Author Archive | Lawrence

Common advice to new marketers is to find a need and fill it. Better advice is to find a want and fill that, since people more readily spend money on things they want than they do on things they need. After all, no one NEEDS an expensive car. Even the cheapest of automobiles will get them where they want to go – yet people WANT the high end cars and they pay dearly for them.

So we know to find needs and wants and to fill them. And we’ve all been told to do surveys or haunt forums to find out what these needs and wants are. It’s very basic advice and if you combine it with some trial and error, it will usually get the job done, at least to a certain degree.

But what if you want a blockbuster smash-it-out-of-the-park product? Something that you can perhaps retire on?

Then you’re going to have to upgrade your methods of product research and product creation. In fact, what you’ll need to do is focus on something called Customer Development, and according to Steve Blank, it goes like this:

1. Understand your customers’ problems and needs

2. Prove that you have a repeatable sales model (for long term sales and income)

3. Create and drive end user demand (also known as marketing)

4. Building – that is, transition from learning what your customers want to executing on what you’ve learned.

It’s that first step – Understanding your customer’s problems and needs – that sets the stage for the other 3 steps and your eventual long term success. And it’s also the step most people get wrong.

You probably already have a vision for a new product. You’ve looked at needs and wants, and you’ve got a solution you want to offer customers. The unseasoned marketer will now create the product and offer it to customers, something you might call the sink or swim method. But since 9 out of 10 products sink using this method, I’m going to suggest you do the following instead:

1. Go talk to the people who you believe are potential users for your product. Your goal is to see if there is a direct match between your product vision and what people want.

2. If you’re finding out there isn’t a match, you make one of two changes. Either you change your product to what these particular customers do want, or you find a different segment of the market that does want what you are planning to offer.

3. Your goal is to understand the problem your product is addressing. Ask people how they handle this problem now and if they perceive it as being an important issue for them. Forget yes and no type questions. Instead, ask open ended questions such as:

– “If you could change anything about the way you deal with this problem, what would it be?”

– “How do you currently solve this problem?”

– “Can you describe the problem in your own words?”

– “Have you tried other solutions? What happened?”

– “What do you wish you could do to solve this problem?”

– “Tell me about the last time you had this problem.”

– “How much does this problem cost you?”

NOTE: Don’t ask hypothetical questions because they won’t be relevant or helpful. Don’t ask for features, don’t try to convince or sell and don’t try to solve their problem. For example, don’t ask:

– “Do you like this idea?”
– “Would you buy this?”
– “How much would you pay for this?”

4. Adjust accordingly. You might uncover an even larger, more pressing problem that you can solve for these customers. Don’t be afraid to discard a good idea for a great idea. In other words, don’t chase after crumbs if turning in another direction will provide a feast.

5. Build, Measure and Learn, but not necessarily in that order. Figure out what you need to learn. For example, will people use your XYZ service if it’s free. Then figure out how to measure that. In this case, you can track sign-ups for a beta service you will be introducing. Then you decide what you need to build. And in this case, all you need is a landing page to sign people up, with either a description or a video showing what your service will do.

6. Notice you can do all of this without actually creating your product or service first. Odds are you’re familiar with Dropbox. When Dropbox was first presented to the public, it was simply an idea presented in a video. It wasn’t working, and in fact there wasn’t even a prototype yet. But the interest received from potential customers was massive – enough to tell Drew Houston that he should indeed go ahead and build Dropbox. Good thing he did – he’s a rich man today. To see how he did it, go here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-product/

7. If you went to that page, you noticed that Dropbox was started as a Minimal Viable Product. That is, the absolute minimum was done on the product itself to assess the market. No doubt you’ve heard that the best way to test a product is to put up a squeeze page or sales page offering the product and see how many people try to sign up for it. Then on the next page you reveal that it isn’t available yet, but you will let them know when it is. This might seem like cheating, and it is. What you’re cheating is failure by assuring yourself that you do indeed have a product idea that will sell before you ever build it.

A Minimal Viable Product isn’t always about creating a minimal product, but it is about learning what you need to know to make your product successful. It might be a working prototype, a mock-up or a video that simulates your future product. An MVP is what you get in front of your customers to find out if they will indeed use it (if it’s free) or buy it.

Bottom line, if you want to know exactly what your customers want, you’ve got to do some digging. You’ve got to first ask them what needs fixing, what’s important to them, and how they would like it solved. Then you present them with the solution – either the actual product or an MVP – and you gauge their reaction and learn all you can in the process.

Who are your best prospects in the early stages of your product development? Those are the customers we call “earlyvangelists.” According to Steve Blank, they will have some or all of these characteristics:

– They have a problem
– They are aware of having this problem
– They have been actively searching for a solution
– They may have already hacked together a solution
– They have or can acquire the funds to buy your solution

Ideally these are the first customers you want to offer your product to. They will take the least amount of selling and will be the first to tell others of your product. Find these people and you have tapped into a goldmine.

Imagine having a time machine that would allow you to travel into the future. Once you got there, you met with your future millionaire self to find out what you did between now and then to build such a successful online business.

You then traveled back to today and (hopefully) began implementing at least some of the lessons learned from your much wiser and wealthier self. Here’s some of the core lessons you would have surely learned by now:

Get clear on what you want and WHY you want it. Once you get the goal and the reason for the goal clear in your mind, it’s a lot easier to take those steps necessary to attain it.

You are smarter than you think. Stop stalling and get started. Now.

Motivation comes from within. Waiting to work on your business “when you feel like it” means one thing: Failure.

Speaking of getting distracted – STOP IT. Make a plan and work the plan. Find your big picture and only do the things that will get you there.

The magic button that creates money out of thin air? Does not exist. If it did, would they be selling it for $97?

There’s nothing noble about doing things the hard way. Automate and outsource ASAP.

Step back. Are you still going in the right direction? Course correct.

Stop complaining. Just. Stop.

Don’t worry about your competition. The vast majority of your competition is mediocre anyway, and you’re not stopping until you reach great.

Never stop learning. You know enough right now to start, but not enough to sustain your business long term.

Face your fears head on. If you let fear rule your life, you’ll never accomplish anything new and you’ll never experience anything exciting.

Making money is simple. You take certain steps, you get certain results.

Smart successful people have goals. f you don’t write down your goals, you’re just playing at building a business – not actually DOING it.

Never compromise your character or your good name. Remember, anything placed on the Internet might very well STAY on the Internet forever.

Be yourself. You have far more to offer others than you realize.

Now then, student of your future millionaire self, here are your next lessons. Use them wisely.

If you already have 2-3 excellent products on your computer on how to money online, you likely have enough information to make 6 figures a year. No joke. We’re going to figure you don’t care for one of the methods but you’re fully capable of implementing at least one of the other two.

There are literally thousands of people who have already proven this is true – you only need one solid workable system to make real money online. So stop searching for new qet rich quick schemes and get busy. Now.

Be warned: Others might not understand what you’re doing. They might even resent it. They might try to hold you back. They might discourage you. They might be a total energy drain. And they might do everything in their power to stop you. Their motivation? Many and varied, but the bottom line is that your new business is perceived as a threat to them.

If they’re family, explain that you need to do this and you are not changing your mind. If they are friends, consider placing some distance between yourself and them. You can catch up with them later once your business is rocking – at which time you might be surprised to find out you need new friends because your old ones resent your success. Sad but true.

What you do today will predict what you become tomorrow. Are you diligently moving forward? Or are you putting things off? Choose your habits wisely. I wish I could tattoo that on your hand so you would see it every day. Choose. Your. Habits. Wisely.

Stop focusing on the economy or the politicians and just get busy. I know people who spend their days watching economic news and then lament that it’s impossible right now to successfully start a business. And I know others who ignore that same news and make news of their own, starting tremendously successful businesses in the weakest of economies. Remember, whatever you focus on gets bigger.

It’s all about selling. Period. You’re either selling a product, a click, a service, or something else, but you are in fact selling. If you are not selling, you are not making money. Focus 90% of your time on the sales process, and that includes getting traffic, converting that traffic to a list, and selling to that list.

Content rules. Social networks, applications, software, etc., will come and go, but content has always and will always work because people will always demand high quality content, regardless of format.

Don’t start with just one product, start with 3. Launching a single product with no follow up plan is a recipe for a few quick bucks and then nothing. Instead, know what you’re going to upsell or cross-sell before you even get started. Yes, they can be other people’s products. For example, launch your own product and then OTO an affiliate product, then upsell a second affiliate product.

Build your own tribe. Pick your corner of the Internet, whatever that might be (call it a niche if you like) and then build a solid and ever-growing tribe of people who know you and trust you as THE GUY or GAL in that niche. Don’t worry about those that don’t fit your tribe – just focus on those who do and you will always have an income online.

Don’t buy “stuff with your profits.” That new TV and new car will wait another year or two. Right now invest all of your profits back into your business. This is how people retire in just 5 to 15 years, by reinvesting now to scale up their businesses. Work the numbers. If you’re buying traffic for $1 that yields $2, then you are effectively doubling your money over and over again. If you instead invest that money in a new car, that money and it’s future earning potential is forever lost to you.

Use deadlines. This is your business, not a hobby, so treat it like a business. Think strategically about what needs to be done and write it down, complete with deadlines. Then do everything in your power to meet those deadlines, no matter what.

In the beginning, do not take a day off. Focus on your goals daily or they will fall by the wayside. Missing even one day can lead to missing two days, which can lead to missing a week which leads to a month lost. Every day re-read your goals and do at least one thing that takes you closer to reaching your goal, even if it only takes 20 minutes. It’s not about how much time you put in, it’s about how much you get done with the time you have, and how consistently you make progress.

Forgo all distractions. Hobbies, television, video games, vacations, etc., are all things you can put off for at least your first 4 to 8 months. Set a goal of what you’re going to accomplish by a 6 month deadline, and only when you accomplish it can you afford to be distracted. Yes, you’ve got to get serious about your business – enough monkeying around, it’s time to actually DO it.

Find a mentor. Or a coach. If you want to accomplish a whole lot more in a whole lot less time with fewer mistakes along the way, find someone who’s already doing what you want to do and hang onto their coattails for dear life until you can do it on your own. Yes, coaches cost money in the short run, but in the long run it’s one of the best investments you’ll ever make.

Figure it will take 2-5 years to build real wealth. Look back at where you were 5 years ago and imagine if you had started your business then, where you would be today. Now look ahead 5 years and realize it all begins now.

Build a support team. This might simply be a group of 4 to 7 people who get together twice a week on Skype to brainstorm and report progress. Nothing beats having fresh minds looking at your business, or the moral support of being in company with others going through the same process you’re living. And if possible, get a couple of more experienced marketers to join your group and act as mentors.

BONUS: This one is for the long haul: Have an exist strategy. There may come a day when you want to sell your business, either to start a new one or to retire. By planning for this in advance, you might be able to sell your business for more. For example, be sure to actively build individual lists of prospects, buyers and affiliates because not only will these make you money – they’re also tremendous assets when you sell.

And give your business a name and brand of its own. If you name it after yourself, it will be difficult to sell unless you find another person who shares your name. And also do everything to solely own that name. Purchase all of the domain extensions available and any variations, along with getting all applicable copyrights and trademarks.

Something to think about: Research shows that 80% of pentamillionaires (those with a net worth of $5 million or more) are entrepreneurs who sold their businesses.

Imagine you’re standing on a time line at the exact juncture where it branches in two different directions. One direction takes you to that million dollar business, and the other direction has you spending the rest of your life just as it is now, with no changes and no big success.

You choose which path to take. The million-dollar-future-you is waiting to guide you to that destiny – if you choose. Or you can do nothing, and the other destiny will happen pretty much on its own. Your choice.

You can turn your blog comments off or on at will. So the question is, will you accept comments or not?

On a positive note, allowing comments sometimes gives you great feedback on your posts. If you have a highly read blog with lots of comments, it also provides social proof to newcomers that you and your blog are popular. But on the negative side…

1, Allowing comments opens the door to spam. Frankly, the majority of blog comments tend to be a waste of time for your blog readers. Some are outright advertisements, and others simply contribute nothing to the conversation. Of course you can install spam prevention software. But some spam will still get through, meaning you now have to invest time locating and deleting those comments or pay someone else to do it for you.

2. The tumbleweed effect. This is when you allow comments, but then you don’t get any or you only get one from your Aunt Silvia. If you enable comments but get very few, it will appear as though no one is reading your blog. You and I both know that most people who read blogs don’t comment, but most blog readers don’t know that. They’ll assume your blog is unpopular and they’ll be less likely to stay themselves.

3. Watered down SEO. While a small percentage of comments will help you with your SEO, a larger percentage can actually hurt your chances to get your post on the first page of Google.

4. Loss of control. Unless you’re prescreening comments, anybody can post anything. This means your competitor can post lies about you and your products, and those comments could be on there for a day before you see them and delete them.

Then there’s slander. Someone posts libelous falsehoods about another person or company. Sure, there are laws to protect you. But until things get sorted out, do you really want to endure a lawsuit? Unlikely, but it can happen.

5. The reply catch-22. Someone leaves a great comment and you reply. Or someone asks a question and you post an answer. So far so good, right? But now EVERYONE expects a reply. This is a great way to encourage comments – and it’s also a great way to spend your entire day answering replies instead of creating new content.

Now then – for every reason to not enable comments on your blog, there is another reason to do so, most of which you probably already know.

Bottom line: If you already have comments enabled and you like the results, then don’t change. But if you’re just starting your blog, or if you’re tired of having to act like the blog police to weed out the riff-raff, you might do yourself a favor and disable comments.

It could result in the best night’s sleep you’ve had in weeks.

Have you noticed there are some marketers who struggle for years to build a responsive list and only end up with a list of people who won’t open their emails?

Conversely, you’ve also witnessed new marketers busting into the scene as complete nobodies, and in no time at all they’re commanding lists of mega thousands of eager and loyal followers. So how do they do it?

It really all boils down to one thing – how you craft your content. Whether you’re shooting videos or scribbling down your thoughts, there are certain tricks that will make others want to follow your every word and buy all products.

1. Don’t just tell – show them with stories. Even the shortest of stories can be helpful in captivating your audience and sticking you and your info to their brains like glue. For example, depending on where you went to grade school, you might have been told two different ways to spell arithmetic. One of course is a-r-i-t-h-m-e-t-i-c. But the other is “a rat in the house might eat the ice cream.”

Which one do you remember decades later? It’s the rat mnemonic of course, because that one little sentence tells you a story of a rat in the house maybe eating the ice cream. You only have to hear it once to remember it.

More importantly, as Robert McKee says, “Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.”

Stories captivate, increase your open rates and conversion rates, and even hypnotize your audience. Do you want people read your content and follow your suggestions? Then become a master at storytelling.

2. Use cliffhangers and open loops. You’re watching your favorite TV show when BANG! One of your favorite characters is shot. Will he live? You don’t know, because the show ends and guess what? It was the last episode of the season. Now you have to wait until the start of the next season to see if he lives and to find out who did it. That, my friends, is the classic cliff hanger. There is action and suspense but no closure. It’s unresolved. Unfinished.

And human nature dictates that we very much NEED to have that closure, so we tune in next season to get it. Of course, we never really do get closure because every episode leaves us hanging in some way.

So let’s say you’re writing a series of emails or blog posts, and you end each one with a promise to reveal something in the next. It can’t be just anything – it’s got to be something that preys on your audiences’ minds, making them eager for the next installment. For example, maybe you’re dong a series on traffic generation. You outline a method that works well, then promise to show them how one little change can instantly triple their results. Tune in tomorrow to find out what that is. 🙂

Open loops work much the same way, only the cliffhanger comes at the beginning of the content and the answer comes at the end. These are especially great in sales letters and longer blog posts and videos. You might promise at the very beginning to reveal 3 foods that effortlessly melt pounds – and then say something like, “But before we get into that, did you know that there are really easy, simple techniques you can use to burn extra calories throughout your day?” They are compelled to continue reading (or watching) if they want to discover those 3 foods that melt away pounds.

3. Engage the senses. First, use words that activate the senses, such as dazzling and glowing [visual] crackle and sizzle [auditory] fluffy and slippery [touch] delectable and refreshing [taste] fragrant and spicy [smell].

Second, use video. Video engages far more of the senses than the written word, and as a bonus, it can actually be faster than writing.

4. Be funny. This one tends to scare marketers – “But I’m not funny!” they say. The thing is, most people are genuinely funny when they are being themselves. This is not the place to try your stand-up routine or recite jokes you learned as a kid. Instead, it’s the time to show your not-so-perfect side, to laugh at yourself, and to find the humor in everyday life. If you need help with this, read “Make ‘Em Laugh and Take Their Money: A Few Thoughts on Using Humor as a Speaker or Writer or Sales Professional For Purposes of Persuasion” by Dan Kennedy. Dan might also get the award for longest book title ever.

Okay, so WHY do you want to be funny? You probably already know the answer – people like people who are funny. They relax when they’re in a good mood. They want more of that good feeling, and so they continue to consume your content looking for that feeling. And perhaps most important of all – people buy more and buy more happily when they’re in a good mood.

5. Grow your genuine personality. Whatever your personality is, magnify it and grow it to the point of being bigger than life. People follow bloggers, not blogs. They follow a marketer, not a marketing website. They follow you, or they don’t follow at all. Be hot. Have the personality that appeals to your ideal prospect.

6. Then take it a step further and be DIFFERENT. Look at what everyone else is doing in your niche, and then go in a totally different direction. Be contrary not for the sake of argument, but for the sake of shedding an entirely new perspective on a problem or challenge.

Don’t be normal. Don’t be a cookie cutter. SURPRISE people. Do the unexpected. Make them stop dead in their tracks. Shock them. This isn’t so hard – just look at what’s normal in your niche and then do something else.

In fact, if you were to follow only one piece of advice out of this entire article, it would be to see where the herd is going and then call them into an entirely different direction. You won’t get the entire herd to follow you, but you will captivate their attention. And those who do follow (you’ll be surprised how many do) will follow you to the ends of the earth.

Yes, people come for the content, but first you’ve got to attract them with the image. After all, images are the first thing people notice about your page or post.

The right image can grab attention and create intrigue, mystery, curiosity and a host of other emotions that wrap their tendrils around your visitor and glue them to your writing. As an added benefit, the better your image is at capturing attention, the less important your headline becomes. A great image with a mediocre headline will almost always lure the visitor into reading your content, while a sub par headline on its own seldom will.

What can you do to maximize the effect images have on your visitor? Here are 10 keys:

1. Use at least one image per post. Every post should have an image of its own above the fold. And if your post is long, consider adding images into the middle as well to break up your post. These will provide welcome breaks to your readers, as well as enticing scanners to stop and read your content.

2. Look for images that work on a gut level. If your post is about how to prevent a house fire, you might be tempted to post an image of a building on fire. But how much more captivating would it be to have an image of someone experiencing loss – even without a single charred remain in the background? Look for images that play on the emotions, rather than ones that simply illustrate your story.

3. Use faces. Studies show that readers pause longer on an image that shows at least one face. If you don’t use faces, then look for something provocative or downright spectacular – something that makes the viewer stop in her tracks and want to know more.

4. Use images in your RSS feed. Just like blog posts, an image can make the difference between your writing being read or ignored. Think of the image combined with the headline as your book cover, and your post as the contents. People do judge books by their covers, and they do the same when looking through their feeds.

5. Take the time to get it right. Grabbing the first interesting image you see is seldom a recipe for stopping Internet traffic. If you need to spend as much time sourcing an image as you do writing the post, then do it. It’s worth the extra effort.

Consider purchasing your images. You can almost always find far better images when you’re willing to pay a little bit to use them, and the selection is far more vast and interesting as well. Keep in mind – a bland as toast image could actually HURT your chance to get your post read. Spend a buck or two and get something that leaps off the page and into your reader’s imagination.

If money is tight, there is a third option, and that’s using creative commons photos. They’re free to use but you MUST give the proper attribution to the photographer. For example, you can start a search for creative commons images here: https://search.creativecommons.org

6. Just do it. Adding images might sound too simple, but the fact is that it will almost certainly increase the time visitors spend on your site.

7. Consider taking and using your own photos. If you’re a shutter bug, by all means get busy. Using your own photos will personalize your website that much more, as well as building a deeper connection with your audience.

8. Build an entire post around pictures. With the advent of social media, you can now get traffic simply for having great images. So why not try a post that’s image dense, such as the most romantic places in your country, or the funniest photos ever, etc.

9. Don’t forget to add alt tags to your images. This can help you to rank higher in the search engines, bringing you more traffic.

10. Have fun. Not only is reading an article that contains images more interesting for the reader – it’s also more fun for the author to put together.

You’ve got a new product or website, but you’re stuck for a tagline.

Should you spend a lot of time thinking up the best possibility? Surprisingly, no. There is a simple shortcut to writing the perfect tagline that will grab people’s attention and let them know immediately that your product is right for them.

So what’s the shortcut? Believe it or not, it’s letting your customer write your tagline FOR YOU.

First, a few things you should know about the perfect tagline:

1. It needs to accurately articulate what it is that you are offering, and it needs to position you positively with your target market.

2. It’s got to be original. Whatever it is that you’re selling, odds are there are plenty of others selling something similar. By being original, you can stand apart from the crowd to get noticed and remembered.

3. It’s got to be concise and precise. Memories are exceedingly short and the competition to be heard is getting tougher every day.

Now then, keeping those three points in mind, what do your clients tell you about your product or service? Better still, what do they tell you about the problem your product or service fixes? For example, career coach Julie Jansen helps people to find their ideal work. What do her clients frequently tell her when they’re in her office? “I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not this.” That became the title of her book.

Another career coach kept hearing, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up!” She resisted using the phrase at first because her clients WERE grown up and she thought it might offend them. However, once she added it to the top of her website, she immediately experienced a dramatic increase in inquiries.

Two young software designers were showing a venture capitalist how their software worked. The investor suddenly exclaimed, “That’s so simple, my mother could do it!” Bingo! Their tagline was born.

An author wanted to write and speak about male-female communications. With the room full of people, she laid out a scenario in which they were all trying to communicate with the opposite sex but having difficulties. One gentlemen yelled out, “Can’t she see I’m watching the game?” And her tagline was born.

If your tagline captures exactly how your ideal customer feels, you’ve got it right. As you can see, you don’t need to place pressure on yourself to find the perfect tagline – instead, simply listen to your customers.

To learn more, read the book: “POP! Create the Perfect Pitch, Title and Tagline” by Sam Horn. Then go improve the tagline for your product so you can sell more and serve more.

Getting on other people’s podcasts is a great way to gain exposure and drive traffic to your offer. But how do you get the podcaster’s attention in the first place?

Here are some tips to getting interviewed and also being asked back again:

1. Listen to several episodes of the show before contacting the host. You want to know the show’s format as well as whether or not your concept fits into their market.

2. If you have done prior interviews, let the podcaster know this in your first contact. Direct them to your media page or to past interviews.

3. Have something to say. “Hey, I wrote a new book!” isn’t necessarily enough, unless it’s a book with new information that fits perfectly with the theme of the show. You can gain an edge by moving it up a notch – having a special event for charity, for example, could get you to the top of the list of potential guests.

4. Provide the interviewer a list of questions in advance, along with a sample of your product or book.

5. Tell your list about the interview and encourage them to listen in. This gives your host more listeners which they will appreciate.

6. Blog about the interview before and after.

7. Most important. Be knowledgeable in your niche. Be prepared to offer lots of great, usable information on the podcast. Do not hold back and simply tell them to buy the book. The more you give away and provide real value, the better the host and audience will appreciate you and benefit from what you are sharing. In addition, the audience will think, “If s/he’s telling this much for free, imagine what must be in the book!”

8. Be sure to thank the host and send them a gift.

9. Ask for a copy of the interview so you can use it in your own marketing.

…Or the life of someone you love.

85% of people suffer from low self-esteem, lack of confidence, or just a general feeling of not being “good enough.” That’s 17 out of 20 people who are afflicted with enough self-doubt to make success difficult and life hard.

It starts in childhood: Something is said that makes you feel inferior, or you interpret something to mean that you are somehow “less than.” You replay it in your mind until it becomes a fixed grove winding deeply throughout everything you think and everything you do.

Low self esteem and lack of confidence affects your life on every level. But so does finally learning – deep down inside where it counts – to really, truly, finally love yourself. It’s transformative. It’s simple. But it takes lots and lots of practice to overwrite all of that bad programming you’ve endured in the past.

I recently discovered a Kindle book that can totally change the way a person thinks about him or herself. The author hit rock bottom. He was sick of the misery and the pain.

So he got out of bed, staggered to the desk and wrote the following in his notebook:

“This day, I vow to myself to love myself, to treat myself as someone I love truly and deeply – in my thoughts, my actions, the choices I make, the experiences I have, each moment I am conscious, I make the decision I LOVE MYSELF.”

After that moment he began telling himself, “I love myself.” He said it when he woke up, throughout his day and when he went to bed. He said it like a mantra in his head, over and over again.

Things gradually changed for him. His body healed. His life got better. Fantastic things started to happen for him. And through it all, he kept repeating to himself, “I love myself, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself.”

Even if you don’t think this will benefit you, I want you to consider trying it anyway.

You don’t have to believe it, you just have to say it over and over again to yourself. It’s a practice. You won’t see a miracle the first day, but you will begin to notice subtle changes in the way you feel and the way you view your business, your connections and your life.

Despite being a quick read, “Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It” by Kamal Ravikant has much more to offer than I can write here. I highly encourage you to get it, read it and let it be a reminder to love yourself and those around you more every day.

When you get an interview, don’t ask the reporter to print your website address in their article – you’ll just annoy them. They’re already giving you free publicity, and if you start pushing then they will do what comes naturally and push back.

Instead, give them a good reason to include your website URL in their story. Here are 5 different ways…

1. Identify your company by your URL. Instead of saying your company is My Really Cool Company, call it MyReallyCoolCompany.com.

2. Offer free information at your website. For example, if you’re a plumber then it could be a free report on “How Not to Get Ripped Off When You Hire a Plumber.” If you’re teaching people to make money from home, it could be “10 Businesses You Can Start For Under $100 and Run From Home.”

3. Offer a free service at your website.

4. Offer free software, free cheat sheets, a free quiz to determine if they have “x” problem, etc.

5. Hook them in the interview, reel them in on the website. Give the reporter several tips on how to solve a problem, and then tell him that his audience can find 17 more tips at your website.

Your goal is to make the reporter WANT to share your URL, rather than begging them to share it. This can make a difference in whether or not your website address makes it into the article as well as the effort the reporter makes in sending readers there. And when you provide the right incentive you’ll also find that far more of the audience members find their way to your website.

How do get you the media to come you? How do you get them to recognize you as a news source – someone they can call when they need your expertise on their story?

You want to appear as the authority in your field and a good source of continuing news content for them. For example, if you’re teaching fitness online and there’s a new study that says doing naked jumping jacks burn twice as many calories as doing them with your clothes on, you want the media to contact you for a quote or to answer a few questions.

And wouldn’t it be nice if each time you launch a new fitness course, you could get interviews in newspapers, in magazines, on the radio and even on television? Like a snowball rolling downhill – gathering speed and quickly growing in size – once you do get interviews you can leverage those into more credibility with your current and future customers. As you become recognized as an authority, members of the media will become more willing to run your press releases and do your stories.

Make no mistake, print media is still still very influential. These days we tend to talk about social media, social influence and so forth online. But we sometimes lose sight of the fact that there is a real world out there with print media – newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. And appearing in any of these media gives you instant credibility you simply cannot get through social media.

One thing that’s especially important to understand is why being in the news is vastly superior to advertising. When you purchase ads, it’s assumed you can say pretty much what you like as long as you don’t violate any laws. Is it any wonder people are immediately skeptical of advertising claims?

But when you’re in the news it’s an entirely different matter. Journalism is for the most part fact based – or at the very least, people believe it’s fact based. Viewers and readers assume what they hear in the story is true, that it’s been verified, and that there is no ulterior motive for the story (such as parting them from their money.)

In a nutshell, advertising raises defenses and news lowers defenses. As an aside, next time you write an ad, whether it’s a sales page, an email, etc., try framing it in the style of news and see if your conversion rate doesn’t increase. Fortunes have been made with just this tip. Think about it.

In the 1950’s the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S. created new regulations to limit and govern the commercial content of television. The worry was that the lines between paid advertising and news were becoming blurred and consumers were being fooled. But then in 1984 the American President Reagan eliminated those regulations. Result? The infomercial. Now you had extra long commercials that were staged like talk shows, news shows, etc. with the sole purpose of selling products. And it worked better than anyone even dared hope.

What’s my point? Get you, your products and your website into the media spotlight. Or at the very least, make your advertising look and feel more like news than just another sales pitch.

There are two basic methods to getting into the news. The first is to be the subject of a news story. Examples might be that you’ve got an especially provocative, titillating or controversial product worthy of being news, or your business is holding an event to raise money for a worthy cause. This gets you into the media eye for short bursts of time, but each time you want to get back into the media, you need to come up with another brilliant, newsworthy idea.

The second method is to become an authority in your field – someone the media turns to for quotes, to answer questions, to explain information to their audience and so forth. This gets you into the news on a more frequent basis, although with less splash.

Both methods are good, and together they can create more free advertising than you could hope to buy in a lifetime.

If you’re thinking that you or your business could never be featured in news stories, you’re probably right. The very first thing you’ve got to do is get your head around the fact that you or your business can indeed be newsworthy. If Wayne Gretsky missed 100% of the shots he didn’t take, then you’re going to miss 100% of the media opportunities you allow to slip by because you’re not confident you have what it takes to be news.

There isn’t time or space here to give you the full run down on getting into the media – entire books are written on this topic alone. For example, Free Publicity: A TV Reporter Shares the Secrets for Getting Covered on the News by Jeff Crilley is in my opinion an especially good one.

What I can tell you is this: KNOW for a fact that you can get into the news, because you can.

Be ever vigilant for news opportunities, and when you see one, don’t hesitate to jump on it immediately.

Submit stories to your local newspapers, television shows, local websites, etc. This is well within almost anyone’s comfort range and it’s a great place to start.

Work towards becoming a featured columnist or editorialist in your local publications. Getting your smiling face and great advice in front of local readers on a weekly basis will get you business. Start by writing letters to the editor that do not sound like commercials. In our fitness expert example, you might note that you’re seeing more overweight children in the neighborhood, and offer 3 tips their parents can use to motivate their children into activity.

If you can retain ownership of your columns, do so, even if it means allowing the paper or magazine to run them for free. This way you can send those columns to other publications as well.

Let your local reporters know that you are an authority in your subject they can call on when they need help with a story. When they call, drop everything and be as helpful as possible. Do not appear self-serving – put their need to get the story accurate and finished ahead of your desire for publicity. 9 times out of 10 they will cite you as a source. “According to local expert John Smith, …”

More Tips For Getting Into The News:

– When pitching your own stories, keep in mind the question every reporter and news editor is silently asking: “Will my audience care about this story? If so, why?” Get familiar with the kinds of stories your target news outlets publish, and tailor your own press releases accordingly.

– Anticipate trends in your field of expertise and the larger implications of those trends. In other words, be on the forefront of news whenever possible instead of chasing it. Show how this new trend will affect the readers of the publication.

– Be the odd man out. If a story breaks and everyone in the media is in lockstep on what this story means, take the opposite view. If a reporter is looking for something different or even just to balance out their own story, they will be anxious to talk to you. Note: Be sure you can back up your point view with facts or examples.

– Know what a reporter has written before approaching them. Tell them you enjoyed their article on propagating ferns when you pitch them an idea to write about the exotic plants you’re selling by mail. A little honest flattery and attention goes a long way to getting your own free publicity.

– Forget small talk. Are you calling a reporter to pitch your story? Or is she calling you to get your perspective? Get to the point. The reporter will appreciate that you respect they’re under a deadline.

– Do the reporter’s work for them. When you send out a press release, make it read like a story in the newspaper. You’ll be surprised how many times they will print it just as you wrote it.

– Relax. Sometimes your stories will be picked up, other times they won’t. It may take time to get recognized as an expert reporters can call on – simply continue to get your name out there.

Have fun with this. You may find it slow going at first, but persistence pays off. And the more publicity you get, the more you will get because publicity begets publicity. Something you do today such as sending out a press release or making contact with a reporter may not pay off for days, weeks or even months. But as long as you are offering newsworthy stories and/or expert help in your niche, continuous effort nearly always gets rewarded.