Welcome! I'm Erica Douglass. I am committed to teaching you how to build an inspired, successful business. I would love to hear your opinions and help you grow your business. If you are motivated to change the world and want to learn from my successes (and failures!), please subscribe and join my community!
Why Your Business Isn’t Doing As Well As It Could Be
I have spent the past month reading basically every Internet marketing idea and writing idea I could find. I subscribed to ProBlogger and started reading sites of those who make a lot of money online, such as Steve Pavlina and Jeremy Schoemaker.
The reality is that most bloggers and writers don’t make a lot of money online. Most make only a few cents a day. I know the same is true with web hosting companies — most hosting companies don’t make enough to even justify that the owner quit his or her day job. From being in the web hosting industry so long, I knew what most web hosting company owners didn’t do right. That probably should be a blog post of its own, but here is the top “no-no”: Most companies focus on themselves instead of their customers.
I will give you a quick example. Let’s say I have one sentence to write, and with that single sentence, I have to convince you to buy a product. Which sentence would convince you to buy the product I am selling?
- “Web hosting from a company you can trust”
- “Web hosting - we will help your business make more money on the Internet, guaranteed, or your money back.”
I don’t know about you, but the second one got my attention. Help me make more money on the Internet, guaranteed? Or my money back? Sounds like a no-lose proposition! Yet the first one (or variants of it) is much more common. In fact, “web hosting from a company you can trust” (that exact phrase!) has 142 results on Google. Why? Because everybody loves to talk about themselves.
Stop focusing on YOU!
Most companies are so focused on themselves (and Simpli, my web hosting company, wasn’t perfect in that regard either!) that they completely forget to talk about what the customer needs. Do you think “a company you can trust” is really about your customer? Think again! Even though it has the word “you” in it, it’s all about your company, and not at all about your customer. Rule #1 of running a business: Put your customers first!
Another thing I like about the second phrase is it opens a lot more doors. You can sell shopping carts, autoresponders, mailing list management software, time management software, search engine optimization services, and merchant accounts to a customer who clicks on the second link.
What’s the person who clicks on the first link looking for? Honestly — probably a low price, and they might have been burned in the past from another hosting company, making them somewhat suspicious of web hosting. The customer who clicks on the second link and derives value from your product will spend thousands of dollars a year more with you. Why? Because you are 100% focused on helping them, and your reputation (and income) is on the line with their success.
If I were to start another web hosting company today, that’s how I would market it. Fortunately for you, I am much more interested in writing about business success right now, so you get free blog posts from me instead. 
What does that have to do with blogging?
How does the above, which I like to call “Marketing Psychology 101″, apply to blogging and writing? Writing is just like any other business. You define a target market and sell to it. However, unlike traditional sales and marketing, most bloggers don’t sell a product. They write, build up a site, drive traffic to it, and place ads on the site. Sometimes the ads are for their own products. For instance, recently, The Simple Dollar, a personal finance site I read, started offering downloadable PDFs of some of the site’s content for a couple bucks. I paid for the Building a Better Blog series. Why? So I could read it on a recent plane trip. I did, and it had some great advice on how to figure out your target audience and write to them.
However, far more frequently, bloggers put ads on their site for other companies’ products. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I feel that it’s bad to pursue as your entire money-making strategy. What do I mean by that? I feel a mix of other companies’ products and your products are the best way to go, but one of the things I decided is that I definitely want to make at least half of my blog’s money via my own content.
I decided I really didn’t want to put a lot of ads on erica.biz (this site.) This is my personal site, and I don’t want to feel pressure to write x number of times per week or to feel like I’m selling myself to a bunch of companies. Plus, I like the clean design of the site as it stands now. I may put a few ads on here in the future, but they won’t be a primary income source. That means I have to create a new site to gain income.
I am going to prove this works…
Today I registered hardworkingmillionaire.com. After reading so many “Internet marketing gurus” talk about silly things like multi-level marketing (AKA “pyramid schemes”) and other scams, I decided to create a website that will go step-by-step into teaching you how to make a million dollars a year by doing what you love. No scams and no get-rich-quick schemes. I am simply going to take you from the basics (your passions) to creating a successful business based on those passions. I recently sold my business, so I have the time to devote to that, and it will also tie in nicely to my interviews with successful entrepreneurs and writers that I will be posting on InspiringInnovators.com. The best part is there will be loads of free content — writing, videos, audio, and PDF — and yet it will still be making over $10,000 a month within its first year. How will I do it? I promise to keep you informed every step of the way, with complete numbers. Just subscribe to my blog and I will send you an update as things progress. No spam, and no crap, I promise.
I look forward to working with you to help you become a Hard-Working Millionaire!
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7 Responses to “Why Your Business Isn’t Doing As Well As It Could Be”
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I definitely agree with the point that focusing on your customers and not yourself is key. So it made me smile a tiny bit to see that your single biggest category on this blog is “Me”.
On a more serious note, I will certainly be interested to hear your thoughts on how to “make a million dollars a year by doing what you love”. In my experience with many would be small business entrepreneurs, doing what they love doesn’t turn out to be a viable market, or a business they can successfully run, or both. Care to share any ideas on how to reconcile that problem when it crops up?
Matt
Nice post!
Content is an excellent way to receive the finest quality for your site. Thus, focusing to your potential customer surely will help you convert your traffic into profit!
@Matt - Thank you for starting off the discussion! I think this post is named poorly… I’ll probably rehash some of the content later in other blog posts.
“Me” is what I named the default category…so, yeah, I should probably go back and re-categorize most of those old ones.
I’ll definitely be blogging more about how folks can make money by doing what they love. Keep subscribed — I promise you won’t be disappointed.
-Erica
I recently called a training company to do some MS certifications. We had a good chat the first time but they wouldn’t leave me alone and kept setting dead lines saying “If you don’t sign up now then you will have to wait a lot longer to do the course”. I got the impression they just wanted to close that sale and take my money rather then think of my personal welfare, so I told them where to go.
What you say is true. This was a classic example of them thinking of them rather then me first. Had they given me a list of course dates to choose from I would have said “I will take the one in March” rather then being forced in to taking the one in 2 days time. I would have signed up there and then for March had he not been so persistent in getting my bank details.
Wow!! really gave me some nice tips…will definitely use it!
In 1975 the Federal Trade Commission accused and sued Amway Corporation for operating as an illegal pyramid. After four years of litigation the court ruled that Amway’s multi-level-marketing program was a legitimate business and not a pyramid scheme.
Perhaps there was a time prior to 1979 that someone could say, “MLM is a scam! It is an illegal pyramid scheme!” And they might have been correct because MLM hadn’t been tested and adjudicated in court. But since 1979, only the uneducated can claim that the MLM industry is illegal.
This does not mean that ALL companies that claim to be an “MLM company” are legal. But, the INDUSTRY OF MLM IS LEGAL.
Just recently opened up a quick serve snack franchise business in a inline mall. When doing the due dilligence, knew the mall was smaller and less traffic but was reflected in a lower rent. First few months projections where about 40% lower than projected (good first month, and tappered off in the next two, but picked up for back to school in august). Our brand is pretty strong, but we also have another established type of franchise right next to us doing 40% more revenue and foot traffic. We have a loyal following so far, but we need to do more volume and the mall doesn’t seem to have enough foot traffic.We are breaking even without taking our own salaries, and my partner is working there full time as I am looking for a day job (seems very hard lately), to try to support the us and two small kids, while doing the administrative paper work for our store. We spent 200,000 from home equity to build to store. We do have enough savings to last about 1 year at this continued pace.
1)What should my priority be, the business or a day job search?
2)Sometimes you put in a lot of effort and the rewards is hard see, when do you know is the time to give up, or you never give up? We do have a good loyal following and niche, but since price points are usually low for our snack products, we need to do high volume and people don’t go there mainly just to eat snack (usually an impulse buy)?