I’ve written a few contrarian things lately.

Specifically, I ranted a bit about why I think the most common “make money online” technique doesn’t work for most people, and about how, really, the most important ingredients of success are persistence and grit.

Then, on my own blog, I ranted about why “systems” for achieving specific results don’t work.

I got a lot of comments, emails, and tweets agreeing — too many people are looking for a quick fix, and we need to remember the basics: hard work, and good old-fashioned stick-to-it-iveness.

But believe it or not, there’s actually a problem with taking that train of thought too far.

Yes, a lot of the marketing for how-to-start-your-business products preys on the naive and is motivated by greed. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t good information out there — information that could help you move forward, remove roadblocks, and arm you with new skills.

No, there is no magic bullet

But that doesn’t mean that you should become a business isolationist, figuring everything out solely on your own, wary of anyone, anywhere, who sells information.

The most sensible approach — as is usually the case — is somewhere in the middle.

Spending money on a fool’s dream is akin to gambling, hoping that some “system” will pay off big. By contrast, spending wisely — with a decent chance of a solid return — is more like an investment.

Obviously, the best way for me to explain the difference is by talking about my grandparents.

Gambling vs. investment

My grandparents used to go to Las Vegas a few times every year to play the slots. Every once in a while, they’d win, and come back with a few thousand dollars more than they left with.

More often, they’d come home having lost some or all of what they’d budgeted as their “fun money.” No matter what happened, they always returned happy, with new stories to tell, and couldn’t wait to go again.

So the question is: Were they gambling while they were in Vegas?

And the knee-jerk reaction is, “Of course they were. What kind of dumb question is that, Truant?”

Well, I don’t know. I’d define gambling as risking an asset that you can’t afford to (or don’t want to) lose because you’re hoping it will multiply. Investment, on the other hand, is spending an asset for a defined purpose to receive a return that you have good reason to believe you will get.

If my grandparents went to Vegas, plunked down their pension checks, and then hoped like hell to hit a jackpot so that they could at least recoup the money they put in, I’d say they were gambling.

But that’s not what they did. They set a budget. They “spent” that budget on the slots. If money came back? Aces. But if not, they wrote it off as part of the trip cost and still came home happy.

They went in with a defined goal: Have a fun trip pulling levers and watching things spin and light up. That’s what they got. They were investing in their entertainment, and in their own enjoyment.

Similarly, I’d argue that what makes a business expense gambling versus an investment is the intention you have when you make it.

How to invest in your business

Are you gambling on schemes, or are you investing in information you can use? The line can seem fuzzy, but I’ll bet it’s obvious once you start looking for it.

Ask yourself what you hope to get out of a purchase. You can buy the craziest, most harebrained get-rich-quick course out there, but you’re investing if you have a realistic outcome you want to see from that purchase. (I’ll talk later about some ways that could happen.)

Or, you can buy the most conservative, reputable, boring instructional course in existence and be gambling, if you spent your rent money on it because you hoped that it would revolutionize who you are and what you do, and fix all of the problems in your life.

If you find yourself thinking things like, “Maybe this course will work,” you’re gambling.

Because courses don’t work; students do. No one course or product will “do it” for you.

If you don’t know anything about a topic, yet think that buying one product will make you a ninja master at it, you’re gambling.

If you have a deadline in mind for how fast a course’s content “must work, or else,” you’re gambling.

If you’re spending money that you cannot afford to lose on the hope that you’ll quickly earn it back, you’re gambling.

Investing in information, on the other hand, is slower-paced and more laid back. An “investment” goal should feel reasonable. It shouldn’t make you overly nervous. It should be something you could tell your mother about without her suspecting that you’re one of P.T. Barnum’s famous suckers.

And the interesting thing? There are a bunch of ways to invest, and a bunch of desired outcomes. It’s not always about a cash return.

• Some people will invest in a course specifically to see how the creator put the course together, and how he is able to justify the cost.
• Some people will invest in a product simply to get on the radar of the seller, to set up a connection that they might later be able to turn into a working relationship. (This wasn’t my intention when I bought Naomi Dunford’s Online Business School, but that’s what happened. How much did I get from the course? Who knows? But how much did I gain from meeting Naomi? Um, a whole lot.)
• Some people will buy a product with the intention of learning only ONE tiny tip from the whole thing, and then applying that one tip to make back the price of the course. It might be a quick return, but it might also be over a long time.
• I even heard a story once about a person who bought a very expensive product so that once inside the circle, she could have prospecting access to . . . well, to the kind of people who could afford to buy a very expensive product.

Still not sure? Here are my three big rules for the “right” way to invest in an information product, a course, coaching, or a service:

1. Know your intended outcome

Even the most expensive, overhyped purchase isn’t a gamble if you enter into it knowing what you can reasonably expect to get out of it.

It almost doesn’t matter what that outcome is, as long as you know it in advance.

Maybe you want to make your money back over either a short or a long time.

Maybe you simply want to see the seller’s marketing sleight of hand.

Even if you say, “I’m pretty sure I already know most of this information, but spending $2k on it will force me to use it,” you’re going into the game with your eyes open.

Obviously, if you buy better stuff, it’s easier to go in with reasonable expectations of what you’ll get out of it.

2. Buy on value, not price

Dave Navarro took some flack in certain circles over his product How to Launch the **** Out of Your E-Book. The program cost $97, and people were outraged that a PDF could be so expensive. After all, you could go down to the local Barnes & Noble and get an actual paper book for $20!

That’s looking at price, rather than the value of the information being sold.

(And by contrast, because an information product consists of slick-looking MP4s with better special effects than Avatar doesn’t make it worth a dime.)

Don’t look at a file or a stack of CDs and ask, “Is this collection of pixels or bytes, in and of itself, worth X dollars?”

Instead, ask how much having this new information will, over time, allow you to earn. (And I can tell you without a doubt that if you read How to Launch and you actually take the advice he gives, you’re going to learn something that can improve your sales by a lot more than $97.)

3. Take responsibility

The hallmark of gambling may be high risk, but investment has risk, too. Even the soundest purchases can bomb on you.

When you decide to make any investment, own up to that risk. Be willing to lose what you spend.

Not everyone agrees, but my own philosophy is, I don’t hedge my bets going in, saying that if it doesn’t work out, I’ll ask for my money back.

I know, I know . . . this is heresy, but think about what the unconditional guarantee mindset says. It says that you’re putting the onus on the product to work for you, rather than on yourself to implement what’s in it. You’re saying to yourself, “I’ll give it a shot, but no promises.”

I always thought that it would be really annoying to own a restaurant, and have someone send a $30 steak back because they didn’t like it. Was it burned? No. Tough? No. So what was wrong? The customer just decided he wasn’t that hungry. Well, if the problem is on the customer’s end, then why should the restaurant have to eat the cost?

I’ve paid for products, coaching, and services that didn’t work for me, or that I just plain didn’t like. Unless a provider has deliberately lied or unless it’s obviously, demonstrably terrible, I don’t ask for my money back. I’m looking at one such product right now, on my shelf. It cost $1500, and had an unconditional money-back guarantee. I won’t ask for my money back, though, because there’s nothing wrong with the course. The problem is on my end, in lack of implementation.

You take a risk when you invest in anything (or, for that matter, when you eat at a restaurant). If you want to be 100% sure about everything, then honestly, you really shouldn’t be in business.

I don’t want to understate this: Investment is really important. You need helpers and partners if you want to be efficient and effective. You need information on topics that you don’t already know well. You need advice in order to grow.

And let’s not forget that the mere act of putting your money where your mouth is tells your brain that what you’re doing is a livelihood, not a hobby. Investment is a way of pushing yourself to take your business seriously.

Just know what you want to get out of a purchase before pulling the lever on the metaphorical slot machine.

P.S.

Nobody point out that my slot machine metaphor for business is flawed. Of course it is; I’m just being colorful. How exciting would it have been for me to tell the tale of when my grandparents went to Duluth to put a hundred dollars into a low-yield federal bond?

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant drives a flying saucer and invests in low-yield federal bonds. If you dig his mojo, you should join the Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions for more monthly mojo than you can handle.

Like everyone else on the social web, I just read Seth Godin’s new book Linchpin. It’s a big book, not so much in number of pages, but in number of ideas.

One core theme is the idea of emotional labor — bringing more human feeling and connection to your work, some essential part of yourself that can’t be automated or outsourced.

It strikes me that this gets to one of the key distinctions between different models for doing business online.

No matter how you approach business, you’ve got to decide on a topic, and probably niche that down to a viable sub-topic.

So you might be in the fitness business or the beauty business or the writing business or the business business.

One approach has us doing some keyword research within our topic, creating enough good content to rank for those keyword phrases, and then applying a revenue strategy — maybe advertising, maybe an affiliate offer, maybe an ebook.

Simple enough.

The other approach has us creating a blog on the topic, doing a lot of soul searching to figure out our USP and/or our sub-topic, finding some readers who particularly resonate with our approach, understanding who we connect with (and being willing to scare off everyone else), and then making an offer (or series of offers) that bring in money.

The biggest difference isn’t how the revenue comes in, how our site is set up, how we approach SEO, or just where on the “long tail” our keywords are.

And contrary to what you might think, the difference isn’t in how much work we put in. Both approaches take a lot of work.

The difference is emotional labor.

The problem with paint-by-numbers

When you’re starting out, it’s tempting to look for a paint-by-numbers solution.

Something that tells you exactly where to start, what to do, and how to do it. Something that works a lot like a franchise, with a three-ring binder that explains what buttons to push.

The problem with push-button systems is that you can train a robot, or an ultra low-wage worker offshore, to push that button for you.

If the business’s genius resides in the system and not in you, what happens when someone comes along who can push the button 104% more efficiently than you can? Or who can push it at 97% of your cost?

My problem with paint-by-numbers systems isn’t that they lack creativity. My problem is that they’re risky. When you make yourself into a cog, by definition you make yourself replaceable.

Don’t be afraid to bring your best game

Emotional labor is about the part that’s outside the system.

It’s about the part that you can’t train a chimp to do. It’s about the part that wants your creativity, your strange ideas, your ADHD, your intersection of interests, your passion, your giving a damn, your hard thinking.

Simply put, it’s the love that you put into it.

You might pour a lot of emotional labor into maintaining a fantastic relationship with your readers and customers. Or you might pour that energy into making something that’s more useful, more user-friendly. Or you might pour it into developing a market position that no one’s seen before, that fills an old need in a new way.

You might pour it into “all of the above.”

Even if you’re following a system (and I think systems are tremendously useful), it’s when you get outside the system that you start to find real success.

By “success” I mean money, sure. But also satisfaction. The thrill (and terror) of saying, “Actually, I’m much too interesting and complex to be a cog. I’m a human being. Here’s how I help other human beings get what they want.”

Money can’t buy love, but can love buy money?

My favorite technique for competing in a hyper crowded niche?

Make yourself more useful or better-loved. Ideally, both.

Now you don’t have to put your personal life into your blog or business. Some people just aren’t comfortable doing that. They may want to protect their privacy, or it just may feel too awkward and embarrassing.

You get to decide. That’s why you started a business in the first place.

But if you think you might be comfortable putting a little more you into your brand, it can, frankly, be the shortest path between you and success. You don’t have to share every detail of your personal life (and please don’t tweet about the sandwich you’re having for lunch), but it’s very helpful to be a complex and individual human being.

Make a stronger connection. Care more. About your readers, about your customers, and about your own business. I don’t care if you have a four-hour work week or a hundred-hour one. I care about how much love you bring to the work when you get there.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe.

This is part one of a three-part series on how to profitably translate advice from old-school marketing guru Dan Kennedy to a new online environment.

Dan Kennedy is the Sovereign of Sales Letters. (Or maybe that’s the Duke of Direct Response.) He knows exactly how to deliver a marketing message with maximum clarity and zero confusion. As he’ll readily tell you, he’s one of the world’s highest-paid copywriters. His classic book The Ultimate Marketing Plan promises low-cost ideas and high-profit results.

This book delivers on both counts, and it’s well worth the read. But it was written in 1991, and at first seems like it’s more relevant to a restaurant or dry cleaner than it is to an online marketer.

If you have a hard time translating bricks-and-mortar advice to your internet business, well, just be glad we’ve got Copyblogger.

The Ultimate Marketing Plan walks you through the 14 steps Kennedy considers necessary to build a bulletproof marketing plan that can help you to explode your business.

And this post will tell you how to translate those to what you’ve been up to.

Dan Kennedy’s 14 Steps to the Ultimate Marketing Plan

1. Putting together the right message

This is your business’s Unique Selling Proposition, boys and girls.

The principles behind the USP have been talked to death. You can call it the Purple Cow, your market position, your winning difference, or just the answer to Why Should Anyone Read Your Blog?

The reason the USP has been talked to death is that this core idea is essential to effective marketing.

Even though defining your USP is one of the best places to start when you’re building a solid marketing plan, it also seems to be one of the easiest places for people to get lost.

Kennedy defines the USP this way:

When you set out to attract a new, prospective customer to your business for the first time, there is one, paramount question you must answer:

“Why should I choose your business/product/service versus any/every other competitive option available to me?”

Kennedy, in his characteristically cranky style, has also been known to call this “justifying your reason to exist.”

You must know the facts, features, benefits, and promises that your business makes — inside-out, upside-down, backwards, forwards, and sideways. Because if you can’t clearly articulate what makes your business unique, how can you expect anyone else to care?

You will need to crow about your business if you expect it to expand, but it’s pivotal that you are trumpeting the right things.

The right USP coupled with the right offer, especially at the right time and place, is important for any business. For a business fighting for attention with millions of other blogs all over the world, it’s essential.

2. Presenting your message

Regardless of where you choose to market your product or service, there is a right and a wrong way to deliver your message.

According to Kennedy, the customer has five mental steps to take between first contact and completing the sale.

• Awareness of a need or desire
• Picking the thing that will satisfy that desire
• Picking the source for that thing
• Accepting the price/value argument
• Finding reasons to act immediately

Let’s say your particular product is a vacation package that includes a seven-day cruise.

Pictures of an island paradise might spark initial desire, while shots of a cruise ship will put a finer point on the new longing. Information about what makes your company’s cruises different will let the prospect know that you’re the right source to satisfy their craving.

Copy that paints a picture of all the fun to be had as well as the tremendous value of the package, backed by proof (user testimonials and pictures both work great), will serve to convince your prospect that his money will be well spent.

Finally, a special, a limited time offer, or perhaps a coupon or room upgrade, will help to get the deal done today rather than . . . never.

Whether you’re online or off, it’s your job to lead the prospect through these five points. Without clear road signs, your prospect will get lost.

3. Choosing the right audience

Who you don’t serve is every bit as important as who you do. It is always okay to trim the tribe.

Let’s say you’re planning to open a steakhouse. What do you think is most important to a spectacular opening day?

• Elegant decor?
• A well-trained staff?
• Ample parking?
• A robust menu?
• Reasonable prices?
• Delicious food?

The answer: None of the above.

The best thing you could possibly have when cutting the ribbon at your new steakhouse is a starving, steak-hungry crowd with a growl in their collective belly.

Which means you don’t want to send your marketing message to vegetarians or calorie counters.

When it comes to reaching your audience online, you’ve got to find the equivalent of those hungry carnivores.

A blog that tries to speak to everyone will find few, if any, readers. It’s always smart to choose a general topic that’s got wide appeal. But within that topic, the tighter your focus, the easier it will be to grow an enthusiastic base of readers, then customers.

4. Proving your case

It seems every decade makes us more jaded. The Internet has only accelerated the process. Your marketing messages needs to survive a lot of cold, hard skepticism.

Some people might argue that you should never put negative thoughts into your customer’s head.

You won’t be.

You’re simply addressing what’s already there.

You cannot ignore this step. Proving your case will get you a lot farther along on your way to making the sale.

Address objections. Your prospect may desperately want your fantastic online cooking course, but she’s got a list of objections holding her back. Fortunately, we’re no longer in Kennedy’s 1991, where you had to use a photocopied 16-page letter to tackle each objection. These days you can do it in blog posts, email autoresponder sequences, and with virtually any form of social media.

Social proof is key. You’ll notice up there in the left-hand corner, that Copyblogger proudly advertises its 100,000-plus subscribers. That’s not bragging. It’s a decisive emotional trigger. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.

Gather testimonials. Happy, satisfied customers can be a magnet for more. What others say about you will always carry a much higher impact than what you say about yourself. While it’s a great idea to put customer testimonials on your own site, you also want to always be aware of what people are saying about you off your site.

Pictures tell a story. Before-and-after, shots of the product in use, or bright smiles on the faces of satisfied customers. Seeing is believing. If you can prove your point with pictures, you’ll go a long way toward silencing the skeptic. Images can also set a powerful mood, which gives your copy an instant emotional charge.

5. Putting your best foot forward

Like it or not, first impressions matter.

If you run a brick-and-mortar business, make sure your store is squeaky clean. Freshly washed windows and a floor you could eat off of will help to create an environment that’s conducive to sales.

Believe it or not, the same holds true online.

If you’re using WordPress for your business, make sure you’ve got a great-looking theme that’s well optimized for SEO. (As you might guess, we’re rather partial to Thesis.) Even if you’re on a budget, you will still be able to do some basic customization.

Make sure your layout is simple and clean. Emphasize your USP with a strong tagline. Be sure your page instantly conveys how you can benefit your reader and potential customer.

When you can afford it, have someone customize your site in a way that’s unique to you and your business.

Either way, if your website is your business, it should look its absolute best. Fortunately, for a tiny fraction of what bricks-and-mortar businesses pay in rent, you can have a “storefront” that shows you’re serious, professional, and worthy of your customers’ business.

(In case you think I’m not too good at counting, the other 9 lessons gleaned from The Ultimate Marketing Plan will come in two future posts. The links to the book are Amazon affiliate links, which means if you buy it, I’ll be able to buy a pack of gum! Put any of this advice into action and you should get quite a lot more out of the deal.)

Part 2: Lessons 6-10 from One of the World’s Highest-Paid Copywriters

About the Author: Sean Platt writes direct response copy, as well as helping authors write, publish and promote their book. Follow him on Twitter.

Those of you who subscribe to the Internet Marketing for Smart People email newsletter found out on Monday what Brian and I have been up to for the past few months.

We knew it would be cool, because, well, we designed it to be cool.

We wanted to build something people would really get value from.

But still, when we saw what people were doing inside after the first day, we all looked around at one another and pulled a Keanu.

Whoa.

Third Tribe Marketing has been active for just under two days now. What’s been happening so far?

• Artists and SEOs and copywriters and entrepreneurs of every stripe are all giving each other business advice, feedback, encouragement, and ideas.
• Nitty gritty conversations are springing up about promotional tactics, how to manage entrepreneurial stress, getting past roadblocks, finding our niches, and dozens of other topics.
• Chris Brogan and Laura Roeder have been helping a Triber see how he can measure social media ROI in the real world.
• A Triber mentioned frustration in putting the final graphic touches on his blog — and within a matter of minutes, another Triber stepped forward to lend her own resources and expertise. For free. Just because it felt like the right thing to do.
• One passionate Triber decided to pull together groups of “Niche Tribers,” who are already working to form cooperative bands to support and grow each other’s blogs and businesses.
• Tribers are arranging to meet up in Austin, London, Toronto . . . and more to come.

Here’s the coolest part for me:

We didn’t make this stuff happen

We provided a comfortable, user-friendly space. We’re providing educational seminars. We’re hosting Q&A sessions. And the four of us who founded the Third Tribe — Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, Brian and I — are part of the conversation, answering questions and sharing our perspective. But that’s the key . . . we’re simply part of it.

The other part is the collection of entrepreneurs at all levels. Some of them are names you recognize, some are new to the game. But all of them are energized by the Third Tribe model of kumbaya respect and community combined with razor-sharp marketing strategy.

If you want to know more about how the tribe works and how you can get access for a very attractive price, here’s where you can find the details. (If nothing else, you’d be smart to go check out Brian’s copy approach — it’s prompted a huge discussion among members on its own).

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe.

Do you know this story?

A scorpion needs to cross the river. He asks a friendly-looking frog to carry him across.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” asks the frog. “You’re a scorpion. You’ll sting and kill me.”

“No I won’t,” says the scorpion. “That would be completely against my self interest. If I sting you, I’ll fall in the river and drown.”

The frog sees the sense in this and agrees to carry the scorpion across the river. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him.

“Why did you do that?” asks the dying frog.

“I’m a scorpion,” answers the drowning scorpion. “It’s my nature.”

Who are you asking to take you across the river?

This painful little story illustrates something we’ve all seen, but sometimes forget.

Lie down with dogs and you’ll get fleas. Do business with scorpions, and you’ll get stung.

For some reason, until recently, most practical information about how to succeed in online business has come from scorpions.

People who see prospective customers as prey to be hunted. People who teach unethical shortcuts. People who preach games and systems, not value and relationships.

Some of the scorpions have interesting things to say. Some of them are even brilliant. And many of them can teach you good techniques.

But they’re scorpions. And you don’t want to find yourself at their mercy when you’re halfway across the river.

Things are changing . . . fast

Have you noticed? Something fascinating is happening in the world of Internet marketing.

Maybe it’s the widespread adoption of social media that’s made the difference. When everyone can Facebook, Twitter, and blog, all of a sudden it’s very hard for the scorpions to pretend to be good guys. The shortcuts get revealed. The light gets turned on to show the little (and large) deceptions.

The flip side is, now it’s easier than ever for great stuff to get found. If you’re glorious, people start talking about you. Word of mouth becomes “word of click.” And the good guys start finishing first.

Copyblogger was an outlier from the beginning. Brian taught his readers how to combine direct response marketing (a tool that was too good to leave to the scorpions) with content and social media to deliver amazing value to potential customers.

And there were certainly others. Chris Brogan devoting himself to his audience for 11 years to create his “overnight success,” built on integrity and connection. Darren Rowse, unofficial Nicest Fellow in the Blogosphere, showing up tirelessly to create value for his readers and help them become “probloggers” in their own right.

The ranks started to swell. We’ve been lucky enough to have many of them write for us in the past year or two. Naomi Dunford. Dave Navarro. Chris Garrett. Johnny B. Truant. Laura Roeder. James Chartrand.

These are people who don’t choose to be (or hang out with) scorpions. People who went back to just offering real solutions, developing fantastic relationships with their customers, and building solid businesses around that.

The Third Tribe is coming

Almost a year ago, this “new” (actually old) way of doing business started to be known as the Third Tribe. We had no use for the scorpions, but we didn’t want to be the clueless frog, either. We wanted to make a good living and be decent people. And we rejected (ok, I’ll be honest, mocked) anyone who tried to tell us we couldn’t.

We knew better. We were doing it. And it was working – third tribe marketing is effective.

Brian and I instantly saw that this intersection was the future of Copyblogger. And, in fact, that it was the future for the smartest online entrepreneurs — the ones who wanted to build the most interesting, most profitable businesses.

So for the past few months, Brian and I, along with some clever co-conspirators, have been building something for you. A place for the Third Tribe to come together. To share ideas and inspiration. To educate ourselves about marketing and business techniques — effective techniques that respect our audiences and preserve our relationships. To grow farther and faster than any of us could alone.

If you’re already subscribed to the free Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People, you can relax. You’re going to be getting all of the details in the next few days.

If not, you may want to fix that now. Our newsletter readers will be the very first to hear about the new project, and have a chance to take advantage of a ludicrous sweet offer.

If you’re curious about it (or frankly, if you’d just like to take advantage of a free 20-lesson course on what smart Internet marketers are doing in 2010), click here to sign up for the newsletter. It’s free, it’s got good stuff, and it’s where you’ll be able to find out all about the new Third Tribe project.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and a co-founder of Inside the Third Tribe.

Right around a year ago now, I made my first cent online. It was literally a cent — $0.01 — and it showed up in my Google AdSense account after a certain number of people had viewed an ad for dog food or a shiatsu massager or whatever on my old humor blog.

That first cent was exciting, because it proved that you really could make money online in the way it seemed that everyone said you could — by creating sites populated with ads, and then sitting back and letting the earnings pile up. Then, if the gurus were to be believed, it was only a matter of time before I would be living in Hawaii, while bikini girls used the Mona Lisa to wax my Lamborghini.

So I read a ton about how to use AdSense, took a few courses, and built a bunch of little search-engine-optimized niche websites. I worked and worked and built and built, and eventually I amassed a couple dozen of these little moneymakers.

Slowly, visitors began to come to my sites, click on the expensive Google ads for lawyers and insurance, and make me some money. Then, reasonably content with my Google army, I put those sites on “set it and forget it” mode (like a Ronco Rotisserie) and started something new.

A different way to do it

Specifically, in April of last year, I started the Johnny B. Truant biz. The business model basically consisted of trying to write funny blog posts and generally just hanging out online, and then parlaying that good will into its logical succession, which is, of course, technology services.

I worked very hard, but it didn’t feel like work — especially compared to what I had been doing on the niche sites. It felt like being an amiable jackass in the right places, and meeting people, and kind of screwing around. Eventually it also started to feel like building a business, but that happened slowly and by degrees.

Nine months passed, with both venues making me money in their own unique way.

At the end of 2009, I recorded my second five-figure month in the JBT technology biz, after building between eighty and a hundred blogs for clients in December.

And at around the same time, I got my first ever AdSense check from Google. It was for $111.

The best way to “make money online” is probably not what you think.

Spend a few minutes Googling around for ways to make money online. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

If you didn’t do that search just now, it’s probably because you’ve tried it before and already knew what you would find. Almost every site, course, and guru out there will tell you that to make money online, you should sign up for AdSense (or maybe for a large advertiser’s affiliate program), rustle up some long-tail keywords, and start gaming Google traffic.

I’m not going to tell you that doesn’t work . . . but I am going to tell you that it didn’t work for me, and that it’s unlikely to work for you if you’re even one iota like me.

Here’s why I don’t like the AdSense strategy as a business model:

1. It’s not a business model. Any time you can talk about “monetization,” you’re probably not talking about a real business because “monetizing” a business is redundant. “Monetizing” is slapping a moneymaker on top of something that doesn’t naturally produce income. The way that 99.99% of people dive into AdSense, they’re simply putting something out there and waiting for the dollars to roll in. There is no real planning, no accounting forecasts, no intention down the road to improve workflow or expand offerings or enlarge the sales funnel, no exploiting the best abilities of yourself and partners to create benefit for others.
2. It doesn’t add value. Technicalities aside, there is no real product or service in the way most AdSense “make money online” campaigns are run. There is simply arbitrage. You’re not increasing widget sales; you’re trying to make sure more of the existing sales will occur through your ads. I learned my lesson trying to play the stock market (and failing) and then investing in real estate (and failing at an epic level): Sustainable incomes come from using your talents to create value for others, not from gambling and playing the numbers.
3. It contradicts the way the Net is supposed to work. Yes, yes, I know . . . some people blog in a heartfelt manner about cabinetry and run cabinetry ads, and visitors click them to buy cabinets and the site owner makes money. But most AdSense strategies are all about gaming the system. When I was creating insurance niche sites, I couldn’t have cared less about insurance. I was simply trying to draw traffic away from the legit insurance sites so that people would click on my ads instead of finding an insurance company a different way. That’s not the way that the Web is supposed to work . . . which is to efficiently connect the searcher and what she’s searching for.
4. It’s anonymous. Few “make money online” strategies will tell you to blog under your own name, include your own picture, and make a big deal about being the guy or gal who created this site. In fact, I spent a lot of my time trying to obscure who I was. Many courses even tell you to use hosting that will generate random, non-sequential IP addresses for each site, so that even Google won’t know that one person owns them all. Anonymity conflicts directly with what I consider to be the most important reasons for my success, which are honesty, authenticity, trust-building, and transparency.

You can do better, no matter who you are

I worked really, really, really hard on those AdSense sites. I worked 15-hour days; I wrote keyword-laced post after keyword-laced post; I entered them in article directories and put them through social media bulk submitters; I launched site after site, tweaked, customized, and researched.

And by doing that, I made $111 in a year.

Maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Maybe I used the wrong system. Maybe, if someone else had done it, they might have done it twice as well. And maybe that same person would have done it for three times as long as I did, building sites for the whole year instead of only doing it for four months.

So yeah, maybe that super-ambitious person might have made $888.

Now, stop and think about that for a second.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that they could start a business today, being themselves, playing to their own strengths, and creating value for others, and not make more than $888 in a year should . . . well, those people should really just stop reading about business right now.

Am I saying that you can’t use AdSense to make money online? No. Am I saying that every “system” for striking it rich on the Net — like creating anonymous niche sites that use AdWords ads to draw traffic to affiliate products — is an impossible scam? No.

I’m just saying that the average person is probably going to have better luck building a real business. Meaning:

• One that you can stand behind publicly.
• One that’s based on helping others in exchange for pay.
• One that benefits from being a real, authentic person.
• One that matches your best abilities to the needs of others.

This Third Tribe thing? This new internet era of being real and honest and open in business and marketing rather than relying on tricks, games, yellow-highlighted text, and the hard sell? It’s real, folks. And at least for me, using that approach turned my Google earnings into an afterthought.

If the “Third Tribe” style of doing business appeals to you, subscribe to the free Copyblogger newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. We’re within a few days of announcing a brand-new tribe for online entrepreneurs. And our newsletter subscribers will be the very first to learn about it.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is an amiable jackass who may or may not have invented Post-It Notes. You can hire him to tell you how to do better than AdSense, or, failing that, you should at least follow him on Twitter because sometimes he tweets about zombies.

Feedback is the cornerstone of community-oriented, kumbaya-style blogging. Like a beautifully polished mirror, we take our best ideas from the wants, needs, and desires of our readers.

So as we all know, the smartest thing content creators can do is to solicit feedback. If our readers unsubscribe, cancel, or stomp off in a huff, we want to know why so we can make our content better.

Right?

Actually, I don’t think so.

I recently found out that the famously cranky marketing writer Dan Kennedy doesn’t give out those “tell me how I can improve” cards when he gives a talk. He’s interested in one thing and one thing only: how much did he sell. (Kennedy long made his living by selling information products on the speaking circuit.)

I find myself agreeing with Kennedy with disturbing frequency these days. Although this bit of behavior goes against what 98% of people will advise you to do, I’m finding that his approach is actually followed by most of the successful business owners I know, especially online.

You tend to move toward what you focus on

I don’t believe in the “Law of Attraction,” but I do believe in a basic tenet of good driving. If you put your focus on a certain point in the road, you tend to steer the car there, consciously or not.

Focus on the wall and you will tend to hit the wall.

Focus on the center of the lane just ahead of that tight little curve and you’re much more likely to nail it gracefully.

When you focus on complaints from people who don’t like you, your natural tendency is to steer your blog (and your business) in a direction that will make it more appealing to them.

Why would you want to do that?

The red velvet rope

Before I started a blog or knew any bloggers, I was a fan of a business writer named Michael Port and his book Book Yourself Solid. Port teaches solopreneurs how to market their businesses without wanting to shoot themselves. I found his ideas very helpful when I was getting started.

In chapter one, Port asks readers to put together a “red velvet rope policy.” In other words, a well-defined understanding of who you want to work with, and just as important, who you don’t want to work with.

Would I rather spend my days working with incredibly amazing, exciting, supercool, awesome people who are both clients and friends, or spend one more agonizing, excruciating minute working with barely tolerable clients who suck the life out of me?

Seems kind of simple when he puts it that way, doesn’t it?

He doesn’t say, “Don’t work with evil people.” It’s not about dividing the world into the Good and the Bad.

It’s more like dividing the world into “good fit for me” and “bad fit for me.” Your repulsive toad may be someone else’s Prince Charming.

So a client I may find “high maintenance” and on the No list could be, in your eyes, “results-oriented with great attention to detail” and be a resounding Yes.

The right kind of feedback

It’s not that I don’t believe that feedback can be helpful. But most people who criticize you aren’t ever going to be a good fit for what you have to offer.

They may not be in the market, at all, for what you’re selling. They may be looking for a very different personality or style. They may love text, when your best medium is audio. They may love audio, when your best medium is text.

If your product is the Blue Man Group of your industry, and you’re talking with a Siegfried and Roy customer, you’re not likely to ever make them happy.

So you might want to ignore their parting feedback about how your site would be a lot better with more glitter, white sequins, and dangerous carnivorous animals.

The very best kind of feedback is along the lines of “I wish you offered this so I could buy it from you.” Also good is “I am so frustrated trying to find a resource meeting this description, do you know where I could find one?” and you realize you’d be the perfect person to build it.

And of course, negative comments from people who are otherwise a great fit are also often very useful. It’s called “constructive criticism.” Just be sure it’s not actually passive aggression in disguise.

“Is this person my customer?”

This is one of the most important questions to ask yourself when you get a negative remark.

If someone’s angry with you for having the audacity to offer a product for sale, it’s productive (and sanity-preserving) to ask yourself, “Is this person my customer?”

If someone quits your email newsletter with a 47-point diatribe on how lame you are, it’s productive to ask yourself, “Is this person my customer?”

If someone leaves a comment about all the reasons they wanted your blog post to be on a different topic entirely, it’s productive to ask yourself, “Is this person my customer?”

There’s a good chance everyone would be happier if they just went back to Siegfried and Roy.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Copyblogger is about to go on our annual holiday hiatus. We’ll be taking a break from posting while we catch up, get rested, and get excited about what we’ve got in store for you in 2010.

You may be taking a little time off yourself. Or you may still be going into the office, but the last week of the year is often a time when routine tasks slow down or stop altogether.

So what’s the smartest, most productive use you could make of the next seven days?

Here are five ideas that will let you take what some people think of as “dead time” and use it to jump start your year in 2010. Doing any or all of these will get you energized and excited for the year to come.

1. Create a quick product

The biggest obstacle most bloggers face when they want to make money is they don’t have anything to sell.

And the biggest obstacle to creating something to sell is that it seems overwhelming. We feel like we’ve got to distill everything we know into a 400-page ebook or 30-hour marathon audio course.

That’s why I was so impressed by a recent post from Dave Navarro about creating a product over a weekend, and his follow up post on
how to know if it’s the right time to create a product.

If you’ve got even one or two slow days coming over the next week, take Dave’s advice and create a small, low-cost product. It doesn’t matter if you have four blog subscribers, three of whom are related to you.

A few people may buy it, and that’s great. They’ll tell others about it, and that will start attracting the targeted audience you need in the future (generating more sales).

More importantly, it will elevate you in people’s eyes as a solution producer and not just a blogger. Big difference.

2. Write a series

If the idea of creating a product is still too scary, put it on your calendar for January. And instead, every day for the next seven days, write a post for a series for your blog or email newsletter.

What should your series be about? It should be about the most compelling, thorny problem your audience regularly faces that you’re passionate about fixing.

Solve some problems worth solving. Don’t wimp or waffle around, and don’t sell yourself short. Give your audience real answers they can start using right away.

3. Reconnect with your favorite bloggers

Sometimes the “social” in social media threatens to eat every minute we’ve got to give.

If you find yourself with a little down time next week, spend a few minutes and reach out to some of your favorite bloggers in your topic. You know, the ones you haven’t had any time to read in the last six months.

Read through their last 4 or 5 posts. Look through their archives or popular posts. Make some intelligent comments. If something useful presents itself, link to them in your series.

4. Create some audacious goals

I know, I know, nothing is more boring than telling you to set goals around this time of year.

But here’s the thing. Wildly exciting goals lead to wildly exciting results. (Not always, or even often, the precise results you visualized. Don’t let that worry you.)

Some time before December 31st, take an hour and write down the most perfect imaginable day for yourself. Where you wake up (and with whom), what you see, what you have for breakfast, what you do and where you go and how you do it. How you feel about everything you’re doing and seeing. How you look. What you smell and hear.

Use every ounce of writing skill you’ve got to make this description vivid. Sell yourself on it.

And try not to be too “realistic.” Let your dreams soar a little.

Then set a reminder in your calendar to take a look at this “perfect day” once every three months in 2010. Each time you revisit it, re-copy what you’ve written, making any tweaks you want to.

I promise you, in December next year, you’ll be a little spooked by some of the “unrealistic” things you wrote down this year, and how much more realistic they’ve become.

5. Sign up for some high-quality (free) education

If you haven’t joined us yet for Copyblogger’s free Internet Marketing for Smart People e-newsletter, you should sign up for it now. It starts with a 20-part course on some of the most important building blocks to marketing your product or service online.

The newsletter will give you the marketing tips and techniques that work in the real world, including the smartest strategies for marketing with social media. And we do it without the annoying sleaze and hype you see from too many other “gurus.”

If you’re planning on putting one (or all) of these into action by December 31, let us know in the comments! (And then come back on January 1 and let us know how you did.)

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Ever had an idea that couldn’t miss?

You took immediate action, created the perfect warm-up content, the best launch strategy, and the perfect offer . . . .

And then it totally failed.

So yeah, the film Purple Rain contains the consummate lesson on this one.

No, really.

The Lesson of Lake Minnetonka

Upon mature reflection, the album Purple Rain is a work of genius, while the film . . . not so much. But any true Prince fan loves it anyway.

And as a teenage boy in 1985, the fact that a diminutive man sporting a Jheri curl and a ruffled shirt could score with gorgeous women was rather encouraging, you know?

One memorable scene involves Prince giving bombshell Apollonia Kotero a motorcycle ride through rural Minnesota. As he pulls up to the shoreline, Prince lets her know she has to prove herself.

“You have to purify yourself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka,” Prince says mysteriously. Then he says it again.

Next, fulfilling every teenage boy’s as yet unimagined wish, Apollonia strips down to her thong and jumps in the lake.

The freezing water provides an immediate shock. But the cruel surprise comes from a half-apologetic Prince.

“That ain’t Lake Minnetonka.”

Did You Jump in the Wrong Lake?

Often, you do everything right, except for the first thing.

You start with an otherwise great product and mistakenly try to sell it to the wrong people.

This isn’t always fatal, but it’s definitely frustrating. And it’s because you focused on what you want rather than who you’re trying to serve. You jumped right in without understanding all the critical facts.

While it may sound a bit kumbaya, understanding who you can help helps you. It’s the key to the kind of outstanding success that eludes those who don’t understand why the take, take, take strategy doesn’t work.

It’s really give, give, give to win. But only if you give the right things to the right people.

Missing the true needs and desires of your market is like jumping in the wrong lake.

You simply end up like Apollonia — cold, wet, and disappointed.

Start With the People, Not the Product

So where do online marketers go wrong?

There’s an old saying . . . start with the prospect, not the product. It keeps you from trying to sell stuff to the wrong people.

Even better, it keeps you from selling stuff nobody wants.

That truly unfortunate event happens when someone has an idea they think, for example, every small business owner should embrace. But it isn’t something the small business market wants to embrace.

It’s like trying to sell asparagus to kids because it’s good for them. If you’re competing against the jingle of the ice cream truck down the street, you’re not likely to get the results you want, because there’s simply no market for your offer.

In this sad case, the analogy is more Matrix than Purple Rain:

Do not think that the lake is cold . . . that’s impossible.

The truth is, there is no lake.

Ouch.

It’s About Them, Silly

You’ve heard it all before. But do you get it?

Wealthy entrepreneurs are essentially highly-compensated servants to their chosen market. And yet the benefits are way better than the numerable perks Alfred gets from the Bat Cave.

Wow, three film references in one post . . . did it work?

If you’re trying to make a match between your market and the right offer, subscribe to Copyblogger’s free newsletter on Internet Marketing. It starts with a 20-lesson tutorial on the four keys to building a sustainable business (one of which is finding the right product or service for your people).

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.

Buying online is a consumer’s paradise, right?

One can compare competing offers ‘til the heart’s content, all with simple clicks of a mouse.

Well, it’s not that great if you happen to sell online.

And what if I told you it’s not really that great for consumers, either?

Sound crazy? Read on.

Preface: Start with a killer product or service

This should go without saying in our age of global competition and reduced barriers to entry. But so often merchants are looking for a magic bullet to widely distribute something that the market simply finds inferior.

The problem is, there are plenty of people out there with exceptional products and services who are losing out to others with lesser offerings and higher prices.

What’s going on with that?

Superior marketing and sales techniques, that’s what. Here are 3 ways to level the playing field (or even tip the scales in your favor).

1. Eliminate competition with artful positioning

Wouldn’t selling online be wonderful without competition? Well, it’s possible, if only to the extent that a certain type of person considers you the absolute only option. Yes, it’s our friend positioning again, and we’ll keep talking about it because it’s so vital to success.

The traditional approach to positioning involves offering a benefit your competition cannot or will not offer, thereby making your offer the only choice for those who value that benefit. It still works too – look at the insane level of customer service that Zappos offers, and you’ll understand why throngs of people wouldn’t dream of buying shoes elsewhere.

For small and micro-businesses, positioning (a/k/a your unique selling proposition) can be as simple as creating a unique bond with enough people to build a thriving business. Whether by creating a hybrid business at the intersection of disciplines, crafting a better metaphor that communicates what people need to hear, or creating an emotional bond and huge trust based on your own personality, modern online positioning has come down to connections that resonate authentically and generate loyalty.

Remember, it’s not about where you rank in a hierarchy against others. It’s about carving out your unique territory and owning it outright.

2. Confront your competitors proactively

Let’s face it, in some markets, positioning alone might not get it done. When you’re selling retail items such as consumer electronics or commodity goods, shoppers are more focused on overall value for the buck.

The most common merchant response to the threat of online comparison shopping is not very effective. “Hey, let’s pretend they’re not there!” is nice as wishful thinking, but let’s be realistic.

You’ll hear time and again that the initial objectives of copy in a call-to-action environment is to 1) attract attention; 2) express benefits; and 3) overcome objections. The fact that your prospect thinks you have legitimate competition is really just an objection to buying from you right now.

Instead of sticking your head in the ground, why not proactively address why your offer is better than the other guy’s? Don’t assume that your prospect “gets” that your offer is superior; “show” her it’s better by doing a head-to-head comparison with charts, checklists, or even an interactive apples-to-apples demonstration.

People examining your offer want you to be the solution to their desire or problem. It’s your job to eliminate the lingering doubt that exists in the form of objections, and like it or not, your competition is one of those objections.

3. Emotional benefits make everyone happy

We tell you over and over (and over) to focus first on benefits rather than features, because people decide to buy based on lightening-fast emotional responses, and justify that decision with logic. But what if it turned out that making purchase decisions via emotion (instead of by overly-rational research and price shopping) actually made us happier?

Recent psychological resaerch indicates just that. The study focused on using proven methods to impede logical decision-making, thereby forcing people to go with emotional, intuitive choices instead.

The results?

Those who used primarily emotion rather than primarily logic made more consistent choices. And consistency is one of the hallmarks of a “rational actor.” In other words, the “emotional” people made more “rational” choices than those who focused on rationality!

What does that mean? From the study:

For the consumers, contrary to lay perceptions, attending to one’s emotional responses may prove to be very valuable in understanding one’s preferences. It is possible consumers would be much happier with choices based more on their emotional reaction. For example, if one buys a house and relies on very cognitive attributes such as resale value, one may not be as happy actually living in it, as opposed to a person who attends to his or her emotional reaction to the house prior to purchasing it.

Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide, thinks that online price shopping might actually make us unhappy. He notes that the study speculates that the Internet leads consumers to engage in more rational deliberation, which in turn produces an outcome that contradicts our assumptions about the “online shopping paradise.”

Remember, when introduced to an emotional benefit in an offer, neurology shows that our brains react as if we were already experiencing the actual benefit. In essence, employing emotional benefits not only begins the customer satisfaction experience before the sale, this latest research indicates that initial satisfaction maintains after the sale.

Isn’t bonding with prospects and customers better for everyone?

It’s amazing how many of the initial assumptions sparked by the Internet continue to be dead wrong. E-commerce was supposed to benefit the consumer by providing limitless options, and yet the counterintuitive paradox of choice shows that too many options make us anxious and unhappy.

Instead, we now have an entire movement devoted to voluntary simple living. We don’t necessarily want more choice; we want something that does what we need it to do when we desire a solution.

In an ultra-competitive environment, a quality product or service is an indisputable market obligation (and I’d say an ethical obligation as well). But given how we actually operate as human beings in the face of overwhelming choice, isn’t a communication approach that bonds emotionally with our prospective customers also a market obligation? Perhaps even an ethical one?

What do you think? Let me know in the comments.

About the Author: Brian Clark is founder of Copyblogger and co-founder of DIY Themes, creator of the innovative Thesis Theme for WordPress. Get more from Brian on Twitter.