For many moons, we have been getting requests for two things. One, more audio. Two, more products that are specific to industries and professions. (Also, more videos, which we might get to this weekend. I mean, hello?! Have you SEEN the Blowjob Barbie picture?)

Word on the street is that if people have to read one more ebook, they’re going to off themselves, and y’all are sick of generic advice that forces you to say things like, “Yeah, but how the fuck does that apply to ME?”

Therefore, we made stuff.

Today, we’re launching a series of hour-ish long classes that address the specific issues and pains of specific industries. While I’m at SXSW, they’re cheap. When I go home, they’re not cheap anymore. (I, however, will remain cheap till I die. Trailer park or bust, bitches.)

If you buy in the next couple days, you’ll be sort of buying and sort of pre-ordering. Three are spiffified, and the other three are still being edited but will be ready by the end of the weekend. If you can handle getting a few now and a few in a few days, you can save up to $215 if you buy the full set.

Our classes are these:

Geek Marketing 010100100100…

How to Conquer Marketing & Make A Living With Your Art

Marketing for Coaches & Consultants: How to Get Strangers to Give a Shit What You Think

Word Fu: How To Sell Your Words

Marketing for Transcendentalists, Hippies, Tree-Huggers, & Alternative Practitioners

Yet Another Damn Thing You Should Know About Blogging (and the Marketing Thereof)

(Short aside to say that HOT DAMN, titling these things is the best part of my job.)

Regular price for these classes is $49. They’re going for $29 each today, or you can buy bundles of three for $49 or all six for $79. (We want to make it nice and easy for you to upload them to torrent sites as a set, you know. Because we’re always thinking about you.)

We’re thinking the bundles will work for the people whose jobs don’t fit into one neat category. Coaches in airy fairy woo woo professions who do a lot of blogging. Tech coaches. Writers who blog on artistic topics. That kind of thing.

Anyway, there are margaritas and panties waiting for me – as well as a baking and burlesque party called Pasties and Pastries – so I’ll just say that if you want in, head on over to the spiffy sales pages and we’ll get you hooked up.

Moving on.

I read a lot of books.

This is easy, because they keep showing up free in my mailbox. The books I read tend towards the Thought Leader category — books like Linchpin and Trust Agents and A Whole New Mind.

These are good books. Great ones. I couldn’t do what I do without them. Some books I probably couldn’t live without.

But as I read books like these, and occasionally their authors’ blogs, it is easy for me to think that the accepted thing to do with your big ideas is to write books and blogs about them. Put your shit in print. Tell as many people as you can. Change lots of lives. Rinse. Repeat.

This is not a bad idea, really. Seth Godin writes books that change people forever. People read them and go forth and change in a manner that can only be described as alchemy. Same with Daniel Quinn. Clay Shirky. Cory Doctorow.

But you’ll notice that these Thought Leader type books and blogs — the good ones, anyway — are actually about people who do not write books. They are about people in the thick of things. People who metaphorically get their hands dirty. People who literally get their hands dirty.

If you are called to write a book or a blog, by all means. Go forth — the world needs you, badly. But if you are called to do the stuff people write books about, that’s good, too. Maybe even better.

You do not have to write books. You do not even have to write a blog. It’s totally acceptable to simply get on with changing lives.

(When you read my memoirs, you will be able to hear the full and juicy details of the conversation I had with Jamie leading up to this meeting, but I’ll give you the highlights here:

Me: Yes, I know I’m asking you to drive me to another man’s hotel room. And I know I haven’t shaved my legs in four years and I’m doing it tonight, right before you drive me to another man’s hotel room. I also know that there’s a very good chance I’m going to come home drunk off my head like the last time I met up with Michael. But you can still give me a ride, right?

Jamie: Whatever. Are you ready?

In my memoirs, I will make this much more salacious than it really was.)

Anyway, among other extremely cool shit – including but not limited to the sexy new concept of workweek vegetarianism, his numerous piercings, and the fact that he tries to be as bad an influence as possible on his siblings’ children – we talked about Great Work as it applies to ittybiz owners. You should probably just drop the fifteen bucks and buy his book, but in the meantime, he made a little video just for you.

Therefore, I unveil:

Great Work For IttyBiz Owners: The Shit You Gotta Know

(Thanks, Michael. It was a damn blast.)

We’ve been getting a lot of questions on the IttyBiz cell phone hotline, as well as through every other medium imaginable, asking what we think of Scribe SEO. I was going to tell you when the hoopla surrounding it died down, probably when I got back from Florida.

Then the lovely Brian Clark — chief geek at Scribe HQ — got in touch to say, “Um, hello? Didn’t you say your people really wanted this? The fucking promotion ends today, jackass.” (It’s entirely possible he didn’t actually call me a jackass, but it makes for a better story.)

Because I am unable to read, I didn’t realize this before.

So now it’s today and he has a crazy deal. And if you’re going to come out and say “I’m an affiliate of this super awesome thing”, you may as well do it when that super awesome thing is on super awesome sale. Because if I ran this post Monday, when your $27 got you a little bit of stuff, instead of today when your $27 gets you lots and lots of stuff, you’d be really mad.

(In defense of the foregoing babble, we ran out of sugar like, three days ago, and Jamie isn’t back from Tim Horton’s yet. Therefore I have had no coffee and am very, very stupid.)

My point, and I do have one

Once upon a time, I wrote a fairly popular ebook about SEO. As such, I get a lot of questions about SEO. The most common question is some variation of “Thank you so much for your book. I’m so glad I understand the fundamentals. But what in hell’s tarnation do I do NOW?!?!”

Scribe is what you do now.

Five Reasons You Want Scribe SEO

Scribe SEO is a plugin for Wordpress that you subscribe to on a monthly (but not a contract) basis. You write your post or page and then you click “Analyze”. Then it tells you all the stuff — EXACTLY the stuff — you have to do to improve your post to get thee lots and lots of search traffic.

1. It shows you EXACTLY how you’re going to appear in Google.

You know how it’s kind of like magic, what shows up in Google when you search for something? And you know how it would be REALLY, REALLY cool to know exactly what your search result is going to look like? Yeah, Scribe does that.

2. It shows you EXACTLY how to optimize your titles and headings, down to how many letters and words.

It will tell you how many words you want in your title and how many characters you want in your meta descriptions. And not in some vague, conceptual way. It will say something like, “Your title has two words. Put more words here, loser.” (Except without the “loser”. Although when we come out with the official IttyBiz licensed version, it will TOTALLY say “loser”.)

3. It tells you what to link to, how, and where.

You know how I tell you you’re supposed to link to your own content because Google hearts that kinda thing? And you know how you’re like, yeah, but, uh, how? And where? Scribe tells you. Exactly.

4. It tells you what you’ll rank for.

I ran one of my very best posts through Scribe and discovered I was ranking quite impressively for “blah blah blah”. This was very useful information for me because ranking for “blah blah blah” does not exactly help my business interests. I got to fix it so I could rank for something useful like “porn”.

5. It teaches you stuff.

It changes how you write. As you learn the rules, you start ranking better and better without trying. Which means you spend less time analyzing, and more time doing awesome shit. It’s kind of like grammar that way. When you’re little and trying to write a story, you have to spend so much time figuring out if you’re saying it right that you don’t get to spend much time saying it. But as you learn, it becomes natural. Scribe does that.

And one reason you want Scribe SEO today.

The normal price for the Super Crazy Fancy Pants Version, which includes 300 analyses a month, is $97. The normal price for the Teeny Tiny Version, which includes 30 analyses a month, is $27. If you buy today — like, TODAY — you can get the Super Crazy Fancy Pants Version for the price of the normal Teeny Tiny Version.

What that means in English

You can run it on all your back posts — and any posts on any other sites you might have — and never run out.

The lovely people at Scribe are very clear that you can cancel with one click, so if you don’t think it’s working out after the first little while, you’re not committed. So if you’re even remotely thinking this might be for you, you may as well do it today so you can run your back posts through it for supa cheap.

(ALSO IMPORTANT: You will notice my official testimonial on Scribe on the sales page. You can also see the extremely adorable picture of me taken by the awful photo machine at SXSW. Every time I wonder why I’m still getting carded at the liquor store, I look at this photo.)

That’s all I got. I really, really need a coffee.

Hmm. That’s a lot of stuff.

Let’s play a little imagination game.

For perspective, we’ll start by looking at my numbers. There are 25,000 or so people reading this blog. There are around 20,000 reading my newsletters. There are 6,000 on Twitter, a few hundred on my much ignored Facebook. Let’s assume that, eliminating duplicates, there are 30,000 or so people regularly tuning into my stuff.

Now that we’ve done that, we’ll totally ignore it. (It was just for perspective anyway.) Let’s pretend to erase every one of those people, and start from zero. We’ll have everything go along at the pace it’s going now, but we’ll pretend I don’t already have 30,000 readers, fans, followers or general tuners-in reading, fanning, following, or generally tuning in.

While we’re imagining that, we’ll pretend I’ve quit Twitter, that I never read or reply to blog comments, and that my cell phone number isn’t up for the whole world to see on my contact page.

We’re just going to look at email.

We’re going to slash my incoming email by over 90% and email from completely new people by a little over 75%. We’re going to pretend that I only get 10 emails from total strangers a day. These are nice, connection-y emails, not “dear webmaster of ittybiz.com” emails.

Are you with me so far in the game? No pre-existing relationships and 10 emails from new people per day. Hell, let’s go crazy and pretend like email takes weekends off. 10 a day, 5 days a week.

Now, if I’m doing this whole social web thing right, I will respond to those 10 emails.

On Monday, I have 10 new relationships and 10 outgoing emails.

Assuming I really respond – because that’s what I’m supposed to do in what Chris Brogan affectionately refers to as “social media kumbaya-ville” – and I don’t try to brush them off, about 8 recipients will respond back to me. (They’re the ones who emailed me in the first place, after all.) But let’s say that by the time I get back to them, the’ve turned in for the night, so they respond tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I get my standard 10 new emails, and those 8 from yesterday. All 10 new ones get responses, and let’s say we continue half of yesterday’s conversations. (The other half are those kind of “okay, talk to you then” emails that would be stupid to reply to.)

Tuesday, I have 20 relationships and 14 outgoing emails.

The next day, I still get my 10 new emails. I get 8 responses from the Tuesday people, and 2 from the Monday people. I respond to the 10, the 4, and both of the conversations that are still going on from Monday because I really liked those dudes.

Wednesday, I have 30 relationships and 16 outgoing emails.

By the end of the week, I have 50 new relationships. I’m still only sending 20 or so emails a day – not the end of the world. The former is a tad overwhelming and difficult to sustain, but the latter isn’t too big of a deal. At this rate of growth, nobody’s gonna die.

But the thing about these relationships we’re so fond of is that they tend to last longer than one email conversation. So the person who emailed me on Monday for some support about the fears they have about starting their own business will eventually get a sales page up. When they do, they’re going to email me because, well, I told them to. (We have a relationship and all.)

The guy who emailed to ask for an interview is going to air the interview on his (fairly high profile) blog and he’s going to bring in a lot more readers, so that will bring in more than my standard 10 emails that day.

I’ll write a post that’s going to resonate with more people than usual, and it’s going to generate an abnormal amount of replies.

If this blog never grows at a rate faster than it is now, I get 50 shiny new relationships every week from here until eternity, and all of the resulting communication. (In order for this math to work, I have to completely ignore Twitter, blog comments, trackbacks, forums, Facebook, LinkedIn, my phone and whatever shit hot new social media program the cool kids come up with next.)

This system is going to break, y’all.

The two sentence email people solve the email problem like this:

two.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be two sentences or less. It’s that simple.

Classy, huh? But the governing bodies of the aforementioned Kumbaya-ville say that human connections are either our most important business asset, the most precious exchanges a human being can experience, or both, so I’m pretty sure this one is out for me. Nothing says social web like receiving 10 paragraphs of soul baring gratitude and responding with a fucking haiku.

Seth Godin answers his email personally. He often does so in three words without capitalization, but at least he does it. Is that connection? I guess that depends on how you define it.

Chris Brogan has a form that ends up in a spreadsheet, organizing messages by subject. Does it work? No idea. My guess is that it works as well as any other linear system designed to organize human behaviour remotely.

Gary Vaynerchuk – the dude who spends his entire book begging you to please, for the love of God, email! him! today! – sends you to a video autoresponder explaining that since his daughter arrived on the scene and his book became a bestseller, he can’t personally answer his emails anymore.

I have the ninjas. Sometimes they’ll respond to you. Usually they won’t. I almost definitely won’t. But we do our best, and as Don Miguel Ruiz quite beautifully says in The Four Agreements, your best changes from day to day.

Web 2.0 is like a goddamn pyramid scheme.

Limitless growth. Limitless connection. Limitless access, relationships, “friendlies”?

It can’t happen.

I get between 20 and 100 new followers a day on Twitter, and in the grand scheme of Twitter things, I’m a nobody. How can I possibly connect with all these people? I can’t. And if I think I can, it would appear I know absolutely nothing about the true meaning of connection, friendship, or intimacy.

I get about 800 emails per workday. Thanks to a pretty aggressive spam filter, less than 1% of those emails are junk. If outsourcing is impersonal and autoresponders are offensive and ignoring them is career suicide, exactly what am I supposed to do with those emails?

And that’s me, a relatively small time blogger. I don’t have 20 books under my belt like Godin or a recent bestseller and 120,000 Twitter followers like Brogan or my email address in 150,000 books like Vaynerchuk.

What if I miss that one follower who could’ve become a real, honest to God friend? What if I ignore the email from that person who really, really needed me to be there for them?

No idea, but it’s gonna happen. It happened today and it’ll happen tomorrow and it’s going to keep happening as long as I have an email address and a Twitter account.

I can’t keep up.

Neither can you.

When women entered the workforce en masse, the media treated it like the best thing since TV dinners. My God, look how much better everyone’s lives were going to become. Gonna be better for women, men, and children the world over, right?

Who would’ve thought that 30-odd years later, every women’s magazine in America would have the same stories on the cover that they did decades ago?

How to find time for it all.

How to find time for yourself.

How to keep your marriage and kids from suffering when you’re so busy.

How the hell to get dinner on the table.

How to stop hating yourself for fucking it up.

What are the stories going to be next year, ten years, 25 years from now?

How to find time for all those “relationships”?

How to find time for yourself with all those “relationships”?

How to keep your marriage and kids from suffering when you’re so busy with your “relationships”?

How the hell to get dinner on the table in the midst of your “relationships”?

How to stop hating yourself for fucking up all those “relationships”?

No-one knows. The only thing we really do know is that it’s not going away.

You’re not doing it wrong.

There is no wrong because there is no right.

It’s a broken system. It’s a naive fantasy of hyperconnected utopia. It is a first year economics student discovering communism for the first time.

It doesn’t fucking work, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can forgive ourselves and get on with our lives.

An update on my ass

So, this one time? At a funeral? I slipped and fell down the funeral home steps?

Yeah, it turns out I broke my tailbone or something.

This is only making the list so lots of people can come in the comments and say “sorry about your ass”. I have to get my joy from somewhere, and there’s an outside chance of a Guinness Book of World Records win.

An update on the sale

249 of you lovely people (not including the emails Jamie got) have commented on the Choose Your Own Adventure sale post. Happy anniversary to me, indeed.

If you commented on that post or sent Jamie an email, you should have received an email from me saying, “Dude! Thanks! We’ll get back to you ASAP!”

ASAP is taking longer than we anticipated, largely because y’all are some very creative people. I’m impressed. But it’s still taking us a while to get through your requests.

Stuff is coming, we promise. We’re responding to everybody, even you. If you haven’t heard from us, it’s just because we haven’t got there yet. Although that shouldn’t stop you from compulsively clicking refresh on your inbox or spam folder.

(A quick note to a couple of you, and you know who you are: Please make sure your inbox isn’t full. We can’t send you email if your email client sends us back an automated message saying, “Na na na na NA na”. Also, remember that we’re going to be emailing whatever email address you provided in the comments field. If you don’t know how to type or you don’t check that email address anymore, we are fresh outta options.)

And another one, just for good measure.

A lot of people loved the idea of Marketing School and SEO School for $50 or Marketing School, SEO School and How To Launch The **** Out Of Your Ebook for $97. If, having considered the delectability of this offer, you decide you want that sale, you can have it whether you commented or not by clicking here:

Yup, here. This link.

The existence of that link does not negate any other offers. It’s just a little faster, and I’d rather not have 143 people email Jamie next month saying they changed their mind and they didn’t think they had any money but now they do and they feel like an ass for not commenting in the first place but pretty please can they have it?

That’s why we’ve stayed married for six years. Because we’re nice to each other.

And on to gossip, part one of four

Word is, Jen Louden’s retreat in your pajamas thing is awfully darn popular. One might want to get in on that if one were that way inclined, since the price is going up on the 5th. Also, apparently there’s a Valentine’s special where two people can get in for cheap. I am told you don’t have to be sleeping together to take advantage of this offer.

Still gossiping.

The lovely, wand-waving Megan Morris is upping her price on the Idea Catalyst Kit prontissimo. You can spend fifty bucks more later if you really want to, or you can buy it now. I still don’t make any money from telling you this, and I still think it’s the best thing since sliced cheese. Or the cat’s pajamas. Or the cat, wearing sliced cheese as pajamas.

OK, nothing is that cool. But if you send her a picture of your cat in that outfit, I bet she’ll comp you a copy.

Yup, still gossiping. Yowza.

The handsome Dr. Charlie and his sweet tree-hugging compadre Pam Slim are doing a real retreat, one that is not in your pajamas. Those of you in Canada or the northern United States may be interested to note that it is in PHOENIX. As in, Arizona.

Sure. Take your time. Let that sink in for a minute.

When Charlie told me about this retreat, I’m like, dude, it’s perfect for IttyBiz people. But not a whole lot of IttyBiz people have fifteen hundred smackeroos just laying around. (If you do, in fact, have fifteen hundred smackaroos lying around, Coach has a really cute pink tote in their Poppy line that I would die for. Please contact the ninjas for my mailing address.)

This is when he alerted me to the fact that I can’t read, and that they have payment plans. Good ones.

So if you feel like going to Arizona and getting in the good books of Charlie and Pam, you might want to spend your birthday money on this one. I have a feeling it’s going to rock. Go check it out. Aren’t they cute?

Gossip, part four of four.

Brad and Jen might be getting back together. I read it in a magazine at the grocery store.

(See, that right there? That totally wasn’t true. That was me covering for the fact that I begged Jamie to bring me gossip magazines in my sick bed. Or my broken ass bed, as is more accurate.)

And at the same time, the most recent post on my blog was a rerun of last year’s “Christmas is Gay.”

Of course, that just seemed like an anomaly, so I looked back.

The post before that was “Cash is King,” about how I’m not going to use credit anymore and will buy literally everything with cash from here on out.

Before that was “How to be Awesome,” then “The Most Awesomest Christmas Post Ever” (in which I theorize that Jesus’s birthday parties must be at the coolest McDonald’s PlayPlace in the universe), and then “Why Arnold Schwarzenegger Would Fuck You Up.”

And, to review: I make my living by consulting and setting up Wordpress blogs. Makes sense, right?

I didn’t plan things this way. I didn’t plan to blog about nothing that has any relationship whatsoever to what I do. It’s not like I sat down with a pen and paper and said, “Okay, I’ll write dick jokes to enhance my ability to sell technology services.” And not only did I not plan it — I, in fact, didn’t even realize that I’d been doing it.

So that forced some soul searching. And of course, I had to ask my mentor, Ms. Naomi, about it when we all got together to record the January call for this little thing I’m part of with Charlie Gilkey and others called The Charlie and Johnny Jam Sessions.

And her answer was that for whatever reason, the strange things I do and write about makes people like me.

And then, when those same people need a blog, they don’t go to Google to find a web guru. Instead, they go to the guy they already know and like.

“Sometimes, it’s just about showing up and being cool,” she said.

And then she devolved into a volley of animal noises and swearing and vomiting, and Charlie and I had to call the Canadian police to check up on her. (The Canadian police are just like the American police except that they wear hats with ear flaps and carry geese.)

But, yeah. Sometimes it’s just about showing up and being cool. Which made sense, and was really very encouraging and badass, because not only is that strategy more fun than “working at marketing and branding,” but it’s also a hell of a lot more natural. And none of this should shock me, because in these past 9-10 months that feel like 16 years, it all keeps coming back to the same basic principles — what I’m coming to think of as “The Third Tribe Way.”

• Be a real and genuine person in business
• Cut through the bullshitty normal internet marketing techniques
• Don’t hide your personal flaws and weaknesses
• Show up and be cool

None of which sounds like what you’d hear in just about any marketing course, but all of which has been essential for what I’ve done, and what I tell my consulting clients to do.

Thinking about positioning and building a list and your tone of communication is hard. Being a real person and letting those things happen more organically allows those things to flow a hell of a lot easier.

So I thought about it more. What exactly is my plan, insofar as I have one? (Which I don’t.)

If I had to outline my branding and marketing strategy as a whole, I’d first give the caveat that it’s hardly a strategy and that it just seems to be what works for me, and then I’d give the following:

1. Have good services that are well-defined, that there’s a demand for, and that are backed by social proof.

This one is obvious. Everyone does it. It’s not always easy, and it takes time, and it takes effort, but everyone knows to do it. You have to offer services that people actually want. You have to be good at what you do, and to have some testimonials from folks who will confirm that you are, in fact, good at what you do, and that you’re not a flaming asshole. Define your services, and explain the benefits to your clients of using them.

But then most people stop there and run off into some internet marketing douchebaggery with yellow-highlighted type and a zillion aWeber autoresponse messages. I prefer a different, nonsensical tack that nonetheless works for some reason:

2. Write my own stupid-ass posts on my stupid-ass blog about whatever the hell I want.

Someone pointed out to me the other day that it’s important to be smart in these posts and to manage to be somehow likable, but rules beyond that don’t seem to apply very much. I pretty much literally write about whatever strikes me. Sometimes that’s businessy and motivational stuff, but often it’s things like a pair of turkeys that took up residence in my barn. I never write about Wordpress tips and techniques any more, or anything else that might help to establish my credibility as a Wordpress guy, or even as a consultant.

3. Interact on the Web.

For me, this has mainly been on Twitter, but for others it’s on Facebook, in forums, in the comments of other blogs, via email, whatever. I just try to get to know people out there in InternetLand. I try not to talk about my services all the time. Most of what I write in these venues is stupid shit that has nothing to do with anything.

#2 and #3 above comprise the “just show up and be cool” part of the plan, and they are essential.

4. Be an authority on other blogs with bigger audiences, for exposure.

You see me write a lot of guest posts. As long as they’ll let me do it, I’ll keep shooting regular posts to IttyBiz, Copyblogger, Problogger, Project Mojave, and others. I don’t do this for fun, although they’re all run by fun folks and I do like writing for them. I do it because it puts me in front of a hell of a lot of people.

Because other blogs aren’t as half-assed as I my own, guest posts are an opportunity for me to actually write about something — specifically, about the topic of the blog I’m guest posting on. This is where I get to talk about how to improve your business or be more trustable, or whatever. So I’m kind of forced to be coherent — which is good, because I’m not always coherent on my own blog, and “coherent” is sort of required sometimes.

But here’s the thing: #4 is absolutely a keystone strategy for me. I’m not saying it would work for everyone, but I won’t do without it. I take it as seriously as building sites for clients. If I get behind on my guest posting, I get nervous and start writing ASAP.

Basically, guest posting on blogs larger than your own (or even just different from your own) gives you a chance to “show up and be cool” in front of a bunch of people who you couldn’t otherwise reach to be cool in front of.

This whole thing is very strange, and very counterintuitive to most people I consult with. I get it. It’s strange to me too.

If I had to sum up the JBT strategy for generating leads in a nutshell, it’d be this: Get out there. Meet people. Make friends with them. Wait for them to have work for you. The more people you can make friends with, the better the numbers get, and the more you can then implement the other things I talk about, like building rapport and trust, generating referrals, and knowing your own value enough to raise your prices.

This whole thing may not be your style, and I’m not saying that anyone should copy it, but maybe it’s just one more arrow to put in your quiver. One more thing to try out. I mean, how can it hurt to show up and be cool? It can’t. Not unless your specialty is being a giant asshole.

And by the way, don’t be cool if you’re selling asshole services. But I have to figure that’s less than 10% of you anyway, so it’s all good.

—-
Johnny B. Truant is the fellow who, in nine months, used IttyBiz advice to go from never having made a cent online to a five-figure-monthly internet business. If you’d like him to help you with your own online mojo, you should totally hire him to coach you. He promises not to speak in third-person like this during your sessions.

Last year, we had a sale, but it was really boring. (Well, it wasn’t totally boring. The fifth anniversary is symbolized by wood, so the coupon code was wood. That’s not totally boring, right? OK, yes it is. Forget I asked. Keep reading and we’ll pretend this never came up.)

Anyway, this year we wanted to do something more interesting. Also, we wanted to put all the responsibility on your head so we could sit around and eat lots and lots of candy. (The sixth anniversary is the sugar and candy anniversary. A theory has been posed that this is to prevent the seven year itch. No-one is entirely sure on what this theory is based.)

Therefore, we unveil…

Choose Your Own Adventure!

Or choose your own sale. Whatever. But adventure is cooler.

Anyway, if you want in on the craziness, here’s what you have to do:

1.) Go get yourself a beverage of some kind.

2.) Affect a dreamy, wistful expression while staring at your wall. (You may take a quick moment to consider getting a drywall guy in to deal with that horrible gash, if you must.)

3.) Think of the awesomest thing I could possibly provide you, and at what price.

4.) Go write it in the comments section of this blog post.

So think. Dream. Imagine the possibilities.

Want Marketing School and SEO School together for fifty bucks?

Want How To Launch The **** Out Of Your Ebook and an hour of consulting for $173, cause that’s all you’ve got on your credit card?

Want us to reopen Marketing For Nice People for a day?

Want only the consulting module of OBS but don’t want to wait for me to get off my ass and re-release it as its own product?

Want the entire OBS because you didn’t get off your ass in time to buy it last time?

Want to buy everything we’ve ever made, all in one tidy package?

Want to pay for SEO School with smoked trout?

Too many people think about what they can’t do, and they waste a lot of time in the process. I figure, let’s try to see what we can do for a while. Let’s see what happens.

The Not-So-Fine Print

Truth is, I thought about this about half an hour ago. This means it’s pretty half-baked and will likely have hiccups the size of heart attacks. I have tried to consider as many hiccups as possible, given that I haven’t even had a shower yet.

Yes, consulting is included.

First come, first serve on consulting. There is a limit, and I don’t know what it is. Probably 10 slots.

What if I ask for a deal and somebody else asks for a better one?

You’ll probably get the better one, although you’ll be forever remembered in my head as the guy who wasn’t so greedy. Depends. There’s only so much smoked trout a person can eat, you know.

What if you can’t give me what I want?

Then one of the ninjas will send you a very nice email telling you that we can’t do it. They might even offer an alternative. We have very empowered ninjas.

So I can ask for SEO School for a buck? Seriously?

You can ask. Whatever lets you sleep at night. But keep in mind, we’re not obligated to say yes.

What if I’m embarrassed because I don’t have any money and I really do have only $1.13 in my PayPal account? I’m going to feel like an asshole leaving a comment.

Send an email to jamie@ittybiz.com. Tell Jamie your story, and exactly what you want. (Hint about life in general: If you ask for what you want, you are more likely to get it, because you don’t make the other person think. If you just tell him some sob story without telling him what you want, you force him to think. Natural human behaviour suggests he will simply ignore you and get a glass of whiskey and start watching Entourage in the middle of the afternoon. Five o’clock be damned.)

So, yeah. Leave a comment, get a deal. Fun, huh?

Few people actually like writing sales pages, and it doesn’t matter whether they write long sales pages or short sales pages – there are plenty of things we’d rather be doing. When you think about it, though, it’s easy to see why we hate it: writing your sales page causes a lot of overwhelm and Stuck because you know that the success of your sales is riding on that one page.

All of your hard work is resting on that page.

Your mortgage might be resting on that page.

Your credibility is resting on that page.

All of your Resistance and creative doubt is manifested in that sales page.

If you’re a creative, compassionate entrepreneur, your heart is on that page. You want to help people and you want them to get your Stuff, and people not buying it can feel like a complete rejection of who you are.

So, yeah, it sucks. Going into a process with all of that built into it is gut-wrenching, and it’s no wonder that so many people bail out on selling because they know they’ll have to write a sales page. It’s not just you.

Since it’s such a onerous process, many of us try to get through the process as quickly as possible. We write the sales page and have a few people look at it really late in the process because we really don’t want the feedback. We want it to be done already.

Moving Beyond Crappy Sales Pages

Here’s what you have to understand: the people who actually sell their stuff write their sales pages multiple times.

Let that sink in for a second.

Your first draft of a sales page is rarely good enough. It’s a start, but you’ll have to do it again.

You probably won’t focus on the benefits of your product, and you definitely won’t place your benefits up front.

You probably won’t be talking to the people who need your Stuff.

You probably won’t be clear about what comes with it.

You probably won’t walk people through the buying process.

You know what? That’s okay. It’s not just you. The sales page I had up for the product I just released didn’t do anything of these things, either, and I know better.

You Can’t Press Rewind, But You Don’t Have To Press Pause

Let’s get real here: your sales page is just a web page that can be rewritten just like anything else. Yes, it would have been better for it to be right the first time, but you can fix it now. And, if you’re serious about getting your Stuff out in the world, you should fix it now.

And three months from now, you should fix it again. Three months after that, you should fix it again.

Do you see a trend here?

Add that killer testimonial. Change that word that snagged people. Answer the objection that caused someone to return your product. Talk about why the product excites you.

Once you accept that your sales page will never be perfect and that there are always things you can do to make it more effective, maybe you can let go of all the overwhelm, Stuck, and anxiety and actually get your gift out in the world. Sure, when you release your next product, you’ll probably fall down all over again – but it’s a hell of a lot easier to get up as you do it more.

Our sales pages are as much of a continual work in progress as we are. Whether you accept this and do something about it or fight it doesn’t matter; it’s the way things are.

About the Author: Charlie Gilkey writes about meaningful action, creativity, and entrepreneurship at Productive Flourishing. Follow him on Twitter to get bite-sized slices of mojo.

Anyway, because I am a Big Deal On The Internet, I figured I’d help Megan out a little bit with her launch, her having saved my life repeatedly and all. So I wrote an email – one email – to some of my peeps to see if we could rustle up some sales that she wouldn’t have to bust her ass to make on her own.

Normally I wouldn’t tell you about this, but we sold 183 copies of a forty-seven dollar product from that one email, and I figured that might be useful information to you.

Here’s what it said:

Part of having so-called expert status (excuse me while I heave… maybe we could toss in “guru” and “diva” and I can seal the deal and just throw up already) is that people ask you what they should and should not read, own, study, and whatnot. I try to not give too many recommendations because I think it weakens the effect and makes. But when something very, very good comes out, I want to let you know.

There’s a new product out, and I really, really think you should get it.

Megan Morris (the wand waver of IttyBiz and driving force behind IdeaSchema) has created her first ebook/infoproduct/audio thingamajig. And it’s very, very good. If enough people get their hands on it, I think it’ll change the way these things are done.

(You can read her blog post about how it happened here.)

It’s about ideas. Ideas for businesses, ideas for what to do when you’ve created your business, ideas for how to make money appear from nowhere, ideas for when you think you’re well and truly screwed.

Got a great thing going but no list? She’s got ideas.

Got a great list but don’t know what to do with it? She’s got ideas.

Got nothing but must quit your job by Wednesday or die? She’s got ideas.

When she sent me her initial draft, I planned to scan it. I ended up reading every word. And then I begged her to let me add some marketing stuff. I’ve done it for free, because I think it needs to be done. Her stuff should be out there because I very strongly feel that the information she’s packed into this kit will change lives, if used properly.

If you check out the sales page, and it’s also a VERY good example of an effective but SO not sleazy sales page, you’ll see some pretty glowing testimonials from some pretty smart people.

Jonathan Fields loved it.

Pam Slim loved it.

Sonia Simone loved it.

Michael Bungay-Stanier loved it.

James Chartrand loved it.

And I love it.

(Brian Clark would’ve loved it too, if we’d had the guts to send it to him.)

I get no money from this. I just think it’s that great. I also think the two audios I did for it are the best stuff I’ve ever done.

She’s launching at a discount so the people who want it but can’t afford a lot can still get it. It’s forty-seven, with an optional coaching add-on. If you’re floundering, this will be the best less than fifty bucks you ever spend.

xx
ND

I thought maybe it might be cool to dissect why this worked. There are a lot of reasons you’ll find obvious, but there might be some in there that you didn’t think of.

1. These people know, like, and trust me.

I have never sold junk to these people. When I say something’s good, they believe me.

2. I don’t do this very often.

I very rarely sell other people’s stuff. There is no history of me hyping stuff every week. Sure, I could. I’m a pretty persuasive person – the last time I did a concerted affiliate push, I made enough money to build a school, for God’s sake – and I could probably add a fair amount of money to my bottom line if I did this all the time. But that would be short-term thinking. I’d rather only bug you when something is really, really great or already being so talked about that you were thinking of buying it anyway.

Too many bloggers and list-owners come out as an affiliate for everything, and that weakens both the effect of their sales effort and their reputation as a source for good stuff.

3. This isn’t my product and I’m not an affiliate.

It could be argued that this is the primary reason I sold as many as I did, but that would be a tunnel-visioned claim. In this case, it was a factor, sure. But I’ve made damn good money being very clear that I was making bank when you bought the thing I was selling too. (This one did extremely well, and I actually said the words “I don’t need your cash and I don’t give a shit what you buy, if anything.”)

Anybody who’s been at least mildly involved in this niche – problogging, ittybizzing, making money on the interwebs – knows that EVERYTHING has an affiliate program. You can be an affiliate for anything. If you give a shit about your brand at all, you may as well shill the stuff that’s good. There’s just as much money in the short term and WAY more in the long term if you shill the good stuff.

I would argue that the reason me saying I wasn’t an affiliate helped here is that I was transparent about my reasoning. If I tell you why I’m selling something, you are not forced to figure it out for yourself, and the odds are good that if you trust me (see # 1) you’ll believe me rather than come to your own sinister conclusions. When you trust someone, it’s easier to keep trusting them than continually re-evaluate.

4. I used strong, relevant and known social proof.

Pam Slim is an expert most of you know. She said:

Lack of ideas is not what keeps hoards of people trapped in Cubicle Nation – rather it is the lack of actionable, marketable, feasible ideas. Thank goodness Megan whipped up her entertaining, inspiring and extremely useful Idea Catalyst Kit so you not only generate killer ideas for improving your life and starting your business, but have fun while doing it.

(I will not lie, what sold me was proof that you generate profitable ideas while in the bathtub. I always knew it, but now have Naomi’s $11,000 testimonial to back it up. Worth the price of the ebook for this tip alone.)

Jon Fields is an expert most of you know. He said:

The Idea Catalyst Kit is an ass-kicking, action-inspiring ideation toolbox. It wrangles together the critical importance of mindset with a series of mini-case studies and immediately actionable tools and worksheets that actually deliver you into a place of clarity, inspiration and momentum. This isn’t a magic bullet, nor does it claim to be. You’ve still got to do the work. But, if you’re willing, it’s one hell of a guide.

James Chartrand is an expert most of you know. She said:

There are a lot of great ideas out there. You probably have a few of those half-formulated ideas floating around yourself. But half-formulated isn’t much good, is it? Half-formulated is just a vague idea that you might be onto something cool, but there’s no real, tangible goal that you can reach. It’s just a feeling you have. Just a dream.

Want some good news? You can give your dreams some glue and turn them into something awesome. The Idea Catalyst Kit is specifically designed to help you get those feelings of something great out of that semi-formed state and onto paper so you can do something about them. It helps you grab your ideas, overcome the creative obstacles and helps you set your dreams into motion.

The Idea Catalyst Kit doesn’t let those dreams of yours float away. What more could you want?

Sonia Simone is an expert most of you know. She said:

She has, in her usual style, overdelivered like crazy on this kit. She dives into all of the stuff that tends to slow us down when we’re trying to start a business. She has a wonderfully gentle way of rearranging your thinking so it’s in line with what you want, and so you actually know you can reach it.

Because she’s a sap sweetheart, she’s underpriced the Idea Catalyst Kit (for now) so you might not realize how valuable it is. Don’t be a dope, grab it now before it’s a zillion dollars.

Michael Bungay-Stanier is an expert most of you know. He said:

The truth is, ideas are cheap. They pop into our head, they pop out of our head. I know this – I was the first ever employee of what’s now the world’s largest independent innovation company. But being able to take an idea and do something with it? Ah now…. that’s a whole different story. That’s why I’m a big fan of Megan’s program. It’s a lovely balance of encouragement, insight and butt-kicking to go from, as she puts it, ’scratch to expression.’

One of my favourite quotes is from Lou Holtz – a football coach – who said “when all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.” If you want to start doing rather than just talking, take a look at The Idea Catalyst Kit.

The people I sent this to are not likely to quibble too much about price. They’re not looking at it going, “Well, maybe I would’ve paid $45. But $47? Not a chance, honey.” They care about getting great, easy-to-implement stuff that will have a mind-blowing return on investment. If you’re on that list, you’re not there because you have nothing better to do than read junk mail. You’re smart and sophisticated and you’re on the lookout for good stuff. So five paragraphs of killer recommendations are more important to you than “LOOK!!! IT’S CHEAP!!!”

5. It was time sensitive, but not TOO time sensitive.

Megan was launching at one price ($47) and putting the price up to another price ($97). That’s pretty standard in the industry, but usually, everybody makes a BIG! STUPID! SCREAMING! FUSS! that you MUST! BUY! RIGHT! NOW! or you’ll HATE! YOURSELF! FOREVER!

I will never say that people are too smart for that. We’re not. We fall for it all the time. We even fall for it repeatedly when it’s the same people doing it to us over and over and over. You just can’t rely on us doing it repeatedly. Because the minute you do that, you’re too invested. And if just one time we don’t fall for it, you’re totally fucked.

Here, we simply said that the launch price was X, and that was significantly lower than Y. We relied on people’s brains to make the connection. If they come to the conclusion on their own, they don’t blame you for hyping them.

(Note: That last sentence was worth the price of a college-level marketing course. Please send me $1100.)

6. Most importantly, I raved.

This is far and above the most important aspect here. You could have read nothing else on this list but I had to include them so that you didn’t fill the comments with crap about, “Yeah, but…”

Most affiliate marketers are under the extremely misguided impression that they have to be objective. Go find a wall somewhere and write this on it in big letters:

Objectivity is death.

We said it before… you can be an affiliate for anything. You can join the affiliate program for Jelly Belly jelly beans, for Christ’s sake. You could sell lawn chairs or Marketing School or hockey gloves or Teaching Sells or whatever the hell you want. You may as well sell the stuff that you adore. And if you adore it, fucking SAY you adore it.

I have said a product is so good that if my people didn’t like it, I’d give them their money back myself. Out of my own pocket. THAT is an endorsement. I’ve said a product is so good that if the buyer didn’t understand it afterwards, I would personally consult with them, for free, until they did. THAT is an endorsement.

It’s big talk, and I back it up.

There is a place for objectivity. If you’re reviewing a book you got on Amazon and you’re doing it simply for content on your blog, feel free to give a weighed and measured pros and cons list. If a new book has come out in your industry and you’re trying to become a recognized expert, give it a well-reasoned and rational review to show you know what the hell you’re talking about.

But if you’re trying to SELL something? For God’s sake, be enthusiastic.

This product is the most useful, helpful, inspirational and applicable product I’ve ever seen.

The stuff I added to it is probably the best stuff I’ve ever done. Two hours of me giving my best stuff about marketing is generally not cheap and here, you get it free. (If you bought this and you haven’t listened to it yet, I STRONGLY recommend you’re not drinking any beverages at around eight minutes into the first audio. Just sayin’.)

The information in here dislodged so much of the stupid stuck shit in my brain that I was able to make an unconscionable amount of money while working about a quarter of what I was working before.

I would be doing you a massive disservice if I said, “Well, it’s graphics heavy, so if you plan to print it out, you’ll want to make sure you have enough toner.” Who fucking cares about toner?! This is going to change your goddamn life, and I’m not going to quibble about a sneeze at minute 31 of an audio. (To my knowledge, there is no such sneeze. It’s an example, people.)

Anyway, yeah. That’s how to do a review that sells tons of stuff and makes you lots of money. Fun, huh?