Figure 8.9WebMasterWorld gives some content away for free. The rest you have to pay for.
The second point is that WebMasterWorld depends on its users not just to pay the subscription fees, but also to deliver value for those fees. The site was free for a long time and built up a solid reputation long before it started charging. For a subscription site, that level of trust is vital. People need to know who you are before you can ask them to start paying a subscription fee.
Branding
Building a brand is more of an art than a science. Successful brands have understood the messages they want to communicate and the tools that they want to use to broadcast those messages. It’s a process that takes time, but one that should end with the customer recognizing the seller’s name and understanding that the company is reliable and trustworthy.
There have always been many different ways of creating that brand, from design to advertising and now viral advertising. But the Web has now made it possible for individuals to create their own personal brands and use them to build their businesses.
Figure 8.10Tony Hsieh of Zappos uses Twitter to create a personal brand and connect with customers.
ZAPPOS
Sure, there are personal brands that are bigger than that of Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com (www.zappos.com). Any story about Steve Jobs sends tech stocks flying across Nasdaq. Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group, has tried to balloon around the world to attract attention to his brand. But they’re both old school. Tony Hsieh has helped to turn his online footwear and clothing store into a multi-million-dollar business in part by building his personal brand on the Web.
One way in which he has done that is through Twitter (Figure 8.10). Tony’s Twitter background is all about the site, but his timeline is packed with inspirational quotes as well as information about his life. It’s just one part of the company’s branding, but it’s helped to build a relationship with his customers so strong that in November 2009, Amazon bought the company in an $847 million stock buyout.
Coaching
Coaching usually involves a personal connection between seller and buyer. That means you have to find the channel that makes you most comfortable. Phone consultations are always simple, but webinars can work, classroom settings can bring in lots of people at the same time, and giant workshops can cram a year’s income into one weekend. As long as you have the information and an audience eager to learn that information, your coaching method is up to you.
JACK THE GARDEN COACH
Most coaches sell information that will help their audiences make money. That makes sense. It’s always easier to demonstrate the value of your knowledge when the audience can estimate how much they can earn once they know it. But it is possible to sell information that’s just fun to know. Jack McKinnon is a gardening coach. He’s been a professional gardener for 35 years; he writes about gardening and also coaches private gardeners in the Bay Area. His web site JacktheGardenCoach.com (www.jackthegardencoach.com) simply explains who he is, what he does, and invites people to drop him a line to book him for a two-hour consultation in their garden (Figure 8.11).
Figure 8.11Jack McKinnon teaches people to garden. It’s not a moneymaking thing. It′s a fun thing.
There are news items and links to his gardening articles that help to build trust, and Jack is also planning to offer downloads of his gardening tips, a smart way to use information products to create an audience. But the coaching itself couldn’t be more enjoyable for him: He visits clients, walks around in their garden for a couple of hours, and tells them what they can do to make their garden better. Simple.
Conclusion
When James Ritty, an Ohio saloon owner, created the first cash register in 1879, his motives were pretty simple. He wanted to stop his employees from stealing his takings. His machine, based on a device that counted the number of revolutions a ship’s propeller made, kept track of his business’s sales. Later versions included a drawer for the money. Putting a bell on that drawer meant that he also knew when his employees were handling the cash.
Registers have changed a bit since then. They’re now digital, programmable, and can even track the purchasing patterns of individual customers, enabling the seller to make personalized special offers. They’re more likely to take credit cards than cash, and now that Jack Dorsey, the brains behind Twitter, has invented Square, a small credit card reader that plugs into the earphone socket of an iPhone, they can even fit in your pocket.
But they no longer go KaChing.
That’s a shame, because to entrepreneurs, it’s a wonderful sound. Each ring is an endorsement, a reminder that all of their hard work has been done for a reason. They’ve had the idea; they’ve implemented the idea; and now they’re getting their reward.
This book hasn’t made a KaChing sound, either. But it has given you the means to make deals and take cash.
For anyone with a head for business and a mind to be his own boss, the Internet represents an open country of unlimited opportunity. Mining that opportunity will take effort. Once your passive revenue systems are in place you’ll be able to relax—a little—but it will take time and solid work to put those structures in place.
The good news is that the structures now come almost prefabricated. If once building an Internet site meant poring over code and tracking down bugs in the HTML, today’s Web publishers can buy templates off the shelf. It’s as though the Wild West were still out there, but instead of heading out into the wilderness with a tin plate and a lot of dreams, you get to choose your patch... then build your own town by dropping in the proven businesses you want to
