What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know (TM) - The Blog For Original Content Infopreneurs

How My Aunt Netti Helped Me Finish What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know

It was one year ago today that one of the big fans of my writing and a special someone who inspired me to finish What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know! passed away. 

My Great Aunt Netti, who was technically my Great Aunt by marriage, and not by blood (although you'd never know the difference), kept in touch from across the country through the old-fashioned method of writing letters.  She'd read my last book Have Your Cheeseburger And Keep Your Health Too! and really enjoyed it, and we shared back and forth different things we were doing as part of our respective healthy lifestyles. 

Those of you who have heard my author teleseminar interview or read the book excerpt for What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know! are aware that for a variety of reasons that contributed to major writer's block, that book took me 7 years to write, when I had written my other five within the span of two years.  How did I get over it?

BlogWorld New Media Expo: How Going Led To My First Live Video

Now while my business is primarily virtual, there are times when you just can’t beat an in-person business event, and going to this year’s BlogWorld/New Media Expo in Las Vegas was one of them.  I had been to the conference two years ago when it was just The New Media Expo and got a lot out of it—it got me to stop talking about launching What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know The Podcast, and be inspired to actually do it. 

Plus, it’s where I met the Microsoft employee who loved my podcast and got it recognized as a featured show (where it remained ongoing), and my book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know spotlighted on the Office Products Podcast Directory.  That love from Microsoft wouldn’t have happened any other way.

So I was optimistic about more magic happening when I attended this year’s conference, and I wasn’t disappointed.  It was also appropriate that this time instead of involving audio, the magic involved video. 

Could Infopreneuring Be The Answer To Baby Boomers Retirement Woes

Yesterday I read a truly heartbreaking piece in USA Today about how baby boomers looking to work jobs in retirement--whether for necessity or just to stay busy--are finding it hard to find jobs. 

 

According to the story, the percentage of Baby Boomers who are unemployed who want to work has doubled to 7% since 2008, and like many unemployment numbers, that figure doesn't include those who've given up or are underemployed.

 

Why is this heartbreaking?  It's simply unnecessary.

 

The baby boomers in this story, as well as those who are following in their footsteps simply assumed that if they wanted to, or needed to work during their retirement, there would be jobs for them...and you know what happens when you assume.

 

But baby boomer or not, even with us being well into the Great Recession, The Second Great Depression or whatever else you want to call it, most people still haven't gotten the memo that they may need a Plan B and make their next job instead of look for one.

 

These baby boomers simply didn't have a Plan B.

 

So what's a baby boomer to do?

 

Well, as a fellow inspirational baby boomer (I'll admit I'm at the very tail end, nearly a Gen X), I'd love to see other baby boomers follow my lead.  It doesn't matter if you're at the very beginning of the baby boomer generation (generally considered to be 1946, which makes you 64), or not, there are options for you!

 

What Independence Day Could Mean To You

If you do a quick search online for the term Independence Day, you’ll get results about either the 1996 movie with Will Smith, or the upcoming holiday that celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence and independence from British rule.

  

For most people Independence Day is about fireworks, parades, hot dogs, baseball, concerts, fairs, patriotism and barbeques, with red, white and blue everywhere.

  

That’s all well and good, but I’ve got a different take on Independence Day.  Sure I’m proud to be an American, but I’m prouder of the fact that much like The American Colonies who sought freedom from British rule and got it, I’ve fought for my freedom from the Corporate World, and I won my independence on a full-time basis nearly 3 years ago now.

  

So before you get too wrapped up in the fireworks this Fourth of July, why not take a moment to think about the progress you’ve taken towards securing your own independence?

  

Are you someone who’s also successfully able to celebrate Independence Day with your own job independence fully in-hand? 

  

If you’re already job independent—congratulations are in order.  But are you really as successful as you could be?

 

Infopreneuring - Creating The Life Of Your Dreams As An Infopreneur

As I started to write this, I was 26,000 feet up in the air having fun with my first time using wifi on a flight from Chicago back to my temporary digs in Tampa.  I love flying because it's a great opportunity to let go of the baggage in your mind (your real bags are stowed anyway), and be open to new ideas.

 

The idea for pitching my boss to be my company's first-ever telecommuter occurred inflight years ago.   The title for my latest book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know™ - Achieving The Life You Were Meant To Have By Making Money From What YOU Know! popped into my head in flight.  And the idea for this blog post just came to me.

 

You see, this past week is an example of how I truly live the life of my dreams through infopreneuring.

 

No, I don't have a fancy house (in fact I'm voluntarily homeless at the moment, staying with family while my husband and I decide where to go next after selling our house in Vegas).

 

No, I don't have a fancy car (but I do miss my Ranger and Mustang convertible that are still in storage in Vegas).

 

No, I'm not flying back from some exotic trip (but I could on a moment's notice).

 

I could afford those things, but for me, going out on my own as an entrepreneur and infopreneur was never about any of that.  What I have is worth a heck of a lot more.

 

 

Being An Infopreneur Is Being Green Earth Day And Every Day

It’s no secret that “being green” in your business, or showing that you’re doing what you can to save the planet a.k.a green business practices, is very much in vogue, and something to be leveraged in marketing.  And as I was working on this blog post for Earth Day—in fact, the 40^th anniversary of Earth Day—it occurred to me that there really is no greener a business model than that of an original content infopreneur.

 

While I do advocate as a fundamental philosophy of my approach to infopreneuring that you want to make your unique knowledge available in all the different ways that someone wants to learn from you—written, audio, video, interactive, or some combination of all of these, when you examine many of the information products and services an original content infopreneur can create, the vast majority of them are truly green offerings.

 

For example, on the information products side you have e-books (green, well green as long as you don’t print them out after purchase to read them), downloadable or streaming audios and videos like the premium level ones available as part of the What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know Coaching Club (green).  In fact the whole concept of a membership site like my Coaching Club is completely green.

Wishing Won't Make It So In The New Year

Editor's Note:  I wrote this at the end of last year, but it's every bit as valid today as we head into 2011.  So please read on and I wish you a very happy New Year!

 

So I’m in one of those moods you often get towards the end of the year, where you reflect upon the year that’s almost gone, and the promise of what the New Year could bring.

  

It’s been a great year for me with my 6^th book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know!(TM) finally published after several years—and in case you haven’t heard why that was the case, you can check out my 60-minute author interview teleseminar for free CLICK HERE.  And I’m very proud of the fact that in a time that’s still pretty challenging in most of the world, I sent out in the form of that book a message of empowerment, of believing in oneself, of valuing one’s unique knowledge and then giving those who decided to take action, all the tools they needed to succeed in 327 pages and 38 chapters.

  

I know I’m doing my part to help people who "get it", achieve the life they deserve every single day.

 

At the same time though, I realize that in my efforts to bring these messages to the world, I’ve only just scratched the surface.  There are so many people out there who still don’t know that there are choices to being a former white-collar professional now forced (so they believe), to be working for FedEx or UPS delivering holiday packages, and hoping that they get to stay on post-holiday and move back up to some kind of managerial position one day.  And yes that’s an actual AP news story that I saw on the web the other day.  Sure they need to pay the bills, but…

  

There are choices to the local businesses going out of business I see all the time (and I’m sure you do too) because of the economy, because of the competition, because of a massive snowstorm killing holiday sales, because (fill in the blank).  Sure there are tons of factors that affect a business’ ability to make it through very challenging times, but…

  

And there are choices to being a starving artist too.  A couple of months ago I went back to Southern California for a visit, and at the Santa Monica Pier there was a young man with a beautiful voice singing Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do, I Do It For You with his cup out playing for tips.  He also sang an original song for all of us hanging out at the pier.  Sure it’s really, really tough to break into the music business, but…

  

 

Having An E- Book Doesn’t Make You An Infopreneur

Sometimes I find it amusing, and sometimes I find it downright scary what people on the internet will refer to as being an infopreneur.  From the monitoring I’ve been doing of the term on the internet lately, it appears that it can often be anyone who can create an e-book by either slapping their name on someone else's stuff through PLR rights (private label rights), or anyone putting together a few pages of “original” crap, who can’t spell or write, with a $47 to $97 price tag, is calling themselves an infopreneur. 

This bothers me for three reasons:

1.  Tainted Love

It taints the view of potential consumers of a legitimate e-book which is every bit as complete in content and quality as any print book out there.  If they keep seeing the term e-book associated with garbage, they’re not going to believe high-caliber e-books are for real.

An e-book is just an alternate method of publication.  It’s an additional delivery method to meet the needs of an author’s audience who wants to access the content right away, avoid shipping charges and save some trees.  For the author it provides a way to keep the content easily updated, and it yields a higher profit margin than a print edition ever will.

Bookseller Amazon even gives quality e-books a major push on its site by pushing its Kindle reading device and all the titles available.  So there’s further proof that the e-book is a legitimate and desirable format.

Take any of the 6 books I’ve written, like my new one What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM).  They are all highly regarded and available in e-book format, and four of them, including the new one, are also available as print paperbacks through any major online retailer (and yes I’m working on the Kindle edition)

Attention Job Seekers You Don't Need A Sandwich Board

As mentioned in a top news story this week, a recent British graduate job seeker was having trouble finding work in London’s tough economy decided to do something to make him stand out in his job search, so he put on his dress for success wear and added a large sandwich board that advertised that he needed work, and would work for free for 30 days, after which he could be hired or fired.  Then he walked around in front of a high concentration of employer’s headquarters hoping someone would appreciate his effort.

He claimed success, and it did work in that within 5 hours he claimed to have a job offer and he got many business cards for making additional contacts.

 

So what’s wrong with this picture?

This student is obviously bright, creative, resourceful and a risk-taker.  All entrepreneurial qualities, yet he was using them somewhat misguidedly in my opinion.  Why humiliate yourself, when you can empower yourself?

 

And it‘s no disrespect to him because what he did absolutely took guts.  But just how empowered is he going to be in the workplace when he starts off being known as the guy who was willing to work for free? 

 

Plus, isn’t he also lowering expectations for other student job seekers?  Now other employers who always want to squeeze all that they can out of a worker, are likely to capitalize on this and seek out candidates who are willing to work for free before they commit to hiring them—they may even make it policy.  And if they hire him, what kind of negotiating power does he possibly have?  They already know he’s desperate to get paid work—what are the chances he gets the kind of job offer with the level of pay and benefits he really deserves?

 

Sure this guy is burdened with student loans and dim employment prospects, but this is because he didn’t have a Plan B.  It’s not news that the economies in most places in the world are absolutely awful.  People with years and years of knowledge and expertise are having the corporate ladder pulled out from under them.  And I know it’s getting worse because I’ve never gotten more invitations to connect on LinkedIn from C-level and other Managers and Execs than I have recently.

 

What Gives Infopreneurs A Bad Name

I have to admit it, I'm a bit bummed over a disturbing trend I am seeing regarding the use of the word infopreneur on Twitter and other social media sites. 

On the one hand, I'm happy that the term infopreneur is starting to become known enough that people don't say to me "you're an info-what?"  On the other though, is the dark side of infopreneuring.  It's the side that's making a mockery out of a perfectly good and respectable word.

It's the wild claims of someone's pet turtle becoming an infopreneur and making a six-figure income overnight. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but I think you get my point.

It's the ridiculous promise that you can have fancy cars, houses, your own jet plane and retire...all by tomorrow, if you simply create an e-book.

It's the social media spammers on Twitter who are following anybody and everybody without offering any original content or conversation, who repeat the word infopreneur on every message they post whether it even has to do with anything regarding being a true infopreneur.  Or it's just a badly disguised affiliate link for the e-book that tells you how to become financially independent overnight. 

I actually set up an alert on Twitter to monitor for the word "infopreneur" as part of my marketing efforts and saw about 50 users every few hours all send out the same tweet blasphemizing the word infopreneur. 

It's no wonder I'm also starting to see Twitter users comment that they're blocking anyone using the word infopreneur, or that they don't trust people who use that word.  It's like Bon Jovi's classic song You Give Love A Bad Name except that here, like the title of this post, it's You Give Infopreneurs A Bad Name.

Well this is my attempt to set the record straight.  Becoming an infopreneur was never meant to be a "get rich quick" internet scheme; in fact it's something that I make sure to point out in my book What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM), that is not going to happen.

As I explain in my video What Is An Infopreneur?  An infopreneur, as I believe the term should be used, refers to an entrepreneur who makes money by selling quality original content information products and information services, and ideally carries this out to an entire product and service line (it's not just I have an e-book), based on their unique knowledge.  Emphasis on "quality original content", so that knocks out, as it should, anyone who is:

1.  Simply spewing out affiliate links for every offering under the sun on the internet and calling it being an infopreneur.

2.  Anyone who is slapping their name on someone else's stuff through PLR rights (or illegally doing so), and saying they're an infopreneur.

3.  And anyone who is putting together a few pages of "original" crap, who can't spell or write, calling it an e-book, and slapping a $47 to $97 price tag on it.

I for one, am not going to accept the deterioration of the term infopreneur, when there's actually a very positive, legitimate business model behind it.  Like any word, you have to take it in context.  If someone says "I'm an entrepreneur" but promises you if you become one by midnight tomorrow you'll have a million dollars, you wouldn't necessarily hold that exaggerated claim against everyone who is an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word, now would you?

All I ask is don't let a few bad apples out there turn you off from the concept of infopreneuring either.  Get the straight scoop.  I won't promise you internet riches, but I will promise that your knowledge does have tremendous value, and that it can be a very empowering way to share what you know if you learn to tap into it and offer it legitimately, in a quality manner, at a reasonable price, and offer both information products and information services in all the ways that people like to learn--written, audio, video, interactive, or a combination of these. 

You are simply a teacher of your own expertise acquired from a hobby, life experience or your business or profession.  Teaching is indeed a noble profession, and when done the right way, so is being an infopreneur.

And now I'd like to invite you to learn more about infopreneuring (creating original content information products and services from your unique knowledge) and get your all-access pass to my What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know" Free Infopreneur Teleseminar Series.  The next few months are going to be jam-packed with free events, and the only way to get access to them is to be a subscriber to my e-mail list. CLICK HERE

I'm also going to be a guest speaker and trainer for many top events, and as a subscriber, you'll always be in the know about those learning opportunities too.

Happy Infopreneuring!

--Melanie R. Jordan, Everybody's Infopreneur Coach, Author of What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know™ - Achieving The Life You Were Meant To Have By Making Money From What YOU Know! and Host of infopreneur podcast What You Know Is Worth More Than You Know(TM), The Podcast Available 24/7 at: http://www.WhatYouKnowIsWorthMorePodcast.com

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