May
18
Why It’s Nice to be Nice
“Win-win” is one of those annoying buzzwords that you hear over and over and over again until you just get so mad that you want to punch Ashton Kutcher repeatedly in the face. But as I’m building these new little businesses of mine, I’m coming to realize why people say “win-win” so often.
It’s either because:
1. They understand how ridiculously powerful and important it is and want to use it to their advantage, or
2. They understand how ridiculously powerful and important it is, and so are pretending to use it while remaining selfish assholes.
Which sort of brings me to two points:
1. They never should have attempted to remake Psycho; I mean, what kind of stupid-ass idea was that? The person who had that idea and Ashton Kutcher should both be punched repeatedly in the face.
And,
2. I’m discovering just how important it is to be NICE in your marketing efforts.
Now, this is Naomi’s blog (nobody point out that my posts have spent more time at the top recently than hers), so I won’t presume to tell you how to market because in the grand scheme, I don’t know shit. But I will say that as I grow my new ittybizes, it’s becoming really obvious to me that nice guys and gals really do finish first.
How’s that for the dumbest and most naive marketing revelation ever? “Let’s all be nice. That will make us rich.”
Okay, maybe I should explain.
I got the idea to write about this after I signed up for Naomi’s new venture with Sonia Simone, Marketing For Nice People. I thought about the hook they’ve come up with, and why it works. If you say “marketing for nice people” and it gets people’s attention, it does so because we assume marketing is for assholes. Right?
I mean, nobody talks about “caring for sick orphans for nice people” or, for that matter, “seal-clubbing for sadists”. Those phrases aren’t oxymorons. But “marketing for nice people”? That’s like saying “watching Powder Blue, in which Jessica Biel is finally naked, for the story”. It simply doesn’t make sense.
As an unseasoned and newbie marketer speaking from his limited experience, I’m here to tell you that once I’m past thanking IttyBiz for the exposure, I’d attribute 95% of my success to being nice.
So let’s explore that a little bit.
Wendy Cholbi of Your Web Coaches wrote recently about how she’s internet-in-love with me, and she said:
… and reminded me that merely giving helpful information, with no expectation of reward, is the single best thing I can do to be remarkable (which, paradoxically enough, will then generate interest, clients, and things like accidental guest-posts on a fantastic blog).
Yes. Yes. This exactly.
I wrote a comment on that post that essentially said, “Yes. Yes. This exactly. And doesn’t the whole thing just make you want to punch Ashton Kutcher repeatedly in the face?”. And I said again what I’ve found myself saying a lot recently: You have to give to get. You have to find ways to help yourself by helping others. It’s like that Zig Ziglar quote I’ve given here before: “You can have everything you want in life — if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.”
Now, I’m not talking about altruism here. Altruism is great, if you can already pay the mortgage and have time on your hands, but I’m not trying to help people just for the hell of it. What I’m talking about is synergy and mutual benefit.
I’m talking about finding ways to give people a ton of shit for free or for cheap, and to make a lot of money by doing it.
As a case study, let’s consider three scenarios:
Scenario 1: I offer a blog setup service for $100-$150. You get the hosting and domain name, and you pay me $150 on top of that to set it all up. Now really, that’s pretty cheap, and you get a blog that’s aces across the board. I’d call that “good value”.
Scenario 2: I offer a blog setup service for $39, with you still getting the hosting and domain name. I have various affiliate relationships along the way that pay me money to supplement the $39 from the client. I end up making about the same amount of cash as in #1, but the client pays less. I’d call that “a damn good deal” — for both parties involved.
Now for the really good one.
Scenario 3: I offer the same service as in #3, but now I have a 50% affiliate program. I make $19.50 from the client when someone buys, and the affiliate gets the other $19.50 just for sending him my way. I make less, but now a third party — the affiliate — is benefitting in the transaction. This person sees how easy it is to make a commission and sends a second client my way. In doing so, we all make more money, and the process repeats.
More people benefit in #2 than in #1. More people benefit in #3 than in #2. And interestingly, as more people receive more benefit, I ultimately make more money. As I get “nicer” I get richer.
Not altruism. Synergy.
And in the process, I get to receive fantastic emails like this one:
Hi Johnny,
I just wanted to let you know that I made my first affiliate sale for you today! I got the email from e-junkie and about fell out of my chair. It’s not that it’s so much money, but I’ve never made a dollar doing this before and can’t believe it actually worked! Thank you!
[Name withheld because it may be 'Elton John.' Probably not, but you never know.]
So let’s review:
• I got paid $19.50 plus my own affiliate commissions.
• My affiliate got paid $19.50 just for telling someone about me.
• The person he referred got a tricked-out new blog and primary business asset for only $39 plus hosting.
• “Elton” got all excited from having made his first affiliate sale ever, and seeing that this stuff is actually possible.
• I got an awesome feeling of having inspired and helped someone when I read his email.
• In both the client and in Elton, I got two raving fans who will eagerly refer more people to me.
I launched my affiliate program two weeks ago and I could not be happier that my affiliates are making money. Frankly, when I get a sale that isn’t an affiliate sale, I’m a little disappointed.
(And by the way, if you’re not an affiliate of mine, why are you being a dick and denying me the pleasure of sending you money? Don’t be a dick. Sign up and do what Elton did. Allow me to put money into your PayPal account. Don’t make me ask again.)
Call it Karma. Helping others will always ultimately benefit you. That’s why I did webinars and videos. It’s why, last week, I asked how I can best help you.
It’s why, based on the results of that survey, I created my first idiotically simple, step-by-step email marketing tutorial that will take you from zero to creating a list to sending a message.
I’ve fielded a ton of questions by email since I started the Learn To Be Your Own V.A. site. In a some cases, those questions have turned into paying jobs, but in most, I just answered the questions. Maybe some of those folks will comment on this post, and they’ll tell you — I just keep answering those questions without expecting anything in return. Why? Because I’m a nice guy.
What’s more — and I can say this without sullying the notion of being nice — those people may eventually need to hire someone to do something for them, or they may need a paid info product, or they may need to refer a friend. Who will they turn to? The dickhead? Or the nice guy?
Let’s take a case study in contrast, just to round things out.
A while back, before I hooked up with IttyBiz, I got interested in AdSense and decided to try out My Internet Payday on a lark (I know; I’m stupid; laugh it up). I will forever tell people never to do business with these motherfuckers because I feel they tricked me out of $97 when I demoed their service. Now, speaking technically, I was not deceived. The fine print was in fact there. However (and really, I’m not a naïve person), I trusted “the way things are done” enough to not read every tiny detail.
This was the wrong decision.
The trial was unsatisfying. I found the content that I was allowed to see redundant and uninteresting, and two weeks later, after nearly forgetting all about it, it dawned on me that I should check back in. The site at MyGooglePayday.com, which is where I had signed up, had vanished (Google bitch smacked them) and it took some sleuthing to find the new URL at My-Internet-Payday.com. When I found it, I realized that I had been converted to a $97/month membership and called customer service to cancel.
I hadn’t gotten any email at all from this company after signing up. When I asked to be cancelled and asked to get at least a pro-rated refund, they told me that I had been adequately informed and that they wouldn’t refund a cent. When I told them that the site had moved, they told me all about how they had emailed to tell me. When I told them that I hadn’t gotten any email, they told me about their tens of thousands of satisfied customers.
Now, did this company do anything illegal? No. Did they do anything that wasn’t, somewhere, explained when I signed up? No. I want to be clear about that, because I don’t want them suing me. They did not do anything illegal or technically incorrect.
But were they nice? No.
And as a result? They got my money one time, but they will never, ever get any more. What’s more, they will not get the money of any of my friends or family, and I sincerely hope that they will never get money from any IttyBiz readers. They traded $97 one time for an extremely pissed off and poisonous negative reference.
In my humble opinion, the nice model is better. You can be a good marketer and still be a cool and respectable person. You can make an online business without selling your soul and looking like a douchebag.
So are you being nice in your business? Are you being helpful, and looking for mutual benefit, for that “win-win”? If not, give it a try. You may be pleasantly surprised.
Mr Truant,
You are a rockstar blog-artist of the highest degree.
You make me chuckle and I like chuckling.
On a more serious matter, there is tea-spit on my keyboard and it’s all your fault.
There’s also some really good advice here and it is made all the more enjoyable by your modesty and funny funnyness.
I think my readers would love this. And I’m too tired to be bothered to write anything clever of my own. I’m sending them here… Please don’t take them from me for forever :-)
JJ Jalopy.
Hi Johnny,
I’d be happy to promote your product and could probably send a lot of people your way, BUT I won’t support GoDaddy and their terrible practices. They almost put a friend of mine out of business by disabling his domain names when he hadn’t done anything wrong. Long story. (You can see http://www.nodaddy.com for more info.)
So, if you decide to go with a different affiliate program, let me know. For what it’s worth, having been in the hosting industry for many years, BlueHost is probably one of the better high-commission companies — although they aren’t perfect, I’d at least rather support them than GoDaddy.
Think about it. Let me know.
-Erica
People (well, Johnny anyway) are talking about being NICE on Naomi’s site?
Jesus! I thought it was going to be MUCH noisier than this when the world came to an end!
Well I must confess that I used the phrase “win-win” during a job interview today and kept a straight face. Of course internally I was laughing insanely and wondering where they kept the fire axes.
Anyway to return to Johnny’s post:
Point #1. You are absolutely correct that they never should have remade Psycho. I once interviewed Robert Bloch who told me “Even if I write a cookbook now, the publishers will market it with screaming headlines that say ‘BY THE AUTHOR OF PSYCHO!’”.
Point #2. Uh, be nice? On purpose? And really mean it? Sincerely? PUKE! One can have a win/win marketing relationship and be wicked. Maybe be kind on occasion, but NICE?
I’m sorry but in business, you can do that soft shoe shuffle about win/win, but never ever truly be NICE.
Someone has to be in charge and if you are doing the selling and collecting the money then NICE is an optional façade but not something to practice in a business relationship. I think Johnny’s confusion is that he has interpreted offering someone a deal as being NICE. That’s not being NICE, that’s just marketing.
I will publicly admit this one time that in private I have found both Johnny and Naomi to be “nice”. Well, in Johnny’s case if he gets “not nice” just say “Cleveland Real Estate” out loud three times and he will poof away like Beetlejuice. In Naomi’s case, always maintain eye contact and never turn off or let go of the electric cattle prod. Not for an instant.
If anyone repeats that I have admitted that both Johnny and Naomi have been nice, I will have my cousin Darrell marry into your family. You’ve been warned.
It is sad to hear that Johnny got taken again. It’s becoming such a regular occurrence that he probably should just keep a jumbo sized tube of K-Y jelly in his pocket.
I want all of you to sign up to be one of Johnny’s affiliates and if possible just send him cash directly because he has two kids and a wife who goes through about a million Post-It notes a month in a vain effort to keep Johnny on course. Not the golf course, some other kind of course.
As this is Naomi’s site you should also sign up for her forthcoming Marketing for Nice People course. Come on! We need to keep Naomi and Johnny fed and well so that we can read their continuing adventures in the blogosphere!
Resuming radio silence…
Very funny. But I gotta gripe, two in fact.
1. I had to scroll down a very long way to find out who the heck wrote this post since it was clear right away it wasn’t Naomi. That gets my scrolling finger overworked.
2. Do you expect me to believe your real name is Johnny Truant?
Who are you really and what have you done with Naomi?
One more thing, I don’t believe this guy who commented has a real name like Mike Drips, either. Clearly this is some sort of scam, and I’ve signed up for Naomi and Sonia’s course just to find out the real truth… you should too.
Johnny, what about the scalability issue? Assuming it takes you a fixed amount of time to set up each client, it can’t have taken you long to “fill up your dance card.”
How are you* going about overcoming the limitations of this biz model; that fundamentally your income is finite ‘cuz your time is finite?
* I understand many/most of the ways others about the blogosphere are doing it. Just interested in yours!
You see what I mean about being NICE?
OK, Patsi just Google Michael Drips or Mike Drips and you will see that I have friggin been around FOREVER!
Do you even comprehend how difficult it is to get married when your last name is DRIPS? Granted Farrah Fawcett shouldn’t have married Lee Majors and become Farrah Fawcett-Majors when she could have married me and become Farrah Fawcett-Drips, but that’s all water under the bridge now.
And getting a date? “The guy I am going out with is a real DRIP”.
The good news is that my parents didn’t name me Peter or Richard.
So growing up with that last name, one has to develop a strong sense of humor or a willingness to punch people who make fun of you. Fortunately I took both of those paths, although I prefer the path of humor as you avoid having skinned knuckles and dealing with washing out bloodstains.
I’m letting my cousin Darrell know about this.
Patsi:
Ha, NO, I do not expect you to believe that’s my real name. I’m aghast that you haven’t been reading every word I’ve written everywhere, or you would have known I’ve admitted it to be a pseudonym to keep my “legit” employers from being tarnished by my shitty tongue. (Oh, and don’t think I didn’t laugh at the knowledge that everyone would start reading this thinking that Naomi was advocating repeatedly punching Ashton Kutcher. Not that she DOESN’T advocate it, but still. Either way, I figured the Jessica Biel reference (complete with “finally”) would ruin the illusion.)
Mike M:
This is a reasonably fast process for me once I get rolling. Rest assured that even if blog setups were my sole income, I’d get to “that’s enough money” well before I got to “that’s too much time.”
Ultimately, that’s the dilemma facing anyone in a service business. No matter how high the hourly rate, it’s still a linear relationship. Fortunately, I also have plans for more passive income streams. For instance, if you go through my very cool new email marketing tutorial ( http://is.gd/BnlT ), that should be a great win-win where the “win” on my end is affiliate commissions if people sign up for that service. I plan to FILL THE SHIT out of my site with that sort of thing. TONS of free, stupidly simple step-by-step tutorials and reports. It’ll be great for the person who wants to learn because most of it will be free, but it’ll be great for me because it will generate income (in time) without me having to lift a finger.
I’m also looking to develop:
• Alternate services (non-blog website setup, I-do-it-for-you work of various types)
• Tech consulting (probably in groups; five or so of us get on a call/webinar and you bring me your questions for me to solve)
• Affiliate training. This is in its infancy because I’m still pretty new to this, but I’m thinking I can at least develop some reports or what-not to train folks to do the affiliate thing. (You know, STARTING WITH MY OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM. In fact, here’s that link again: http://is.gd/wGx2 Sign up and tell your Uncle Fred about cheap blog setups.)
Just so everyone knows, there’s a really cool reply above this one that is in moderation. You just WAIT!
That JJ is crazy; there’s no way I’m going back to his entertaining and enjoyable blog when there’s another one here with added niceness. I think JJ is nice, but he’s never told me directly, so I say why take the chance.
Johnny (who has another name, but whatever) is definitely nice. I commented on his blog the other day, and not only did he reply with concern about my story, he also offered to help me out for free. He doesn’t know me from a hole in the universe, but he offered to help me for free.
I know how to do much of what he offered, but I did have some questions and when I asked those questions, he wrote back thoughtful, extended answers. Johnny is going to make an excellent living being a nice guy, and I’m taking a lesson from him as I start my own endeavor…figuring out what it is I have to offer and putting it out there for anyone who could use it.
Thanks, Johnny. So much.
Very nice!
I came here from JJ Jalopy’s site. He’s an ass.
My exciting long-ass comment above is still awaiting moderation. Naomi must be drunk again. Everybody stay right there on the fucking edge of your seats.
Ok, I feel like I’m diving into shark infested waters, or is that snark infested? But I have to take exception to what you wrote about altruism.
You said: “Altruism is great, if you can already pay the mortgage and have time on your hands, but I’m not trying to help people just for the hell of it.”
1. Altruism is not contradictory to earning an income. (Just don’t use me a an example of proof.)
2. (and most especially) Johnny I don’t believe you. I think you DO help people just for the hell of it and what you’ve managed to do here is just find a way to do it that also brings you income. (ref. point 1 above.) Have you read Naomi’s “What I’m really doing is saving the world” post? Same thing.
So, even thought I don’t think sainthood is in the picture, I think you have the potential to be a very good Buddhist.
We’ll take up Karma next time ;)
See, you don’t understand this disease I have. It’s called uncontrollable post-length syndrome. I was going to explain myself a bit there but it was getting too tangential.
I actually do believe in altruism. I was just trying to cover the jaded readers who would think I was claiming to want to do something for nothing. In this case, yes, I’m benefiting… and that’s all I wanted to make clear.
As to #2, I absolutely do help people for the hell of it. I just don’t base the entirety of my business around it. I want to have a structure that allows back-end benefit, but you’re right… I wouldn’t ignore someone who needed help if I saw no way to profit from it. I actually spend quite a bit of time doing that!
If I had to class myself into one philosophy, you’re right… Buddhism seems closest. I’ve read “The Art of Happiness” about ten times!
I like “uncontrollable post-length syndrome,” except that I think it should be called “uncontrollable long-post syndrome” because that way it would have the acronym ULPS which looks like the sound you make in your throat when you realize that you’ve committed an Internet faux-pas.
And, on top of all of Johnny B’s other sterling character traits (such as his continued willingness to quote me, which is a verifiable public declaration of internet love), he might have Buddhist tendencies?
::swoon::
My inner science geek is remembering the college course where I learned that primatologists (er, monkey-studiers) had created the term “reciprocal altruism” for certain behaviors of the “I’ll scratch your back now for nothing, and later you’ll be my friend when the other monkeys gang up on me” kind.
And I was all like “well, if it’s reciprocal, it’s not really altruism, is it?” But it actually *is*, because when the first back-scratching occurs, there’s no guarantee that the ganging-up-on will occur later, or ever. So that back-scratching could turn out to be totally free.
Just like Johnny’s email replies could turn out to be totally free if the people he’s helping don’t actually hire him (or refer someone to him) later. It’s still worth it for him to help people, for all the reasons he explained (that I’m probably muddying up with my monkey-love).
Not that I’m suggesting that any monkeys gang up on Johnny, oh no, of course not. And note how I’m carefully avoiding any euphemistic references to bananas.
ULPS.
I’m never going back to JJ. Did you know he’s the King of shameless self promotion and that he’s attempting world domination? Why can’t he just be nice like you?
Don Shepherd
Central Oregon Camphiker
Okay, that post is never coming out of moderation. The links are surely causing it, so I’ll remove them and repost it here:
———————
Patsi:
Ha, NO, I do not expect you to believe that’s my real name. I’m aghast that you haven’t been reading every word I’ve written everywhere, or you would have known I’ve admitted it to be a pseudonym to keep my “legit” employers from being tarnished by my shitty tongue. (Oh, and don’t think I didn’t laugh at the knowledge that everyone would start reading this thinking that Naomi was advocating repeatedly punching Ashton Kutcher. Not that she DOESN’T advocate it, but still. Either way, I figured the Jessica Biel reference (complete with “finally”) would ruin the illusion.)
Mike M:
This is a reasonably fast process for me once I get rolling. Rest assured that even if blog setups were my sole income, I’d get to “that’s enough money” well before I got to “that’s too much time.”
Ultimately, that’s the dilemma facing anyone in a service business. No matter how high the hourly rate, it’s still a linear relationship. Fortunately, I also have plans for more passive income streams. For instance, if you go through my very cool new email marketing tutorial on the LTBYOVA site, that should be a great win-win where the “win” on my end is affiliate commissions if people sign up for that service. I plan to FILL THE SHIT out of my site with that sort of thing. TONS of free, stupidly simple step-by-step tutorials and reports. It’ll be great for the person who wants to learn because most of it will be free, but it’ll be great for me because it will generate income (in time) without me having to lift a finger.
I’m also looking to develop:
• Alternate services (non-blog website setup, I-do-it-for-you work of various types)
• Tech consulting (probably in groups; five or so of us get on a call/webinar and you bring me your questions for me to solve)
• Affiliate training. This is in its infancy because I’m still pretty new to this, but I’m thinking I can at least develop some reports or what-not to train folks to do the affiliate thing. (You know, STARTING WITH MY OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM. Sign up and tell your Uncle Fred about cheap blog setups.)
As my nephews would say, I’m ROTFLOL…and Mike D., you really make me giggle. Good luck to you. Hope to see some of you on the Nice People project.
NiceTurtle.com is all about being nice to EVERYONE. Join the “Nice Movement”.
Hey fine Blog. It is much effective Later you Think about it. Increasingly valuable. Aloha.