KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays (37 page)

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Authors: Joel Comm,Mark Victor Hansen

BOOK: KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays
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WEBMASTERWORLD
 
My own subscription site is pretty complex. I’ve packed in a ton of features in my aim to overdeliver. But a subscription site doesn’t have to be that complicated. WebMasterWorld (
www.webmasterworld.com
) is essentially a forum, and for a long time, it was a free forum (
Figure 8.9
). When it came to monetizing the site, there was a problem: A forum is a place for open discussion, and those open discussions often involve criticisms of the companies advertising on the site.
 
Rather than attempt to censor discussions, WebMasterWorld instead chose to ask members to pay a subscription fee of $89 for six months or $149 for a year. The hope was that the value of the sometimes technical information on offer would more than pay for the cost of the subscription.
 
Some of the older threads can be read for free. They act as sources of information, inviting potential participants in and demonstrating the quality of the knowledge on offer. But to start a thread or to take part in one, users have to sign up.
 
There are a couple of points to note here.
 
The first is WebMasterWorld’s simplicity. There are no whiz-bang features. Subscribers are paying for the chance to access each other’s knowledge. That’s all. The site provides a means for them to do that.
 
Figure 8.9
WebMasterWorld gives some content away for free. The rest you have to pay for.
 
The second point is that WebMasterWorld depends on its users not just to pay the subscription fees, but also to deliver value for those fees. The site was free for a long time and built up a solid reputation long before it started charging. For a subscription site, that level of trust is vital. People need to know who you are before you can ask them to start paying a subscription fee.
 
Branding
 
Building a brand is more of an art than a science. Successful brands have understood the messages they want to communicate and the tools that they want to use to broadcast those messages. It’s a process that takes time, but one that should end with the customer recognizing the seller’s name and understanding that the company is reliable and trustworthy.
 
There have always been many different ways of creating that brand, from design to advertising and now viral advertising. But the Web has now made it possible for individuals to create their own personal brands and use them to build their businesses.
 
Figure 8.10
Tony Hsieh of Zappos uses Twitter to create a personal brand and connect with customers.
 
ZAPPOS
 
Sure, there are personal brands that are bigger than that of Tony Hsieh, CEO of
Zappos.com
(
www.zappos.com
). Any story about Steve Jobs sends tech stocks flying across Nasdaq. Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, has tried to balloon around the world to attract attention to his brand. But they’re both old school. Tony Hsieh has helped to turn his online footwear and clothing store into a multi-million-dollar business in part by building his personal brand on the Web.
 
One way in which he has done that is through Twitter (
Figure 8.10
). Tony’s Twitter background is all about the site, but his timeline is packed with inspirational quotes as well as information about his life. It’s just one part of the company’s branding, but it’s helped to build a relationship with his customers so strong that in November 2009, Amazon bought the company in an $847 million stock buyout.
 
Coaching
 
Coaching usually involves a personal connection between seller and buyer. That means you have to find the channel that makes you most comfortable. Phone consultations are always simple, but webinars can work, classroom settings can bring in lots of people at the same time, and giant workshops can cram a year’s income into one weekend. As long as you have the information and an audience eager to learn that information, your coaching method is up to you.
 
JACK THE GARDEN COACH
 
Most coaches sell information that will help their audiences make money. That makes sense. It’s always easier to demonstrate the value of your knowledge when the audience can estimate how much they can earn once they know it. But it is possible to sell information that’s just fun to know. Jack McKinnon is a gardening coach. He’s been a professional gardener for 35 years; he writes about gardening and also coaches private gardeners in the Bay Area. His web site
JacktheGardenCoach.com
(
www.jackthegardencoach.com
) simply explains who he is, what he does, and invites people to drop him a line to book him for a two-hour consultation in their garden (
Figure 8.11
).
 
Figure 8.11
Jack McKinnon teaches people to garden. It’s not a moneymaking thing. It′s a fun thing.
 
There are news items and links to his gardening articles that help to build trust, and Jack is also planning to offer downloads of his gardening tips, a smart way to use information products to create an audience. But the coaching itself couldn’t be more enjoyable for him: He visits clients, walks around in their garden for a couple of hours, and tells them what they can do to make their garden better. Simple.
 
Conclusion
 
When James Ritty, an Ohio saloon owner, created the first cash register in 1879, his motives were pretty simple. He wanted to stop his employees from stealing his takings. His machine, based on a device that counted the number of revolutions a ship’s propeller made, kept track of his business’s sales. Later versions included a drawer for the money. Putting a bell on that drawer meant that he also knew when his employees were handling the cash.
 
Registers have changed a bit since then. They’re now digital, programmable, and can even track the purchasing patterns of individual customers, enabling the seller to make personalized special offers. They’re more likely to take credit cards than cash, and now that Jack Dorsey, the brains behind Twitter, has invented Square, a small credit card reader that plugs into the earphone socket of an iPhone, they can even fit in your pocket.
But they no longer go KaChing.
That’s a shame, because to entrepreneurs, it’s a wonderful sound. Each ring is an endorsement, a reminder that all of their hard work has been done for a reason. They’ve had the idea; they’ve implemented the idea; and now they’re getting their reward.
This book hasn’t made a KaChing sound, either. But it has given you the means to make deals and take cash.
For anyone with a head for business and a mind to be his own boss, the Internet represents an open country of unlimited opportunity. Mining that opportunity will take effort. Once your passive revenue systems are in place you’ll be able to relax—a little—but it will take time and solid work to put those structures in place.
The good news is that the structures now come almost prefabricated. If once building an Internet site meant poring over code and tracking down bugs in the HTML, today’s Web publishers can buy templates off the shelf. It’s as though the Wild West were still out there, but instead of heading out into the wilderness with a tin plate and a lot of dreams, you get to choose your patch... then build your own town by dropping in the proven businesses you want to run.
Of course, you still have to bring people into the town. You have to offer services and products that people want to buy. You need to create a brand so that visitors know what they’re getting when they pass through, then persuade them to stick around because they like it. That’s work, but it’s work that’s available to anyone willing to do it.
The Internet provides all the opportunity that anyone could wish for and makes it available at a price that’s incredibly low. When you can create an ad-supported web site, in minutes, for free, you won’t be able to find an opportunity with lower entry requirements—or higher potential.
In this book, I’ve described the most important models that I’ve used to build my seven-figure Internet business.
I started by pointing out the size of the Internet’s opportunity. That you no longer need to be a geek, a programmer, or even possess any technical knowledge at all to become an Internet publisher means that the Internet’s opportunities are now available to anyone. That’s an incredible thing.
I then talked about what you will need to be a success online: You’ll need to be you. I explained how everyone has unique knowledge, and why that unique knowledge (whether it comes from the workplace or from the things you love to do in your spare time) has value. The Internet lets you cash in on that value.
Usually that’s done by creating content, and in Chapter 3, I discussed seven types of content that you can create and almost a dozen different ways of monetizing that content through advertising.
Web content is free; information products cost money, often lots of money. The source of the information is the same. You’re still telling people what you know about your job or your hobby, but you’re doing it in more detail than a web site allows... and charging a price much closer to the true value of that knowledge. Nor is it particularly difficult to create, sell, and deliver those products. You can even buy a shopping cart off the shelf these days.
When you sell your information products, you’ll be relying on affiliates, independent resellers who earn a commission for every sale. That’s an opportunity that you can take up as well. Much though depends on the connection that you manage to build with your audience. Whenever you’re selling online, you have to guide your market through a four-step sales process that takes leads from knowing you and liking you to trusting you and paying you. That’s particularly true of affiliate products, which work best when the links are delivered in the text as part of a personal recommendation.
Affiliate sales have to be made again and again. Subscription fees to membership sites are renewed automatically, provided you can deliver services and products of high enough quality to attract subscribers and keep them on board. In Chapter 6, I revealed the ingredients of a successful membership site and explained how you can build one.
Finally, when your brand is strong enough and your community’s trust in you is deep enough, you can even offer personal coaching, a wonderfully rewarding way to sell your knowledge and help people achieve their dreams.

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