Make Money Online With Snowboardjohn

One of my absolute favorite comedians is Chris Rock. His ability to pace social issues in his stand-up routines is pure genius.

And one of the things he parodies in particular, can definitely be applied to the way a lot of people are marketing online.

Says Rock, “Ladies, whenever a man is being nice to you, he isn’t REALLY being nice to you. No. What he’s really doing is saying “Hey, can I open this door for you?… WANT SOME DICK?” or “Hey, can I help you with that shopping?… WANT SOME DICK?”"

In other words, what’s really going on is that men generally help women because they want something from them - obviously in this case - sex.

But in online business, this same thing happens all the time - and people REALLY DON’T like it any more than women do in their private lives.

“Hey, can I give you some tips about training your dog?… WANT SOME ADSENSE?” or “Hey, can I help you with your dandruff?… WANT SOME SPAM?”

Now keep in mind it’s ok to sell. Selling isn’t some evil activity. Selling is 100% necessary to having your own online business. The problem comes when you sell in the wrong context. At the wrong time.

And I think it happens simply because people want to do the right thing - they just don’t know how.

So here’s a breakdown of the stages of relationship you have with your market, and the time when it’s ok to sell to them:

1. The first second they notice you. They haven’t even clicked on your site yet, but a headline has caught their attention, and they are deciding to check you out.
2. Reading your first piece of content. Does it make sense to them? Are you able to communicate as an authority purely because it’s plainly obvious you know WTF you’re talking about?
3. Giving them options to read more of your stuff. The first headline, then click, then content read was the taste tester - now you want them to CONSUME more of your stuff.
4. Baiting the END OF THE content (NOT the start of the content) with permission based contact mechanisms. Like asking for a second date. For me and this blog, it’s obviously my RSS feed. It doesn’t have to be though - in markets with shorter attention spans, or very NON TECH SAVVY users, opt in forms are fine.
5. Monetize. Just kidding. You COULD monetize at this point in some markets - like low price point, commodity style markets. And that would work fine. In higher trust, higher price point, competitive markets you should build SOCIAL PROOF instead of monetizing. Get blog comments, testimonials, feedback. Create a community that feeds into itself.
6. Your investment in the market at this point is quite high. So you’re going to lose a lot of work if you mess up at this stage. You could continue to build social proof if you want, or, you could monetize. If you monetize MAKE SURE you monetize with something people are going to LOVE. Like “I cannot believe how good this is” love.

Some pitfalls:

• If you monetize too soon, you may end up with customers who have buyers remorse. This can be overcome with solid back end customer support, but you need to take it into consideration.
• If you take too long to monetize people may start to wonder if you know what you’re doing. Looking like a nervous virgin who somehow ended up with the prom queen isn’t going to work for you.
• Working a ton of hours. Seriously. This stuff doesn’t happen by itself.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 12:19 am and is filed under Make Money Online Tip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.