E-Biz Booster Blog

While waking up this morning I suddenly found myself having a pen in my hand and scribbling 2 ideas for a new blog post on a piece of paper. Here is the first one.

Probably you can help me out and post as a comment, who had said the following originally.

“If your business doesn't grow it dies.”,

It is certainly true.

As the population grows, as markets grow, someone else will takeover your niche soon. If not, you are in the wrong market and hopefully close to retirement with enough retirement funds saved.

What are the drivers:

• Number of sales
• Average sales price

So why would you like the product of those variables to grow continuously, strictly monotonically?

This is not supposed to be a scientific article. No. I only want to get you engaged thinking about those issues in your own business. So I really only give you a short list and not much more.

Let's start out with a solo entrepreneur, because it's real easy to start thinking from this point on and the rest applies for big corporations as well.

Here is my Top-10 list, why your business needs to grow:
→ Continue reading:

It is the norm to think a virus or an infection is something very bad. This is true for most cases, but my ‘blogger-friend’ Aaron Potts writes on his Blog today, that you actually should seek to get infected by a very special kind of virus.

I was drawn into his article right away and thought that you could benefit from that great post, too.

Here it is.
In case you get an “500 Internal Server Error”, just hit the reload/refresh button. It's a kinky technical issue that should not stop you from accessing Aaron's valuable content.

Enjoy reading.

Yours
John W. Furst

Are you a sharing person? Do you sometimes talk too much and someone else catches it and they sell it as theirs? This can happen in business and very much in corporate life. Oh boy, some people would sell their wife, kids, and mother-in-law to get a 3 second spotlight on them in order to impress their boss.

But how much of your ideas should you share with others? I think this can be applied to both the business world and also if you are in a corporate structure. Because, … bottom line is:

“It's all about selling!
Selling products or selling yourself! (in the corporate world)”

You might be aware of two pieces of advice.

• Share your best ideas with your prospects and customers... for free.
  --Eben Pagan
  
  
• Keep your best ideas secret.
  --John W. Furst

Sounds like a contradiction!
Not really, all you need to do is to expand the second quote.

• Keep your best ideas secret… as long as you cannot use them for selling your products, service, talent, whatever.
  --John W. Furst

Wait till you are ready to monetize your ideas and make them your brand. You also can share your ideas in a circle with colleagues, friends, like-minded business people, who you know of won't do you any harm. Because the interaction with like minded, success oriented people (not suckers, and a…) will increase your creativity and productivity.

That's it for today.

---

I though a short, concise Blog post is better than no Blog post. Right? I hope you find this advice useful. Apropos usefulness! There is a Tip Jar on this Blog.

Just kidding! No, it's actually there.

Some stranger rang my door bell this morning. I opened and he told me the sad story of his family. I felt it's a true story, I could practice (my poor) Spanish, … so I gave him some cash. Made me feel better, and you know what? I forgot that someone actually made me angry this morning.

You should do that too from time to time. (Here's the Tip Jar). Again, just kidding.

I am kind of in a funny mode today, but actually I have to catch a plane to London later today. Little trip to visit my wife, who happens to be there right now. I can't wait to get her back here full-time.

Have a nice day and an even better weekend.

Yours
John

It seems that people respect their boss and they do whatever they demand — more or less — in exchange for their salary. That's how this boss-employee relationship works. What can you learn from this for your own business?

Even if you have changed the sides in the meantime and become your own boss, either as owner of your company or manager of a department, you will remember the days, when you worked late or on weekends to meet the deadlines given to you by your superiors. All of a sudden everything became less important: your plans for Friday night, the date with your new acquaintance, the movie premier, etc.

You absolutely needed to finish your assignment, because your boss would not accept any excuse and even could fire you. Even, if your assignment appears to be ridiculous to you.
Your boss is your boss.


I will cut a long story short (… and save your time).

→ Continue reading:

Many Internet marketing and Making Money Online “Wannabes” refrain from creating and selling products of their own, because

• they believe it were too hard to create products
• they do not want to deal with customers.

They rather get into affiliate marketing, drop shipping, selling advertising, …

“Of course it is possible to make money online without a product of your own, but building a real sustainable business is on the other side of the coin.”

Creating your own products has certainly many advantages that outweigh the so called disadvantages.

• You are in total control of every aspect.
  • Product quality
  • The offer
  • Customer relationship
  • Cash flow
  • Your Affiliates
  • etc.
• You set the rules and you own the customers. They are yours.

Does this sound interesting, “They are yours!”, or scary to you?

What's the deal about customer service anyway? I don't want to talk about product creation today, but rather about the question, “Are you ready for a relationship with your prospects and customers?rdquo;

A great long-term, profitable customer relationship is based on the following.

• Products, services, and value that keeps up with the expectations created during the sales process. That means: High Quality Products (I say high quality, not necessarily overly expensive.)
• Excellent documentation
• Excellent follow-up and customer support
• Respect (*)
• etc.
  
  
• Overdeliver and you won't have much problems!
  

Of course, there are certain types of folks that will try to pull your leg. But when selling a product of your own, you are in control how to handle this and you will learn ways to minimize those negative side effects. Otherwise you leave it to someone else (like your affiliate partner, Google, … to fix the problem. All you get are refund reports, invalid click reports, smart-pricing, …)

The key to long term success is building a relationship with your prospects and customers. Yes, I include the prospects that might be on your email list already, but did not buy anything so far. The terms of such a relationship varies of course with the ticket price, and if you sell to businesses or consumers.

Back to respect (*)

I have observed it in large corporations, in small businesses (though more in consumer markets than in business-to-business markets) that product managers, CEOs or other relevant employees call their customers names and simply ignore their input and signals.

“Any business person that fails to understand the basic tenets of treating people right is most definitely not a genius. It’s very, very disappointing.”
~Ed Rivis

Many companies operate on the edge of what is fair or even what is legally allowed, and not too few have lost masses of clients, credibility, reputation, and fortunes.

“There is no place to hide in todays Web 2.0 economy, you better show respect and play fair in all what you are doing. Otherwise it will fall back on you sooner than later.”

Think twice about how you can support your prospects and customers. Is your business built on arrogance or support?

Yours
John W. Furst

How many times have you watched an Internet marketing video online that promised “great, special info”, but did not deliver? That's really a big turn off.

“A bad video steals you up to 20 times more time than a bad PDF document”

Unfortunately you cannot always tell in advance, if a video will deliver on its promises or not.

• I have seen poorly produced, short and long videos that contained more than expected and
  
  
• I have seen studio production quality kind of videos that didn't tell you anything, except that it must have been expensive to produce.

Too many videos just waste so much time with introductions and typical “Let me tell you my / his / her / their story …” phrases. Too many videos show just faces or other static information. Could be an MP3 audio, and just a piece of written text instead.

I am absolutely tired of this and simply prefer written material, since I can quickly scan through it. Most people also can read faster than those video guys and gals do speak. It's just a waste of time and not to forget a waste of bandwidth.

Of course, there is room for video. The visual aspects can add tremendous value, but not everything needs to be in video. Shooting a video from lame content does not make the content better, it just gets thrown into a different package.

Some folks claim that it takes less time to make a great video than it takes to provide good quality written material. Well, that's true. But only for the producers, who actually have the ability to write good quality content at first place.

All others are just showing their stupid faces into the camera and that is definitely not worthwhile watching. And furthermore they are showing that it is not even worth their own time to create quality content for others. “To hell with them.”

Now, let's talk about some absolutely positive aspects of online videos.

Good reasons for use of video

• Showing onscreen actions that would be hard to describe otherwise. Videos are great for tutorials, but should be accompanied with a written add-on, like a cheat sheet.
  
  
• Showing animated graphics that tell more than words. I have shown an excellent piece of descriptive statistics here on this Blog.
  
  Another excellent example are the recent StomperNet Going Natural 2.0 Videos (↑) about SEO, conversion, … facts that help you increase your sales. For my personal taste the intros are too long. However the content is very valuable.
  
  
• Adding artistic, humorous, graphic, … value
  
  
• or just adding a moving pictures to otherwise great content

Since not everybody is following quality gidelines, how can you protect yourself from wasting time with bad, empty, or hype only videos?

Tips for saving your time

• Watch only videos that have been referred to you by a trusted person.
• Build a list of trusted, good quality sources.
• Watch a video only one time and take notes (if it is worthwhile).
• If the video doesn't capture your full attention during the first 30 seconds. Click away.
• Prefer material that will give you transcripts of the video content as well. Especially, if you have to pay for a course or something similar.
• …

What additional tips do you have to share?
Leave a comment, let me know.

Yours
John W. Furst