Archive | July, 2024

While there are many ways to make money online, the vast majority involve selling a product – be it yours or someone else’s.

But have you ever considered offering great content or software for free, and then allowing your visitors and fans to reward your good work through giving you donations? It’s simple – you provide your visitors with the opportunity to say “thank you” through either monetary donations or buying you things that you want.

This might not be the method to use if you’re looking to make huge money, but it can be a lucrative source of extra income. And perhaps best of all, you don’t need to feel you’re pushing anything on your customers or asking them to buy more stuff they don’t need or want. Visitors reward you when they choose to, and because they don’t feel pressured, they can sometimes be even more generous than if you were trying to sell them the latest greatest product.

Here are 8 tips on how to make the donation business model work for your website…

1. Offer quality content that truly helps your readers. This is true on any website, but especially important if you’re going to ask for donations. The more your content helps your readers, the more likely they are to want to send you a monetary ‘thank you.’

2. If your content doesn’t provide helpful information, then it should entertain. Perhaps you’re especially funny, or you’re up on the latest news in your niche. You’ve got to offer your visitors some type of real value to get donations.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask. “Did you find this information helpful? Then please help us to continue providing this great info in the future by supporting us. Any amount is helpful and greatly appreciated.”

4. Make a wish list on Amazon and post a link to your wish list on your website. “Have I helped you? If you would like to express your appreciation, please feel free to buy me a book.”

5. Don’t be afraid to place expensive items on your wish list. Optimally you want to choose items from a couple of dollars all the way to a hundred dollars or more, because you never know who will be buying you a ‘thank you.’ It could be a rich person whom you’ve just given a stellar idea that will make him/her thousands of dollars, and they might be the one to buy you that expensive $599.00 espresso machine you’ve been thirsting for.

6. You don’t have to confine yourself to Amazon: More and more online companies are offering wish lists. For example, thinkgeek.com, barnesandnoble.com, dickblick.com and containerstore.com all offer wish lists, as do hundreds of other retail websites.

7. Instead of wish lists, let them send you money. For example, “Buy me a cup of coffee” is a popular way of asking for donations. You then give them Paypal options of buying you anything from a single cup of coffee ($3-$5) to a case of beer, or dinner for two. You choose the options offered and the donation for each. And you can also create an option where they choose the amount to send to you. “Was this post helpful to you? Then please buy me a cup of coffee.”

8. Don’t get pushy. You’re providing them the chance to be nice and return some of the benefits you’ve offered to them on your website. You’re not trying to “sell” them on sending you money or gifts.

Selling products online is certainly the most direct path to earning profits, but there are a growing number of high profile websites, and everyday bloggers who are making a pretty penny through donations. If you are creating quality content, give your visitors the option to reward you in this way, and you may be surprised at how much money you were leaving on the table before trying this out.

You have the potential to achieve great things, and to do something extraordinary, whether it’s in your online business or something else.

And achieving the extraordinary is more possible than ever before, thanks to the technologies and knowledge we have today.

However, it’s also easier than ever before to get distracted, too.

So, how do you stay focused? And how do you ensure that you are making progress every single day?

By taking a lesson from other successful people who have reached their goals.

There is a common fallacy in our culture known as the ‘overnight success.’

Someone achieves something great, and because this person was previously unknown, people say s/he achieved this success seemingly overnight, out of thin air.

But as you might expect, it actually takes years to become an overnight success.

If you ask any entrepreneur or actor who made it big, you’ll find they worked hard for years before achieving their goals.

Think about this: You’re an actor, going up for a major role. If you get it, this will be your big break.

But you’re up against another actor for that same role.

This actor has been taking acting classes for 10 years, taking part in local theater, auditioning for every part possible, and taking every job she’s offered.

You’ve been ‘acting’ for 10 years, too, but in that time you really haven’t done much.

You didn’t take any acting lessons.

You didn’t participate in local theater.

You didn’t audition for a part unless you ‘felt like it.’

Needless to say, it’s the other actor who gets the part and becomes an ‘overnight success,’ all because she’s been working hard for a decade to get ready for this exact moment.

I’m going to share something with you right now that is life-changing.

However, since you’ve probably heard this before, you’re also likely going to dismiss this.

That would be a grave mistake.

What I’m about to impart will make the difference in a life of mediocrity and stellar success, and it’s this:

Every single day, without fail, determine the ONE thing you need to accomplish to move forward on your goal, and DO IT.

If you can only get one thing done, what would it be?

Ask yourself this question every night before going to bed, and again the next morning.

If you get just ONE thing done, what should it be?

The key here is to focus on importance, not busy work.

Contacting ten possible new clients is a step forward. Clearing your desk is not. Yes, it might be important to have a tidy desk, but how does that advance your goals?

There is the story of the professor who holds up a glass beaker in front of the class. The professor fills the beaker with large rocks all the way to the top, and then he asks the class if the beaker is full.

“Yes!” the students reply.

Then the professor pours small pebbles into the beaker that fit all around the large rocks. Again, he asks the class if the beaker is full.

“Yes!” comes the reply.

Finally, the professor pours sand into the beaker, which fills in the gaps around the pebbles.

Now the beaker is full.

But what if the professor had put the sand in first, or the pebbles in first? Then the professor could not have fit the big rocks into the beaker.

The things you need to do to advance your goals are your big rocks. You’ve got to do these things first, or they will never get done. If you focus your efforts all day long on sand and pebbles, you will always be busy, but you won’t accomplish anything.

Choose one thing per day, the one BIG thing you can do to advance your goals, and do that thing first, no matter what.

There’s always going to be a small percentage of your customers who are more than happy to pay more to get things done faster and better.

Case in point: If you’re not familiar with it, there is a giant ferris wheel in London that is absolutely huge and offers spectacular views. It was built for the Y2K celebrations. Ironically, it didn’t open in time for Y2K, but that’s another story (perhaps about planning your business and hitting deadlines.)

To ride this ferris wheel, known as the London Eye, you’ve got to pay something like 20 pounds and stand in a queue for about an hour and a half. For you Yanks, a queue is a line. 😉

But if you’re willing to pay more – a good deal more – you will only have to wait about 15 minutes. That’s because they also offer something called the Fast Track, also known as the short line for rich people.

Now then, where in your business can you offer a “short line for rich customers?” That is, how can you upgrade your products or services for those customers who are more than happy to pay for better/faster service? Because these are the customers you need to spoil rotten. These are the customers who will make your business a pleasure to run and who will be the reason why you like getting up in the morning and you have a new car in the garage. Frankly, these are the customers who, when you get enough of them, will allow you to focus exclusively on them if you choose.

Think of it this way – would you rather service 100 rich customers who pay whatever you charge without so much as a flinch, or a 1,000 customers all moaning about your latest $2 price increase? To be frank, you can earn far more by catering to your best customers than you can by trying to sell cheap stuff to cheap people. And yes, I realize it might not be politically correct for me to be saying this, but I bet you can already see the truth in it.

So it’s your decision – continue to focus only on selling to the masses, or begin locating those customers and clients who will gladly pay you top dollar for your extraordinary services without batting an eye.

If you don’t have time to write 6 or 7 emails each week to send to your email list, try this method instead: Pick out several evergreen products that you know and trust and can promote to your list for months and even years to come… For example, choose your favorite hosting service or autoresponder if you’re building in the online marketing niche.

Write 4 emails for each of these evergreen products. They can be stand alone emails or a sequence with each email building on the previous one, whichever you prefer. Put a link in each email to the product or service you are promoting.

Place these sequences into your autoresponder and schedule them to begin going out as soon as someone joins your list.

However, cue these emails so they only go out on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Monday and Wednesday are reserved for new emails you write, promoting new products.

No matter when a new lead signs up, they start on the email sequences you’ve programmed, but they never receive them on Monday or Wednesday because this is when you send out your new, live emails.

Now you’re only having to write two emails per week.

Once you get used to sourcing products to promote and writing the emails for them, you have a choice: You can either send more live emails and fewer autoresponder emails, or you can use some of your new emails as automated sequences (assuming the products stay relevant and available.)

This method is a great way to ease into emailing 6 days a week, and it’s perfect for the person who is currently working a full time job but looking to quit as soon as the online income is high enough.

It’s also perfect for the new marketer who takes a long time to write an email. No worries, you’ll get faster with time.

Try this method and see if it doesn’t take some of the email writing pressure off of you.