George, Do You Think Selling Is Easy? Think Again

Hi George,

Daniel Scocco here, and this is the Daily Blog Tips newsletter.

Today I want to talk about selling stuff (either products or
services). More specifically, about how most people underestimate
how hard it is to sell stuff.

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A couple of months ago a person approached me to see if I was
interested in becoming an affiliate for his "Make Money Blogging"
eBook. In his email he explained that he had great plans for the
eBook. The price would be $29, and he was expecting to sell 10,000
copies in the first six months.

The numbers got me curious, so I went to visit his blog. According
to his "Advertise" page he received 50,000 monthly visitors, and
had 2,000 RSS subscribers.

Hhmmm, I thought.

I didn't want to rain on his parade, so I replied to his email
politely saying I was busy with some projects and wouldn't have
time to join as an affiliate, wishing good luck for the launch
anyway.

What I had in mind was something else though, which is: There was
no way on earth he would be able to sell 10,000 copies of that
eBook in 6 YEARS, let alone 6 months!

How come? First of all because the product was not a novelty, and
it aimed at a saturated market. Second, the product creator didn't
have a strong name/reputation, nor a big audience already in place.

In fact if I was to make a guess I would say he sold 100 copies at
most.

Probably this was the first time the guy was trying to sell a
product, and that is why he grossly overestimated the numbers.

I have been there myself. When I launched my first eBook I already
had a blog with 20,000 subscribers. The topic of the eBook was
appealing, and I had put a lot of work on it, so I figured that at
least 10% of my readers would buy it (i.e., 2000 people). Boy I was
wrong!

After 30 days or so I had sold only 200 copies. I was really
frustrated, but the whole experience taught me a good lesson:
selling is never easy, no matter what.

Practically speaking this means that you should aim to have a great
product, with great marketing, and possibly with a great audience
in place before you start selling. And even if you manage to get
all these 3 factors, remember that it will still be hard to
convince people to buy.

Again, selling is never easy. If it was, everybody would be rich!

Talk to you next week,
Daniel Scocco
http://www.dailyblogtips.com

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2972 Columbia St. Suite # 8161 - Torrance, CA 90503 - US

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George, Here Are Some Goals You Should Always Have

Hi George,

Daniel Scocco here, and this is the Daily Blog Tips newsletter.

2011 just started, and as usual people are setting new goals and
making resolutions. But are you setting the right goals? Below
I'll talk about 3 I consider particularly important.

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GOAL 1: Learn new things

If you want to stay competitive, regardless of your field and
profession, you should always be learning new things. And I am not
talking about opening a magazine and learning about what is going
on in Egypt or how many calories a hamburger has. I am talking
about learning new technical things related to your field.

If you work full time on the Internet, for example, you could set
the goal to learn one or more of the following things in 2011:

-HTML
-CSS
-JavaScript
-SEO
-PHP
-MySQL
-Apache

GOAL 2: Move closer to your ideal lifestyle

One of the things that certainly adds to our happiness is living
a lifestyle that we like. This includes things like living in a city
you like, sleeping/working during the times you like, having the
flexibility to make the activities you like and having the time to
spend time with the people you like.

In fact many people consider this more important than money. So
instead of aiming to make as much money as possible in 2011, aim
to get closer to your ideal lifestyle.

GOAL 3: Work on projects you love and are proud of

We all need to work on stuff we don't particularly love to make
the ends meet. That is fine. Over time, however, you should be
gradually doing fewer of those "pay the bills" projects and more
projects in areas you really love, doing things you'll be proud of.

Getting this started is really easy. You could simply dedicate one
hour of your nights to working on such a project, and as it grows
you start putting more work on it.

If you pursue these 3 goals I am sure you'll end 2011 in great shape!

Best wishes for this new year,
Daniel Scocco
http://www.dailyblogtips.com

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2972 Columbia St. Suite # 8161 - Torrance, CA 90503 - US

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George, Only Buy Medium To High Quality Domains

Hi George,

Daniel Scocco here, and this is the Daily Blog Tips newsletter.

Today I want to talk about buying domain names, and why most people
waste a lot of money in the process.

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As we all know, the Internet is booming with opportunities, and
the first step to tap into those opportunities is to buy a domain
name for a website.

Available domains are pretty cheap (around $10 per year), so most
people start buying one after another.

That is what happened with me too. Right after I started working
full time on the Internet I got fascinated with the idea of
launching websites on all sorts of niches, and as a consequence
I bought hundreds of available domain names.

Most of these domains were average to poor quality, as one should
expect since they were available.

The result? I wasted a lot of money.

Out of 100 available domains that I bought I only keep 3 or so as
of today, the rest I let expire over time because they had no
potential.

When I spent money on medium to high quality domains (think $200
per domain and upward), however, I always got a positive return
on my investment.

The message I want to pass is this one: buying average domains for
$10 is usually a waste of money (unless you have an immediate use
for it, like a test website). A much sounder strategy is to buy
fewer (even just a couple) high quality domains.

Here is an example to illustrate my point. Suppose there are two
guys with $100 each, wanting to invest in domain names. The first
one buys 10 available domains for $10 each, while the second one
buys only 1 domain for $100. After a couple of years I am pretty
sure the 10 domains of the first guy won't be worth much, if
anything, while the $100 domain the second guy bought will be worth
at least the same amount of money, if not a lot more (depending on
how he worked on the domain).

The next time you get an urge to buy that free domain for $10 (we
all get it once in a while!) think twice, cause those will be $10
you'll never see again!

Talk to you next week,
Daniel Scocco
http://www.dailyblogtips.com

--------

2972 Columbia St. Suite # 8161 - Torrance, CA 90503 - US

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George, You Probably Never Heard About This Outsourcing Resource

Hi George,

Daniel Scocco here, and this is the Daily Blog Tips newsletter.

Today I want to talk about an outsourcing resource that very few
people know about (and the ones who do usually keep it secret!).

------

Suppose I told you I had one guy willing to work full time for you,
so 40 hours per week, and that he had a good knowledge about SEO,
Internet marketing and web design. What kind of salary do you think
you would need to pay him?

$1,000? $1,500?

What if told you the salary he was asking for was $300?

Sounds crazy, but it's true. I am talking about hiring people from
the Philippines. There are plenty of recent graduates there who
want to work from home over the Internet, and $300 (converted to
the local currency) is considered a decent monthly salary.

Another advantage is that most Filipinos speak English almost
fluently, and they are quite savvy when it comes to the Internet
and new technologies.

At this point you might be thinking: "OK, sounds intriguing, but
where can I find those workers?"

That is exactly the resource I was talking about. It's a website
where you can find hundreds of Filipinos looking for online work.
You'll even find the skills they have, the monthly salary they are
asking and how many hours per week they are willing to work.

The URL is: http://www.onlinejobs.ph

You can browse the marketplace without paying anything, but if you
want to see the contact details (e.g., email address) of the workers
you'll need to pay $40 for one month of access.

Before you go ahead on a hiring spree, though, here is a remark:
you'll need to spend some time researching and testing the candidates.

I have had both good and bad experiences hiring people from that
site in the past. Sometimes the person worked as promised and
delivered good results, but there were other times when I swear
the other person was working 5 instead of 40 hours per week, and
I couldn't do anything about it except terminate the deal after
the first month was up.

It remains a very good resource for times when you need to outsource
stuff anyway, so check it out.

Talk to you next week,
Daniel Scocco
http://www.dailyblogtips.com

---------

2972 Columbia St. Suite # 8161 - Torrance, CA 90503 - US

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