How much should I charge?

Today, I got asked about one of the most popular questions in starting a business – How much should I charge?

Big mistake!

When I started out, I first surfed the net for competition and I went straight to their “rates” page.  So, then I made a range of lowest to highest rates amongst competition.  I was fortunate to also read a book about starting a business.  They told me, whatever you do, DO NOT price too low.  Shoot for a medium price, at least.  Every cell in my body cringed at that.  I mean, how can I price above the lowest price… AND convince customers to pay me?  So, guess what I did?  I charged the lowest price.  BIG mistake!

The less you charge, the less customers you have

What? Wouldn’t it be the opposite?  That’s what I thought at first too.  That’s why I charged something like $5 per hour, or less!  When you charge less, you don’t get customers who value quality and then become loyal to you.  Most likely, a good chunk of your client base will be people who are searching for the lowest price.  They don’t really care to be loyal to you.  And most of the time, they will give you a lot of hassle.  It’s true!

So then, how much should I charge?

I can’t give you a clear cut answer because, quite frankly, it depends.  Here are some factors to think about:

1.  Are you doing this as a hobby, freelancer or company?

2. Who exaclty are your clients?

3. How much quality are they looking for?

4. How much are they willing to pay for your work?

5. How good is your product or service?

…and most importantly,

6. To what extent do YOU value your own work?

In most cases, it’s best to go for the medium to high price. That’s IF you have a good product or service.

 

Article just published!

 

I recently came across a useful hub for information about the Muslim business world on www.DinarStandard.com.  They just published an article with an interview about me for their new section, Women in Management.

Enjoy the article.

The website has over 400 webpages ma sha Allah, and mostly provides articles to Muslim entrepreneurs about finance, management, entrepreneurial challenges etc.

How high do you rank on Google?

We all know that if you don’t rank on the first page in Google searches, most likely many surfers are not going to find your website, but how do you get on the first page of Google?

Search Engine Optimization 101

Well, there are lots of ways to do it that require hard work, but I’ll give you the first SEO 101 tip.  By the way, SEO stands for search engine optimization – in other words, ranking high on Google (and other) search.

The title tag

If you visit, let’s say www.bravenet.com, at the bottom of your computer, the bravenet tab will read, “Web Hosting, Free W” and you can’t read the rest.  Notice that it doesn’t read “bravenet”.  This is because they are taking advantage of the title tag to get ranked high on Google searches.

SEO’s first trick

How did they do that? Here, I’ll show you. On the bravenet’s site, at the top, click on View/Source.  Scroll down a bit and you should see:

 <title>Web Hosting, Free Web Hosting and Web Tools from Bravenet.com.</title> 

That’s their title tag. 

Why did they use that title?

Because, those are the keywords they know people are searching for to get to their site (and their competitiors’). 

So, what happens if my website doesn’t have a title tag? 

You might end up on the 17th page of a google search, like my friend did!  Have you ever clicked through all the way to the 17th page to find a website?  Most likely not! Well, I have, but that’s another story.

So, how do I get a title tag on my website?

Simply, just let your web designer know to add one.  Or, if you are looking for web designers, search for ones that offer SEO packages too.  It’s well worth it. Don’t end up like my friend who ended up on the 17th page!!

Go ahead and type in a keyword in Google to find your website.  How high do you rank on Google?

 

 

Drive massive traffic to your blog

 

Digg, del.icio.us, reddit, YouTube.  We heard of these but what are they really?  It can get really confusing but the bottom line is that you can use these types of social media marketing programs to drive massive traffic to your blog and here’s how:

Sign up for the next Hubspot Social Media Marketing Webinar on April 9, 2pm EST.  It’s as easy as that. Take the baby step that will help you tremendously.

Muslim business directories

I was putting together a list of Muslim business directories to sign up to when I thought, hey, my blog readers might like this and want to add their businesses too.  So, here’s the list. Most of them are free to join.

Islamic Finder

Islamic Port

Muslim Directory (UK)

Muslim 411

Tijara Pages (UK)

Muslim Businesses USA

Business Link Directory

Pakistani Community Portal (Toronto)

Muslim Web Page

Calgary Islam Directory

Halal Business Directory

Muslim Business Directory Online (UK)

Ummah Index

Ya Halal

Muslims Internet Directory

Arab Trade Zone

Muslim Connection

My secret to success

 

I’m currently going back and forth with a writer from DinarStandard that is interviewing me for an upcoming article. After discussing what makes a women a great manager, she ended up asking me how long I’ve had my business for and she thought it was for 6 years now.

After telling her that I’ve been running it now for 2 years only, I started thinking about how far we’ve grown in just a short time.  And then I started thinking about other businesses I know who didn’t do the same.

So, what’s my secret to success in business?

Definitely, the answer is “it’s all in the mind”.

I recently read an amazing quote from Henry Ford,

“If you think you can, you can and

if you think you can’t, you can’t. 

Either way, you’re right.” 

If you treat your mind like prime real estate, you will achieve your goals.  If you treat your mind like the garbage dump, you’ll probably end up there.

So, how did I grow my business so fast?

I simply set my goals beyond realistic measures.  The first thing I did after deciding to start a business was sit down and write a 10 year plan.  When I was writing this, the only thought that was going through my mind was, “Man, this is so crazy, I don’t know how I’m going to achieve all of this but I’m going to keep writing!”. 

So, how do you reach your dreams in 1/6th of the time?

Now, after reaching my goals faster than I ever dreamed of, I recently signed up with a lifecoach to take my personal and business life to an ultimate level.  That’s where I want to go, and I want to do it in 1/6th of the time.  But this time, I have my lifecoach who gives me tremendous support and optimism and makes me superfocused in the stuff that’s really important to me.

With a lifecoach, not only is your mind living in prime real estate, all the minds surrounding you are prime real estate too!

If you want to catch up in success and achieve all your goals in 1/6th of the time, you can visit my lifecoach’s blog.  She has some really awesome reflections and tips so check it out.

Are your customers willing to?

I had an interesting discussion today and I’ve been thinking to start a new business based on the premise that people keep coming to me with the same problem about a particular issue so I want to solve it for them – and hey, you gotta love when you can make money off of it at the same time!

So, my next step was to test out the idea more by informally interviewng some people I know and also sending out a survey.  I still thought I probably have a good idea of the response since I’ve seen this same problem come up over and over again over a long period of time in forums, in our communities and also by lots of people asking me personally for advice about it.

But then it hit me in the head!  It reminded me that I should still do thorough testing. 

And what is it I’m testing?

Well, of course, I’m testing to see if customers are willing to pay for these products.

And I’m glad I talked to a friend about it, because it made me realize that what I was going to offer, people might have not purchased it but instead would like to have it for free and if I tweaked the format of the product, then they would be willing to pay for it.

Are your customers willing to? How do you know?

In case you missed it

  

Two days ago, I participated in the Blogging for Business webinar that I really benefited from.  In case you missed it, here are some awesome tips you would want to take advantage of:

3 Keys to Success: 

Reading, Writing and Commenting. 

Hubspot recommends you spend 1/3 of your time on each.  Many of us might think to spend the most time writing on our blog, but you can drive more traffic to your blog by reading other blogs and posting relevant comments with a link back to your own blog.  Makes sense.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tips

Hubspot absolutely recommends using a business URL, not wordpress, or hubspot.  For example, use www.blog.hubspot.com, instead of www.hubspot.blogspot.com.  Why?  Because everything you write will now automatically help your website move higher up in search engines like Google etc.  This is one that I’ve thought about for a while now and I might just make the move.

Writing Tips

1. Your title:

It can either be funny, enticing or simply a combination of your keywords that will move you up higher in search engines.

2. Blog frequency:

If you are looking for steady readership, you want to post at least 1-2 times per week, but two is even better.

3.  Topics

Because most people scan the blog post first, people love quick tips, lists, trends, list of links or you sharing a recent experience.

Mass Promotion

You can first start out by promoting your blog to family and friends but soon enough you’ll want to become tech savvy with digg, reddit, Stumble Upon, facebook, Linked On and so on. 

Measuring Your Success

With all marketing programs, how will you know how successful you are unless you measure it?  You can monitor the number of RSS feeds, and e-mail subscriptions you have. Some other ways are to keep checking your SEO ranking and Technorati rank etc.

If you’re like me and all of these tech savvy blog programs like digg and technorati are bewildering you, then go ahead and watch the Hubspot video for step-by-step instructions. (Not sure how long it will stay on the site so you might want to check it out soon.)

http://www.hubspot.com/blog-webinar

Narrow does it

 

I’m almost finished rereading the branding books by Al Ries and I’m making some notes.  I’ll tell ya, what a way to make your brand a powerhouse!  There were many amazing guidelines to follow but there was one reoccuring message that kept standing out.  And that was the exact point in branding that many large businesses failed to stay on top of once they became famous.

Can you guess what that is?

It’s called narrowing your focus.

What does that mean?

Well, it means to provide a specific narrowed down solution to a specific problem for a specific audience and to never expand out of that category.  Huh? 

So, for example, Staples sells you office equipment, Optimize It. Designs provides you with design work, Amazon sells you books and Yahoo! provides you with a search engine. 

So, what happens when Yahoo! gets famous, wants to grow more so they start expanding out of their category and now provide you with mail AND calendars AND directories AND news AND hosting AND on and on?  Well, someone like Google steps right in, narrows its focus to search engines and kicks Yahoo! out of the race. Sure, Google still has news AND videos AND mail, but when I ask you what is Google, what’s your answer?… It’s a search engine!  And what is Yahoo!? It’s a mail provider…AND a search engine…AND…

If you ask others, what is [fill in your company name]?  Will they say ‘x’ or will they say ‘x AND y’?  If someone asks you what do you sell, and YOU answer x AND y, be weary of it.  You might be expanding your focus too much and letting competition into your territory. I’m going to think about this more for my business and see how I can also narrow my focus more.

 Narrow does it!

Did this post help you?  Let me know by clicking on “…Comment” below.

Well, it’s their fault!

 

It’s their fault if they don’t want to buy my product!  They really need my product and I don’t know how they are going to survive without it.  I’m so bewildered how people can act so strange.  I go out of my way to spend thousands of dollars creating a product that they NEED and all I get is “no thank you” after all of that hard work! Pfff.

Does this sound familiar to you?

It could for some businesses.

This is an example of the difference between NEED and WANT.  It’s and interesting topic.  It really hurts that after all the hard work and money you put into building your business, your baby, people don’t buy it.  It’s easy to put the blame on your customers. But I’ve seen so many business owners do it.

So, what’s the solution, you ask?

Stop blaming the customers. 

To make things clear, do you go and support every single business out there even when you you don’t really want their product? Do you just buy it anyway?  Maybe if you have a really good heart but not for billions of companies out there. 

The real reason you buy something is because you’ve been convinced that you really want it and that this company is the best place to get it!

And who convinced you?

We’ll of course, the company’s marketing program, whether that be through its website, advertisement, free product give-away, referrals from a trusted friend, a thank you card or a sponsorship of a charitable program or all of the above. 

Most of the time it’s a consistent nagging of attention that’s plastered in your face through internet, tv, radio, direct mail, online mail, e-mails people forward to you, free products and gifts, magazines and on and on. 

We’ll talk more about the consistent nagging in future posts but for now, have you realized yet that it’s not the customer to blame?  Perhaps, it’s you.