Who Else Wants to Make Money from Social Media?

Hi there. I suppose since this is a guest post, I should start with a little introduction. I’m Tim Woodin, and I’m going to talk about how to use social media to make money.

Firstly though, let me give you a bit of background info. About five years ago, I created a course on copywriting. I set up a simple website with a sales page, a blog, and not a lot else. Most of the marketing was done offline through classified ads in niche publications, and I made a tidy sum of money. Fast forward about two years or so, and I started playing around with social media. I learned new ways to drive traffic, how to filter out the good and lose the bad, and so on. Since then, I’ve created several other products, and bought licences to many others. Today, I run a very successful business, and over the past five years, I’ve made a little over £7,000,000 online, with about 85% of that being profit.
So that’s why you should listen to what I’ve got to say. And now I’ll get on with saying it.

Why I’m a Millionaire and You’re Not

When you get right down to it, making money isn’t that hard. The formula runs something like this:

• Create a product, with low manufacturing and distribution costs, but high perceived value
• Write great sales copy, or get some written for you. Then create a site, put the copy up, and hook up PayPal
• Drive lots of targeted traffic to it, and either get the products shipped by a fulfillment house, or do it yourself
• Lather, rinse, repeat

It really is that simple. However, there are a few common pitfalls:

1. People don’t know or can’t be arsed to create an awesome product that matches those criteria
2. They can’t write great copy, or they think they can but they can’t, and
3. They don’t know how to drive traffic

With that in mind, I thought I’d take some time to show you how social media can solve each of those problems.

Creating a Product With Social Media

There’s a wonderful thing about social media. The key to it is in the name: social. All social media is, is content that people share because it’s interesting or useful. And that gives you the key to just about everything you need to know.
If you’re stuck for how to create a product, there’s a simple way to get some inspiration, which we’re going to walk through now step by step.
Firstly, think for a minute about what you do for a living, what your hobbies are and what you’re passionate about. These are the things you’ll find it easiest to write on, because a. you probably know quite a lot about them, and b. you’d probably find it fairly easy to create a product around them once you know what to do. There’s also a third advantage, but we’ll come to that in a minute.
Next, write down a list of those things, and any seminars you’ve attended, or courses you’ve bought, or websites that you visit in relation to them. Next, write down any products or items you’ve bought that are connected to them. Once you’ve got that done, you’ll know where you’ve spent your money for those things, and where other people are likely spending their hard earned cash too.
Finally for this bit, next to each of those things, write down why you paid for each particular item. What gap did it fill, what knowledge did it give you? How did it help you? Now you know why people buy.

Writing Great Copy With Social Media

So, you know what people spend their money on, so you can create a product. I won’t go into that here, but I will be doing a guest blog on it in a few days, so follow my twitter feed for updates. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to get some killer copy down, to get people to buy.
This is slightly more tricky, as there’s a definate art to writing great copy, and whilst you can learn a lot from guys like Copyblogger and Michel Fortin, there is a factor of practise involved in writing great copy. The simple truth is it takes time, and the more you write, the better you’ll become at it.
That said, if you can write good copy already, here’s how to find the hooks that your audience will respond to.
Firstly, go check out Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, and any similar sites for the industry you’ve picked (so for instance if you’re creating a webdev product, you’d go to DZone). There you’ll be able to see what content communities, both broad and niche are responding to. Look at what’s going hot, and analyse why. What’s the tone of those pieces? Who are they angling at? What about them does the community love?
After you’ve done that, you’ll know what the hot topics are. You can then reference them in your sales copy, to show that you know what you’re talking about. You get the “in jokes”, you know the players… You’re not just someone out to scam them. That builds trust.
When you’ve got the copy done (or you’ve gotten someone to do it for you), all that’s left is to drive traffic. So let’s look at that.

Driving Great Traffic With Social Media

There’s no doubt hitting the homepage of Digg is nice for links, and good boost for your ego, and pain for your serve, and potentially good for your branding too, but it doesn’t make any sales as a general rule. So what traffic does?
There’s an old saying, “Don’t send vegetarians to a steak convention”, and it’s true of just about any method of marketing. You can send a million people to a sales letter, but if they’re the wrong people, it doesn’t matter. So what qualifies the right people, and how do you get to them?
Well, they have to be passionately pro whatever it is you’re selling. They also need to have a proven track record of spending money on similar products. Finally, they need to believe there’s enough value in products like yours to justify whatever price you’re going to ask. The last of these is taken care of in the sales copy, but the first two come down to understanding your audience and where they hang out.
There’s a reason most social media traffic is rubbish for generating sales, and it’s this: people using social media sites are looking for entertainment or information, not products. They’re in window-shopping mode - not planning to actually buy, but just looking to see what’s there.
What you need to do is get them interested at that point. This is where running a blog or newsletter helps. If you can offer them something for free, in exchange for an email address or an RSS subscription, you’re half way there, because you’ve now got a way to get in contact with them again. So find or create something you can give away for free to get that line of communication and start building a list. Getting traffic for that is easy - the blog allows you to create linkbait, go for search engine traffic, paid search traffic, standard social media stuff… That’s all been covered before. Then once you’ve got them, every now and then, remind them you have a product that will give them the next level of information.
You’ve now got social media traffic coming in, and hanging around. But look beyond Digg and Reddit and so on, and turn to Facebook and MySpace, as well as industry-related forums. If you spend time building presence here, you can gain a following in the industry too. Again, this takes some time, but you should be able to build a reasonable base of people who follow you within a month or so. Then, again over time, get them onto the blog, and remind them that you have a product. Once again, being seen as genuine is key to this. If people suspect you’re just after their money, they’ll lambast you and that’ll be the end of it. Creating fake personas can be useful for this, as if you get caught, you can burn the persona, no harm done.
Finally, keep driving more traffic, and investing a small amount of the profit back into marketing purposes. Scale up, and enjoy the rewards.

Everyone Starts Somewhere

The key to all this is to start small and leverage. Sure, I now do one product launch a month, and make 6 figures a time from it, but there was a time when all I wanted was to make £100 a month. Aim small, hit the target, and then raise the bar. Don’t think you’re going to be able to do a million in sales tomorrow, because you won’t. Nothing is going to change that. But to be able to do a million in sales over a year? That’s perfectly doable.
If you want to follow me and the series of guest posts I’m doing at the moment, subscribe to my twitter feed, where I’ll be sharing thoughts and tips on business, and I’ll keep you updated.
Until next time, have a great day!
Tim Woodin

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Who Else Wants to Make Money from Social Media?

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