mistakes: 6 things to avoid doing

by Dawn Martinello on April 12, 2013

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s no hard and fast rules to building and designing a website-slash-online business, but that never stops people from seeking recommendations and best practices. Grab a notepad, here’s some of my top “don’t make this mistake” tips.

SUBSCRIBE HERE – TO FEEDBURNER

I recently came upon a great website and was amped up at the information they promised to provide. Subscribe here their pretty orange button said! Sadly, they were using Feedburner in lieu of a real honest-to-goodness mailing list. Yes, that’s right – in lieu of. That means if you’re currently using Feedburner you have to make a solemn promise that you will ditch it and move to a real marketing platform. It’s clunky and junky and on it’s way out. It’s definitely not what you want to use to build your business. There’s two services that I recommend – Aweber and Mailchimp. If you’re not sure which to use, comment below.

GIVE ME A “Y”

The trend used to be that you’d give away your prized PDF book valued at $450 when people graciously joined your list. Some people have moved away from that trend and are giving away their valuable content for free – without even needing to provide an email. They want their best information in as many hands as possible so they’re giving it away without ANY hitches at all. It’s all about building your audience. If this doesn’t suit you, give ViperChill’s Cloud:Flood a try.

DON’T CUT OFF RSS

Most people think like this: if someone signs up to receive my blog posts via RSS and they can read that whole post without ever coming to my site then I’m losing money. So they make the choice to send out their RSS feeds with one paragraph (if you’re lucky) thinking that it’s enough to entice you to click over to the site and read. What usually happens is that people get ticked off that you’re ruining their time that they delete you (and possibly unsubscribe). Make me another promise – send out your RSS feeds with your full posts.

EVERYTHING HAS A PURPOSE

Everything that lives on your site must have a purpose. If it doesn’t – you need to get rid of it. Let’s say you have a tag cloud that takes up half your side bar because you think it’s pretty cool. A month goes by, two months, six months … no one has ever clicked on the bugger. Why would you want to keep it there? It’s not serving any purpose (other than your love of tags). And yes, the bigger problem IS indeed the person who has no idea if anything is worthwhile because they haven’t been tracking anything on their site. You’ve got two promises to make this time around: start tracking your statistics and become a deleting mad man for anything that doesn’t work on your site.

DON’T TRY TO CATCH TWO RABBITS

A client recently relayed her problem to me: she has too many talents and passions for one business. Acting, teaching, spirituality, health and fitness, and energy healing. Trying to push that into one business is going to be too much – for you and your audience. If you’re a multi-passionate entrepreneur then you need to figure out exactly what you want to be doing and move in that direction. Marie Forleo has a video that tackles this subject – check it out.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLOUR

Waaaay before I built businesses online, I had a friend who was a pretty talented web designer. Y’know, back before WordPress was prevalent and we had to hand code HTML sites. Anyway, on one of his website revamps, he splashed the pages with a black background and either red or white text. Back then we were all “oooh” and “aaahhh” … but now we’re all “hey stop it – that’s killing my eyes” and “dude, PLEASE change your colours”. Readability is a big issue when you’re choosing the colours for your site, but there’s also some psychology behind the whole thing too.

According to one site, orange is “the most flamboyant color on the planet! It’s the colour tied most this fun times, happy and energetic days, warmth and organic products. It is also associated with ambition. There is nothing even remotely calm associated with this colour. Orange is associated with a new dawn in attitude.” And red is “associated with movement and excitement. People surrounded by red find their heart beating a little faster and often report feeling a bit out of breath. It’s absolute the wrong colour for a baby’s room but perfect to get people excited.”

In case you want to put that into some business context – check out how many “buy now” type buttons are either red or orange. Check out this site that talks about it more.

Your turn:

If you have any “don’t make this mistake” type tips of your own – list’em below.

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3 Short Lessons in Online Business

by Dawn Martinello on April 3, 2013

If you did a Google search for “multiple streams of income” you’re going to find a boatload of sites, mounds of information, and probably more than a handful scammy-looking sites. (don’t believe me, go ahead and look for yourself … I’ll wait). Some of the sites are very specific – they might focus on different ways that a Real Estate agent can find new ways to make money. A lot of it isn’t very helpful – knowing that I need to have more than one client or that I should take on a part-time job is NOT useful.

Lesson #1:
There’s always gold in your business

Way too many people think that there’s nothing “else” they can offer in their business. Nuh-uh. No way. There’s always gold in those mines. During one particular guide session, I was running through some ideas on how the client could add some extra money in her business. When I wrapped it up there was silence on the other end. Did I lose the connection? Does she think these are the most mundane ideas ever. She responded with a “Wow. These are incredible. I wasn’t sure my business idea would fly let alone being able to do all that.”

Success. She dubbed me a gold finder.

Lesson #2:
There’s only 3 ways to make money

This mind map is one I made up a few years back. There’s a lot of stuff happening in there, but it all fits nicely into 3 little buckets of entrepreneurial happiness.

MAIN EVERYDAY INCOME: This is easy – if you have a business that makes money from the work you do day-in and day-out, it falls into the main everyday income bucket. If you’re a service based business, your foundation income comes from finding clients and providing the service. Way too many businesses stop here … but eventually you’re going to max yourself out – there’s only so many business hours that your store can stay open or that you can work.

SMART CAPITALIZED INCOME: If you offer any type of group services, you’re working inside the capitalized income zone. Entrepreneurs quickly find out that the income potential skyrockets when they figure out how to leverage their time and energy properly. This can be anything from membership programs to live events.

PASSIVE INCOME: Passive income used to be a pipe dream, but it’s a reality for many online entrepreneurs. Anything that doesn’t require your constant attention to deliver the goods will fit into this bucket. Did you write an eBook? Create a video series? Record a CD? Are you an affiliate for anything or anyone? These are all passive ways of making money. And yes, I plunk Affiliate Income into this bucket too.

There is gold in every business. Your job is to find and leverage it. @mondaymorningva

Lesson #3:
Ideas

If you’re having a hard time coming up with some ideas on what to offer, here’s a handy list that that has been compiled from ideas I’ve given clients as well as things I’ve found ’round the internet.

>> create an informational product

>> host a workshop

>> offer coaching sessions

>> offer a critique or some kind of make over service

>> go out and speak to an audience

>> whip up a teleseminar

>> sell audio or video

So tell me … where’s the gold in your business?

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7 ways to find new blog ideas

by Dawn Martinello on February 27, 2013

You need to update your blog. You sit down in front of your computer.
20 minutes later, you walk away from the still blank screen in a search for inspiration.

Sound familiar? Yes Ma’am.

First things first: I’m giving you permission NOT to write 7 days a week. Or even 5 days. I’d much rather see you create one great piece a week, than send out 5 mediocre articles. I bet your audience feels the same way. If your business relies heavily on news – then perhaps hire a freelancer to help ease some of the burden.

FINDING NEW IDEAS

Readers

:: if you don’t have an autoresponder set up yet for new subscribers, get one done right away. Like today. New eyes on your material is a great way to get a fresh look at things you may have missed. It doesn’t matter if you have a survey in place or you just want them to email you – the point is that you want to find out what types of things they expect to learn from you, what they’re hoping you may cover, and what burning questions they have about your niche.

:: go back through old blog posts and comb through the comments. What types of things are your readers asking about? What products are they mentioning? I’m willing to bet there’s a pot of gold sitting in those comment sections.

:: I know you have a Fan Page and Twitter account set up already – so start asking your followers there the same types of things you’ve asked in your autoresponder.

The Internet

:: Google Alerts is a great way to have relevant information land inside your inbox. You can do something similar with Twitter as well. You’ll want to make use of keywords that are relevant to your niche so you’ll pull in what others are talking about. And no, this isn’t about pilfering others ideas. Take the idea and put your own spin on it or make the article about your point of view on the subject.

:: On a forum, people are always asking questions and giving their opinions. Find a busy one and you’ll have a fresh batch of ideas daily.

:: Check out Amazon. Find a relevant book from your industry and check out the reviews. Gold. Mine.

You have permission to NOT write every single day. @mondaymorningva

It’s All You

:: Whenever you can work in a personal story to your piece – do it. We love to be able to relate to one another!

:: Keep a notepad with you all the time. I’m sure there’s been more than one time that a great idea came to mind but you forgot all about it by the time you got in front of your computer.

Your Turn

How do you keep your ideas flowing?

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