I’ve read the long sales letter (well, OK skimmed it – when is anything more ever required?).

One problem I may have is that (like you I guess) I’m not interested in doing whatever the market will buy – I want to make my money doing what I love. So, I’m not just in it for the money, which this system, like all the others, seems to presume is our motivation. (A rather jaded view of humanity in my view – how many people have kids to make a profit?)

I’m saving up for it. Australian money (I’m in Australia) doesn’t buy much US money these days (even though, from what the media says our economy looks to be in better shape – thanks to China – go figure.)

Once again many thanks. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Much appreciated. I’ll ignore most of the long sales letter (all those recommendations and whatnot – ever seen a recommendation that wasn’t good? Me neither. I forget where I read it, “What’s the value of a recommendation? About the same as the credibility of the person giving it.” In other words those which just give initials and so on are pretty close to useless.) So your recommendation does carry weight. It’ll depend on how much it costs too – I may need to save up for it.

It could well be just the kind of thing I’m looking for. I won’t be doing a long sales letter to promote my stuff though. Thanks again.

Check out this post:

http://www.inspiredmoneymaker.com/2008/10/14/nitro-launches-nitro-blueprint-2009-with-no-hype/

I know you think it’s “Hype” because they use a standard long page sales letter to sell the product, but you may need to relax your beliefs about online products sold with sales letters. If you automatically disqualify any product just because they use a sales letter to sell it, you’re missing out on a lot of value.

If I’m not mistaken, I think they offer a 365 money back guarantee. Plus, I recommend the product. What else do you want as far as credibility. I don’t promote crap.

And is mostly about marketing (though I do think what I produce is valuable – but then most people do don’t they? I have no idea what the market wants. The only way I know to assess this is write stuff and see what happens. There are key words which may give some indication – but only of what previous people have wanted (they can’t give an indication of where to go next or whether something newish will be well received).

I’m thinking of using an affiliate system for the next enrolment in my course. There will be some stuff that I need to learn to do this.

Sorry to harp on abou this but it is my major frustration with blogging which is how I hope to make my income from doing what I love. My guess is that others feel this frustration too (though it may be just me of course).

It’s not very difficult to recruit a whole army of affiliates to sell your product if you’re offering something valuable, that the market wants, at the right price.

thanks for the great reply. Actually I’d be happy to give half. I’d rather have the $100k than $1k.

(1) Partner with someone who is good at the other side of the coin. If you’re good at creating stuff, find a partner who’s good at marketing. If you’re a good marketer, find someone good at creating stuff. As for the “business” side, I think that is one part which you can just contract out. Hire a book-keeper/accountant, tax accountant etc. during the times of the year when you need to do that stuff.

or

(2) You drop your belief that one person can’t do both the creative side and the marketing side and instead of finding reasons why it won’t work, you look for ways that it can work. You may not be as good as the best marketers in the world, but you don’t necessarily have to.

I’ve taken both routes, and right now I’m definitely more biased towards #2. I’m also a lot better at creating things than marketing them, but I’m not going to let that stop me. There are plenty of examples of people who have done it all. You just have to be open to that scenario.

Remember that if you partner with someone you also have to cut your income in half. So if you want to be making $150,000/year yourself, you have to jointly build a business that makes $300,000/year to make the $150k you want.

The reason I think most “marketer types” and most “creative types” can’t agree on working together is because both sides think that what the other side is doing is easy. For example, in a technology company, most programmers/engineers/production people think that sales people are lazy bastards and do nothing compared to the amount of work that programmers do. If it were up to programmers/engineers, 90% of the budget would be spent on them and 10% on sales, marketing, accounting etc.

On the converse, sales people think that compared to the emotional fears and risks and issues that they have to deal with, a programmers job is easy. Sales people think that THEY should make 90% of the income and 10% should go to the other side.

This is why most marketing/creative partnerships don’t work because neither side sees the value in the other side’s work. I’ve been on both sides of the coin in business, running a development team and running a sales team. I can tell you without any shadow of doubt that it’s really more a 50/50 type thing, or perhaps 60% sales/marketing and 40% development/creative work as far as difficulty level is concerned…

However, it’s very rare that a partnership like this works. As a creative type, would you be willing to write 1,000 articles for a Blog, and then give $100,000 of the $200,000 your Blog makes to the marketing consultant you hire? Probably not, right?

Personally I just decided to do both sides after seeing how it all works. Maybe not everyone can do it, but I prefer to do both sides. I see creating content and marketing as BOTH being creative endeavors. The only part of my business I’d farm out to someone else is non-creative stuff such as bookkeeping or accounting or filing or something.

Entrepreneurs I do think are needed to find opportunities and start new businesses.

Here’s a question that is somewhat un/related. I think I can write good content. I think I’m not good at marketing. There are people who want to say they are good marketers and can turn any business (in my case blog) into a success. But they won’t work for a percentage of the turned around business. I’d be happy to share the profits. So I just don’t take them seriously – if they really believed they could do it, why aren’t they working for a piece of the success they are so sure they can create? Why should I take these people seriously? If I sound angry and frustrated I’m not surprised.

Ernesto Sirrolli – a very successful community development worker (wrote a good book called Ripples on the Zambezi) – talks about three roles for a successful business: doing the service or making the stuff or whatever the business is selling; business management – the books, compliance with tax and so on; marketing etc. He says that one person is rarely good at all three. I must say I agree with him. So, where do we go to get together with those who have the other skills that we lack?

I realise these questions aren’t exactly on topic for this post, they do seem to me to be a big part of me making money doing what I love; so I hope you think it’s OK for me to ask them here.

I’m very interested in any and all responses.