Are you looking for a way to help your audience while making more money?

Are there products or services that you promote that you’d like to do a better job at promoting?

In this episode, you’ll discover how creating resource centers can help you do all of the above.

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Inside This Episode

A few months ago, I decided to create a GetResponse Resource Center. This single activity took me between 10 and 20 hours and will be responsible for me making a minimum of $12,000 in 2015, and even more in future years.

What is a resource center?

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How To Create Resource Centers That Increase Your Income

A resource center is a section of your blog that’s devoted to providing resources to help your audience with a particular product or service.

In my case, with my GetResponse Resource center, I created a series of videos, an article, and a comparison chart to help people make an educated decision about whether to use GetResponse.

The resource center also shows them how to do a lot of the tasks they might want to do using the service. I look at it as a one-stop shop for all things GetResponse-related.

Why you should create Resource Centers

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Resource Centers

There are a number of reasons why I love resource centers and think that more bloggers should create them. Here are a few:

  • It helps your audience. They have questions about products and services. If you can be a resource to answer their questions, that can go a long way.
  • If you help your audience, you will gain their trust.
  • If your resource center is done well, it can drive more traffic to your blog
  • It can help you to stand out with influential companies and individuals
  • It can help you make more money

Where to start?

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Start where?

The first thing you need to do is decide which product or service you will be creating a resource center for. This decision should be based solely on the needs of your audience. Ask yourself the following questions about your ideal target person?

  • What are her goals?
  • What struggles is she encountering?
  • What product(s) or service(s) will help her accomplish her goals or overcome her struggles?

Once you’ve gone through those questions, you have candidates for resource centers.

The next step involves deciding if it’s worth your time to create an entire resource center to promote those products and services that made the list.

For this, you have to look at the profitability factor. Consider the following questions:

  • How much do you make in commissions on each sale?
  • Are the commissions one-time or recurring?
  • If the commissions aren’t significant, in what other non-financial ways will this benefit you?

Once you’ve answered those questions, rank the list of potential Resource Centers from highest potential to lowest potential.

Then, start with the one at the top.

What to Create

Once you’ve decided which resource center you’re going to create, answer the following questions:

  • What do they need to know in order to make the right decision about the product or service in question?
  • Once they have purchased the product or service, what kind of help will they need in order to benefit from using it?
  • What questions will they have at every stage of the game?
  • What struggles will they encounter when using the product or service?
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What to Create?

Once you’ve answered those questions, your job is to figure out what content you can create to help them, answer their questions, and provide guidance to overcome the struggles they will face.

Some of the things you can create are:

  • Comparison articles – How does the product or service compare to other products or services out there? For example, see my Aweber vs. GetResponse article.
  • Comparison tables – Similar to the first point, but in this case, you are comparing multiple products/services in a way that’s very easy to consume. I.e. my Email Marketing Comparison chart.
  • Tutorial videos – Show them exactly how to use the product/service.
  • Checklists – These are always useful for helping people go through a process in a step by step way.
  • Infographics – This can be a great way to guide someone through a decision-making process. This is not something I’ve done yet, but you can see an excellent example here.

What to do with these resources

Once you’ve created these resources, add them to your blog in a prominent way, and make it obvious that it’s a resource center, and not just an individual article or resource.

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Blog resource center

I’ve added a link to my resource center in my navigation menu. Also, you can see that if you go to any of the individual resources in my resource center, I have links to all of the other resources, with a clear indication that there are more resources available.

Resources Mentioned

  • GetResponse Resource Center – here is an example of a resource center I created here at Become a Blogger for Get Response.
  • Great infographic example here.

Infographic

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How To Create Resource Centers That Increase Your Income

Transcript

Some people prefer to read along with the podcast episode. Others actually prefer to read than listen. If you are one of those people, not to worry. I’ve got a transcript right here for you :)

Click here to download transcript.

Announcements

I’m in Las Vegas at the New Media Expo and National Association of Broadcasters, and enjoying myself. If you’re here, come up to me and give me a hug 🙂

About the Author Leslie Samuel


Leslie Samuel a business coach for high-performing entrepreneurs. As the host of the Leslie Samuel Show, he teaches how to build an online business. "Changing the world one post at a time” is the mission he strives towards. As a former university professor, he has a passion for education. He's the founder of Interactive Biology, a blog and YouTube channel dedicated to making biology fun for students and teachers. As the head of training for the Social Media Marketing Society, he helps social media marketers get the training they need to stay on the leading edge of social media.

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