Your Customers Are Busy Too
What is the most valuable part of your life? It’s the only thing in the world that is limited…
TIME
This is something most marketers and internet business owners forget about. Of course we know OUR time is valuable, but we tend to forget that our customers and readers have limited time as well.
Especially in the future, when there will be 10 times as many things to distract us in a day compared to our crazy busy schedules today. I predict there will be a major shift in how marketers and internet business owners operate in the near future. When you think about it using common sense, it’s pretty obvious.
Example #1
Would you rather purchase a huge 22 DVD, 1000 page manual mega training course or a condensed “no fluff” 1 DVD, 50 page guide?
Personally, when I see those mega courses being sold for $2,000, my first thought it “how am I going to find time to go through all this stuff”. Sadly, this is exactly what happens most of the time. People get excited about the opportunity to learn what the course teaches, but when it arrives, the customer gets overwhelmed and may never even open the box!
I know the purpose of having those huge courses is to “increase the perceived value” by making people think they are getting more for their money. I’m sure this little trick does work for most people in the market. To me as a marketer however, I know MOST of those DVDs are going to be fluff and a complete waste of time.
There is nothing worse that trying to learn from someone who waffles around for 30 minutes telling stories about their dog, rather than just getting to the point of the lesson.
Example #2
Blog posts are another thing to keep in mind. I hear a lot about how you need to make in-depth blog posts for them to be considered a valuable contribution, and that you need to make posts every single day or people will stop following you.
This is something I’m trying to get over myself!
From this point on, I’m going to work really hard to shorten my blog posts AND only keep the most valuable information in the post. I know your time is limited and you don’t have time to read long posts from 30 different bloggers.
I’m also going to change my posting frequency to about 3-4 posts per week. If you have time to read this blog (or any blog) 7 days a week, then you are taking away from your time to make money online. Not saying I don’t want you here or that I don’t think you should read this blog, but I do appreciate your time and I want you to be successful online. If I can help you save a little bit of time and help you put that time into your own business, I’ll be happy.
YOU DON’T MAKE MONEY READING A BUNCH OF BLOGS EVERYDAY!
I know that doesn’t make sense for a blogger to say that, but it’s true. It’s important that you spend most of your time working on your own business. I’d recommend only reading your favorite 4-5 blogs (this one and 3 others, ha!), and only dedicate 20-30 minutes per day total to blog reading/commenting. If you can do this, I guarantee you will make more money online than you are right now.
I’m taking this exact strategy with my How To Buy & Sell Websites class I’m teaching in a couple weeks. The lessons are going to be intentionally short and to the point. Most of the videos will be about 5-10 minutes each, and ONLY contain valuable content worth its weight in gold. Each lesson will have bullet points explaining what content is shared in each video so customers and jump to exactly what they want to learn.
Sure, it will be more work on my end, but my customers will appreciate the fact that they don’t have to sit through hours and hours of long videos. I won’t be rambling on about nonsense just to make the class “look bigger”.
When you are working on your business, please make sure you consider how valuable your customers’ time is as well. If you are writing a 7 day mini email course for an autoresponder, don’t just write a bunch of fluff to fill up the emails. Make sure you write solid, to the point, and valuable information. Your customers will appreciate that much more than 20 pages of nonsense.
I know your time is valuable so I’ll wrap up this post now…
Comments
Mike April 18th, 2008
Max, I had bloggingexperiment.com bookmarked, I hadn’t checked it in a while…until recently. I spent hours digesting the information in your posts. BloggingExperiment has become my must read blog. Finally, a blog that’s giving straight forward, real world advice.
My only fear for the new BloggingExperiment was that if you were going to feel obligated to post everyday the quality would suffer. Soon, we’d be reading what you had for lunch for today.
So, I’m happy to learn that you will be limiting your posts, keeping up the quality. I think the misconception that you MUST post everyday or your readership will suffer is hurting many quality publishers. I think a few years ago that was true, before people could just simply check their RSS aggregator, etc.
I’ve actually given up on many blogs that have this mentality…the biggest being that guy that posts about his lunch daily…sheesh.
Anyway, great job, you have a loyal reader.
Alex at Net-Entrepreneur.com April 18th, 2008
Hi Max!
This is very true, especially the blog posts’ length.
At some point, every blogger will have a substantial amount of subscriptions in his RSS reader, and unless you have something extraordinary, there is no way he is going to read your 1000-word article!
This is a sure way to loose attention, commentators or gain more meaningless comments.
I try to keep my posts 300-500 words long, for the same reason.
Cheers,
Alex
Terry Tay April 19th, 2008
I like to read this and a few other blogs not only for the info, but to take a break from actually working. Sure time is money, but I don’t want to be working from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep.
Also, I don’t mind if there are blogs that have a bunch of posts everyday. I will skim the titles and read what interests me.
~Terry
Kaykoa April 19th, 2008
Excellent points made in this article. I was surprised that you never used the word “concise” in this article. I feel that sums up your message here. In such an information-noisy world we have now, conciseness is REALLY IMPORTANT.
However, I don’t think that means that 1000-word posts are unwise; it’s a matter of how concise they are and how well they hold the attention of the reader. For instance, I recently wrote a 1259-word article about Inspiring your workspace in 7 steps and it works because it’s logically and concisely arranged.
Look at very successful bloggers like Steve Pavlina, he has been very successful and his posts are almost always over 1000 words.
To me, what’s more important is being concise as well as knowing your audience. If you know your audience, they will *want* to read an in-depth post.
Mike Huang April 20th, 2008
Interesting post, great read of the day I might say. Keep up the good work!
-Mike
Terry Tay April 20th, 2008
I agree Kaykoa…I will read a 1000 or 1500 word post if it has something that interests me or I will benefit from. For instance, I don’t mind reading the long posts on this blog.
~Terry
Wade April 20th, 2008
It depends on the content. I wont read a novel on someone’s weekend, but I will read a long post on something MMO or computer related. John Chow has been posting about is Ad:tech trip. I am really bored with hearing about his trip. I couldn’t care less on what they had for dinner. All I want to hear about is the tips and insight for making money online.
Terry Tay April 21st, 2008
Wade…I think it depends on who’s weekend it was and what happened on that weekend…lol
No Max…That isn’t an invitation to start posting what you did and ate this weekend
~Terry