| LED Digest 2552: Pricing, Marketing Tools & YouTube |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.WillMaster.com/Master : the LED's Key Sponsor Master Series Software - Get Connected with Your WebSite www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. December 11, 2007 Issue no. 2552 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Raising Prices =-- ~ Marty R. Milette "...the key issue is 'what are you worth to the client'..." ~ Janet Attard "...you might be asking some of the wrong questions..." --== Internet Marketing Trends in 2008? ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "I suggest it's past time to get much more serious about marketing." ~ Adam Audette "I see tagging going mainstream and being adopted by more ecommerce sites..." --== Should Your Company Be On YouTube? ==-- ~ David Spahr "Video is here to stay." ~ Michael Linehan "No particular tactic is automatically and always wonderful." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Marty R. Milette Subject: Pricing > It's been a few years since I last raised > my prices, and I know I need to... The > problem: how to determine what my market > will think is fair. - Shel Horowitz, LED Digest 2551 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1966/190/ Pricing is always a sensitive issue, but the key issue is 'what are you worth to the client' -- rather than 'what am I worth'. When people say, "I'm worth xxx per hour, and won't work for less", I respond with, "unless the client finds value in your service, you're worth ZERO." I currently have five different rates -- depending whether: - I work on-site (foreign travel) or at home. - I work on an 'internal' company project, or do directly 'billable' work for a third-party client (where my work is resold). - Whether I am delivering training (which is the highest rate), or doing other types of work. Even within training, I may offer different rates depending on the 'level' of the training (end-user vs technical), duration of the course, and duration of the contract. Best suggestion is to map out a list of your services, and then work out ranges for each specific service. It may also be nice to set up an auto-responder, so that when someone queries about the rates, it can send the detailed list back -- as opposed to just publishing them on the site. Marty R. Milette http://hotel-club.net Hotel booking system for Luddites. -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Janet Attard Subject: Raising Prices I think you might be asking some of the wrong questions, Shel. Not that there's anything wrong with raising prices - there isn't. But instead of asking how you can raise consulting prices for some, but not as much for others, maybe a better place to start would be the best way overall to increase your income. Let me explain what I mean by chopping up your original post a bit... > I've been at US $145/hour for most services, > with $175/hour for certain specific types of > copywriting... (chop) > I have had pretty much no price resistance. > However, more and more of my work seems to > be helping writers... (chop) > But in that sector, there is definitely > price resistance. (chop) > I work in bursts of half an hour to an hour, and in the > course of a day I try to manage two hours of billable work (chop) > struggling upstream to not fall *too* far > behind in the deluge of several hundred emails (chop) > I'm currently creating four monthly newsletters > and updating my blog several times a week. There are some > slight revenue streams from this, but basically it's just > greasing the marketing wheel. It sounds like all those activities are limiting you to only generating income about 2 hours a day. And 2 hours a day isn't much time to generate income. Say you raise your prices and charge $200 an hour for all the services you provide. Even if all the time you spend is now billed at $145 an hour, that's a $55 per hour increase, or $110 per day. (2 hours billable time.) Now, if you didn't raise prices but found a way to generate that $145 an hour for 4 hours a day, you'd give yourself a $290 a day raise. If you raised your prices to $200 an hour AND could generate income 4 hours a day, you'd give yourself a $510 a day raise.... So, if this were me, what I'd do is try to figure out which types of things you do bring in the most income month after month. I'd look for ways to increase the amount of time devoted to those key sources of income. One way would be to eliminate things that don't have to be done, or don't have to be done by you. You could hire someone to read and answer routine email questions, if that takes a lot of your time, for instance. You could hire or train someone to sort through all the things you now read and forward only the new information to you, too. If you haven't already done so, you could assimilate all the training you provide to authors and sell it to them in a product consisting of CDs and a workbook - then perhaps have them send in lessons or something to you - you make money, without spending as much one to one time on the phone. Finally, I'd look at ways to better monetize your websites. If you have traffic going to them, you should be able to do better than just get slight income from them. Janet Attard Small Business / Home Business Resources http://www.businessknowhow.com Free newsletter http://www.businessknowhow.com/newsletter/subscribe.htm ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= The Master Series CGI Software It's tools. It's automation. It's a solid investment for your online business. Here's a tip- If we sell it, we guarantee it. And support is extraordinary. http://willmaster.com/masterLED ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Marketing trends I wrote: > I think it's time to study up on > marketing and sales principles. A little clarification on what I meant by that. I did mean for site owners --- and I also meant for web professionals. Many websites don't work very well. That failure to deliver is usually not a graphical or technological matter. The fix lies in marketing --- of the site to bring the right viewers, and inside the site to accomplish the "most desired response". That fix needs much more than using a few of the most obvious tactics. For maximum effectiveness and profitability, implementation must be rooted in and permeated by fundamental marketing principles. I suggest it's past time to get much more serious about marketing. Getting serious might mean a commitment to extensive, ongoing study, or it might mean becoming an informed consumer and using professional services. But whichever is best for a given business, I'd suggest that the #1 word in "Internet Marketing" is always marketing. The awareness of this has been developing for a while, and, I believe, marketing, in the full, strategic and multi-faceted sense, will become a dominant trend for the immediate future. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Adam Audette Subject: Marketing Trends in 2008 > What do you think are the most important > trends for Internet Marketing people to > watch 2008? - Lennart Svanberg, LED Digest 2550 Lennart, great question! Here are some trends I think will be increasingly important: 1) Tools. Yup, I agree with you on this. Specifically, pay-per-click management tools (such as the forthcoming Clickable.com which has gotten great reviews so far) and analytical tools. On the analytics side, Google continues to add functionality (such as the site search tools they announced recently) and there are myriad other options, some extremely expensive. Spidering technology is another excellent area to consider. A tool that can mimic a search bot and identify crawling issues is very valuable. Linksleuth is a good tool for this ( http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html ), but the most robust solutions tend to be proprietary and not publically available. 2) More specialization. SEO is becoming such a huge subject, it's going to mean more focus on specific areas. Social media may be one area to focus on, analytics and conversion another, and link building a third. Speaking for AudetteMedia, we're excited about focusing more and more on community SEO (optimizing user generated content) since so much of it is not being adequately leveraged. 3) Universal search is going to be increasingly important. For example, more ecommerce sites should using Google Base to get product listings. And I'm amazed how many sites don't have their PDFs, videos, and images properly optimized. It's not about web "pages" anymore, it's about digital assets in myriad formats. 4) I see tagging going mainstream and being adopted by more ecommerce sites as well. This is simply using the taxonomy / folksonomy popularized by blogs to "tag" content using keywords. These are great for SEO and internal linking. Cheers, Adam Audette http://www.audettemedia.com http://www.led-digest.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: David Spahr Subject: Marketing on YouTube > OK, my customers are on YouTube, no > doubt about that. But, how do they react > when a company are trying to "spam" > YouTube? I think they react negatively. My > strong believe is that if you want to show > your products in a videoclip, you should > do this on your own website. - Jesper Brantberg, LED Digest 2551 I heartily disagree with this point of view. The internet will not remain a collection of static pages. Video is here to stay. It's all about imagination and providing information customers can use/enjoy and not just about "selling products". I guess if you just sell widgets and all you are trying to do is "sell them" then it will not be good. If you can provide useful or creatively presented information not currently well represented visitors probably will not consider it "spam" at all. Youtube and MySpace and most others are key word and network driven. People look for other like-minded people with similar interests using keywords, blogging, making friends, and thereby creating networks. I sell unique products. I sell stereoviews. People on MySpace are likely to find me by searching for that word or, alternatively "collect(ing) mushrooms". Chances are almost 100% that people finding my page will not be offended. They say so regularly. (You can always click the "Deny" or "Block" button on a friend request). One of a kind products that are seen nowhere else (except on my site) are most always appreciated wherever they are presented. An interesting sidelight to this is the representation aspect of MySpace. Women. Want to talk to women? This is where you should be. I went on a friend hunt the other day using the key words "collect cameras" since I have some nice offerings. I got a huge list of collectors who were mostly under 35 and women. Who woulda thunk it? My friend hunts always turn up lots of women. It's a demographic I need. My clientele over the years has always been mostly older men. My point of view (and entry) has certainly been changed. There are tons of interesting businesses out there now. Unique businesses and products. Many are one person. Many are women. Maybe you all were aware of this demographic but I bet not. You get some business spammish posts in the comments but it's not a big deal. Realize these people are part of your network because they have some similar interests. I know "The Purse Diva" has a items you aren't going to find at J.C. Penney. I'm not going to get all "sensitive" about it. I let her "comments" live. People creating good networks of like-minded people are likely creating some considerable synergy. There are musicians, comedians, famous people, composers, uniques, and regular people networking, etc. etc. If you are a straight retail vendor maybe this is not for you. For the unique people, this is a thing of beauty. Targeted personal linking. My customers really are (or become) my friends in many cases. I'm betting you won't find my MySpace page offensive or spam even if you are not into the things I present. I have just begun. I have videos to make. David Spahr http://snipurl.com/1v2k0 [profile.myspace.com] -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: YouTube > So, Should You Be On YouTube.com? - Rod Aries, LED Digest 2548 > Only those with web 1.0 vision will not > see that this is a great thing. - David Spahr I don't mind the dismissive insult - because it is so thoroughly empty. I just don't want other readers to believe it is a logical and true statement. No David. Me disagreeing that YouTube is a great thing does not meant I have "web 1.0 vision". YouTube is great --- for some people some of the time. It's a waste of time for many others. No particular tactic is automatically and always wonderful. There is no magic bullet, not YouTube, not anything else. Periodically, another tactic is touted as the be all and end all answer, the cure that will fix all marketing problems and bring plenty of clients, forever, with little or no effort. This happened, long, long before the Internet and it continues to happen all the time. Don't you remember the frothing fervour around the wonderful new tool, the blog - how that was going to automatically bring every writer fame and fortune? Or before that, around websites, themselves? There are so many examples. And they can all be powerful tools - if used well. Three critical marketing questions are: 1. Who are your target markets? 2. What do they want? 3. How can you reach them; repeatedly, powerfully and for effective return on the dollar. If part of the answer to 3 is "YouTube", then fantastic. But not everyone's target markets are trolling YouTube, looking for videos to watch. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com (c) Copyright 1995-2007 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "A man should choose a friend who is better than himself. There are plenty of acquaintances in the world; but very few real friends." - Chinese Proverb |
