KaChing: How to Run an Online Business that Pays and Pays by Comm, Joel (most important books to read .txt) 📗

link your coaching site to your main blog or web site, you should find that you receive a steady flow of readers who pass from that site and want your advice in person.

Another option though is to put on miniworkshops. This can be a great way to make yourself known to people in your area who might be willing to sign up as personal clients. Entry to the workshop would be free. The content would contain an introduction to your topic and a few tips that people can take away with them. Pitch it as a lecture on “Turning Your Knitting Hobby into a Business” from a professional knitting expert or a talk on “Why Start-Ups Fail” from an experienced entrepreneur; make it clear that you’re not selling or charging, and you should find that you can even pick up free space in libraries and community centers.

Some of the people who attend may become clients. Others may choose to order the information products that you make available at the back of the room. Either way, you get a chance to put your name in front of a targeted audience for little cost. You can even use that lecture as an introduction to a group course. This won’t be as personalized as one-on-one coaching, but if you keep the group small and emphasize that spaces are limited, you’ll create a sense of urgency that’s more likely to have people signing up.

It’s even possible to run these group sessions online and at a distance, giving you more opportunities for marketing. Dr. Gina J. Hiatt (www.academicladder.com), for example, is a dissertation and tenure coach who helps students write their theses and academics boost their careers. She provides a range of different coaching environments, including an Academic Writing Club, which is a four-week online course; individual coaching, consisting of 30- to 45-minute telephone sessions; and group coaching, made up of a 60-minute group telephone call and dedicated listserv. Software programs like Group Coaching Manager (www.groupcoachingmanager.com) make managing group coaching relatively simple.

Of course, it’s also possible to sell coaching products such as online courses and DVDs. These won’t be personalized in the way that one-on-one or group coaching can be, but they should form part of your coaching revenue streams.

A basic coaching program is fairly easy to create. The packages themselves follow a familiar formula, and the fees can be very high, offering hourly rates of at least three, and sometimes four, figures—that’s a seriously loud KaChing. Your success will depend mainly on your ability to build your name as an expert and to instill confidence in potential students to sign up to receive your knowledge.

You should find that’s something that will happen naturally as you create good content and build your community.

Kicking It Up: High-End Coaching

But what do you do then? You have a number of clients whom you speak with on the phone once a week. You do a weekly group session using conference calls so that everyone can learn from everyone else’s experience. And you might even have the odd local client whom you’re teaching on an individual, in-person basis.

In addition, you’re still writing your web site content, earning from ads, and pitching your information products.

All of those things are going to deliver steady streams of cash, and if they’re done right, they’re going to deliver that cash in amounts that will surprise you. You’ll be hearing KaChing rings all around you, and they’ll be so loud you’ll think you’re working in a bell tower.

But it’s not enough.

The real benefit of putting information online and making it available to others isn’t the money it will bring you. That’s wonderful, life-changing stuff but it’s not the biggest reward.

The real thrill comes when you see other people taking that information, putting it to work, and seeing success themselves. I know that sounds a bit cheesy, and it wasn’t my main motivation when I started online marketing. I wanted to make money. But once I’d made money, and once I saw that money continued to come in regularly and abundantly, I really did start to get the biggest kick out of sharing my knowledge and seeing other people enjoy success.

All of the strategies I’ve described so far will help you do that to some extent. But nothing will do it as efficiently as a high-end coaching program.

This is a step up from other coaching programs. Low-end coaching programs will let you provide personalized solutions to others, who will then have to take those solutions and implement them themselves. You tell them what they have to do, and you have to hope they’ll do it.

Many will, but plenty won’t. Even after paying for their coaching program, they’ll listen to you and nod and thank you, but when it comes to rolling up their sleeves and battling the problems involved in creating a business, they won’t bother. Instead, they’ll sign up for someone else’s coaching program and wonder why they aren’t achieving the success they expect. You’re being paid, so you’re happy, but if they aren’t willing to put in the work, then they won’t be happy, and that’s always going to be a problem.

High-end coaching is about results. It means helping people who are genuinely serious about achieving success and giving them the knowledge and the tools they need to achieve it themselves. It also means being selective about the people you coach.

This isn’t an attempt to sell as many items as possible to as many people as possible. Your information products should do that. This is about choosing the people you want to guide toward their goals so that you can have the satisfaction of seeing them succeed.

There’s something in it for you too, of course. When a person you’ve mentored is able to say that he or she became a millionaire because of your advice and guidance, the perception of your expertise goes through the roof. Your sales will rise, your web sites will receive more attention, and you’ll have people lining