Broadband ads ‘confuse and mislead’ consumers about ‘true cost’

Helen Knapman

confusedwoman.jpg

Broadband adverts have been slammed as “likely to confuse and mislead consumers about the true cost of broadband deals”.

Broadband adverts have been slammed as “likely to confuse and mislead consumers about the true cost of broadband deals”.

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2 Main St. buildings to come down; retail, apartment complex in the works

The five-story Main Street building would be built in place of the to-be-demolished state liquor store and Bridal Locations,

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Dollar General proposed at 2-acre site on Business 209 near Marshalls Creek

Dollar General hopes to cash in with a new retail store in Smithfield Township.Capital Growth Buchalter — a national retail developer based in Birmingham, Alabama — proposes the 9,100-square-foot store on a 2-acre vacant lot on Business Route 209, near Marshalls Creek. The lot at 2531 Milford Road will be bought from property owners Ken, Paul and Judith Schuchman.The site across the road from Saw Mill Court, near the Social Security building, is zoned [...]

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Shop CVS Online Before Friday to Save 25% — or Even More, If You Follow These Steps

Great news from the Internets this morning: CVS is having a sitewide online sale!

Take 25% off of anything in the store — and free shipping if you spend $35 or more — with the CVS coupon code SAVE25.

Since CVS already offers awesome prices, that’s a pretty great deal.

I know I, for one, am ready to re-up on my toiletries. My bathroom is looking pretty bare.

So, I excitedly rushed to the site and filled my cart with my favorite toothpaste, mouthwash, shampoo, conditioner and bodywash.

But I’m a writer at The Penny Hoarder… so 25% off wasn’t enough for me.

Get the Penny Hoarder Price

The items in my cart cost a total of $30.56, or $36.05 with shipping.

I applied the discount to see an instant drop to $22.91, or $28.40 after shipping. Not bad already, right?

But I knew I could save even more.

First of all, I wanted free shipping, so I threw a couple of extra things I could use into my cart (can you say new nail polish and dark chocolate?).

My total came to $36.69 — pretty close to to the exact minimum price for free shipping.

But I still wasn’t ready to check out yet.

Once I had my total, I searched Raise and Gift Card Granny for a discounted gift card to get the most out of my money.

Turns out there was an electronic gift card valued at $41.98 for just $36.35 — which means I’d spend less money than my CVS shopping cart total, and I’d still have $5 left to spend at CVS later.

Pictured above: Winning.

Finally, when I purchased that eCode, I used my Barclaycard CashForward World MasterCard® to make 1.5% cash rewards on the purchase price — just 50 cents in this case, but still even more savings.

I was an English major, so I’ll let you do the math. But I definitely scored way more than 25% off.

End result: more stuff, less money, happy Penny Hoarder.

How to Stack Your Own CVS Deal

If you want to add up your own savings, it’s simple. Here’s a recap of what I did:

1. Shop at CVS using discount code SAVE25 — make sure you put at least $35 worth of goodies in your cart to get free shipping. If you order before noon ET, it’ll even be two-day shipping.

2. Find a discounted gift card (an electronic one! You don’t want to wait for a physical card to ship — this CVS sale is only good through 1/23) at Raise or Gift Card Granny to save even more.

3. Purchase your eCode using your favorite cash-back or rewards credit card to earn while you spend.

4. Profit. Well, sort of. A penny saved is a penny earned, after all.

Your Turn: Will you take advantage of this awesome CVS sale — and stack deals like a savvy Penny Hoarder?

Advertiser Disclosure: Many of the credit card offers that appear on this site are from credit card companies from which ThePennyHoarder.com receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). We do not feature all available credit card offers or all credit card issuers.

Jamie Cattanach (@jamiecattanach) is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems.

The post Shop CVS Online Before Friday to Save 25% — or Even More, If You Follow These Steps appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Should You Buy a Franchise, or Start Your Own Business? Here’s What to Consider

Do you dream of owning your own business?

Maybe you crave the freedom of being your own boss — or have a vision for a unique addition to your industry. Maybe you’re just one of those folks with a passionate entrepreneurial spirit.

Maybe you envision yourself covertly sipping a perfectly foamed latte behind your laptop at your very own café while watching tons of happy customers who have no idea you’re the one behind the operation.

OK, OK, that’s my business fantasy. Did my specificity give me away?

Franchising or Starting From Scratch?

If you have the startup capital, investing in your own business could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain financial stability and personal fulfillment.

But no matter which industry you’re in, you’ll face a difficult decision: Do you start a private enterprise, or open a franchised location?

Both options have their pros and cons. But here’s some insider info on how to figure out which route will best help your business flourish.

The Pros and Cons of Franchising

Franchising can be alluring even to the biz-illiterate among us, as long as we have a decent chunk of savings.

It’s easy — and tempting — to browse potential future business ownership options the same way we browse clothing catalogs.

They’re even broken down by initial startup capital required: super low-ball franchises under $10K, middle-of-the-road franchises under $50K, and all-in franchises of $100K or more.

Who knew it costs $2 million to open a Taco Bell? It’d take a lot of dollar menu orders to get you back in the black.

Upsides

Buying a franchise amounts to buying an existing vision instead of developing your own.

It saves you the time and effort of developing all the minutiae of a fully fledged business plan from scratch.

This ranges from the difficult, big-picture stuff — market research and branding campaigns — to details like employee handbooks, interior décor schemes and vendors for raw materials and equipment.

Arguably, the main benefit of purchasing a franchise is built-in brand recognition.

No matter how good your burgers are, everyone already knows about Five Guys. Buying a franchise gives you pre-baked marketing, and a better chance at success.

Plus, you’ll have operational resources and mentorship from headquarters. This can help you get through tough times or when you run into a situation that stumps you. Terms can vary, though, so check your franchising agreement.

Franchising is most likely an easier route, especially for first-time business owners. And as mentioned above, you don’t always need a ton of money to get started.

Downsides

Of course, all those benefits come with costs.

Literally.

When you buy the rights to operate under a branded franchise name, you pay more than just the initial franchising fee. All the big sum does is get your foot in the door.

You’ll be contractually obligated to pay regular, ongoing royalty fees, advertising fees and other potential fees to your franchisor.

In short, you’ll owe a portion of your gross profits to the big guys upstairs. Depending on your agreement terms, they might even be allowed to reach directly into your bank account to get it.

Of course, your ability to scale and expand your business will be limited by the terms of your agreement. You’ll also have little input about changing the way your business runs.

In the end, you’re functionally operating as a representative of the mother company, and momma’s word is law.

Plus, all the stuff you’re buying pre-made with a franchise, like the interior design, logo and the script for the 30-second TV spot? For many, those are the real “dream” parts of opening your own business.

“Franchises are so limiting, and the fees absolutely kill you,” says ex-UPS Store owner Chris Dyson. If you own just one location, he says, “you are simply buying a job with a poor wage and huge responsibilities.”

Although his UPS Store generated $400,000 in sales the first year and received top rankings in customer service, compliance and quality, he says he didn’t enjoy much profitability.

He has no plans of future franchise ownership, unless he’d be able to open multiple units to drive profits.

But, franchise consultant Tom Scarda reports it’s “a well known and published fact that generally, franchises are more successful than a start up.”

“A franchise is a business with training wheels,” says Scarda, author of “Franchise Savvy” and “The Magic of Choosing Uncertainty.”

Although franchising is often more expensive than starting and operating a private startup, he believes owning a franchise is more cost-effective. He should know — he’s owned two franchises and three non-franchise businesses.

In the end, the success and cost-effectiveness of a franchise will depend on which franchise you purchase, the location and, as always, a little bit of dumb luck.

You might have enough cash in the bank to give it a go, but you may have noticed the names on those “franchises under $10,000” lists aren’t very recognizable. (There are some exceptions; it only costs $10,000 to open a Chick-fil-A.)

Unless you have the cash to go all-in for a guaranteed winner, like a $14 million highway-side Hampton Inn & Suites, you may be better off hoarding your pennies to spend on a project closer to your heart.

Going It Alone

Franchising starting to sound a little more scary than sexy?

You might consider creating your own path — and your own startup.

If you’ve heard the term “unicorn” being tossed around without any reference to sparkly hooves, you know some startups are incredibly successful.

Heck, we here at The Penny Hoarder fit the successful tech startup description!

But the slang term “unicorn” was coined because, well, successful startups are pretty rare — and massively successful startups are almost unheard-of.

Going solo guarantees you creative freedom, ownership of all your profits and the ability to forge your business exactly as you see fit.

But you take all the risks involved with investing a large sum into a project that may very well just… flop.

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t give your small business a go. Many small business owners work hard and make a good living doing what they love, acting as their own boss.

They might own restaurants, coffee shops or boutiques you frequent. They might be freelancers who market their skills — be it cleaning houses, personal training, massage therapy or writing.

But you should be aware the private road can be perilous — particularly if you’re a business newbie.

“Usually, a private business is started by someone who has a great idea but no real-world business operation experience,” says Scarda. “Because of lack of experience, they may make mistakes that could end up costing [them].”

It could cost even more than the fees franchises require, he warns.

But many have found fulfillment and success in the world of the privately owned small business.

Candice Galek, owner of Bikini Luxe in Miami Beach, FL, says she chose to open her own store instead of a franchised bikini shop. The franchise would’ve cost her a required $10,000 franchise fee and monthly $1,000 fee.

“It was difficult at first,” she said, “as the learning curve doing things without a franchise behind you can be sharper. But at the end of the day I am extremely happy I chose to do it on my own. I was able to put that initial money back into my business and not have an extra monthly overhead.”

She also mentions her business has been a runaway success, and she’s enjoyed the opportunity to think outside the box with branding and advertising campaigns.

Dyson, who ditched his franchised UPS Store for the self-made entrepreneurial venture of writing a book and opening a goalie school (yes, as in hockey), says the move also was beneficial for him.

“In private business, you are in complete control and can make changes on the fly as needed,” Dyson says.

“The recognizability is not there, so the initial launch is always much more difficult, but the rewards and satisfaction are much higher (at least for me as an entrepreneur).”

While it may be a more risky venture, private business ownership might have more potential to leave you feeling fulfilled and fully independent.

Which Will You Choose When You Start a Business?

Unfortunately, there’s no simple right answer to this complicated question, but choosing wisely can make or break your business venture.

The choice is ultimately rooted in a variety of individual factors. It depends on what kind of business you want to run, how much entrepreneurial experience you have and how much startup capital you can wrangle.

No matter your choice, be sure to first do plenty of your own research. Make sure you know what you’re getting your hands (and bank account) into!

Your Turn: Would you rather open a franchise or start your business privately? Let us know in the comments!

Jamie Cattanach is a junior writer at The Penny Hoarder. She also writes other stuff, like wine reviews and poems — follow along at http://ift.tt/1RiB7sH.

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How Getting a New Credit Card Could Actually Help You Pay Off Your Credit Card Debt Faster

It may seem counterintuitive to get another credit card to help you pay down existing credit card debt or pay less in interest charges.

And the strategy outlined here isn’t for everyone.

If you can’t handle credit cards responsibly, don’t get more!

On the other hand, even responsible, well-organized people can sometimes run up credit card balances they can’t pay off right away.

If that describes your situation, you might’ve already tried negotiating a better interest rate or transferring balances to lower-interest-rate cards. But even if you succeed, the debt is still there and the interest charges add up.

What else can you do? Make or get what I call a “PIF card.”

What’s a PIF Card?

PIF stands for “pay in full” — my own name for a card you pay off every month.

Ideally, each month you should pay off every credit card you have. It’s how you avoid all interest charges, according to CreditCards.com.

But even if you can’t pay off all of your cards every month, having even one PIF card can make a difference.

So if you can, completely pay off the balance of one of your cards and, from that point on, pay in full every month. If that’s not possible, apply for a new credit card, and make it your PIF card.

Either way, you’ll be able to use your PIF card to save money on interest every month and pay down your credit card debt more quickly.

How a PIF Card Helps You Save Money

To understand how to use this type of card, you have to understand how credit card interest works.

If you always pay in full every month, you pay no interest. If you make only the minimum payment or you owe anything at all on your card after the statement due date, you pay interest on purchases from the day you make them.

Consider these two examples, assuming your annual interest rate is 18%.

Example One:

You pay your card in full by the due date and then make purchases on it in the coming month, with an average daily balance of $1,350.

The statement arrives, and if you pay in full by the due date, you owe $0 in interest.

Example Two:

You pay everything but $1 by the due date and then make purchases on the card in the coming month, with an average daily balance of $1,350.

The statement arrives — and even if you pay in full by the due date, you owe $20.25 in interest.

The $1 balance on the card cost you $20.25, because if there’s any balance, interest accrues from the moment you make purchases.

To explain it another way, let’s say in addition to paying off your debts, you can afford to pay for $1,350 in normal purchases each month.

If you use a card you pay off every month, you’ll pay no interest. If you use a card with a balance, you’ll pay an extra $243 per year in interest ($20.25 times 12 months).

You might see where this is going. We can summarize it in a simple rule:

Use your PIF card for all purchases until you’ve spent what you can comfortably pay for in full that month. For anything else, use your other cards.

Here’s a real-life example.

A friend had a card with a large balance that would take her years to pay off. She also had a card she cancelled once she had paid off the balance. Big mistake!

She was buying groceries and other regular items with the big-balance card, and increasing the amount of interest she paid. Instead, she could have used the cancelled card as an interest-free PIF card — and saved serious money.

She also could have paid cash for her purchases, but why not get the credit card’s valuable rewards points?

The Bottom Line

Keep normal affordable purchases off your cards with balances — and you could save hundreds of dollars in annual interest charges.

Of course, one of the things you can do with your savings is…

Knock Down Your Debt

Once you have a PIF card and you’re saving money on interest, why not apply your savings to paying down the balances on your other credit cards?

Then, when you’ve paid off those, you could make all of them PIF cards — and enjoy being free of credit card debt.

Your Turn: Do you have a card that you pay in full every month? Or do you pay them all off monthly?

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 6 Ways Your Content Marketing Might Be Broken (And How to Fix That)

I understand your frustration.

I see it every day.

I’m talking about marketers, or aspiring marketers, who put a lot of effort into their content marketing but just don’t get the results they need.

The truth is that effort does not equal results.

Working hard doing the wrong things won’t produce any significant results.

And that’s what most marketers do. They have a broken content marketing system.

While a lot of the pieces are right, they’re making a few big mistakes that are making their efforts fruitless.

I realize that it can be disheartening to hear that, but let me assure you that you are not alone.

According to a recent survey, only 30% of marketers rate their use of content marketing effective.

Very few (6%) say that their content marketing is “very effective.”

Everyone seems to realize the potential of content marketing, but very few are getting the most out of it.

So, instead of showing you a new tactic today, I’m going to show you 6 symptoms of a broken content marketing plan.

If you recognize a symptom, that’s actually a good thing because I’m also going to show you how to fix these flaws and get back on track to success.

I realize that no one likes making mistakes, but try to keep an open mind and honestly evaluate whether you have any of the problems I am about to describe in detail here.

There’s no shame, everyone (especially me) has made many of these mistakes at one time or another. Every marketer needs to find their own path to success. 

1. You’re not getting as many backlinks as you’d like (i.e., stagnant search engine traffic)

If you know me at all, you know that I love organic search engine traffic.

It’s very consistent and typically grows over time if you’re doing content marketing right.

You can see what I mean in the 100k case study.

As you might know, search engine rankings and traffic are tied to backlinks, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

The more high quality backlinks you have pointing to your content, the more traffic you will get.

I’ve written about how to get these backlinks and how to optimize your content for search engines many times in the past:

• The Advanced Guide to Link Building
• The Advanced Guide to SEO
• The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO

In this post, however, I want to focus on determining whether something is wrong with your content marketing.

If all is well, your organic search traffic should increase fairly steadily. Otherwise, we have a problem.

Symptom: Organic search traffic has plateaued or is slowly declining.

Step #1 – Check the numbers: Just as doctors turn to machines to provide them with data about their patients’ health, marketers have analytics to turn to.

Start by going to Google Analytics.

Using the left sidebar, navigate to “Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels,” and then select the “Organic Search” grouping.

The important part is to look over a long enough time period.

I’ve often had a span of 1-3 months during which traffic remained relatively constant, but if you have a plateau for longer than that, there’s probably an issue (with the exception of a highly seasonal niche):

Here’s an example that shows that there is something wrong:

There was a really nice increase of search traffic over a few months, but since then, it has either stayed the same or declined.

That indicates that there is something really wrong with this site’s content marketing.

Step #2 – Find the cure: This is a bit tougher but doable with a little bit of effort.

I’m going to assume that you know how to detect a Google penalty and that you’ve already done some basic technical SEO (like having a decent page speed).

Aside from those potential issues, the most common problem by far is not getting enough backlinks to new content.

Let me clarify – high quality backlinks. A link on a forum isn’t going to do much for your search rankings (although it won’t hurt either).

To confirm this, you need to use a link database tool. Ahrefs and Majestic are the best options.

First, input your domain into either tool:

Once the page loads, you’ll see a graph of the growth of all the links to your site.

Hopefully, it will look something like this:

As long as your backlink count (and total referring domains) are both steadily increasing, you’re doing something right, and search traffic will almost always go up.

But what if you see a downward trend or a plateau?

That tells you that your site as a whole isn’t attracting any new backlinks.

Uh oh.

That needs fixing.

It’s a clear sign that your content promotion isn’t up to par.

You should be spending at least as much time promoting your content as you do creating it. If your blog is relatively new, you should spend even more time.

Aim to get at least 20 high quality links from your promotion efforts. This takes a lot of time and persistence. You might have to send out 500+ emails per article. Do it.

You won’t see the results immediately, but after a few months, your search traffic will increase and keep rising if you keep up the work.

If you’re not really sure how to promote your content, I’ve got you covered. Read through these guides I’ve written in the past:

• The Day After: 11 Things to Do After You Publish a Post
• How to Use Advanced Content Promotion Strategies
• The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing: Content Promotion

2. Your current audience is not finding your content useful

Think about the basic principles of content marketing.

Your content needs to have value in order to accomplish anything. If your audience isn’t finding your content useful, they’re not going to continue to read it.

This is something you want to catch as quickly as possible, or it can become tremendously hard to reverse.

Here’s what happens with most somewhat loyal readers:

• they generally like your content, maybe even love it
• but then they read a post that isn’t very useful. That post alone won’t deter them from coming back.
• if they come across more posts that aren’t useful within a short time period, they will not come back.

Take a second to understand that sequence.

It’s easy to produce a less than stellar post and let it slip by because your numbers won’t take a hit. In the short term, most of your readers will still be loyal to you.

But if you let 2, 3, or 4 posts that aren’t very valuable slip by, you’ll start seeing your readership decline exponentially.

It happens all the time to even popular sites. They lose a large percentage of longtime loyal readers in just a few months because they start to cut corners.

You can’t afford to do this…ever.

Diagnosing ‘weak’ content: In order to evaluate how your audience perceives your content, you need a few different metrics to get a full picture.

There are a few different symptoms that you’ll need to keep an eye out for.

Symptom #1: Your email open rate goes down…down…and down

I suggest keeping a close eye on your email subscribers at all times. These are typically your most loyal readers, which means they provide reliable, accurate information.

Here, you need to examine your email open rate. All major email marketing service providers offer some sort of report in your account that should show you your overall email open rates over time.

Something like this:

If it’s staying steady or even going up, great. You’re doing something right.

But if it’s steadily going down, that’s a sign that people are losing interest in your content. If it’s only a slight downward trend, you may be doing okay, but you’ll want to keep an eye on it.

The reason why this is a good metric to look at is because these loyal readers will open most of your emails if they expect there is valuable content in them (why wouldn’t they if your content will improve their lives?)

If your numbers are dropping, it means that more and more of your readers aren’t expecting to find useful content in your emails.

Symptom #2: The number of “actionable comments” goes down dramatically

Truth be told, I don’t really worry about the sheer number of comments I get on posts.

Sometimes I get 20 comments; other times I get 300. A lot of that depends on whether what I am writing about is interesting to all or only certain parts of my audience.

What I do care about is how many actionable comments I get.

For me, an “actionable comment” is a comment that demonstrates that the reader not only liked the content but actually took action to apply it.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? If you want to see whether your readers find your content useful, see if they actually use it.

Cranking up the value and winning back your readers: The reason behind either (or both) of these symptoms is usually the same.

Some time in the recent past you started publishing content that wasn’t up to the standard you set before.

It’s really easy to do, and there are many things that can cause it:

• distractions in your personal life
• falling into a content creation “grind”—feeling burnt out
• getting overwhelmed by other parts of your work or business

First of all, know that it’s okay. Everyone (including myself) has dips in the quality of their content once in awhile.

But the best marketers spot it really quickly and fix it.

The solution is actually quite simple: start putting more effort into creating more valuable content.

If you can’t do that for some reason, it might be time to at least temporarily hire a writer or editor to help you.

If you’re just feeling a bit lost with your content creation, it may be time to learn some new ways to add value to your content. Here are a few posts I’ve written that will help you inject some new life into your work:

• How To Create Better Content For Your Customers
• Transform Your Blog Posts: 6 Open-Ended Questions That’ll Help You Create Better Content
• 12 Content Writing Secrets of Professional Writers
• No More Tricks: 5 Ways to Create Content That Google Wants to Rank

3. Your traffic is barely growing

I think every content marketer has experienced it near the beginning of their career.

They create content on a regular basis, but the traffic never amounts to anything more than a few hundred views a month.

But there are many possible reasons for that, including publishing boring content in the first place.

I’m going to assume that you know better than that and that you’re already producing some good content.

If this is your situation, the problem likely lies with your current content promotion systems.

Here’s how you diagnose it:

Symptom: You get great engagement metrics, but your traffic barely grows.

Engagement metrics tell you how much your users enjoy and interact with your content. They include:

• average time on page
• bounce rate
• average pages per session

To find these, open Google Analytics, and navigate to “Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.”

In this report, you’ll be able to see the average time on page and bounce rate of each piece of content on your site.

Two metrics will help you diagnose this problem.

In general, your content is pretty darn good if you can achieve the following numbers:

• average time on page over 2 minutes
• bounce rate under 60%

However, if you’re producing really long content (like I do), you should aim for even better numbers.

The point of checking these numbers is to make sure your readers enjoy reading your content, which is a signal of its quality.

If you see that you’ve met these standards for almost all your posts, it’s a sign you have the problem of poor content promotion.

The solution to getting the traffic you deserve: If you have good content but poor traffic, you need to re-evaluate your promotion strategy.

You might be faltering in two ways:

1. You’re not promoting your content enough.
2. Your promotional tactics aren’t effective.

For the first one, it comes down to priorities.

If you’ve found a way to get traffic to your content, spend more time and effort on it whether it’s forum posting, advertising, email outreach, or whatever other tactic that has worked for you on a small scale.

If you have a low level of traffic, any tactic that brings in a bit of traffic will work if you devote enough time to it.

You should spend at least as much time promoting your content as you do creating it. In most cases, you should spend more.

If that means you need to create less content, so be it. Put quality over quantity.

Now, if your promotional tactics aren’t effective, that’s a completely different problem.

That means you need to spend time learning new tactics and testing them out until you find some that are effective for your business.

As always, I have a few resources that will teach you just about everything you need to know to do this:

• The Day After: 11 Things to Do After You Publish a Post
• How to Use Advanced Content Promotion Strategies
• The Advanced Guide to Content Marketing: Content Promotion

4. You’re doing everything on your own

There is no sustainable way to do everything by yourself once your business reaches a certain size.

If you do try to, three things can happen:

• you get burnt out
• you can’t keep up, and your business suffers large setbacks
• you have to limit your growth

All these cases are obviously bad. And if your current content marketing system relies on you doing everything, it’s broken.

It is not set up for long term success, no matter how passionate, persistent, and intelligent you are.

If this sounds like you, and you feel that one of those three scenarios is happening (or has already happened), you need to take a step back.

Know when it’s better to get help: You wear a lot of different hats as a content marketer.

Content marketing requires a lot of different skills:

• research
• design
• copywriting
• editing
• promotion
• PR
• link building

And more…

Unless you’re an extremely rare exception, you’re not amazing at all those things.

Like most marketers, you’re probably good to great at a few of them and mediocre at the rest.

By all means, you can improve those weaknesses, or you can get help.

When I tell business owners and marketers to spend more on freelancers (or additional employees), they always resist, saying something along the lines of:

I can’t afford to do that.

They’re right and wrong at the same time.

With their current content marketing system, they can’t afford it. Their growth and results can’t justify increased spending.

But what they don’t realize is that by doing everything themselves, they are costing themselves a huge amount of money.

Hiring good freelancers almost always makes you more money than it costs for a few main reasons:

• they’re better than you - instead of struggling with one of your weak skills, like design, you can hire a professional graphic designer who spends all their time improving that one skill.
• it frees up your time - with help, you have more time to spend on the parts of content marketing you excel at. For example, I love creating content, so I do that. Getting help with other things allows me to write several posts a week, and you can’t do that if you’re doing everything else too.
• it minimizes catastrophes - if you get sick and you’re doing everything on your own, everything shuts down, which is extremely costly. When you have help, others can fill in to keep everything running smoothly.

I really hope that makes sense.

When you hire intelligently, you make even more money, AND you’ll get to do the work you enjoy the most.

How do you hire intelligently? I’ll be honest, hiring the right people isn’t easy. If you hire people who aren’t professional, they might leave you hanging unexpectedly, which can mess up your content strategy.

My first big advice is to know exactly what you want.

Hire for a very specific position (e.g., copywriter, funnel expert, designer, etc.), and make your requirements very clear.

As an example, take a look at 3 job postings I posted on Quick Sprout in 2015:

You’ll notice that the main thing I look for, besides knowledge, is passion.

I like working with people who love their work and spend a large part of their lives doing it. These are the most likely people to act like professionals and always deliver on their promises.

As long as you return the favor by paying promptly and treating them like professionals, they will make your life a lot easier.

One more thing that you absolutely must do when making hiring decisions is to talk to the person you are considering to hire (phone, Skype, or whatever you prefer).

Get a sense of their expectations so you can determine if they’re a good fit for what you can offer.

Sometimes, you’ll get a gut feeling telling you that you should hire a particular person; other times your gut will tell you to pass. More often than not, that gut feeling is right, so trust your instincts.

Finally, don’t hire all at once.

Once those marketers and business owners see how hiring could actually help them, they often hire too many people too fast.

When you’re planning on working with someone long-term, rushing is the biggest mistake you can make.

Start with one position.

Even if you find a great person to hire, chances are you’ll still do a few things wrong. When you start with just one position, it gives you a chance to learn from your mistakes and then apply those lessons to the next person.

Slowly transition to the business structure you want instead of trying to make it happen overnight.

5. You’re getting views and subscribers but no sales

One of the biggest reasons why business owners think that content marketing isn’t very effective is that they don’t know how to turn it into sales.

They do a good job when it comes to creating high quality content, but then they expect that their readers would spontaneously start buying their products.

Or they don’t want to upset their audience by selling something to them.

If you relate to either of these types of people, you need to understand that the whole point of content marketing, like most other types of marketing, is to increase profits (sales).

Without any return from content marketing, how are you supposed to justify the investment in more content? You can’t.

Additionally, why would you feel bad about selling a product that will genuinely help your customers?

If you’ve been having success with your content, you understand your reader very well. No one else is in as good a position to create a useful product for them as you are.

So if you don’t have a product to sell, get one.

The more interesting problem to diagnose is when you have poor sales of an actual product despite getting a good amount of traffic.

Possible diagnosis #1 – Your conversion funnel needs work: All products have conversion funnels; some just aren’t very well defined.

A conversion funnel simply describes the path that a customer takes to become an actual customer from being a first time visitor:

Yes, there are many different paths in each step, but you should be able to define the main channels they pass through.

For example, “visitor > email subscriber > sales pages > customer.”

Once you have your funnel defined, you can use analytics to see where they are dropping off in this funnel.

You can create a sales funnel in Google Analytics or use some more advanced sales analytics software like Kissmetrics.

If you’re not sure how to build an effective conversion funnel, I have an in-depth guide that will show you how to.

Possible diagnosis #2 – You don’t have product-market fit: Now, if you actually have a good funnel but you can’t figure out why barely anyone is buying your products, you likely have a poor product-market fit.

Your product-market fit is basically a measure of how well your product meets the needs of your audience.

If no one is buying, it means one of two things:

• your product sucks
• you’re targeting it to the wrong audience

Be honest with yourself about your product: is it really good enough to sell? I rarely see this problem with content marketers, however, since they tend to give as much value as possible.

The more common problem is creating the wrong product for your audience.

For example, if you had a blog catered to SEO beginners, would it make sense to try to sell an advanced technical SEO crawler to them?

No, it wouldn’t. Instead, a basic rank tracking tool or email outreach tool would be much more useful for them at the moment.

It’s not that your product isn’t good—it’s that your audience doesn’t have a need for it.

Instead, you should have been writing content that attracts experienced SEOs rather than beginners. Then, you’d be selling the right product to the right audience.

To fix this problem, you either need to create a different product or pivot your content marketing strategy to target the right audience for your product.

6. No other bloggers are willing to help you out

The final big symptom of broken content marketing is that everything seems to be an uphill battle.

Then, you see guys like Brian Dean who start a blog from nothing and turn it into a leading blog in their niche within just a few years.

A big reason for Brian’s success was that other influencers in the marketing and SEO niche loved his work and shared it with their audiences.

Symptom: No influencers are willing to mention you or any of your content, no matter how many of them you interact with and send emails to.

In this scenario, a few different areas of your content marketing might be broken.

Possible diagnosis #1 – Your content isn’t unique enough: You have to understand things from the perspective of a blogger with an audience.

They receive dozens of requests from other bloggers every day asking them to look at their content.

Almost all of it looks exactly the same.

It’s not bad, but it’s not unique.

When Brian started publishing his content, people took a look at it and said, “Wow.”

He created new SEO tactics and presented them better than almost everyone else in the niche.

Your takeaway: your content needs to be exceptional if you want other influencers to share your work.

The best incentive to share your work in particular is if you’re the only one who has written about something, so be unique.

Possible diagnosis #2 – You need a better outreach approach: This ties in with your promotional efforts, which we went over earlier.

One of the biggest challenges for you is to get an influencer to take a look at your content in the first place.

Your content may actually be excellent, but if you’re coming off as another blogger who just wants something, your email will be deleted.

How do you solve this?

It’s a complex subject, but the first thing you want to do is stop approaching these bloggers as people you want to do something for you.

Instead, approach them to try to build a relationship. Let them know that you enjoy learning from them and would like to become their peer in the future.

Don’t just shove a link in their faces the first time you email them. Try to research a mutual connection and send a few emails over a few weeks with no objective other than to develop a deeper relationship.

You’ll be surprised how much of an effect that little change can have.

Conclusion

It’s no secret that content marketing can produce great results. But at the same time, the majority of marketers are not having success with it.

It’s because their content marketing approach is broken.

I’ve shown you the 6 most common symptoms of broken content marketing as well as what you need to do to fix them.

Now, it’s your turn to honestly evaluate your results and determine if there’s a weakness that you can fix.

As always, if you have any questions at all, ask me in a comment below, giving me as much detail as you can.

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UK must abandon debt culture to solve pension crisis

Rebecca Jones

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Britons must stop consuming and running up debts if they are to save enough to see them through retirement.

The UK urgently needs to move away from a current culture of spending and debt to a culture of saving if future retirees are to have enough to live on, according to two leading savings and retirement experts.

read more

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Who Cares What Everyone Else is Doing? Here’s How I Manage my Money as a Nonconformist

Go to college, get a decent job, buy a big home — and go shopping!

It’s the American Dream, and loans and credit cards will pay for all of it.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with education, employment, houses and credit cards. But sometimes we half-consciously follow what the people around us do — without considering whether we might be happier going another direction.

And that conformity is expensive!

In the U.S., the average student loan debt is $28,950, the average mortgage loan is $222,261 and the average credit card debt for households that carry balances is $16,140.

Yikes!

Maybe you’d prefer to travel around the world for months at a time instead of making payments on a big house. Or you might want more meaningful work, even for a much smaller paycheck. And what if you’re like me and you don’t even want a job?

Fortunately, there are alternatives to financial conformity.

This is my own situation, in brief: No degree, no job, no debt, mortgage-free home and doing fine.

Based on my experience and a lot of research, here’s a nonconformist guide to personal finance. Could it work for you?

Educational Debt Is Not a Necessity

To avoid educational debt, you can look into college scholarships.

But there also are these interesting options we’ve previously reported:

• A Free MBA From a Business School

• Alternative Education Programs

• No-College-Required Jobs That Pay Over $59,000 a Year

• Get Paid $100,000 to Drop Out of School

If you do go to college — and must pay for it yourself — you could implement a two-part plan to stay out of debt.

First, choose from universities that cost less than $5,000 per year. Second, pay cash as you go by getting one of the best jobs for college students.

Or, skip college and commit to building a business instead. For inspiration, read about the many entrepreneurs who succeeded without a college degree.

Another possibility? Go to college temporarily, and then drop out.

College dropout billionaires like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg credit their college experiences and contacts for much of their success. For them, the experience was valuable, but the degree clearly wasn’t necessary.

Get a degree or don’t. Obtain an alternative certification or license. Go into debt or don’t — the choices are many.

After a few boring college courses, I opted to continue my own education with a thumb-out travel curriculum.

What Good Is a Job?

My wife and I make money in many ways, but very little comes from traditional employment.

I’ve been a full-time employee for a total of six months or less since my first job 35 years ago. My wife isn’t a fan of jobs either, but we always pay our bills on time — and we have money in the bank.

Smart money management is our secret to living well with limited employment.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with a paycheck — you can use your job to achieve various goals.

For example, I’ve used jobs (part-time, of course) to pay off a mortgage, learn about businesses, make friends and fund mountain-climbing trips.

But jobs are not, strictly speaking, a necessity. Here are some of your many alternatives:

Join the Peace Corps

When you’re done with college, you can to do something interesting and make some money in the Peace Corps. Your student loans might even be forgiven.

Start a Business

You can start a small business for under $100, and there are a number of ways you can make $100,000 without a job.

Get Rich and Retire

If you earn enough early in life, you could even retire young.

You might start with one of the fastest ways to make $1 million.

I don’t have the ambition and commitment needed to get rich, so I’ll muddle along in a lower tax bracket, and maybe even throw an occasional job into the income mix.

Invest for a Living

With $10,000 saved from summer jobs, 20-year-old college dropout Mike Henkel started investing in real estate. By 24, he owned rentals worth $4 million.

My more modest real estate investments will earn me only about $8,000 this year, but every bit helps.

A job is a great thing if you love it and it pays well. But it can also be a temporary tool, or something you avoid altogether. The choice is yours.

Oh, and in case you’re tempted to leave employment behind, be sure to read my guide about how to quit your job.

Homes Take Many Forms

You might want an oversized house with a big mortgage, but if other things are more important, consider cheaper housing alternatives.

Making a school bus your home or camping half of each year to save money may work well for some people.

My wife and I lived in our van for a month, but there are less-extreme non-conforming alternatives like these:

• Build a tiny house for under $16,000

• Buy a used mobile home

• Pay cash for a house to avoid monthly payments

• Get a free mobile home on Craigslist

• Rent a room instead of a whole apartment

• Move to one of the cities that pay you to live there

• Stay with mom and dad a while longer

• Get a Habitat for Humanity home

• Become a house sitter

• Pay off your mortgage by renting out rooms

• Live on a boat

• Downsize to a smaller and cheaper home

• Use our list of 10 ways to save on rent

• Move to one of the towns with the most affordable houses

• Move to one of the cities with the cheapest rent

• Split the rent with roommates

Start by deciding whether it makes more sense to buy or to rent. In either case, there are plenty of options for the non-conformist.

Secondhand Does Not Mean Second Class

Some things you should buy used because it just makes financial sense.

My wife and I won’t buy used mattresses or running shoes due to the “ick” factor, but wood furniture? You bet! For example, we bought a new-looking solid oak coffee table at a rummage sale for $20 — it’d be $180 at a furniture store.

We had a six-figure income when we bought the thing, but why spend an extra $160? It could pay for another day (or two) of travel, or dozens of used books on Amazon, or whatever.

Life is richer when you buy used items. You free up money for so many other things, or work less and have more time for doing what you like.

Do You Really Want Children?

We’re not all meant to be parents.

Yet childfree couples are pressured to have kids, to conform to the societal norm.

Still, the choice is yours. My wife and I have never regretted our decision not to have kids. Studies show there is no gain in happiness from having children.

And children are expensive! It’ll cost $245,340 to raise a child to the age of 18, according to a recent USDA report.

Even if you definitely want to have kids, you can choose the timing more consciously. It may make financial sense to wait until your career is established and your income is predictable.

A Marriage By Any Other Name

I’m married because it’s the legal way to be with the love of my life, Ana, who I met in Ecuador 15 years ago.

But, if you and your soul mate already share the same citizenship, you can simply spend your lives together — without a government permission slip (otherwise known as a marriage license).

Part of the decision might be financial.

Plenty of articles tout the tax advantages of marriage. But some people believe marriage is obsolete, and there are financial disadvantages of marriage, like these:

• You may pay a marriage penalty at tax time

• You and your spouse may be liable for each other’s debts

• You can lose commonly owned assets in a lawsuit

• You may lose health care subsidies if you marry

• Marriage complicates bankruptcy

“55% of men and 50% of women say they would like to get married someday,” the Pew Research Center reports.

And if you’re going to spend your life with someone anyhow, the financial advantages of marrying may outweigh the disadvantages.

Or maybe not — it all depends on your particular plans and circumstances, and it’s your choice.

Pets and Personal Finance

Our cats are our children.

We build outdoor enclosures for them, feed them expensive healthy foods and pay $50 to $60 per night for a cat sitter when we travel. Animal companions are a wonderful — but expensive — responsibility.

A medium-size dog will cost you $1,580 the first year, and a cat $1,035, the ASPCA reports.

Then there are the “surprises.”

For example, the average cost to repair a dog’s injured anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is over $3,000, and one of the most common dog surgeries.

What if you love animals, but don’t want the 10-to-20-year financial obligation of a pet?

Don’t get one! Instead, consider one or more of these options:

• Volunteer to walk dogs or play with cats at a local animal shelter

• Watch pets for family and friends

• Become a pet sitter and make money spending time with animals

• Donate time and money to animal causes

If you have an unconventional life and variable income, financial responsibility is the key issue with pets.

After all, a decent person won’t abandon a pet because of a little financial difficulty. On the other hand if you spend even twice as much on animal causes instead of owning a pet, you’re financially safer.

Why? Without direct responsibility for the animals, you can more easily stop expenditures when you need to.

Avoid Christmas and Other Holidays

I don’t participate in the frenzy of Christmas activities my friends and family enjoy (or tolerate).

My choice has saved me thousands of dollars over the years.

U.S. consumers spent an average of $812 on Christmas gifts in 2015, according to Gallop. That’s just on the gifts — there’s also the cost of trees, lights and other decorations.

What a waste, especially considering 20% of Christmas gifts are unwanted in Australia, and £700 million ($1.13 billion) is spent on unwanted gifts in the United Kingdom.

There aren’t any figures available for the U.S., but who hasn’t received a few useless Christmas gifts — or given them?

There’s pressure to conform to this expensive tradition, but if you make your nonconformity a stand against consumerism, your family and friends will still love you. Send them a link to “The Case Against Buying Christmas Presents.”

Unless you really enjoy spending a fortune on Fourth-of-July fireworks or other holiday traditions, say no to those, too.

If you enjoy Christmas lights, drive around town to see them instead of buying any. If you like fireworks, watch the ones your tax dollars paid for. Or, just do something else fun and interesting.

Take it from me — you can enjoy the holidays without the expense of doing what everyone else is doing.

What’s the Price in Time?

Part of being a nonconformist is choosing new perspectives, like pricing things in terms of time worked.

If you take home $14 per hour after taxes, a $50 pair of shoes costs 3.57 hours at your desk, on the assembly line or wherever you work.

Some items obligate you to ongoing expenses.

For example, you might pay 429 hours upfront for a snowmobile ($6,000 at $14 per hour after taxes). But you’ll also pay annual licensing, insurance, repairs, maintenance and operating costs.

Those can double the time-price over the first five years, bringing it to 858 hours, or over 21 weeks of work.

You can go too far thinking like this, especially if you hate your job — like asking yourself “Is eating today really worth the time I’ll spend at my desk?”

But the exercise can change your mind about what you thought you wanted. It’s also useful for comparing options, which brings us to the flip side of this perspective…

How Much Money Does Time Cost?

With no regular job, I decide when and how much to work.

I can’t completely slack off, but if I find a way to save $100 on car insurance or make $100 more with a new bank account, the money buys me five hours.

I make about $20 per hour, so I can play chess or hunt wild edibles in the woods instead of working. In other words, I can buy hours for $20 each.

Have you ever heard people regret the lack of time spent with their children? Maybe it’s because they choose to spend money elsewhere instead of to buy time with kids.

Time is the stuff of life and money can buy it.

Maybe you’d rather spend your paycheck on time to do something interesting (or nothing at all), rather than on expensive coffee and the latest gadgets. Maybe morning lattes and the newest iPads are what you value more — and there’s nothing wrong with either of those options!

The choices are yours, but considering them from other perspectives helps you make them more consciously.

How Many Times Will You Retire?

Is age-based retirement a necessary tradition?

After all, some people are healthy and productive at age 88 while others are disabled and unable to work at 28.

And who wants to wait until old age to relax or do interesting work that doesn’t produce income?

Why not retire next year?

OK, maybe not permanently, but consider what author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” Tim Ferriss calls “mini-retirements.” I’ve enjoyed a few of them so far — once or twice just to travel, and other times to relax and figure out what I wanted to do next.

If you want mini-retirements throughout life, you have to save money.

Even if your “retirement” lasts only a few months, you may continue to spend your savings afterward while you look for the next job or income source. Be prepared!

It works well to take mini-retirements when you’re between jobs for other reasons.

For example, if you plan to quit a job, first save enough money to delay the necessity of a new paycheck for a year. Or, if you know you’ll be laid off in a few months, work overtime to build up a mini-retirement fund.

Of course, it always helps if your expenses are low, which brings us to…

The Advantages of a Small Lifestyle Overhead

There are two basic types of personal expenses.

Fixed expenses like house payments, utility bills and medical insurance make up your “lifestyle overhead.” Focus on keeping this small if you want more freedom (we’ll get to “buying freedom” in a moment).

You can cut discretionary expenses, like restaurant meals, vacations, shopping for non-essentials and going to the movies, as needed. Don’t worry about these unless they’re interfering with other goals.

But be careful about purchases that become part of your overhead, like a boat or second car that will need ongoing licensing, maintenance and insurance.

To understand the importance of a small lifestyle overhead to a nonconformist, consider this scenario:

You find a job you’d really love, but it pays 50% less than what you currently make — and you currently spend everything you make every month.

What can you do?

If your lifestyle overhead is high, you’re probably out of luck. Stick with the job you hate.

On the other hand, if your lifestyle overhead is low, and your current income goes mostly to parties, travel, and clothes, you can reduce those costs and live on the smaller income provided by the awesome job.

My wife and I own our home free-and-clear, pay less than $140 per month for all utilities, and always buy used cars with cash.

As a result, we have money to spend how we like. Our income is down 70% in the last few years. But, because of our low lifestyle overhead, we’ve had no real financial difficulties (despite our worries).

We’ve even taken five vacations this year. Oh, and I keep my workweek to 30 hours or less.

That brings us to…

Freedom and Personal Finances

Freedom has political and spiritual meanings, but also financial aspects.

Who doesn’t feel more free with enough money to buy what they need and want? Even if you love your job, wouldn’t you also love feeling free to quit when you want?

There are two basic ways to increase financial freedom.

The obvious way is to make more money, and invest some of it so you eventually have all the residual income you need.

The other is to pay less for things. If your necessities cost half as much, you have the freedom to do twice as much with your money, or to work a lot less.

Only you can decide how much to focus on each approach.

Live simply, and you can work less to support your lifestyle (my most common approach).

But you can only reduce expenses so far. So, if you have expensive needs or desires, it might make more sense for you to focus on getting rich.

Freedom is very personal.

If I had a beautiful big home with a big mortgage, three kids, two cars, a boat and a job with a $140,000 salary, I might jump off a cliff to escape.

But that’s a dream situation for some people — maybe you’re one of them.

Whatever your goals and income, learning to wisely manage money and take control of your finances gives you more freedom.

Taking control means learning from others, but doing what works best for you — regardless of what everyone else says or does.

Your Turn: Are you a non-conformist? If so, what do you do differently from others when it comes to your money?

Disclosure: This post includes affiliate links. We’re letting you know because it’s what Honest Abe would do. After all, he is on our favorite coin.

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).

The post Who Cares What Everyone Else is Doing? Here’s How I Manage my Money as a Nonconformist appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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