Cars We Remember: Ford Maverick enthusiast seeks information

Q: Greg, I want to let you know that I enjoy reading your columns and your knowledge of older vehicles. My friends and I are having a problem finding information on a rare car and we’re not sure it even exists.I was told by friends that Carroll Shelby built 200 Ford Shelby Mavericks in 1970 in New Mexico. I would appreciate any information you can send to me and who I can contact for more information. Also, I would like to know if there are any car clubs for the [...]

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Get a $15 Starbucks Gift Card for Just $10 Before Dec. 31!

I usually scour Groupon for deals when I’m in a new city, looking for something to do or someplace to eat. But I forget to check for deals on the things I use every day.

Maybe you do, too?

Here’s your nudge to keep a better eye on everyday deals: I just found a $15 Starbucks gift card available on Groupon for only $10.

If you want it, act fast! The discount is limited and only available through December 31. These deals tend to be popular, so get your card before Groupon runs out.

How to Get $15 Worth of Starbucks for $10

This one is super easy to get your hands on. If you don’t already have an account with Groupon, you’ll be prompted to create one when you buy, which will take a minute or two.

1. Purchase this deal for $10 from Groupon.
2. You’ll get an eGift card code you can redeem in-store at participating Starbucks. (Here’s how to redeem it.)
3. The gift card is good through June 30, 2016.
4. If you want to send the eGift card directly as a gift, you can do that through Groupon, as well. Just click “Give as a Gift” instead of “Buy”.

Don’t Like Starbucks?

Even if you’re not a Starbucks coffee fan, this could prove to be a good buy.

You can likely sell the gift card for more than you’re going to pay for it through a gift card exchange site like Raise.

If you’ve got some late holiday parties to attend, this could be a quick, affordable gift for that hard-to-shop-for friend or co-worker.

Or, check out any of these eight creative ways to use that Starbucks gift card after the holidays.

Cheers!

Your Turn: Have you found any unexpected deals on Groupon? Share them in the comments!

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We would have shared them with you anyway, but a true “penny hoarder” would be a fool not to take the company’s money.

Dana Sitar (@danasitar) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. She’s written for Huffington Post, Entrepreneur.com, Writer’s Digest and more.

The post Get a $15 Starbucks Gift Card for Just $10 Before Dec. 31! appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Cars We Remember: Ford Maverick enthusiast seeks information

Q: Greg, I want to let you know that I enjoy reading your columns and your knowledge of older vehicles. My friends and I are having a problem finding information on a rare car and we’re not sure it even exists.I was told by friends that Carroll Shelby built 200 Ford Shelby Mavericks in 1970 in New Mexico. I would appreciate any information you can send to me and who I can contact for more information. Also, I would like to know if there are any car clubs for the [...]

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Silvio Calabi: At Jaguar, a new XF ushers in a new era

There is an event in the car biz called simply The Launch: A carmaker books a resort somewhere, maps out a day of driving nearby, and then invites us “lifestyle influencers” to be wined, dined, given logo merchandise and earnestly pitched by corporate. The following morning we drive off in shiny new cars, hopefully to develop an appreciation for Marque X’s latest pride and joy. Delightful as this sounds, it can be grueling, for the next day we’re usually up [...]

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Your Step-by-Step Guide to Throwing a Rockin’ New Year’s Eve Party on the Cheap

New Year’s Eve. It seems like such a perfect opportunity to go out on the town. The only problem? Everyone else has the same idea.

So, thanks to the law of supply and demand, most bars and clubs charge a premium to count down the last minutes of the year within their walls. When you add it all up, cover charge + fancy dress + expensive drinks + taxi rides = one heck of an expensive night.

Add to that an inability to move (due to the throng of bodies) and long waits to get a drink, and you may discover going out isn’t worth the hype.

After several years battling the New Year’s Eve bar scene, that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. This year, I’ve decided to throw my own New Year’s Eve party, which, between my friends and me, is going to save us hundreds of dollars.

Here are six steps you can take to throw the perfect New Year’s Eve party — on a budget!

1. Send Festive Evites

First things first: the guest list. You could make a plain ol’ Facebook event, but why not class it up with an evite?

Paperless Post has gorgeous designs, or use Evite so your friends can leave messages as they RSVP.

2. Decorate With Handmade Crafts

There’s only one requirement for New Year’s Eve decorations — lots of sparkle — which means it’s super easy to decorate on a budget.

The best part? You can use all of your leftover Christmas decorations: keep your lights up, hang varying lengths of curled ribbons from the ceiling and cut out circles of wrapping paper to attach to the walls as giant confetti.

If you really want to get crafty, here are some shiny ideas:

• Countdown number corks from Pizzazzerie
• Tinsel drink stirrers from Bubbly in Brooklyn
• Golden-wrapped numbers from Ruffled
• Bowtie pasta garland from The Gold Jellybean
• And 51 more ideas from Buzzfeed

3. Create the Perfect Playlist

Music is absolutely essential for creating the perfect party mood. So, please, make sure you have something louder than your phone to play it with! If you don’t, ask your friends if Santa Claus brought them a bluetooth speaker.

As for the tunes themselves, there are several options. With Spotify, you can either create your own playlist or rock one of their pre-created mood mixes. On Pandora, you can listen to everything from top 40 to Frank Sinatra.

Songza is another good choice; here, the playlists are curated by experts — so you’re sure to find some good grooves for New Year’s Eve.

4. Serve Champagne Punch and Dessert

Your party isn’t going to get hopping until 8 or 9 p.m., so ask your guests to eat dinner at home. That way, you don’t have to worry about buying and preparing food — and if your couple friends want to enjoy a romantic dinner beforehand, they can.

What you do need to provide is champagne, and lots of it.

The best way to do this is by buying a bunch of cheap champagne and making punch. Not only is it delicious, but it will make the booze (and therefore, your guests) last longer. Try this orange, cranberry, and basil punch from Cook the Story, or this strawberry punch from Allrecipes.

Since you’re providing the drinks, ask your guests to each bring a dessert to share. That will keep your costs down, as well as allow everyone to sample a variety of tasty treats.

If you can’t resist making one yourself, here are a few festive ideas:

• Almost-midnight clock cookie bites from The Decorated Cookie
• Champagne cupcakes from A Little Claireification
• Lemon raspberry cheesecake bites from Shugary Sweets
• Pink champagne cake pops from Keep It Sweet Desserts

5. Hand Out Fun Favors

Favors are definitely not required, so skip these if your budget is really tight. If you have the time and money, however, favors give your party a bit of extra oomph (which can put it in the running for the best party of the year!).

Here are a few ideas you can make cheaply and easily:

• Personalized glitter champagne glasses from Something Turquoise
• Paper plate shakers from The Centsible Life
• DIY confetti poppers from weddingbells
• Decorated tic-tac boxes (for the midnight kiss!) from Infarrantly Creative

6. Plan Some Group Activities

Between the champagne, desserts and music, your party might have enough going on — but if it needs a boost of energy, try some engaging group activities.

Here are three ideas that will make your guests laugh (and bond):

• Create a photobooth. Gather silly props from around the house, paint a NYE-themed backdrop onto a sheet or big piece of paper, buy a disposable camera — and voila! Not only will you have a blast, you’ll have funny photos to remember your night.

• Print out these New Year’s Eve playing cards from Real Simple. Ask your friends to fill out the cards with their resolutions for the new year, and then guess who wrote which.

• Download the group game app Heads Up, which will provide hours of fun for just 99 cents. (You may have seen it on The Ellen Show.)

Follow these steps, and you’re sure to have the best NYE party on the block — for a fraction of what it would cost to hit the bars. We can’t think of a better way to ring in the new year!

Your Turn: What are your plans for New Year’s Eve?

Susan Shain, senior writer for The Penny Hoarder, is always seeking adventure on a budget. Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.

The post Your Step-by-Step Guide to Throwing a Rockin’ New Year’s Eve Party on the Cheap appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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5 Ways to Use Content to Get More Sales

If you want to generate hordes of sustainable, long-term traffic without spending too much money, content marketing is the way to go.

At its core, it’s very simple:

Create valuable content for your target audience, and give it to them.

Seems a bit short, doesn’t it?

And it is. But that’s only part of the equation.

Unfortunately, that’s where most marketers and businesses stop.

They invest a decent amount of time and money to create content, and many achieve some degree of success.

They start to get a few hundred to a few thousand visitors a day.

But then they realize something….

None of these visitors are becoming customers.

They’ve wasted a great deal of their traffic by not knowing what comes next.

So, what’s the second half of the equation?

After you use content to generate an audience, you then need additional content to make sales.

And you desperately need those sales. Otherwise, how can you justify spending money to give away more content?

You can’t…

I want to show you what types of content you should be producing in order to generate strong sales from the rest of your content marketing efforts.

Some of these might overlap with the content you’re already producing to generate traffic, but some will be new.

If you’re starting to see a solid level of website traffic but aren’t sure how to turn those visitors into customers, this post should help you a lot. 

1. Teach and make sales: Webinars

I want to make this clear right away:

Just because a piece of content is geared towards helping you make sales doesn’t mean that it has to be a “salesy” piece of content.

It can still be highly educational.

The key difference, however, is that these types of content are suited better for making a sale than a general “X tips about Y” article.

I started this post with webinars because it is an incredible type of content.

Not only is it better from an education perspective (compared to most content), but when done right, it’s also better for sales—it can yield crazy numbers.

Let’s look at a few examples.

KISSmetrics has used webinars for a long time.

While I was working at the company, we produced 77 webinars, which had a total of 155,386 signups.

Although only half of those who signed up actually attended the webinars (74,381), we were able to convert 16,394 of them.

That’s a 22% conversion rate (of the people attending).

Those results are pretty typical for high quality webinars.

A few other businesses, such as Adobe and BuzzSumo, have revealed the results of their webinars. Adobe reported a 19% conversion rate, and BuzzSumo gets a conversion rate of about 20%.

You might not get that high of a conversion rate right away, but it’s not improbable either.

There are few types of content that convert as highly as webinars.

If you’ve visited NeilPatel.com any time in the past few months, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve been running webinars on a regular basis.

I’m going to outline how to create a webinar right now, but I highly recommend signing up for a future webinar just to see what an effective one looks like.

What a typical webinar looks like: In case you’re unfamiliar with webinars, let me give you a quick rundown of how they are typically made and run.

A webinar is essentially a video conference.

The video feed comes from your screen, and only your screen. Then, your audience can join the “call” at a set time, and you can do a live presentation.

Typically, the only sound will come from your microphone, but you can have multiple people do the presentation or even unmute certain viewers if they’d like to speak.

The whole point of a webinar is to teach the audience about a specific topic. Usually, it’s how to do something.

In my case, we teach the audience about our process of customer acquisition and the way they can replicate that process.

In general, webinars range from 40 minutes to 2 hours. Mine are on the high end because I like to pack in as much value as possible.

Take a second to realize the power of webinars: you have most of your viewers’ undivided attention for over 40 minutes.

You can’t get that anywhere else.

Finally, most webinars focus on high level topics—strategies, not tactics.

So, while you won’t get a super detailed step-by-step breakdown of how to do one specific thing, you will get a blueprint of how to create a strategy to accomplish something much greater.

My webinars focus on building a successful customer acquisition process (high level strategy), not how to design specific types of lead magnets (low level tactics, which is also one very small step in the process).

Then, the topic ties into either a lead magnet or a full-fledged product or service.

After I reveal everything about my proven process of building multi-million dollar businesses, I tie that into my consulting service.

It’s a natural fit. If you don’t want to learn how to do all the small things in the system yourself or you want to be sure of the result, you can just hire me instead.

Can you see how about 20% of viewers would want to pick that option?

The key parts of a webinar: There are five main parts of a webinar slideshow that you’ll need to create for your webinar.

I went into much greater detail in this guide to webinars, but this outline will give you a higher level view of the whole process and clarify things.

First, you have the introduction slide(s). Something I haven’t really mentioned is that webinars can attract viewers who aren’t part of your regular audience.

So, while you’ll have some super fans on the webinar, there will also be some people to whom you should introduce yourself.

This reinforces that you’re someone who they should listen to and that it’s worthwhile to spend the next hour or so of their lives paying attention to you.

This is also the time when you re-introduce the topic.

Then, you move right into the core content, which is the meat of the presentation. It can take upwards of 80% of the total presentation time.

During this part, you walk the viewer through whatever process you’re trying to teach.

 

The most effective webinars are highly transparent, which is why I share a lot of personal company information with my viewers.

Transparency is especially needed when you’re addressing a high level strategic topic. With tactics, it’s obvious whether something will or will not work.

But with a strategy, viewers need real numbers and experiment results to prove to them why each part of the strategy is included.

Once you’ve spilled the beans and given everything you have to give, you need to look at some overall results that can be achieved if they put your lessons into action.

Finally, you can take a minute to make them an offer. It’s typically an exclusive offer that they can’t find on your website.

The more the offer is tied to the topic, the better your conversion rate will be.

The last component is the question period. You could do this before or after the pitch—it’s up to you. You could even do two question periods, one before and one after.

2. Get your product reviewed by influencers

One of the main reasons why your typical content won’t bring you any sales is because it doesn’t tie in with what you’re selling in any way.

For example, you might sell coffee.

And you might publish content like “The 5 mistakes you’re making when brewing coffee.”

Your readers might read the article and enjoy it. But what does learning about brewing have to do with buying your coffee? Not a whole lot.

And that’s okay—not all content needs to have a sales angle, but some content should.

The most direct type of content that sells is a product review.

But it’s also something you can’t really create yourself. If you make a new post reviewing your own product, of course your readers will assume it’s biased (because it is!).

Instead, you need to find bloggers, freelance writers, and journalists who are willing to review your product.

How to find content creators who will review your product: To begin with, you’ll need a list of people who might be interested in reviewing your product and have an audience that contains your target audience.

For the rest of this section, let’s pretend that you’ve just released a new time management tool.

Now, you’re trying to get reviews for it, which will drive sales.

To start with, search in Google for “top (type of product)”:

Go through the results on the first page, and write down all the alternatives.

Next, we need to build a list of all potential sites and writers who might review your product.

To do this, we want to find sites that have already reviewed time management tools—specifically, those tools that you just wrote down.

One by one, you need to search for “(name of competing product) review”:

For popular products, this could bring up hundreds of reviews.

You’ll see that the top few reviews for a popular, established product are on big authority sites. In this case, they are on PC Mag and PC World, which are both huge.

It would be awesome to get a review on those sites as well. However, unless you have a well-known brand or a strong existing relationship with writers on those sites, it’s going to be difficult.

Unless you have a product that is very different from all the rest and revolutionary, I wouldn’t suggest trying to land reviews on those sites right away. You can try, but expect a lot of rejection.

Instead, I propose a more methodical and strategic approach…

How to maximize your chances of landing a successful review: When you’re starting from scratch, it’s difficult to get a lot of attention.

You need to be able to prove that (1) your product is of high quality and (2) that your target audience likes it.

Essentially, you need social proof.

How do you get it?

You start at the bottom and work your way up.

Forget about those top few results when you search for your competitors’ reviews. Instead, dig into the 3rd page, 4th page, 5th page, and deeper results to find reviews on less authoritative sites.

Writers on these sites are sent hundreds of review requests every week, and they are much easier to convince to review your product.

Down on the 5th page for our example search, I found a Rescue Time review on an unknown blog.

They probably don’t have a ton of readers, so it’s not going to spike your sales. However, a review on a small blog can still yield a few sales, so it’s not like it’s a waste of your time in the short term.

Additionally, smaller bloggers often have a tight-knit group of subscribers. Sometimes, smaller blogs drive more sales than larger ones.

The best part about reaching out to a blogger like this is that there’s a good chance they will be happy to review your product.

I would find their email address and then send them something like this:

Subject: Content idea for (blog name)

Hi (name),

I came across your blog recently and was impressed with your (competitor’s tool) review.

So much so that I’d like to offer you a free copy of my own tool.

It’s called (product name), and it’s a lot like (competitor’s tool), except that (how is it different in a good way?).

If you’re interested in checking out the tool or have any questions, just let me know!

Thanks for your time,

Your name.

There are three things in particular about the outreach email that you need to understand:

1. The differentiator - It makes sense to relate your product to your competitor’s so that the blogger sees why they might be interested in reviewing yours. But it’s important that you explain how your product is different and in which ways it’s better. Otherwise, why would the blogger try just another copy of a tool they already like?
2. The free product offer - Let’s face it, the review is primarily for your benefit. You need to provide some sort of incentive. The most common incentive is a free copy or sample of whatever you’re selling.
3. Not pushing the review too hard - Don’t make it a condition for them to post a review when you offer your free product. They know that’s what you want, and if they genuinely like the product, they will post a review.

Send out as many of these as you can to lower-tier sites.

Not all of them will agree to do a review, but you’ll be able to get at least a handful.

Next, you start to target larger sites.

If you started on the 5th page of results or lower, now you might want to try the sites on the 3rd and 4th pages.

The outreach emails should be similar, but you should also include a line near the end like:

Our product has already been reviewed on sites such as (site #1) and (site #2) and has been well received by their audiences, which is why I think your audience would also be interested in getting an in-depth look at it.

This type of paragraph introduces the social proof that you need so badly at this point.

The bigger the two sites that you include are, the more effective it will be. In addition, you’re providing reassurance that their audience will enjoy it.

Again, this will get you another handful of reviews if you contact 100-200 sites (10-20 sites for 10 competing tools).

Finally, you just repeat this whole process.

As you get reviews on better and better sites, start using their names in your outreach emails.

By the time you get to the top few results on the first page, the biggest sites, you should have some decent sites to include as social proof.

Note that this entire process can take months to complete. However, during this time, you should still drive an increasing number of sales with the initial reviews you land.

3. Design an email sales funnel

When it comes to making sales, there are two aspects of content that really matter.

First is the type of content, which we’ve looked at a little bit so far (more to come).

Secondly, it’s the form in which it’s being delivered.

Content can be delivered in many forms:

• blog posts
• videos
• e-books
• infographics
• webinars
• slideshows
• emails
• text messages
• forum posts
• etc.

Many marketers don’t realize that the form matters a lot.

That’s because the viewers/visitors have a different perceived value of different content channels.

Blog posts are free, and there are millions of them. Readers are used to skimming them, learning a few small things, and moving on to the next one.

However, take emails for example.

People put a lot of value and trust in emails. When they get one from someone they know, they usually give it their full attention and expect to take some sort of action. It could be just replying to the email, but it could be clicking a link and buying something as well.

There’s a bit more to it than that, but it’s one of the reasons why email marketing is by far the most effective selling channel.

 

Assuming you have been building an email list, you know that you should shift a lot of your sales efforts to selling through email. If you don’t know how, I’ll show you in the next section.

How to get sales through emails: The best way to sell most products through email isn’t by sending a random email saying “buy our stuff” even if that feels like the easiest thing to do.

Email gives you the opportunity to send a series of connected pieces of content to your subscribers.

You can use these to educate your subscribers, help them understand their problems, and then finally introduce solutions (your products).

A series of emails like this is essentially a mini sales funnel:

And it’s incredibly effective.

There’s no right or wrong email funnel. You might have three emails in it, or you might have 20. It depends on the complexity of your product, the cost of it, and even how advanced your email marketing provider is.

However, there are three general types of emails that you will want to include in the following order:

1. Educational (first 1-5 emails) - You want to send lessons to your subscribers so that they fully understand their problem. For example, if you sold high end coffee, you might want to send emails about the health benefits of high quality coffee as well as how to tell the difference between low and high quality coffee.
2. Product introduction (1-2 emails) - Here, you want to offer a solution to their problem (not being able to find high end coffee). You don’t need to give a hard sell; just make your readers aware of your product.

3. Product offer (last 1-5 emails) – Finally, you want to offer your limited time discounts or bonuses. This is more important if you’re selling something like a course that is only available during a certain time period.

While it’s not required, I think it’s also a great idea to add at least one email where you follow up with anyone who purchases something from you. It’s one small thing you can do to gain lifelong customers.

By thinking of a sales funnel as a whole, you can combine all these emails to take your audience one step closer to a sale every email you send.

4. Use content to get access to your target audience

In the previous section, I went over the reasons why blog posts aren’t the greatest places for selling products.

People reading them aren’t in a buyer’s mindset.

The same goes for many other types of content, like social media posts, YouTube videos, slideshows, and more.

The better plan is to use your content on these other channels to get attention (traffic) and then get that traffic onto an email list. Then, you can sell much more effectively through email.

Option #1 – Start with blogging: I love blogging because I’ve seen the power it can have to help just about any business. I’ve built multiple 7 figure businesses mostly through blogging.

But I rarely sell in blog posts. In fact, I can’t think of the last time I even mentioned my services in a post.

The key is that I have signup forms on my posts—any visitor can sign up for my email list.

If you haven’t already been doing that, I can help you.

I’ve written many posts on how to create blog content that gets attention:

• Content Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide
• No More Tricks: 5 Ways to Create Content That Google Wants to Rank
• How To Create Better Content For Your Customers

And here are the posts that will help you effectively convert that traffic into email subscribers:

• 15 Quick Tips to Convert Visitors Into Email Subscribers
• Triple Your Email Opt-in Rate by Using This 6-Step Lead Magnet Creation Process
• The Real Secret to 1,000 Blog Subscribers in 60 Days or Less

Option #2 – Social media has one purpose: There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, selling on social media doesn’t work.

You won’t be able to tweet out a link to a sales page and get people to visit the page expecting them to be in a buyer’s mindset.

However, it is possible to send them to a blog post or a landing page where you offer a lead magnet, which will help you get them onto your email list.

That is the purpose of social media from a sales perspective (it’s good for other things as well).

Some social media sites, such as Facebook, even allow you to integrate your email list with your profile so that your followers can sign up right on the social networking site.

Otherwise, you can always just link to your content and drive your followers to a page that has some sort of an opt-in form on it:

In the above case, it goes to a blog post I published on NeilPatel.com, which has a nice big opt-in form in the sidebar:

Option #3 – Slideshows and videos: Besides your blog and a select number of social media sites, there are many places where you can find traffic that you can get onto your email list.

In fact, there are thousands.

However, two in particular are more commonly used for business, so I’ll focus on those.

Those two are Slideshare and YouTube, which focus on publishing content in slideshow and video formats respectively.

Getting a popular slideshow on Slideshare isn’t easy, but if you can achieve that, you can expose your slideshow to tens of thousands of people on the site.

Then, you can put a link to a page on your website (hopefully a landing page with a lead magnet offer) either on the last slide of the slideshow or in the description:

YouTube is similar. If you produce high quality videos consistently, you can get thousands of views on each of them.

If a video goes viral, you could get millions of views.

You drive traffic back to your site by linking to a landing page or blog post in the description of videos:

5. Focus on the types of blog content that convert

I’ve been a bit harsh when speaking about blog posts so far.

They are still a great way to get traffic to your business’ site, which you should always keep in mind.

And although many types of blog content do not produce any sales, some types of content actually do.

If you’re looking to increase sales from your blog itself, start producing more of these types of content on a regular basis.

Content type #1 – tutorials: There are two main types of tutorials, both of which are great for selling.

The first type is where you explain in-depth how to use a specific product.

For example, I did this in one chapter of my advanced guide to link building when I covered how to use the tool ScrapeBox.

The key is to not only include incredible detail but also make it useful. Show readers how to actually accomplish something with the product:

In this example, I showed my readers how to find free proxies and build links with the tools.

This type of tutorial works best when you have a fairly well-known product already (most SEOs know ScrapeBox even if they haven’t used it). Because of this, this type of tutorial often lends itself to selling products as an affiliate.

The other type of tutorial involves showing your audience how to accomplish something. Then, you include your product in one of the steps of the tutorial.

A great example of this is Ann Smarty and her product MyBlogU.

She routinely writes tutorials on her own site and others and includes MyBlogU as a tool that will help the audience accomplish their goals.

For example, she wrote a post about how to write newsworthy content:

In the article, she mentions the tool as a way to accomplish a specific step in the process:

Content type #2 – product reviews: A good product review can convince just about anyone considering it to actually buy it.

However, you need to understand what a good product review is.

Most reviews suck. They’re incredibly biased, contain no actual detail of the product in use, and are obviously written just to generate sales.

A good product review is authentic and as unbiased as possible, and it’s clear that the writer has used and tested the product.

There are four main steps to creating a great product review:

1. Pick a type of product in your niche (e.g., link-building tools)
2. Buy the products you’re comparing (it costs more upfront but will allow you to write a credible review)
3. Test the products (test the performance of each product in the way they are meant to be used)
4. Quantify the results, and share them in a detailed review

Content type #3 – case studies: Finally, case studies are a great way to get new customers.

They consist of a detailed account of how a past customer used your product or service successfully.

They are best used for complex products, where it’s not clear to potential customers if the product is right for them or not.

HubSpot is a company that produces a steady stream of new case studies because they know they work:

There’s a lot that goes into writing an effective case study, which is why I wrote an entire post dedicated to showing you how to do it.

Conclusion

Content marketing is arguably the most effective type of marketing at your disposal today.

However, you need to make sure that you are using content not to just generate traffic but to convert that traffic into sales.

I’ve shown you five detailed ways in which you can use content to accomplish the second part of this—sales—which is what most businesses struggle with.

Finally, I’d like to hear from you. If you’ve used any of these methods successfully, I’d love it if you shared your experience in a comment below. Also, if you have any questions, feel free to leave them below too.

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How One Simple Change Helped This Gymnastics Mom Save $4,391 a Year

We spent a year hemorrhaging $350 per month for my daughter to be in a private gymnastics school.

This monthly expense didn’t even include the cost of boosters, leotards, warm-ups, meets, meals and hotel rooms. Combined, these expenses totaled more than $6,000 a year!

My bank account was dwindling before my eyes. And we were just beginning our journey down the road of competitive gymnastics.

As a single mom with three other children in addition to my gymnast, I realized this was just plain crazy.

Saving on Gymnastics With One Simple Change

It turns out a YMCA two towns over has a top-notch gymnastics team at a fraction of the cost we were paying at the private gym. And that’s for the same amount of gym time.

Granted, we do have to pay for the monthly family membership. But this provides a place for our entire family to go for fun and exercise. And the meets are all within a two-hour drive, which means no hotel costs.

All in all, we save more than $4,000 a year by switching my daughter to the YMCA team.

Check out the side-by-side comparison:

My daughter is having a marvelous time on her new team, being challenged and learning new skills.

Creating a Teachable Moment

As we maneuvered through this process, I was able to explain to her how switching teams could provide a similar experience while saving a significant amount of money.

Because I choose to involve my children in our plan to live debt-free, we discussed how the money we saved could be used to pay down our remaining debt. Our kids are smart and understand more about money than we may think.

My daughter was especially excited about her not-so-little contribution to this — she knows our reward for becoming debt-free is a long-awaited, paid-for vacation. She was happy to oblige!

During the transition to the YMCA team, something else clicked: My daughter didn’t understand the mental comparisons I was making between the two gyms. She doesn’t notice the fancy zip code or bells and whistles of the private gym — she is 10 years old and just loves to do gymnastics!

Our new family policy is to keep the kids’ activities focused around the Y and school. We can afford these experiences without causing ourselves financial hardship or adding debt.

Could You Make a Similar Switch?

Thinking of switching your child from a private team or gym? Check out the YMCAs and community centers in your area.

Be prepared with the following questions to give you the biggest bang for your buck. These are gymnastics-specific, but could easily be adapted to another sport:

1. Is there a monthly or yearly member fee in addition to the team cost?
2. How much gym time does your child receive for the cost?
3. How far is the facility from your home? Are the commute and gas costs reasonable?
4. How far will you be expected to travel to games or competitions? Are hotel stays involved?
5. Is there a booster fee?
6. Is there a parent volunteer requirement?
7. What is the uniform cost?
8. What is the competitive philosophy and does it align with your family values?
9. What are the safety expectations of the equipment and the coaches?
10. Is there high turnover among the coaching staff? What are the credentials of the staff, and are background checks performed?

Your Turn: How do you save money on your children’s activities? Do you involve your kids in financial decisions?

Kristen Erickson is single mama to four way-cool kiddos, works full time at a structural design firm, and writes and blogs on the side. She is almost debt-free and an expert on raising content and healthy suburban children as sustainably as possible on a shoestring budget! Join her on her journey at http://ift.tt/1Jc9amR.

The post How One Simple Change Helped This Gymnastics Mom Save $4,391 a Year appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Questions About Financial Independence, Living Out of a Car, Grocery Delivery, Homebrewing and More!

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question.
1. Financial protection against parents
2. Wedding observations and insurance question
3. Loaning money to friends
4. Is financial independence selfish?
5. High interest account offer
6. Job misery
7. Homebrewing question
8. Netflix still better than Amazon?
9. A book swap Christmas
10. Dealing with encyclopedia set
11. Brother living out of car
12. Grocery delivery

Like most of the country, we haven’t seen much of what you might call winter up to this point of the year. November and December are often cold and snowy, but until today it’s been mild and largely free from any kind of precipitation. In fact, the ground was clear but still wet yesterday.

Today, that all changes. We’re forecasted to get a foot of snow today and more overnight.

What have I done to prepare for it? I put batteries in the flashlights in case we lose power. I also made sure there were tons of blankets in the basement in one place so they’re easy to find. I put gas in the snowblower. We also made sure that we have plenty of food supplies in the cupboard.

We’re ready for whatever this winter storm hits us with.

Q1: Financial protection against parents

How do I protect myself from my parents? They are great people who mean well, but they’re about as bad as it gets with money. They are approaching 70 with only $10k in the bank. They both collect pensions, but rely heavily on my father’s as it is about 4x my mother’s. Neither has life insurance, and both smoke so much no insurance company will touch them. Other than furniture, they have no assets. I recently found out that 10 years ago they filed for bankruptcy to get away from their debts, of which they now have none. They have no will, and refuse to make one. There is no money set aside for funeral expenses. They make enough money to pay for their lifestyle, with virtually nothing left over. They are providing free child care for my sister’s kids, and my sister believes my parents are financially well off, so she takes all the handouts she can get. I know that their plan for the near future is to buy a house with money inherited from my grandmother, and I’m doing everything I can to talk them out of it. I need to protect myself from the financial fallout! If my father dies before my mother, she will not be able to afford to live alone. Having her move in with me is not an option, unless I plan to end my marriage, and I will not be paying for either of them to live in an old folks home.

Other than the awkward conversations I have to have with my family, what can I do to make sure I’m protected if their financial fallout, such as funeral costs or living expenses, comes my way?
– Jim

You’re only as exposed to their financial situation as you choose to be.

It sounds to me like your primary fear is that you’re going to end up having to care for one or both of them out of your own pocket. The thing to remember is that this is a choice you’re taking on, not something you’re legally obligated to do. It may be the “right” thing to do, but it’s not something you’re legally obligated to do.

At the same time, you can’t “make” your parents do anything financially that they don’t want to do. You can talk to them all day along about making better choices, but they’re not going to do so unless they want to.

What you need to do right now is decide what kind of support you’re willing to offer your parents in each of those scenarios and start financially preparing for that outcome. That conversation is going to have to involve your wife’s wishes, too.

The conclusion you come to might seem cold, but offering your parents full support when they’ve chosen not to do so effectively means that you’re financing their lifestyle right now. They’re sacrificing their future to buy silly stuff today because they know you’ll pay for what they need tomorrow. That’s not a particularly fair situation.

Whatever the two of you decide, you should make the results of that conversation clear to your parents.

Q2: Wedding observations and insurance question

I’m 36 and have spent most of my life single, up until about a year and a half ago when I met the most wonderful guy. We fell in love and after talking about it for a while (long story short), we recently decided to make our arrangement official and get married…and now, I’ve landed on the strange planet of Bride-To-Be. My first shock was The Dress. I couldn’t believe that women would pay such a stupid amount of money for an article of clothing they’d only wear one day in their entire lives…and most of the dresses are stupid ugly to boot. (I did find a dress at http://ift.tt/1Zxg223 – I told her what I was looking for, sent her my measurements, and she made me a beautiful, very simple dress that I love. And it was less than $150. It’s still more than I’d normally pay for a dress…$12 at a thrift store is about the max that I like to pay…but I just don’t have the time to hunt for a good thrift store wedding dress.

The location that my fiancé and I have selected is at a natural feature in New Hampshire, near the Canadian border, on a state-owned property. In order for us to reserve the space, the state requires that we get a special use permit, and that we obtain wedding insurance. Prior to last month, I’d never even heard of wedding insurance (something single people don’t need, as your recent insurance article pointed out)! I’ve been told that insurance coverage needs to be $2,000,000, including personal liability ($1M for injury to 1 person, $2M for injury to 2 or more people) and property damage ($500,000). Is this a standard thing? Any ideas for how I can get the best insurance deals, and what I should be budgeting for this? Any scams to watch out for? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!
– Kelly

You’re correct that modern weddings are often far too expensive. Some of the prices are just crazy. That’s just the reality, though, because so many brides (and grooms) are willing to pay those prices.

One of the few things that Sarah and I were frugal about before our financial turnaround was our wedding, mostly because bridal magazines and bridal guides struck both of us as being kind of tacky and over the top. We chose simple in almost every way.

The wedding insurance you describe is a pretty standard thing. Many properties are going to require that you have such insurance if they’re going to host a wedding there, as wedding insurance usually absolves them of responsibility. They want you to be financially responsible for unfortunate events during your wedding, after all.

The best way to find good insurance rates is to shop around. Get quotes from lots of different insurance providers for the type of insurance you need. The first place I’d look is with the provider that you already use for other types of insurance, as they may offer you a discount for being a known customer (as they already have a model of your risk level).

Q3: Loaning money to friends

I have a friend who needs money asap to pay for a tax bill she never dreamed of receiving. Long story. Anyway, I have agreed to loan her the funds as she is really in trouble, will need to put her house for sale etc. She has been a friend for some 10 years. Should i get something written up??
– Kaylee

Yes, you should always have a loan agreement if you want this to actually be repaid in the future.

However, there’s a huge catch. You would have to get that agreement legally enforced if your friend was unable or unwilling to pay you. I suspect that suing your friend would not exactly have a good long-term impact on your friendship.

On the other hand, without such an agreement, you have no recourse at all if your friend chooses not to repay you.

In the end, I view it as an absolutely terrible idea to ever loan money to family or friends. If you want to help, gift that person the money so that there’s never a need to repay it.

If you enter into a loan agreement, you become a lender and your friend becomes a borrower. Do you have warm fuzzy feelings about your bank or your credit card issuer? Probably not.

Q4: Is financial independence selfish?

I’m 53 years old and have about $700,000 in my 401(k) and IRA combined. I will easily be able to retire in a few years with no worries.

Lately though I have begun to feel kinda guilty about having that much money just sitting there, like Uncle Scrooge or something. There are people in my own town who don’t have enough to eat and I have $700,000 just sitting there not doing anything at all.

Do you ever feel guilty about this kind of thing?
– Stan

Not really. I see it as the result of making good choices with my money.

If I feel any guilt about not helping charities enough, it comes not from how much I have in the bank, but my income level. I feel like I could give a larger share of what I earn to charitable causes without damaging my day to day life.

On the other hand, I choose to work in a field that’s demanding in many ways. I have constant deadlines and expectations. Compared to other jobs, I have a lot of demands. I think it is reasonable that I earn more than some because I choose to use that time in challenging ways.

So, overall, I don’t feel guilty about my savings. I do feel a responsibility to give some of my income to charity, but my choices with what I choose to keep are my own.

Q5: High interest account offer

My local credit union has an offer where they will give you 4.25% interest on your checking account which seems amazing. The only catch is the interest is only on balances up to $15,000 and you have to use your debit card at least ten times a month to qualify for the interest that month.

I already use a card more than ten times a month so this seems like a great deal. What am I missing?
– Nadia

Offers like that are great if you’re able to meet the account use requirement, but if you can’t, you often earn nothing at all.

Thus, my main suggestion to you is to look into what happens if you don’t use your debit card that often. Do you earn zero interest? That’s often the case.

Another thing to note is that this isn’t going to earn you a mint. Even if you kept your account balance at a $10,000 average during the year and followed the account requirements perfectly, the interest would add up to just $425. If you have that large of a balance in your checking account, it’s either simultaneously serving as an emergency fund or you’re foregoing better returns in investment accounts (like putting some of it into your Roth IRA or 401(k)).

Q6: Job misery

I’m going to simplify this without getting into details. Which is better, a job where you make $100K a year but the commute is long and the work is miserable or a job where you make $40K a year where you can basically walk to work and the stress is low? At the $100K job you can move toward retirement nice and quick but at the other job your progress will be really slow.
– Thomas

I would rather have the $40K job any day of the week in my current life situation. Being able to enjoy life with my family with low stress and an easy work commute is invaluable right now.

If I were single, however, the other job might become more tempting. I wouldn’t have the strong family demands that I have right now and a $100K job as a single person would make a path to early retirement much easier.

I guess that my advice to you depends on the life situation you find yourself in. Do you have a lot of things going on in your life outside of work? If so, then I’d lean toward the $40K job. If not, the $100K job provides a much stronger path to financial independence.

Q7: Homebrewing question

I recently read your article about brewing beer. I am requesting clarification. If I decide to bottle my own beer, would I skip the step of waiting two weeks for fermentation?
– Anna

No, you need to leave the beer in the bottle for a little while unless you want flat beer.

If you’re bottling beer, you allow two to three weeks for fermentation in a large container. Then, after the fermentation has stopped, you add a bit of sugar to the large container and then bottle it. The remaining yeast in the beer eats up that sugar, creating a bit more alcohol and some gas in the beer, creating the carbonated foamy effect that good beer has.

If you don’t do this, then the beer will be really flat. No foam, no texture on the tongue… it would just be flat, like a beer would taste if you opened it and left it out for a day.

On the other hand, you can’t do full fermentation in a sealed bottle because the bottle will explode. You want just a little bit, enough to add a bit of pressure and carbonate the beer in the bottle.

Q8: Netflix still better than Amazon?

With all of the new stuff that came out in 2015 do you still think Netflix streaming is better than Amazon streaming?
– Damon

Yes, but it’s closer.

Amazon is reeling off some good original series, like Transparent and The Man in the High Castle. While their portfolio isn’t as good as Netflix yet, it’s definitely improved over a year ago. I still think that Netflix has a superior selection of original shows and other programs, but the lead isn’t overwhelming any more.

The real perk that Amazon offers is that a year’s worth of Amazon streaming includes Prime shipping, which means two day shipping on pretty much anything from Amazon.

If you’re choosing one service among the two, Netflix still has a lead on quality and breadth of streaming programming, but Amazon offers additional perks that might make up the difference for some.

Q9: A book swap Christmas

We tried something different this year for Christmas with my brothers and sisters that I wanted to share with you and your readers. Since there are seven of us adults, everyone gets everyone else a gift but that can get expensive. Since we are all big readers, this year we decided to get everyone else books for Christmas. We each picked books for each other person and it was really fun but the best part is that we decided to turn it into kind of a book club. We’re getting together the last Sunday in January for lunch and then swapping the ones we’ve read and then having lunch the last Sunday of each month to swap the Christmas books and talk about the ones we’ve read too. We’re all looking forward to this and this could turn into a new holiday tradition that gives us tons to read and isn’t too expensive.
– Jerry

This sounds absolutely amazing. I would absolutely positively love to be involved with something like this.

In fact, I could probably arrange something like this with my wife and my three sisters-in-law, as all of them are avid readers and we have at least some overlap in our tastes.

This has given me a really great idea for Christmas next year, actually. The trick will be remembering to do it…

Q10: Dealing with encyclopedia set

Is there any value in a set of encyclopedias at this point? Does anyone use them? I have a set of World Book encyclopedias from the mid 1990s that I haven’t looked at in years because of Wikipedia.
– David

There is some value, but it’s not nearly the value that you paid for the encyclopedias twenty years ago.

You can probably find someone willing to pay $10 or $20 for a set of encyclopedias on Craigslist, especially if you offer local delivery. I’ve seen similar items sell in my local area.

However, you’ve identified one of the big problems with this set – for most people, it’s superceded by Wikipedia. Another problem is the age, as a lot has changed in the last twenty years. Many articles – not all, but many – will be outdated. Another problem is the space, as such a set of books will take up a full shelf.

Still, a set of encyclopedias can be a resource that some people will want, just not at a high price. Keep your expectations within reality and you should be able to sell it.

Q11: Brother living out of car

My younger brother graduated from college in August and has a job that pays pretty well but it is in a really expensive area. I thought he found an apartment there but at Christmas I learned that his address is still at our parents house. It turns out that he’s living in his minivan. He apparently sleeps in the back and uses the middle seats as a dresser. He has permission to leave his van parked at work and has a parking spot close enough to get wi-fi. He has a propane stove and uses that for cooking. This seems weird and desperate to me. How can I help him get out of this mess?
– Carrie

I actually don’t have a particular problem with this scenario. There is a major league baseball player who live in his own van, for example. There’s nothing inherently wrong in doing this.

The thing I would look at is whether he is happy and whether he is able to take care of himself in this situation. Is he eating well? Is he keeping clean? Those things are obviously available to him, but not as easily as they’re available to other people.

If he’s happy and doing okay, then I wouldn’t worry about it in the least. It’s definitely a method for spending a lot less money and that may entirely be within his values.

Q12: Grocery delivery

My local grocery store is now offering a delivery service where they charge you $15 to deliver your groceries to your door. You just buy them online and use your credit card and they tack on a $15 fee. However most days I commute to work on the bus so I realized I could do the grocery shopping on the way home and then it would be delivered an hour or so after I get home. No trip to the store needed and no extra time spent shopping online either. So basically this $15 buys me about an hour of free time. I think most weeks this is pretty worthwhile.
– Kevin

I actually don’t have much problem with this service. You’re essentially spending $15 to have someone do your grocery shopping for you and if you have a smart grocery list, it’s a pretty easy way to avoid food impulse buys. I’m actually surprised that stores offer this service that cheaply as I would suspect they make more than that from people spending money on impulse buys in the store.

My only suggestion to you would be to do something worthwhile with that hour to make it really worth the $15. Simply watching whatever happens to be on television probably isn’t worth the $15, but engaging in a hobby or doing something fulfilling or taking care of other key tasks? That’s probably worth the money.

If this service were available to me, I’d at least strongly consider using it sometimes.

Got any questions? The best way to ask is to follow me on Facebook and ask questions directly there. I’ll attempt to answer them in a future mailbag (which, by way of full disclosure, may also get re-posted on other websites that pick up my blog). However, I do receive many, many questions per week, so I may not necessarily be able to answer yours.

The post Questions About Financial Independence, Living Out of a Car, Grocery Delivery, Homebrewing and More! appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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Low Gas Prices a Gift for the New Year

Gas prices have become the holiday gift that keeps on giving. The U.S. national average for gasoline is so low it is expected to save each licensed driver $550.

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Considering a Costly Credit Card Cash Advance? Try These 5 Tricks First

So, you need $1,000 to pay the rent or repay a loan, but you don’t have it. What do you do? You might consider a credit card cash advance.

Of course, that can be expensive. CreditCards.com says the average cash advance fee is close to 5%, and the average interest rate is over 24% — 6% higher than for purchases.

If you pay back that $1,000 cash advance in two months, you’ll pay an extra $90, which amounts to an effective APR of 54%.

But there are some ways to get that money from your credit card company for much less. Sometimes you can even get close to a zero-cost cash advance, or just skip the cash advance altogether.

Here are five strategies for avoiding expensive credit card cash advance fees.

1. Use PayPal “My Cash” Cards

If you have a PayPal account connected to your bank account, you have a way to get a cheaper cash advance. Here’s what you do if you need $1,000…

1. Buy two PayPal My Cash cards with a credit card
2. Have the cashier load each one with the maximum $500
3. Load your PayPal account with these
4. Move the money to your bank account

When the transfer is complete (usually in a day or two), you can spend it as you wish.

Each PayPal card carries a $3.95 fee, so you’ll spend $7.90 instead of the $50 cash advance fee.

Use a credit card with no balance and make the purchase the day after your statement date — that way, you’ll have a month plus the legal 21-day grace period to pay the card in full and avoid all interest charges.

Not every place lets you pay for these with a credit card, but the CVS stores in Florida near me allow it. PayPal’s list of vendors for My Cash cards names over 60 different chains, so keep trying until one lets you pay using a credit card.

PayPal imposes a limit of $4,000 in reloads per month, and some reports say PayPal may suspend or close your account if you abuse the system.

2. Go Shopping With a Friend

A friend may not be willing or able to lend you $1,000, but he might let you pay for his new refrigerator or television with your credit card and then give you the cash.

To be fair, take 1% less to cover the points he would have received if he had paid with his own cash-back credit card.

By engineering a cash advance like this, you avoid the usual up-front fee and you get a lower interest rate.

If you pay with a credit card that has no balance, you’ll have three to seven weeks (depending on where you are in your payment cycle) to pay yourself back without interest.

3. Use a Balance Transfer

If you’re in the good habit of paying off your credit card balances each month, now might be the time to make an exception.

Rather than pay cash-advance fees and interest, transfer a big balance to a card that offers zero interest for a while, and use the money that would have paid off the card as your cash advance.

Even better, make it one with no transfer fee. Chase Slate has recently been offering 15 months of zero interest and no transfer fee.

4. Use a Credit Card to Pay

What do you need the cash advance for?

It will cost less to just pay with a card, and there are services that let you pay almost anything by credit card now. The fees they charge are almost always are less than cash advance fees, and you pay the lower purchase-based interest rate instead of the cash advance rate.

Here are some examples:

Rent

You can pay rent with a credit card through RentMoola or RentShare. They make arrangements with landlords or send a check. If you have roommates, you can even split rent and pay with two cards.

These companies charge you up to 2.9%.

Income Taxes

The IRS lists companies authorized to process tax payments by credit card. You can use these services to pay your annual tax bill or quarterly payments if you have a business.

The cheapest option at the moment charges 1.89%.

Property Taxes

Plastiq will process your property tax payment by credit card. It charges 2.5%.

Tuition

You can also pay your tuition bill through Plastiq.

Various Debts

You can pay mortgage payments, car loans, student loans and even credit cards through ChargeSmart.

The charges vary, so check to see if they’re lower than any other cash advance options you have.

5. Buy Pre-Paid Debit Cards

Retailers sometimes have debit gift cards on sale.

For example, OfficeMax recently offered $20 off the purchase of at least $300 in Visa gift cards. So two of their $200 cards, which normally cost $206.95 (there’s a $6.95 fee) would be $393.90. Do that three times and you have $1,200 in visa cards for $1,181.70 total.

There are a couple ways to convert these into cash.

If you have an Amex Bluebird or Serve card, there are tutorials online on how to load them with Visa and MasterCard gift cards. Once you’ve loaded them, you transfer the money to your bank account, getting your hands on your cash advance.

The other way is to go to friends who are willing to help you out by buying the debit cards. Explain that MasterCard and Visa gift cards can be spent anywhere MasterCard and Visa debit cards are accepted (almost everywhere).

If you don’t find a sale, the usual $6.95 fee is about 3.5% of a $200 debit gift card, which may be less than a typical cash advance fee.

If you find one of the grocery stores that sell $500 debit gift cards you might get that down to less than 2%. Be sure you have a way to liquidate the cards (turn them into cash) before you buy them, though.

Is It Worth the Trouble?

If you pay it back in a month, a $2,000 cash advance will typically cost 5% upfront ($100) and 2% interest for the month ($42 on the total balance of $2,100). That’s a total cost of $142, and some of the strategies above may only cut that cost in half. So is it worth it?

You can decide that based on your own situation.

If you can’t pay back that cash advance quickly, these strategies become more valuable. You’ll typically be paying an interest rate that’s 6% less than the normal cash advance rate. That saves you money every month.

Your Turn: What other tricks do you know for avoiding the fees and high interest of cash advances?

Disclosure: We have a serious Taco Bell addiction around here. The affiliate links in this post help us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

Steve Gillman is the author of “101 Weird Ways to Make Money” and creator of EveryWayToMakeMoney.com. He’s been a repo-man, walking stick carver, search engine evaluator, house flipper, tram driver, process server, mock juror, and roulette croupier, but of more than 100 ways he has made money, writing is his favorite (so far).

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The Working-Class Reality of Your Superstar Dreams

Whenever I’d meet new people during my three-year tenure as a professional basketball player in Israel, they’d be skeptical.

They’d look me up and down with a furrowed brow, as if I was playing a trick on them. It’s like I owed them something if I was going to say the words “pro athlete.” I should have been wearing really nice clothes or had a fancy watch. At the very least they expected a towering, polished, physical presence — not some short guy with big calves and messy hair.

Once they were satisfied that they weren’t on a hidden camera show, they’d inevitably start talking money and lifestyle. Despite my appearance, certain connotations still come to mind when you hear that someone is a professional basketball player: Ludicrously high salaries. Private jets. Front-of-the-line access to every nightclub.

Everyone’s eyes would glaze over when the truth came out. Salaries that were commensurate with an entry-level IT job. Looooong, cold bus rides through places like Bulgaria and Latvia. And not only did we wait in lines for clubs like everyone else, I once had a teammate get denied entry because the bouncer didn’t like his haircut. Somehow I feel like that wasn’t happening to the stars of the local soccer team.

Other than the 300 or so guys playing in the NBA, being a pro basketball player is not a glamourous job. You do it to see the world, make a little money, to have fun — and because you love it.

And you have to really love it. Not just anyone will be happy to play in a country where you don’t speak the language and where quite a few of the neighboring nations wouldn’t lose sleep if your country was wiped off the face of the earth.

I was happy to have my job, but it was still a tough adjustment. I was given a roommate even though my contract said that I would have my own place. I confronted management about it, but they just said (in their classic Israeli accents), “Don’t to be a worried! He’s good guy! Good guy!” And that was that.

We played in gyms that looked like a dust storm had just blown through. I think our uniforms were made out of a mesh-sandpaper hybrid polymer. Our team trainer was on loan from the local soccer team. When he showed up, he usually had us play soccer in the basketball gym to “practice on the footwork.”

After many months of this, the reality starts to sink in. You’re not going to be hitting game-winners for the Lakers anytime soon.

That’s when you can either get sad, because you’re failing the third grade version of yourself, or you can learn to embrace the struggle.

Appreciate the Journey

I slowly started to realize that I was never going to grow five inches, gain five inches on my vertical, or start shooting three-pointers like Steph Curry. All those things would have been nice, and could have allowed me to gain “big-time athlete” status. But, it wasn’t reality.

That was difficult for me to accept. In the beginning, I was still caught up in the idea that doing something non-traditional that you love would always be glamorous. That’s not the case.

Entrepreneurs, writers, artists, and freelancers of any kind are mostly slogging through in the “minor leagues” of life. As many as nine out of 10 startups will fail. Only 17% of baseball players drafted into the minor leagues will ever make the majors. And for every famous movie actor or big-name musician, there are hundreds more paying their dues while they wait tables and tend bar on the side — the notion of a “starving artist” isn’t cliche by accident. 

At my last job, I got a first-hand look at what it’s like to cast a network TV show. It’s not pretty. Well, the people are all beautiful beyond belief, but the process itself leaves you questioning why anyone would ever want to be a TV actor.

From what I could gather, this is a typical day for a low-level comedy actor during audition season:

Wake up. See which of your day’s appointments have already been cancelled because the show decided they want someone older, younger, skinnier, bigger, taller, funnier, more serious, or with a different sense of style. I mean, did you see what they wore at their last audition? 

Brush off the negativity. You still have an audition, and this could be your big break! Drive an hour across town. Park in the 5th floor of a parking garage that is a quarter mile from the casting room. Trudge through 90-degree heat until you find the right building. Sit and sweat in room full of 10 people who look just like you while you wait for your name to be called.

Perform your lines for the writers, executives, and casting directors. Start a scene over again after someone’s cellphone goes off. Get some polite chuckles and a “thank you,” head back to your car. Go to sleep, wake up, repeat.

It would be crazy for all these people to base their self worth and happiness on whether they book one of those impossibly-hard-to-land TV roles. The journey in and of itself has to be enough to fulfill and sustain them.

I finally came around to that idea over my final two years as a basketball player. I was getting paid to throw a ball through a hoop, and that’s not to be taken for granted.

I began to appreciate the little things that come along with playing in the Israeli professional basketball league: free travel, free housing, free car, free time. Like, serious free time. I could spend whole afternoons walking through the city, reading books, and studying for graduate school tests. 

You are doing what you’re doing because you love it and there are ancillary benefits. This is true of many pursuits.

Take, for example, freelance writing. Most working writers aren’t bestselling authors — they’re churning out web copy or marketing materials or magazine articles in the middle-class trenches of the industry. Most will never write the next great American novel or win a Peabody, but they’re getting paid to do something they enjoy, in their own time, and in their underwear if they want. (I swear I’m not doing that right now!)

Most working writers aren’t bestselling authors — they’re churning out words in the middle-class trenches of the industry. Photo: Ritesh Nayak

Understand the Role of Luck

If you’re going to go into an industry with high barriers of entry, you have to prepare yourself for the possibility that you will never quite attain your dream.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t try your best. I just think that part of the American Dream mythology is that the cream always rises to the top and that hard work always prevails. We’re taught that if you really want something, all you have to do is put in 100-hour weeks until it becomes a reality.

That is simply not true. Nothing is a purely merit-based. There will always be backstabbing and politics and accidents and lucky breaks and surprise benefactors and any number of other circumstances that will affect your chances of “success.”

If you don’t find joy in the day-to-day process of your pursuit, it’s probably not worth doing, no matter how high the potential payoff — because that payoff might never come.

Reframe Your Idea of Success

Any entrepreneurial or non-traditional pursuit is going to be fraught with peril. Yet, you can tweak your perception a tiny bit and see the whole thing in a different light.

Sure, if you want to be an actor, it’s going to be a slog. But if you got into that profession because you really love performing and being an artist, then it shouldn’t matter whether you ever get cast as some boring network-TV archetype. You love performing and you’d do it in a community theater if it meant you got to express yourself.

The Simple Dollar’s Mia Taylor once profiled a full-time musician named Will Dailey who perfectly sums up the ethos of doing a job many people think of as glamorous, but is often a grind just like any other profession:

“I will do this full time until I can’t give it my all anymore,” Dailey said. “I found the one thing where, when it really gets tough and I get kicked down, I can get back up, year after year.” 

Basically, you better love what you’re doing enough to endure the setbacks: You can’t just be chasing fame and fortune.

I may have played professional basketball, but I never signed an autograph or flew on a private jet. I never got paid seven figures or signed an endorsement deal.

What I did get was a unique set of life experiences and a newfound appreciation for all the people struggling to get by in jobs that are not as glorious as they once envisioned — but getting by nonetheless.

Related Articles:

• Why Freelancing Can Be Safer Than a 9-to-5 Job
• Could You Quit Your Job on Monday Morning?
• What I’ve Learned as a Volunteer Trash Collector
• Financial Independence and Career Choices

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