Thanks for all the emails about the making money post last week.

You asked for a few more examples. Well, here they are.

9 (More) Ways to Make Money on Your Blog

Just one word of warning. Before you choose a product to sell online do as much research as possible. It’s very frustrating when you find that after setting up a site, selling some units, that your partner doesn’t pay up.

Ask around before you choose to invest you time. It will take a little effort but it’s worth doing. With that said, here are nine more…

1. Music – When I created my first podcast I needed some background music and a jingle.  Where do you get these? Odesk is one option. Other companies have setup blogs offers royalty free music that you can add to your videos, podcast, and online shows. How hard can it be?
2. Writing Templates – if you have writing skills, develop products for non-native english speakers or for specific industries. Here are templates for technical writers
3. Voiceovers – Ever taken voice lessons? If you did, you can make money online doing screencasts, narrations, voiceovers, and tutorials. Want an example, listen to the intro to  Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast.
4. Membership Sites – This takes hard work but… offers HUGE rewards. Do the math. 100 members paying 49 USD per month. How about 500 paying $79? The question is who’d pay? Again, focus on the business sector, for example, energy, software, finance, research, government. Look at Jay and Sterling at Internet Business Mastery  and the Third Tribe.
5. Mobile Apps – Again, link up with others on odesk and create an app that you can sell to mobile users. Don’t create another generic me-too product. Look for something magazines will want to review. This gives you the exposure and publicity you need to sell the product. Look at the iTunes store and see what products you could make better.
6. Buy and Sell Sites – You can use sites like Flippa.com to sell do this. Be careful when you start. Learn the basics. Get as much information about the site’s performance, traffic, memberships and sales. Then place a bid. This process works very well is you understand the fundamentals of web business and are prepared to be patient. Don’t get burnt by paying too much. See what others are bidding and then proceed.
7. Languages – While this market is saturated, look for ways to offer segmented courses or products. For example, teach American Born Chinese how to speak Shanghai-hua (the dialect spoken in Shanghai). Or teach the Scottish version of Gaelic. Most products are for the Irish version.
8. Third Parties Software – Maybe the simplest way to make money. If you can get ‘quality’ traffic in sufficient numbers, then you can sell them software on behalf of others. For example, I sell Aweber, Method123, WhiteStorm software on different sites. If you have ANY experience of these areas, then you can use this to create posts, videos, cheat sheets, downloads and other content that drives traffic back to you site.
9. Royalties – Use sites like Createspace, which is owned by Amazon, to upload music, videos and books you have written. You will be paid royalties on each sale; there are no setup costs.

You’ll notice that many of these involve selling other products. My suggestion is to try to sell products with a medium profit margin rather than real big hitter. Why?

The market is saturated with people trying to shift the very lucrative products. It’s a battlefield. Instead, step sideways and look at areas that are under-served. You’ll get much better returns in the long run.

What else did I miss?

Documents fail for many reasons. One common mistake is to adopt a ‘one size fits all’ approach to your audience. This works only when generic material, usually of a non-technical nature.

When discussing Audience Analysis, David McMurray points out that, “for most technical writers, this is the most important consideration in planning, writing, and reviewing a document. You “adapt” your writing to meet the needs, interests, and background of the readers who will be reading your writing.

Online Writing Lab makes the point that, “In order to compose persuasive, user-centered communication, you should gather as much information as possible about the people reading your document. Your audience may consist of different people who may have different needs and expectations. In other words, you may have a complex audience in all the stages of your document’s lifecycle—the development stage, the reading stage, and the action stage”

In other words, the audience of a technical document is the intended reader.

If you don’t know who you’re writing for, you need to stop and figure out why these people will read your document.

Other examples

In the same way that Disney creates movies for kids, ESPN target basketball programs at sporting types, and The Economist send their glossy magazine for executives, all of these products are targeted at a specific audience(s) and deliver accordingly.

Audience types

When you start to analyze an audience, try to identify its type. These tend to fall into four categories:

1. Executives who make decisions regarding product development and its role in the company’s overall success may have little technical knowledge but a firm grasp of how to position the product as a business asset.
2. Software developers, who are less concerned with sales and marketing activities, need to know other details, such as the specs and installation instructions.
3. Experts will have in-depth technical knowledge. They are most likely to have designed and developed the product in question. They’ll be interested in emerging trends and new technologies. How does it compare against the competition?
4. Users will have the least technical knowledge. They simply want the product to work and ‘do something’ for them. They have little interest in its business goals, marketing promises, or technical architecture. Does it help solve their problems?

For a professional writer, knowing your audience is critical. If you get this wrong, you’ll miss the mark.

Other considerations

In addition to the types discussed above, you also need to factor in their:

• Delivery – How will the document will be delivered (print, online, projection, PDA). Will it be read in the office, on the road, or in more stressful situations, for example, disaster recovery documents may be read in very hazardous conditions?
• Experience – knowledge of the application to date
• Needs – determine the reasons the reader needs to have this document and what they hope to accomplish with it.
• Preferred document type – for example, do they have a preference or a need for printed or online material.
• Training – likelihood that the person has had some (or no) training with the application. This may determine how much needs to get into the Getting Started Guide and/or the Introduction chapters.
• When the document will be accessed (work, home, travel)
• Where the document will be read
• Why the document will be accessed (reference, training)

Other factors to include:

• Age
• Culture
• Language
• Level of education
• Needs and interests
• Skills

All of those factors will contribute to how the document is written and delivered.

How to define an audience

Depending on what you’re writing, you may have just one audience or possibly several.

For example, different chapters in the TV guide will be targeted at users with simple, moderate, or advance levels of proficiency.

• How many audiences do you have? List them. Start by identifying their needs.
• What do they hope to achieve?
• What is most (and least) important to them?
• What should they do with the document?

Audience acronym

Wikihow provides this AUDIENCE acronym:

• Analysis – Who is the audience?
• Understanding – What is the audience’s knowledge of the subject?
• Demographics – What is their age, gender, education background etc.?
• Interest – Why are they reading your document?
• Environment – Where will this document be sent/viewed?
• Needs – What are the audience’s needs associated with your document topic?
• Customization – What specific needs/interests should you the writer address relating to the specific audience?
• Expectations – What does the audience expect to learn from your document? The audience should walk away having their initial questions answered and explained.

It adds that audience analysis is part of the beginning stages of producing a target document. Whereas audience analysis does help to start off the project and lead the writer in the right direction, it is only one step in the formation of a document. It is beneficial to consult other rhetorical strategies that may help guide the writing process even more so.

Advantages of audience analysis

Knowing your audience lets you refine the subject matter so that it matches the reader’s needs. If you don’t know who you’re writing to, then you can’t achieve this.

Understanding your audience is the first step towards creating a healthy document. Before you start writing, define what the audience expects from the document. Imagine how readers will use it.

For example, imagine you are writing a manual on how to tune a High Definition TV:

• What will your readers going to expect to find?
• Will there be graphics and diagrams? Maybe screenshots of how to install parts.
• What do they want to read? How to troubleshoot if they can’t find a channel.
• What do they not want to read about? Its technical architecture and business plans.
• Where are they going to read it? In their office, car, room, or even outdoors.

Here are some questions to consider when defining your audience:

• How knowledgeable is the audience?
• Before starting a project, I always ask my clients, “What do they already know?” The client should know his customer’s level of proficiency. If not, interview the target readers and determine their strengths and weaknesses.
• What do they already know? Saves you from re-writing material.
• What do they need to know? Allows you to focus on the gaps in their knowledge.
• What background material should you provide to bring them up to speed?

How to keep readers interested

Sometimes you’ll have to work hard to persuade your readers to even open the first page. Writing a grant proposal means persuading the reader that your project is worthy of investment. They’re under no obligation to read it and can stop at any time and move onto something else.

Your success as a writer depends on grabbing their attention, keeping it and then encouraging them to take action – calling the sales office, for example.

For other projects, you may have a more captive audience. Internal documentation, memos, circulars, and other such publications are all targeted at your colleagues. To a certain extent, they have read this.

But you still have to make sure they understand the material. If not, you’ll be held responsible for such poor communications. When you consider it like this, both your internal and external customers have to be taken very seriously. Just because you’re writing for your colleagues doesn’t mean you can step down a gear. Rather, you need to be vigilant and avoid complacency entering your material.

How to write different types of information

For example, if you’re updating a User Guide, you may have to highlight how it differs from previous publications. Many readers will look at the introduction only (where you’ve discussed the changes) and skip to the sections they know best rather than read the entire document.

However, if you’re writing a white paper for a conference, you’ll have different writing goals. Your aim is to get their attention and persuade them to keep turning the pages.

So, how you present different types of information really matters. Is it new or old? An appendix or update? Is it neutral (i.e. sharing information) or sales-orientated.

Here’s another angle: consider whether the publication is technical (admin guide), commercial (case study) or promotional (press release)?

When you think about it, each type of reader is very different. Knowing their expectations helps fine-tune your material. Imagine if you didn’t know who you were writing for? Where would you start?

How do readers see you?

You can’t write in a vacuum. So, how others see you will determine the tone and position you’ll adopt when ‘speaking’ to others – just as it does when speaking to people in real life.

For example: consider a business plan where you’re requesting funds.

• What’s your position to the Venture Capitalists?
• How do they see you? Inferior, superior or peer?
• What tone do they expect? Chatty, witty, and light-hearted? Maybe not!
• How about a series of Standard Operating Procedures for a Military unit?
• Again, what tone should you adopt?
• When the solders read the instructions, what attitude would you like them to adopt?
• Should they consider the SOPs politely, debate their meaning amongst colleagues, or accept it as a direct order from their superiors and act accordingly?

So, before starting, make a list of your target readers. Then, write a single paragraph outlining their needs. Prioritize their three main objectives and write your document around these. Later you can go back and refine the text to incorporate other topics that are close to their heart.

Understanding your audience is the first step in the writing process. Spend more time on this in your next writing project and you’ll see a considerable difference in the final publication.

Then go back and look at other documents where you did no audience analysis. The difference will be very obvious. Older documents will appear to be very coarse and immature; newer documents will have a more professional and solid feel to them. You know who you’re writing for and it shows.

Links:

David McMurray – Power Tools for Technical Communication

Online Writing Lab – http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/629/01/

Ten Audience Analysis Exercises http://www.tengrrl.com/tens/013.shtml

What are your thoughts on this area? Is it best to get something written up fast and circulated or is it better to be patient and go through the analysis phase?

A PayPal survey this week shows that 50% of online shoppers have abandoned their carts multiple times in the past three weeks due to high shipping costs, security concerns and lack of convenience. The average cost of abandoned goods in U.S. shopping carts is $109.

Note: High Shipping Costs Top the List.

While nothing could have prevented one-third of shoppers from abandoning purchases, the survey found that providing shipping costs upfront might have caused 40 percent to complete the purchase.

To help merchants encourage shoppers to purchase, PayPal released a new Express Checkout feature – the PayPal Instant Update API.

By integrating the new API, merchants can show order details earlier in the process including shipping options, insurance choices and tax totals.

“To get shoppers to buy, it’s critical merchants make costs transparent,” said Eddie Davis, senior director of SMB merchant services, PayPal.

The survey also uncovered signs that the economy still has shoppers wary about clicking the “purchase” button.

• 33% of respondents abandoned checkout because they didn’t plan for all of the expenses
• 25% left the site to search for a coupon.
• 33% later returned to the same site to buy.
• 20% purchased the items at a brick and mortar store or competitor’s Web site.

“Merchants who don’t welcome back abandoners with open arms are leaving hundreds of dollars per shopper on the table,” added Davis.

“Sweetening the deal with free shipping, coupons and special discounts is also a great way to encourage online shoppers to complete their purchases.”

Breakdown on Why Shoppers Abandon

At least a fifth of all U.S. survey respondents cited the following as very important reasons for cart abandonment:

• High shipping charges: 46 percent
• Wanted to comparison shop: 37 percent
• Lack of money: 36 percent
• Wanted to look for a coupon: 27 percent
• Wanted to shop offline: 26 percent
• Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24 percent
• Item was unavailable at checkout: 23 percent
• Couldn’t find customer support: 22 percent
• Concerned about security of credit card data: 21 percent

About the survey
The PayPal Checkout Abandonment Study was conducted by comScore among active shoppers who had recently abandoned a shopping cart. In the United States 553 people participated between May 12-15, 2009.

Ivan Walsh is a technology writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Learn how to save time, make money and develop digital products.

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If you plan to do an online survey either by email or over the web, make sure you follow a few golden rules.

Keep it short. No more than 3 screens. No more than 10 questions.

Otherwise they will give up and close the browser.

Add some benefit, for example, a prize. Describe how and when they will be entered into the prize. Include the date for the draw. Emphasize how you value their opinion and how you will keep their responses in confidence.

Sounds good!

Here is sample text you can modify for your next survey.

Hello, Now that you’ve seen what you can do with [insert the name of your product or service], we’re interested in your opinion.

In order to keep our [name of product or service] at its best we’d like to know how you use [name of product or service], why you use it, and how it can be improved.

Please fill out our quick 3 minute survey on [name of product or service]. Go on!

We’re offering an iPod touch to three lucky participants.

Could be you!

Just add your email address at the end of the survey. We will contact you if you win the June 16th drawing!

Thank you for your time and for helping to improve [name of product or service]!

Take the [name of product or service] Survey.

Your responses will remain confidential. No information about you will be sold or provided to any other company whatsoever, nor will you receive unsolicited emails because of your participation in this survey. Add your name and job title. What software do you use for surveys? Let me know and I will add it to our list.