Blog Marketing News For This Week

55 Lessons About Online Business Ive Learned Over 15 Years

By David Risley on November 11th, 2013

1. The most valuable asset of your business is your customer list. Do everything you can to build it. And take care of them. 2. Power is found in simplicity. Complexity is a sign of failure. 3. The key to building a real business is systems. Boiling everything you do down to a repeatable procedure is the only way you will EVER be able to move on to a new game. 4. Deadlines are important even when there is no threat attached to them. Any task will expand to meet the amount of time allotted to it. 5. The best way to get a lot done is to cut your available time to get it done in half.

In internet years, I am an old goon when it comes to blogging and online business. Ive been at it now for 15 years. I got started as a technology blogger, built that into a six-figure business, then started this site about 10 years later. In doing it myself, by helping other people do it, by people involved in mastermind groups and watching several businesses from the inside Ive learned alot. The learning never stops, really. Hell, sometimes you have to re-learn something you have forgotten. One thing about my evolution is that, while I got started focusing pretty exclusively on blogging, I ended up being acutely aware of the fact that what were really doing here is business. It might be a new breed of business, but it is still a business. And a lot of the entrepreneurial lessons that would hold true for any business hold true for an online business, too. Below, I will outline 55 lessons Ive learned after being in business now for 15 years. They dont come in any particular order. And, no doubt, a list of everything would be a lot longer than 55. But, I think you may find it interesting. Lets get started

6. The most important skill any entrepreneur can have is the skill of selling. 7. The #1 most important goal of a brand new entrepreneur is to make the first sale. Everything else is secondary. 8. Blogs are a great marketing platform. But, theyre not a business. And they never have been. 9. Blog monetization is the old-school way of thinking. The workable way is to build a real business which happens to have a blog. 10. Never get so entrenched in being the worker in your business that you forget to be the CEO. 11. When youve found out that a certain action is highly successful, dont stop doing it. 12. The only way to stay relevant in the world of business is to constantly be expanding. Staying steady and flat is actually the same as shrinking because the world is moving without you. 13. Money is not a valid reason not to outsource. You wont make money if you dont outsource. 14. Never get caught in the trap of comparing yourself to others. Only compare to your past self.

15. While others are treating people like a number, you can surpass them by treating people like people and acknowledging them. 16. Dont try to sound smart. Make sure what you do say is fully understood by the other party. 17. When money changes hands, thats not when the work stops. Thats when the work begins. 18. You will never grow your business by trying to make everybody happy. You have to know who YOU are, and allow those who resonate to connect with you. 19. Building a cohesive team is one of the more difficult things for an entrepreneur to do as he/she grows, but it is also the most valuable. 20. Never assume you know what your audience wants. Ask them. 21. The best way to complete a product you want to make is to pre-sell it. If nobody buys, it was a bad idea anyway and you just saved yourself a lot of work. If they do buy, they just lit a fire under your ass to get it done. 22. For anything to grow or expand, you must assign to it a statistic. Then, manage by the numbers. 23. Never fail to fire somebody out of discomfort. 24. Blogging every day is a waste of time. 25. Success isnt determined by how hard you work, or how long youve been doing it. It is determined by ingenuity combined with speed of implementation. 26. Never fail to maintain a personal connection once made. 27. The most important asset you have as an entrepreneur is your confidence. Protect it at all costs. 28. You wont succeed alone. Join a mastermind group. 29. If inbox zero is a lost cause for you, then it is time to reorganize your incoming lines of communication. 30. 20% of your time should be spent on content. The other 80% should be spent on marketing and business expansion. 31. Businesses which dont use content marketing will find it harder and harder to get noticed. 32. Continuity income is important for every business. For any one-off product you may sell, always find a way to build on continuity as an option. 33. The first step to making money online is to stop searching the internet for how to make money online. 34. Money is a result of delivering value to the world and to people who need a solution. 35. If you have to ask how long it will take before you will make money online, youve already failed. 36. Passive income only exists for people who busted their ass for awhile to build it. 37. Business cards are about as good as trash can liner in most cases.

38. When you stop working, really stop working. The internet lifestyle means nothing if you dont know how to shut it off. 39. Working doesnt mean going on Facebook. 40. Never put up shields to stop you from communicating directly with your readers and customers. 41. Just because you have been doing something for a long time doesnt mean you have to keep doing it. 42. The pride of doing it all by yourself is for idiots. 43. We all tend to be blind to our own constraints. Hiring a business coach or mentor is a great idea not just to learn something, but also to provide a different perspective grounded in experience. 44. Even while your business is small, structure it as if it were larger. Create different divisions for different areas. Create the systems for them. Even if youre the one doing all the jobs simultaneously, youll never grow unless you build something which can be occupied by another. 45. In order to get the sale, you have to ask for it. 46. Dont sell from your heels. If you feel back-off at the idea of selling your product, then you need to re-visit your product so that you can make it so important to your prospect that youd be doing them a disservice not to get them to buy it. 47. Creating systems for your business isnt just about future outsourcing. It is also to provide YOU a sense of order about what youre doing. Without systems, your business will seem like big ball of effort. 48. If you think and act small, youll stay small. 49. Not offering a high-end product or service is just leaving money on the table. The 80/20 curve shows that there will be a percentage of people who will take the higherpriced option. 50. Marketing automation is an important component to growing and scaling a business. 51. Dont read peoples income reports. You dont need the motivation. You need to get to work. 52. As you make money, sock some of it away into hard assets. Online businesses come and go. The dollar is only as good as the confidence in it. Hard assets of lasting value are a way to make the earnings of your business ever-lasting. 53. Turn contributions to savings or reserves into a budget item. If you dont make it part of your monthly budget like any other bill then it is all too easy to ignore it. 54. Real businesses do real accounting, budgeting, and income/outgo tracking. It is small-time thinking to make spending decisions based on your bank balance. 55. Communication with your audience and customers should be two-way. Dont get stuck talking AT them. Do everything you can to keep them talking back to you.

Want Me To Give You A Ton Of Actionable Focus Items For Your Blog For Free?
One of the services I provide here at the Blog Marketing Academy is the Expert Blog Analysis. It may sound a little presumptuous to call myself an expert on this but after 15 years of doing it, 5 of them helping other people do it, too I have no problem claiming that title. The way the analysis works is this: 1. You fill out a quick pre-analysis survey so I know what your main challenges and problem areas are. 2. I then do a full, personal video walk-through of your site. I literally go over your site with a fine-toothed comb and say right on the video what I would do with your site. The video is then shared with you privately. 3. We then schedule a followup, personal phone call where we can go over anything you want in person and get anything clarified. This is a $199 service, and people are signing up for it fairly regularly without me ever really promoting it. But You have a chance to win this service, pay nothing at all. Heres how I would like your help to share this post across social media and bring in some new people people who you feel can benefit from what we do here at the Academy. Heres what you can do right now: 1. Pick your favorite lesson from the 55 of them above. 2. Put that quote out onto your social media accounts. Include a link back to this post. 3. On Facebook, be sure to tag your post to the Blog Marketing Academy page on Facebook. First, like the Blog Marketing Academy page. Then, in your post, you can type the @ sign and then start typing Blog Marketing Academy to tag it. You should get a little link to the BMA page. 4. On Twitter, be sure to include @davidrisley in your tweet in some fashion. I know you can only use 140 characters and some of the above quotes are long, but just do the best you can. It isnt a requirement to follow me, but you can if you want. 5. For Google Plus, be sure to circle me. Then, you can tag me in your post using the + sign then my name. The tagging is important that way I can see your post, so dont forget to do that. Then I will go through all submissions which include all the components Ive asked for and I will randomly select a winner of the Expert Blog Analysis from the pool of submissions. Obviously, the more you share the post, the more chances you have. But, at the same time, dont over-do it and piss people off, guys.

I will contact the winner via social media to complete the details and get things lined up, then I will announce the winner as an edit to this blog post. The giveaway period ends in one week (November 18th, to be exact). We are now on a weekly publishing schedule here at the Academy, so basically this window to enter the giveaway will last until I publish the next blog post. If you choose to enter, then I look forward to personally thanking you for sharing and helping spread the word.

The post 55 Lessons About Online Business Ive Learned Over 15 Years appeared first on Blog Marketing Academy.

How Tutoring Turned Into An Online Business: Leah Fisch, from Leah4Sci.com. [Academy Member Of The Month]
By David Risley on November 7th, 2013

There is nothing that makes me happier than watching clients of the Blog Marketing Academy succeed. Every time one of them emails in a win, it reminds me why I do what I do. Might sound cliche, but it is true. After all, I am motivated by some big whys that are bigger than just revenue to me (which is obviously important, too). Truth is, I dont take any credit. One thing my long-time readers know about me is that I dont BS anybody, and that means Ill be up-front with you that building a real business takes a lot of work. There is no easy button. You cant skip the work and go be empowered. You cant skip the work and go hang out in a certain forum all day, call yourself a warrior, and make it. So, I never take credit. Because truth is, YOU are the one who did the work, stayed up late working on your business, and fought the headwinds. One thing I thought would be cool to do is feature one of our Academy members each month. And so, this month I thought I would do just that. This month, Id like to introduce you to Leah Fisch, from Leah4Sci.com.

Now, for any of you out there who still think the only people who make a living online are people who talk about making a living online, get this Leah is in the organic chemistry niche. She helps people who are looking to pass exams in chemistry. Shes the one who helps the rest of us chemistry laymen pass the test. ==========
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Why did you join the Blog Marketing Academy, and how has it paid off for you? When I first heard of SEO I did a Google search for getting my blog found. Many search results had sketchy, complex or magic-bullet solutions that didnt resonate with me. Then I found this one blog post with an image of a crowd of white cartoon figures and a red one in the center. The post was about providing value and earning the respect of readers. The idea resonated with me. As a military vet I dont believe in quick-fixes. I believe that hard work is how results are reached. What was it that got you started with your business? Theres the long and short answer. The long answer, I love learning, teaching, and helping other people learn. I was the one who always gave answers to rhetorical questions not realizing that answers were not actually required. In college I started working for my schools learning center to earn some extra cash. I took on private tutoring clients and it took off. After returning from a military deployment I decided to give private tutoring a try. I built a website for something to show not realizing it would turn into my primary business tool. What was the turning point for you, where things sort of clicked and you felt you were actually getting somewhere? What was the aha moment? I dont know if I can call a single moment my aha moment. I was scared to charge what I felt was my price. But then I raised my prices and the new clients didnt run screaming for the hills. Instead they returned, shared positive exam scores and showed that they understood what I was teaching. Another big one for me (I do this whenever I feel down and need an ego boost) is log on to my YouTube channel and read the comments. Total strangers saying things like 3 hours of lecture that made no sense, clarified in a 15 minute video, thank you and I feel like what, are they talking about my video? cool! What kinds of things do you do to build traffic? My primary traffic source is YouTube. I create simple easy-tofollow tutorial videos and they just keep coming and coming. It was slow at first, but as I keep adding new videos I find my traffic growing exponentially. I remember jumping for joy when (after begging and pleading my friends to watch) I had 25 views in a single down, now I see numbers in the thousands on a single day, its awesome. I use a simple call to action in the video and video description and they sign up. What has been one of the most effective strategies youve implemented in your business? Focus! As someone with ADHD + the entrepreneurial bug, I thought I had to do EVERYTHING. I attempted too many strategies offering too many solutions on my site. Once I zeroed in on a single goal and idea I was able to put in 110% effort. My business is, of course, still a work in progress, but creating a plan and sticking to it has been greatly effective for growth. So I joined the 30-day challenge. But I felt it wasnt enough. I must have read about 30 blog posts in that first week and joined the Academy by day 8 or so. The Academy helped me get on my feet and get my site off the ground. I approached the material crash-course style studying and implementing for hours every day. The Academy helped me set up my site with a proper customer-oriented focus, ditch distractions like unnecessary sidebar apps and annoying ads. I also learned a great deal by asking tons of questions on the mastermind calls. What I like most about the Academy, theres no FLUFF. Theres work involved and you tell it like it is, you call bullshit by its proper name and you make sure excuses are not part of the training mentality (love your use of strong language on the podcast). ==== After some time working with members of the Academy, I start to remember them by name and how they work. One thing about Leah that always struck me she is a SERIOUS action taker! And it is obviously paying off. Her business is doing well and she just bought her first home in New York something she says would never have crossed her mind when she first started. So, well done, Leah. You can check out what Leah is doing here: Leah4Sci.com Leah4Sci on Facebook Leah4Sci Youtube channel (her biggest source of traffic) You can get started with the Academy today and take action on growing your business online, based on a real foundation that will set you up for something long-lasting. Youll also be able to get into the mastermind calls and our private discussion group with myself, Leah and other Academy members. => Click Here To Join The Academy PRO program today The post How Tutoring Turned Into An Online Business: Leah Fisch, from Leah4Sci.com. [Academy Member Of The Month] appeared first on Blog Marketing Academy.