Well, I started my marketing efforts years ago by giving away my articles and primarily working with pre-new business owners. That has worked out OK, but I'm not living up to my full potential. My best clients, the ones I want to concentrate on are established businesses, having made it through the first year or few years. However, I want to build relationships with those pre-new business owners, too, as simply as possible, since they ARE my potential clients.

It's time for me to take things to new levels. What I've learned is that pre-new business owners either don't have the money to get expert advice/counseling/etc. or they don't see any value in it, or they say they can't afford it. All excuses I know, all reasons why the number of business failures is so high, however, I'm no longer looking to "fight city hall", so to speak. I know I'm generalizing, and have had new business owners utilize my services, with great results, however, it's been a hard way for me to make an income, let alone make the income I want, by doing what I love to do (coaching, consulting and teaching).

I get notes from my ezine readers all the time telling me how successful they became just by reading my articles. From people/coaches who thought about being "x" and were afraid and started their business because of an article they read to people who didn't start businesses because the marketing aspect scared them to death to people who just needed to know where to start, in the maze of information that's out there. Many of those people who write me, are making triple what I am making, yet they wouldn’t have taken the plunge or continued toward their goals if had not been for articles they read on my site. The testimonials are great and wonderful to have, except they’re not bringing me any money/

I recently decided that it was time for me to pay someone to help me do what I help others do. It's been an interesting 2 months since I had someone to look at my business with “fresh” eyes. And I’ve started "stretching" and taking giant leaps of faith. *I’ve always taken leaps, however, one thing I found out by getting some help is that “leaps” for me have to be gigantic… not just leaps.

I'm coming up with a different angle for making money providing services to pre to start up's. and of course I’m open to other ideas, too. I have over 200 articles that are being revised and put into PDF files. I’m planning to sell them, maybe at $1 or 2 per article + sell them as a few articles together in booklets (and ebooklets) + sell them as a bunch of articles together in ebooks + the bigger goal is a book down the road.

My thoughts are to offer what I’ve already created to pre-new business owners at rates they can afford (or want to pay). Give them some things that can help them, and build relationships with them as they grow their businesses.

With the one page articles, I will offer then at $1 each or 5 for $6. The next level is the ebooklets/ebooks and pricing them is where I'm getting lost. For example: I have one 5 pager on Creating USPs/Introductions. It contains a little history of USPs, 2 exercises, lots of tips, and links to over 20 (I think) resources who have given me permission to link to them.

How do I decide how to price this ereport? Is it by the pages? Is it the information it contains? Etc?

And let's say I put it into booklets that I provide at events I speak at, what do I price it there?

Other than assistance on prices, I’d appreciate any other ideas on what can be done with articles other than what I’m doing, which is submitting them to article banks, newspapers and magazines.

Thanks in advance for your assistance,

Maria Marsala
Business Growth Specialist




Elevating Your Business