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Knowing your worth and setting prices

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Hello again; Today I want to talk about an important subject. I want to discuss the age old fear of are you good enough. This subject came to me as i was wrestling with another problem common to all bloggers and that is what to charge. I hope hearing my thoughts will help you with your own inner discussion.

 

When I first started blogging with the new website, I wasn’t sure people would want to read my posts much less hire me for coaching or speaking. I set the blog up on a free platform so i wouldn’t have to invest the time and money of choosing and filing for a domain name as well as creating a new site. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that not only do people like my posts but quite a few of my readers say they depend upon them and look forward to them. So, I moved over to word press and continue to be impressed by the response of my readers. But that brings me to the subject of coaching and what to charge for it.

 

I don’t have any formal training as a coach or mentor. I plan to draw on my own experiences to motivate and inspire clients. For this reason I decided not to charge for the service. I figured I can do it for free for a while and find out if I like it and if I am any good at it. I put it out there that I was available. I especially promoted it among the blind and visually impaired community. So far, I have had only one response, and he did not return for a second session.

 

Investing in yourself

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List building without realizing it and getting an auto responder

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Hello again; I apologize for being a bit behind with this week’s post. I had been proud of myself for publishing a post each friday. I consider the guest post on Harleena’s site my own post for that week. But this week I was sick with a fever for about three days. That combined with this oppressive summer heat had me thinking about skipping this week all together.

But then I remembered the people who had told me that my posts had motivated them to keep going. I thought of others who said they look forward to my weekly sharing. And I thought what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t keep of my schedule. So, I hope you enjoy this week’s effort.

The problem

In the early days of my business as an amusement equipment broker I had trouble getting people to return my phone calls or answer my emails. I understood that it would take time to get established. I also knew that my idea of running a commission sales site would be a tough sell competing against several free classified sites with longer track records and more well known names. But I wondered how I could overcome this. I thought there has to be something more I can do to get people to listen to me.

About this time I started reading posts online about promoting your website. There were a lot of posts about how you have to give people things to get their attention and as a result their traffic. . I thought well I don’t have a lot of money so what can I offer for free. I thought well I would love for people to add a link to me on their site. I figured I cant be the only person who wants more traffic.

The big idea

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Learning to maintain my site and switching to a mac

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Hello again; Today, I’m going to pick up my story where I left off. If you remember, my brother had left me to take a high paying job with Floyd and Baxter. I didn’t have the money to hire a webmaster, and I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable turning over the keys to the car to just anyone. I didn’t even know what html, php, and java all really meant. But I had a business to run and a website to maintain. So, I knew I had to learn how.

last version of the site before switching to word press

This is a screen shot from just before I moved the site to word press. I told you it was bright. 🙂

Learning to manage the site myself

I told my brother I didn’t know where to start. Michael said to start small. He advised me to find a ftp, file transfer protocol, program that I could access with speech and download the current version of the site to my computer. Then, he said and this is critical max make a copy of that folder in another place on your hard drive. He couldn’t be more clear that doing this would save my life at some point. I believed him and followed his instructions.

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honored with guest post successfully migrated to word press and won OBSS contest 3rd prize

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Hello again; This week, I decided to share several pieces of good news for me and the website. In the last two weeks I had a guest post published on Harleena Singh’s site Aha Now I successfully transferred my site from blogger to word press, and I won third prize in the Online Business Superhero Summit Contest.

The contest

Its no secret that I love Adrienne Smith. She has taught me a lot about blogging especially the power of blog commenting and the value of building relationships. So when she has a new post I follow her suggestions. Back on July 10th she shared a post called How To Learn From A Superhero She explained that it was a two week long series of presentations from superheroes of the online marketing world. She included a link that would take us to their site and give us access to the line up of speakers, a way to watch previous broadcasts, and where to enter a contest to win some cool products or an opportunity to learn from one of the superheroes.

Why I entered

Well, upon visiting the link, I found out that you had to enter the contest in order to gain access to the webinars. So, I entered the contest not thinking anything about winning. I knew that some of my friends might also enjoy watching these broadcasts, so I shared the link on my social media networks. After that i went to listen to some of the replay shows and didn’t think any more about it. I did have some trouble getting started watching the replays, but Adrienne sent me a direct link to them, and I was off and running listening to these giants of the online marketing field. I had a full weekend where I learned some new concepts and began thinking in some new ways concerning how I market myself and my website.

surprising progress

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First listings first big sale and first hard lessons

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Hello again; This week, I am returning to the narrative of my early days trying to build a new business. I promised to talk about some of my early ride listings and how I got them. This covers just a few of the hard lessons I have had to learn since starting out.

the astroliner as it looked when the buyer first saw it

The Jewel’s Verne Astroliner my first big sale

As I told you earlier I went to work telling people about the site and trying to get more of them to list their equipment with me. I had wanted to work on a straight percentage of sales basis, but most ride owners didn’t like that idea. The ones that were interested in working on a percentage basis thought the ten percent I was asking for was way too high. The rest either wanted me to add something to their asking price, or they wanted to use the famous or infamous phrase I’ll take care of you. And i’ll admit to being happy enough to get some of those listings that I took them at their word. Yes, I was really green back then. But like I have said before, part of being in business is the education you receive. I continued to send out emails and make calls. Most people didn’t return them. I was new and there were places they could list for free.

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