Selling Yourself

First of all, who is your audience? Think about what you are trying to accomplish. Think about the people you want to talk to. What are they interested in? Use search engine optimization to help you attract an audience.

My target audience is working class people who want to improve themselves and homeless people, drug addicts and criminals who actually want to recover and improve themselves. People who are struggling to survive.

Finding Customers

You’re going to have to make your website an entertaining education to make a profit. I am a recovering addict myself and my primary objective for this business is to help anyone who wants help and is willing to work on improving themselves.

You’ve got to let everyone know you are in business and what business you are in. You can do that on and off line. Start working on your search engine optimization. Do your research and find a few video hosting services and get your stories out there.

Watch out for user agreements that lock you into exclusive contracts. You want your stories on as many channels as you can get them on.

Using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one way to get started attracting an audience. Getting a business card and fliers that you can pass around is another way to attract people to your website.

Your going to have to get in the habit of talking about your business all the time. Trying to do everything on line may not be the best strategy. Definitely use the Internet. Just use other ways as well. Get out of the house and meet new people.

You don’t want to be obnoxious about it, but learn how to start conversations about your business. Set yourself a schedule to go out a certain number of days every week, to talk to people in your neighborhood about your business.

Attracting Customers

Video production compliments written stories very well. A lot of my target audience doesn’t like to read very much. I recommend that you learn to love reading. You don’t really need to understand what you are reading. Just read the manual and use the software and you will gradually learn to understand it. Watch the videos.

Learning is an important part of your business. Schedule a significant amount of time for you to do your research. Manual labor is not the best way to earn a living. Make yourself valuable. Study. A lot.

Instead of watching TV, work. Produce new content. Study. Improve your old content.

So, how does a loner, who likes to read scientific journals for the fun of it, attract an audience of people who don’t like to read at all? How can I teach you to like to read?

There are a lot of jobs that need to be done. Construction, cleaning, case managers and probation officers are great careers. If that’s what you want to do, then by all means get good at it. Be a high performance carpenter or electrician. We have machines that do a lot of the labor. Learn how to be a machine operator.

Construction is a good, high paying job. Those operators make a good living. Take good care of yourself. Exercise. Qigong is my favorite form of exercise. Eat lots of natural whole food, not processed food.

Get married. Have kids. Raise a family. I’ve been so busy, desperately trying to survive, that I failed to do that and I regret that very much. Now, I’m coming up on 64 and I’m still all alone.

I did get married once, for about 4 years. I ruined that relationship. I’m sorry about that. It taught me that giving is a lot more important that getting. Success in romance is about sharing with your partner, just like finance is all about trading with your community. Be productive. Help people every chance you get.

I stopped using drugs about 30 years ago and I’ve been working on improving myself ever since then. I’ve made a lot of progress. I’ve actually been working on this story telling business for all of my life. I’ve finally got my story published. Now, I want and need to attract an audience.

I believe my stories are very valuable. They are not all that academically correct. They’re not very business professional. And yeah, they’re not politically correct either. They are a result of reading thousands of books and half a century of seeking the truth, to learn my way out of the violence and abject poverty I was born into. The stories on this website and in my books is a very advanced, entertaining education.

I’ve noticed that my writing style has a rough edge. I like my writing style. I feel like a combination of Spock from Star Trek and Columbo, the clumsy and absentminded detective. I feel like a clumsy and absent minded professor. I am a high performance, holistic healer and teacher.

Educating/Entertaining Your Audience

If you read all the stories on this website and watch all the videos, I promise you will get an extremely advanced, entertaining education.

The stories are a catalyst that will unleash the creative freedom within you. Its already within you. Its in every human being. The problem is, it has been bottled up by injury and by a lack of proper education. Seek the truth.

You have to have ambition. Not selfish ambition, which is the dark side of human nature. Have faith, hope and love of yourself and everyone around you. Strive to improve yourself and make the world a better place.

Everyone is important. No one is more or less important than anyone else. Thinking you are more or less important than anyone else is a character defect. Love and respect every human being, individually and collectively.

Even if you are doing manual labor for some uncaring corporation, make sure the corporation gets a good deal trading with you. Justice is a feature of reality that is just as real and constant as the law of gravity or the speed of light. Sooner or later you will be rewarded for all of your thoughts, words and deeds. Be fair, to yourself and everyone else. Ultimately, we’re all servants of the one true God.

Stay humble. Submission to God is the true nature of freedom. Unlike animals, who follow natural laws of biological instinctively; humans, who have instinct and emotion in common with animals, our submission to God is voluntary. That is the big difference between animals and civilization human beings.

Closing the Sale

Sales is a great job. It doesn’t require a lot of manual labor. It is a talent that can be learned. The problem is that a lot of poor homeless drug addicts may not have the right temperament to do it. Desperation scares people away. You need to be willing to give, rather than take. Serve other people, rather than your own selfish ambition.

A bad reputation doesn’t help. People naturally want to trust the people they trade with. Trustworthiness is a very important character trait that you can cultivate in your own personality. It starts with genuinely wanting to help people.

Desperately wanting someone to buy what you are selling does not inspire trust. Its your thoughts, words and deeds. Ubuntu is a good attitude. Be friendly. Try to understand what your customer wants and needs and show them how you can fulfill those wants and needs.

Remember that your customer wants pictures, not paint and brushes. Focus on benefits, the beautiful pictures the customer can create with the painting supplies that you are selling, rather than the features of the painting supplies.

Make sure you do not spam anyone. I don’t mind advertising, but I despise being interrupted by an advertisement popping up in the middle of a story I’m trying to read.

Make sure you have everything you need to close the sale. Have the paperwork handy. Lead your prospect to your most wanted response, which is to buy what you are selling.

My most wanted response is to cause a dramatic improvement in your life as a result of reading all the stories on this website, or at least many of them. This website is a very advanced, free and open source, entertaining education for anyone who is interested.

The value I have to share is that I love reading and have a world class education. I don’t have any credentials, but I definitely have a good education.

I am also recovering from extremely dire circumstances. I have slept on concrete floors. I have experienced hard core drug addiction, poverty and homelessness many times and I am making good progress in my recovery. I’ve been clean for more than 30 years. I have a job and an apartment and I’m creating this website to help people recover from whatever trauma you are recovering from.

Bluehost is the company I use for hosting homeoffice.studio. They have been great to work with. Every time I’ve had a problem, which is probably twice in four or five years, they have responded and solved the problem immediately.

Remember, you are following your own business plan, building your own free enterprise. If you are selling online, make sure your automated sales processes are working flawlessly. Have your security well thought out and up and running. Make your safe and secure sales process as easy as possible. Make trading with you a pleasant experience.

Plan, do and review. Make a plan to create prosperity being productive. Execute the plan. Review what works and what doesn’t work and refine your strategy and tactics.

All photos by Bob Mccoy