1. A trusted industry expert or organization or company or entity requires a minimum standard for identity, knowledge and/or performance and offers a certification that, if achieved, sprinkles Magic Credibility Dust on the heads of…
2. Folks meeting the standard and proving their ability, who can then show the cert to…
3. Other folks wanting third-party verification

This is a game where everyone wins. The folks wanting a third-party verification get a single piece of paper that represents the hassle of testing and verifying the certificate holder’s credentials, abilities, and knowledge. With a trusted certificate, they’re assured the holder: 1) is who they say they are, 2) knows what they say they know, and/or 3) can do what they say they can do.

The folks who acquire certifications get credibility-by-association, which is especially helpful for newcomers to a field. Certifications don’t replace real-world experience, but they do offer potential clients or employers that bit of proof.

What does the certifier get? Well, they get paid, of course.

So Where’s The Money?

The money is all along the certification process, from application to training and testing to the piece of paper at the end. Here are some examples—

• Last week I mentioned Jim Horan, a consultant who earns passive income by certifying other consultants to resell his licensed One Page Business Plan system. He charges $2,800 to $10,000 for training and certification, as well as a $250-$750 annual license renewal fee.
• Microsoft administers their technical certifications through authorized testing centers worldwide, with exam fees at around $125. Certification tracks require up to 7 exams.
• Microsoft outsourced administration of their Microsoft’s Office Specialist (MOS) certification to Certiport, who also administers exams via authorized testing centers, these at around $80 each. The Master Specialist track requires 4 exams, and the Master Instructor status requires all of that plus proof of teaching experience and a $95 application fee.
• Learn2Type offers a self-administered online typing test, where it’s free the take the test, but the certification itself costs $19.99 plus shipping.
• BrainBench has 575+ self-administered online exams for everything from ASP to XML at $49.95 each, which includes a hardcopy certificate. They also have a subscription plan for $199 a year with unlimited access to their entire exam library.

So when I tell you Jim Horan has 400+ certified consultants paying $250+ annually to maintain their certification, and that Certiport’s 12,000 testing centers have delivered 5.5 million exams at $80+ each, and that BrainBench has delivered over 8 million exams online at up to $49.95 a piece, you can appreciate the earning potential in offering—or even just administering—certifications.

I bet you can think of at least 3 more certifications I didn’t list here…every industry has their own. When you have them in mind, put on your Passive Income Glasses and look closely at the setup. Is it passive income? Could it be?

Mmmm! Passive Income…

Clearly, the passive income part depends on what the certification is based on and how it’s administered. If the certification requires a personal interview with each applicant, then that setup is the opposite of passive income.

But if certification depends on background verification and testing, it’s easy enough to delegate the daily operations to staff, contractors, or technology.

Jim Horan’s applicants attend teleclasses that may be taught by him, but are likely facilitated by qualified members of his consulting team. Microsoft and Certiport both outsourced some, if not all, of their certification administration to partners. Learn2Type and BrainBench offer online exams that are 100% web-based, so staff need only print and mail certificates.

But you can already see trouble brewing, can’t you?

Fakers, Cheaters, and Other Credibility Killers

A certificate’s value is wrapped in the credibility of the certifier and/or the certification process. Obviously the certifier has to be trusted and respected, but the process has to do its share of the heavy lifting when it comes to establishing the certificate holder’s credibility. If the client or agent or customer doesn’t know, respect, or believe in what the certificate represents, it’s just paper.

For example, I’m an ordained Scribe. Seriously. The Universal Life Church openly offers free online ordainment. I typed my name in a box and clicked a button. Done! The only thing easier would’ve been wielding my pen as a magic wand and tapping my head with it. “Poof! I’m a Scribe!”

And while the certification seems a bit of a sham, the certifying body is legit—apparently my state recognizes UCL’s instant ordainment as proof of my qualification to hold marriage ceremonies. Still, it didn’t take much so it doesn’t mean much. The easy-peasy process is a credibility killer.

Fakers will wreck a certification’s credibility, too. MCSE bootcamps are legendary in the IT world for churning out legions of underqualified systems engineers who are well-trained to pass Microsoft’s certification exams, but not necessarily able to handle the job their certificate gets them. So while employers like to see these certs, they’re not a golden ticket.

And of course there are the cheaters, whose certifications are worth less than nothing. They memorize the answers from stolen tests, pay someone else to take the test in their place, or buy the certification outright from an unethical or unauthorized vendor. When word gets out that the certification can be bought, it’s absolutely worthless…forever.

But some credibility killers are built into the certification process by the certifier. For example, the BrainBench and Learn2Type exams are 100% online, and therefore 100% honor system. I’ve taken their tests, and I believe that they are valid ability tests. But anyone at all could take the tests in my place, so what good are they at proving MY ability?

Also, I’ve seen would-be professional certifications (naming no names here), where the passing exam score was near failure by any other educational standard—a pitiful 63%. The certification’s documented benefit is it proves holders “have key job skills”. I’d begin or end that with “barely”, based on their low expectations.

Which is all to say that offering and/or administering certifications can make for great passive income, but it’s not without pitfalls and hazards and it’s fair share of rogues. If you take this on, step carefully and guard aggressively.

Some Last Thoughts

So developing a certification process into a passive income generator isn’t tough, and I shared plenty of examples of people, organizations, and companies who are earning heaps of money from it.

The challenge is in gaining and maintaining the credibility that gives the certificate it’s true value. And it’s as much about the certification process as it is the certifying body…maybe even more.

Because above all, a certificate’s purpose is to provide proof that the certificate holder has demonstrated their knowledge or skills, and if the certification process is lame or flawed or easy to circumvent or nonexistent, it’s not worth a helluvalot to anyone.

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 45 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: passive income

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I feel sure that 99.99% of us are affected by these increases, and there’s no doubt some of us are more critically affected than others. I’ve been more and more troubled about this since yesterday afternoon. Here’s what happened—

I met a friend for our monthly lunch. Halfway through her salad she said, “Girllll, I’m starting to feel the money squeeze. My car’s paid off and my mortgage is manageable, it’s the rest of it!”—

• The grocery trip that used to cost $65 now costs $75.
• Her electric bill (for lights, central air, and stovetop) was $150, now it’s $210.
• The estimate-based propane bill (for central heat, water heater, ovens) has been $220 monthly, but it’s time to settle up based on actual usage and they’ve billed her an additional $1400. Due, like, now.
• And since the propane bill’s estimate is based on the previous 12 months use…starting next month her monthly bill will be $330.
• In addition, the cost of propane is going up something like 15¢ a gallon, so she anticipates owing them another huge chunk this time next year.

She went on to say that because of these there’s no wiggle room in her budget for extra saving. Along with regular additions to her 401K, she’s saved a year’s salary so far. However, unless she changes jobs, gets a raise, or prices go down, there won’t be any more cash socked away in CDs and her IRA.

The thing is, she’s a well-educated person in a management position with a solid company. She has always handled her money well, with a solid savings, an affordable fixed-rate mortgage, and no other debt.

Barring a layoff, she’s pretty much immune to minor shifts in the economy—but she’s feeling it now.

This is what’s troubling me.

That and lunch was expensive. Not the food…the 60 minute round trip drive. Driving to and from lunch cost more than the lunch itself. My other monthly lunch date, Chris, has established a “You Drive, I’ll Buy” lunch policy to defray my meeting up expenses.

Admittedly, these are relatively luxurious frets of lower-middle to middle-middle class Americans: not saving enough, spending too much on gas, and who’s buying lunch.

What’s been troubling me is if we’re fretting, what’s everyone else doing?

What Everyone Else Is Doing

If I’m worried about affording gas for lunch dates twice a month, someone else out there is worried about affording gas to get to work every day.

If my girlfriend can’t save extra, then someone else out there can’t save at all.

Which means that someone who was just barely covering their credit card or student loan debt, now can’t afford to pay it.

Which means that someone who wasn’t covering their debt, now also isn’t covering their utilities.

Which means that someone who wasn’t covering debt or utilities now can’t afford their medical bills.

Someone else can’t afford their mortgage

Someone else is behind on their rent.

Which means someone else isn’t eating as well.

Which means someone else isn’t eating as much.

Which means someone else isn’t eating at all.

The Big Diff

It doesn’t take alotta money to make alotta difference. An additional $400 each month is a big help regardless of where you are socio-economically.

Think about it: The difference between saving and not saving, eating and not eating—or something in between—can be a $47 ebook that sells 2 or 3 copies each week.

But Why Passive Income?

If we earn our living as an hourly or salaried employee, or bill by the hour, we weren’t gifted with more time to cover these increased expenses. The days didn’t increase proportionally…they’re still only 24 hours long.

We can’t make time to earn more, we can only take time away from something else, so unless we got a comparable cost-of-living increase or successfully raise our rates, we’re going to continue coming up short.

At least, that’s true for those of us that don’t have something running in the background: A published book with a royalty payout. A useful and affordable ebook. A membership site. A directory site. A niche content site with some ad revenue.

For God’s sake, not a blog…too much hands-on time required.

We just need to create a little sumpin that will pay us back for a year or two…or twenty. Something that doesn’t need our hand in to continue making a buck or two…or four hundred.

That’s all I’m sayin’.

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 49 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: passive income

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And with my Passive Income Glasses on, I view that as a problem. As an entrepreneur can be caged by their business because they don’t delegate and outsource day-to-day tasks, a Personality is worse off because they can’t delegate or outsource their role.

They are their job. Their job is them.

Think about it: What if Rachael Ray got sick, or just sick of cooking, and stopped doing her cable shows? Rachael is the shows and the shows are her. If she is paid per show like most TV actors, then she doesn’t get paid if she’s not in front of the camera.

However, among other things, Rachael has written and published umpteen cookbooks. As the author, she likely receives royalties—a small percentage of each and every book sale…forever. Here are some thoughts, ideas, and a fine example on how we can build this scenario for ourselves.

Getting Over Beyond Ourselves

Like Rachael, we must extend our business beyond ourselves, even if—especially if—we are the business and the business is us. We need to ensure we’re paid even when we’re removed from day-to-day operations, whether we’ve chosen not to do our work or we find ourselves unable to.

Think on these—

• Rachael isn’t the first or only celebrity chef to publish books or license her persona: Julia Child also wrote best selling cookbooks, while Wolfgang Puck’s name and face are on a dozen bottles and boxes in the grocery.
• Movie celebrities have a long history of insuring their signature body parts for up to 8 figures. Notable food critics insure their taste buds, dancers insure their legs, female strippers insure their boobs, and some male stripper insured his nethers.
• Even way-minor celebrities have to manage extraction from a business that’s closely tied to their personality. When Lisa of Hungry Girl wanted to get clear of her Monday-Friday ezine, she queried her readers for a writer who could mimic her tone and style.

With these in mind, here are a handful of ways to extend our businesses beyond ourselves. Each can take a variety of forms and some or all can be combined for a portfolio of continuous hands-free income:

• Write a book
• Package a process
• License or patent
• Teach others how

A Fine Example

Jim Horan of the One Page Business Plan is someone who assembled all of these. He started with a process for developing concise and effective business performance plans, then extended his consultancy beyond himself by:

• Writing books
  His One Page Business Plan books are well-rated sellers at Amazon. Cleverly, he composed a 4-book series by directing his one process at four different groups—non-profits, consultants, creatives, and financials. The examples are specific to each group, but the core content is the same.
• Packaging his process
  In addition to his books, Horan packaged his process into retreats and workshops, as well as a web-based system with enterprise software and graduate school level e-learning. With these, his process is executed by certified facilitators and proprietary technology—totally hands-off continuing income for him.
• Licensing his work
  The One Page Business Plan site labels Horan’s process as “proprietary methodology” and his licensed consultants and international affiliates prove this to be true. Anyone who wants to resell his process to their clients has to pay up.
• Teaching others how
  Consultants wanting to resell the One Page Business Plan process pay a pretty penny for training and certification, as well as annual license renewal. But like any franchise, licensees benefit from his established brand and overall marketing, and get some support for training, sales, and demos.

A Few Notes

• At the heart of it, Horan has only one product. One. There’s no madly varied suite of offerings here, just his one great idea configured, presented, and earning in a myriad of ways.
• Horan’s collection is crafted for many spending levels and audiences. His books cost around $25, his smallest license and certification program costs $2,800 with a $250 annual renewal, and his executive certification program costs $10,000.
• Horan’s site says he has over 400 licensed consultants out there. Even if they’re all at the lowest consulting tier (and I’d bet they’re not), the $250 annual licensing fee comes to at least $100,000 each year.
• The production, marketing, distribution, and sales of Rachael’s books are delegated/outsourced to a publisher and partners who share her income, and are therefore dedicated to her success. Yum-O, indeed!
• If you haven’t already, catch Our Freedom at Work and James Hipkin’s great comment on resolving how there’s only so much of me to go around.

Et tu? Do you have a plan in place, or in action? Did this spark an idea, or give you a push? Lemme know down below…

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 21 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: case studies, licensing, passive income, royalties

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A Freedom Timeline

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the New Americans, and I (as an American) was made forever free of Great Britain’s rule.

On September 22, 1862, the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, and I (as an African-American) was made forever free of slavery.

On August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified and I (as a woman) was left forever free to cast my vote.

In 1992, I became self-supporting and I (as an adult) made myself forever free of my parents’ rules and priorities. Theoretically, anyway…

January 15, 2005 was my last day of full-time work as an employee. I invested three years into supporting Dan while he was in school full-time, and on that day he started returning the favor with three years of freedom to work from home. Maybe forever. Maybe not.

My Freedom

Much of my freedom was fought for by my forefathers (and foremothers!), but some I had to earn myself. With each additional chunk of independence came the joy of flexibility, the burden of responsibility, and the bittersweet confusing bliss of having choices.

That’s what freedom means to me, just as Sethe said in Beloved: waking up at dawn and deciding what to do with the day.

Not that I wake up that early…9:30’s just as good.

Building Freedom

There are 6 months of my Employment Freedom left and I’m revisiting my strategy on how to remain free. The original plan was to build a business, but the way I had it figured, I was actually building another job.

Now I know that I need to develop/create/manifest/engineer an income machine that will maintain—and maybe even extend—my freedom.

Tricky stuff, that. Because “independent work” only promises freedom from an employer, not freedom from a desk, freedom of movement, freedom from worry, or financial freedom.

Whatever I build, it needs to run for me, not run on me—there’s only so much Crystal to go around. Just as indispensable employees can never be promoted, an indispensable entrepreneur has built their own cage.

Work Freedom

As I see it, truly Independent Workers are queens and kings of passive income streams. They still work, of course, and from what I’ve seen they work hard. There is work freedom, but without a trust fund or a big win lotto ticket, there’s no freedom from work.

But these Independents work on projects for weeks or months, not so much on tasks day after day. And after a project is completed and earning, they don’t need to work as hard or as much, if at all. Nifty, eh?

Above all, true Independent Workers have incomes that aren’t limited by time. Their earning potential is not limited to the hours they can work (quite finite), only the price of their product or service and the number of people they can get to pay for it (also finite, but way more potential).

Going Forward

Starting today BigBrightBulb is going to continue with more focus on Independence: ideas and resources for passive income streams, mobile working, and similar topics. Other stuff will surely pop up from time to time, but the core topics are going to be on getting—and staying—free.

Et tu? When did (or does) your freedom start? What does your freedom look like?

And yes, Jeremy Adam Davis, I am finally reading The 4-Hour Workweek! It’ll likely be this month’s book review…

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: passive income, pep talk

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Image credit: redjar

Earlier this week we talked about using online backup services for offsite safekeeping of our files and photos.

But many of us have stuff that lives online and not on our home computer, like blogs and websites, and all our goodies at Del.icio.us and Flickr, et. al.

I feel sure we can depend on social media sites and online services like Jott and Remember The Milk to protect what we’ve put out there. And that’s not fangirl talk.

The bottom line is that their bottom line is 100% dependent on their ability to 1) provide the service, and 2) preserve our data. And not necessarily in the order.

So with our links, photos, reminders, and schedules in trustworthy hands, we only need to worry about backups for our websites and blogs. And really, we don’t need to worry (much) about those. Here’s why—

The Good News

The Internet remembers (almost) everything.

When we heard that Sharon over at Get Paid To Write Online lost a piece of her terrific blog to a webhost error and a not-quite-current backup file, Dan and I put our heads together to figure out how she could get restore the missing pieces.

We suggested online resources like the Google Cache and her own feed (more on those below), and Sharon was able to recover most of what was lost from Google’s semi-permanent memory.

The Bad News

The Internet remembers (almost) everything.

Don’t publish anything online—anything!—that you don’t want preserved…maybe forever.

Webmasters have a little wiggle room. If the website traffic is low, it could take a day or two (or ten) for the search engines to note that something has been added or edited. Also, odds are that no one will see (or print or save or share) the boo-boo before it can be fixed. If the website has a lot of traffic? Wellll…maybe not so much.

Bloggers have no room to wiggle. Once a blogger clicks Publish, their content is broadcast to distribution points all over the Internet. The entire web-connected planet can access it immediately through RSS feeds, a copy will arrive in every email subscribers’ Inbox within the day, and the search engines may discover it within the hour.

Just like when we were 12: there are do-overs, but no take-backs.

Lost your website?

With those in mind, here are a few places to check for archived copies of your web pages:

Your website host

While many website hosts keep backups of customer content, there’s no guarantee their backup will be current, accessible, or usable. Most webhost Terms Of Service that I’ve seen say customers are responsible for maintaining their own backups. Avoid unwelcome surprises! Check your webhost’s backup policy before you need it.

Some full-featured website hosts offer routine backups in their hosting packages—both free and for a fee—but watch out for hidden costs. In addition to a flat fee, there may be additional charges based on how much is stored, as well a fee to recover your lost data.

Tip: InMotion Hosting* is an award-winning host with affordable packages that include automatic backup and free recovery, with a reasonable charge for repeated recoveries within a four month period.

The Google Cache

Google’s Cache is updated as web pages are indexed, so it can be good for recovering recent copies. Depending on how often Google’s bots visit the website, Google’s Cache will have a copy that’s just a few minutes old to ancient history.

To see what’s cached for your website, type into the Google search box site:yoursitename.com and click Search. For example, here’s everything for BigBrightBulb.

Every search result will have Cached listed among the links beneath it.

Click on Cached to display Google’s copy of the page. There will be a header with how old their copy is and links to a text-only version.

Google’s Cache is a wonderful, powerful thing…another reason to both admire and fear them.

The Wayback Machine

This feature of the Internet Archive maintains snapshots of the Web forever. It takes about 6 months for copies to be listed and there may be gaps in the timeline, so don’t expect anything current here and don’t depend on it solely, but know that whatever you find there, is there to stay.

The Wayback Machine is best for recovering older versions of content, because unlike Google’s cache, this is a permanent record. For example, here’s Yahoo’s homepage for December 22, 2004.

Lost your blog?

The features that can shame us when we post errors can save us if our posts and comments pisaddear. From the moment we publish, copies of our work can be found in/with our:

Feeds

Depending on its settings, the last 5 to 95 published posts and comments are stored in the blog’s widely published feed. We can access formatted content through a feed reader like Google Reader or FeedDemon.

We can also recover the feed’s XML from our feed manager. At Feedburner, this is at Optimize > XML Source (see below).

Inbox

Bloggers who receive new comment notifications have a stash of detailed reader commentary in their Inbox. This can be a great resource for recovering lost comments if your blog doesn’t use a comment feed.

And if your blog offers email subscriptions (like this one does), it’s a good idea to subscribe to your own feed. For everyday use, it’s good to know what arrives in your subscribers Inbox, as well as when it gets there. For the long haul, you have an easy-to-access archive of every post.

Avid Readers

Loyal as they can be, we don’t want to depend on our readers for our data recovery plan, but they may help in a pinch. For example, I occasionally print or PDF posts for reference, so there’s a small and varied collection of articles on my hard drive.

There’s no telling which readers are saving your stuff, what they’re saving, or in what state it’s in, but it’s still one more way your stuff can be preserved forever…whether you like it or not.

Extreme Backups

And if you (like me) trust your service providers and the Web, but feel more comfortable with a backup for their backup, you can always maintain a copy of your blog or website on your own computer. This is the best way I know of to be assured of an easily accessible, up-to-the-minute copy.

I execute and download a backup of this blog’s database file each time I post, so there’s always a current copy at hand. Of course, because my hard drive is continually backed up by Carbonite*, a copy is maintained at their remote sites as well.

Which means my backup’s backup has a backup. Heh.

Et tu? What’s your recovery plan if your website, blog, or computer pisaddears? After the screaming stops, I mean. And after the crying.

* Yup, these are affiliate links because they’re products I paid for, use, enjoy, and recommend.

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Power Tools

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Image credit: Mark Setchell

Many, many moons ago, I finished a lengthy document and saved it to one of those portable thumb drives? Shortly thereafter the crappy little thing died, the document was irretrievably lost, and I had to do it over.

A short and somewhat ordinary story in retrospect, but if you’ve ever lost a document—or an afternoon’s work—you know that the actual moment was long and vibrant, full of colorful language, whimpers of denial, and gnashing of teeth.

The aftermath was just as exciting, between trying to revive the thumb drive (deader than a hammer), attempting to recover something—anything!—from the computer I had worked on (a public PC wiped clean between users), then sadly and frantically recreating what I had lost. All before a nearing deadline.

And all because I didn’t have a backup. I could have avoided those hours of tearful re-work by simply emailing myself a copy.

Thankfully, with nifty Web tools and the Internet’s nostalgic tendency, it’s nearly as simple to store all of our files somewhere (else) safe and recover archived copies of our Web work.

Online Backup Services

When we’re at our computers, external hard drives and such are perfect for storing copies of our data right at hand. I also keep a backup of my backup on CDs/DVDs in a fireproof safe particularly rated for computer media. Yeah, I’m crazy like that.

Still, I believe my remote backup is the most critical part of my data protection setup. Here’s why—

• If our place was burgled, the thieves would likely take the server and the safe, along with the computer…leaving me with nothing.
• If it was destroyed by fire or flood or whatever, who knows when I’d be allowed to pick through the ashes/wreckage to recover my work?

Dreadful scenarios to consider, but valid arguments for storing data offsite. And so I value my remote backup the most, and I heart Carbonite* because it’s easy to setup, secure, relatively cheap at $49.95/year, and offers unlimited storage space.

Best bit about Carbonite: my new and edited files are automatically backed up throughout the day. I “set it and forget it” over a year ago, and it’s saved my heiny more than once.

Mozy looks like another good’un, though I haven’t tried it. The service is free for up to 2G, but unlimited storage costs $4.95/mth = $59.40/year). There are plenty of other online backup services, but these two look the best to me.

That said, I’m wary of iDrive, which looks and prices the same as Carbonite and Mozy, but does not offer unlimited storage. Also, while iDrive Pro has additional features for managing backups on multiple workstations, it costs twice as much for far less storage space than iDrive Basic, and also a monthly fee if we go over our storage limit and don’t upgrade to a beefier (and more expensive) plan. Hmph.

Last Thoughts On Online Backups

A key issue with any backup system that doesn’t go without saying: data storage is only half the solution, recovering your data is the rest. Whether you’ve got dedicated hardware, special software, or an online service—

• Test the recovery process to make sure it works! I’ve restored both files and folders from Carbonite with easy success.
  Note: I need to try recovering the whole kit-and-kaboodle too…
  
• Because of data structure, it may not be possible to restore data to a different operating system.
  Example, a Windows XP workstation’s backup may not restore easily (or at all) to a Windows Vista workstation or a Mac.
  

* Yup, this is an affiliate link because Carbonite is a product I enjoy, recommend, and use every day.

Next time » Online Backup Resources: The Internet Remembers

Et tu? How do you protect your work? Do you keep it in a safe? Do you keep it out in space? Do you stick it some other place? Lemme know down below…

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 28 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Power Tools

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If you read Business Card Gallery: Beyond The Template way back in the day, you know that I’m not a big fan of a blank page. Frankly, I hate ‘em.

A blank sheet of paper can be threatening instead of thrilling when there’s a lot at stake or there’s a lot to do. If you’ve ever had writer’s block, you know that putting the first mark on the page can feel like a mammoth, impossible step.

This can also be true on our first encounter with a new process or product. Whether it’s self-help or software or something for dinner, this new thing is a blank page that we stare at and wonder: Where and how do we start?

The smart money is on authors and vendors and service providers who anticipate this question and provide checklists, worksheets, and samples to help new customers get started.

Great examples are everywhere, and so are places where the added value is needed. As you read through these, think on simple tools you could create to add value to your content, give an easy and unintimidating jump start for your service, or provide suggestions on how to use your product.

Add Value to Content With Worksheets

Tonya R. Taylor’s small business Quick Start Toolkit (featured in the photo) walks new business owners through the complexities of selecting a domain name, creating a tagline, setting up their office, and more. Each section has worksheets to record ideas and a detailed checklist for tracking progress.
Best bit: Each worksheet is paired with a completed example, so readers see exactly what to do!

Whether or not you roll with the premise of The Celestine Prophecy, the workbook that accompanies it is worth a look. The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guide has, among other things, exercises for individual and group study, including fill-in-the-blank lists and phrases to encourage active participation and help students connect the book’s concepts with their own experiences.

Jump Start Services With Samples

Newcomers to 37Signals’ online productivity tools won’t be flummoxed by a screen of empty form fields. Instead. Instead, they’re greeted with screenshots of sample projects-in-progress, along with links to guided product tours and fully narrated video tutorials in every section.
Blatant plug: I heart Basecamp!

For consultants, intake questionnaires (verbal or written) seem a great way to start new clients on the process and give you a snapshot of what they’re about. Also, work samples and portfolios do double duty: they demonstrate your skills and also start clients’ gears turning on what you can do for them.
Tip: Anyone can have a portfolio, not just artists and designers. Back when my ex facilitated caving tours, he kept a portfolio of thank you letters and before/after group photos. His book of muddy, elated, tired, smiling kids and “Wow, that was fun, THANKS!!!” letters won him plenty of weekend gigs.

Spoon Up Serving Suggestions

These are my favorite. The overall theme is: Why sell what is, when what could be is far more appealing?

Pretty much every boxed or bottled food product on the grocery store shelves displays a fanciful photo of the product’s “serving suggestion”. And why not? A glob of red condensed paste has nothing on a gleaming bowl of tomato soup with a dollop of sour cream, a sprinkle of chives, and crackers on the side. With a cloth napkin. And flowers on the table.

Another clever trick from the food people: sell us the recipe on the box, not the product. A great example right from my pantry: a bag of yellow corn meal (yawn!) became treasure when I read the Jalapeno Cornbread recipe on the side of the bag. Had to have it.

But my absolute favorite serving suggestions aren’t at the grocery: fully-furnished and perfectly decorated model homes. Sure, the builders could show the unpainted, empty shells. But while some of us see potential in 2500 square feet of blankness, many of us view a bare house with white walls as a helluvalotta work. Far better to show a yummy, finished home for us to imagine our lives in. Example: My dream house *sigh*

Think Closer To Home…

So for BigBrightBulb, this means going back through 89+ articles and seeing where a worksheet, checklist, or sample can add a little sumpin’ useful, jump start a process, or carry an idea from head to hand.

What does this mean for you?

Your thoughts, ideas, comments, and suggestions are thoroughly welcome. Lemme know down below!

And if you haven’t already, subscribe to the full feed. More goodies next week…

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adding value, power of free

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How long can your business last without you?

This is not a new topic, of course, but I’ve been sick and the necessary time-out brought alarming clarity to some things. Among them, we’re walking a knife’s edge when there’s nothing in place to earn for us when we can’t earn for ourselves.

Like I touched on in What’s So Great About SEO?, as it is now this blog requires my daily attention. I don’t have even one article held in reserve, no guest posts stashed away, no co-authors to respond to comments or add content, and most new site visitors arrive directly from my activity in social media arenas.

I realized that this blog could only last a day or two, and you can bet I’ll be addressing that tout de suite.

As you read through this, think on what you have tucked away for a rainy day, and also who (or what) would do your work and bring new customers your way if you couldn’t do it yourself.

Sick and/or Tired?

Many employees earn out-of-office time as they work, accumulating 3 to 8+ hours of leave for every 80 hours worked. Whenever they’re not working, those earned hours pay out until they run out.

If an employee runs out of earned sick leave and qualifies for—and their company offers—short- and long-term disability, they’ll receive checks for up to 3 months to forever. Good for them. But what about us?

Heck, what if we’re not too sick to work, but just tired of working? Weekends are short, the year is long, and everyone needs time away from their work to recharge, refresh, and renew.

Most microbusiness owners don’t earn Off Hours while they’re working. We can set aside money for a 2-week vacation, but we can’t save up time throughout the year to pay out later.

Because even if we reserve the time and the money to take off for a week or two, what happens to our business in our absence?

For consultants, designers, and other service providers:

• Client questions go unanswered
• Requests for new business go unaddressed
• No billable hours are logged for later invoicing

For folks in product sales:

• Customer questions go unanswered
• New orders go unshipped
• No new inventory produced (for those who make their products)
• No new inventory purchased (for those who don’t)

The Real Question

Of course, savings and insurance can sustain our businesses (and us!) through lean times, vacations, and illness. And our clients and customers might understand that we’ll be out of the office for a week or two. Overall, we can arrange to be absent. But.

How long can your business generate income without you?

If we’re a service provider who bills by the hour, our business stops generating income the instant we stop working.

If we fulfill product orders, our business stops generating income when we stop shipping or run out of inventory to ship.

If we create products for sale, our business stops generating income when we create and/or sell that last piece of work.

Some Real Answers

A staff of dependable employees can run the shop and generate income for a good long while without our help.

Creative work that pays royalties. Books and licensed patents pay continuous income for as long as they are reproduced and distributed.

Subscription-based access. A product (or content) that customers continually pay to use. The 37signals suite of online productivity tools is an example. Online training is another.

Hmm…that’s all I can think of, but I’m sure there are more ways to generate income without needing to continually have our hand in, and also many more examples.

If you think of some more (or just have something to say), lemme know down below…

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: business, small business

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Like we talked about earlier, word-of-mouth marketing is tops for spreading the word about a microbusiness. We could spend money on advertising and hope for a return, but it’s more cash flow friendly to get new business referrals from delighted customers, and then pay them a commission for the done deal.

The same apples to online businesses: build the business by providing referral bonuses, whether informally or with an affiliate/commission program. Brick-and-mortar or on the Web, the value in word-of-mouth is how it affordably and effectively extends our message to customers that are beyond our reach.

But online, there’s a way to reach people outside of these typical one or two degrees of separation…

Search Engines: Our Silent Partners

Our blogs and websites have silent, not-so-secret partners that offline businesses lack: search engines. Google, Yahoo!, and MSN will deliver potential customers/subscribers to our websites day in and day out, from get up ’til go to bed, without requiring a penny of payback.

Search engine “bots” regularly scan and scope our sites for content, and the search engines themselves will share our message with the rest of the world—but we have to meet them halfway. Specifically, we must make sure our content is accessible, readable, and optimized for what we want the search engines to find.

Search Engine Optimization, a.k.a. SEO is

The process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” search results for targeted keywords.

Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site.

~Wikipedia

My SEO Experience

Contrary to what I often read, in my experience, search engines won’t deliver a stream of visitors just because a website has regularly updated content and loads of incoming links.

In fact, a website that hasn’t been updated in over a year with few incoming links can survive almost entirely on search engine traffic if it’s been optimized. Compare these two sites:

Doodlefinder.com is my directory of specialty dog breeders:

• The site is over 3 years old
• The content has not been updated in 13 months
• Since it’s launch, I have syndicated only one article and posted once to a forum
• According to Yahoo!, there are less than 40 incoming links
• It doesn’t get any love from Twitter, Facebook, or other social media
• I paid close attention to making the content Google friendly
• Summary: Minimal effort on content, much effort on SEO
  

BigBrightBulb.com is my blog for microbusiness ideas and advice:

• The blog is almost five months old
• I publish new articles three or four times each week
• Readers contribute their comments daily
• I have syndicated only one article, but I post to other blogs and forums daily
• According to Yahoo!, there are over 1000 incoming links
• I interact daily on social media with a branded username
• I have put minimal effort into making the content Google friendly
• Summary: Continuous effort on content, little effort on SEO

Putting aside the very different target markets, you might think there is a big difference in the volume of site visitors between these two websites. I sure did. And there is a big difference.

According to Google Analytics for the past 30 days, Doodlefinder.com has significantly more new and unique visitors, and twice as many pages viewed per visit. Another big difference: 90% of Doodlefinder’s traffic comes from search engines, while BigBrightBulb only gets 14% of its traffic from there.

Were you expecting the website with the new, regularly updated content to draw more traffic from the search engines? I sure was. Instead, it appears that my small investment in basic SEO is still paying off two years later, even though I haven’t updated the content.

On the other hand, BigBrightBulb requires daily maintenance across media, yet draws fewer visitors. Notably, its traffic can drop dramatically on days I haven’t posted a new article and/or participated in Twitter. Aside from the occasional boost from StumbleUpon, this blog’s visibility—and therefore survival—depends almost entirely on daily attention.

So What’s So Great About SEO?

SEO is great because:

• It doesn’t require a continuous outlay of cash like advertising
• It doesn’t require a paid commission like a standard referral
• It doesn’t require a continuous time investment like social media
• The results can supplement, or even surpass, our other traffic building efforts
• There are plenty of free and affordable resources

As with many things, your mileage may vary, but for me there’s no question that SEO does it’s job to bring in new site visitors. Now the question is:

How well will SEO work for you?

My SEO Power Tools

Here’s what I’m using to improve BigBrightBulb’s chances to appear prominently in Google. Give some or all of these a try and see if SEO will make a difference for your blog or website:

SEO School: How to Become an SEO Ninja
Focused on the needs of microbusinesses and written for non-techies. Includes real-world examples with the big picture on how web traffic works. Learn how to make friends with Google, implement simple SEO tactics, and avoid behaving like a spammer. Great information with potty mouth language and good-hearted humor, only $39.
**$9 off until July 1! Use discount code MovingDay at checkout**

Creating a Google-friendly site
How to rank well on Google, straight from the source. Clear, detailed SEO guidelines and directions written for semi-techies to high-techies. Includes a wide range of tips, from making useful 404 pages to moving your site.

All in One SEO Pack
Plugin for Wordpress users only. Simplifies SEO basics like page titles, page descriptions, and keywords. Instructions and screenshot examples provided. Notably, allows us to tweak items for individual posts, which is not something Wordpress can do on its own.

Et tu? Do you need more traffic to your website? If so, what are you doing about it?

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: book review, SEO, web design, website design

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The membership fees total $423,000 annually. Yup.

So anyway, this post is an extension of Part 1’s “Selling access to information”. If you missed the series or want a refresher, read: Making a Million With 1000 True Fans: Be a Toll Booth on the Information Highway.

Image credit: *** ___ The System ***

Yesterday I got the inside scoop on a new Ali Brown product. At least, it was new to the Scooper…Scoopee? Anyway…

A Silver Mastermind group member said Ali is offering CD recordings of their monthly teleseminars for $47.

This made no sense to me because the Silver membership already includes a CD-by-mail of that month’s teleseminar. Also, members can download the calls from their exclusive access area.

My question was, “If the members already get a CD by mail, and they can download the calls whenever they want, why would they buy another CD?”

And then Ms. Scoop clued me in—

Only the three most current teleseminars are available for download
in the members-only access area.

Take a moment to think on what that means.

…

…

It means that if the Silver members’ digital library held the entire collection of 18+ months of teleseminars, NEW members would have unlimited access to content that they, essentially, hadn’t paid for.

It means that unlimited access limits income potential. And based on what I’ve observed, limiting her income potential is not what Ali’s about.

That said, it is less expensive to purchase the content as a new member than to have paid for it monthly from the start. A single CD costs $47, but new members can also purchase 5 teleseminars for $199, or 10 for $347, choosing from a list of 18 topics.

Tenured Silver Mastermind members paid $47 each month without that quantity discount, and they couldn’t choose the content. Huh.

Which Is All To Say…

When we consider offering content in a paid subscription format, we need to think beyond what we’ll include and how we’ll make it available.

It pays (literally) to also consider what content we won’t include, and how we can make it unavailable. And then how we can make it available again to newcomers at a price.

Et tu? Would you be turned off by this as a new member, or welcome the opportunity to buy “back issues”? How about if you were an old member?

© Crystal for Big Bright Bulb, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1000 True Fans

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