Whether you’re a writer, product creator, coder, freelancer or techy, this can work wonders for your creativity, and therefore your bottom line.

Create an odds and ends box/folder/book/hard drive/cloud/drawer/journal

When you’re working on a project you’ll come across valuable information that you won’t be able to use on that particular job. And human nature being what it is, if you dont store it somewhere you’ll forget about it.

So create a file on your PC or have a physical journal or box (depending on how you work) to store these snippets in.

Because I guarantee when you hit a lean period and you’re staring out of the window on a wet afternoon, desperate for am idea or something to start from…

…if you have an ideas file you can go there for an hour with a hot cup of coffee (or glass of wine if it’s been a bugger of a day) and you’ll find a spark of inspiration to get things moving again.

I’ve created work that has paid out multiple times from just a couple of lines of an idea I jotted down months before, and I’ve done this time and time again.

If you can’t use something there and then but recognise it as being valuable (or even if you don’t recognise it in the moment) jot it down and return to it when you need it.

Think it’s just a pretty idea?

I worked with a coder who made over £100,000 from a snippet in his ideas folder. Just a simple idea for an app that made things easier for Amazon sellers.

Make that folder.

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As a freelance you might think your only saleable talent is being a writer, or web designer or coder or however you make your living.

But more and more freelancers are now selling the secrets of HOW they make a living as well as creating an income by actually doing it.

When I first started as a writer I wrote pieces whenever I could get a commission, I wrote sales copy for internet marketers and occasionally wrote something first and then tried to sell what I’d written (much harder)

By far the biggest chunk of my income came from writing sales copy for internet sellers at this time, and as it became clear to my clients that my sales copy actually worked, they came back to me with more and more commissions.

I even managed to work out a small percentage point on sales with a couple of these jobs which was very profitable and gave me a recurring income for several months.

Out of the blue I received an email from someone who wanted to get into copywriting asking for advice about how I pitched clients, where I learned the art of copy writing and how much I charged.

It hatched the idea of writing a short course about what I did on a day to day basis as a copywriter. A ‘How To’ that other wannabe copywriters could follow to establish themselves and make it profitable.

I created a basic website and offered either a downloadable PDF version of the course or a comb-bound printed copy for a higher price (all done by me at home) and sold enough copies to buy a new computer, printer, hosting and the other bits and pieces I felt were necessary to my trade.

As sales died down from the ads I placed in Biz Opps mags and Exchange & Mart I struck a deal with an online ebook publisher and sold the rights to the course. This was a mistake and I should have kept on marketing it myself because he made much more than I did, but the lump sum was worth several month’s salary at the time and much appreciated.

The experience really thumped home that as a writer (or whatever branch of freelancing you’re involved in) you can not only profit from being paid by clients, but also by people who want to be doing what you’re doing – the ‘how to’ of your skill set – the day to day running, pitching, selling, payment chasing, connecting ann networking side of being a freelance.

You’ve learned a lot and have a lot to share, and there are more people willing to pay for your expert knowledge than you may think.

And if we get down to the nitty gritty who would you rather learn from?

Someone who does, someone who teaches, or someone who does BOTH?

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If you’re a freelance writer and your work increases your client’s revenue, you can justify putting your prices up. You should put your prices up because it’s better for everyone involved.

When you bring value you’re an asset.

If you’re a copywriter and your work increases conversions on your client’s sales page or ad AND you can do it consistently, ask for a small percentage point on sales next time. You may get it, you may not but you’ll certainly have made your client aware that you know your own value.

If you’re a business coach and you get results for your clients you should adjust your fees accordingly, and if you’re an email marketer who can consistently drive traffic to affiliate offers or webpages you should either request an increase in commissions (I went from 50% to 80% last week because of the hops I was driving to an affiliate offer) or some other form of reward such as getting your ad placed inside a member’s area or download page – the places where buyers are at their ‘hottest’

In short, just because you’re not a product owner or acting in the role of a product owner at a given time doesn’t mean you don’t have any leverage or platform to negotiate from.

In my early days online I wrote sales copy for some relatively big names in the internet marketing niche and my prices or incentives always increased (gently) when the same client wanted to hire me again.

If a client comes back and wants to hire you again, you know he’s seen results from your previous work, whether that’s as a writer, an affiliate, a designer, a coder or whatever.

So put your prices up.

Not in an aggressive way but in slow steady increments so you get used to your own ‘new worth’

Focus on getting results for your client and you’ll see increased revenue yourself regardless of what service or product you bring to the marketplace.

I know a freelancer who specialises in writing technical ebooks, blog posts and reports and has a talent for translating even the most frightening tech-speak into plain, understandable prose.

But her REAL talent is looking at the project and suggesting changes to her client from a writer’s point of view that client would maybe miss, such as breaking down large blocks of text with visual aids and flowcharts, and putting a technical manual into a diary format so it became easier to follow.

She’s never short of clients.

You can do this if you’re an writer, affiliate, web designer, coder or whatever – in fact you SHOULD be doing it, because when you add value in whatever role you play, you’ll never be out of work.

And when you become the client, you’ll know exactly the sort of person to hire…

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I knew I was wrong but just couldn’t shake the feeling.

When I first went full-time as a writer and online marketer I remember sitting at my desk with my new shiny PC, printer (not used one of those puppies for years) and phone line just waiting for the work to arrive.

Obviously I knew it didn’t work like that but the small excited part of me that was buzzing like a nun’s hobby about my new venture wanted the rest of the world to be so excited they’d call me up and want to commission a piece, or buy one of my ebooks.

Didn’t happen.

Was quite a shock when I realised that writing had just become a tiny 20% of my new business. The other 80% of me needed to become a salesman, copywriter, ad designer, website builder, payment button programmer, receptionist and tea lady.

I had to get out there and hustle.

You already know this if you work for yourself.

If you’re working from home for yourself then you’re no longer just a writer, artist, software developer, proof reader, website designer or internet affiliate.

For me, it wasn’t until I started to place equal importance on ALL the roles I had to undertake that things started to happen.

I can sit down and write the most perfect article, book or report that would help my readers immensely with their own businesses. It could be the best thing I’d ever written…and it doesn’t matter a jot if no one even knows it exists.

I’m sure out there is Ms Perfect Google Adwords Genius, who could create an Adwords campaign that would have eager traffic flowing to wherever I wanted it and could double my monthly income in a few days…

…but until I know who and where she is, I can’t hire her.

If you’re a freelancer or product creator you need to spend just as much time marketing your service or product as you did creating it in the first place.

Social media and consumer psychology expert Derek Halpern spends 20% of his time creating a product and then 80% of his time marketing it.

He says

“If you write a post that 1,000 people read, chances are there’s another 1,000,000 people in the world that could use that exact same article,”

Not doing this was detrimental to my business. It makes little sense to spend a long time defining or creating a product or service, doing a little half-hearted marketing then worrying because no one has bought it or hired you.

Congratulations – marketing, selling or touting for work is now the biggest part of your business!

Whether that involves getting commissioned to write something, driving traffic to your new website, getting hired to do SEO work or letting your market know about the new app or software you’ve developed, it has to be at least as important as your product or service itself.

Takes some getting used to but when you do implement this, you’ll have a big advantage over most of your competitors, because chances are they won’t be doing it.

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No it’s not a sport from the Yorkshire Olympics, it’s about how to make money from spotting the mistake potholes that many of your readers or customers are going to fall into and solving those problems for them.

Years back I wrote a mini-course aimed primarily and writers called Blog your wage.

It was mostly about how to create a blog solely for the purpose of building a readership and subscriber base that you could market future products to.

I covered the very basics because the idea was ultimately intended to get people thinking for themselves, making their own mistakes, learning from them and moving forward. Having done this myself I knew that a lot of content writing and finding your own subject niche was quite a hit and miss affair in the early days until you realised what worked for you and your readers.

I sold quite a few copies and encourged my readers to contact me with their thoughts and experiences of using my system.

I pretty soon realized that a percentage of people just weren’t comfortable with doing their own research (or more accurately on trusting their own judgement) and were decidedly less comfortable making mistakes.

Personally, I learn by making mistakes so was quite shocked by how badly affected some people could be when thing went wrong. A botched blog installation could set them back weeks mentally, in terms of confidence.

(These were the days before Fantastico installed WordPress on your hosting on one click remember).

And of course it wasn’t their fault. At school we focus on the nine maths questions we get right and totally ignore why we got the other one wrong. At school mistakes equal failure. In the real world, mistakes teach us how to do it right the next time and are a stepping stone to success.

Anyway…So this segment of students on my course were freaking out because they didn’t have the confidence to either put up a blog or research the ways I’d pointed out of monetizing their blog. I told them exactly how to do it – the only thing they needed to do was to research a few basic things related to their own writing niches.

And I continued getting emails asking for more information once people hit a certain point in the course.

So I wrote two reports that covered in minute detail, and with step by step instructions the subjects where my readers hit their main sticking points. One was about basic SEO and the other was about researching competition in your niche.

And I started to make a regular income from these two pieces as more and more people came onto my course and hit the same pothole as the rest. (Obviously I hadn’t covered this as well as I could)

Soon I noticed another pothole, another logjam where my readers were getting stuck and my ‘help’ emails increased. These were from people who were having problems FTP-ing files up to their server. It took me a while to get my head round this when I first started do I can sympathise.

So I wrote a full Filezilla FTP tutorial (Filezilla is free software that allows you to upload files to your hosting account quickly and in bulk if you’re not sure) and by using screenshots and step by step instructions I came up with a self-contained tutorial on how to get your websites up onto your sever, create directories and basically the whole nine yards.

Predictably it sold well and continued to sell until FTP somehow seemed to become more accessible and generally easier.

All these are examples of me selling a significant number of reports (in downloadable PDF format) by spotting potential potholes that newcomer marketers could fall into and providing a solution.

Some of these I’ve offrered free to build my mailing list. I quickly realised that if someone wants a solution they’ll gladly swap their email address for it, and some have been paid-for products.

It’s not too hard to spot the potholes – here’s how to do it:

1. Don’t try to second guess anything,  just look at where you are hitting a logjam with your own blog or business.

2. Take note of the emails that come back from your readers, and try to spot any patterns.

3. But perhaps best of all, visit forums, boards and Facebook groups in your own niche and look at which questions are asked the most. Look at what people are asking for help with.

They’re your potholes. Solve those problems with your writing or products and you’ll have a ready-made marketplace

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I’ve just released number FIVE in my
series of FREE Micro Reports.

This one is called:

“Three UNSPOKEN Reasons You Could
Be Failing With Your Online Business”

…and it reveals three things I had to FIX
in my own business before I started making
any real progress.

It’s five pages of pulling NO punches
and telling it like it is – or how I see it anyway 🙂

It’s also a direct download (no opt-in
or anything) from the link below:

http://www.gimmeabutton.com/TSR5a.pdf

Any questions or comments go right ahead…

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Watched a lot of TV last night – specifically a couple of ‘LillyHammer’ episodes which I really like (stick with me, marketing point on the way)

When it finished and as I was finishing my wine I flicked back onto ‘real telly’ and found something ‘featuring’ a bloke called Joey Essex doing something somewhere in Wales.

This bloke’s background is from reality TV, a genre I can’t believe is being beamed into space so aliens can find out more about how we really are (we’re now fucked in my opinion)

Anyway…this Joey chap, who I’m sure is a caring and loving bloke went BEYOND thick and into a new realm that I’m seeing more and more on TV and that is of TOTAL SELF-OBSESSION.

If something was discussed that wasn’t about him, he turned the conversation around to how it ‘might’ affect him (or his hair or his clothes)

I actually ended up LIKING the bloke because he had turned the cult of ‘Joey’ into an art form.

And I found myself thinking that if more and more younger people are going to be influenced by this kind of ‘celebrity’ and TV…

…what an AMAZING niche it will be to market to!!

I’m making plans now, because if copywriting is the art of appealing to a persons self, egocentricity or vanity…

…then it’s going to be like shooting fish in a barrel 🙂

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…of lardies, not champions but who cares?

Sometimes you need warm and comforting, especially on a cold foggy Yorkshire morning.

Strong, fresh black coffee and home-made peanut cake.

You can’t start a creative day on granola and aduki beans in my opinion!

See you in the cornonary ward 🙂

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The embarrassing moment when you when you have clinched that ad integration deal with an up coming launch…only to send the person asking for the details a copy of your daughter’s spelling homework…

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You can learn how to become a millionaire..or billionaire for that matter…for FREE

You can free yourself up from your 9-5 job if that’s what you want.

And you can start as soon as you’ve read this post.

All the infomrmation you need is out there for free on the internet.

The case studies

The videos showing how to do the technical side

The information

Even many of the services and software you need are available for free if you look hard enough, take trial offers and source discount codes.

Bit of a weird thing for me to say perhaps because part of my business is writing about how to start a full-time online business.

But I’m safe.

Because at our point in history, while we live in an age of amazing, stunning opportunity…

…we also live in an age where we don’t value things that are free.

Which is part of the reason I charge for mwhat I do

Obviously I need to make a living myself but also because they won’t be taken seriously or acted upon if they’re free.

But if you’ve ‘paid hard-earned money’ for something, well you’re much more likely to use it.

Of course if you hire me, or buy something I’ve written, you’ll ALSO get alongside the actual ‘thing’ you buy, a huge saving of your own time.

Because I’ve tweaked and tested, made mistakes, gone through the process, have the experience, have had the successes (and the failures) and all the other stuff over the past decade online that means you can benefit from that knowledge and take shortcuts.

But you don’t need it…

Because all the information you need IS out there for free.

You CAN learn the skills you need to replace your job or become an online (or offline for that matter) millionaire.

It’ll take more time, but this is the first age in history EVER where it’s all been there at your fingertips. At the push of a button you can learn to play the banjo, build a kite, compose a poem in the medieval  style or help a pig give birth.

It’s all there.

There really aren’t any excuses.

I’m acutely aware of that.

You should be too 🙂

Get stuck in!

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