Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

You have a big challenge. The internet is full of people who are happy to answer questions (for free) on a wide variety of topics. To get people to pay for your services, you need to show them that your information is not just worth it - it's a huge bargain. You'll need to build your testimonials on your website to show the types of people/problems you've helped with (and their concrete results).

Once that's all in place, you start by working the network of past clients (perhaps creating an monthly online newsletter about live issues in general, etc.). Your website needs an opt-in form to receive the newsletter so you can regularly reach out to people who are interested in you and your offering.

As for in-person, you don't want to mention the email route initially. Why? Because you're standing in front of them - human-to-human. Keep this connection alive by telling them about how you help people. And if they're interested, they'll ask about your services. Then you mention email as an option.

I'm curious how such a business would work.

On this forum, we try to b e very helpful. However, in most cases, we are not given sufficient information to provide a reliable answer. Naturally, we do our best to read between the lines and to encourage those asking questions to continue to seek expert advice and to continue to research the problems on their own.

If someone just send you a short e-mail, I would imagine that your advice would be much less reliable than if you knew the person asking the question personally. If I were seeking your advice, I would prefer to spend as much time as possible introducing myself and my situation before I committed myself to some course of action.

Naturally, the Internet provides vast opportunities. Perhaps you could broaden your offering by including phone conversations and detailed questionnaires rather than silver bullet solutions which you infer from short e-mails.

I wonder if you might be more successful if you set it up more like a retainer. For X dollars I'll provide X responses to your questions each week/month, whatever. One time answers I would think might be more frustrating. As in, "Okay, I understand, but what about...." Which then will cost more to get an answer to that question. Might be a never ending "nickle and dime" situation.

I recently attended an open house at which a chiropractor talked about preventive spine care - makes sense, but he talked about regular visits and I saw lots of eyes roll and somebody later said, "man, it'd never end, he'd be in your pocket for ever." I think people like to think that there is an end to such a relationship.

Pay in advance and you get x answers.

Just a thought.

Merry Christmas!

CVN

I think you do need to offer some quality content for free and then have some premium content that people will need to pay for. Perhaps this can be subscription based or each item is sold separately.

Be giving some quality content for free you are demonstrating your expertise and wetting people's appetite.

Another thouhgt is to do things like phone seminars. This seems to be popular with coaches.

Mike