minutes on the Internet. But the chances are, you may already have a hobby or subject that you know inside out. And unless you have some extremely bizarre interests, there’s bound to be other people who want to learn what you know.
Why Would People Pay For Something So Short? Time is a precious commodity to many of us. Some people want to learn what they need to know about a subject without spending hours on end researching it. And the chances are - they won’t want to spend hours on end reading some padded tome when a dozen pages will do.
So Where Do You Start? Obviously some information products sell better than others. Click here to subscribe to this series of posts and you’ll discover: How to choose a topic that will sell, how to make sure it’s what people want, how to research and the best ways to market and sell your product.
Have you already tried selling information products? If so, how did you get on? Would you like to give it a shot but don’t know where to start? What is your biggest challenge?
Does Your Business Feel Like A Prison?
April 22, 2008
Has your business begun to feel like a prison? Are you able to take a week off without worrying that everything is going to collapse while you’re gone? What about two weeks?
Whether you employ several people, or you’re a freelancer working alone - your sanity will suffer if you’re unable to do this. So it’s worth bearing the following points in mind, unless you want to become a slave to your work:
Pre-planning: Plan well in advance what needs to be done, before you take a break. If you don’t do this, you’ll spend the 24 hours before you go trying to get things done. And unless something is absolutely urgent - leave it until you get back. I just took a week off to go on a course. And whilst it was tempting to do a million and one things before I went - I left most of them until I came back. There are very few things that can’t wait a week.
Automating: Do you do some routine tasks on a regular basis? Could you automate them? If so, it may be worth automating them now - it will make it far easier when you do take time off.
Delegating or Outsourcing: There’s probably plenty of things you do that you could delegate or outsource to someone else. These are always things that don’t need to be done by you personally and could be done by virtually anyone given the right instructions. Maybe you could start doing this now, or at least find someone to cover for when you do need them?
Emails and Internet Access: Try to avoid using emails or Internet at all when you’re away. You’ll have a far more enjoyable time. If you simply must receive emails, try to organise things so that someone else is dealing with your basic everyday emails and only forwarding to you the ones that are truly urgent.
Emergency Contact: Do give an emergency contact number that you can be reached on whilst you’re away, but make it clear that this is only for emergencies. If someone is dealing with your calls or emails, make sure they’re your first point of contact and leave them a clear definition of what constitutes an emergency.
Give Others Clear Responsibilities: If you have staff, make sure they’re clear on what needs to be done whilst you’re away. And emphasise the fact that you don’t want to come back to mountains of work that they couldn’t be bothered to do. I’ve been in that situation before and you wind up feeling like you haven’t had a break at all.
Important Decisions: Do you have someone you trust enough to make important decisions in your absence? If so, things will run far more smoothly if you give them authority to do so. For example, whilst I was away last week, I was not contactable by any means, so I gave Stuart full permission to deal with anything urgent in my absence. And he did have to make one big decision.
Whilst he didn’t deal with the situation in exactly the same way as I would have - it removed a huge burden from my shoulders. However, I will add one thing. If you do give someone permission to act on your behalf whilst your gone - tell them not to let you know about it until you return, or you’ll spend a lot of time worrying about things you have no control over.
Paying Bills: Do make sure you pay any bills that need to be paid before you go. And if this is impossible, consider giving someone permission to write cheques on your behalf - if there is someone you trust enough to do so. I can’t overemphasise the importance of doing so.
In 2006 I took almost three weeks off work to go on my honeymoon. Unfortunately I forgot to pay a bill which was meant to be settled in 14 days. This caused me a huge headache on my return to work and I wasted several hours trying to avoid significant court costs - even though I only owed £45. I would have saved myself a lot of trouble if I’d arranged for someone else to sign cheques in my absence.
Are you able to take time off without worrying? What is your biggest concern?
Beyond Criticism - When It’s Time To Pull The Plug
April 21, 2008
Do you receive hate mail? Do you get vile comments on your blog? If so, you’re not alone, but don’t worry, there’s simple and effective ways to deal with the offenders:
The Gramatically Correct: These people often show up on the comment sections of popular blogs and point out minor errors. And their comments range from annoying to plain rude.
Whilst most of us strive to avoid making typos or grammatical errors on our blogs, often the odd one will slip through. Most of us don’t spend our entire day writing blog posts, so speed is essential.
And we don’t need some anal retentive tw.t pointing out our mistakes. So if it happens to you, I recommend deleting the offending comment and correcting the error immediately.
The Vile Critic: Few of us expect the world to agree with every single word we write. But some blog commentors choose to go beyond what I would call constructive criticism.
If they don’t like what you’ve written, some people will resort to attacking you personally. And others will go as far as to give graphic descriptions of what they’d like to see happen to you – and believe me, there are some sick minded people on the Internet.
I’ve had these types of comments on here recently. I usually delete them and ban the offender. And I’ve found that it’s best not to reply to them either.
Whilst some of these are what I would describe as threatening, I would never allow these types to intimidate me and you shouldn’t either. Remember that anyone who attacks you anonymously is a coward anyway.
The Legal Challenger: If you write about people and companies who have seriously pissed you off, then sooner or later, someone may threaten to sue you.
And, if every single word you wrote about them was true, you should just ignore them. One of the main reasons the Internet it so popular is that it discourages censorship, so don’t be bullied into deleting your words by someone who dislikes something you’ve written.
If you’re still worried, bear the following points in mind:
1) You can only sue someone for libel if they’ve written something untrue and it is something which could defame their character. 2) It is hugely expensive to sue someone for libel, so unless your accuser is extremely rich, their threats are probably empty. 3) If they do try to sue, they have to prove what you wrote about them is untrue and show evidence that they have suffered as a consequence.
* If you don’t live in the UK, you may want to read up on libel laws for your own country.
Have you received comments that go beyond reasonable criticism on your own blog? What did you do?
You Can Beat Your Critics
April 16, 2008
One or two people tell you your work sucks. So, you let it go over your head. What do they know anyway? But how do you feel when hundreds or even thousands of people are telling you they don’t like what you have to offer?
Sometimes, it’s a case of your critics not knowing a good thing when they see it. Other times, maybe you just need to perfect what you’re doing until it’s right.
Stephen King’s work was rejected for four years before he was published. Had he given up, he’d never have gone on to publish more that 40 novels and over 200 short stories.
James Dyson first came up with his idea for a bagless vacuum cleaner in 1979. I took him 4.5 years and 5127 prototypes to develop the technology. Then, when he finally came up with the goods some big company tried to steal his idea. And it wasn’t until the early nineties that he was able to sell the machine. That’s a lot of years of persistence.
And I bet you’ve heard the stories of Thomas Edison’s thousands of attempts to invent the lightbulb. And that Colonel Sanders, founder of KFC had his chicken recipe rejected over 1000 times.
The truth is, you have just as much chance of success as these people, if you remember these points:
Rejection, or not getting it right the first time isn’t failure. You don’t fail until you give up trying.
Every single rejection takes you one step closer to success.
It doesn’t matter how many mistakes you make so long as you learn from them.
Often a rejection isn’t about you, or your work - critics have their own fears too.
Every single one of the people mentioned above went on to achieve far greater success than those who rejected them.
Is fear of rejection preventing you from achieving your potential? Can you see how rejection can help you to achieve success? Do you have any tips to help others overcome their fear of rejection? Please share in the comments section.
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