3 insidious ways monetization shyness is killing your business

To continue our recent content about monetizing your expertise, I want to talk today about “monetization shyness” — something that will greatly hinder your ability to generate income if you don’t identify and fix it.

The danger is that we often don’t realize we’re doing it.

Monetization shyness typically shows up in three forms. Take a look to see which ones might be biting you.

1) Not Selling to Your Audience At All

For years, I — and I’m certain other colleagues — counseled Pat Flynn, popular marketing expert, author, and speaker, that he needed to sell his own courses. At the time, Pat’s income was entirely derived from affiliate commissions. Even though he was doing quite well, it was severely limiting his income growth potential and leaving his business at risk because his sources of income were all ultimately outside of his control.

Pat hesitated for years to create and sell courses because he was worried about backlash from his audience. It’s an understandable concern. He’d managed to build a large and loyal following and didn’t want people to tune out if he “sold out.”

Perhaps you have similar concerns. It certainly feels great to offer value and have your audience love you for it. We all love getting validation for our efforts. But validation doesn’t grow your impact and income.

You have to realize that in order to deliver the greatest value and impact, you must focus on those who are ready to invest time, energy, and money into what you offer. That means being okay with letting go of those who would take issue with you selling. Yes, you might lose a few people, but you’ll deepen the impact with those who stick around.

Today, Pat’s been able to build an even bigger and more robust business because he’s diversified his income streams and regularly promotes his courses.

2) Sending Too Few Emails for a Promotional Campaign

The other day I talked to a client who was disheartened by the poor performance of a promotion she ran earlier this year before she engaged me to work with her.

As soon as I looked the campaign over, I knew exactly what was wrong. In fact, it wasn’t really a campaign at all. She’d sent a total of two emails and made a handful of social media posts mentioning the product. That’s it.

There wasn’t any warm-up to the promotion. She hadn’t sent any content to empathize with her audience and build trust first. She was so bashful about promoting too much that she didn’t send enough content to properly establish the value of her offer and didn’t address concerns before giving the opportunity for her audience to buy.

Your offers deserve a proper promotional sequence of content. Your audience deserves to have all the information they need to make the best decision for them.

There is a way to send a proper series of promotional content while still creating immense value for your email list subscribers. In fact, when you do this the right way, you earn more trust and loyalty even from those who decide not to buy from you at that time.

3) Not Emailing Your List Often Enough

Did you know that your fear of people unsubscribing is costing you money? It’s never fun to see someone leave your email list. I get it. I filter those messages and metrics out because sometimes they get to me and I don’t want them to sway my strategic decisions.

Emailing your list less frequently to avoid unsubscribes is like deciding to eat more green smoothies to be healthier, but stopping just because your p**p turns green.

This study from Alchemy Worx shows that when they started emailing a client’s list twice as often, the rate of unsubscribes did indeed double. However, the average value of each person on their list (i.e. the average amount of revenue generated per email subscriber) tripled. They made a lot more money!

The bottom line: by trying to avoid unsubscribes the client had been missing out on significant income (and I would add impact).

The important metric is NOT how many people unsubscribe. It’s about value you create for, the money you make from, and the impact you have on those who stay on your list.

And please…don’t get sucked into the list-size ego-brag culture. If you base your success on the size of your list, I can name at least a dozen ways this will lead you astray.

No More Monetization Shyness

The solution to monetization shyness is to make a mindset shift. Believe in the value you offer, Believe that you deserve to get paid well for the value you offer. Don’t attach meaning to metrics that are more about ego than income and impact.

You have to know that your mission is to impact people’s lives and not play it safe with your ego.