Here’s How to Find the Right Mix and Fine-Tune Your Offer

Have you ever wondered if your strange collection of skills and interests could be woven together to build a profitable business?

If you have, you’ll love today’s Hero’s Journey article.

Lauren Pawell is a rare breed: she has a background in development and marketing. That’s a combination you don’t see every day!

Some people might have encouraged Lauren to choose one field or the other. But she persisted and has built a business that artfully combines her many passions.

Lauren’s story is this month’s Hero’s Journey feature. We’re tapping the collective wisdom of our community members to bring you reports from the front lines of the content marketing world. See all the Hero’s Journey posts here.

Read on as Lauren shares what she’s learned over the years and how you can use her hard-earned wisdom in your own business.

Building a one-stop revenue-building shop

Lauren Pawell: What sets Bixa Media apart is my background in both development and marketing. This allows me to sit at the intersection of business, technology and design.

We help entrepreneurs turn their WordPress and Shopify websites into revenue-generating powerhouses. We do that through a mixture of website design and development, content marketing, search engine optimization, paid advertising, and online reputation management.

Not only can we write killer copy, but we can also evaluate your technology options, decide which is best for your needs, and build everything for you, while keeping your business objectives at the forefront of the process.

I find our clients really value having a partner who can help them from A to Z.

Perhaps more importantly, we’re able to tell our clients where not to waste their dollars and effort, and where to focus their resources.

Even if this doesn’t always match what a client had in mind, our honest feedback resonates with business owners.

We offer two types of services:

• 1:1 online marketing services: For medium-sized businesses who are looking to outsource their online marketing, we offer a variety of services designed to amplify their online exposure and generate more customers.
• DIY programs: For small businesses or solopreneurs who don’t yet have the resources to outsource their marketing, we offer educational marketing programs through Websites That Generate.

My business is primarily online, although I do plenty of networking offline — I find they go hand-in-hand. The offline contact tends to tip the scale in our favor, especially when it comes to securing large contracts.

Putting the brakes on spinning wheels

Lauren Pawell: I started my business for two reasons.

First and foremost, after working in marketing overseas for a few years, I saw so many small-to-medium-sized businesses with a wealth of online opportunity at their fingertips. But they just didn’t have the right guidance.

As a result, they were spinning their wheels in so many different directions with little-to-no impact.

I wanted to help them pick that low-hanging digital fruit, so that they could continue to grow their businesses and entrepreneurial dreams.

So, in 2011, I moved back to the United States, booked my first client at a friend’s birthday party (notice that offline touchpoint!), and haven’t looked back since.

The best part of that story? Our first client still works with us today and has gone from a one-man business to a 20+ person company. Now that is why I started Bixa!

I don’t share the second reason with many people, but I feel it will resonate with the Copyblogger audience.

In 2011, I had been through one-too-many bad bosses and was tired of not being in charge of my own destiny, from both a personal and career standpoint. That freedom I craved drove me to start my own company.

My driving motivation is to help other entrepreneurial spirits achieve the same freedom I have.

Conversion experiments that paid off

Lauren Pawell: Converting cold traffic into qualified leads is a finicky beast, especially when it comes to selling online education.

It’s not hard to understand why — cold traffic doesn’t immediately pull out their wallets. It took quite a bit of trial and error to dial in our lead-nurturing process, but we did it.

A few highlights:

We use Facebook ads as our hook

A new email subscriber generated from a Facebook ad was not likely to immediately jump up and buy our program. However, when we started to establish trust and demonstrate our authority through a few different mediums, we were far more successful.

Here’s what we do:

First, we run the new subscriber through a long welcome series over email. We send them 7 emails over 20 days, all of which include a lot of copy. It helps us weed out unqualified leads.

While in many approaches we did not want a lot of unsubscribes, in this case, we welcome them. It allows us to filter out anyone who doesn’t immediately love us.

After this, we direct the subscriber to our private Facebook community

There we share weekly educational content over video and give 1:1 feedback, similar to what they would experience in our course. This also helps establish us as a trusted and authoritative figure.

Then, we deliver free educational webinars on specific topics

This helps the subscriber better understand their problem and the solution they need to transform their situation.

Finally, we open our doors periodically

Last, but not least, we sell our program through email during specific times of the year, and are available on live chat to answer any questions the prospects have. (This, again, is similar to our course experience).

Some may say we give away too much for free, but I find this really helps us find great students. Plus, it allows our Facebook ad spend to generate far more ROI.

When we didn’t follow this solution and jumped straight from Facebook ads to a webinar to a sales email, our conversion rates weren’t great. Now, they are stellar.

So, if you feel like you are wasting dollars on Facebook ad spend, consider the rest of your funnel. Now that we know what works, it’s far easier to justify scaling up our marketing spend.

Venturing into online education (one validated step at a time)

Lauren Pawell: In Q2 of this year, I decided to test the idea of online education programs.

I wanted to be less reliant on 1:1 client work, which can be unpredictable. And I wanted to help all the entrepreneurs we were turning away due to a full calendar on our end, and limited resources on their end.

To validate the idea, we began being incredibly transparent about our marketing tactics.

We educated our audience through a number of mediums, notably: email, online webinars, and a private Facebook community.

I believed that through great educational content, we could:

• Empower solopreneurs, allowing them to achieve quick wins in their businesses
• Determine whether there was a demand for our DIY programs

This effort has been quite successful. We recently presold an educational course (before it was created) that our audience was begging for.

By validating an idea through free content first, we were then able to dedicate the resources to creating paid educational programs. A course takes a lot of front-loaded work, especially content creation. The last thing I wanted to do was create a program no one wanted.

As an added benefit of this education-first approach, when 1:1 prospects come through the door, they are already sold on working with us. Because they already understand the “why” behind our recommendations, the selling is 90 percent done by the time we write a proposal.

The Rainmaker Digital products Lauren uses

Lauren Pawell: We use quite a few Rainmaker Digital products, including:

• Rainmaker Platform to power our online courses and membership programs at Websites That Generate
• Genesis Framework + StudioPress themes to power clients’ websites
• Copyblogger Authority and Digital Commerce Institute to continue learning and engaging with the community

I also happen to be a new Copyblogger Certified Content Marketer. And I’m attending the upcoming Digital Commerce Summit in Denver.

So, needless to say, I’m a Rainmaker Digital diehard!

Refining and scaling up for the future

Lauren Pawell: In the final quarter of 2016, we’ll focus on refining our sales funnels and scaling up our DIY programs.

Our educational courses at Websites That Generate haven’t been marketed on our website, or really even promoted outside of email. That’s because I wanted to run a few groups of people through our programs to ensure we really dialed them in.

Now that we’ve gotten the process down, we’re ready to scale up. The first step in that process requires some adjustments to our sales funnel. Then, we can scale up our lead generation through Facebook ads.

An unsolicited piece of advice

Lauren Pawell: If, like me, you’re considering creating an educational program to complement your 1:1 services, I highly recommend the Rainmaker Platform.

All of the technology was so easy to set up, allowing us to focus most of our effort on the course creation and marketing.

When it comes to selling a course and serving your students, the less you have to worry about the technology, the better.

Find Lauren Pawell online …

• Bixa Media
• Websites That Generate

Thanks to Lauren for appearing in our Hero’s Journey series.

Do you have questions for her? Ask them in the comments.


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The Complete Guide to Email Automation for Beginners

If you’re a marketer, you’ve probably heard of email marketing automation.

Email marketing automation is an essential part of building a profitable email list for any online business.

In this article I’ll try to cover some important points:

1. How does email automation work? 
2. What type of events trigger automation? 
3. The main terms you need to know before getting started 
4. Email marketing automation tools 

If you are unsure of everything email automation can do for you, then read on…

How does email automation work?

With email automation, when an event happens, an email is triggered (automatically sent). The email is sent from your email marketing tool or from your marketing automation tool.

The relevance of the email, and its timing is important. With a bit of smart automation, you can send the right email at the right time and to the right person, with information that is relevant to them, based on the actions they take on your website.

Another important thing is cleaning your email list. By doing so, you know that the email addresses are real and still active. Read more about how to clean your email list here.

What type of events trigger an automation

Below are some simple examples to understand what I am talking about:

• Email after someone signs up to your email list 
• Email when a website visitor is a previous subscriber – When someone is an email subscriber and visits your website, some email marketing tools can track which pages they have visited on your website and then trigger an email based on this. 
• Survey response – You sent an email to your subscribers and asked them if they were interested in a product. Based on their answer, a different email (or series of emails) is automatically sent. 
• Cart abandonment email – If you collect the email address of the person during the sales process – or if you already have the email address as the customer is an existing subscriber – you can follow up via email to encourage them to come back. 

Did you know that the average cart abandonment rate for e-commerce providers is over 60%. More than half of shoppers abandon their purchase after adding products to their cart.

What are the main terms you need to know before you start with email automation?

Before you get started with email automation, you need to get familiar with some of the most used terms of email marketing:

• Opt-in/Subscribe – when someone opts in to receive emails from you 
• Double opt-in – when someone opts in to receive emails from you and they need to confirm their opt-in 
• Spam – when someone doesn’t opt-in and you send them emails, or when someone does optin and you overdo it 
• Unsubscribe – when someone unsubscribes from your email list 
• Trigger – describes an event that causes something to happen (an email is sent) 
• Sequence – the sequence of emails that are sent after an event happens 
• Email campaign/Autoresponder – a series of emails that are sent for a specific event 
• Bounce rate – the rate at which emails are not delivered. A soft bounce is temporary, but a hard bounce is permanent and means that your message can never be delivered to that email address. 
• CTR – stands for Click-Through-Rate and is the number of times people click on links within an email 

Email marketing automation tools

The main difference between an email automation tool and a basic email marketing tool, is the functionality and the price. An email marketing tool is used for sending regular emails such as newsletters. With a marketing automation tool you can build automation around those emails.

Some features of a marketing automation tool are:

• email sequence builder 
• landing page builder 
• analytics 
• program management – manage marketing campaigns across multiple channels 
• online behavior tracking – email subscribers visiting your website 
• and more. 

If you’re looking for a marketing automation tool, you have a large variety to choose from.

Here are some popular examples: 

• ConvertKit – designed specifically for bloggers 
• GetResponse – growing functionality, but not as powerful as some of the other tools below 
• InfusionSoft – complex to use but very powerful 
• Ontraport – doesn’t integrate with as many products as InfusionSoft does 
• HubSpot – very useful and comprehensive tool, but the price will be higher compared to the other two 

What are the steps for building an email automation sequence

For any sequence that you want to build, the required steps will be similar.

1. Find out who you want to attract

Start by analyzing the customers who have bought from you in the past and try to figure out what are the characteristics and interests of your customers.

2. Do some research about the issues of your existing customers/audience

The next step is to do some research and find out the issues your customers/audience encounter while using your services/product. Doing that will help you come up with an incentive for people to subscribe to your services/product.

3. Use the info collected and create your incentive

Use the information from the above steps to create a buzz around that topic. You could also create a guide as a solution or use the info in your opt-in message. This will get people to sign up and then all you have to do is to offer them a free trial of your product.

4. Direct people to make the action you want them to make

You need to create some sort of a “map”, to think in advance. First you have a welcome email, then some follow-up emails with links to the guide created in the step above. After that, what should they do?
They could become a customer, so you must move them to a customer list
If they don’t become customers, you can move them to a newsletter list

A tool you can use for that is Lucidcharts.

5. Create your emails

When you’re creating the emails, think about the relationship you want to build with the subscriber. Make them feel welcome, as part of the community, tell them about yourself and deliver your promises (free trial, a guide, etc.).

With every email you send, make sure that you are building a relationship as well as providing quality content.

6. Create the sequence in the email automation tool

You will need to create a sequence, add emails to that sequence and then specify when the emails will be sent.

An example:
Welcome email – send immediately
Email no.2 – 2 days later
Email no.3 – 4 days later
Free trial/discount offer – 5 days later
Offer reminder – 6 days later
Add them to a customer list if they bought, or to a newsletter list if they didn’t

*days are counted after the welcome email is sent

Note: Your series of emails will be different depending on the type of service you provide and who you are targeting.

7. Deploy your opt-ins and segment your audience

Now you can setup the opt-ins on your site. Depending on the marketing tool you use, you might have the functionality and opt-ins required, but it’s always better to use a specialized tool.

OptinMonster has some smart functionalities and it also provides multiple ways to collect opt-ins.

Some examples of OptinMonster functionalities:
opt-ins based on your blog categories; this means that you can segment people based on where they opted in.
different opt-ins based on the page they visit
different opt-in based on their location
different opt-in based on their actions (abandon the cart or product purchase)
A/B testing for different opt-ins

8. Drive traffic to the opt-ins

Now that everything is in place, it’s time to drive some traffic to the opt-ins. This could be organic traffic, referrals from other sites, paid traffic from Google, Bing, Facebook Ads, etc.

9. Analyze and optimize your results

Measure what works and optimize it. To improve your opt-in rate you can change the words, the opt-in style or the incentive.

The same thing is available for your email sequence: if you notice that people are not opening your emails, you can test different subject lines. Keep in mind that the way you communicate with your new email subscribers needs to be completely different to the way you communicate with existing customers. You will need to split these two out.
Wrap

Successfully segmenting your email list guarantees that messages are landing in the right inbox at the right time.

You can educate. You can connect. You can sell.

Remember, the number one rule of email marketing automation is to keep your users’ experience as your top priority, so think outside of the (in)box!

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How to Write a High-Converting ‘Start Here’ Page

 I have fallen in love with a travel website.
It’s called CheeseWeb, and it’s a blog dedicated to “slow travel.” Slow travel is staying in one place for longer periods of time while you’re on the road and having full experiences in each place you stay.
When I stumbled upon it, the incredible photos and gorgeous design of the site made my mouth water. As an armchair traveler, it has now become one of my favorite travel sites.
One of the reasons why the site appealed to me during my first visit was CheeseWeb’s amazing “Start Here” page.
The page told me:

• Who the main CheeseWeb writers are
• Why they started a slow travel blog
• Where I could find their best content
• How I could connect with them via email and social media

By the time I was finished reading the “Start Here” page, I had become a die-hard fan of the site’s main writers, Alison and Andrew.
Since becoming a fan of their site, I’ve noticed more “Start Here” pages on various sites around the web. I’m now fascinated with this effective way for content marketers to create fast and valuable bonds with new readers who cross their paths for the first time.
Let’s talk about what a “Start Here” section is, why it’s important for your digital business, and how to turn yours into a high-converting page.

A powerful tool for bonding with your readers

A “Start Here” area is a page on your website that helps people have the best possible experience on your site. It assumes that people don’t know who you are and have never visited your site before. It also gives them a brief introduction to your site’s purpose and exactly what their next steps should be.
Here’s CheeseWeb’s “Start Here” page:

An effective “Start Here” page is like rolling out the red carpet for your visitors and giving new people a positive first impression of you. It’s a smart way to communicate:

• Who you are
• What the purpose of your site is
• Where new visitors can find your best content
• How they can connect with you via email or social networking platforms

That’s a big job for one page, right? But “Start Here” pages do that job beautifully (when they’re done well) and that’s why they’re so powerful.

Give every visitor a great website experience

It’s important to have a “Start Here” page on your site because website visitors — especially new visitors — are often like timid little birds when they land on your virtual real estate. They’re cautious and looking for any opportunity to fly the coop, so you need to be gentle with them.

Your “Start Here” page allows you to be a patient, nurturing, non-threatening tour guide who’s on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But your “Start Here” page never needs to take time off. It’s on duty forever and waiting to give new visitors a great experience, every single moment of every single day.

A “Start Here” page might also be called “[Your Site Name] 101,” “Begin Your Journey,” “Getting Started,” or any other name that informs new visitors that the page is an initial jumping-off point for your site.
Regardless of what you call it, a great “Start Here” page can earn you repeat visitors, convert more visitors into subscribers, increase your social media following, and bring in more sales.

7 elements of an effective “Start Here” page

Here are seven elements you should consider including in your own “Start Here” page.
You don’t necessarily need to include these elements in this order, but make sure your “Start Here” page is organized in a clear way that takes your reader on a journey from first-time visitor to educated site veteran.

1. Brief definitions of the key terms you use on your site

To avoid confusion, briefly define key terms you frequently use.
For example, Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income defines the term “passive income” close to the top of his “Start Here” page:

2. A concise statement about you and your mission

If you’re a solopreneur, this will include your individual story (and might include details about why you started your business or website).
If you are a larger business, you can explain the origin story of the business and talk about the mission of your company. Keep this story brief — you can use your About page to give more details or publish your official bio.
Food blogger Lisa Leake delivers a short version of her story on her “Start Here” page:

3. A clear message for your ideal reader or visitor

People need to know whether the information on your site will benefit them. They want reassurance that your content will meet their needs.
Show that you understand your ideal visitor’s issues and problems, and let him know he’s in the right place to get solutions.

4. Links to your best content

Your “Start Here” section is the perfect place to link to your best content — especially your best resources for first-time visitors.
Don’t go too crazy here. You want to include enough links that new visitors will find value and get lots of information, but not so many that they get overwhelmed and click away.
Consider organizing your links into categories if you have a lot of them. Put yourself in the shoes of a new visitor and choose categories that make sense for that person.
Here’s an example from Michael Hyatt’s “Start Here” page:

5. A prompt to join your email list

Your “Start Here” page should always include a strong call to action, so use that CTA to ask people to join your email list.
Explain why they should sign up and possibly offer a tantalizing incentive.
CheeseWeb invites you to be part of their community:

6. An invitation to connect on social networking sites (optional)

If you’re active on any social networking platforms, you can include links that allow people to connect with you on those platforms.
Clearly label the links and include directions on how to connect with you.

7. A link to an entry-level product offer (optional)

If you have an entry-level product, consider offering it on your “Start Here” page. Include this offer toward the bottom of the page.
Discuss the benefits of any paid product you offer here in detail, so the reader knows why it’s a good place for them to start. You want to avoid scaring away your new visitor and sending the message that you’re just trying to make sales.

3 perfect entry points to your “Start Here” page

Where should you put links to your “Start Here” page? Here are three options.

1. In your top navigation bar, preferably on the far left side

Your visitors will naturally look at your navigation bar when they start browsing through your content, so put a link to your “Start Here” page in that bar. The “Start Here” or “Getting Started” button lets people know exactly where to begin on your site.
Adding it to the far left side of the navigation bar ensures that it will be one of the first things people notice, as seen here on Lisa Leake’s site:

2. In a widget, slightly lower down on your home page

CheeseWeb’s home page has a “Start Here” widget that includes a welcome message and a prominent “Start Here” button. This technique also works well because it grabs the attention of people scrolling through the home page of your site.

3. Make it your home page

You can even consider making your “Start Here” section the home page of your site. The Copyblogger home page orients people to the site’s offerings.

Create your own “Start Here” page

Your “Start Here” page can create the perfect welcome for your new visitors and help them make the most of your site and your offerings.
Take some time today and outline the information new visitors need to know about your site when they first arrive. Then draft an original, friendly, and educational “Start Here” page.
Publish your “Start Here” page as soon as possible. Your prospects will be grateful for the warm welcome!
Have a favorite “Start Here” page? Share it in the comments section below.


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Are You a Digital Entrepreneur?

 It’s been said that every entrepreneur is a digital entrepreneur.
This is right. This is wrong.
It’s right in the sense that all entrepreneurs are using digital technology to build, launch, and grow their businesses.
But it’s wrong in the sense that not all entrepreneurs are doing everything digitally — which is, amazingly, now possible to do. And it can create compelling career and lifestyle options in the process.
We just launched a new podcast, The Digital Entrepreneur, that discusses the specific strategies, concepts, and tactics necessary for pure digital entrepreneurs to thrive in today’s ever-evolving online marketplace.
Will entrepreneurs who use digital technology benefit from this show? Absolutely. Because the big ideas apply to all businesses in a digital world.
But we’re talking directly to the pure digital entrepreneur.
Is that you?
Brian Clark and I invite you to join this discussion, which you need to be a part of. 

Who is a digital entrepreneur?

Let’s get a little more specific here in how we define “digital entrepreneur” and the distinction between other types of entrepreneurs.
To do this, look no further than the home page for Digital Commerce Institute, the ultimate online home for digital entrepreneurs.
Digital entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs focused exclusively on digital commerce, and digital commerce is “a subset of e-commerce used to delineate companies that create digital products and services that are marketed, delivered, and supported completely online.”
Examples of digital commerce products include ebooks, online education, membership sites, downloadable software, web hosting, and software as a service (“SaaS”).
If you look at the history of Rainmaker Digital, we have created successful examples of each of those types of products. We are digital entrepreneurs in the purest sense of the term.
This is what qualifies us to define and champion the term, and to be the mentor for other digital entrepreneurs who want to create the digital business and lifestyle of their dreams — one built around digital goods and services.
We dig more into this idea of who is, and who isn’t, a digital entrepreneur in our first episode.
Listen: Who is a Digital Entrepreneur?
We also discuss how digital facilitators of offline services like AirBNB and Uber fit into this whole spectrum, and even how virtual reality might change everything in the future. 

What does a digital entrepreneur need to succeed?

If digital entrepreneurs are focusing on digital products and services that are marketed, delivered, and supported completely online, as we submit that they are, then it stands to reason a good website is a prerequisite for success.
There are five elements of the modern marketing website that all digital entrepreneurs need to be thinking about and implementing in a smart way.
Really, all entrepreneurs needs a website that incorporates these five elements.

1. Email (registration, not opt-in)
2. Adaptive content and responsive design
3. The access experience
4. Online courses as lead magnets
5. Testing … of everything

You’re fighting with one hand tied behind your back if you are not including all five elements as part of an adaptive experience that you deliver to your audience, your prospects, and your customers.
We discussed these five elements in our second episode of The Digital Entrepreneur, with individual breakdowns of each on the way.
Listen: The 5 Elements of the Modern Marketing Website

What can you learn from other successful digital entrepreneurs?

Plenty.
This is why we are going to feature regular interviews with digital entrepreneurs who are out there making big things happen.
Digital entrepreneurs like … Danny Margulies.
In our most recent episode, I interviewed Danny about his experience transitioning from a “soul-crushing” job into becoming a six-figure freelancer, and then how he leveraged that experience into building a powerhouse online course about freelancing that made over $25,000 in revenue in January of 2016.
It’s a great story — both for the human element and because of what you learn from Danny’s experience and insight.
Listen: Secrets of a Six-Figure Online Course Builder

Subscribe, and join us on this journey to better digital entrepreneurship

As I mention to Brian in the first episode, the name of the song we’re using for intro music is “Men on a Mission.”
It’s appropriate, because he and I are men on a mission to help digital entrepreneurs succeed — via smart and proven strategies, and by sharing the experiences and stories of others.
If you’re a current or aspiring digital entrepreneur, we hope you’ll make The Digital Entrepreneur a weekly appointment.

Subscribe to The Digital Entrepreneur on iTunes
(Or search “Digital Entrepreneur” in your podcast app of choice.)
Thanks … we’ll talk to you soon!

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5 of Our Favorite Ways to Make Money From Home

Working from home in pajamas is the dream of many out there trapped in the rat race. The great news is that it's not hard to get started. Below are some of our favorite ways to make money from home. 

Find a Passive Income Stream

What's "passive income"? It's simple -- finding a way to earn money while you sleep, of course! 

There's a saying in the corporate world: "Don't make yourself irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted." As an entrepreneur, this is still true in its own way.

Let's think of "being promoted" as earning more and working less. You can raise your prices, but until you can remove yourself from being directly involved in doing the work that generates the income, there's always going to be a limit to how much you can earn, and it can only increase very slowly.

More on passive income here. 

Do Affiliate Marketing the Smart Way 

Affiliate marketing is sometimes touted as "get rich quick schemes" by shady sites offering pyramid schemes that promise quick cash for little effort. Make no mistake -- successful affiliate marketers put in a lot of effort toward building an audience and quality content that will bring in sustainable passive income. Expect to do a lot of legwork up front -- but if you play your cards right you can build a solid source of revenue over time

Learn to be a successful affiliate marketer here.

Build a Blog on a Speciality Niche 

If you create a speciality blog that brings in a reasonable amount of traffic, you can enjoy income on ads you place on the site.

One good way is to craft a speciality blog with product reviews and recommendations. Be sure to pick a topic that you enjoy and know something about. If you can't stay passionate about the topic, that will show, and it also won't hold your interest. Choose a narrow enough niche to be distinctive, e.g., bands from your city, left-handed guitarists, music for a certain kind of dancing, authors of a certain religion, books about arts & crafts, etc.

More here. 

Make Money Doing Something You Love

You don't have to be a professional photographer to sell your photos for money. People are constantly in need of stock photography for websites, presentations, brochures and so on, and are willing to pay for the right image. People generally search for images on stock photography sites by keywords, not by photographer, so you have the same chance as anyone else of having your image picked. Just be careful that you don't have images of trademarked brands, copyrighted art or people's faces that are readily identifiable (unless you have a model release), but just about anything else is fair game, and I promise - you'd be amazed what people need pictures of, so don't make any assumptions. If it's a decent photo, upload it. Some sites to get you started include Fotolia, ShutterStock, Dreamstime,  and iStockphoto. The great thing about this is that it's truly "set it and forget it".

More ways to make money online here. 

Build an Information Products Business 

If you have a knack for teaching or making complex material more digestible, consider the field of information products.

You can create your own webinar or ebook using low-cost tools, such as Camtasia, YouTube, and Powerpoint. If you are interested in using the resources of a larger company, new educational startups like 

Udemy and Skillshare allow anyone to create and sell classes through their platform. Though they take a small percentage of your profits, you can take advantage of their built-in communities and marketing lists.

How to get started: Read our guide to information products.

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Digital Sharecropping: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Content Marketing Strategy

We have a great bookstore in my town — the kind of place you picture in your mind when you think of a great independent bookshop.

It’s perfect for browsing, with lots of comfy chairs to relax in. The books are displayed enticingly. There’s a little coffee shop, so you can relax with an espresso. They get your favorite writers to come in for readings, so there’s always an event and a sense of excitement.

They do everything right, and they’ve always had plenty of customers.

But they still closed their doors last year.

No, not for the reasons you might think. It wasn’t Amazon that killed them, or the proliferation of free content on the web, or the crappy economy.

They closed the store because they were leasing their big, comfortable building … and when that lease ran out, their landlord tripled the rent.

Literally overnight, their business model quit working. Revenues simply wouldn’t exceed costs. A decision made by another party, one they had no control over, took a wonderful business and destroyed it.

And that’s precisely what you risk every day you make your business completely dependent on another company.

It might be Facebook. It might be eBay. It might be Google.

It’s called digital sharecropping, and it means you’re building your business on someone else’s land.

And it’s a recipe for heartbreak and failure.
What’s digital sharecropping, anyway?

Digital sharecropping is a term coined by Nicholas Carr to describe a peculiar phenomenon of Web 2.0.

One of the fundamental economic characteristics of Web 2.0 is the distribution of production into the hands of the many and the concentration of the economic rewards into the hands of the few.

In other words, anyone can create content on sites like Facebook, but that content effectively belongs to Facebook. The more content we create for free, the more valuable Facebook becomes. We do the work, they reap the profit.

The term sharecropping refers to the farming practices common after the U.S. Civil War, but it’s essentially the same thing as feudalism. A big landholder allows individual farmers to work their land and takes most of the profits generated from the crops.

The landlord has all the control. If he decides to get rid of you, you lose your livelihood. If he decides to raise his fees, you go a little hungrier. You do all the work and the landlord gets most of the profit, leaving you a pittance to eke out a living on.

Well, we’re professional content marketers — not subsistence farmers — and our work doesn’t involve 12-hour days in grueling conditions. So is sharecropping still dangerous?

It is, for a couple of reasons …
Landlords are fickle

Let’s look at Facebook. What if you moved all of your marketing to a site like Facebook? It’s local, it’s free to sign up, and it makes businesses feel like they’re doing something cutting-edge.

But what happens when Facebook thinks you’ve done something that violates their terms of service and deletes your account? Or changes the way you’re allowed to talk with your customers?

Facebook is a particularly fast-changing platform, but it’s not the only one. An entire industry has sprung up based on trying to figure out what Google’s going to do tomorrow, both as a search engine and as an advertising platform.

If you’re relying on Facebook or Google to bring in all of your new customers, you’re sharecropping. You’re hoping the landlord will continue to like you and support your business, but the fact is, the landlord has no idea who you are and doesn’t actually care.
Landlords go away

The other problem with sharecropping is that the landlord may or may not be here next year.

Sharecroppers have put millions of hours into sites like Digg or MySpace. And those sites still exist — but they’re no longer bringing the traffic they once did.

Sharecropped land, in other words, has a tendency to become less and less fertile over time.

Maybe Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest will buck the trend. Maybe they’ll continue to stay healthy and vibrant for decades.

The best we can do is guess. And if we guess wrong, our business goes into a slow and steady decline.
So are Facebook and Google bad for business?

Of course not. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest and many more search and social sites are all superb tools to add to our marketing mix.

The secret is to spend most of your time and creative energy building assets that you control.

There are three assets you should be building today and should continue to focus on for the lifetime of your digital business:
A well-designed website with your own hosting
An opt-in email list, ideally with a high-quality autoresponder
A reputation for providing impeccable value

Developing these assets are the equivalent of buying your building instead of renting it.

Any of these can still fall prey to outside influences. The bookstore’s building can burn down. And your site can be hacked, your email account closed down, your reputation smeared.

But repairing your assets is in your control. You can fix the hacked code, export your email list to another provider, and respond effectively to manage your reputation.

More importantly, you can proactively protect those assets by taking website security seriously, avoiding any spammy or dodgy practices with your email, and cultivating a loyal audience who will vouch for you as being one of the good guys.

You’ve put a lot of time and effort into your business — don’t put it all at risk by building on rented land.

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