Aaron Hoos

A few days ago, I posted 2 blog posts about moving your business toward a passive model — one in which you maximize your return while you minimize your effort. In those posts, I outlined the key business functions which CAN demand a lot of time and attention, but which entrepreneurs should try to make passive. Those business functions are Administration, Marketing, and Deliverables. You can read the 2 blog posts here: How to be a lazy entrepreneur (part 1) and How to be a lazy entrepreneur (part 2).

If you are building a sales funnel for a new business or optimizing a sales funnel for an existing business, you are probably thinking about ways that you can generate income by converting prospects into customers. Your choices are active deliverables and passive ones.

• Active deliverables require you to put in some time to fulfill the order — an active product might require that you manufacture it, package it, and ship it; an active service might require that you do research, perform the service, and send it to the customer.
• Passive deliverables are ideal because they allow you to earn an income without doing a lot of active work for each sale. Passive deliverables can be more profitable because it allows you to spend more time filling your sales funnel and nurturing contacts through your sales funnel, and less time on the deliverable component.

If you are thinking about the ways to earn passive income, there are three that you can mix and match for your business: Ads, Affiliates, and Assets.

Ads: This is where you create content and embed ads into your content. This earns you income (usually per-click, although there other payment models). Google AdSense is an easy way to get started.

Affiliates: This is where you create content and link to products or services via an affiliate link. When someone clicks through your link and then buys that product or service, you will earn money (often a flat fee or percentage). Amazon is a nice starting point but there are many options here.

Assets: This is where you create content and then sell that content for money through various methods, such as ebooks, podcasts, subscriptions, books, magazines, etc. Clickbank or Lulu are great ways to get started selling assets.

The key to success in all three is creating highly-targeted, compelling content that correctly identifies the problems, needs, and interests of your target market and then positions the deliverable (the ad, affiliate, or asset) as the solution the problem.

In the past decade (plus a little bit), the internet has created a universe of opportunity for new and old businesses to become marketing machines. This has been good… but it has also been bad.

In pre-internet days, businesses would think up some marketing ideas, have them created by professionals, and rely on more traditional methodologies to get the word out: Flyers were mailed; coupons were handed out; advertisements were published. These efforts were expensive, time consuming, and usually required the skills of an outside expert (to design and/or to publish).

Now, anyone can start a business and any business owner can drive traffic to their site using a variety of web-based marketing activities (like blogging or article-writing) and techniques (like SEO). They can do it themselves quickly and affordably.

This is advantageous — because it blows the doors wide open for anyone to become an entrepreneur — it has also had some nasty repercussions:

PROBLEM 1: MAKING IT UP ON VOLUME
Do-it-yourself marketing has led to entrepreneurs trading quality for quantity and spamming search engines and inboxes and Twitter streams with volumes of content. Even businesses that market legitimately (that is, they don’t spam. Rather, they create quality content that adds value for the reader) need to achieve a certain quantity of marketing to get the job done.

PROBLEM 2: MARKETING THAT DOESN’T KEEP UP WITH THE EVOLUTION OF BUSINESS
On top of volume is another reality that people don’t realize: Businesses change and markets change but content posted online can outlive those changes. So if you create a series of articles and point those articles to a page on your site, then take that page down, those articles no longer provide the benefit they once offered. (I’m definitely guilty of this one!)

PROBLEM 3: NEW OPPORTUNITIES ARRIVING DAILY
There’s a third factor in this new reality of “DIY marketing”. New marketing techniques crop up almost daily. When I started writing (nearly two decades ago) the internet wasn’t on my radar. It wasn’t on very many people’s radar at all! Then, over the years, the web arrived and along came new ideas about how to market your business: Websites then ebooks then blogs then articles… Heck, just a few years ago, no one had heard of Twitter. Now it is THE darling of social media. It seems like a new way of marketing your business is arriving daily.

THE RESULT?
You can probably imagine what happens when you combine these three things together: A “requirement” of quantity + an ever-changing business environment + a constant flood of new marketing opportunities = An over-abundance of marketing is published and it is helpful for a brief season, but then it ceases to be helpful.

What is needed is sales funnel strategy to solve the problem: Businesses need to take one more step before they start flooding the web with marketing. (Or, if they have already started, they need to pause and revisit their strategy). In doing so, businesses will find that they will spend less on marketing but quickly achieve a more profitable result.

Sales funnel strategy will reduce the need for a volume of work and will actually make a lesser quantity of marketing content more effective. Sales funnel strategy will remain effective for longer than marketing that wasn’t applied to any sort of strategy, helping businesses stay competitive even though they are evolving. And, Sales funnel strategy will help businesses discern which marketing opportunities are right for them and which ones are unnecessary wastes of time.

TRENDING: SALES FUNNEL STRATEGY
Because of the economy being what it is (and what it was just a year or two ago), I think businesses are looking to cut back on expenses but increase the effectiveness of, well, everything they do. On top of that, I suspect that entrepreneurs are getting tired of having to race from one marketing technique to another just because everyone else is doing it. Entrepreneurs want to get back to basics and work on the parts of their business that can generate results.

So sales funnels and sales funnel strategy will increase in importance in the year(s) to come as businesses pull back from the frenetic pace that once was a DIY requirement.

Businesses need content to sell their products or services: They need marketing material, web content, sales scripts, instruction manuals… and sometimes they need content written which will actually be the product sold (as in the case of ebooks).

Not everyone can write or wants to write, and that’s where a ghostwriter comes in. Ghostwriters are hired by the business to create content that is attributed to the business rather than the writer. It’s a very common practice in writing.

HERE’S THE PROBLEM
When businesses look for ghostwriters, they don’t always know what to look for. Sure, they look for someone with experience as a writer — preferably with experience in a specific industry or with a specific content type — but beyond that, there are just question marks.

Over the years I’ve worked as a ghostwriter for hundreds of clients and I can tell you that each client comes to the table with a different set of ideas and expectations.

If you need to hire a ghostwriter, here’s what you need to know:

THE FIVE ROLES OF CONTENT CREATION
All written work (regardless of what kind of content you want) is put together by five different roles. These roles can be performed by one person or by more than one person. The roles (in order) are:

1. The thinker — The thinker comes up with the clever ideas and catchy elements; they perform content strategy; they consider the audience and the value the audience is seeking; and they solidify the concepts into a workable shape.
2. The researcher — The researcher looks at what the market is looking for and how it’s communicating its needs; they look at the competition and what is already on offer; and they look for opportunities (including SEO, marketing messages, etc.).
3. The scribe — The scribe takes the ideas from the thinker and the research from the researcher and they write it out; they massage the ideas, if necessary, to create a powerful and focused piece of content.
4. The editor — The editor reviews what the scribe has created and makes sure it is aligned with the thinker’s vision and the researcher’s findings; they ensure coherence within the document and between the working document and other content produced by the business.
5. The publisher — The publisher makes the content available to the target audience. It could be as simple as copying the text and pasting it into a blog publishing platform, or it could be more complex like printing and binding a book and setting up distribution.

Businesses who hire ghostwriters often bring need one or more of the roles mentioned above, but they don’t always effectively communicate that need.

If you’re a business looking to hire a ghostwriter, look at the five roles above and figure out what you already have and what you need. Then look for a ghostwriter who can perform the roles that you need. You might look for them in a single person or you might assemble a team, depending on the size of your budget and the scope of your project and the skills of your team.

EXAMPLES FROM MY EXPERIENCE
I’ve worked with several clients who have simply said, “I’m starting a business and I want to position myself as an expert. Can you create for me an ebook, sales letter, marketing material, and other sales funnel supporting content?”. These clients hired me to think, research, write, edit, and sometimes even publish their work.

I’ve worked with several clients who have said, “I’ve made a name for myself as an expert in my niche. Here is my content, research, and experience. I’ve got the system in place to take the content you write and sell it.” These clients hired me to be the scribe and editor, and they’ve taken care of the thinking, research, and publishing.

WHY THIS MATTERS
For business owners, knowing exactly what kind of roles you’re looking for in a ghostwriter will help you in the following ways:

• You’ll be able to better manage the project and your budget
• You’ll be able to find a ghostwriter faster and more easily
• You’ll be able to find a ghostwriter who fits your needs
• You’ll be able to communicate more effectively with your ghostwriter
• You’ll end up with a project that is closest to your vision and will help you to achieve your business goals

So the next time you’re looking for a ghostwriter, remember: You’re not JUST looking for a ghostwriter. Be specific about the roles you want your ghostwriter to take on.