Rainmaker Rewind: Announcing a Breakthrough Educational Collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis

This week on Rainmaker Rewind, Sonia Simone shares an exciting announcement on Copyblogger FM that you don’t want to miss.

James Garvin of U.C. Davis joins Sonia to chat about the evolution and future of online education, as well as a new collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis!

And, as always, be sure to check out the other great episodes that recently aired on Rainmaker FM.

1. Copyblogger FM. Sonia Simone and James Garvin reveal the collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis and what it means for online education going forward: Announcing: A Breakthrough Educational Collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis
2. The Digital Entrepreneur. Joanna Penn hops on the show to discuss her online entrepreneur journey and share her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs: How Joanna Penn Designed the Lifestyle (and Career) of Her Dreams
3. Confessions of a Pink-haired Marketer. In this episode, Sonia Simone answers a few questions about B2B and B2C marketing sent in by her Twitter followers: Q&A from Twitter, Independence Day Version!
4. Elsewhere. On Write With Impact, Pamela Wilson chats with Glenn Leibowitz about writing and publishing her first book: Pamela Wilson on Write With Impact
5. Youpreneur. Chris Ducker welcomes back New York Times best-selling author Tucker Max to explain “Book in a Box” and the process of writing a book: Catapulting Your Personal Brand by Launching a Book, with Tucker Max
6. The Missing Link. Carrie Dils joins Jabez LeBret to talk about teaching and taking courses online and how it affects your digital business: What Lynda.com Can Do for Your Business, with Carrie Dils
7. Zero to Book. Pamela Wilson and Jeff Goins explore the philosophical part of being an author and discuss the reasons why people start writing in the first place: What’s Driving You as an Author? How to Pinpoint Your Internal and External Goals
8. The Showrunner. Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor share their thoughts on why you should consider auditing your own podcast and what you can gain from doing it: 5 Steps for Conducting a Useful Podcast Archive Audit (in 30 Minutes or Less)
9. Hack the Entrepreneur. Jon Nastor also welcomes Carrie Dils to the network this week. The two talk about her journey from freelancer to entrepreneur and the benefits of teaching courses online: Building Something Out of Nothing

And, one more thing …

If you want to get Rainmaker Rewind sent straight to your favorite podcast player, subscribe right here on Rainmaker FM.

The post Rainmaker Rewind: Announcing a Breakthrough Educational Collaboration between Copyblogger and U.C. Davis appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Defined in 60 Seconds [Animated Video]

Like David Ogilvy, mid-20th-century ad man Rosser Reeves promoted a hard-sell approach and thought advertising should do one thing: sell.

And sell he did.

Campaigns for Viceroy cigarettes, Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Listerine mouthwash, and Colgate toothpaste boosted sales and put these brands on the map.

His goal was to get customers to recognize a specific brand proposition — what has become known as a unique selling proposition (USP).

But what exactly is a unique selling proposition? And why is it so important?

Watch our 60-second video about unique selling propositions

With help from our friends at The Draw Shop, we whipped up 12 definitions from our new Content Marketing Glossary into short, fun whiteboard animated videos.

Check out our video for the definition of USP:

Animation by The Draw Shop

And for those of you who would prefer to read, here’s the transcript:

In essence, a unique selling proposition (USP) is something that you offer customers or clients that your competitors do not offer.

It’s also known as a “remarkable benefit.”

In the late 1970s, FedEx effectively branded itself as the fastest, most reliable shipping service with its tagline: “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.”

That was the remarkable benefit no other company could claim.

And once you identify that unique element for your business, you’ll know exactly what the theme of your content marketing should be, which will eventually become the big story of your business.

Share this video

Click here to check out this definition on YouTube and share it with your audience. You’ll also find 11 additional Content Marketing Glossary videos.

Additional USP resources

For more information about unique selling propositions, visit these three resources:

• Your Unique Story Proposition
• How to Discover Your Hidden Remarkable Benefit
• Take 15 Minutes to Find Your Winning Difference

Learn more from the Content Marketing Glossary

Ready to master content marketing essentials? Watch all of our animated whiteboard videos right now by going directly to the Content Marketing Glossary.

By the way, let us know if there are any definitions you’d like us to add to the glossary! Just drop your responses in the comments below.

The post Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Defined in 60 Seconds [Animated Video] appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Does Your Copy Pass the ‘Forehead Slap’ Test?

One of the most repeated rules of writing compelling copy is to stress benefits, not features.

In other words, identify the underlying benefit that each feature of a product or service provides to the prospect, because that’s what will prompt the purchase.

This is one rule that always applies, except when it doesn’t.

We’ll look at the exceptions in a bit.

Fake benefits

The idea of highlighting benefits over features seems simple. But it’s often tough to do in practice.

Writers often end up with fake benefits instead.

Direct response copywriter Clayton Makepeace asserts that fake benefits will kill sales copy, so you have to be on the lookout for them in your writing. He uses this headline as an example:

Balance Blood Sugar Levels Naturally!

That sounds pretty beneficial, doesn’t it? In reality, there’s not a single real benefit in the headline.

True benefits

Makepeace advises to apply his patented “forehead slap” test to see if your copy truly contains a benefit for the reader. In other words, have you ever woken up from a deep sleep, slapped yourself in the forehead, and exclaimed “Man … I need to balance my blood sugar levels naturally!”

I think not. So getting someone to pull out their wallet to buy that so-called “benefit” will be difficult at best.

Here’s how Makepeace identifies the real benefit hidden in that headline:

“Nobody really wants to balance their blood sugar levels. But anyone in his or her right mind DOES want to avoid the misery of blindness … cold, numb, painful limbs … amputation … and premature death that go along with diabetes.”

A high-risk person will want to avoid the terrible effects of diabetes. That is the true benefit that the example product offers.

How to extract true benefits

So, how do you successfully extract true benefits from features? Here’s a four-step process that works:

1. Make a list of every feature of your product or service.
2. Ask yourself why each feature is included in the first place.
3. Take the “why” and ask “how” does this connect with the prospect’s desires?
4. Get to the absolute root of what’s in it for the prospect at an emotional level.

Let’s look at a product feature for a fictional “read later” app.

Feature:

“Contains an artificial intelligence algorithm.”

Why it’s there:

“Adds greater utility by adapting and customizing the user’s information experience.”

What’s in it for them:

“Keeps the data you need the most at the forefront when you’re in a hurry.”

Emotional root:

“Stay up-to-date on the things that add value to your life and career, without getting stressed out from information overload.”

Getting to the emotional root is crucial for effective consumer sales. But what about B2B prospects?

When features work

When selling to businesses or highly technical people, features alone can sometimes do the trick. Overtly pandering to emotions will only annoy them.

Besides, unlike consumers (who mostly “want” things rather than “need” them), business and tech buyers often truly need a solution to a problem or a tool to complete a task. When a feature is fairly well-known and expected from your audience, you don’t need to sell it.

However, with innovative features, you still need to move the prospect down the four-step path. While the phrase “contains an artificial intelligence algorithm” may be enough to get the tech-savvy reader salivating, he’ll still want to know how it works and what it does for him.

The “What’s in it for me?” aspect remains crucial.

For business buyers, you’re stressing “bottom line” benefits from innovative features. If you can demonstrate that the prospect will be a hero because your CRM product will save her company $120,000 a year compared to the current choice, you’ve got an excellent shot.

While that may seem like a no-brainer purchase to you, you’ll still need to strongly support the promised benefit with a detailed explanation of how the features actually deliver.

Remember, change can be scary to the business buyer, because it’s their job or small business on the line if the product disappoints.

Sell with benefits, support with features

We’re not as logical as we’d like to think we are.

Most of our decisions are based on deep-rooted emotional motivations, which we then justify after the fact with logic. So, first help create the emotional desire, then aid the rationalization process with features and hard data so that the wallet actually emerges.

Are you a writer who wants to become a Certified Content Marketer?

Inside our Content Marketer Certification program, we’ve got a lot more for writers.

We designed this program to help writers make the most of their careers — to help them position themselves and their offerings, so that they can build profitable freelance writing businesses.

And we’re opening the program soon. Drop your email address below and you’ll be the first to hear about it.

Find out when our Certified Content Marketer training program reopens:

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on February 19, 2014.

The post Does Your Copy Pass the ‘Forehead Slap’ Test? appeared first on Copyblogger.

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Suck Less | A Plea For User-Centric Design: Powered By You!

Analysts, honestly, make the world go round when it comes to any successful business – yes, data is that important. As you might expect from any role, they also make a handful of important mistakes. I've written about the biggest mistake web analysts make.

Today's post is an adjacent mistake: The cardinal sin of spending too much time with data and in reports!

Wait. What?

Yes, I worry that Analysts, and Marketers, are spending too much time with their head buried in custom reports and advance segments and smart calculated metrics and strategic or tactical dashboards. Yes. They are all things I love and have repeatedly asked you to care for. But, perhaps I'm at fault for creating the problem of you spending all your time with data. Additionally, you are spending your day in the warm embrace of Adobe or Google Analytics because your job is set up as "data people."

In the biggest mistake post above, I'd encouraged you to spend time with the business, with the site (mobile or desktop) and dig from a non-data point of view. Today, I want you to do the same… Spend less time with data and a bit more time with your website. Specifically, the most key elements of the website.

The higher order bit is simple. In the second post on this blog (one million words ago), I'd shared the value of qualitative analysis because it is the only way to get context you need to answer the question why something was happening, rather than just relying on data which only answers the question what happened. Lab usability testing and online surveys both provide great strategies to obsess about user centric design. My love for heuristic evaluations is sourced in the fact that they are relatively straightforward, require the best possible cost – almost free -, and rely on you and your team.

My idea today is even simpler. The four-point self-driven path-to-business-glory:

1. Find the most critical experiences in your digital existence.

2. Try them yourself as if you were the actual user.

3. Cry.

4. Now that you have the why, use the what to highlight the importance of improving the experience.

You must be freaking out, you have a huge website and 25 mobile apps.

While I do think it is a great idea for you to carve out 30 mins each week to execute the four-point approach above, I want you to start with places where your for-profit or non-profit entity is most likely to make money. Then, because this will be so addictively sexy, you should make time every week (might I suggest 1330 – 1400 hrs each Friday).

The initial focus of the above four steps will be the last-mile (core) experiences on your website. The starting point will be as simple as it can possibly be so that everyone in your company will care tons: Are we fabulous at the things most important to us making money as a company?

It does not matter if you are are B2B or B2C. Neither does it matter if you are a for-profit or a non-profit (it takes capital – human and financial – to change the world, right?).

My advice for you how to execute this massively important process is broken into the following sections, using delicious real-world examples:

HTC Does Not Check-out.
United Breaks Hearts.
Patagonia Returns No Love.
Your Turn | Ideas To Impact Your Bottom-line Today.
BUT I Want Data-First!
Everything's Fine. Our Digital Experience Rocks!
Testing Kills/Delays Good Ideas.

Intrigued? Ready to learn from three wonderful companies, and their real-world reality, how be a one-woman/man user-centric design revolutionary?

Let's go!

HTC Does Not Check-out

Let's look at one example of the four step process above in action. It comes courtesy of a personal experience.

We all know HTC is in trouble. I've always thought they pushed the edge and took risks. I have had three HTC phones, and I loved HTC One. They have an approach to simplicity in software that is closer to a pure Google experience (when compared to the nails scratching a blackboard irritation that is personified in the Samsung phones).

I was in the market for a new phone recently (turns our tripping on oneself and falling into a swimming pool for a quick ten seconds is enough to fry a Nexus 5X). The announcement of an HTC 10 was that very day. A quick review of the even simpler approach by HTC to software (very close to pure Google, most default apps are Google) and pictures of the HTC 10 and I was sold.

Within ten seconds of getting the available for order email from HTC, I was on the Buy Now page.

And then… I was stumped…

Select Carrier was pre-selected as unlocked, exactly what I was looking for.

I could not figure out how to Select Color, which presumably would ungray the PRE-ORDER button.

#ARRRRRHHHHAAA

I reloaded. No dice. Opened the page in the Edge browser – sometimes Microsoft is all you need to do the trick. No dice.

Extremely frustrating.

I am a usability expert after all, I did figure it out.

Turns out you have to click on the Unlocked green icon. It does absolutely NOTHING when you click on it. But, that click opens up Step 2 for you to Select Color. That in turn opens up the PRE-ORDER button.

#doh

Now consider this. Here is a company in deep financial trouble. They desperately need early order like mine (at full price!), a full month before they'll ship the phone. They really need to know if their marketing, and last hope the HTC 10, is going to be received well. Yet, no one bothered to try the web experience to check how much it sucked. AND, it was the only way to submit a pre-order!

The insanity of it all makes my blood boil. And, I don't even work for HTC. As someone who loves the web, who is passionate about digital experiences, it makes me bat-crap cray-cray when I see this level of staggering incompetence.

It should upset you too. This is happening on your website.

When was the last time you submitted a product review on your site? Or, tried to submit a lead? Or, unsubscribe for your company mailing lists? Or, download a piece of software? Or, customize the layout of the car (boo BMW boo!)? Or, tried to return a product? Or…. or anything else that is directly connected to you making money?

Just do it.

My recommendation will yield two great outcomes:

1. You will get insights you can use for your data/campaigns. The why for your what .

2. You are going to become stark-raving mad at the incompetence you'll see from your own company.

Thing 2 is priceless. And, your career will really, really take off.

United Breaks Hearts.

To prove that these experiences come in many different shapes and sizes, let's look at another example.

I humbly believe the worst checkout experience in the known universe is buying Wi-Fi on United planes. It does not work with password managers like Dashlane (which would greatly reduce the nightmare). The form has a crazy captcha that will require prayers to Buddha and the layer of magma in the middle of planet Earth. Drop-downs in the form related to credit card expiry date or other elements are terribly organized. It is missing primitive intelligence, like the city does not get auto-filled after you type in the Zip Code. It does not remember that I'm a United 1k member, and that they have all my credit card, underwear size etc. info already, and let me press one button to buy.

I would keep going on, and this is a one-page experience, but let me stop.

It honestly is the worst. I challenge you to submit an experience worse than this via comments below.

Oh, and one more thing. Set everything above. United is experimenting with pricing, you can buy Wi-Fi by the hour.

How about making it easy for me to figure out how much to buy…

I'm flying from SFO to ORD.

It is not an 81 hour flight.

Not wanting to pay too much, I had to buy Wi-Fi twice because I guessed wrong the first time. Frustrating.

Why is something so gosh darn easy so very, very hard? I understand times are tough at United-Continental, but don't United employees buy wi-fi on United planes? Or, even better, tried to buy Wi-Fi on competitor planes and realized how much better they are? Why do they put up with this atrocious horribleness? Don't they love their company?

While I'm being a bit more passionate than you might expect me to…. consider that, literally, hundreds of thousands of people each day sit on a United flight – which is already frustrating for reasons that have nothing to do with United – and the very first thing they have to deal with is avoidable pain.

Patagonia Returns No Love.

Here's a story of unrequited love.

There is perhaps no brand I love as much as Patagonia. I love, love, love Patagonia. I love the clothes, the quality, the fit and all that normal stuff. The reason I love, love, love Patagonia is the depth and breadth of their corporate responsibility and the fact that as a B Corps company doing good for the world is in their legal charter.

Patagonia though refuses to return my deep love for it because of how difficult it makes the most basic thing an ecommerce company should be good at: returning products.

Let me explain.

If you see me out and about, anywhere in the world, I'll be wearing my well worn scratched blue nano puff jacket. I love them so much, I buy them for others. Recently though, my aunt did not like the green color and I had to return it.

It is easy to start a return…

When you click continue you land on the Shipping & Billing Page. The Shipping Cost is described as "flat rate repair shipping cost." I don't actually want to repair anything, I just want to return the jacket. I don't know if that is what Patagonia will charge me to return the jacket, or returns are free as I'm not sending anything for repair.

What is also a tad bit confusing is that they are asking for a shipping address.

My mind goes back to the multitude of returns we have made via Amazon Prime, and I can't recall having to confirm my shipping address.

Is the assumption of the Patagonia digital user experience team (if they have one) that most of their customers move after they buy Patagonia products?

Worse is yet to come.

When I scroll down on the above page, I see this… REVIEW ORDER.

REVIEW ORDER?

What order?

Order to return a jacket?

Is Patagonia so short of buttons that they could not make a separate one for the return process and call it PROCESS RETURN?

I genuinely pause at this moment not sure how much the return costs, and what I'm ordering. Perhaps an address label?

But remember, I love, love, love this company. So, I persist.

Here's the next page…. It is called Shipping & Billing. What the hell happened to REVIEW ORDER!

I would have assumed at the minimum the above step would happen when they asked me if I had moved homes after ordering the jackets.

I persist of course and give them my credit card, which will be charged for $5 or $0. I'm not quite sure.

Then I have to go to two pop-up windows to separately print a page I have to include in the package and the page I have to stick outside the package.

The whole experience is so bad, it hurts my feelings. Especially because I really do love this brand and I can't believe they suck so much.

I don't understand what the problem is. Is this so bad because Patagonia run out of money having created a order submission process that they had to re-use it for processing returns? Is this so bad because no human at Patagonia has experienced returning anything they've purchased on the internet? Is this so bad because I am the only person who has ever purchased anything at patagonia.com and hence honestly they don't need to give a crap for one person?

As an outsider to United, HTC and Patagonia, it is hard to understand why companies that put so much money into trying to provide a service seem to run out of money, or love, at the last-mile.

Fix that for your company. Fix the last-mile.

Oh, and remember my beloved blue nano puff jacket? Don't bother searching for it using the search box on any patagonia.com webpage. You get zero product results. Zero. For a jacket that costs $199 list. Zero results via search. Patagonia is making me cry, I don't know how I'm going to fall asleep tonight.

Your Turn | Ideas To Impact Your Bottom-line Today.

If you are a part of an ecommerce company, order something right now (in a different tab, keep this one open to read the rest of this post!). Make note of what frustrates you. Email it to the CMO. Then tomorrow. Try to cancel the order. Take notes. Email them to the CMO. If it won't let you cancel the order, try to return the order after you get it. Take notes. Email them to the CMO.

That is what it takes to drive change.

If you work at Salesforce, submit an online lead, experience your company in all its frustrating glory that your potential customers do.

If you work at Unilever, go to any brand's active Facebook page and submit a problem using the comment system. See what happens.

If you work at AT&T, try to review the current month's bill to understand the charges on a family plan before you use the online bill pay feature. Then, get really, really mad. (Or, ask me to send you a video of my pain as I try to do that each month.)

If you work at the Lutheran World Relief, try the funky box that opens up when you hover over the red Donate Now, see how it feels. (Then fix it please.)

I hope you'll be the bright star whose obsession with true digital simplicity and glory will infect others in your company. Imagine how many problems will be found, how much improvement can be driven…. all without Google or Adobe Analytics.

Oh. And, before I forget. Try all of the above on your mobile websites and mobile apps. I would post screenshots, but I fear the pain it would cause you. So. Be sure to have a friend or lover hold your hand before your dive into your company's mobile experiences. It is going to suck a lot, but consider the fact that you are going to be doing God's work and making the world a better place.

Bonus | Download: The team at Google has already spent loads of money on research to identify the mobile best practices, with loads of cool examples. Why not benefit from Google's spend and improve your mobile experience? PDF Here: 25 Principles of Mobile Site Design.

[sidebar] I'm writing a weekly newsletter that shares tips on how to make sense of data, my favourite data visualizations, marketing strategies and things to avoid in your quest to be a smarter digital person. No advertising, just amazing advice. You can sign up here: The Marketing-Analytics Intersect. Thanks. [/sidebar]

BUT I Want Data-First!

For some in our audience here, it is hard to leave analytics and data behind no matter how desperately I want you to. I understand the pain of trying to let go of years of accumulated comfort from never having to experience your business, and only living through data. I've done it.

You can use data as a starting point, if you really want to.

It is possible that the HTC team could have found their heartbreaking Pre-Order page via the fabulous Shopping Behavior Analysis report that is part of the magnificent Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting in Google Analytics.

The above data does not belong to HTC (15% also might be a bit too high!). But, the first column is what we would be looking for. That could trigger a visit to the website to try the user experience.

I do want to caution that not everything broken will be so easy to find, hence I want you to complement your data skills and analysis efforts with just going to the site/app and trying to emulate a normal person (you!).

Another source of starting points, if you insist on using the data, is to leverage the Behavior Flow report that automatically helps you unpack the complexity of the user experience on your website or mobile app.

I am not a huge fan of path analysis, so do know that you have some of those issues here. But, the GA team has done a wonderful job of trying to avoid some of the issues. Besides, you will likely be most intrigued by the red bars above and any really dark gray bars that are ending up in odd places.

By reflecting the actual behavior, GA is trying to get make this a productive use of your time and when it comes to trying to walk in the shoes of the user this report does a pretty decent job.

There are other reports you can use as well. I hesitate to give you a complete list because my core ask of you is to skip the whole data bit and just use your site/app.

Everything's Fine. Our Digital Experience Rocks!

It does not.

If you want me to prove it to you, reach out with your URL. It won't take too long to find the issues. :)

I do not believe in the everything's fine mantra. Stay hungry, stay foolish. If my four step process outlined at the start of this post does not yield anything meaningful, I take it as an indicator that I've become assimilated.

In these cases, my strategy is to use the blessings of the multitude of online usability testing tools to identify problems my beloved users might be facing that I've become blind to.

Steps One and Two are the same as I've recommended for when conducting Heuristic Evaluations.

Then, you'll pick a unmoderated usability (or moderated if you insist) tool you like, from UserTesting to UserZoom to Loop11 to UX Recorder (for mobile) to the many others out there. Conduct your studies, wait for the result to roll in, reflect on how much there is to do (a good thing!) and get stuff fixed.

Testing Kills/Delays Good Ideas.

If you have read either one of my books, or even bits of this blog, you would have learned of my extreme stress on experimentation in terms of fixing the user experience. And, I do stand by it. Most Analysts and Marketers are less than ideal proxies for actual users (you are too close to your own company).

There is a class of fixes, everything above, where you should not recommend testing anything. First, stop the bleeding. Just fix the primitive problems.

(I'm not sure there is one, but if there is one…) What should the United digital user-experience team to first? See what two of it's main competitors are doing, take the simplest things, implement them right away.

No testing.

HTC team? Patagonia?

Ditto!

Or, just copy Bonobos or Amazon or someone who has already figured it out.

In these cases, testing becomes another boondoggle that will continue for another trillion years while the bleeding continues. You can even quantify the bleeding if you use any of the above report. It is very expensive.

Once the core is fixed, then use experimentation and testing to elevate yourself beyond your direct competitors, beyond how great your customers thing you could ever be.

Closing Thoughts.

I really did write this post for you, the person whose job description does not have one word about user experience or user-centric design. No matter what your title, dogfood your own digital experiences. You'll find valuable insights that give context (why) to your data (what). Besides, you'll get mad and pity your customers, and, because you are awesome, you'll get things fixed.

And, once you fix all the last-mile (core) issues, don't stop there. Most Analysts, Marketers, rarely search for their own brands on Bing or Google or Baidu and follow the experiences that come up to the end. Rarely do they click on their display ads and see what happens (remarketing to death!). Most don't follow their brands on social media and are self-tortured by the embarrassment that is their social media presence. Most… You catch my drift.

User-centric design powered by you can transform your company. You can get a ton of enriching insights if you set aside 30 mins every week to use your mobile and desktop website, your mobile app, your Search ads and your social channels. So… make time, solve for world peace.

As always, it is your turn now.

Does your company have an existing user-centric design practice? If yes, are all the last-mile user experience problems solved in your digital experiences? Is there a cultural incentive in your company to do what I'm recommending above, even if your job is not UX? What is the most embarrassing thing you've discovered about your company? What is the most delightful phone buying, wi-fi ordering, order returning experience you've seen? Is there a painful experience you want to share, perhaps we can get it fixed (!)?

Please share your tips, best practices, painful experiences, joyous clicks, and masterful guidance via comments below.

Thank you.

Suck Less | A Plea For User-Centric Design: Powered By You! is a post from: Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik

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A Simple Way Out of Your Precarious Freelance Income Problem

Freelancing. That’s the life, isn’t it? Total control. Total freedom. Abject terror.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to be said for the freelance life. You’re in charge of your own time. You pick and choose the projects you’ll take on. You select your clients.

When it’s all working the way it’s supposed to, that is.

When you’re not breaking into a sweat as you open your checking account statement. When you’re not wondering how you’ll pay next month’s rent. When you’re not thinking, “Maybe a job with a salary wouldn’t be so bad …”

There’s a simple solution, though. One that will restore a feeling of stability to your freelance life.

It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. But you may not realize how important this solution can be for your freelance business. You may not be taking full advantage of the peace of mind and regular income it can provide.

Let’s get it working for you.

How to build an income foundation for your business

The solution to a freelancer’s unstable income problem is to take on a handful of retainer clients. Retainer clients pay you a set amount every month, and they provide a steady income you can count on. There are several ways to negotiate a retainer agreement, and we’ll cover them in this article.

For a freelancer, retainer clients are the closest thing to the stable income a salary provides.

The reliable income retainer clients provide is great, but if you don’t specify exactly what their retainer payments cover, you may find yourself selling your time for cheaper than you should.

Here’s what to aim for and what to avoid.

Why retainers rock (and why they sometimes suck)

Retainer clients have massive advantages:

• They provide a set income you can count on.
• You don’t have to spend as much time in the networking-prospecting-qualifying-selling cycle.
• Admin tasks are reduced because they’re predictable.

And there are some important retainer client minefields you should be aware of:

• You are “stuck” with your retainer clients: they’ve bought your time and you have to deliver on whatever they ask you to do (like it or not).
• Your projects may suffer from scope creep: clients feel a sense of ownership toward your time and may try to sneak in a few extra tasks here and there.

One way to minimize the risk associated with beginning a retainer relationship with a new client is to do a few “test projects” to see how you like working with them. These test projects would be one-off jobs you bid on, complete, and invoice individually.

As you work with the client, ask yourself:

• Is this client clear about her expectations?
• Does she understand the value my work contributes to her project?
• Is she easy to communicate with? Does she return my calls or emails?
• Does she pay on time?

Treat these one-off projects as a vetting process you’re putting the client through. When you find those client “gems” who are easy to work with, appreciate your contributions, and have ongoing projects, think about moving them to a retainer relationship.

How to protect your time, energy, and income with retainer clients

There are two primary ways to structure a retainer relationship.

The “Reserve Your Time” Retainer

• You’re paid a set amount for a specified number of hours that you reserve for that client every month.
• To make this attractive, you can offer your hours at a savings (but you don’t have to).
• Hours aren’t carried over to a new month: the client starts with a fresh chunk of your time each month.

Clients with ongoing needs like content creation, website maintenance, or social media management can be ideal for this type of retainer arrangement. You — the freelancer — need to find a way to carefully track the time you spend on the client’s work.

A note of caution: Be careful not to overbook your time. If you have several retainer clients who reserve your time and don’t use it fully, you may be tempted to book an extra client since you “always have time left over.” But if all your clients show up with heavy loads of work at the same time, you may find you don’t have the bandwidth to meet your commitments to them.

Solve this issue by either not overbooking your time or having a stable of reliable freelancer colleagues you can outsource the extra work to.

The “Handle These Ongoing Projects” Retainer

• Writers or professional content strategists can provide a set amount of content each month: for example, four blog posts, two email newsletters, two emails added to an autoresponder series.
• Designers may commit to handling specific ongoing design needs: website graphics, print material design, social media graphics.

Some freelancers prefer to handle specific projects and take their clients “off the clock.” This can be freeing: if you are able to get their project done in less time, all the time you save is your own.

This type of retainer relationship works best when you really know the client, their working style, and the projects they give you. When you can predict how much time it will take you to do their work consistently, you can take them off the clock and focus on delivering a result for a set fee.

2 easy ways to make retainer proposals irresistible

One easy way to make a retainer proposal extra attractive is to guarantee a set amount of time for a lower-than-usual hourly rate. The lower rate is only available if the client purchases the full block of your time for the month. And remember, hours don’t carry over from one month to the next.

For example:

Your normal hourly rate is $125/hour. Your retainer client asks for 20 hours/month of your time. Twenty hours of your time would normally be $2,500. For clients who pay you on a retainer basis, you can sell this time for $2,000, effectively reducing your hourly rate to $100/hour.

To protect yourself, ask the client to commit to a set period of time for the retainer relationship — perhaps six months. That will help you avoid clients who view your offer as a way to get one month’s worth of work for less.

Another way to make retainer agreements attractive is to bill on a quarterly — or even annual — basis.

I once had a client who had to jump through all sorts of administrative hoops when a vendor’s invoice was submitted. I suggested billing my retainer once per quarter so he’d only have to request four checks a year rather than twelve. He was thrilled, and it saved me administrative time, too.

Freelance writers: we have something just for you

Inside our Content Marketer Certification program, we’ve got a lot more for writers.

We designed this program to help writers make the most of their careers — to help them position themselves and their offerings, so that they can build profitable freelance writing businesses.

And we’re opening the program soon. Drop your email address below and you’ll be the first to hear about it.

Find out when our Certified Content Marketer training program reopens:

Share your retainer tips in the comments

If you have structured your freelance business to use retainers, please visit the comments below. I want to hear about:

• How you first proposed a retainer
• Both the positive and negative aspects of retainer clients
• Whether you still use retainers today

Let’s talk! Scroll down and share your thoughts.

The post A Simple Way Out of Your Precarious Freelance Income Problem appeared first on Copyblogger.

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3 Tips for Creating Your Own Independence Day

July 4 is Independence Day here in the States, which, for most of us, entails the risk of losing:

• Your fingers to cheap fireworks
• Your waistline to hot dogs
• Your liver

All of which, as a red-blooded American, I support wholeheartedly. But if you’re spending today celebrating the country’s independence, how about giving some attention to your own personal independence?

It might be independence from a day job, financial stress, or even a mindset that’s keeping you from making things happen.

Here are three of my favorite tips for declaring your own individual independence.

1. Expand your audience

Andy Warhol had it wrong. Now that we’re living in the future, everyone isn’t famous for 15 minutes. We’re each famous with 15 people.

Each of us has our own village of customers. And most of us would like to expand that village, at least by a little bit. Especially if we want to build a business around it.

So, what’s the secret to finding a wider audience?

Put more thought into what your village of customers wants and needs.

Sure, personal expression can be a good thing. But never forget the other side of that computer screen.

There’s something you can offer your audience that will fulfill their fondest desire or solve their most pressing problem. Think a little more about them and a little less about yourself.

2. Create a revenue stream

For most of us, freedom and independence tend to boil down to having enough money coming in the door.

It’s a lot easier to say goodbye to your nightmare boss or your crummy living situation when you’ve got some steady income rolling in. And there are improvements you can make or simple products you can build in the next six week to bring in more revenue.

If you have a service business, you could learn a smarter way to set your prices. Or, you may decide to build a membership site or create an online course.

The hardest part is getting started. You can start small and once you’re up and running, you can tweak and expand your offering to make it better and bring in more income.

Don’t let perfectionism slow you down. There’s no better way to see what works than taking action.

3. Never stop learning

In today’s economic and technical environment, the moment you stop learning, you’re roadkill.

It’s not always about learning the latest and greatest. Sometimes it’s taking the classic works in your field and translating them for a new audience. Sometimes it’s about making a completely new connection. It’s about staying curious and keeping your mental playfulness.

If you never add anything new to your intellectual mix, your content is going to suffer. (If for no other reason than you’ll develop a serious case of writer’s block.)

Spend a little less time on the trivial stuff (I love Twitter too, but no one needs to be there five hours a day) and a little more time educating yourself.

Knowledge is your greatest asset. It can’t be stolen or confiscated. It sets your intellect free. And when your mind is free, the rest of it is just a bunch of beautiful fireworks.

Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on July 3, 2009.

Image courtesy Hugh MacLeod.

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Rainmaker Rewind: From Infoproducts to Software Rockstar, with ConvertKit’s Nathan Barry

This week on Rainmaker Rewind, Chris Ducker welcomes Nathan Barry of ConvertKit to Youpreneur.

Nathan and Chris dive into the story behind ConvertKit and the fundamentals of email service providers.

And, as always, be sure to check out the other great episodes that recently aired on Rainmaker FM.

1. Youpreneur. Chris Ducker and Nathan Barry talk about the fundamental and powerful features of email service providers: From Infoproducts to Software Rockstar, with ConvertKit’s Nathan Barry
2. The Digital Entrepreneur. Brian Clark, Chris Garrett, and Jerod Morris revisit the perennial importance of email marketing and why what you’re doing probably isn’t enough: Is Your Email Marketing Leaving Money on the Table?
3. Copyblogger FM. Sonia Simone explores the one, big reason why customers often turn away from offers at the last minute: How to Break Past the #1 Conversion Killer
4. The Writer Files. Kelton Reid wraps up part two of his interview with publishing consultant and writer Jane Friedman: How Publishing Consultant, Educator, and Author Jane Friedman Writes: Part Two
5. The Missing Link. Jabez LeBret welcomes John Nemo to the show to address LinkedIn privacy concerns: How to Stay Safe On LinkedIn (and Have Fun While You’re At It)
6. The Showrunner. Jerod Morris and Jon Nastor discuss the reason why an email list is so important and how you can get your listeners to subscribe: [Rebroadcast] Next-Level Tips for Building Your Show’s Email List
7. Confessions of a Pink-haired Marketer. Sonia Simone shares her opinions on the “abundance mindset” vs. wishing really hard: The Difference Between Mindset and Wishful Thinking

And, one more thing …

If you want to get Rainmaker Rewind sent straight to your favorite podcast player, subscribe right here on Rainmaker FM.

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