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Walk Dogs for $105,000 a Year (Or Make a Living Doing What *You* Love)

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I recently put out the word that I wanted to interview small business owners for an upcoming project, the Empire Building Kit . These were the criteria: you had to net at least $50,000 a year with two or fewer employees, you had to be willing to talk about money in specific terms, you had to share your biggest mistakes as well as your greatest successes, and you couldn’t be a professional blogger. (Obviously there’s nothing wrong with professional blogging — I just figure that bloggers get enough attention already. Besides, if you want to create a business , there are much easier models.) I heard back from 300 people with all kinds of different backgrounds, but Lisa’s email stood out from the rest. I have a dog-walking business in Minnesota. Can I contribute my story? I’ll be honest: I didn’t think much of it at first. A dog-walker? Shouldn’t we be talking about affiliate marketing, information products, and Facebook ads? Walking dogs around the park for cash isn’t really my thing, so I assumed I’d say no. But then Lisa told me how much money she makes: $88,342 in 2009, and now on track for $105,000 in 2010. That got my attention. She makes six figures as a dog-walker? Wow. Now that’s a story. And in marketing, of course, story is everything. If you can build a real business around something you’re passionate about — in this case, Lisa loves dogs — I think that’s worth some attention. Follow your passion? Yes . . . sort of The thing about following your passion to the bank isn’t so much overrated as it is incomplete. Finding a way to get paid for doing what you love is both feasible and sustainable. The trick is to construct a lifestyle business around something you’re passionate about that other people are willing to spend money on . The difference is crucial: I can be passionate about eating pizza and playing video games, but so far I haven’t found anyone willing to pay me for it. Therefore, I have to orient my business not only around my own interests, but also around what other people are willing to pay for. I built the rest of the Empire Building Kit around conversations and insights from people like Lisa. The photographer, the triathlon coach, the translator, the guy who makes baseball art, the murder mystery host, and so on. You’ve probably never heard of most of them, but they’re doing very well doing something they love. Last month I released the product on board a 44-hour Empire Builder train from Chicago to Portland. It was a huge success, with rave reviews from our inaugural group of emperors — and a freaked out merchant account that wanted to know why so many sales were rolling in. Long story short, today I’m doing it again. It’s for 24-hours only, before I get on a plane and head overseas as part of my quest to visit every country in the world. If you’re interested in joining the inaugural group of new emperors, I’d love to have you on board . All the details The goal of the Empire Building Kit is to help people build a business in one year by doing one thing every day. To that end, I’ve compiled a truckload of resources and hand-holding to make sure that happens. The Kit includes: 15+ Case Studies. From 300 initial respondents, I narrowed it down to more than 15 thriving emperors from at least as many different backgrounds. I asked for their stories, their secrets, what they wish they had known before they started. The case studies come in a variety of formats: video interviews, MP3 files, PDFs, with complete transcripts. So you can get the most out of them no matter what your learning style. 365-step Email Series. You get one mini-lesson today, one tomorrow, and 363 more over the rest of the next year. According to the folks at Aweber, it’s officially the longest follow-up series in their history. The key is: if you do one thing a day, it will be much easier than trying to do everything at once. But you also have to make sure you’re doing the right things, so we help with that too. A 52-step Product Launch checklist. Even if you’re not launching from the “bloggers’ lounge” onboard an Amtrak train, something always goes wrong with a product launch. Use this checklist to avoid big mistakes, and dramatically increase revenue. One step produces an average revenue increase of 30% every launch, no matter the price of the product. Another step ensures you can sleep at night by not screwing up the confirmation emails. And so on. “Show Me the Money” module. All the details from behind the scenes of my own Unconventional Guides business. You’ll learn how much money each product brings in, where I’ve screwed up, where I hit it big, and so on. Ok, so I could go on about all of that for a while. But what you really get is insight and context from people who have successfully cracked the code of following your passion. They all talk about money, they are all extremely candid, and they’re all real people doing fun things while getting paid. Care to join Lisa and the rest of us? You can find out all about it right here , but it’s only available for 24 hours, ending Wednesday morning at 9am Pacific Time . And if it’s not a good fit for you, of course, that’s fine too. Most importantly, I hope your business is as enjoyable as Lisa’s — and as enjoyable as mine. About the Author: Chris Guillebeau travels the world and writes for a small army of remarkable people at chrisguillebeau.com . Follow his live updates from every country in the world at twitter.com/chrisguillebeau .

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Walk Dogs for $105,000 a Year (Or Make a Living Doing What *You* Love)

Johnny’s Copyblogger Wrap-Up: Week of May 10, 2010

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I got this phone call yesterday from Brian, because he’d just read the post on my blog about how I’m thinking of getting a couple of tattoos . Anyway, he insisted that I drive down to Texas immediately so I could use his guy for my new skin art. I had to listen because the man definitely knows his ink. Most people don’t know that Brian has an entire episode of Diff’rent Strokes storyboarded across his back. The dude is hardcore. When I got there, he funneled me enough tequila to send an entire Cinco de Mayo party to Federal prison. Then he took me to some place called Deep Ellum, where I got two tattoos, an infectious disease, and a black market kidney. All I can show you are the tattoos . SOLID. Anyway, here’s what happened this week on Copyblogger: Monday: Free SEO Copywriting Report I was just talking to a client about the topic of this post. How do you write for search engines in a way that sounds natural rather than super-annoying, what with all the SEO stuff you have to jam in there, like proper keyword utilization and backlinking and robots and cyborgs? And conversely, how do you rank well in search engines while writing in a way that sounds natural, unlike that romance novel written by my cyborg buddy Norm? You read this post and pick up your copy of Professor Clark’s free report, that’s how. Read the full post here . Tuesday: How Cornerstone Content Gets You Traffic and Subscribers Out of everything I’ve said on Twitter, I have a favorite tweet. It went, “They say true beauty is on the inside. The problem is that nobody can see it in there, so you’re still going to look ugly.” It kills me that I can’t repeat that, but in social media, you really can’t keep recycling the same exact stuff. The same problem exists for blog posts, which is where this post by Derek Halpern comes in. You write a great post, and then the next thing you write bumps it down the page. A few weeks later it’s gone, and you can’t pull it back up to the top or people say, “You tweeted that already, Truant, you hack.” To put that “best of” stuff to good use, Derek tells you how to use of your A+ material to keep drawing readers… while boosting your search engine rankings at the same time. Read the full post here . Wednesday: 6 Steps That Get Big Shots to Answer Your Email I’ve finally figured out why my emails to Jessica Biel are going unanswered. I figured it was my pushiness and abjectly creepy come-ons that had resulted in the silence and/or restraining orders, but it’s because I’ve been crafting my messages incorrectly. This post by Pace Smith explains how to get the attention of the big names you’re trying to get ahold of. Because honestly… they may LOVE what you have to say or the pitch you have in mind, if they could just cut through the email you’ve buried that gem of an idea in. Important note: This post also contains a cookie volcano. It was the only post with one that I came across this week, so feel free to thank me in the comments. Read the full post here . Thursday: 10 New Ideas for Getting Inspired to Write The guy who wrote Thursday’s post was once mentored by a goth who carried a Samurai sword on his belt and used it to trim his hedges. If that alone doesn’t frighten you into reading this post, then there’s no hope for you. The post itself (which contains no swords but does feature a dog wearing a funny hat) lists ten more of Jon Morrow’s gems for getting inspired to write. Because sometimes, the muse doesn’t want to come out, and you have to chase her with a Samurai sword until she relents. The tips in this post will whip any muse into shape pronto. P.S: I’m not kidding about the sword guy. Jon tells the story in Question the Rules . Read the full post here . Friday: The Solution for Marketing Overwhelm If there’s one person I’d trust to draw up a marketing blueprint, it’s Sonia Simone. You just know she’s able to walk that fine line where she’s giving easy-to-follow steps to creating your plan and staying unstuck in your biz without getting all, “You must do this no matter what” on you. But whatever you do, don’t let Sonia draw up blueprints for your house . How is a building supposed to stay upright using six boards and no bricks? And why are there chickens in the ventilation system? WHY, SONIA? WHY? But marketing blueprints? Yeah, she’s great at that. And the Remarkable Marketing Blueprint is about to open up again, so you should really get on the advance list so that you’ll be first to know when it does. Read the full post here . Friday part 2: (a.k.a. Next Friday , now with more Ice Cube): The Three Surprisingly Simple Keys to Success In Sonia’s second post of the day (damn, she’s fast), she points out the truism that to succeed in anything, you need any two of the following: Talent, luck, and persistence. So you can be talented and persistent. Or lucky and talented. You can even be relatively talentless as long as you’re persistent and lucky, which is the process through which most sitcoms are created. But you need two, and this post is filled with pointers on how to become more talented, more persistent, and even more lucky ( hint : set leprechaun traps.) I bet if you have all three of those attributes, you end up being like Spiderman. Bitten by a radioactive spider? Lucky . Willing to fight a never ending cavalcade of cartoonish supervillians? Persistent . Able to take photos good enough for J. Jonah Jameson? Talented . So there you have it . . . read this post and you’ll become Spiderman. Read the full post here . About the Author: Johnny B. Truant has a dumb blog at JohnnyBTruant.com and is one of the guys behind Question the Rules . You should also really check out his Jam Sessions with Charlie Gilkey, because they’re filled with tasty informational nuggets that make your business better.

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Johnny’s Copyblogger Wrap-Up: Week of May 10, 2010

6 Steps That Get Big Shots to Answer Your Email

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You need to get the attention of a powerful internet marketer, A-list blogger, or busy CEO. Maybe you’ve got a brilliant idea for a joint venture that would make you both scads of money. Or maybe you just wrote a brilliant guest post that a certain top blogger’s audience will love. Whoever it is, you’re convinced you’ve got a win for this person. Unfortunately, the big shot you’re pitching won’t answer your emails. It’s not because she’s evil, honest. She’s just got a lot of other pitches in her mailbox, and there’s no way to give all of them her full attention. Your mission is to get yours to the top of her list. Here’s how. So how do you get prominent people to pay attention to you? Obviously, the most sure-fire way is to know the hotshot personally. If you didn’t happen to go to grade school with your famous person of choice, you can still make a connection. You can go a long way just by being consistently sincere and helpful to her and her friends. Social media tools come in handy here. That takes time, though. When you don’t have time, follow these six steps instead. 1. Open with compelling subject line Your reader likely gets hundreds of emails each day. Make yours stand out — not with all caps or lots of exclamation points, but by condensing the best points of your offer to create a sense of urgency . WEAK: An invitation for you STRONG: Paid speaking opportunity, no travel required (deadline approaching) 2. Introduce yourself in one sentence Your reader doesn’t care about you (yet). Don’t blather on and on about your accomplishments or your history. Introduce yourself in one sentence. Include a link to your site, so if your hotshot wants to know more, she can investigate. 3. Do your homework What sorts of offers has this person accepted in the past? What kinds of propositions is she interested in, and what sorts of incentives does she need to say yes? If you find that your big shot agreed to a $6000 fee for a three-day conference, offering $2000 for 90 minutes of her time on the phone makes for an irresistable offer . 4. Keep it short State your offer clearly in one paragraph. Not a long run-on paragraph either. Six sentences, tops. 5. Be bold, not precise Your goal for this email is to get this person interested . Too much detail at this point wastes your reader’s time and attention. (But do include the one or two details that will capture that attention.) You’ll get 51% of the registration fees from the people who click on your affiliate link, unless they click on someone else’s affiliate link after they click on yours, or unless they clear their cookies or buy from a different computer or switch browsers. Or unless the cookie volcano erupts. Way too complicated. Instead, stick with: You’ll get 51% of the profits from everyone you refer ($212 per sale). Keep it bold and simple . 6. Don’t squee all over your shoes. Acting like a rabid fan won’t win you any points; it will get your proposal taken a lot less seriously. Don’t go on and on about how you’ve read all this person’s books and that you stood in line for hours at a convention once to meet her and does she by any chance remember the woman with the mauve hair carrying a bunch of asparagus because that was you. Act like a peer with a good proposal, and you’ll find you’ll get replied to like one. It’s fine to mention that you like the person’s work. But too much gushing and your email is going to wind up with all the other fan mail — not in the “A” folder of messages that need a quick response. No one can guarantee you’ll capture that busy big shot’s attention. But follow these six steps and you’ll stack the odds in your favor. About the Author: Pace Smith is the co-leader of the Freak Revolution , a bunch of weirdos who do awesome stuff. Her latest project is the World-Changing Writing Workshop , featuring six famous writers who replied to her email.

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6 Steps That Get Big Shots to Answer Your Email

4 Things an Ethical Internet Marketer Can Learn from Spammers

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First things first: We hate spam. And we hate spammers. Maybe even more than you do. So this article isn’t about endorsing spam in any way, or suggesting that you do anything unethical. But as much as we hate spam and wish it didn’t exist, we can’t deny one fact. Spammers make a killing online. Just to give you an idea, last year a Russian investigation found a network of spammers selling fake goods and fake pills online. Each spammer was making, on average, $4,600 per day. Sure, the spammers use the “law of large numbers” to achieve these results. But you also need marketing savvy to make more than $1.5 million a year selling fake stuff to people who would rather shoot themselves in the left foot than listen to you. When I started looking more closely at their tactics, I found some valuable lessons any marketer should know. 1. Go where the fish are What is the most important factor you need to have if you want to go fishing? Most people will say the fishing rod. Others will say the bait, or a boat. Interestingly enough, they are all wrong. The most important element of the equation is the presence of lots of fish . If you have a lake full of fish but don’t have a fishing rod or bait, you can probably still improvise something that would let you enjoy a fish dinner tonight. But no matter how great your bait or how cutting-edge your equipment, if there aren’t any fish, there’s no fish dinner. Spammers know this, and they always focus their efforts on the niches with the largest number of fish. That means they always target known customers willing to spend money. Examples include health-related niches, luxury goods, anti-virus software, and, of course, men who want access to certain prescription medicines without getting into embarrassing conversations with their doctors. Lesson learned: If you target a niche that’s too obscure, you’ll have a hard time making money even if your product and marketing are outstanding. If you target a large and profitable market, of course you’ll face more competition. But it’s a lot easier to improve your product and marketing than it is to manufacture buying customers out of thin air. 2. The money is in the list Email is the most direct type of communication we have. That’s why spammers love it so much. It allows them to display their messages right in the face of their victims. Now, if creepy, bottom-dwelling spammers get a conversion rate high enough to keep them in business, imagine what kind of results you can get with: A legitimate, permission-based list of people who want to hear from you, Terrific content that benefits the reader, and Smart, respectful promotion of excellent products and services? Lesson learned: If you are not building your email list, you are almost certainly leaving a lot of money on the table. Blogs, social networking, and various kinds of advertising are all useful tools. But email is still the “killer app” for building relationships with your prospects and clients. 3. Copywriting, copywriting, copywriting Ever wondered how scammers manage to convince people to buy fake products? It comes down to one word: copywriting. Spammers may not always write the most poetic English. But they do use solid, time-tested copywriting techniques. If you master the essentials of copywriting yourself, you’d be able to sell crappy products to a fair number of people. (Not that we recommend that.) But because you have a quality product or service and a great reputation, you’ll be able to sell it to lots and lots of people . Who will, in turn, tell their friends about how terrific you are. There are lots of places you can get solid copywriting advice, including: The Copywriting 101 series on Copyblogger (free) Copyblogger’s Internet Marketing for Smart People newsletter (free) Read classic books on copywriting (inexpensive) Take a paid copywriting course — one that focuses on persuasive writing that sells rather than beautiful or “creative” writing (can be expensive, but if you’re a serious marketer, it’s worth it) Lesson learned: Copywriting matters just as much as having a quality product or service. In some situations it matters even more. Never shortchange the attention and care you give to your copywriting. 4. Scale matters Do you know how many emails a spammer needs to send out to get one sale? More than a million. That’s right, their conversion rates are usually lower than 0.0001%. So how can they make those thousands of dollars per day in profits? By sending out millions and millions of messages. Obviously we are not saying you should start spamming people like there is no tomorrow. What you need to keep in mind, however, is that even great conversion rates are still pretty low in the scheme of things. If you were able to convert 5 or 6% of your list to becoming paying customers, you’d be doing a fantastic job. Which means 95% of your list won’t ever spend a dime with you. In fact, for many marketers, a conversion rate of 1% is doing quite well. That means if you have 1,000 subscribers on your email list and you send them an email talking about your latest product, you’re doing well if 10 people buy it. Lesson learned: Numbers aren’t the only thing, but they do matter. If your main income source is your website, learn how to get as much traffic as possible. If your main income source is your email list, learn how to get as many subscribers as possible. How to do that? Keep following blogs like this one and putting their advice into action. About the Author: Daniel Scocco is the owner of Daily Blog Tips . He is also the author of the “Make Money Blogging” ebook, which you can download for free by signing up for his newsletter here .

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4 Things an Ethical Internet Marketer Can Learn from Spammers

The Betty Crocker Secret to Email Marketing that Works

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You’ve heard it a thousand times: the money’s in the list. If you’re serious about getting results online, you need to build a list of people who are paying attention to you, typically an email list. So how do you get people to sign up for your email newsletter? You probably already know the answer to this one: Reward them. Give subscribers something great as a “thank you” for signing up. This is usually some form of content — a useful video, a killer PDF special report or white paper, an exclusive podcast. Sure, everyone else does that. Because it works. It works . . . if you do it the right way. Giving away something good will get people to sign up for your email list, no question. The problem is, what address will they do it with? It’s not like it’s hard to find an email address. Gmail is just one of the many excellent services that will give you one (or a bunch) for free. Double opt-in forces your reader to give you a real email address. But real addresses are cheap. Readers have dozens of ways to capture your valuable free reward, then ditch the rest of your email once they’ve got their prize. They might unsubscribe (best case scenario). They might throw the email address away or just quit checking it. They might set up a filter that automatically pours your messages right into their Delete folder. If they’re jerks, they may just mark you as spam so they don’t have to see you again, rather than take the “trouble” of unsubscribing. It happens. (Incidentally, this is why you must make it stupidly easy to unsubscribe from your stuff. If it’s more than a click or two, you’ll regret it.) You can’t make anyone pay attention to you in the virtual world. You can’t trick them into it either, at least not for more than a few seconds. Some of the smartest traditional advertising writers figured this out a long time ago. They created advertising that didn’t look like advertising . . . advertising that was inherently useful. Make your advertising too valuable to throw away It’s funny how many of our moms’ and grandmas’ most-treasured recipes came from the back of product boxes. Food packagers know that recipes are irresistible. Human beings are an omnivorous and naturally curious creature. We enjoy novelty. We benefit from eating a variety of foods. Put simply, we want something new for dinner. Recipes teach readers how to use more of the product being sold. And recipes feel inherently valuable. They promise a fantastic collection of benefits: Exciting new tastes, happy family members, harmony at dinner time, and kids who will actually eat their green beans. Recipes, including back-of-the-box recipes, get clipped and passed along and carefully preserved. A good-sounding recipe is reason enough to try that pancake mix or new pasta shape. The recipe on the back of the peanut butter jar is advertising, yes. But it’s advertising that actually gets your attention. It’s too valuable to throw away. Your topic has a recipe Some topics have literal recipes. (Weight loss being the most obvious one.) The act of nourishing ourselves has spawned hundreds of sub-niches, from slow food to raw food to grab-some-calories-on-the-run food. For most topics, the “recipes” are metaphorical. You might teach a recipe for financial independence. A recipe for a fulfilling retirement. A recipe for getting a better job. A recipe for a happy marriage. Some recipes are complex and some are simple. Some readers want Gourmet and some want White Trash Cooking . You’re the one who decides how easy you’ll make the recipes you offer. You can use a recipe anywhere Great blogs usually give lots of good recipes. The special report or white paper can be a single very strong recipe. And a great information product or membership site is often a collection of recipes that work together. But one of my very favorite spots for a recipe is the email newsletter. More specifically, it’s the email autoresponder , a tool that I now consider essential for every marketing project I work on. Newsletters (what’s new in your business, what’s the latest promotion, what fresh exciting offers can you make to your customer) are an excellent tool. But they’re 1000 times better when they kick off with a terrific autoresponder. Maybe it’s 8 Tips for Being a Better Dad , or 7 Ways to Know if Stock Trading is Right for You , or 20 Keys to Internet Marketing Success . There are always a number of steps. (In fact, they look a lot like our friend the numbered list post , don’t they?) They always build on one another. And they’re always a recipe for some result the reader wants to have. A sequence of steps trains your reader Are you seeing why this works better than a single-shot special report, podcast, or video? When you create an email sequence that forms a killer recipe, the reader develops the habit of opening each message. It’s got a critical step, after all, to the recipe he’s trying to cook up. Sure, he can still ditch you when he’s finally captured the final sequence. But by that time, if you’ve given a recipe worth having, you’ve created some trust. Your reader has started to know and like you. You’ve built a little sense of reciprocity. You’ve emailed him 9 times in a row and you haven’t sent him any crap. Just valuable, good stuff that gets him a result he wants. Think he’s likely to open that 10th email? The recipe for a great email autoresponder Make sure your “recipe” delivers a solution that your reader really wants. Break your recipe into a sequence of 7 – 10 steps. (You can do more if you’re ambitious.) It’s best if each step delivers a positive result and stands on its own. Deliver your recipe via the autoresponder function of your email marketing program. If your program doesn’t let you put together a robust autoresponder, find a new program. Write the best content you can for your autoresponder. The time you put in now can continue to work hard for your business for years to come. Rather than selling your products or services, start to “sell” your terrific free autoresponder. It will build trust and rapport so that down the line you can fully explain all the benefits of what you do. If you want an example of what we mean, take a look at our own version, the free Copyblogger Internet Marketing for Smart People newsletter. How about you? Are you delivering a recipe to your readers? What formats are working well for you? Let us know about ‘em in the comments. About the Author : Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe .

betty crocker The Betty Crocker Secret to Email Marketing that Works

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The Betty Crocker Secret to Email Marketing that Works