The change has to do with how small business owners who do not service people at one location, but rather go to them, display their address in their Google Places profile. Think businesses like plumbers, painters, carpet cleaning companies, and the like.

For the longest time, Google has offered businesses like these the ability to hide their address (because lets be real, most of these folks don’t have or need actual offices) and specify a specific service area (in miles) or a list of cities or zip codes they serve.

Most small businesses didn’t pay much attention to this, and for a long time it was thought that having your address visible positively affected your rankings.

But now Google wants to require all of these types of companies to HIDE their addresses.

You can get the full scoop here.

Now, I guarantee that 99.99% of small business owners knew nothing about this policy change. Most of them are busy running their businesses and serving their customers, as they should be.

But ignoring changes such as these, especially when they involve the 800-pound gorilla of the search world, could put a strangle hold on a small business’s online marketing efforts.

In cases like this, it can pay to have somebody else looking out for you at all times.

Time Is Money
Another reason most small business owners should outsource their online marketing is to get their time back and either put it to work in their business actually servicing customers, or reinvest it in themselves by taking some time to relax, spend time with family, and recharge their batteries.

Let’s do the math. If you spent 30 minutes a day reading up about social media, blogging, copywriting, SEO, link building, and everything else that goes in to online marketing, that’s 2.5 hours a week.

Combine that with another 30 minutes a day of actually implementing what you learn and we are now talking about 5 hours a week or roughly 21.5 hours per month spent on online marketing. And anyone who has dipped their toe in the water to try and learn this stuff will tell you these are conservative estimates.

Now lets say that in your business you make $50/hour. Multiply that by the 21.5 hours you should have been doing actual billable work and you just lost out on $1,075 a month…almost $13,000 a year! That’s 2 or 3 car payments where I’m standing.

Wait, what’s that you say? You make more than $50 an hour? Well big shot, just plug your numbers into my little formula above and you’ll see the opportunity cost of managing your own online marketing efforts.

So the next time you think about building a website yourself, screwing around with Facebook and Tweeter, or trying to learn SEO, be sure to ask yourself if it’s really worth losing $13,000 when you could hire someone to handle it all for you for far less money, and have none of the headaches.

Iron Mike Tyson once said:

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.

And that’s pretty much how February went for me.

It was a month of one thing after another, and definitely things I had not planned for nor did I have any control over. I did my best to roll with the punches, but I didn’t accomplish as much as I had hoped in the learning department.

That said, the few books and topics I did have time to explore were fantastic. Here they are.

The Education of Millionaires
I spent a large part of the month reading and reflecting on Michael Ellsberg’s The Education of Millionaires: It’s Not What You Think and It’s Not Too Late.

This book is a fairly short, engaging read, but it took me a while to get all the way through it because I put a lot of thought into what I was reading and how it relates to my life.

While I might not be as successful (yet) as some of the people Michael talks about in the book, I share a similar distaste for higher education with them.

While I did go to college and get a 4-year education, I don’t use anything I learned inside the classroom in my work life. I majored in Business Management and got by with a GPA hovering around 3.0, so I wasn’t asleep all the time. But so many of the concepts and theories you learn in the classroom just don’t apply in the real world.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade those 4 years for anything…I gained some lifelong friends out of the deal…but I wish that I could say I’m able to apply what I learned in the classroom but I really can’t.

Unlike so many others, I did not have to go into debt to finance college, thanks in part to a massive first serve and some of the best hands at net south of the Mason-Dixon. But my wife is a different story. She took out student loans to get a 4-year criminal justice degree, worked in that field until we got married, quit, and does not plan to return. Meanwhile we are and will be paying on those loans for years to come. Such a smart “investment”.

People really need to think long and hard about the risk/reward proposition of going to and paying for college in an era where everything you could possibly want to learn is available at your fingertips so long as you have an internet connection. I won’t spoil the book for you as Michael lays it out far better than I ever could, but this is really a topic to ponder.

When my kids were born, we went ahead and paid for college. Our state has a program where you can either pay by the month or one lump sum and your tuition is guaranteed by the state when your child is ready to go to college. But now I’m wondering if my kids will choose to go to college, or if they even should.

As I’m finishing up a move to a new office, I’ve delayed hanging my college diploma while I ponder the question of whether that piece of paper in a frame is a symbol of something I want my own kids to aspire to or not.

Definitely check out The Education of Millionaires if you are in college, are thinking about going to college sometime in the future, or have kids that might one day go to college.

Digging Into WordPress
Last month I read Rockstar WordPress Designer. This month I read Digging Into WordPress. While “Rockstar” was strictly geared toward designers, “Digging” has something for everyone from beginners to advanced WordPress users. I myself learned a lot and this is a book I’ll be recommending to anyone who asks me about how to learn more about WordPress.

As you probably know, WordPress is always changing with new versions and updates coming out several times per year. The authors have done a good job keeping the book up-to-date with these changes, and after you buy the book, you get the updates for free which is a great deal.

I like the pdf version because there are several really good code snippets that you can copy and paste, but there is also a print version of the book that is not always available but I might pick up a copy to have as a desk reference the next time printed copies are available for sale.

The book is in color, and has more than 400 pages covering everything from the background of what WordPress is, to setting up WordPress, and make the most of your projects and websites. Definitely check it out if you do even a fair amount of work involving WordPress.

CSS Tutorial from w3schools.com
Last month I talked about starting the Code Year course by Code Academy. I got pretty far behind in the course but I think one of the main reasons I got behind and lost interest was because the course was about javascript which I just don’t use very much.

CSS, on the other hand is another matter, especially with all the work I do with WordPress. So this month I transitioned to learning about CSS and right now I’m going through the free course at w3schools.com.

Some of it is stuff I already know having worked with CSS for a while now, but I’m still finding the course interesting and I’m making much more progress here than I was in the javascript course.

O.k., that’s it for February. A month I’m glad to put behind me! Here’s to hoping March will be a whole lot better and more conducive to learning.

The goal of Flagler Beach First is to:

provide an effective method for Flagler Beach businesses to promote each other and to educate residents and visitors alike about the importance of purchasing products and services from businesses in Flagler Beach First!

I was happy to take on this project in support of their cause. Here’s how I did it.

The first steps were to secure hosting and install WordPress, of course.

One of my favorite WP themes for projects that, for whatever reason, don’t start off perfectly defined is Canvas by WooThemes.

WooThemes does have a theme specific to building directories such as this called Listings, but I prefer the flexibility of Canvas, especially since this is a project I will eventually turn over to the organization to manage themselves.

After installing Canvas and getting the design set how we wanted it, I needed a way for local Flagler Beach business owners to submit their business information to be put into the site.

Gravity Forms to the rescue.

Using my favorite WordPress contact form plugin, I built a simple form that when submitted gets sent to the person at FBF who is responsible for reviewing and approving each submission, and also copied to me.

The form includes business name, address, description, website, category selection, etc. and also allows the business owner to upload a logo or photo to include in their listing.

Posts saved as "Draft" by Gravity Forms

When the business owner hits “Submit” on the form, Gravity Forms auto-magically creates a new post which gets saved as a Draft in WordPress. After review, FBF tells me whether the submission is approved, approved with changes, or declined for whatever reason and I publish or delete the post.

Right now I copy and paste the details from the email notification, add some style, link the post up to their website and/or Google Places listing if they have one, and insert the logo or photo they submitted. It’s kind of clunky but really, we’re talking about 2-3 minutes of work.

I understand that the Post Fields feature of Gravity Forms could pull more of the weight and add the image and some other fields to the post itself, but right now, considering the wide ranging quality of logos/images being submitted (I usually have to edit them in some way shape or form before publishing them) its just easier to go the path I have chosen.

Hacking the “Find a Business” Page

It may not look like it, but the Find a Business page is actually an “Archives” page. FBF wanted a list of businesses in alphabetical order running down the left hand side of the page, and a list of business categories (again in alphabetical order) running down the right.

To achieve the alphabetical list of businesses I used this code inserted in the appropriate place:

wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&type=alpha&order=ASC');
?>

For the life of me and even with a little help from the awesome WooThemes support forum, I could not figure out how to get a second column going with the list of categories. Rather than fight this battle I just added a Category widget to this page and styled it to match the list of business names. I think it turned out looking pretty good:

And here’s the finished product:

Flagler Beach First promotes the website in a variety of ways, and the site has been written about by all the local newspapers. Reaction from business owners has been positive and the site now has over 75 businesses listed.

If you’d like to inquire about having a similar site built, or just have a question about this particular project, feel free to contact me.

Pat Flynn comes to mind.

Now, I’m not quite as comfortable as some other people when it comes to sharing my monthly income. But what I would like to do throughout 2012 is explore a new genre of post type: The Monthly Learning Report.

My two themes for 2012 are “Learning” and “Earning” so this jives perfectly. Chris Brogan said to pick 3 words for 2012, but I’m the consummate underachiever, so what can I say?

Why document my learnings?

Two reasons:

1) To hold myself accountable, and

2) To reinforce what I’ve learned throughout the month. So often we take the time to read a book or take a course or listen to a podcast and when its through we scramble to find the next one without ever applying what we learned or taking the time to let it really sink in.

I’m hoping this new practice each month will help change that.

What am I going to learn?

Some of the topics I’m going to focus on at the start of the year are coding, WordPress, Facebook (pages for business and ads), Google+, consulting (as a business model), and more. This list of topics will evolve and grow as the year progresses.

I’m using Evernote to store my notes and keep track of everything I learn each month, and I’m enjoying how powerful and flexible it is. More on that in a future post.

Ready to get started? Here goes nothing!

Brand Against The Machine

I actually started reading John Morgan’s book Brand Against The Machine in December but it spilled over into January so I’m including it here.  What I liked about this book is that I feel like I could share it with just about any small business owner and they would instantly “get it” and feel compelled to take certain actions to improve their business.

There’s no high-brow theory or wild ass guesses about where branding is going in the future. This is stuff pulled either from actual experience or observation that can and should be put into use today. It is essentially what works in helping businesses (and people) build their brand.

BATM is broken down into 61 chapters each focusing on a different aspect of your brand. In addition to being practical, its also a fast and entertaining read. John does a great job of making his points while keeping the reading light. Everyone should pick up a copy and give one to their business owner friends.

Google+ for Business

Only Chris Brogan could take on the task of writing an authoritative book on a brand new social network still in its infancy. I think he knocked it out of the park.

I’ll admit I tried to ignore Google+ as long as possible. Who wants/needs another social network to maintain?

But after panda-monium hit and it was made clear that like it or not Google+ would be a big part of Google’s search results going forward, I decided it was time to stop ignoring it.

Google+ for Business tells you why you should be using Google+, how to set up your profile, how to circle people, how to get people to circle you, what types of content to share when and for what result, and more. Sure, some of the details may change over time as Google+ matures, but I think the basics are all here for you.

But what I thought was most valuable is that you get to watch Chris basically starting from scratch on a new social network and building up his following and influence.

Most people look at a guy who has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and they think, the guy must just be famous or lucky or both. Truth is, it didn’t happen overnight.

In Google+ for Business you learn the tactics and strategies that Chris used to build his follower count, and watch first hand as he uses them to do the same on Google+.

Final verdict: Even if you think Google+ is not for you, read it. Chris might just change your mind.

Rockstar WordPress Designer

I’ve had this book on my reading list for quite some time now and I finally got around to reading it last month.

It’s less about the nuts and bolts of WordPress and more about the practical application of building a theme from the ground up. The book walks you through building three projects: a blog theme, a portfolio theme, and a general site theme. The book comes bundled with the PSD, HTML, and CSS files that you’ll need to use.

While I didn’t build the actual projects, just following along with them in the book was enough for me to learn what I set out to learn. For example, I’ve always wondered how a design goes from a PSD to a live WordPress site, and now I have a much clearer understanding of that process.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to the everyday small business owner using WordPress, but its definitely for someone interested in learning how to customize their WordPress site to the fullest, or someone wanting to build their own custom themes.

There is a 2nd installment titled “Rockstar WordPress Designer 2” that I may read in February or March. This one picks up where the first left off and talks about topics like widgets and custom post types, which may have a practical application for me in a consulting project I’m involved with these next few months.

Code Year by Codeacademy

Having at least a basic understanding of how to code is becoming more important and more valuable of a skill in the marketplace. I do not see this trend slowing down.

As an example, Facebook puts all new engineers – even managers who will not be responsible for writing a single line of code – through a program called Bootcamp where they learn the Facebook codebase.

I know enough HTML and CSS to be dangerous, but beyond that I feel like my skills are very weak in the coding department, so I’m looking forward to building those skills up in 2012.

Code Year basically sends you a new lesson every week for you to complete at your own pace. I’ve admittedly fallen a few wekks behind in the program but I’ve got some travel for consulting gigs coming up and plan to use the downtime between meetings to catch up.

Make More Money With Facebook Ads

I’ve been using Facebook ads the past couple months to drive awareness and engagement for a few of my books and I can’t believe how well it’s working. The main reason it has worked so well is because I’m dealing with VERY targeted markets, in some cases I know down to the zip code who will likely be receptive to my ads.

Rick Mulready’s ebook has helped me dial in my campaigns even further by tweaking my images, headlines, and ad copy. Its’s a great book for both new Facebook advertisers as well as those with experience already.

And all it will cost you is an email address. Check it out.

January Is A Wrap

All in all January was a great month for me as far as quantity and quality of learning goes and I think it set me up with some great ideas and momentum for cruising into February and the rest of the year.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you back next month!

Wishlist Member, Amember, and Cart66 are just a few that immediately come to mind.

But these plugins come at a cost, and offer features and functionality that most small business owners simply don’t need and will never use. Each of these membership plugins also have a considerable learning curve associated with them, not to mention the upfront cost, and usually, on-going charges for support.

But what if you run a small business and simply want to give clients access to a protected area of your website where they can access “customers only” documents or other media?

Today I’d like to share with you how you can do just that with a few free WordPress plugins.

Here Are The Plugins You’ll Need:

- Members
- Custom Registration Link
- Peter’s Login Redirect
- Login Logo

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugins I listed above, you’ll want to go to the settings for each and make a few changes. But first, go to Settings >> General >> and make sure you check the box in the “membership” line next to “Anyone can register”.

Now on to setting up the plugins.

Members – This is a user, role, and content management plugin for controlling permissions and access. After enabling the plugin in the settings, you can also create a custom error message for users that don’t have permission to view the protected pages/content. Obviously in this custom message you should include a link where they could navigate to learn more about how/why to join.

Once enabled, this plugin creates an input panel with checkboxes and you need to check those boxes on posts/pages you wish to protect like so:

Custom Registration Link – This plugin lets you modify the registration link of your WordPress website. This will result in greatly reduced spam registrations. The default WP registration link is “www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php?action=register” and is heavily targeted by spam-bots. This plugin will change this link to another one and make the old one invalid.

Once you’ve activated this plugin, go to the general options and put in a new url for your registration page.

Peter’s Login Redirect – This plugin let’s you redirect subscribers to a particular page/post after they log in. Pretty self-explanatory here but you want to make sure you are sending subscribers to a central page to act as sort of their membership “hub” allowing them to them jump off to other protected content.

Login Logo – This plugin allows you to use your own logo on the WordPress login page. Here’s an example:

This keeps your customers from getting confused, especially if they aren’t exactly tech savvy. Many people don’t know what WordPress is, so this helps out in that regard. They’ll see your logo on the registration and login pages and know they are in the right place.

That’s pretty much it. When you want to give a customer access to your Member’s Only page, just send them the link to your registration page.

You may also want to put a link to your Members/Customers Only page somewhere in your website navigation or in the footer.

I should also note that you could accomplish the same thing I have with a number of other plugin combinations. The above combination just happens to be the mix I am using for one particular project, and it has not failed me yet.

Good luck!

WordCamp Orlando was held at the UCF Rosen School of Hospitality Management. I actually happened to be staying with my family at the Hard Rock Hotel a few miles down the road before hitting the parks and holiday parade at Universal, so the timing couldn’t have been any better.

WordCamp tickets were only $20 and included a t-shirt, lunch, open bar reception, and other goodies. Some of the sponsors had pretty amazing giveaways for attendees. (I’m looking at you, WP Engine.)

My ticket was actually comped by my hosting company, ZippyKid, who was also a sponsor. Thanks again guys!

So, because of family obligations in the afternoon, I was only able to partake in the morning sessions. There were two tracks, a “publisher” track and a “developer” track. I chose to sit in on the publisher sessions and the three sessions I got to see did not disappoint.

The first session was called “Designing your brand through user experience”. Dan Maccarone provided some good insight into the topic and showed several real life examples of how design could both help, and potentially hurt your brand.

The next session was “UCF’s use of WordPress as a CMS”. This session was great because I get the question a lot from clients about “Why should I choose WordPress over other website platforms?”. Matthew Vaccaro and Justin Sisley gave a great presentation on how they researched the various platforms available and why they ultimately chose to build UCF Medical School’s new website using WordPress. The slides from this presentation are embedded below and are well worth a look.

The final session of my time at WordCamp Orlando was titled “WordPress in the Newsroom”. In this presentation Ibrahim Madha talked about how Salon.com uses WordPress. It was great to see how a really big website like Salon.com had modified the dashboard and editor to meet their unique publishing needs. Ibrahim hinted that some of the plugins the Salon.com team had built in-house might be released to the public in the near future, which would be awesome to see.

I wish I had been able to stay for more sessions but the presentations I was able to watch made me even more excited about WordPress as a platform. Not to mention the fact that being among 100+ other WordPress junkies makes you realize what a great community WordPress has created.

I’m looking forward to my next WordCamp in the near future!

An education derived from TV, Magazine, and Bill Board advertisements.

It’s a concept (an art, perhaps) that I think you’ll be exposed to and see a lot more of in the future. Teaching sells. Not only does it sell, but it spreads too. You’re more inclined to pass along an ad to your friends that teaches them something cool, more so than just any ‘ol regular ad.

Look at this JC Penney ad in the June/July 2011 issue of Esquire Magazine:

Rather than just saying “Hey, check out this suit…buy this suit.”, they included a teaching element in the ad…a pocket guide to playing blackjack. This does a few things for them.

For one, it makes the ad more memorable. It stands out because unlike most of the other ads they aren’t just saying “Hey, check out this suit…buy this suit.”

They’ve also given you, the reader, something of value. This is the Law of Reciprocity at work – I give you something, you feel more compelled to give me something.

There’s also something to be said for putting the reader in the right frame of mind, picturing themselves in a casino perhaps with that suit on.

Now, I think they could have made the ad a little better by showing the model actually in a casino. And if that were the case, maybe a darker color suit would have been good too. I think these two slight changes would have been a better fit with the blackjack guide, but hey, somebody’s getting paid the big bucks for a reason. What do I know.

But all in all its a great example of aducation in the wild. Everyone wanting to get more clients and customers should find ways to employ the art of aducation.

Despite the fact that I get so many coupons from them, I never seem to be able to scrounge one up when I’m thousands of miles overdo and REALLY need that oil change. My fault, not theirs. But funnily enough, at that point in time, I usually rationalize putting it off until I get another coupon. This hurts both me (well, my car) and them.

So when I received the most recent email from them which contained a QR code, I immediately thought:

Cool, I’ll scan this and it will take me to their mobile app or at a minimum their Google Places page where I’ll always be able to put my hands on a coupon when I need it. Mu-ha-ha-ha.

No such luck. The QR code takes you to their Facebook page which doesn’t really have any useful content besides pictures of all of their locations throughout the state. This is a prime example of how not to use QR codes in your marketing.

Perhaps it would have been a little better if they’d said where the QR code would lead to, such as “Scan this code to Like Us On Facebook”. And certainly some more enticing content should be posted on their wall if they want visitors to convert into Likes.

If I were handling the mobile strategy for this company, I’d build a simple mobile app listing all of the locations, phone numbers, and hours of operations; a page with some tips to get better gas mileage or extend the life of your oil; a coupon of course (which they could change out easily based on the current offers they’re running); and maybe even a place for me to subscribe to SMS messages from them so they can alert me when they’ve got a REALLY great deal running.

It would probably cost them less than $1,000 to have this app built and maybe a couple hundred bucks a year to maintain it. A drop in the bucket compared to what they’re spending in the newspaper and on direct mail. But I guarantee it would pay off in both customer loyalty and customer frequency.

This is a funny video from Scott Stratten titled “The Problem with QR Codes”

The sport consumed me. Whether it was baseball season or not, I could be found practicing my hitting, throwing balls onto the roof and catching them as they rolled off, or pitching to my mom or dad in the backyard. If I wasn’t playing baseball, I was watching it, following the Braves in the days of Bob Horner and Dale Murphy.

I played short stop and pitcher. Because of all the work I put into it, I was on the All-Star team every year except maybe my first.

One year, because I was such a good pitcher, I was asked to move up to a higher level league with kids that were a year or two older than me to play. Despite the age difference, and playing with kids bigger and stronger than myself, I was still in the top 3 pitchers in that league.

When it came time for All-Star team selection, I was shocked and disappointed to learn that I could not be on the All-Star team that year because I was not old enough. Looking back, I guess when you’re 11 or 12, you don’t quite understand things like that.

I was so upset that I vowed to quit playing baseball. I just thought that being left off the team because of my age was so unfair, and besides, I had recently found a new passion in tennis.

Coaches, not just my own coach but others from around the league, visited with me at my home and tried to convince me to reconsider. I was a stubborn kid and wouldn’t hear it.

I never played baseball again. It’s one of the biggest regrets I have in life. A fine example of what I like to call “Little League thinking”.

The only reason I’m writing this is because I think there are a couple lessons here that I hope my own kids can learn from:

#1: Don’t let other people’s rules determine your future. I let one silly rule make the decision for me that I was not going to play baseball again. What if I had stuck it out and come back next year more determined and driven by my anger? Would I have been an even better pitcher? You bet. Who knows how far I might have gone in the sport.

#2: The younger you are, the more you need to listen and at least consider the words of people older than you, especially when you know they are just trying to look out for you. Looking back, this was true when I was 12, and it’s still true as I write this today at the age of 32.

Lead generation is an often overlooked but very profitable way to monetize a niche site. Most commonly, niche sites are monetized with Adsense, affiliate links, and even some private ad sales. While Adsense and affiliate links work to a certain extent, it can be tough for a fairly new or even well established niche site to get interest from private advertisers.

I’ve used lead generation to overcome this on some of my niche sites, and my income from lead generation now surpasses what I bring in from Adsense and affiliate links.

I first became aware of lead generation after reading this Shoemoney post a few years ago. Now, the type of lead generation Jeremy suggests is slightly different than what I’m describing here in that his strategy involves building a site for one particular business or client, whereas what I’m going to talk about below involves using your existing niche site to generate leads for a variety of businesses or clients. But I definitely tip my hat to his post which turned the light on in my head regarding the possibilities of lead generation.

The Basics
My simplistic definition of lead generation is gathering someone’s contact information and selling it to someone else for a fixed fee. You could say that its similar to affiliate marketing, but usually with affiliate marketing you are paid on conversion, meaning someone has to actually purchase before you get paid. Not so with lead generation. Companies simply pay you for the lead, then the onus is on them to convert that lead into a sale.

For example, I have niche sites about retirement communities. I know…contain your excitement. It just happens to be a topic I’m extremely familiar with, so it works for me. My website visitors are looking for information on the communities available to them, so in a nutshell, I collect their contact info., send it to the community for a fee, and the community sends them more information and gets in touch with them to try and make a sale.

You can learn a lot more about the basics behind lead generation from Shoemoney’s post I linked to above. When I was just starting out I also purchased and learned a lot from Chad Frederiksen’s Local Lead Plan. Local Lead Plan is definitely geared toward working with local businesses and building sites specifically for them, but I am applying a lot of what I learned in that course to my niche site lead gen activities. There are also some sample contracts provided in the course that I have put to good use when signing up new clients.

The Approach
Email is the quickest way to get your proposal out to several businesses for consideration. Here’s a rough email template that I’ve had success with. Feel free to use/modify it to fit your niche:

XXXXX,

Hope the new year is off to a great start for you.

I wanted to run a unique idea by you. I own the website, xxxxxxxxx.com and most of my website visitors are looking for more information about communities just like yours.

In addition to traditional advertising options, I also offer a “pay for performance” lead plan.

Here’s how it works:

If someone wants more information I have them fill out a form (name address, email, phone, etc.) which is then forwarded to you (or the sales office) to follow-up.

I charge $XX for any lead sent. Currently there are XX communities listed there now and they are getting around XX-XX leads per month.

The model works great because you only pay for actual leads sent, not “clicks” or “impressions” that end up being of little value to you.

My question is, would this type of model be of interest to you guys?

Would you be willing to test out the concept over the next month? I wouldn’t ask for payment for any leads sent the rest of this month. This would give you a chance to test it out and see if the leads are worth it to you.

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,
Ryan

Direct Mail has also been good to me for getting new clients signed on. I usually send a two page letter, the first being an introductory note introducing myself/my site and the 2nd page goes into the details of my lead generation program. Here’s an example of what I send:

Download sample letter

Now, I just send this in a standard #10 envelope, but if you want to step up your game you might consider sending your letters out priority mail to get a little more attention.

You may also want to test who you send it to in an organization. Sometimes I send it to the owner of the business, and sometimes I address it to the “Director of Marketing”. I’m still trying to figure out what works best.

Initial Offer
You’ll hopefully start to get some call or emails from interested businesses. If this is your first time doing lead generation and don’t have any prior results to share, you might consider letting them test out your program for a few weeks for free or at a reduced rate. Be sure to cap their trial at a set number of leads. This will give them a chance to determine the quality of the leads you’re sending, and assuming all is well, you’ll have no problem convincing them to participate long term.

After you have a few clients running in your lead gen program, you should use your best judgement as to whether to offer a free or reduced trial to convert new prospects. In most case you can just reference the success others are having and more or less say “take it or leave it”.

Collecting and Distributing Leads
I use Wufoo to create forms to collect and distribute leads. I like it because it keeps track of all leads that come through the system and notifications of new leads can be automatically sent to me and the business I’m promoting.

The more information you collect from the visitor, the more valuable your lead will be to the business paying you for the lead. I require all my leads to include name, mailing address, phone number and email address. In my mind, and in the mind of the communities I work with, if someone is willing to give up all that contact info. they are a serious prospect. Much more so than say, someone who provides a fake name and a throw-away email address.

You’ll have to figure out what works best for you and the companies you choose to work with.

Landing Pages
I try to keep the landing pages that my lead gen forms appear on as simple as possible. I use the “full width” page template so users don’t get distracted by links or ads in the sidebar. I’ve still got the regular header/navigation on the page though, so I’m sure I lose some conversions because of that. But most of my forms average between 20 and 30% conversion.

I’ve tested having just the form vs. a few pictures with a description of the information they will receive then the form and have found that the pictures and description version seems to convert better. I also include some “trust signals”, letting people know that their information will only be shared with the company they want information about. Here’s what one of my lead gen pages looks like:

I’ve thought about trying a landing page service like unbounce to test whether having a dedicated page increases conversion. The issue is that this would take visitors away from my site which I’m not too keen on. I’m interested to see what Brian “Copyblogger” Clark’s Premise ends up providing, as at first glance it seems like it might be useful for building lead gen pages in WordPress.

Maximize the Opportunity
There are a few steps you can take to maximize the number of people seeing and filling out your lead forms. Here are a few ideas that have worked for me.

On-site
You want to highlight and make your lead gen forms more noticeable to visitors to entice them to take action and fill one (or more) forms out. I have links to lead gen forms where appropriate on my site based on the business and their location, but I also have a “Featured” page that lists all of them. After reading this article over at DIY Themes I’ve recently started using a Hello-Bar on my site which links to my “Featured” page and so far it seems to be working well.

You could also try a sidebar ad, a banner ad, or an ad at the end of your posts promoting your “Featured” page or individual lead gen forms.

Newsletter/auto-responder
One of the best things I’ve done to increase the amount of leads is to add each business individually as an auto-responder message to my newsletter subscribers. Because I have several clients I’m generating leads for, I have to be careful to spread these out, and be sure to intersperse them with pure content messages. This isn’t difficult, and even the messages that promote these businesses are seen as valuable content by my readers. I rarely get a spam complaint from these messages.

PPC
Most niche site owners don’t promote their sites via PPC. Since most niche sites are monetized with Adsense, it doesn’t make a whole lot of business sense to buy clicks from Google just to sell them right back to Google. But with lead generation, it’s different since you have the opportunity to buy clicks for much less than what your pay out per lead is. Just make sure you have your pages dialed in and converting at a rate you’re comfortable with before going down this road or you could lose your shirt.

Getting Paid
On the first of every month I send my clients an invoice for all of the leads that were sent in the previous month. I use Freshbooks for this because it allows clients to easily pay online through PayPal or credit card, and I can also schedule late payment reminders to go out at set intervals (I use 5, 10, and 15 days) to clients who are slow to pay.

Most of my clients pay online but I do have a few that have to have a check cut by their accounting department and send to me via snail mail.

Advancing the Relationship
After clients see success from all the leads you’ve sent them, it makes it a lot easier to discuss other ways that they can put their business in front of your readers through banner ads, newsletter or e-book sponsorships, and the like.

It also makes it easier to approach other businesses to advertise on your site when you have a few “wins” under your belt that you can reference.

You now have a basic understanding of what lead generation is and how it can increase the profitability of your niche site, how to approach and land new clients, how to collect and distribute the leads, and how to get paid and advance the relationships you build with these clients.

The next step is to put it all into action. I’m interested to hear about your success, so drop back by sometime and leave a comment about your experiences with it.

Good luck!