The Profitability Formula – How To Go From Zero To Hero Reliably
So, you’ve taken the leap and started your own business. Woohoo! Building a business is just the first step of many that eventually culminates into your ultimate goal – profitability.
Profitability is the most reliable indicator for how well a business is doing. (There are other business models which don’t rely on direct profit, but that’s a topic for another time) Once you’ve started turning a profit, the market has answered. You have a winning product at hand.
But if you’re just beginning, profitability might sound like the Holy Grail. You know it’s out there, but you aren’t sure how to get it. It’s understandable. #hustle
While individual business models might go about generating revenue in slightly different ways, there’s a basic formula that holds true no matter what niche you’re in. Here are some tips to get you headed in the right direction faster...
Create fantastic content and give it away for free regularly.
Wait, what?! I can hear you saying “You want me to give people my best stuff for free?”
Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying. Until you’ve established yourself as an authority in your niche (and even after that), you are basically an unproven property. Why would Joe Schmoe come to your website and immediately buy your product, without ever knowing what information you have to offer, and if it’s worth his money?
Exactly. Joe wouldn’t do that, because you wouldn’t do that. Until you’ve proven yourself, you have to put out great free content regularly.
You have to create value for people before they will invest in your product or service. By giving them great free content (e-books, articles, webinars, podcasts), you will give new viewers plenty of reason to stay and revisit your page.
Build an audience.
If you’ve been creating good content and giving it away for free, you will eventually build up a loyal subscriber base who expects good information from you and trusts what you have to say. This way, when you do eventually advertise a paid product, your audience has already seen that you’ve got great information, making them more likely to buy. Because if your free content is this good, your paid content will probably be amazing.
Don’t sweat the number of followers or subscribers you have just yet. Remember, if you want to make say $10,000 a month, and the product you’re selling goes for $1,000, you only need to have 10 sales. Focus on building a dedicated audience that is pre-qualified and more likely to buy, rather than swelling up your follower count with people who are just there for the free information.
Understand the most burning issues in your market.
Think about your product or business from your customer’s viewpoint. For example, assume you’re in the weight loss market. Obviously, people in this market are looking to lose weight. But, you can dive deeper to find certain hot-topic issues that you can address. People might be looking for “all-natural” weight loss solutions or the fastest way to lose weight. People might be wondering whether or not they should get on the latest, most popular diet.
Whichever market you find yourself in, take some time to understand the most pressing issues people in that market have. Knowing what ails your audience will inform your content strategy and make people more receptive to your advice.
Learn from your audience.
Every niche you can think of has several forums, Pinterest boards and social media accounts. By examining what people are talking about in the forums or on social media, you can gain an insight into what you should be talking about the most.
Interact with your followers on social media and ask them what their top 1-3 concerns are. Sometimes, all you need is a little nugget from a tweet or a comment to spark an idea for your next e-book, product or webinar.
Create a product that solves the most pressing problems.
You can give out e-books, seminars and complex mind maps about finding the right keywords to target on Google AdWords. But, if your audience doesn’t know how to judge competition, search engine rankings and target the right niches, your information isn’t going to be helpful to them. If your audience is having trouble sticking with a diet plan for 30 days, you can’t give them a year’s worth of meal ideas and exercise routines.
Listen. Listen to your audience, and let them tell you what they want.
If you’ve followed along so far, you’ve already learned about building an audience with quality information that solves real problems and adds value to people’s lives. Now, it’s time to capitalize by presenting yourself as an authority and your product as the complete solution for your market. Whether you decide to sell an e-book, a physical product, a membership course or anything else, keep your prime directive (adding value) in mind.
We’re passionate about creating systems that add value to people’s lives. For busy entrepreneurs like yourself, managing invoices, billing, to-do lists, follow-ups and a dozen other things can become overwhelming. We created Dubsado for this very purpose – to make things easy for people who are building their own businesses. Dubsado automates almost everything that you need to manage as an independent professional, so that you can focus on what’s important – creating value.
Now get out there and get those profits rolling!
- Becca & Jake