Advice on getting started building an email list and generating online income

Some in my advanced coaching group was having trouble getting focused and figuring out where to put her energy/time and what to do first.

Here were my suggestions. After I wrote them, I made them a little more generic and thought some of you might want to read them. Could they apply in your situation?

I would put together a free report on your topic. About 15 pages, written in Word, spruced up with some graphics and turned into a PDF. Put another free offer of an audio someone will record interviewing you on your topic. Mention this audio in the report so even if people forward it to others, your name, contact information and your offer will be in there.

Send the offer of the free report out to anyone you can think of that you have permission to email and ask them to forward it to anyone they think might be interested. Announce it on your Facebook feed; your Twitter feed; etc. Put up a YouTube video on your topic area and put a live, clickable link to the free report on the YouTube description box.

To do this, you’ll need:
1. To have set up a mailing list management service (like AWeber or Constant Contact or iContact or MadMimi) to capture emails, manage them and send out autoresponders.
2. Write the free report, get someone you know to edit it and check for errors. Then get some graphically-oriented person to fancy it up and turn it into a PDF.
3. Start thinking about what products or services you want to sell once you gather a list and get more well known. Begin to create those products/services; create a page that describes each one somewhere on the web (on a blog or website); set up an online shopping cart and set up the product or service you are selling on that shopping cart; then get the code for that product and service and put that on the sales page you set up.
4. Start thinking about what additional services/products you would offer people who bought anything from you (this is called “the upsell” in marketing/sales). It could be a more advanced course (audio, video, online) going more in depth on the topic, etc.
5. Set up another page to describe and sell your upsell and arrange to send people to that page after they have purchased your initial product.

Will Smith’s wisdom – You gotta see this!

I can’t get no . . .

I read the results of a survey by the Conference Board today about Americans’ job satisfaction. It turns out that job satisfaction is the lowest it’s been in more than 22 years. Only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. Fewer people consider their jobs interesting; they are not happy with their incomes and the high cost of health care.

That was true for me many years ago (in 1981, actually) and, as a result, I left my job and began working for myself. I have never regretted it.

When are you gonna get some satisfaction and start your own enterprise? It doesn’t have to be full time (until you are sure you can support yourself and your lifestyle).

It is easier than ever with the web tools and services available and all sorts of free information about how to do it, including this blog.

Could this be the year that you will fill out a survey like the Conference Board’s and say you are satisfied with your work?

What are you waiting for? The year is already 5 days old. Time’s a wastin’.

Your TALK/DO ratio

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
– John Andrew Holmes

Some years ago I read an article by Stewart Brand, the founder of The Whole Earth Catalog. He said that when he met someone, he paid attention to their TALK/DO ratio. How much did they talk about doing things versus how much they actually did things.

Since I was more of a dreamer at that time, this idea had an impact on me. When I first began to write books, I knew I woud have a tendency to be “fixin’ to get ready.” I would read books about how to be a writer rather than write. I would dream about giving presentations rather than present.

So, I deliberately went against my “natural” instincts and just plunged ahead and started doing.

As one of my mentors, Milton Erickson, said: If you fall on your face, at least you are heading in the right direction. Of course, taking action, I did fall on my face quite regularly, but I got books published and I got hired to speak.

My point: Examine your own TALK/DO ratio and adjust as necessary.

Be like cement

I was reading something today that scientists had only recently discovered the structure of cement. Turns out that its molecules are a combination of order and randomness, giving rise to its strength.

Coincidentally, I was talking to my friend Rob today and we were talking about a mutual friend who is very creative but not very grounded.

These two things came together in my mind and I decided to write this post.

In this life, it is important to be creative and randomly generate new ideas and approaches as well as have some order and structure. Having some of both will take you far.

I tend toward the creative and flaky and it takes effort to discipline myself and learn structure and focus and practical stuff.

Which side do you need to lean more toward these days?

And what would that look like?

Use free screencasting services to make videos

You can buy screencasting software (that records you talking over actions you are showing on your computer screen and makes a video) or you can use free online services or software.

Paid software for Windows: top choice is Camtasia. For Macs: Camtasia, Screenflow, Screenium, SnapZPro.

Free sites and software for Macs and Windows: Jing (http://www.jingproject.com/), Screencastle (http://screencastle.com/) and Screentoaster (http://www.screentoaster.com/).

What use are these? Well, you can share your expertise about some computer software or procedure, but more likely you would show a slide program of you talking about some area of knowledge you want to share with people and record a voiceover, thereby creating a video in which you do not have to appear (and worry about your hair, or the lighting, etc.).

Post it on YouTube, Vimeo, ShowMeDo or other video sharing sites or sell it.

The Power of Completion

Years ago, I attended a time management seminar and the presenter made a point that has stuck with me: Anything that is incomplete in your life can drain energy and completion can bring or free energy.

Every time you walk by that bill that needs to be paid or that paper that needs to be filed or that leaky faucet that needs to be fixed, a little bit of your attention and energy go into that unfinished thing.

I heard an organizational expert speaking the other day who claimed that every paper on your desk distracts you 5 times a day. I don’t know where she got that (I am suspicious of these kinds of statistics, like “we only use 10% of our brains”; first problem-how do “they” know this; second, stats rarely come in even numbers like 10% or 5%), but even if it isn’t exactly scientific fact, she has a point.

What can you handle easily that could create energy that can then help you complete or tackle other projects or undone things?

Try your own unscientific experiment and discover whether or not the principle is true for you. Does completion bring energy and do incomplete things drain your energy?

About teleseminars

Hear me talk about setting up and doing teleseminars and what they might be good for in your work. This one, even though it has already happened, is available still. Visit: http://www.billohanlon.com/Teleseminar/Training.html

A cool new service; turn a PDF into a Word file

Boy, how I wish this free service had been available to me through the years. I often had the need to turn a PDF into an editable Word or text file.

Visit: http://www.PDFtoWord.com.

Diversifying at your point of vulnerability

I was trained as, and worked for years, as a psychotherapist. Because I have a restless mind, love to learn new things and am bored easily, I diversified my work life over the years. I began to give workshops and write books. Those activities began to be successful, so much so that my clinical practice became a minor part of my income.

But I had another motivation in the back of my mind as I pursued those new directions. I was always thinking about the possibility that depending on only one source of income could leave me vulnerable if conditions changed.

And, lo and behold, they did change. “Managed care” (which really meant limited therapy sessions that had to be approved by an overseer from the insurance company) swept through the field of therapy. I heard my colleagues complain bitterly about how this development had both reduced their income and intruded in a grating way on their autonomy. Some quit the field altogether.

Managed care was barely a blip on my radar screen, though. First, I stopped taking clients who used insurance or let them handle insurance issues on their own. Second, if they couldn’t afford therapy, I saw them for no charge. I could afford to do this since I made most of my income elsewhere.

The point: Identify places where your income is dependent on one (or very few) sources. And then diversify.

Of course, this is one of the things this blog is about: setting up diverse sources of passive, online, affiliate, automated and location-independent income; either to supplement your current income or to replace it entirely.

Where are you vulnerable to other people’s whims or sudden shifts in income? And what are you going to do about it?