Hey, about the freelancers — maybe ask a great one to write up a sample welcome page copy for a made-up business in your costumer’s field; you’ll post it as an example of what you can offer; she’ll get credit for it and links back to her site; if she gets click-throughs from your site, she can PayPal you a tiny piece of the action when she gets the order. So you can start small with one freebie from the freelancer, you’re posting and referring to her for free, and hopefully everyone including your customers win. But Crystal would know more about that stuff — I’m sure there are warnings I can’t imagine…

Crystal — you always have such helpful Readers!

At what point in the process are your competitors getting access to your materials? Do they pay for the sample and then run off with it? Or is there something else they’re getting their hands on that they’re using to compete with you? It’s a frustrating problem to have…

I love the idea of contracting with freelance copywriters. I’m not sure we’re at a volume yet where that makes sense, but I’m definitely going to keep that in mind…

Recent blog post from Kyle / OnYourBusiness: Tech Tools: Managing and Sharing Your Calendar

Currently, people are paying for the sample (they do have to enter info and mailing address, since I snail mail it to them — harder for them to “share”) and they do eventually order the product (after trying to do it on their own I guess.)

In your case, you might want to hook up with a few good freelance content writers to send the Body Shop’s filled out questionnaire (that you’ll make up) to them, have them write that 5 pages of content, give the Client a week to approve, you post it, all is well. You can sub-contract new content to them on a weekly or whatever basis, taking your cut before you pay the writer. Or introduce them to each other and take a referral fee, or not. But you’re scaring them off if you don’t offer to help them with content. It’s clear you’re onto that though!

Unfortunately, structured queries like fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice questions (obviously) yield nearly identical answers. A troubling trade…

And thanks for the great answer for GirlPie. I’ve been worrying thoughts on how to protect something so public, and that makes sense…make it less public, and identifying at that. Good stuff!

Whattaya think GirlPie?

You managed to put your finger squarely on the biggest issue I face with web design. We cater largely to body shops who have never had a website and don’t know where to start. They’re looking for a cheap and easy solution, so we offer design templates to get them started, but then we tell them “Okay, now give us five pages of content” and in some cases never hear from them again. They’re overwhelmed! I’m going to work on putting together a system based on some of your suggestions above… I’ll keep you posted.

GirlPie – Definitely a good point, and well worth considering… What if you made this sample form purely accessible upon request? You could even require them to put in some sort of simple ID number (tell them it gives them access to a premier level system or something along those lines), so that only the people you specifically authorize are able to get in.

The benefit here is two-fold: you keep your competitors out, and you also have a means of tracking every time a client or potential client logs in. This would give you more information about who’s really interested and allow you to make more educated and timely follow-up phone calls on sales leads.

Hope that helps…

~Kyle Claypool / OnYourBusiness

Recent blog post from Joshua: Project Wealthy

And you’re absolutely right about the laziness factor, and how little time it takes to make big difference. My blog to-do list has long had “make cheat sheets” as an option…never did even one. But now they’re looking like a requirement…

@GirlPie—Gah! A million good points, and you’ve stumped me! Lemme chew on it…more later.

Happy Friday y’all And thanks for your comments!

And how do we prevent the competition from using/copying our samples, forms, etc. for their own consultancy?! I swear, in 10 years as a consultant I’ve accidentally trained way to many newcomers who claim they do the same thing I do. ARG!

Another confounding issue is in the sample idea. I’ve created one product that seems easy to copy, but when it’s copied and not executed by one as exacting as I am, it’ll be sh*t and it’s recognizable as my template and that would make me look like sh*t. So I do offer a sample, which they can buy for a pre-paid 1/7th of the service cost — if they want to try to copy it, fine, I’ve minimized my loss; if they see they can’t do as well (inevitably) then I apply the charge as a deposit toward the product. But again — it leaves me open to the copy-cats… any ideas?

And that’s something I think gets forgotten/left out because of that extra effort required to provide one. Lazyness kicks in quite easily in many aveneus – and going that extra meter (it’s not even a Mile so I won’t use the expression to it’s fullest) can honestly make all the difference in the world when it comes to an idea or lesson ‘sticking’.