This week I sit down thinking about many steps of my businesses. Usually when I do this I just try to think at what I can offer to others.
A typical conversation with myself would go like this:
me: ok, what can I offer to people using my service?
my inner self: oh, you could just give them some free reports.
me: sounds cool.
my inner self: but you shouldn’t tell them the whole story, otherwise how are you going to make any money?
me: uh.
Can you see a problem with this?
The one I see is that I’m self posing a physical limit to the amount of value I can deliver. By thinking at how I could eventually make some money one day, I’m damaging the whole product today.
I spent quite a bit of time thinking about this fact this week. You see, it makes sense to plan your business or website with the intent of making money. I’m the first to say that launching something without knowing upfront how to make it profitable is not a wise idea. But that should not pose a limit to what you can offer.
Take this blog for example. I could either offer my best content available for everyone, or keep something for myself just in case I’ll write an ebook one day.
I tell you upfront that I choose the first option, and here’s why. If I want to build a successful blog, I have to provide something useful for my readers, so I have to focus on provide value for them and not for me.
The point is that it’s not the reader or customer that has to find what you can offer, but rather it’s you who has the obligation to give them what they are looking for.
So how do you make money?
A question still remains. If you give everything away for free, how do you make any money? There are several ways to make money once you have something that’s really valuable for others people, so I wont really talk much about it.
Keep in mind that the fact that you do your best in your field doesn’t mean you can’t offer a premium or tailored services. In the case of blogging, a specific ebook on a particular subject may be wort both for you and for those readers who are really interested in it. If you have a web application, it makes sense to offer a subscription, as you probably have to face some costs about hosting and development.
But don’t let that stop you from making the most awesome product or service you can.
Don’t pose a limit to the amount of value you can deliver.
The next time you’ll have something to do, ask yourself: “What can I do to offer the best?”
If you do this, and you always do your best, awesome things will happen.
P.S. If you are like me, you want to incorporate the previous question in your life by inserting it in your habits system.