Some of you have signed up to Join this Conversation and had a snag in the process. For most of you the snag was the Thank You page (after the sign-up process was finished) was slow loading and your browser decided the page was not there. But, you had already successfully joined.

On that Thank You page were instructions to watch your Spam Folder for the confirmation email from Rodger Bailey. And, that page reminded you to tell your email program that Rodger Bailey is not sending Spam.

Pardon the inconvenience. I’ll change the Thank You page location so that it loads faster in the future, so others will not have the same difficulty you suffered with.

Thanks for your tolerance and your consideration.

Rodger Bailey

BTW: Check your email, I just sent out a broadcast to everyone with the download link for the first ebook. I wanted to make sure everyone got that link. Make sure you check your Spam Folder, if my email does not seem to be there.

I finished the ebook at about one in the morning. I was a little bleary eyed, but I was happy to be finished with it.

I immediately sent it out to those who had already Joined this Conversation. I asked those members to review the ebook for me and give me feedback, so I could clean-up any problems in it.

If you want to join the review team, Join now, and I’ll email you the download link as soon as your email address is confirmed.

If you want to wait until later to get the free ebook, you are welcome to wait around for it. You will still have to Join this Conversation to get the download link.

Newcomers:

For those of you who are new to this blog, we are having a conversation about technology, information product development, and marketing & sales. There are several posts before this one. Please read them (and the Comments) to get a flavor of the conversation so far.

Another ebook:

Writing this ebook about knowing your customer, has helped me crystallize some concepts which were rattling around in my head. We have been talking about the ‘normal’ approach for Internet Marketing. Offer your information products from your website and drive traffic to your website, so that traffic buys your products.

Well, frankly this is not working. The really successful Internet Marketers are no longer using this paradigm, because it was not working. Of course, one of the key elements of the new paradigm is knowing your customer. But there are other attributes of the new paradigm we all need to know about, understand, and use.

So, I am going to write another ebook describing the new paradigm. It is a complex system. All the parts of the system support each other to make the system work. You have already seen parts of that new system being used by others, but you may not have understood how the complete system works.

I will write an ebook about the system and what the parts are. Hopefully, I can get this ebook done in the same amount of time I took for the one I just finished (I was able to complete it in 3 days).

I’ll keep you all informed about my progress in this and I’ll have it available for a free download to those who have Joined the Conversation.

Asking others to participate:

I am sending emails to other SelfGrowth experts to grow the number of participants in this conversation. If you know of someone who is struggling with the old, normal paradigm of internet marketing, please let them know about us here. I know that all of us are busy and do not have a lot of available time to explore new paradigms for marketing our products. But, if we spend a lot of time doing things which do not result in sales, maybe it is time to explore something different.

Rodger

PS: Comment now while you are still here. I’m listening.

PPS: If this topic interests you, please Join The Conversation.

Here are a few paragraphs from Chapter 7 of the ebook.

“One of the trends in your own market (creating/selling information products on the Internet) is that you have learned that having a website is the best way to sell your products on the Internet. But there is a new trend that is based on another philosophy which is having a lot of dramatic results. A lot more sales and better opportunities for ongoing business seem to be the norm for this new paradigm.

I have talked with many of you and the common thread of these conversations is that you have information products (or are developing them), you have a website (or are developing it), you want traffic to your website now (or when you have your site up), and you want your traffic to buy your products.

What I know from this information is that you probably feel powerless with respect to selling your products over the Internet. You do what you have been taught to do, but you do not obtain the results you want.”

The new marketing paradigm which seems much more successful are not based on the website and the sales letter. They are much more based on the relationship between you and your customer. Knowing your customer, talking with your customer, and having a relationship with your customer is the basis of this new marketing strategy.

And, because you know you customer and talk with your customer, you develop products which are precisely aligned with your customer’s needs and wants. Your customers ask for your products.

Another aspect of this new paradigm is that you end up developing a business process. You don’t just end up with some products you sell. You end up with an array of informational solutions to a range of real problems your customer wants to solve. You build authority in your chosen market.

I need to get back to the ebook. I’m finishing up with Chapter 7 and I have three more to go. I’m on page 28, and I think there will be 8 to 10 more pages.

So, today I would like for you to Comment on the idea of building an online business and becoming the authority in your niche. What does this mean to you? Is this something you would want? What would your range of products be? Have you already been thinking about creating this range of products and becoming an authority in your market?

BTW: I’m going to ask those who have Joined This Conversation to review my ebook before I put it up for everyone to download. If you want to be one of those who get to review it, you should sign-up right away.

Rodger

This is the second post in this blog. I started by making a few comments and asking a few questions. Three of you have posted Comments to my first blog note: I Had An Idea. I have also received some offline communications as a result of this blog post. If you are new here, I suggest that you read the first post and all the Comments before you read this post. That way, you will not miss any part of this conversation.

The common thread of your Comments (so far) is that technology, product development, and marketing & sales are all important and they are somehow related to each other. Those who have responded want to know more about the technology to help themselves in the tasks of product development and marketing & sales. They also want to know how to do those tasks in ways that work for their business.

In several of your communications you have talked about creating your websites and this seems to be (at least, I assume this from your communications with me) the first step in your process. I also assume that some of you have started building your products as your first step and then you will build (or then, you built) your website as the second step. In both of these you are using the model of, “Build It And They Will Come.”

Another idea that surfaced in your Comments is the belief that your website is your basic communication tool with your market (again, I assume this based on what you talk about). So, you use this piece of technology (your website) as your way of representing yourself and delivering your part of the communications. This has been a basic concept of Internet Marketing for as long as there has been an Internet. In fact, it has been a basic foundation of advertising, in general, to use technology as a one-way communication tool to get your message out to the market. Print and TV advertising does exactly the same thing.

Recently, my wife’s family had a big family event in our apartment. Some of her family are in Peru and others are in Belgium and they could not attend. So, I set up a live webcam feed so that those who could not make it could witness this event as it happened. I was also busy videotaping the event so that everyone would have a way of remembering the event and the people who were here.

I was so busy the whole time that I did not make real contact with any of those who were here. I was using all of my technology stuff to help others. This was how I showed them that I cared about them. But, I did not have any meaningful contact with anyone who attended, because I was walking around looking at the event through mt camera.

From my work I recognize that people need to use, as their basic media, certain contextual frames. I need to work with technology and information. Other people can work with other frames such as people, time, place or some others. Each of us has our own mix of these contextual frames.

My contextual frames work great if my market is also paying attention to technology and information. But, I need to find out who my market is before I can be sure that my communications is a good match for my market. And, I cannot know if the match is good unless I have a two-way conversation with my market.

So, building products and building websites might not be the best starting place for the conversation with our market. So, I’m writing a free ebook about just this subject. I’ll make it available to you through this blog. If you have joined this blog, I’ll email you as soon as I have it posted.

Now, more queries. Please use the Comment feature of this blog to join the conversation, so we all can benefit from your thoughts and ideas.

1) Tell us about your products you sell/deliver from your websites. Tell us about your market (housewives, professionals, small businesses, sports enthusiasts, etc. . .), your product form (ebook, audio, video, tele-seminars, etc. . ), and your content (happiness, goal setting, health, etc. . .).

2) Tell us your biggest challenge in your online business (difficulty with the technology, struggling to create content, not enough customers, etc. . .).

Comment now while you are still here. I’m listening.

Rodger

I have been a member of the Master Mind Power Group for a while and I’m very impressed with the interactions and the broad base of experience and capability which shows up every day in the posts in this group. For those of us who are members, we see the synergistic power of the master-mind working in this group. The caring between the members and the sharing of information and skills is strong and I am delighted to be a part of this little world.

From my perspective, one of the most common requests to the group is for information or resources related to creating, tweaking, or delivering our information products (ebooks, courses, articles, videos, tele-seminars, tele-conferences, etc. . .). Another common request has to do with marketing of our information products. We ask each other to review our websites and our sales pages. And many requests relate directly or indirectly to technology issues.
From this, I know that many of us are concerned about our products/services and our marketing and sales results. We want to do better.

Are any of you interested in finding ways to raise your levels in technology, product development, and marketing and sales?

First, Join the Conversation and I’ll let you know when I have made a new post to this blog. Then, please use the Comments feature of this blog and let’s start a conversation about what you would want.

In your Comments, please tell all of what you would want. And, make sure you identify which of these three areas are important for you to learn (any combination):

1) technology, 2) product development, and 3) marketing and sales

Read other’s Comments and if you have the same concerns, be sure to put that in your Comment. This will be like voting, it is important for us to understand among ourselves which are most important for us.

I’ll collect what you comment on and I’ll post a summary. If you have Joined this conversation, I’ll send you an email telling you when I have posted the results.

Comment now, it only takes a moment.

Rodger Bailey