Staying Paid

The Real Item Your Website Needs To Sell, and Three Steps To Make It Happen

Posted on June 25th, 2008 in General Blog Songs, entrepreneurship, Niche Domination, Product Creation, Recession Busting, Solution Z

Pick up any newspaper, flip to any news station, hit up Twitter or even stop and talk to your neighbors and you’ll hear everything you need to about a recession. As I sat in crush hour traffic, I realized there’s a very simple “cure” for business owners worrying a little bit about a recession in the works.

I realized that not everyone on the road was simply driving to work and back, or picking up the necessities - I saw people buying, and that’s all any business owner needs to hone in on to combat fear, uncertainty, and doubt in this business time.  Put another way, money is everywhere.

The Ultimate “Money Magnet”

You won’t have to battle me in an arm wrestling match to get this secret, and chances are you probably already know: it’s Solution Z. The ultimate solution for your niche market. It’s what’s keeping them up at night, polling friends, buying magazine after magazine and book after book, hunting down professionals and sometimes traveling up to two hours to get. It is dynamite in the hands of today’s information providers. Solution Z is so named because it needs to be the focus of your website.

It makes me sad how many people are running the risk of losing their business dream because they’re chasing everything else but Solution Z. So I wanted to take some time to help you “stay paid” by laying out not only how to grab hold of Solution Z, but bring it home to your niche audience, online style!

Step One: Breathe Your Niche

Hitting up Wordtracker or some other keyword research tool isn’t going to get you closer to Solution Z. It’s apart of the overall research process, but in the short term, a handful of keywords is nothing if you have zero idea what your audience really  wants. To put it another way, in order to connect those keywords with dollars you must be able to empathize and relate to the person first. What terms does your niche use on a daily basis? What problems are they facing, what’s keeping them up at night? What emotions are driving them to search for a solution (fear, anger, pain, loss, etc)?

Forums are great for niche research because you’re getting a front row seat into the greatest show on earth: the unedited thoughts of your audience! You get to know exactly what’s eating at them, in their own words, without any “spin” or self-consciousness you would get from a “focus group survey” or the like.

For forum research purposes, I use BoardReader.com. I can search very quickly for exactly what I want to look up, and it’s absolutely fantastic - no more random googling just to find a forum! If you’re old school, you can type in “intitle:<niche> forum” to get the specifics as well - that little “intitle” specifier tells google to return pages that have that keyword specifically in the title of the webpage.

Step Two: Get Known

This is where social media can really rock the house as far as breaking into niches. For the corporate set, maintaining a blog where your audience can find solutions, tips, and stories “from the trenches” (even if it’s something as simple as your own personal struggle within that topic) is hot. Getting on Twitter is hotter. Video is on fire, in a total “grease fire” kind of way - no water’s gonna stop this movement for a long time. If you’ve got a webcam, PowerPoint, Camtasia Studio, or a traditional camcorder, you can make videos that will pull in your audience. Instead of Googling, do yourself a favor and sign up with TubeMogul - rapidly deploy your video to the top video sharing websites like Viddler, YouTube, Veoh and more!

Don’t forget email - if you’re known as easily accessible, people will gravitate to you as their “go to person”. As the resident nichelady, I answer questions about how to penetrate and succeed in tough niches via email, instant messenger, and sometimes even the phone.

What’s getting smoking hot is the merging of the chat and video together. Sites like ustream and justin.tv let you create your own tv show where the audience can talk to you while the show is runing, aks questions, and really get to know you. One thing we’re doing with Staying Paid as a company is producing niche internet tv shows in markets that aren’t known for having them - it’s something we’re testing out and hearing some great feedback from as far as the concept goes.

Step Three: The Art of the One Two Follow Up Punch

Solution Z isn’t always a “one and done” type of solution. If you’re trying to show people how to renovate their houses while incorporating green technology, you can’t pack that into an hour’s worth of video. You may have to incorporate other books and resources to fully explain Solution Z. There’s also a possibility that your audience wants you to do Solution Z for them. As a business owner, even though I can do my own taxes, I still seek out a tax preparer. Simply giving your audience Solution Z may not fully seal the deal for them - take a step forward and offer to build it for them!

The One Two Follow Up Punch is a two step move, with the first step building the offer, and the second step defining the relationship. You get down in the trenches with your audience and build a real offer, something of value. It can be free or premium, a step by step action plan or merely an offer of personal service. Don’t underestimate the power of personalization - give your niche something personal. Web 2.0 is a little scary for traditional businesses because it requires breaking away from the completely professional and throwing a little personal flavor in the mix.

The Search For Solution Z, “Staying Paid” Style

We decided to step away from the “corporate web site” model and really expand Staying Paid to be a resource for our videos, articles, thoughts, podcasts … everything. As the head of operations, I was a little afraid to do this, thinking that I would push away more business than I would bring in - until I realized that business owners LOVE seeing how we think, process, and handle web business. It’s a transparent look at life in the trenches, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

As we explore the development and production of Solution Z with respect to niche markets, I’ll be bringing on the other members of Staying Paid to post their insights, suggestions, and perspectives. We want to be your resource for “Staying Paid” and it’s time to crank that up a few notches!

Our search for Solution Z is going to take some time, but I wanted to end on one last note, a note of thanks. This journey wouldn’t be the same without you! The Web isn’t just where we make our living - we make our friends here too. So keep tuned for the conversation, and thanks for being here!

Work hard, play hard, love easily!

Tonight’s Blog Song: Guns ‘N’ Roses - Paradise City