Provide a Service

If you have followed the steps in this book, you have learned how to trade in your passion. In the previous chapter, we discussed about having your own online presence, telling the world about your passion. Could you actually provide a service to other people, to help them in whatever your passion is? I’ve read tons of biographies of successful business people and they all have one thing in common, they learned how to provide a service. This means they learned how to become valuable to people in some way.

How to Provide a Service

Think about what your passion is. What do you enjoy doing the most? If you won the lottery tomorrow what would you spend your time doing? What are you good at? What do other people tell you that you are good at? Still stuck? What do people come to you to help them with? Fixing computer glitches? Putting flat-pack furniture together?
Could you Coach someone in your passion. E.g. Do you love gardening? You could have a little side-line buying and selling in garden utensils, then, have a website up and running giving tips for gardeners. Then you could provide a service to people, mowing their lawn or weeding their garden???
Or, are you passionate about personal development? Then you could buy and sell self-help books. Your website could show people how to get what they want in life. Then, you could become a life coach?

2 minute marketing tips

How do you go about telling the world about your business. Here are three ways that can get you up and running.

Your Website: You should already have your site up and running and remember I said to put a method of visitors to contact you, well why not tell them you offer a service doing xyz?
Word of mouth marketing: It should go without saying that because this is your passion, you will give exceptional service. Because of this, your customers will become your fanatics. They will sell your services for you.
Social media: Tell the world what you are up to and people will come.
Once you have paying customers, you could use some of your profits to buy pay-per-click ads on Google or Social Media. Check out Bluehost for more on setting up your website.

Advertising

The list of methods for advertising your services is massive but here are a few cheap ones. (Remember though, you pay for what you get.

Ads in local shop. I had a quick look in my local Newsagent yesterday and you can put up a small notice in the shop window for £3.50 a month. Just think how many people might notice it?
Leaflet drop – print off your own or maybe pay on online printer. One tip I learned is to do three leaflet drops, one per month. Statistically people only take notice of leaflets the third time they see it.
Ads in local newspaper – for a few quid, this old style marketing method still works wonders.

There are only so many hours in the day and there is only so much service you can give, so why not turn your service into a proper business? That’s the next step: Scaling Up Your Business.