* Highly
Recommended *
You
Can Import Goods From Overseas For Pennies On the Dollar!
It
may have been hard in the past for small entrepreneurs to import
cheap products from countries like China, but things have drastically
changed.
For
example, In 1986, total trade between the United States and
China was $7.9 billion. By 2005, this total has reached over
$170 billion, making China the United States' third largest
trading partner.
You
can't believe how easy this is. With the right information,
you just find products that cost a couple of dollars each and
sell them for 1000%+ mark-ups by the thousands with your own
Internet sites.
Please click
here to read this urgent report.
-
Patrick Coffey
ETR
Insider Report: Bootcamp Begins with an Elephant in the Room
At
5:30 last night, nearly 250 people crowded into the ballroom
of the Delray Beach Marriott to hear Steve McDonald welcome
them to ETR’s Info Marketing Bootcamp.
You
can hardly imagine how many different people filled up that
room - and all of them eager and excited about starting or
growing their own Internet-based businesses. Steve took a mini
survey of the audience and found 10 or 15 people involved in
the health, dental, or legal fields ... two bold mortgage loan
officers ... Internet technology specialists ... copywriters
... educators ... a chef ... and an astrologer.
Steve
started off the conference with a parable: A man on a safari
in Kenya gets separated from his group and wanders off, lost.
He comes across an elephant lying in a clearing, nursing a
foot that has been pierced by a branch.
Carefully
and slowly, the man approaches the elephant. Once he gets close
enough to touch the beast, the man yanks the branch from its
foot. He runs back across the clearing, then stops to look
back at the elephant.
The
huge animal stares at him. Then it rises to its feet, walks
slowly over to the man, and touches him on the forehead with
its trunk. Then the gentle giant turns and walks away.
The
man eventually meets up with his group and goes home.
Ten
years pass.
The
man goes to the zoo with some friends. At one enclosure, he
notices that an elephant is staring at him intently. The elephant
drops the food it is eating and approaches the fence, staring
all the while at the man.
The
man’s friend says, “Hey, looks like that elephant
recognizes you.”
And
the man starts wondering, Is this the same elephant?
As
the elephant stares at him, he becomes more convinced that
this is the same elephant he saved in Kenya. He goes closer
to the fence. The elephant stares at him. He starts to climb
the fence, despite the protests of his friends. He drops into
the enclosure. The elephant stares at him. Then, slowly, the
elephant reaches out its trunk and touches him on the forehead.
I
know this elephant! the man thinks. Then the elephant stretches
out his trunk again, and grabs the man around the waist and
slams him on the ground.
It
wasn’t the same elephant.
Steve
got a lot of laughter from this story. But his point was that
info marketing is not the same elephant. You may have been
in business before. You may have even owned your own business.
But once you venture into the world of info marketing, you
are approaching a totally different elephant.
Even
though you couldn’t make it to Bootcamp this year, we’ll
keep you up to date with all the goings on this week - and
we’ll help you recognize that information publishing
is a whole new elephant.
"A
business absolutely devoted to service will have only one
worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large."
-
Henry Ford
5
Ways to Command Premium Fees for Your Services
By
Bob Bly
In
my last ETR
article, I shared with you my observation
that a common strategy for entrepreneurs hoping to get a toehold
in the market with a service business is to undercut the competition
by charging lower hourly fees. And I explained in detail why
that's a terrible strategy.
In
a nutshell, you work your rear end off for very little pay.
You never get ahead financially. And your clients think you
are worth as little as you charge them.
I
suggested that your pricing should be high, and fall somewhere
in the top third of what your competitors are charging. Which
means that if the lower third of service firms in your trade
charge $50 to $100 an hour ... the middle range charges $100
to $150 ... and the highest-paid charge $150 to $200 ... you
should aim for between $150 and $175 an hour.
"But
how can I command such a premium fee?" you ask. "Why
should clients pay me three times more than what some of my
competitors charge?"
Good
question. And here's the answer ...
There
are at least five specific strategies I can think of that can
enable you to get the premium hourly fees you want to command.
1.
Sell a dollar for a quarter.
Superstar
marketing consultant JA likes to ask prospects: "If I
give you a dollar, will you give me a quarter?"
Of
course they will.
And
your prospects will have no problem paying the price you ask
... as long as you give them a dollar for a quarter.
If
your service saves or makes them money many times in excess
of your fee - if you can demonstrate that they will get a huge
return on investment (ROI) from your service - you can command
a huge price.
2.
Work an under-served market niche.
There
are some clients that everyone selling your service is going
after. Consequently, these prospects can pick and choose which
vendors they work with ... and, to a large extent, the price
they agree to pay.
My
friend DW is a direct-mail copywriter. But unlike the copywriters
who work for the big direct-mail marketers - newsletter publishers,
nutritional supplement makers - DW works a niche where there
is virtually no competition: construction companies in New
England.
Despite
an oversupply of copywriters in other direct-mail markets,
DW's prospects are thrilled when they discover one who specializes
in their trade ... and gladly pay hefty fees for his marketing
assistance.
3.
Become a recognized guru in your field.
Most
management speakers get around $3,000 - and often less - for
a one-hour speech. Tom Peters gets something like $30,000 or
more.
Does
he get paid 10 times more than other management speakers because
he knows 10 times more about managing a company or because
his advice makes his clients 10 times more money?
I
doubt it.
His
fee is 10 times higher because he is a recognized management
guru ... largely because of In
Search of Excellence and his other best-selling
books.
Want
to get paid top dollar? Become a recognized guru in your field.
There
are so many ways to quickly establish yourself in your field
that I put together an entire audio
program on the subject.
Three
ways to get started: Write a "how-to" book ... write
a magazine or newspaper column ... publish a content-rich website.
4.
Add value.
My
friend DH is a top copywriter selling information products.
He gets huge fees to write direct-mail packages.
But
after DH writes a DM package, his clients get something else
most other copywriters don't give them: an extensive memo outlining
other marketing strategies they can use to sell even more of
their products.
If
you were to pay DH separately for this consulting advice, it
would cost thousands of dollars. But he gives it to you free
when you hire him to write for you.
People
don't mind paying more - as long as they get more. DH gives
them more.
5. Shift supply and demand in your favor.
The
number one reason why people in the service industry charge
too little is that they need the business.
The
secret to overcoming this? Keep your pipeline of leads full
at all times. Generate twice as many leads as you think you
need ... and you'll always have more work than you could ever
hope to handle.
There
are many ways to generate a steady stream of leads: classified
ads ... small display ads ... Yellow Pages ... cold calls ...
direct mail … pay-per-click advertising. Just to name
a few.
Today's
Action Plan: You can - and should - charge close
to top dollar for your services. So figure out how to put
at least one of these strategies to work for you immediately.
[Ed.
Note: Bob Bly is a popular Early to Rise columnist,
self-made multi-millionaire, and the author of more than 60
books. He is also the editor of ETR's
Direct Marketing University: The Masters Edition -
a program to help you start your own successful direct-mail
business.]
* Highly
Recommended *
It's
Nearly 2007...Where Is Your Early Island Retirement?
Don't
let your dream retirement stagnate in an under-performing retirement
account. In today's IRA market you have real choices,
including many that will probably shock and surprise you (pleasantly
so). But don’t count on your stockbroker or financial
advisor to tell you about them – it’s actually
in their best interest to keep this information to themselves!
I
encourage you to read
our eye-opening Special Report revealing Wall
Street’s great "myth" and the truth about your
money. The report is completely free, a quick read, and
could completely change your retirement outlook.
-
Kam Weiler
Contributing Editor, Main Street Millionaire
The
Secret Learning Trick of the World's Most Skillful People
By
Michael Masterson
In Message
#108, I theorized that to become competent
at a complex skill (like playing the piano or speaking
a foreign language), you have to invest about 1,000 hours
of practice. Mastery takes longer. My guess: 5,000 hours.
In
1976, K. Anders Ericsson, a memory expert, came to a similar
conclusion. With practice, his subjects could remember longer
and longer strings of numbers. (Seven numbers with no practice,
20 numbers with 20 hours of training, and over 80 numbers after
200 hours of training.)
Ericsson
was surprised that practice made such a dramatic difference
in memory, and he wanted to see if it affected the human capacity
to acquire other skills.
He
studied expert performers in various fields - golf pros, chess
masters, concert pianists, and acrobats. What he discovered
was that their talents had nothing to do with genetics. Their
IQs weren't any better than those of average college students.
Other psychological testing failed to turn up anything unique
about them. Except for one thing: They were all willing to
work harder than the average person.
In
almost every case, these top performers had put in an enormous
number of hours of practice.
The
top classical pianists, for example, had practiced over 10,000
hours by the age of 20, while less accomplished performers
had only practiced between 2,000 and 5,000 hours in that time.
"From
the outside, it seems like talented people don't have to put
in a lot of effort," Ericsson says. "They make it
look so easy. But when you look closely, the opposite is actually
true. The best performers are almost always the ones who practice
the most. I have yet to find a talented person who didn't earn
their talent through hard work and thousands of hours of practice."
I've
been practicing Jiu Jitsu for seven years, and I've probably
averaged about an hour a day. That's about 2,500 hours - putting
me well into the level of competency but far from being a master.
But
my Jiu Jitsu instructors - Marcus, Renato, Boca, and Marcel
- have been practicing at least three hours a day for over
a decade. That's more than 10,000 hours.
Which
is why they - and not I - are world champions.
Margarine
vs. Good Old-Fashioned Pig Fat
By
Al Sears, MD
I'll
never forget my grandmother's pies - apple in fall and winter,
blackberry and raspberry in the summer. When I was a boy, I'd
watch her make them on Sunday afternoons. Her piecrusts were
like none I've tasted since. Her secret? Homemade pig lard.
You
probably cringe at the thought of cooking with pig fat. But
good old-fashioned lard - in its unpolluted, unadulterated
form - is one of the healthiest fats you can eat.
Fat
is a natural part of your diet. And I've been saying for years
that saturated fats aren't the bad guys the food industry (which,
not coincidentally, makes huge profits from synthetic fat substitutes)
would have you believe. Now, an article in the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition seems to agree.
For
the article, a group of University of California studies was
analyzed. The studies proved that cutting out saturated fats
won't help you live any longer. What's more, they found no
evidence that eating less saturated fat lowers your risk of
heart disease (a shock to those avoiding meat, cheese, and
dairy fat).
Many
of the so-called "healthy" alternatives to natural
animal fat are loaded with the real enemy to heart health:
processed unnatural fats, including trans-fats. Margarine
is a great example. I think of it as plastic food. And the
food industry convinced millions to give up real butter for
that?
Learn
where trans-fats come from and avoid them. Anything made from
hydrogenated oil is a problem. A new law requires that the
trans-fat content must appear on food labels. So read the labels
before you buy - especially things like cookies, cakes, chips,
buns, or breads.
[Ed.
Note: Dr. Sears, a practicing physician and the author of The
Doctor's Heart Cure and 12
Secrets to Virility, is a leading authority
on longevity, physical fitness, and heart health.]
It's
Good to Know: The Blooker Prize
By
Suzanne Richardson
Who
writes blogs? People who love to write. So it seems natural
for some of these prolific folks to make an easy transition
into writing blooks.
No,
that's not a typo.
A "blook" is
a book written or published on a blog site. More specifically,
a blook is a bound and printed book developed from content
originally posted on a blog or website. If you've posted your
brand-new novel, chapter by chapter, on your blog, that also
counts as a blook.
If
you think you're the ultimate blook writer, you just might
want to enter the Lulu Blooker Prize contest (lulublookerprize.com).
Sponsored by the printing and distribution website Lulu.com,
the Blooker Prize is a $2,500 award for the winning blooks
in three categories: fiction, non-fiction, and comics. The
Overall Winner receives an additional grand prize of $7,500.
[Ed.
Note: Check out Michael Masterson's new blog at http://www.michaelmasterson.net.]
* Highly
Recommended *
The
Only Three Ways to Grow a Business
Did
you know that there are only three ways to grow a business?
1. Increase
the number of customers.
2. Increase
the average transaction value.
3. Increase
the frequency of repurchase.
Find
a way to maximize each one, and your business will experience
an astonishing rate of growth.
In
his "9 Pillars of Business Growth" program, acclaimed
consultant Jay Abraham outlines hundreds of proven, frequently
unrecognized, and almost totally underutilized ways to grow
these three key areas of your business. If
you own a business (or would like to), be sure to take a look
at Jay's program.
-
Patrick Coffey
Word
to the Wise: Sangfroid
"Sangfroid" (sang-FRWAH)
- literally, "cold blood" in French - is calmness
and composure during difficult times.
Example
(as used by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in News
of a Kidnapping): "Gaviria knew
Alberto as an impulsive but cordial man capable of maintaining
his sangfroid under the most stressful circumstances."
