Taking my business in a new direction
Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a set of plans designed to help a greater number of people realize the power of belief. The central focus for these plans has been a 30-day event in which people may challenge the Law of Attraction to prove itself workable.
Knowing that the best way to do this is to gather a large group of participants, and knowing that having a lot of promotional partners is vital to this end, a sub-project was started to attract more promotional partners. This sub-project has become the Spiritual Business Center, which is at http://www.SpiritualBusinessCenter.com.
Within this sub-project, my intention is to condense everything I've learned over the past 6 years about how to spread a message out to the world, including how to pick the best strategies to do so, how to package information as products, and how to market those products. The first version will be more or less skeletal in nature, and will hit the high points more than the specific details, which will be filled in later over time.
Of course, I have my other work to attend to while doing all this. I just held a workshop in Muskegon, MI and have another workshop to do in Ada, MI at the end of March. A sale I ran on my main website (www.PowerKeysPub.com) to raise funds to complete these projects did not bring in as much as I had hoped, so I will need to devote some of my time to bringing in additional funds.
As you can imagine, my mind is going a million miles a minute. I find myself waking up earlier and earlier each day with ideas to jot down. And it seems the ideas I wake up with are usually the best ones of the day. Perhaps I should do as Edison and take several naps during the day.
Anyways, the point I'm getting to here is that in producing notes for the new product (a "Spiritual Business Kit"), I've realized that the BEST form of doing this sort of work is a format I started with at the original www.KeysToPower.com website. A membership site very similar to what Mike Filsaime calls a "Butterfly Marketing" website.
Originally, I set up my first website as a membership site simply because I was looking for a cheap, easy way to limit access to the package I sold. After several weeks of research (it may have been months, I can't recall exactly), I selected aMemberPro as the software best suited for my purpose. It worked great, the developer was very helpful whenever I needed help, and it was very reasonably priced.
When I set up my 2nd website, I again used aMember to protect the downloads. However, when it came time to release my 3rd product (Keys To Power Persuasion), I felt that it was time to move all my products to a single website. There were several reasons for this, which we don't have to get into right now. Suffice it to say that I was convinced that a catalog site (similar to Amazon.com) would be the best way to proceed.
Today, everything I've produced can be found at my main website (www.PowerKeysPub.com) and each item purchased separately, as well as in a few packages. This has worked okay for the past few years. However, after releasing a bunch of new products over the past several months, sales have dropped.
I could blame the economy for this, but I know better. I'm providing quality products for very low prices. My products can help people as much now as ever, and many may actually get MORE benefit from them now than ever. So the economy is not at fault here
My first line of thought is that I have some beliefs getting in the way. So I dig down and find several at work. Some are very easy to change, others may require more work.
One belief that may take more work is the one that says, "people may be getting confused by all the choices I offer on my website." Yes, I could change that belief, and my experience would be that I attract people who are not confused by the choices offered. However, if I allow myself to work within this belief, and change the way the website is presented, I may be able to serve a larger audience.
Another belief that may be worthwhile to work with is the one that says, "perhaps I need to write better descriptions on the website." I've long believed that the website could be better presented. What has stopped me in the past was the belief that "there's not enough time." Now THAT belief is one that seriously needs to be changed. Along with it, I also need to believe that "it's okay to not do everything on my to-do list." Sometimes, I get so caught up in "I've got to do this, and I've got to do that, and there are these 20 other things that should be done."
And with all that, I'm considering whether I want to hire an assistant or not. Yes, an assistant would help me get more things done, but then again, do I really WANT to get more things done, or do I want to simplify my life?
My preference is to simplify things.
Okay, so how does all this relate to the original point of this post? Business structure. I firmly believe what Anthony Robbins says about "when you ask yourself the right question, the right solution will present itself." Well, he may not have said that exactly, but that's the message I got from him.
How can I simplify my business in a way that will help the greatest number of people?
As I was reading over some of my past educational purchases, I opened up my Butterfly Marketing Manuscript. Inside, Mike Filsaime says that a membership site does not need to have consistently updated content, but can simply be a holding place for the content you sell. And if every customer is automatically given an affiliate link to track referrals, they will have an additonal reason to tell others about the website beyond just the great content.
Yes, I already knew that. Not only from my early experiences, but also because I've read this before. Even when I read it the first time, I recognized the potential of this, but felt it was outside of my ability to implement properly.
However, because of the questions I've recently asked myself, I see this a bit differently. My mind is reminded to think back to the first website I built and how I approached my business then. At that time, I had decided how much I wanted to make on each sale, and then put together a package that would justify that price to my audience.
And as I now consider how a Butterfly Marketing website may be applied to a spiritual business, I realize it fits perfectly. The site offers a collection of free content to anyone who wishes to become a member. Once someone makes that decision, they are presented with an offer to purchase an even better package of information for a discounted price. If they decline that offer, they may purchase it later for the normal price. All members (both free and those who purchased the upgrade) are automatically given affiliate links and tools they may use to refer others to the site, thus helping to "spread the word".
Beautiful!
At this time, the original Butterfly Marketing software which ran these sites is no longer available. There are other ways to accomplish the same thing, though.
Good 'ole aMemberPro was designed to offer multiple levels of memberships, and even includes a built-in affiliate program. I haven't taken a look at this for quite a while, and I'm not sure how one would set up a "One Time Offer" (OTO) using it. I may need custom programming to get that feature.
The makers of the affiliate software I use now have created a system that mimics the Butterfly Marketing concept. That system is called "Post Member Pro", although it is also called "Viral Site Generator" by one of the co-creators on his website. They are exactly the same thing, sold under different labels. For $200, this software will run a Butterfly Marketing site perfectly, including the OTO.
A few years ago, I had an opportunity to get a copy of JV Manager from John Delavera. This software can be configured to run a Butterfly Marketing website, and costs a mere $97. The only disadvantage of this software is that it has been replaced with a much larger, more expensive product called Fantasos, and is no longer supported. However, it works great as it is.
While Fantasos will do all of this and a lot more, it costs $3000 to purchase. This allows you to sell accounts to the software, so it's an investment to a different type of business. Through a series of "lucky breaks", I qualified for a license to this software (for free!) and have it set up on my website, www.KeyWebTools.com. You won't see any references to this on the website, however, as it's tucked away its own subsection. Although I do plan to make this available to others at some point, I've been focused on other things.
The concept of using a Butterfly Marketing approach was further reinforced when I compiled a list of the various types of websites one may choose to use. Here's the list I compiled:
- Brochure site - describes products & services offered offline
- Mini-site - sells a single product/service "package"
- Catalog site - sells multiple products /services
- Butterfly Marketing site - free & paid content, members automatically become promotional partners
- Resource site - lists information
- Service site - provides an online tool to be used on the site
- Community site - brings people together
- Media site - publishes free content
Most websites are a combination of these basic types. Blogs and most other Web 2.0 sites fall into either the media or community classifications. The last 4 website types are generally supported by ads and affiliate relationships (or possibly donations), whereas the first 4 sites are supported by direct sales.
Looking over the list, and thinking of what each type of site requires for success, it became clear which direction "fits" me best. This site (www.AlanTutt.com) is a media site. While it's probably not popular enough for me to sell advertising (at least not yet), that's okay since it's more of a hobby venture than a business one.
For my business, though, my preference has always been to add new content to a central website and have a promotional system in place so I don't have to do much promoting on an ongoing basis. While I have found some ways of promoting that don't take much time (such as submitting articles to article directories and offering affiliate accounts), I've found over time that a catalog site does require ongoing promotion.
The more I can automate the promotion, the better. The idea of viral marketing has always appealed to me, but I didn't quite understand it well enough to make use of it.
The other day, I noticed that I referred 2 people to a number of websites, including 1 that's definitely set up as a Butterfly Marketing site (www.SecretsofEliteMarketers.com). Even though I have an affiliate link for this site, I rarely use it. Looking it up takes time, and when I refer folks to it, it's because I know the value they'll get in the free content. I may be losing out on a few commissions, but that isn't my main interest in promoting the site.
Besides that, one of my most successful affiliate partners (Iain Legg) builds his websites in this way. He provides a lot of free content to those who join his sites, and offers them an incredible bargain of a deal right after the signup process. When I first saw what he did, I thought that producing that much content would take forever. Over the past 6 months, though, I've figured out how to do it much quicker.
Overall, I now know what direction I want to go with my online business. I want to set up websites that fit the Butterfly Marketing model, offering free quality content up front, and an incredible bargain of a deal on my more advanced stuff.
The ONLY reason to NOT go through route would be related to my experience with lowering the price on my Step by Step course as I did a few years ago.
As a test, I had lowered the price on my original course (Keys To Power - Step by Step) from $49 down to a ridiculous $15. Originally, this was going to be for a week, but I had SO many responses to it, I decided to keep it there long term. Sales were very good for at least a month, but then things tapered off.
At the time, I figured this was because the excitement of a lower price had "worn off", and people may have gotten the idea that it was a low value product. My response was the raise the price back up again. Now, as I'm writing this, I wonder if the drop in sales was because no-one was promoting it, and if giving my customers an affiliate link would have extended the excitement and sales. The only way to know for sure is to test it.
Currently there are about 4000 customers in my database, and over 6500 subscribers on my mailing list. If I could set all of them up with affiliate accounts, and make it worthwhile to them to refer even a couple of friends, I'm guessing that this could really spark some excitement again. And if everyone who comes into the system can be inspired to pass the message along to others, we could really touch a lot of lives.
Free free to let me know what you think about all this. Click the "Add new comment" link below and share your thoughts.