Help, help, help... Make money!
This is the little known (often ignored), golden nugget of advice that is the backbone for making money online.
It’s not about chasing the next fad, the next gimmick. Instead it’s about HELPING people, and it always has been.
And it’s for this reason that I’d like to introduce you to a metric I judge all of my work by, in fact, it’s one of the things I take most pride in. And I like to call it…
“Proof of Help”
If you want to learn more about possibly the most important metric in you online business, I suggest you read on.
WHAT IS "PROOF OF HELP"?
Proof of help is the tracking of certain key metrics or actions you’ve taken, whereby the impact of those actions has had a direct result in helping someone.
The help you’ve given is quantifiable, and measurable, and serves as the basis for building an ethical, growing online business that serves others first.
WHAT METRICS/ACTIONS SHOULD YOU TRACK?
The list I’m going to give you here is by no means conclusive, but it’s served me well up until this point and it’s something that you can take for your own and tailor it to your own business.
FORUM ANSWERS
Forums are a great way to offer your skills and knowledge to help answer the questions of others in your niche, and it’s a great way to begin building an audience of raving fans. And as such and such points out, you only need 1000 fans to build a truly successful business.
A couple of great places to start are:
SOCIAL MEDIA
On platforms like Facebook and Twitter people are often asking questions about problems they’re having. Providing answers to these questions builds your authority within your niche and also spreads goodwill.
Facebook groups can be a goldmine of people hungry for answers to their questions.
If you do a killer job answering them, then you’re well on your way to building and audience of raving fans.
BLOG COMMENTS
The comments sections on blogs can be a treasure trove of people crying out for help.
Don’t wait for the moderator to get in there and answer the questions, get in there yourself, and give valuable actionable content.
Thoughtful blog comments are a great way to drive new users to your blog too.
It’s not going to bring down your servers or anything, however, by leaving comments and providing help within the comments section, you’ll build up your digital footprint, and over time you’ll see an increase in traffic to your site.
CREATE BLOG CONTENT
Probably the biggest help you can provide someone is a well thought out, practical blog post.
By giving a fuck about someone else, their problems and pains, and creating killer content around that topic, you’ll be providing tremendous value.
People search the internet for solutions to their problems, and, by answering these questions by providing amazing content, you’ll be able to drive a tonne of traffic.
This is SEO 101 in 2019 and it’s only going to become more and more important.
PUBLISH VIDEO CONTENT
More and more people look to platforms like YouTube for answers to their questions. So why not package your knowledge into a neat video and give people actionable helpful content that solves their problems?
If you’re not comfortable on video yet don’t worry, nobody ever is in the begginning, that shit takes time.
The important part is not to be so fearful that you don’t actually do it, and instead, take action, ship your content and learn by doing.
PODCASTING
Have you ever thought about starting a podcast?
Or, if starting your own podcast ain’t your thing, how about making a guest appearance on someone else’s podcast?
Podcasts are a great way to spread your message, provide massive value and grow your audience and authority in the process
PREPARE THE VESSEL TO RECEIVE
When you offer massive value to people they naturally want to reciprocate. It’s a biological response in humans (not to be abused) to give back and return favours from others, and for that reason it’s important that your website has been crafted in a way that lubricates the vessel to receive.
By that I mean you’ve:
a) got to have paid products or services to offer
b) make it seamless, intuitive and simple for people to access them
That’s what I mean by preparing the vessel to receive.
When you help others they’ll naturally feel inclined to give back, so you need to pay attention to ensuring your vessel is ready to receive to make that journey as stress free and seamless as possible.
CONCLUSION
The concept of ‘proof of help’ is half action plan, half philosophy, but it’s a worthwhile metric to focus on, as without helping anybody with your blog content, it really serves very little purpose.
My advice to you would be to incorporate ‘proof of help’ into the KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) that you track on a regular basis.
Anyway, I hope this post has given you food for thought as to how you approach your own blog content, and it’s given you a valuable metric to judge your performance by.
Peace out.
Rowan.