Marketing Works. So Does Sales.

Marketing works. So does sales. They are different skill sets, and a business owner needs to know how to use both. Surely many businesses have operated purely on marketing in the past. And this is what has allowed a fear of sales to develop. But social media marketing is becoming more and more crucial, and the more social media becomes an indispensable component to business, the more sales skills will become a requirement for success.

That’s why I’m using Next Level Blogger to spread the word about the importance of learning how to sell while most other bloggers are still focusing on ads. This is the direction business blogging is going.

As business owners, we need to learn that selling is not manipulation. It is not some black hat, malicious tactic. It is not the act of underhandedly trying to extort our customers. What a simplistic and inaccurate way of looking at it! Sales is a skill set. Nothing more. Nothing less. It teaches you how to engage people on a personal level, effectively and skillfully matching problems and solutions to a mutually beneficial end. It can be used to truly offer an invaluable service to our customers and clients.

Sales is Not Evil, but it IS a Super Power >:-)

Like any skill set, sales skills can be used for both good and evil. It is no different than the skills an attorney learns for navigating our legal system or that which a physician learns for solving problems of the body. Any skill set can be used for good or harm. Unfortunately sales has been abused (as is the case for ALL fields of expertise, but I digress), and it has been misunderstood for many years.

Traditional business models have allowed this misconception to perpetuate. But of course, traditional business models are crumbling these days, and that is why I’m preaching the importance of learning these essential skills, which I teach to clients. Marketing works. But combining sales and marketing in a skillful manner makes you invincible. It is a super power!

Seriously though, if you know marketing you can make a great living, and that is a beautiful skill to have. But if you know how to sell, you are recession-proof. Period. And that is a killer skill to have as well. Why would you not want both?

If Sales is Evil, then So is Your Car

You can use a car to destroy property or even kill someone. That doesn’t make driving evil or underhanded. I find it ironic that sales gets a bad wrap while marketing is touted as a more ethical and honest way to conduct business. Give me a break. I’m tempted to accuse people who say this crap of being high-minded and elitist, but I know it’s not the case. It’s just that they haven’t had the same experiences I’ve had. They don’t know the power of sales. Marketing has been abused and used to convey inaccurate and misleading messages for generations. It is no less a means of distraction and coercion than anything else.

The reason marketing has become the preferred method of building a business is not because it’s “better” or “more effective”. It’s only played out this way because it allows business owners to run their businesses from a distance…without getting emotionally or personally involved with their customers. Put more simply, it’s less messy. I don’t mean to downplay the power of marketing here. But marketing does allow you to remain detached, while sales puts you in the thick of it. It’s scary, and when something is scary our minds come up with all kinds of excuses for not doing it. But excuses don’t build successful businesses, do they?

Well, the days that we will be able to get away with running our businesses without personal engagement are numbered. This means we need to learn how to engage people on a personal level and help them solve their problems. There’s a word for that. It’s called “sales”. And if selling makes me evil, baby I don’t wanna be good >:)(just kidding)

Do you avoid selling to your customers, clients or blog readers? Do you find it difficult to ask for people to buy things? Do you feel selling is selfish, unethical or rude?

Don’t just get information from your visitors and then fail to implement it into your plan! You guys and gals are AWESOME for speaking your mind and letting me know what you think about Next Level Blogger. I want to confirm with you that I AM listening to your feedback, and I am already in the process of following through on what you’ve shared with me :)

So far, you’ve given me input on what type of issues and concerns you’d like to see addressed here, and you’ve given me some awesome ideas for upcoming articles on blogging, monetizing, internet marketing and more, so be on the look out for them!

If you read my articles or ebooks, and you haven’t submitted a survey yet…please do so! It will take you about one minute. Seriously…and I absolutely WILL read your input, and I absolutely WILL follow through on it :) Speak your mind! Let me know what you love about Next Level Blogger, what you hate and what you’d like to see next. Thanks again!

Take the Next Level Blogger Survey :)

What is an advocate? An advocate is a fan of your business. Someone you’ve worked with or someone who has bought from you. They know what you do, like what you do and truly believe you bring real value. They have no problem sharing their belief with their friends and peers. When someone has a question about something that relates to what you do, they don’t hesitate to say “You should really talk to so-and-so. They’re the best in the business.” You gotta love an advocate!

But ironically most business owners DON’T love their advocates! Mostly because they don’t know about them. This is a step we cannot afford to ignore.

Identifying Advocates

I mentioned every business has advocates. Is this true? It really is. If you’ve done business for any length of time, you no doubt have some real fans. See if you really sucked and everyone you work with is disappointed, you’re simply not going to be in business for very long! So if you’re in business, yes you have advocates. And it’s essential to take measures to identify them.

How do you find them? There is a highly specialized technique I use that I was taught by a guru many years ago. I ask. You should too!

When someone buys something from you or subscribes to your newsletter or works with you as a client, etc…ask them how they found you. This is old school, and oddly enough many businesses just don’t do this.

Are you going to get an answer 100% of the time? Absolutely not. It truly is impossible to get perfect results with this. The beautiful thing is that it doesn’t have to be flawless. You just need to make a concerted effort. It will pay off for you.

The Power of Advocates

The reason your execution doesn’t need to be perfect is because just by catching up with a percentage of your advocates can have a beautiful effect. You don’t have to snag all of them (although the more the better); you just need to snag SOME of them. Do this, and you’ll be writing me a thank you letter at some point. I guarantee it!

The cool thing is that an advocate can be turned into a real asset. Let’s say you get a new client. You ask them how they found you, and they give you an interesting answer. They tell you that their coworker had worked with you about 6 months ago, and they told them you were the person to call. You’ve officially received a referral client. That is an awesome thing.
You’ve already done one great thing. You asked. Now you have an answer, and you have a name. The next thing you need to do is contact that person who referred your new client to you, and you need to thank them personally. I recommend even sending them a gift of some kind if appropriate.

Reward this behavior. Don’t let their gracious behavior that led to you getting a new paying customer go unnoticed. Let them know in a very clear way that you appreciate it. And let them know that you want MORE!

It’s easy to see that big companies are understanding the power of advocates more and more. Referral programs are growing in number. Vonage offers a month or more of service for free to every customer you refer to them. That’s just one of many examples. Vonage understands that word of mouth advertising is powerful, and they want to harness as much of it as possible. That’s smart.

Like I mentioned, this kind of activity is most likely happening behind your back. If you believe in letting things like that go on without you having any control over them, then that’s up to you. But if you can harness and encourage and make it worth their while for people to continue referring business to you, do you see how powerful that can be?

Are you asking your customers how they found you? Are you taking this (or any other steps) to identify your advocates?

I run this “make money online” blog from a very different angle than David and most other writers in this space. I’m not a media guy. I’m not a marketing guy, and I’m CERTAINLY not a tech guy. I’m a sales guy.

I’ve spent years in the field selling and training others to make money for themselves. I’ve spent the last three years adapting all that experience to internet marketing, and it’s been a beautiful journey. That’s my angle…direct sales. It’s what I do, and it’s what I teach.

An article David Risley posted a couple days ago speaks to how essential direct sales is to blogging. I highly recommend you check it out. I love seeing a well-known blogger like David Risley talking about this, because it makes me feel like this very important idea is catching on. Unfortunately it has a long way to go before being mainstream though.

Stuff is Changing, but Not the Way You May Think!

I am convinced a fundamental truth is coming out more and more, and it’s essential to pay attention to it…here it is:

The WAY people search for information and buy things is changing. This is a permanent, global change. However, the REASONS people buy things haven’t changed at all…and aren’t going to.

What does this mean to you…the business owner or professional who wants to thrive throughout this economic downturn and all these paradigm shifts that we’re witnessing? It’s simple. It means you need to become a competent sales professional. You’re in sales! You need to become very good at engaging people and selling to them.

Social Media is a Tool, Not an Excuse

As a sales trainer, I’ve trained over a thousand people to go out and make more sales. What do you think is the biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome?

• Lack of sales talent?
• Time management?
• Teaching others how to “close, close, close”?

It isn’t any of these. Fact is, sales is pretty damn simple. And you know what? It still is. There are absolutely some things to learn, but it’s not rocket science.

The biggest obstacle I’ve had to overcome with my sales training clients is EXCUSES. Here’s the brutal truth: people avoid sales like the plague. Even sales professionals avoid it. It’s called “call reluctance”. They come up with all kinds of creative ways to avoid selling.

In fact, people pride themselves on their aversion to sales! CEO’s talk openly about how they hate to sell. People talk about how they avoid selling as if it’s a good thing. This is such a misplaced mentality, and it shows clearly how misunderstood the art of selling is.

But here’s the rub…more and more people are realizing they HAVE to learn how to sell. Because if you don’t sell, you’re out of business. You have to make sales to stay in business, yet most business people hate sales. See anything wrong with this picture?

Here’s something I hope will offer some comfort: It’s not sales you’re afraid of, it’s BAD sales. Good sales is simple, natural and fun. And high-paying! You have to learn how to do it. It takes training, and it takes practice, but anyone can learn it. People misunderstand what sales is because they’ve spent their whole lives avoiding it…they’ve never learned it.

As Risley mentions in his article (if you haven’t swung out to check it yet, please do), many bloggers out there are still fixated on making money with advertising. Thing is, that works to a certain degree. If you’re getting a lot of traffic (I mean a lotta lot of traffic), you can make some scratch with advertising. But there is SO much more opportunity out there. The bottom line is that not all niches are high traffic niches. So if you’re niche isn’t a high traffic niche, are you S.O.L.? Well, if you aren’t willing to learn direct sales, then yes, you’re S.O.L.

There is No Such Thing as “Selling Without Selling”!

So many gurus and “experts” out there are touting social media as a way to “sell without selling”. Screw that noise. If you don’t sell, you don’t make sales! Let’s call a spade a spade. Sound fair?

“Selling without selling” is another way of saying “making sales on accident”. When it comes to my business, I want to know what the heck I’m doing. I don’t want my success to be accidental, because if it’s accidental, then I can succeed one month and totally suck the next month, and I won’t know why. That’s no way to live.

Here are three steps every business owner or professional needs to make right now:

1. If you don’t have passion and excitement for what you do, do something else.
2. Embrace that you’re in sales. Take your excitement and passion for your business and use it to put yourself out there and get good at selling.
3. Study with a professional who knows how to teach you to sell (ahem), and get good at it. Sales is your lifeblood. Always has been. Always will be.

Highest Paying Hard Work; Lowest Paying Easy Work

We’re entering a new era at full speed, and it’s an era where job security is non-existent, opportunity is huge and risks are high. More and more people are coming online to market their wares. Business is highly competitive. To succeed you have to be good, period.

That’s the world we live in. If you are willing to do the work, you can thrive and live very well here. All you bloggers out there looking for a quick buck or some turnkey “automatic” or “automated” solution to making money…go on and keep looking; let me know how that works out for ya!

Almost 10 years now I’ve been in sales and training/coaching people to make more money. Most people are looking for a way to chillax. Why would you want to kick back and chill when you have a BUSINESS that excites you? You wouldn’t. You’d want to go out a raise hell every single day. That’s why I consider it so vital to absolutely LOVE what you do. Because when you LOVE what you do, you can’t wait to get at it every day. You push hard every day for results, because you just really like what you’re doing. That’s where you want to be. That’s where you have to be!

I read in a book years ago that sales is “the highest paying hard work and the lowest paying easy work”. I’m pretty sure it was Brian Tracy who wrote that, but I’m not positive. But it’s true.

I’ve known sales people (in all different kinds of fields) that are barely getting by, and I’ve known sales people who make an absolute killing. What’s the difference? I know many people are still convinced that successful sales professionals have a particular sleazy charm that just comes naturally to them, and in order to be good at sales you need to be born with the “shyster gene”. But it’s not true. First of all, selling is not sleazy…at all, when it’s done well. Second, sales can be learned. And it can be taught. That’s what I do.

The difference is not some innate talent or ability. The highly-paid, successful sales professionals of the world all employ an ancient and proven technique that works every time. They work their tail off, and they love every minute of it!

There is Stuff to Learn

So, quick recap:

• The way people buy things is changing, but the reasons people buy things are NOT changing. You need to learn to engage people and sell to them.
• Social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc) is a tool for selling. Don’t use it as an excuse for avoiding sales. It’s not “selling without selling”. It’s selling.
• Embrace that you’re in sales. Study sales. There are a million books. Plus, subscribe to Next Level Blogger.
• Make sure you’re in a field you love and that excites you.
• Get coaching.
• Work hard, every day.

Sales comes naturally to very few people, but it can be learned by anyone. It is the art of engaging people on a personal level and helping them to solve a problem. When done well, it is a invaluable service to others.

Of course when used poorly or maliciously, sales is the same as any other powerful weapon. It can be used for both good and evil. It is the evil use of sales that everyone fears and wants to avoid. The solution is simple. Don’t be evil. If you’re not evil, then learning to sell will not make you evil. It will just enable you to help you customers on a much deeper and more meaningful level. It will also make you rich. Nice secondary benefit, no?

At the end of the day, sales is nothing to be scared of. It is simply a skill set you learn. You learn it through training, study and practice. And when you learn it, it makes your income and livelihood impervious to any changes in the economy. A good thing!

How do you feel about selling? Do you avoid it? Does it scare you? Do you think I’m full of it and that learning to sell is not necessary? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Are you asking your existing customers to refer their friends, families, coworkers and colleagues to you? If not, you are not alone. Most business owners and sales people fail to do this or even consider it. But why wouldn’t you?

This principle is something I see applied rarely online. The masters do it, but few others even think about it. It’s one thing to make a sale. It’s a whole next level thing to tap into that customer’s entire base of friends as well. Your paying customers should not be on the same list as your prospects (the people who have yet to buy from you). They should be treated differently, because they ARE different!

Prospects and Customers are Not the Same, and They Should Not be Treated the Same!

If someone has purchased from you, they have entered the fold. They are on a new level with you and your business, and they should be treated as such. They are easier to sell to in the future, because they are already warmed up to you, and it is also reasonable for you to ask them to refer you to their friends and coworkers. If they’ve found real value in working with you, many people will gladly tell their friends about you.

Here are two important things to consider:

1. Deliberately seeking referrals is one of the most cost effective ways of significantly building your business online, and few people even try to do it.
2. If you have a customer list of even just a few hundred people, you REALLY have a customer list of many thousands…if you know how to work referrals.

Why Referrals Are So Valuable

A contact is a contact, correct? I’d argue no. Not all contacts are created equal. People that come into your database as a result of a referral are much more valuable for a few significant reasons. Consider these:

• With a referral customer, there is more trust right from the start, because they have contacted you through a friend. This usually means they are a very qualified potential customer. It usually means they are very close to buying as well.
• The cost of getting a referral is zero, which means your net earnings are almost always higher with a referral lead.
• A referral provides an opportunity to improve your relationship with your existing customer. It’s valuable when someone buys from you. When someone buys from you, they are deciding to trust you. But consider what it means when someone trusts you enough to refer their friends to you. A referral is MORE valuable than a sale when it comes to the relationship you have with your customer!
• Referral leads, when treated like the gold they are, are often more likely to bring you referrals of their own, continuing the cycle of growth.

When your existing customers send their friends and colleagues your way, it’s essential to treat them well, as you would all your customers, but it’s also essential to reward the customer for sending you the business. This will encourage them to send you more business in the future of course, but it will also strengthen the relationship you already have, making it that much more likely you can continue to help that customer in the future.

Here are some steps you can implement to ensure you’re taking advantage of this fundamental principle:

• Deliberately ask your existing customers for referrals. “Who do you know that can also benefit from …(whatever it is you’re  selling)?”
• Make sharing your content easy, and encourage your prospects and customers to spread your emails, ebooks, blog posts, etc around to their peers.
• When you get a new prospect, make it a matter of course to find out how they found you. Did they find your site and subscribe through search, through a link, or were they recommended by a friend? It’s good to know where your subscribers and customers came from!
• If someone came to you through a friend, make a reasonable attempt to find out who it was that referred you. Send a thank you note or even a special gift to someone who sends you referrals. Of course this just isn’t ever going to be something you can successfully accomplish  100% of the time, but it’s important to do whenever you can. People who send you business should be acknowledged!
• Don’t just ask for referrals once. Ask repeatedly, when the time is appropriate. When someone buys something from you. When you answer someone’s question, when you follow up after a consultation, etc…there are a lot of appropriate opportunities to ask your customers for referrals.

It’s not news that everyone in the world is separated by only a few levels of contact. Referrals are your quickest, most effective, most powerful and most personal way of growing your business. Do right by just one person, and you have done right by that person’s entire network. Tactfully tap into that network over time, and you have a shot at doing right by the whole world.

Trust me, there’s more business out there than you could possibly ever handle! It’s just a matter of reaching out and grabbing it. Should you hammer all your prospects and customers everyday? Of course not. But as you know, I’m focused on the human element of marketing online. Keeping a personal dialog going with your customers, as you should, naturally leads to you getting referral business from them over time.

Here’s the thing, if you’re good at what you do, you’re going to get referral business whether you’re aware of it or not. As with all things in business, I’m a big fan of intentionally harnessing these things and deliberately addressing them. Instead of just hoping your business works out and grows simply because you’re so good, be aware of the fact that referral business is a huge factor in the success of most any business. And with that in mind, take steps to deliberately encourage it! Don’t just leave it up to chance :)

The reason I mention this is because a lot of readers here may not necessarily be inclined to read RENewsBlog, a blog about real estate sales and investing. I wanted to drop you a line and let you know that I will now be a weekly contributor over at RENewsBlog.

The content I publish there will be focused on internet marketing and blogging, just like here, so if you like this blog, I encourage you to check out my articles over there as well :)

The fact is that most real estate professionals, like all small business owners, have a real need to market themselves effectively online. I will be the guy who covers online marketing and sales strategy over there on a regular basis. The concepts I cover will at times have a little bit of a real estate spin on them, which is cool because I know many of you readers of Next Level Blogger are in real estate!

But also this is great for everyone else as well, because the sales and marketing concepts I cover on RENewsBlog will directly apply to YOUR business as well, no matter what industry you’re in.

I invite you to swing by and say “hi”!

This paradigm leads me to look at blogging and internet marketing a little differently than a lot of my peers. I do not focus on traffic, at all. I do keep my site fairly well search optimized, because I’m hardly one to say “no” to free traffic, but I refuse to depend on Google for a variety of reasons.

I would be the last to argue that my way is the only way, but this is the game as I play it. As with all things on Next Level Blogger, this list is focused on what it takes to build a highly profitable niche business online. Stick to these business basics, and you will be on track to achieving your goals…

1. Build a list: This is the foundation of your business. If you’re not building a list, you’re not building a business. For the foreseeable future, email marketing is still king, and if you want to make money online…learning the art of list building and selling through email is mandatory.
2. Ask for the order: This is a key sales principle. This often comes off as a “duh” kind of statement. If you want someone to buy from you, you should probably ASK them to buy from you, right? But year after year, study after study shows that salespeople will often perform an entire sales presentation and fail to ask for the order at the end. Internet marketers and bloggers are big culprits of this as well. Most often, as much as I hate to say it, bloggers. So many bloggers want to make money yet fail to ever ask for it. Asking for the order goes for making sales but also for other things. Do you want your readers to comment your posts? Do you want people to tweet out your articles…link to your site…download your free ebook? Tell them what you want. Ask for the order.
3. Ask for referrals: This is something I see applied only rarely online. The masters do it, but few others even think about it. It’s one thing to make a sale. It’s a whole next level thing to tap into that customer’s entire base of friends as well. Your paying customers should not be on the same list as your prospects (the people who have yet to buy from you). If someone has purchased from you, they have entered the fold. They are on a new level with you and your business, and they should be treated as such. They are easier to sell to in the future, and it is reasonable for you to ask them to refer you to their friends and coworkers. Deliberately seeking referrals is one of the most cost effective ways of significantly building your business online, and few people even try to do it. If you have a customer list of even just a few hundred people, you REALLY have a customer list of many thousands…if you know how to work referrals.
4. Identify your advocates. Use them, and treat them like gold: Of course, not everyone will refer you to their friends. Not everyone is going to connect with you enough to become an advocate of yours. But when you have an advocate, even if you just have one advocate at the beginning, you better treat them like a king or queen, because an advocate is something rare and powerful. I’ve seen powerful real estate brokers sell several hundred houses a year with a list of only a few hundred people. This type of efficiency is not possible if you don’t know who your advocates are. Can you build a very profitable blog with only 10 subscribers? Yes! If those 10 subscribers are advocates.
5. Multi-tier product and service development: There really isn’t such a thing as one size fits all. In this day and age we need to connect with your readers in as personal a way as possible. Many internet marketers will come out with a single product and then simply proceed to drive as much traffic as possible to that offering, and rack up whatever sales they can. I can’t argue that it’s a way to make money online; I just don’t think it’s nearly as personal, efficient or profitable as it could be. The beauty of blogging is that you have an awesome opportunity to interact with a large number of people in a personal way. Ask them what they want. Believe me, your readers will tell you what they want if you just ask! Build your audience and your list, and then proceed to interact with them often. Have them tell you what products and features they’re looking for. Use their feedback and come up with products and services based specifically on that feedback. By “multi-tier” I mean specifically that you should have options for people. One Blogger that does this very well is Michael Martine at Remarkablogger. He offers one-on-one blog consultation for an hourly rate, and you can also get group consultation at a much lower rate. You can also invest in one of his very reasonably priced products like WordPress SEO Secrets to get specific solutions at a great price. He doesn’t just do one thing. He offers multiple solutions, so that he can connect with his readers in any number of different ways. That’s smart.

Each of these 5 steps deserves a post of it’s own. And they will get one. They are already in the works! I encourage you to bookmark and/or save this page and visit back, because I will link them up as I publish them. Or, subscribe to Dangerous Tactics, and I’ll make sure you get an email with the new articles as they come out!

Blogging is mostly the activity of posting content on a regular basis in a specific niche, etc. When “internet marketing” is mentioned, most people think of squeeze pages, affiliate landing pages, sales pages of other various kinds, etc. My hope for this post is simple: I’d like to blur the lines a little bit and hopefully get you to realize, if you don’t already…that if you’re blogging to make money online, you are an internet marketer. And it will benefit you greatly to think of yourself as such.

Business blogging and internet marketing are the same thing. It’s important to view every post on your blog as a landing page.

If You Want to Make Money Online With Your Blog…

Bottom line: if you want to make money online with your blog, you need to sell things. This means you are in sales. That’s internet marketing!

Many bloggers do not think of themselves as marketers or salespeople. And then they wonder why they’re not getting the results they want. There is a lot more involved than just writing blog posts.

You Can’t Make Much Money Blogging

The reason I decided to write this post is because there seems to be a line in many people’s minds that divides internet marketing and blogging, and there really needn’t be. Here’s something that may surprise you to hear: you can’t make much money blogging. Really. You can make a bit. If you happen to be building your blog in a high traffic niche, and are successful in building a high traffic site, you might be able to make some cash through advertising. But honestly, this does not apply to most blogs.

If I’m being honest with you, you are probably not going to be the next TechCrunch. I’m not one to be a dream crusher…if you have an idea and a plan, you should work it, and no doubt there will continue to be many huge success stories like this. My point is this: MOST blogs in the vast scheme of things just aren’t going to be high traffic blogs. And that’s OK. You can STILL make a killing!

One more point about this: there are many sites out there that make as much money as TechCrunch does, and you have likely never even heard of them. Popularity does not necessarily correlate to success, or to income. Sales skills, business skills and skillful execution however, usually do.

Low Traffic Blog Niches Rock!

So what about all those innumerable niches out there that just aren’t high traffic niches? Those are my focus and specialty! Look, there are a TON of ways to make great money online. High traffic is just one, and in my opinion it’s far from the best one.

Yes, there are a lot of gurus out there that will tell you magical ways to explode your traffic and build your email list to staggering numbers, but what many of them will fail to mention is that a lot of niches just don’t have the kind of mass appeal that’s necessary to build a high traffic site.

And it’s important to understand that this is NOT a problem…but it SHOULD affect your monetization plan!

For example, you’re not going to get 100k visitors a month to your Lentil Recipes blog, no matter how hard you try. At least probably not :). I’ll say it this way, if you’re the lentil recipe guru of the world, and your success depends on getting tons of traffic, you do not have a good plan, and you probably haven’t done your research.

However, there are a lot of ways to make that niche profitable. There are good ways to make any useful niche highly profitable, and I’m going to be going over specific ways to do this in upcoming posts on this blog.

The Often Overlooked, Money-Making Benefit of Low Traffic

To suffice for now…how do you make a low traffic niche profitable? You learn to sell! In other words…internet marketing. Personal interaction is king in the low traffic arena. See, you can do that when you have a low traffic niche. You can literally build a great, intimate relationship with your audience. It’s not that possible when you’re getting several thousand visitors a day…the level of personal attention goes down.

Both high traffic and low traffic niches have their advantages. So don’t think because you’re only getting a few thousand visitors a month right now that you’re at a disadvantage. The fact is that you’re in a great place! Use what you’ve got. The fact that you can interact with and engage your audience on a highly personal level means that you can create a lot more value for each individual who reads you blog, and when you create more value…you can make more money.

So I will be covering different ways to monetize like this in more detail in coming posts over the next several weeks. I hope you can bookmark this site or subscribe, so you can get this information when it comes out.

I think it’s absolutely essential to do a few things here:

1. Stop thinking high traffic and huge subscriber lists are the only way to make a good living with your blog.
2. Start thinking of yourself as an internet marketer, and open yourself up to the idea that you are a salesperson. Sales skills will be what enable you to make good money online in whatever niche you choose. Realize that if you apply high traffic methods of monetizing on a low traffic site, your results will always be disappointing. However, learn to apply the right techniques to your business, and your results will be impressive.
3. Study different methods of monetizing that I will be discussing here in the coming weeks, and write a plan for your blog that makes sure you can get the results you’re looking for…don’t just assume you’re going to follow the same model of another blogger you like. Do your own research, and write a plan that’s appropriate for your own niche. Follow your own path!

This is the crux of blogging vs internet marketing…if you’re blogging for business and to make money, you ARE an internet marketer. You are a salesperson. You do not have to embrace these things, and I will admit that most bloggers do not. I will also tell you that there is a REASON most blogs fail :). The difference between blogging and internet marketing? When it comes to making your business successful, there is NO difference!

I recently sent David Risley a guest post, and he graciously accepted and published it. That same day, I sent a guest post to Michael Martine, and he also accepted and published a few days later. Two original articles, two guest posts. I couldn’t think of a better way to help get this new blog off the ground than by sharing it with the awesome readership of these two great blogs. Unbeknownst to me, and them, I had sent them the same post.

It was an accident, but the effect was still terrible in my mind. Duplicate guest posting is really not cool. David had published the article first, and then Michael followed, and I didn’t realize my mistake until the post went live on Michael’s site. David sends me a tweet basically saying “what’s up with this, fool?” He had every right…even an obligation…to call me out. And my stomach sunk when I visited Michael’s site to see that I had submitted a duplicate post to him.

I apologized, and both guys were terrific and gracious as always. It seems to be water under the bridge. But I walked away with a terrific lesson I wanted to share with you. One of those damn lessons you need to learn more than once in life. Details matter. Pay attention to what you’re doing. Also, when you make a mistake…own up to it as soon as possible. No one is perfect; God knows I’m not.

Thanks guys for the opportunity to appear on your blogs. It’s an honor, and next time I promise not to screw it up : )