Catharsis of the Bogue

Oddities, Profundities, Profanities and Dad Stuff

Tag: money

Time is up! *&%$ or get off the pot!

May 27, 2014 / / 6 Comments

Well folks the time is here and I don’ tknow if my ass is getting worn out yet or it is just the chair.  It has been 5 full months now that I have been posting on this blog and playing around.  I am getting ok traffic and it is time to start charging for each blog post!

No of course I am kidding.  My posts on here and for fiction Saturday will be free forever.  But today I want to talk about money and how to separate people from it.  I have been listening to Nathan Hangen’s podcasts in bulk lately and he has inspired me to get something going now.

What I am looking for today is some input.  The time has arrived that the new baby is imminent and I need to get some cash in to cover the bills.  I am trying to come up with a product that is not just another e-book for people to file away in the dusty recess of their hard drive and never read.  I have too many of those myself.  I want something to make people say, “Yea, that is good.  Hey Steve, have you seen this?”

So here is a question.  I want to ask something like what do you think of a stay at home dad membership site or mentoring thing but then I think how many stay at home dads are out there that actually would be willing to pay money for a site like that?  Maybe an ebook would be better.

I have a couple of books that I am working on, but one is fiction and one is about my daughters kidney disease.  I keep trying to figure out what exactly I have to offer besides writing, that people would be interested in.  I haven’t started yet, but I am going to have audio versions of my fiction stuff available in the near future and I don’t see how I could charge for those, at least until the ebook comes out.

Anyone need a partner for a JV?

So, any ideas that people need tackled?  I am just confused again at what kind of a product that I can offer that will be of value to people.  I am not sure now what is important to share.  I am working on a groovy workbook for kids on roadtrips.  That will be a good one to get out.

Anyhow, what do you guys think?  I expect comments on this one folks!

until later

Justin

Get Over Here and Give Me Your Money!

September 26, 2013 / / 4 Comments

You can spend less than 5 minutes on the net and fill your inbox with tons of  “click here to make millions on the internet” links.  There are so many different make money things and free reports and how to grow your readership ebooks out there that you could literally spend the rest of your life (would be short, I predict a stroke on day 4) reading nothing but how to get traffic and give things away for free.

I know every one of you reading this is nodding your head because it is true and you have done the same thing.  Many of these programs are from A-list bloggers too.  I know that is how they make their money.  It is proven to work.  Can I do it?  I don’t know if I want to get to that point.  I have gigabytes of ebooks all dedicated to this.

A question here, if the point is for these guys to make money, how can they give away so much stuff for free?  Granted, most of the money they make is from using the free stuff as a teaser and selling memberships or upgrades.  But still, there is enough free stuff to choke several small camels and still fill up pages and pages on my site.

I have 2 case studies.  I have not really done anything with these money makers yet but I want to chronicle these.  The first one I purchased several years ago in a round about way.  I saw this program either on the internet or on tv and ordered the “demo” cd-rom.  Only pay for postage order the whole thing if you want right?  Well I was wrong.  They took the shipping charge and sent me the whole kit (valued at some ridiculous price like $495).  There was a trial period and then send it back.  I called to send it back  so I wouldn’t be charged for it.  At the time I didn’t know the Marketing ploy.

You call to return the product, you get a special deal for $197, then $97, then $47, then $27, then $17!  Now this program was not bad so I ponied up the $17 and that was that.  I am sure that the program cost at least that much to make the cd’s and print the book.  I have often wondered why?  this guy was willing to get a darn near $0 return on investment so his product can be out there.  How many people take the special $97 or even $47 deal and he is ahead.

Fast forward to last week.  I was looking into a program to use affiliate links and some Resale rights stuff to be supplemental to my books I want to sell on the site.  The program was all online downloads, you guys have seen them.  Price $497 value for $97!  Not for me that time.  Try to close the window, wait special deal, $47!  Nah.  Try to close the window, $37!  This was turning into an auction, I decided to see how low it would go.  I ended up at $7.  I bought it for that and I may never use everything that is included.  For the price of a Subway sandwich and a drink, I can make money.

The really annoying thing about this site, after I had bought my basic members access, there were literally 20 pages of sales copy trying to get me to upgrade.  All of this before I even saw the program bits that I bought.  Now, there was not printing or duplicating costs with this program but there was a ton of time invested in putting all of those pages together and he was willing to get $7 for it.

The lesson that I learned from these products is have a minimum price and then jack it up 1400%.  Then don’t be afraid to drop it down to sell it.  With this model my fiction ebooks will be $130 to start.  The hard part I think is to get people to click the item initially.

How do you pick and choose what to read, keep, or get for free?  Will the book help me?  Will I actually read it? Why is this person giving me a free book?  It is all to make cash somewhere.  I am not going to be running things like that though.  I will start with a cheap price that will go up to a static price after X amount of books are sold.  And I am going with the paypal buttons to start.  Way too much time wasted messing with the shopping cart program right now.  Thanks for all of your input on that.

I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!  Also, my first Newsletter will be going out on St. Patricks Day, Sign up here!

Until Later!

Justin

Moving Forward In The Third Month

September 5, 2013 / / 4 Comments

Today I did more than just talk.  I actually started putting together my first ebook that will be for sale!  It needs some major rewrite and some edit to avoid copyright infringement but it is not going to be bad.

Sneak, Sneak preview for loyal readers, It is a beginners guide to Fly Fishing.  I should write something about how to type on a keyboard that only half works.  I digress yet again, soon I will have an ebook for sale.

I have a good feeling about starting this part of the adventure.  I am also going to edit my Saturday fiction into saleable ebooks as well.  Now I have to keep pumping out content and getting people over here to read!

If anyone has any ideas or feedback I am listening.  I have been watching James get ready to monetize his blog and, since that is one of my goals as well, I figured I would start a product out and go from there.  Will it be successful?  I sure hope so.  Will it be worth it?  Definitley.  Will I get a keyboard that has a working shift, m, y, v and q key?  I hope so but it takes a while to get from Hong Kong.

This post is not very long, I am getting worn out redoing our basement.  At least it will look good when it is done.  I hope my blog can look good and just be “done” except for posts for a while at least.  In that vein, I am going to beg for feedback.  Is there anything on my site that is just annoying?  Is it hard to read?  How is navigation?  Too much stuff, not enough stuff?  Looks ok as 2 month old blogs go, it will grow out of the baby fat?

How is Saturday fiction?  Too long?  To short?  A waste of your time to read?  Can’t wait for the ebook to come out?  (tip anyone on my mailing list will get advance notice when I release the ebooks.  so far I only have 1 subscriber.  And it is me to keep track of how it works!  That sounds really pathetic.  It is times like this when I remind myself that my blog is only 2 months old.  And this rambling makes me realize that I need to go to bed.

Funny how a short post still managed to hit almost 400 words.  I am getting better.

Thanks for indulging me, Please leave your comments if the mood strikes!

Thanks, Justin

What they never tell you about making money online.

July 2, 2013 / / 11 Comments
Shopping cart.
Image via Wikipedia

It is simple to read a ton of stuff on the net about making money online.  It is easy to start trying but they don’t tell you actually how hard it is to do “things” right.

There is information about how much work it takes, you do have to look for it.  Many of the people who actually make a great living online work their butts off.

Now, I have been around the blogosphere for a while now, almost 7 months.  I have seen so many make money quick things out there that I can spot a sales pitch in about 12 words.  I have taken steps to try and make sure anything I sell doesn’t sound like those.  As of right now, I have nothing but one fiction ebook to sell.

This weekend I have been working on 2 of my sites that I hope to be making money with right away so that I can write more books.  And more fiction.  I am really trying to create products and interest in what I have to offer.  I am even working on a free ebook for my mail list subscribers and new subscribers, to be released soon.

The other sites I am working on are: First, BrendasQuiltShop.com.  This site I keep calling my wifes, and while it bears her name, and her stuff, it is more of a family business that I do the sales and web stuff for.  We used to have everything up on eBay and we sold some stuff over the years on eBay.  Details are on brendasquiltshop.com.

I decided that eBay was just too expensive to pay listing fees and final value fees for what we have sold.  I try to price stuff with what I think people will pay, that doesn’t leave much profit after the fees.  So I dug into the world of WordPress and integrated a shopping cart that I can list everything we have for sale and sell it myself.  If you get a chance, check it out and send me some feedback about anything I can do better on that site.

The second site that I have been working on is my main business site, AnvilForge Limited.  I am not going to link to it today, it is not finished to where I need it to be.  There is a bunch of copy that I need to write on the about page, and the sales pages, promoting wordpress installs and web maintenance as well as my blogs.

One of these days I will figure out how to write about being a Stay at home dad in a way that will make people want to pay for the privelege of reading it.  I am working on something with real value and not a bunch of worthless info that will sit on someones hard drive and slowly degrade into mediocrity.  Sure, I will have the original investment but I feel strongly about repeat customers and not turning into one of those guys who just sells systems that don’t really help.

So there you are, what they don’t tell you about making money is that it is hard work.  Sitting back and letting money drop on your head is not going to happen.  Yet.   Thanks for reading, I have to get back to work.

Still striving to never work for anyone again,

-Justin

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