Sales and Marketing
Practice and get really good at make good deals and closing the sale. Sales and marketing are very valuable skills that you can learn. Marketing attracts prospects, sales is making the trade. Plan how you are going to do each one of these important tasks.
Creating content is the heart of your business, sales and marketing are the lungs of your business. You need both, to have a prosperous and sustainable business.
Get really good at telling your story. In person, in writing, on video. Podcasts are good channels for communicating your ideas. Explain the benefits of your products and services. What problems do they solve and how do they solve them?
Ask a lot of questions. Figure out what your prospects want or need and explain how your products and services can fulfill those wants and needs.
Make sure your stories are valuable. The stories can be your main product or they can describe another product that you intend to sell? Or you could be selling products that are only indirectly related to your stories. For example, you could have advertisements for mountain climbing equipment in a story about climbing mountains.
What is your unique selling proposition? You’re not going to be able to earn a living producing free and open source education. The free and open source education can be an attraction, to attract an audience that you can sell other products to.
Affiliate marketing is a good way to earn income. It will probably not earn enough income to live on, at least not to start with. You can sell website hosting and other digital products and services.
You can build a store using eBay, Etsy, Amazon. Or you can go with the small business model and sell ClickBank or Commission Junction products.
It seems to me like CJ Affiliate is a good way for home office entrepreneurs to earn income. It has a lot of educational content, to teach you how to be a successful affiliate marketer.
I just looked at Barnes and Nobles webpage and their affiliate program is run by CJ Affiliates. So, that combination will supply a very good selection of very valuable products you can sell with a CJ Affiliates strategy.
The advantage of selling Barnes and Noble, rather than Amazon is, you will be working with an alternative to the giant monopolistic everything store. Barnes and Noble may be a bit more selective about their affiliates than Amazon.
The advantage of working with Amazon is you’ll be working with the biggest company in the world, for now. Alibaba and other Chinese companies are growing fast and may be even bigger than Amazon.
The CJ Affiliates and Barnes and Noble plan looks like a good strategy. Using CJ Affiliates will allow you to promote individual entrepreneurs, along with the Barnes and Nobles selection of literature.
CTPM
Ken Evoy, author of Make Your Site Sell and developer of SoloBuildIt!, taught me to focus on creating content first. Then work on attracting traffic. Then presell other people’s products. Then monetize the your website.
Make sure you have a substantial amount of valuable content. Don’t waste your audience’s time with fluff. Teach them something valuable.
Then, start working on attracting traffic. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important part of your business. There will be a learning curve. Investigate the technology and incorporate it into your work flow.
Try to automate your SEO as much as possible. Use your Instant Articles for WordPress plugin to automatically post your blog posts to a Facebook page. Do the same thing for as many social media websites as you can. Make sure you find ones that your stories fit into naturally.
Once you get a high performance traffic funnel built, start preselling your products. Writing stories about subjects related to the products. Not necessarily directly about the product. You could write a story about electric automobiles with affiliate links to sell car insurance.
Set up a secure and convenient payment system. Turn your computer into a cash machine, pumping money into your bank account. PayPal, Bitcoin and GnuCash are major players, there are many others. Find a good combination tools and partners for your business and deploy them.
Meetup at Your Local Cafe
You’ve got to get out of your home office often. Work in your local cafe. Socialize with the people of your neighborhood. Find out what is going on.
Start building a database of people. Get in the habit of asking for contact information. Practice meeting people. Find out what their interests are.
Attend meetups about subjects you are interested in. Meetups and conventions are excellent gatherings you can attend to meet people and cultivate relationships. Practice your public speaking skills at Toastmasters International.
Start developing a list of associates you can trade with. Develop a “Mastermind Group,” as in Napoleon Hill’s, How to Think and Grow Rich. Practice intentionally cultivating relationships with people who have interests similar to yours, and with people who have interests that compliment yours.
Travel to other cities to market your products. Make sure you are not always talking about your business. Just be friendly. Kind, friendly and polite is a good way to be. Have fun, exploring earth and visiting with the people of earth. Enjoy sharing your story.
Talk about your business when the time is right. Naturally. Educate your audience about what you are accomplishing with your product or service. Don’t push your stuff on your audience. Let them decide if they want or need it. Just let them know what you have and invite them to try it out.
Tell people what you are doing and why. Tell your stories in an inviting tone of voice. Don’t tell your customers what they need, ask them what they want and explain to them how you can solve their problems better than anyone else. Remember to speak with an inviting tone, not a prescriptive one.
Ask For The Sale
When the time is right, ask for the sale. Be prepared to close the sale, gracefully. Have any documentation you need neatly arranged and easily accessible.
And follow up. Send your customers a thank you note if it is appropriate. Ask them if your products are working well for them and offer to remedy the situation if not.
Make sure every customer you trade with is satisfied and happy to have traded with you. Every deal is a big deal. The details are important. Be fair and honest and make sure every deal is good for everyone involved.
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