Mel,
Let's get one thing clear right now:
Organizing, creating and communicating information—and getting paid well to do it—sure beats mopping floors or hunting yak meat for dinner.
Low inventory, printing on demand, high margins, selling downloadable stuff on the web, selling advice and insight for top dollar—it's a pretty fine gig.
But contrary to marketing land folklore, it's NOT for everyone.
Is this the "perfect" business for you?
First of all, the perfect business for you is the one that employs your own giftedness and unique talents...
Capitalizes on your past experience...
Engages your passions and interests...
Is the info business good for your passions and interests?
Maybe, maybe not.
If you don't like to write or speak, then you'll have to hire other people to do all your writing and speaking, and that's a big handicap.
If you don't eat, breathe and sleep marketing and advertising, the info business is a bad business for you too.
Another HUGE myth is that an info biz runs on autopilot.
Now it is possible to generate some "passive income" this way.
But with the steady parade of Pandas, Penguins and Google slaps, this gets tougher every day.
To stay profitable you have to penetrate deeply into your market.
Most of the money in any market is "underground."
It's only available to those who have achieved a degree of recognition and longevity, and have built a trusting, ongoing relationship with customers.
Not the one-time sale, but the cultivation of a following over time.
Full Time Info Marketer = Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
This is NOT a business where you lay in your hammock for months on end with nary a care or thought while people rabidly consume your stuff and a part-time assistant occasionally replies to their emails.
Yes, you are a paper and ink alchemist.
You do have enormous leverage. The value of your insights has little or nothing to do with how much time it takes you to develop them.
You can automate many, many things; you can have most customer service done for you by part time staff, and you can reach hundreds of thousands of people without ever talking to a single one of them. You can take vacations and even sabbaticals.
But you can't turn your brain off. If you have a following, a 'herd', a group of hot, responsive customers—you can't ignore them for very long, or they'll go away.
So if you're in the information business full tilt, you need to be prolific.
Whether it's emails, newsletters, teleseminars, seminars, postcards, videos, mentoring programs, new products, CD's or whatever (notice that's a pretty big list of choices), your group needs to hear from you.
That's the reality of the "pure info marketing" approach.
What I recommend for most people is the hybrid approach.
It's much easier to run an information business when the product is only a part of what you sell.
I started my business as a consultant, and because I was already known in my industry, got paying clients right away.
I spent the next year getting my information business up to speed, which was a trial and error process.
If you do consulting—if you perform, hands-on, what you also teach people to do, then you always have a cash cow you can fall back on.
You also have more to write about.
Most of us would prefer not to be trading hours for dollars, but here's a little secret:
In the end, anything you do, no matter how automated it is, boils down to a certain number of hours for a certain number of dollars.
Let's say you pull off something really brilliant and it takes very little work to maintain it—it may net you $20,000 per hour.
But twenty grand is still a finite number.
And if you climb to the top of the consulting heap, fine-tune your pricing and build a "support machine" to handle the mundane details, well...
You'll find your hourly returns are nothing to sneeze at.
Carpe Diem,
Perry Marshall
***NOTE: This email address isn't monitored! If you need help, please email:
support@perrymarshall.com
 | Free Video
We manage our emails with Infusion. This Guide and Video explain my secret marketing sauce. |
No comments:
Post a Comment