What Came First – Quality Service Or Money?
Good news, lambing time is almost over! The bad news is that now it’s time to reseed (is that how you spell it?) some fields so I have mind numbing days of sitting on a bumpy tractor seat to look forward to. But on the plus side I did find an i-pod Nano on a footpath that some careless walker dropped so at least I have something to listen to whilst I do it.
Yes, farmer talk ladies and gentlemen, farmer talk. If you type exactly what’s in your head does it make things more readable, I think it does.
Here, have a picture of a sheep and new born lambs:
If you think the gunge looks tasty, it isn’t.
For those of you that love structure I apologize, but writing an introduction is always a bit of a stumbling block and I can’t not have an introduction, it just aint right!
Have a picture of the Tina Turner concert I went to on Saturday. If any of you get chance, BUY TICKETS to the remaining shows, probably the best live concert I’ve ever been to and I wasn’t exactly a huge fan before I saw her live.
And if you do go to one of the remaining shows, take a good camera with you. Mobile phone cameras just don’t cut the mustard.
Phew, the introduction is done, and I’ve managed to write it without giving you any clue whatsoever as to what this blog post is about, great introduction Dan, great introduction.
**End of BS (maybe), start of content**
When you are starting a new project, be it a website, or a new product, what do you think of first? Do you think how the project is going to make you money, or how the project will benefit the people it’s designed for?
When I look around, I see a lot of people take the money making idea and then try to build a site/product around that without giving much thought at all to what website visitors actually want from the product/service.
Should you provide the product/service first and then think about the ways of making money from it after?
That’s what Google did.
I remember back in the day when Google didn’t have adwords or adsense. They had millions of users because they provided a great service, but they didn’t start making money until bright spark in California came up with the paid advertising idea.
The same goes for pretty much all of the top sites on the Internet – Facebook and Twitter just to name a couple of them.
But if you don’t have an idea of how to make money from the site, then you may end up with a site/service that gets loads of visitors and as such your costs go through the roof and as you have no “money making” plan the awesome service you provide isn’t sustainable.
I’m rambling, I have a point in my head but I’m failing to get it across.
So I’ll turn to examples that we can all relate to.
Butterfly Marketing (BM) seems to have a buzz around it at the minute, and I’m sure a lot of you jumped on the BM 2.0 freebie offer, so I’ll talk about Butterfly Marketing sites.
If you are new to this, the BM model, if you strip it right down to the basics is this:
1. Give away product for free in exchange for email address
2. Show visitor special offer after they enter email address
3. Some will buy, others won’t
That’s it, in a nutshell.
The system works, simple as that. BUT only if you put thought into the service you are actually offering, if you use the Butterfly Marketing system as the “money maker” and then throw in some shoddy product as the “service” you are delivering to the customer it won’t work.
People don’t just want any old crap from you, they don’t care what system you are using. All they care about is what they are going to get out of it, give them a botched up package of resell rights products you sourced in 30 minutes won’t cut it.
You need to spend the time researching, planning and implementing what you are going to deliver to your visitors and the money will come.
Here’s another real life example, this is (probably) one of the most successful Butterfly Marketing sites out there:
https://elpassoblog.com/recs/free_website.php
It’s successful because the creators of the site thought about how they could provide a service to keep the customer coming back for more, rather than looking at it from a purely financial point of view. And because they provide such a good service, everything else falls into place and I’m sure it makes them a very good amount each and every month.
Am I getting there yet…..no…..I think I’ve got out of the way of writing, give me a couple of blog posts for me to get back up to speed 😉
Instead of rambling, I’ll sum it up in 1 sentence.
Think about providing a good service to the website visitor, if you do, the money side of things will fall into place, provide them with a crap/product service and they’ll click away from your site and go somewhere else to find what they are looking for.
It’s something I do feel quite strongly about, too many times I find myself looking on Google for information and rather than clicking a link and finding what I want, I’m presented with some BS marketing page that has no relevance to what I’m looking for.
Stop destroying the Internet Marketers! (double meaning, and it wasn’t intentional)
I might even give you a real life example of my own next week, you’ve probably heard me mention this before, but my most profitable sites provide top quality information that the visitor is actually looking for, and a single one of these sites has made well over $20,000 in just over a year – it can be done!
And that brings to an end a pretty terrible blog post from a purists point of view, but there are some points in there. You just have to do a bit of digging around to find them 😉
Many thanks for reading, and I promise the next blog post will be better!
Dan
Receive Free Email Updates When A New Entry Is Posted. Join Them! |
Comments
10 Responses to “What Came First – Quality Service Or Money?”Receive FREE Email Updates, according to one reader it's....
"Better Than A Poke In
The Eye With A Sharp Stick"
Currently Enjoy This Blog More Than Christmas.
Follow Me Via RSS!
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.
I like your blog Dan, you’re a funny guy!
Do you live on a funny farm by any chance?
🙂
I think that would be an accurate description 🙂
Hi Dan
Totally agree with you on this one Dan, first impressions really do count in this business and if I signed up for a membership site or a free gift and it was rubbish quality, I wouldn’t be doing business with them again.
You can normally tell who wants to sell sell sell to you and who really wants to provide you with a quality product and a good service.
Thank’s for the info
Dawn Kay
Hi Dan
100% behind you on this one, Dan.
If you give away your best stuff you will build a loyal base of customers you can sell to for years.
I spent dozens of hours creating 24 videos on how to create and market your own eBook, I don’t sell these videos but give them away to anyone who wants them (in exchange for an email address, of course!)
This strategy really works.
Stuart
Follow my internet marketing adventure
http://www.stuart-turnbull.com
http://www.Twitter.com/stuart_turnbull
Hi Dan, I got your gist mate. You make some very valid points. I’m in the process of making my 1st product and your words (well most of them) have struck a cord.
Spot on mate, see you on the next blog post.
Regards, Barry
I couldn’t agree more. I tend to give away too much but better that way than the other.
Carol
Hi Dan,
Again I fully agree with you about the importance of delivering quality. Whatever system you use, if what you have to offer is crappy, your clients simply don’t return.
As for the BM script:
I’ve also seen the vids on John Thornhill’s site. To me it was’t quite convincing the success of Monthly Free Website is due to the BM script only, or also because it’s heavily advertised by affiliates and because of the good reputation John, Dave and Daniel already have!
All it showed to me was that the BM script has one mighty handy tracking device! 😉
Daniël
I do have BM (I got it first time around) but to be honest I don’t like it. It was hell to use and I’m still not 100% sure how to work everything :-0
ok, I give, what is “lambing time”? Other than that I agree with your post. Quality and answering the age old question of a customer, what’s in it for me?.
I live on a farm, so “lambing time” is the time of year when sheep give birth too baby lambs 🙂