Steve Pohlit has released ‘Blogging For Profits: Issue No. 8. Read Pohlit’s latest article titled “Increase Sales and Profits of Less Popular Products and Services With The Help of Your Blog’.


Steve Pohlit’s latest article is reprinted here.

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Blogging for Profits issue No. 8: Increase Sales and Profits of Less Popular Products and Services With The Help of Your Blog

Reviews of recently released book “The Long Tail” by Chris Andersen summarizes his focus on niche markets and the resulting sales and profits from product sales that are generally obscure to the mass markets but appeal to special interest groups.

Ed Dale and Frank Kern are guiding thousands through the updated 30 Day Underachievers program. This is designed to teach you how to identify a profitable niche market and create a product that will meet a need in that niche. If you are an internet marketer or otherwise interested in using the tools of the Internet, you will be well served to pay attention to this program (www.underachieverlife.com ).

This series is about how to achieve a dramatic increase in profits for your business by developing and managing a blog. In The Long Tail Chris says only 20% of the items offered by retailers are hits. Of course it is by no coincidence this is consistent with the 80/20 rule I have mentioned in previous issues. In summary, 20% of the items, or customers account for 80% of the revenue and profits. Ed Dale and Frank Kern teach you how to identify the top 20% of the keywords in you niche market research. I spend most of my time helping clients identify and focus their resources on the top 20% of their offer. In other words spend 80% of your time on the 20% of the items that account for 80% of your sales and profits.

Rich Shefren teaches this extensively to his coaching students. Read his interviews with two students at http://www.strategicprofits.com/interview Part of what both Rich and I advocate is the leveraging of skills. For example if you are great at sales, it would be a mistake to have you devote a lot of time to maintaining the accounting system. I am sure you understand the principle.

While I spend a lot of time on the top 20% or A items, this Issue of Blogging for Profits is about the 80% or the B’s and C’s. Always there are hidden gems in these groups and these groups are necessary for the ongoing growth of every business. Just a reminder before we go deeper: make sure you have identified your A items categorize them into niche markets and then develop content for a blog focused on each niche. The content you post should compliment the A item for that niche.

As to the 80% that are B’s and C’s, the goal is to optimize their contribution to your business and in the case of products, identify and move those that have the potential into the A category. This is the biggest mistake I encounter when teaching people to manage based on the principles behind the A, B, C’s. They complete the analysis and then think the results remain static. They do not. Some A items eventually lose steam. With work, some B’s become A’s and C’s become B’s. For optimum business performance you need the metrics or measurements of performance to confirm where your time and business resources are best invested.

Here is an example which may help illustrate the principles. A number of specialty retailers sell laptop computers. Personally I am not aware of any of them supporting a blog on laptops. This is a mistake as laptops now account for 54% of all PC sales in the US. In some foreign markets the percentage is much higher. The highest sales volume category are those laptops selling for less than $1000. As you might imagine, those selling for less than $1,000 do not have much of a profit built into the sales price. Manufacturers are counting on the volume of purchases to drive an acceptable level of profit.

There are two major niche markets in the laptop category that have lucrative profit margins. These are laptops purchased by frequent travelers and those purchased by gamers. Both groups will spend a lot more than $1,000 and will buy options and software that further add to the profit margin on the sale.

Travelers want small, lightweight and powerful machines. Gamers want massive storage capacity, speed, best graphics sound and visual capacity. There are laptops that meet the demands of both groups now and laptop manufacturers typically offer models for all major niche markets. In the travel and game niche markets there is one additional benefit to companies serving them. Both niche markets have people who are ravenous for the next new product that is superior to what they already own. In other words the frequency of purchase is a lot higher than those in the low price niche.

Is a blog on laptops worth the time and energy of Circuit City, Best Buy, Staples and others? Absolutely! This week there was a headline on IMnewswatch (www.imnewswatch.com) that only 5% of the Fortune 500 use blogs. Not using a blog to assist in the development of your business is a mistake. Not having a communication strategy linked to your business strategy that is evident on your blog is a waste of blog space and you may as well not use a blog at all. Before we move on to another example, let’s be clear that in the laptop example, if I were the CEO of Circuit City I would have a blog for laptops because the laptop market is huge and there are definitive ravenous niche markets within that category.

In the next example, I recommend using categories within a blog as opposed to running separate blogs. The market is diabetes which is a disease of epidemic proportions. Type 11 diabetes accounts for about 85% of all diabetes cases and Type 11 is preventable and controllable naturally.

A couple of additional background points. Dave Joffe and Steve Freed are pharmacists who are diabetes experts and diabetes educators. We have been friends for more than 10 years starting when I owned drug stores with pharmacies. About six years ago Dave and Steve started Diabetes in Control (www.diabetesincontrol.com)This on line business is mainly focused on the market of medical professionals who have a diabetes practice. Several years ago it became apparent that much of the information published at Diabetes In Control was also valuable for non medical professionals and specifically people with diabetes or at risk for diabetes. After more than a few advisory sessions. Dave and Steve agreed to have me set up a blog and use information from their Diabetes In Control database. And so www.diabetesreports.com was created.

We have identified the following niche markets within the huge diabetes market based on our keyword research. Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Testing Diabetes Care Diabetes Treatment Diabetes Information

You will find each of these categories in the Categories section of this site which is set up using a Word Press blog template and some tools from Rapid Niche Formulator (http://www.theprofitexpert.com/rapidnicheproducts.html)This site is new and there are only a couple articles posted but there will be more added each week now. You will also find the following will be added: Register for automatic notification of new articles by email Forum Special offer selected for our target market. Free reports and ebooks

I wanted to give you an example of a site that is incomplete and share with you our development strategy. Is it optimal? I have no idea but we will be testing and as you can tell we go live when we have some content. Are there arguments against this approach? Yes. However I have found by going live there is an incentive to move the development forward faster so that is whatI do. I believe in taking action and encourage all my clients to act since having a meeting rarely makes money once there is a decision on a course of action.

I hope these examples help illustrate how you can use a blog to fuel the growth of niche categories within your business. Of course I am in the business of helping business make extraordinary profits. Email me if you are stuck on how to move forward faster.

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
www.stevereports.com
www.stevepohlit.com
“Helping Business Make Extraordinary Profits Now! No Reports…Just Results”

P.S. I discovered a new friend of mine uses the same company for web hosting as me. I have been using a lower cost plan then him which has worked fine. Then I found out the really cool bells and whistles available for just $10 a month more so I upgraded immediately and I am very pleased. Check out the reseller package at www.theprofitexpert.com/hostgator.html This service along with the spam filtering program I promote at www.stevereports.com are the two best services I have found in all the years I have been on line. They make my life easier and will likely help you as well.

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* IMNewswatch would like to thank Steve Pohlit for granting exclusive permission to reprint this latest article.

 

 

 

 

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