Credibility
Monday, May 11, 2009 21:29With this post I need your help, please check the link at the end of the post and post your choice in the comments.
Sally was an expert cutter, she knew how to go down with metal saw - up and down and up again.
If you ever sold anything you know that the second most powerful sales force is the expertise. If you come out of sales you might ask what is the most powerful. Good news, the most powerful sales force is enthusiastic action so everybody who stuck their fingers into power socket as a toddler have electric enough personality for sales.
EXPERTISE
It is very difficult to project expertise over the web. Whatever you write or film can be faked. How many make money online blogs or websites you have seen that claim to be run by person who makes lots of money online? I bet that amount is rather staggering. It is almost like there are no losing poker player, at least I have never met one they all claim to be on the high side if you look at it in the long term… yeah, right. Interestingly enough, rest of the blogs seem to be “my journey”- type of blogs that are more personal and at least initially make no claims of high earnings. This blog is one example of such a lowlife blog.
EVIDENCE
Irrefutable evidence gives credibility and validates expertise. If your site has photos of other online money making celebrities and you are in those photos, shaking hands and changing laughs… well, it’s pretty clear case. Even more credibility will come over you if someone who is validated by the community mentions you. With that commodity under your belt, you can go to a credibility bank and make a hefty deposit.
SUCCESS
You have to be successful for people to start paying attention to you. The best way to be successful is to do something big no matter the field. If you are sitting in your room in the night and have no other source for content but writing a mobile phone review based on many reviews around net, you ain’t gonna cut it. Do something else, possibly wildly crazy (walking on the street naked and filming the reactions of passersby) or tediously dull (film how grass grows in real time not one of those speed-up time lapses), just make it out of the ordinary and you get your success. Then you can use that success to brand yourself as the making money online naked guy. With that everybody knows you and gives credit to your expertise and finally you can build on that.
Now the task. Do you think this site has expertise?
Aman@BullsBattleBears says:
May 12th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
The site looks more like a giant advertorial rather than a place for expert advice…I looked around and cannot figure out who is giving the advice and why they feel that entitlement.
Aman@BullsBattleBears’s last blog post..Freebie Monday #23 - Free Gillette Fusion Razors and MORE!!
Jake Stone says:
May 12th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Thank you Aman. I was thinking that it is going to be you who tackles this request. Yes, I had a similar impression, however there is a human voice behind this site. I know because I emailed the webmaster, nice fellow, which is quite interesting, eh?
I was wondering about the motivation behind this website. Is it the need to make a money making niche site or to really help visitors.
It is made with SBI, which is clearly not the cheap way to go at it. Not much personality there either. I wonder if the site is actually making enough to cover the yearly upkeep…
Much of the stuff that I come across in the web is like this. Sometimes I wonder why people bother, either create something important for yourself or something useful for others.
I’m not taking stance on the validity of the information here, just wondering if this site has what it takes to stop occasional search engine visitor?
I would resort to PPC traffic with site like this.
Rambling a bit… However, I think that the credibility starts from the overall impression that your site gives for the visitor then the functionality kicks in - you just have to have things in their right places. Finally there comes the patience to glance through the content.
I see your freebie Monday has Gillette… man that is one sorry company. They used to make stuff that lasted from father to son. Now they make stuff that lasts for four mornings. I bet they think that visually appealing advertising will make the trick, and so it has. Only old geezers like me know how brilliant tools those shaving knives really were.
Try one of those old school tools and soon Fusion, Mach etc. single-serviced plastic blades stay on shop shelves.
Melody says:
May 13th, 2009 at 1:26 am
Well, whether focused or incredibly random–I still love your writing style. Honestly, I know you may poke fun at this, but when you come across such dullness on the internet, it’s refreshing to see a writing style with a kick to it. Some people may be too incompetent to quite understand it (obviously they’re not your audience), but I certainly believe, as I’ve mentioned before, that this blog is highly underrated.
Now, the question is, how far do you want this blog to go–because you kind of hide behind this awesomely ridiculous gravatar, and I think some of the connection between writer and reader is lost. Then again, there are plenty of great bloggers/writers with anonymity, so the next question would be how could you make the “anonymity” work wonders for you.
Seriously, even when you comment, I find it more interesting than half the crap online–and honestly “all you need” is the proper traffic because the top bloggers have no creative writing style whatsoever (and are incredibly conceited and boring)–yet they “just” have loyal readers who will occasionally kiss ass.
You could very well become one of those top columnist/bloggers with funny posts about business/finance either on a popular website–or making this that very site. Perhaps, though, you should focus on making everything more cohesive…I think you could start by asking the fundamental question(s) every blogger should ask–what needs does my blog satisfy?
um…..so yea, that was a long comment lol…
By the way, Forbes calls Finland the second most happiest place for people to live in the world–am I gonna have to become your neighbor? lol
Melody’s last blog post..Feng Shui For Your Business Cards
Melody says:
May 13th, 2009 at 1:35 am
lol..uh. I may have meant that comment for your newest post..
p.s. No, that site kind of looks conventional and mediocre..
Melody’s last blog post..Feng Shui For Your Business Cards
Jake Stone says:
May 15th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Isn’t it funny how we immediately associate the looks with the content - judging by the cover.
I’ve just started to learn hypnosis, which by the way seems to be the ultimate tool for a salesperson. My first discoveries are that visual information is over half of what we can absorb in any conversation. The second most important thing is the voice and all the tones we use, and this is almost forty percent of the information that we can take in. Finally comes the actual meaning and information that is being transferred. This part plays only less than ten percent of communication… No wonder that we rely so heavily to website looks…
How could it be that my stuff is difficult to get? My job is to present the benefits as layman terms as possible. Seriously, I am not trying to communicate as I sell, one tends to grow weary on matching the customer’s level. I’m not going so far to say that this would be therapeutic for me, but it sure makes me feel better. That is the reason why I don’t want to limit myself to a certain pattern or form.
I could always start a video blog and do it with peculiar faces in line with the gravatar, but that would probably snatch away the last crumb of credibility - eaten away by birds what a terribly Hitchcockian end. Anyway it looks like I should shy away from difficult writing style and embrace mainstream and traffic stream as well. Huh, what a daunting task. But right now my blogs fills exactly that one need that it was designed to fill, but should it fulfill some more?
Melody says:
May 16th, 2009 at 4:15 am
Well, that’s a question only you can answer. But why am I not surprised in your interest of hypnosis. I’m an avid researcher of Neuro Linguistic Programming–hoping to train in it one day.. I say stay away from the norm, it’s what makes you so unique…ew that was cliche lol..
Hmm, a book that follows Twitter format–might just be the book that makes it for ya..
Melody’s last blog post..How Twitter Influences Blog Posts
Jake Stone says:
May 16th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
What led me to hypnosis (I don’t know how to use those fancy NLP terms) was the realization that many salespeople that I know are surprisingly stupid and still manage to sell well. My conclusion was that there was something in this silent and simple style that worked.
Now that I’ve spent some time reading about hypnosis it doesn’t amaze me at all to notice that most of the theory encourages an environment of few outside interruptions. My hypothesis is that simple salesman unawarely puts prospects into remotely hypnosis-like state and is then able to influence on their decision.
Feng Shui and NLP not to mention art… you seem to be full of surprises yourself…
Melody says:
May 16th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Well NLP is basically the relationship between language and the human mind, and how that relationship affects our behavior. Hypnosis is one of the many techniques it incorporates to create influence on behavior. It’s something I’ve wanted to do with my old finance (hence “financial therapy”) business, and hope to do with my future venture.
I wholeheartedly agree, that I’ve sadly witnessed the most idiotic salespeople actually closing a sale simply because of their style of selling. People, who don’t even know the product well, and yet beat their prospects to a pulp–or at least until they hand over the money. I can’t place what the actual term is, but bombarding people like that is one of the many successful hypnotic techniques to get people to do what you want…
However, that’s not my cup o’ tea..but what can I say, I have a wide spectrum of interests..
Melody’s last blog post..How Twitter Influences Blog Posts
Jake Stone says:
May 17th, 2009 at 12:34 am
Financial therapy as an idea sounds so exotic that I bet you had to spend quite a while to explain the concept to prospects. Probably required more time that you had in your hands, given the fact that you are not doing it anymore.
Now I got two books about hypnosis and NLP under my belt. I think that the next step should be to take some practical course, because reading can only take you so far… However, this has been interesting topic. A lot of it is oddly familiar to me from personal selling. As years go by, one tests various methods for different situations and slowly makes progress. My best practices have quite a bit of resemblance with NLP. I guess somebody just named a common phenomenon and “invented it”.
Melody says:
May 19th, 2009 at 1:38 am
It’s dissolution was just a matter of getting out of a really bad partnership. That’s why although I’m out of the financial industry for good, I’ll still be using a major component related to the therapy that existed from that previous business, as the product for a new venture.
Isn’t it really badass when your credited as the creator for a new term? Boy was I pissed when I knew I couldn’t coin the term financial therapy as my own genius…
What books did you read?
Melody’s last blog post..The Top 5.5 Myths of Online Marketing
Jake Stone says:
May 19th, 2009 at 8:11 pm
You have many years to come up with market shattering terms that will carry your name AND which you are able to copyright.
What comes to terms it is easy to coin them if they are goofy enough. I grabbed a brandolize.com domain, because all this conversation that is happening in social media between brands and consumers is bound to lead into idolizing brands. Needless to say that I have not done anything with that domain.
I read a general book by a Finnish author to learn the basics and then read an old book by Crasilnek and Hall; Clinical hypnosis:Principles and applications. I didn’t get it yet, but I think that by reading more I’ll just waste time, I should go to a course or some kind of class.
Fake Money Blog » Sales is all about twisting the truth says:
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
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