Today’s Post covers Step THREE: Learn to CREATE Value
Words: Hmm, ’bout 1200. Lotsa pictures. Take ya five minutes.
Contents: AMAZING! Plus, gluten-free.

SO, Steppers. Sorry to have an interruption in posts plus “radio silence”  over the last week or so. I had an opportunity to go visit my Dad in a foreign nation known as Cody, Wyoming… and have my son with me to boot. Family time trumps all bizness activity.

But on with the story! We’ve been tracking the Shoestring Steps at work in the conception, production, sale, and scaling of one of my information products. It’s unrelated to internet marketing or social media, proving that you actually can make money on the internet by doing more than just telling folks how to make money on the internet 😉 Last time I looked, my info-product “The Blueprint” had over $1M in total sales, starting from scratch.

On Monday and Tuesday (last week) we did Shoestring Steps ONE and TWO: Get OFF Your ASS and Find Out Some W’s.

Today, Wednesday October 30 is Step THREE: Learn To CREATE Value.

Money Has No Value of Its Own

I’ve said elsewhere on this blog that money has no value of its own. No, not even for exchange!

Think about it; I like you so I give you a hunnerd bucks (that’s how I learned to say it in another foreign land known as Texas). This gift makes you so happy that you wonder what you could possibly do for me. SO you give ME a hunnerd bucks. Yayy! …or, uh. Not…

Is either of our lives enhanced by this exchange? Nope. Not even one bit.

In fact, if I were stranded in the mountains of Wyoming and caught in a snowstorm… your hunnerd might end up as kindling. Best use for it, under the circumstances.

So money has no inherent value. But then, what does?

Heh. It’s always the same. There are only two things that people pony up their hard-earned dough for: good feelings or solutions to problems.

Go ahead. TRY and figure out something that you would pay for, that doesn’t fall into one or the other… or BOTH… of these categories.

How to Create Value from Scratch

I’m not sure exactly what “scratch” is, but you can make a lot of things from it 😉 . As far as money goes, I’ve heard people talk about “making money” but last time I checked, only the Mint is allowed to make money.

On the other hand, you can solve people’s problems and/or make ’em feel good, can’tcha?

Yup.

And that, my friend, is valuable.

Now THAT’s Creating Value! Mmmm.

<==Make something pleasurable like AWEsome Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes and you got my money’s attention, yo. 😎

Solve someone’s nagging problem and you are in like Flynn.

You can’t make money. That’s illegal. But you can Create Value. Armed with this single skill, you may as well be printing the stuff.

The best way to Create Value from scratch is to solve your own problem. If you make up your mind and face down something that’s been bugging YOU, that’s something you woulda paid for at one point in your life, right? Right.

And if it’s of value to you, others might also think your solution is cooler than the other side of the pillow. You already met some of those peeps  in Step Two. Now it’s time to package your solution to share with others.

You can look at a starter list for ideas in my post, 19 Ways to Create Value out of NOTHING. As far as my information product, check out this easy process:

Laser Focused Target Marketing: Identify WITH Your Market

When I began blogging about my trading method, it was to give an “acid test’ to the solution I made for myself.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed on an equal or greater benefit.
~Napoleon Hill

What had been the problem? Well,  an options trading “guru” promised me 4-10% per month returns if I learned a particular trading strategy known as “selling covered calls”.

Just by following directions, I managed to wipe out my entire savings account.

As I was crying in my milk, I remembered Napoleon Hill’s quote that every adversity carries with it the seed of a greater benefit.

I examined the flaw in “covered call trading”. It effectively made it so that if you were right about a stock going up, you had to part with it early, often before it made its biggest gains. On the other hand, if you were wrong about a stock you got to keep it. Hmmm… any of you scratching your heads? Hold on to losers, get winners sorted out of your account. HOW on Earth do they sell such sloppy thinking as a savvy stock strategy? It’s drivel, really.

Well, anyway. My system solved both problems; by using a totally unique setup I was able to keep losses down to single digit percents in my losing stock pick… while leaving the upside open for my winning picks for explosive growth.

Worked like a charm! Tweaking my trading structure and behavior changed everything.

Then I added the dimension of accountability by publishing my results, both winners AND losers, on a blog.

Create Your Unique Selling Proposition: State the Problem Simply as Possible

 So that blog got a little bit of attention from my friends that trade. But when it came to driving traffic to it- I was at a loss at first. Didn’t understand a thing about targeting a segment using pay-per-click… but quickly learned.

See, since the trading system I created for my own use was born out of the horrific experience I had with trading covered calls… I decided to find fellas (and feller-ettes… lots of lady traders out there too) that were just like me.

Either they had gone ahead and drunk the Kool-Aid  with that flawed covered calls seminar, or they were thinking about it. My book was written to help people JUST LIKE ME– folks that got hurt trading covered calls.

Effective Marketing on a Shoestring Budget Using YouTube

I made a series of small videos on YouTube that solved that problem for people. It was titled, “The Trouble With Covered Calls“.

Y’know how people found it? I brought a tiny li’l bit of traffic to my blog with the phrase, “Hurt Trading Covered Calls?” in a pay-per-click campaign.

That attracted guys like me that had been hurt by that strategy. The guys and gals that I wrote the book for in the first place

See the view count? Don’t imagine for a moment that I sent 25,713 people to that page at a coupla dollars per click. Uh-uh. No, this short video just introduced the solution to a problem that many people experienced.

From the pay-per-click traffic I got me a few spokespersons – folks that were turned on by the solution presented in this short video series – and they passed it around in a very select community. Um, you guessed it:

OTHERS that had been hurt by this flawed strategy.

That helped me find the perfect people I could help… my hungry market.

How to Speak to Your Target Audience

…is how you would speak to your best friend that’s experiencing the same problem YOU used to have.

“Hey Kurt, who did you write The Blueprint for?”

“Folks like you and me that got suckered into that covered calls thing and got hurt.”

Easy peasy. Restate the problem and its solution in your marketing message. Then make sure you can DELIVER– solve your market’s problem with what has worked for you. This is how you Create Value From Scratch.

Okay Steppers! NEXT Step is the one that I had to learn before ever making five figures in a month– but it’s well worth it. Keep tuned for the perfect marketing funnel, tomorrow. Til then,

Keep Stepping!

Kurt