Marketing pros rarely think of traffic much. Sure, it’s important, but there are more impactful numbers to focus on.
The same happens in most industries. One idea is the hot topic for a while before the next one emerges. For example, ADHD is the psychiatric equivalent of web traffic.
Here’s how it works: People hear about the symptoms of something (e.g., ADHD). They lack expertise to diagnose anyone, but the symptoms seem to match, so they believe they see ADHD. Companies come in selling the medicine and urging everyone to “ask their doctor” about it. And diagnosis rates skyrocket to absurd levels.
The same thing happened with traffic in marketing. Marketing pros described symptoms (e.g., lack of sales) and explained how the cause was lack of traffic. People heard it, recognised the symptoms, and wanted the solution: more traffic.
Selling what the masses are asking for is easier than selling what they really need. And so, countless traffic products popped up. There are good ones, but the majority of trend-topic products are as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane. It might make you expect to stay dry, but when your boots are full of water, you might want to update your expectations.
Just like smart psychiatrists didn’t join the ADHD craze, there are marketing pros who never lost sight of what matters more than traffic.
Are you responsible for your customers’ results?
If you sell information products, how much responsibility do you have for your customers’s results?
Often people look at this very simplistically and blame the sellers of information products for all kinds of unethical things. For the most part, the same things apply to coaches, consultants, and even many normal products and all sorts of services, but I’ll focus on information products in this article.
The lack of clarity on what you’re responsible for also makes people accidentally create misleading marketing and unhappy customers, so they’re to blame in part, too.
When you know the things you have to consider, you can make promises in your marketing without worrying about what people might misunderstand.
And at the same time, you can make sure you get almost no refund requests.
Getting a guest post accepted isn’t complicated. Still countless people fail because they make these simple mistakes.
It’s not all that hard to submit a guest post—and get it accepted—even to one of the best guest blogging sites around.
But some people just mess up their initial pitch. Badly.
If you want to avoid making mistakes and increase your chances of guest blogging success, let’s take a look at the five most critical—and sometimes entertaining—guest post pitch blunders.
Lots of people complain it’s hard to get guest posts published on the big sites. Sure, there’s plenty of competition. But if you make any of these mistakes after reading this, you can only blame yourself.
PayPal is convenient, widespread, and easy to use. I use it to get paid for products and services. But it’s also taking a cut from withdrawals, which are supposedly “free”—amounting to thousands of dollars.
NOTE: Since I published this article, PayPal has improved their withdrawal process. Now they clearly tell that they charge a currency conversion fee. However, they still don’t provide a receipt of that charge.
PayPal is used by millions. You can pay for pretty much everything from dollhouses and jumping castles to real apartments with it.
And if you run a small business, especially online, you’re going to at least consider using it to process payments because PayPal’s fees seem very reasonable.
It’s easy and free to set up. It works in most countries on this planet (I hear they’re expanding to Mars, too). And it gives you enough options to run a small business.
The transaction fees are also smaller than what you’d pay for similar services with most other companies.
But, if you look closely, and if you tally up the hidden fees, the real PayPal fees aren’t as favorable as they seem on the surface.
Simply put, PayPal steals from its customers.
Edit: PayPal has made some updates to the visuals. My point still stands, though: PayPal doesn’t provide a receipt for the charges—and that amounts to stealing (or maybe it’s “fraud” or some other legal term).
You—as the business owner—are the most important factor in your business’s success. If you have false beliefs, making progress and getting results will be much harder than necessary.
Your business doesn’t mind if you believe in Santa.
Not even if you wait for his flying sleight every Christmas with a cup of milk and cookies ready for him.
Your business doesn’t mind if you’re Christian, Jewish, Zen Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu.
But there are common beliefs your business doesn’t tolerate. They will make it crumble and you may not have any idea why it’s happening.
I learned them the hard way – maybe I can spare you the trouble.
The biggest business mistake you can make is one you likely do many times—perhaps every day on some level. If you manage to avoid it, results will follow quickly.
The biggest business mistake you can ever make, is one you’re likely to make. Several times. Without noticing.
It stops your business from going forward, and can even take you back. Do it too often and you guarantee your business won’t succeed. This is also the most common reason most bloggers never succeed.
And here’s what’s worst about it, the mistake is a lot of fun to make. So, even when you notice you’re making the mistake again, you may not do anything about it.
What’s the biggest business mistake? It’s losing focus.
You’ve probably done it, everybody you know has probably done it, I certainly have done it. But what exactly does it mean, to lose focus?
Assuming Google’s algorithms are logical, here are some of the key factors that affect your SEO results the most.
There are more self-proclaimed “SEO gurus” than polar bears in the world. They “know” (without any way to prove it) the perfect keyword densities and link formats and everything else about SEO. I’m not a guru, nor do I have any percentages, studies, or great successes to share. But I do have a rational approach to things, SEO included.
If I were Google, how would I work? Google is made by people, rational people I suppose. So, if you think about search engine rankings rationally, you should end up with a similar logic. I know it sometimes feels like they do irrational choices (like the “Panda” update that hit hard many quality sites). But I’m sure they at least attempt to think rationally the big question: How to rank webpages?
Television ads can get your brand in front of millions of people. But apart from a few exceptions, they’re a huge waste of money.
Tv advertisements are the easiest way to spend your marketing budget. Even if you need to spend $10 million it’s easy with a TV advertisement. Just call an advertising agency and tell them you have $10 million to spend for advertising. They’ll take care of it in no time. But they wouldn’t have a job unless it was effective, right? Well I’m saying TV advertising is a waste of money.
A TV advertisement works only if there’s someone watching it. During the commercial breaks people run off to the refrigerator or the toilet. And those who stay at their couch don’t want to see the commercials. So, they’re not really paying attention. Every advertiser knows this and yet they spend millions of dollars into content no one wants to see.
The idea, as all the same people would point out, is to create familiarity. People intuitively believe a familiar product is superior to a strange one. So, when you go shopping and see a line of cereals you like the one you’ve seen before. This works even if you don’t remember seeing the ad. So, TV advertising can work because of the benefits of branding. And for a select few it’s effective (see a list later in this post).