What’s included?

This is the pricing question of our time.

First, from the buyer’s point of view: when I buy this car/boiler/phone, how much are the services that come with it going to cost me every month, forever?

We stand at the Verizon store agonizing about the extra $34 in posted price for one phone over the other, then sign a contract for $2400 in fees.

We are attracted to a car with a rebate, not caring about the $2000 extra in lifetime gas costs.

More and more, the thing we buy isn’t a thing, it’s a subscription. The thing might as well be free.

And from the seller’s point of view?

When you sell me that low-cost email service, did you also just get yourself on the hook for a lifetime of free support? What’s that going to cost you?

When you take her reservation at your hotel, are you prepared to do all the work and attention you need to get a decent review on TripAdvisor? Ready for your CEO to take a call in the middle of the night, ready to comp meals, scramble teams of reps or engage in months of correspondence with that customer? Because that’s all included in your marketing costs now, isn’t it?

I recently hired someone to do some research and brainstorming. The first stage of what might become quite a bit of work. I was sort of amazed at the end of the short project… he asked me if I was happy with what I got, and I said, ‘no.’ He said, ‘sorry’ and walked away.

On one hand, this is dumb marketing, because he’d already done the hard work of establishing a customer, and wasn’t particularly interested in turning that customer into a happy referral.

On the other hand, the old school decision to view a transaction as a transaction, time to move on to the next, is getting more and more rare. Perhaps it’s an intentional act on his part, a way of doing business in the moment, without investing in or worrying about what comes as a result.

Your business has a core, a goal, a challenge and a deliverable. There is probably one thing that would transform your project, one success that changes things, one hurdle that’s tougher than the others. What’s difficult, what would respond to overwhelming attention? That’s the core.

Getting from here to there involves making sales, delivering on promises, overcoming the Dip and shipping.

Along the way, there are supporting tasks you can engage in, things you can do to make the goal easier to achieve.

A popular blog might gain attention and then trust and ultimately help you sell more widgets.

A lot of followers online might give you permission to tell a story that gets you better employees.

A vibrant party at SXSW can create buzz that gives your salespeople entree to important meetings.

These aren’t trivial activities. In fact, they’re part of what marketing means today. But…

But if they give you and your team an outlet to avoid the difficult work of achieving your goal ("I can’t go to that sales call, I’m busy uploading pictures of last night’s party to the blog and then tweeting out the url") then you’re not building, you’re hiding. Rich calls this playing with turtles. The thing is, the turtles are alive, and they’re going to demand a lot from you.

There’s a huge downside here: once your side activity gets going, it will lead to crises (we have an urgent email we have to answer), to feelings of abandonment (hey, you haven’t been on the forum lately!), to irresistible offers to have the CEO speak or get people involved. There will always be a feeling of sunk cost, of opportunities missed and of things on the verge because these are human movements, not paid ads.

Two choices: 1. find a way to make your goal completely aligned with the tactics you use to achieve it. What’s good for your blog is good for your business. or 2. Now that these approaches are working, and working incredibly well, it’s time to come up with boundaries so the tail doesn’t end up wagging the dog.

by ANDY JENKINS on MARCH 22, 2010

Ready… Fire! WAIT! No, Aim… Ready… WAIT! FIRE! No, wait…

If you attended the webinar I had with Frank Kern last week, you may have heard me say this, but I think it bears repeating:

“Failure is just a test result.”

I try to think that everything in business (and life in general) is a test of one kind of another. Meaning that if you don’t get the outcome you were trying for:

1. Think of a possible reason why it didn’t work.

2. Implement a test that eliminates that possible reason and try again.

3. If it didn’t work, go back to 1.

I guess that’s just my usual “maximum verbosity” way of saying “Practice makes perfect.” One of my heroes said it best:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Thomas A. Edison

Now, as much as I love that attitude, I have to admit that I’d *rather not* have to fail *10,000 times* in order to find something that works. There’s got to be a better way, right?

It turns out that we actually use Alternating Current (AC) to power the most of the modern world, contrary to Edison’s designs. AC was actually championed by Edison’s biggest rival, Nikola Tesla.

And in fact, Tesla actually worked for Edison early on and thought his trial-and-error process was B.S. too.

“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.

I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.”

Yeah! Now we’re onto something. If I can eliminate 90% of my work by applying a little theory and calculation, that means I only need to fail 1000 times. THAT’S do-able.

It might sound like a lot, but consider that with the internet, you can spend $100 on AdWords and get 1000 clicks to test nearly ANYTHING.

Failure online is a LOT cheaper than it was for Edison to try to make light bulb filaments out of every element known to man.

So how did Tesla do it?

“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind.

When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.”

Man, wouldn’t THAT be awesome? There’s just ONE little problem. Tesla was dealing with harnessing little particles called electrons.

They move according to entirely predictable laws of physics and electromagnetism. So any electrical engineer can make a
*pretty good* guess about how they’re going to behave.

That’s the whole reason it’s even possible to harness electricity at all, and how we use it to keep the lights burning and wheels turning across the globe.

But as marketers, we deal with a much more UNPREDICTABLE force: human nature. If electrons were as unreliable as people, we’d still be cooking on wood burning stoves by candle- light.

The fact is, when you’re dealing with homosapiens like us, you don’t know ANYTHING until you do live testing. You can use the best theories and make a good GUESS, but you can’t ever truly predict.

Every single launch I do surprises me in at least some small way. BUT I learn a little more each time and that informs how I do the NEXT launch. And guess what? I do better EACH time.

That’s why I hereby recommend to you the hybridized Edison/Tesla/Jenkins method for solving the problems you find in your business.

You’ve got to be like Edison and be ready to test stuff right away and either proceed or fail and move on. But you want to waste as little time as possible, so you need to plan ahead like Tesla.

However: If you spend TOO MUCH time in the planning phase, it can make it hard to identify exactly why it’s failing because you’ve over-thought things. That’s why you need BOTH!

Get WHATEVER it is you’re testing in front of REAL prospects and customers as soon as possible. See how they react, then use your noodle, think of something to test and then adjust accordingly.

MAD SCIENTIST DEGREES NOT REQUIRED:

Now, all this talk of electricity and eccentric geniuses and entrepreneurs might make it seem like a big convoluted procedure you need to go through to test like this.

It’s actually REALLY easy.

You just take the time to INTERACT with your prospects, add value to their lives, and try to make em better every single time you talk to them.

Then, every once in a while, if you have an idea to bounce of them and test out, you can just ASK and they are HAPPY to help. For example:

If you feel like you’re failing, or you feel like you can’t fail frequently or fast ENOUGH: leave me a comment below to share your thoughts.

Until next time,
Andy

P.S. If you have just one takeaway from this newsletter, remember that what feels like a failure can really be just one minor tweak away from lasting success. How lasting?

http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm

That’s a webcam where you can watch a light bulb from Edison’s time that’s been operating for 109 YEARS! Answer me this: If they can make them last that long, why don’t they ALL last that long?Conspiracy?
Remove me from this list

For most products and services, most of the time, people sign up for the Cheapest Reliable Alternative Plan.

If everything appears to be the same, then of course they’re going to pick the cheapest one that’s good enough.

In the face of this understandable strategy, you have a few choices:

You can be cheapest (difficult to sustain).

You can be more reliable (great if you can figure this out).

You can be redefine the playing the field to be the only one (most preferred).

Buying a new microphone or lights for your DJ business doesn’t do any of these three to your competitive status, it merely makes you feel good. Same with re-organizing your office, painting the parking spaces or buying a new laptop. They merely keep you where you were.

The scalable, profitable strategy is to change the game, not to become the most average.

Seth Godin

First, organize 1,000

Kevin Kelly really changed our thinking with his post about 1,000 true fans.

But what if you’re not an artist or a musician? Is there a business case for this?

I think the ability to find and organize 1,000 people is a breakthrough opportunity. One thousand people coordinating their actions is enough to change your world (and make a living.)

1,000 people each spending $1,000 on a special interest cruise equals a million dollars.

1,000 people willing to spend $250 to attend a day-long seminar gives you the leverage to invite just about anyone you can imagine to fly in and speak.

1,000 people voting as a bloc can change local politics forever.

1,000 people willing to try a new restaurant you find for them gives you the ability to make an entrepreneur successful and change the landscape of your town.

Even better, coordinating the learning and connections of this tribe of 1,000 is not just profitable, it’s rewarding. If you can take them where they want to go, you become indispensable (and respected).

What’s difficult? What’s difficult is changing your attitude. Instead of speed dating your way to interruption, instead of yelling at strangers all day trying to make a living, coordinating a tribe of 1,000 requires patience, consistency and a focus on long-term relationships and life time value. You don’t find customers for your products. You find products for your customers.

Seth Godin

Prepare to be sethificated by the soothsayer. . .

A friend is building a skating rink. Unfortunately, he started with uneven ground and the water keeps ending up on one side of the rink. Water’s like that, and you need a lot of time and power and money if you want to change it. One person, working as hard as he can, has little chance of persuading water to change.

Consider this quote from a high-ranking book publisher who should know better, "We must do everything in our power to uphold the value of our content against the downward pressures exerted by the marketplace and the perception that ‘digital’ means ‘cheap.’ …"

Hello?

You don’t have the power. Maybe if every person who has ever published a book or is ever considering publishing a book got together and made a pact, then they’d have enough power to fight the market. But solo? Exhort all you want, it’s not going to do anything but make you hoarse.

Movie execs thought they had the power to fight TV. Record execs thought they had the power to fight iTunes. Magazine execs thought they had the power to fight the web. Newspaper execs thought they had the power to fight Craigslist.

Here’s a way to think about it, inspired by Merlin Mann: Imagine that next year your company is going to make 10 million dollars instead of a hundred million dollars in profit. What would you do knowing that your profits were going to be far less than they are today? Because that’s exactly what the upstart with nothing to lose is going to do. Ten million in profit is a lot to someone starting with zero and trying to gain share. They don’t care that you made a hundred million last year from the old model.

If I’m an upstart publisher or a little-known author, you can bet I’m happy to sell my work at $5 and earn seventy cents a copy if I can sell a million.

Smart businesspeople focus on the things they have the power to change, not whining about the things they don’t.

Existing publishers have the power to change the form of what they do, increase the value, increase the speed, segment the audience, create communities, lead tribes, generate breakthroughs that make us gasp. They don’t have the power to demand that we pay more for the same stuff that others will sell for much less.

And if you think this is a post about the publishing business, I hope you’ll re-read it and think about how digital will change your industry too.

Competition and the market are like water. They go where they want.

Seth Godin

Traffic Getting Jumpstart

This is where I will list my step-by-step traffic-getting strategies for getting more traffic to your websites and blogs.

I call it my Traffic-Getting Jumpstart™ Master Plan.

I’ll start by adding a general outline and then I’ll come back and keep updating it with links to new videos and tutorials as I produce them… the videos and tutorials will that walk you through my “traffic getting” strategies one-by-one .

Not all of them will be posted on my blog.

Some will only be sent out via email so make sure you keep checking your inbox for my new and exclusive Traffic-Getting Tutorials.

Once again: This is the general process that I personally go through to ramp up traffic on a new blog.

Some, but not all of the techniques will also apply to static sites, social networking profile pages, or non-blog websites of any kind.

Each of the steps will be listed but not all of them will have tutorials… at least not for now.
But if you guys see one particular step that you’d like me to jump-forward to and “just create the damn tutorial now”… just leave a comment telling me so and I’ll see what I can do.

Here are the basic “Traffic-Getting Jumpstart™ Master Plan” steps that you should follow.

Remember, it’s knowing how to scale this out and leverage both technology and people to scale this out but everything can be done by just one person if you choose to… just don’t expect an avalanche of traffic for two hours worth of work on a site with only 10 pages in a market that no one cares about!

Always learn how to scale things out by leveraging technology and people… and pick highly competitive markets that people are actively searching for.

DO NOT USE THESE TECHNIQUES FOR SPAMMING THE SEARCH ENGINES!

There’s a fine line between using this technology  and techniques to increase your traffic… and using it to spam the hell out of the engines… don’t cross that line.

We are simply trying to increase awareness of, and increase traffic to, our sites leveraging the viral nature of blogs and web 2.0 sites and technologies.

That having been said:

Here’s my quick “2 hours or less”:

Traffic-Getting Jumpstart Master Plan

1. Pick a market

2. Register the domain

3. Install the Free SEO Blog Software

4. Change the blog’s theme

5. Install the banner ads, affiliate program ads, etc

6. Set up the email capture and first few follow up emails

7. Add content to blog

    a. Run a social bookmarking campaign on blog with one group of bookmarking accounts logins and at different times and days.

    b. Create supporting micro-sites mini-network (social profile pages at squidoo, hubpages, bumpzee, and small static hand built sites).

    c. Run a social bookmarking campaign on your micro-sites mini-network with a different set of bookmarking logins and at different times and days.

8. Submit site to SEO friendly directories sites using directory submission services.

9. Create video

    a. Distribute video with video sharing software

    b. Run a social bookmarking campaign on the videos sharing pages.

Steps 1 – 9 are enough to jumpstart the traffic to your new blog, static website, ecommerce website… and it only takes an hour or two.

If this is a site or market that you know is worth spending additional time on then you can follow these additional steps.

The following steps don’t take that much additional time but should, and can easily be, outsourced.

10. Every month (or sooner) go back and run the social bookmarking campaign again using new social bookmarking logins at different times and days.

11. Every month (or sooner) go back and create a new micro-site or social profile page to support your micro-sites mini-network.
12. Add posts to the blog that link/pingback to other authority blogs in the market.

13. Pick specific posts on your blog that you’d like to rank higher.

    a. Social bookmark those posts with random bookmarking login accounts

    b. Create a videos specific to those posts and load to youtube

    c. Blast that video out to video sharing sites

    d. Social bookmark the videos on the video sharing sites with random bookmarking logins and at different times and days.

    e. Find other authority blogs in the market and post content-rich comments on their blog with links heading back to the post you are trying to rank higher.

You can do the following steps yourself but I would strongly recommend you simply outsource them.

14. Outsource someone to spin articles for you and submit them to directories

15. Outsource someone to create new social bookmarking login accounts

16. Outsource someone to subscribe to your RSS feed and have them social bookmark your new posts (the RSS feed notifies them when there is a new post so they simply head over.

17. Outsource someone to post high-quality, relevant comments on other people’s blogs and forums (DO NOT COMMENT SPAM). Concentrate on ones that do not use the “no follow” attribute.

18. Rinse and Repeat steps 7 – 18+ for sites that are worth the effort.

How do you know if the site is worth the effort?

I can’t answer that for you… only you can answer that question since it is your time and money involved… what is “worth it” to you may not be worth it to the next person and vice-versa.

Ask yourself this question… “does this site (sites) add money and/or value to my business versus the time and effort it takes to rinse and repeat Jeff Johnson’s Traffic-Getting Jumpstart Master Plan?”

If the answer is “yes” then continue to “rinse and repeat” steps 7 through 18 and beyond.

And do yourself a favor and reinvest your earnings into your business by outsourcing the work that takes up the most time so you can concentrate on finding new markets and making money from the traffic you have.

I’ll keep emailing you new tutorials down the road so be sure to check your inbox for updates,

Jeff Johnson
UndergroundTrainingLab.com

Seth Godin is a gift to us all. He is a soothsayer and visionary of Web 1.1-3.0

He has just released a book, and at last measure the servers are on meltdown, so Im tickled to offer it to you here.

click:  www.tevisverrett.com/blog/library/what-matters-now-1.pdf

Here is the original article:

What Matters Now: get the free ebook

Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.

Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth it the effort. (Download here).

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

Here’s the deal: it’s free. Download it here. Or from any of the many sites around the web that are posting it with insightful commentary. Tweet it, email it, post it on your own site. I think it might be fun to make up your own riff and post it on your blog or online profile as well. It’s a good exercise. Can we get this in the hands of 5 million people? You can find an easy to use version on Scribd as well and from wepapers. Please share.

Have fun. Here’s to a year with ideas even bigger than these.

Here’s a lens with all the links plus an astonishing array of books by our authors.

Sweet, Frikkin’ Schweet!