nick usborne's blog

Funny how we grasp for quick answers and the latest “secrets”, instead of asking ourselves the tough questions.

Yesterday I announced the publication of a workbook I wrote for freelancers. I sent emails to my two largest lists. I worried about my sales page. I wondered how many people would buy.

Well, the conversion rate was truly horrible. Sales were way below my estimate.

How come? What was my mistake?

Here is one way of looking at it. One of my newsletter subscribers wrote to me and described the sales page for this workbook as being “just an ad for a PDF with 25 questions and lots of blank lines”.

Ouch.

I would describe my “mistake” more like this: I offered people something they probably needed instead of something they actually wanted.

If you really want to make money selling information online, give people what they want.

What do most people want? They want the easy button.

Most people want to be told the “secret” to success online. They want all the answers lined up for them. All proven. No risk. Just get-rich-quick secrets that are guaranteed to work.

Unfortunately, they rarely do work.

Those “secrets” may have worked for the author, but that doesn’t mean they will work for you. We are all different. We are all at different stages with our businesses or business plans. We all have different weaknesses and strengths. We all have different psychological and emotional responses to what happens within our businesses.

There is no easy button. There are no secrets.

Instead you have to protect and grow the core value of your business, you have to work hard, you have to be stubborn and you have to question everything.

Regardless of what my newsletter subscriber inferred when he wrote back to me, I think there is huge value in being challenged with tough questions.

I will always prefer to engage my mind seriously with a tough question than to slip into lazy, wishful thinking with a spoon-fed, one-size-fits-all list of “secrets”.

Here is my ”ad for a PDF with 25 questions and lots of blank lines”.

25 Tough Questions to Ask About Your Freelance Writing or Copywriting Business.

I’m a big fan of questions.

Statements close doors. (“THIS is the truth.”)

Questions open doors (“WHAT is the truth?”)

In the world of freelance writing and copywriting, questions are particularly useful. Why? Because we often get stuck in a rut. We just keep stumbling forward in a straight line, even if we don’t know where that line is taking us.

Asking questions changes everything. It opens our minds to new possibilities and opportunities.

- What are your goals?

- How quickly to you deal with problems?

- What is the central “flywheel” in your freelance business?

In my coaching work I ask a ton of questions.

Unfortunately, there is a limit to the number of people I can coach one-on-one. And I know there are people who would like to sign up for my coaching program, but haven’t been able to put together the fee.

Well, it can’t replace coaching, but here is a first step for you.

Get a copy of my new question-and-answer workbook - 25 Tough Questions to Ask about Your Freelance Writing or Copywriting Business.

As it says on the front cover, “If you’re not asking the tough questions, you’re not getting anywhere close to achieving your full potential.”

What do you do if your website topic is all about images, and not words?

I received a question recently from someone who wants to write a money-making website, but is passionate about a topic that lends itself more to pictures than to words.

In a nutshell, the guy is a photographer.

I don’t think that need be a problem. But to get a ton of search engine traffic, he will have to add more to each page then just an image.

The same goes for writing a site about your paintings, your jewelry or even your favourite recipes.

When the focus of each page on your website is primarily visual, it will help your search engine results if you also add a decent amount of text to each page.

What can you write about? Tell the story behind the image.

If it’s a photo, tell the story behind the moment you took the photo. Where were you? What time was it? What went wrong that day? What went right?

The same applies to a page with a photo of a handmade pendant. What inspired that piece? When did you make it? What materials were used?

By adding a story to each image, you’ll be making the page more interesting for your readers, and you’ll be helping Google decide where and how high up to include your page in search results.

Also, be sure to complete the image Alt tags. This will help Google identify the topic of the image and then include it in its image search results.

And...upload your images to Flickr, with links back to your page.

Then...look for other site and social media communities where you can share your images and interests.

Bottom line: Yes, you can create a money-making website when your topic is primarily image-based. Just be sure to add some good text to each image page. It will help a lot.

More about my program, How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites...

My “very slow path to riches” blog is still growing.

Back in late April I wrote about a "very slow” website of mine. I started writing it in late September 2008, but had almost no time to spend on it.

Actually, to clarify, it's not a website, it's a blog.

In my April post I wrote:

Last month the site made me only $67. This month it will make a touch over $100.

Hardly seems worth it, right?  Well, take another look at that curve. Imagine where that will take me by the end of the year. I'm guessing it will bring me between $1,500 and $2,000 a month by Christmas.

I was wrong about the $100 figure. The income for the month actually jumped to about $220.

I know, $220 is still a very small number. Not very impressive for a blog that I started back in September.

But...I’m happy. I’m happy because I started the blog without knowing whether I was right or wrong about the opportunity. I spent almost no time on it. Now I know that I’m on the right track.

BTW, here is the revised chart, showing the ongoing increase in traffic over the last three months.

Again, the figures are small...but the growth rate is encouraging.

I still plan to spend only about an hour a week on this. And I’m still guessing it will bring me in between $1,500 and $2,000 a month by Christmas.

More about my program, How to Write Your Own Money-Making Websites...