What would you rather make?

1. $60k a year knowing your neighbor makes $40k
2. $80k a year knowing your neighbor make $100k

I hope you picked 2.

Unfortunately, people are happier when they are in situation 1. This principle is known as the reference-income hypothesis.

People want more money, but more money doesn’t bring happiness. Happiness is making more than your neighbor.

Are you better or worse then the Joneses?

To escape this trap you need to put a value on your own time and measure your worth as compared your needs and desires; and then stop measuring your worth relative to others.

When taken to extremes there are people who look at a concert ticket and think to themselves, “I worked 3 hours to get enough money for this ticket. Is going to this concert worth 3 hours of work?” That really good date last night might have cost you an entire day of working wages, was it worth it?

Another way to examine the situation is to look at how much you make per hour. If something saves you more hours than you paid for it, wouldn’t you keep buying it?

For instance:

• Assumption: Your time is worth $150 per hour
• A tool will save you 6 hours per month
• The tool costs $100

Would you buy it?

If you said yes, please give me $800 for free (that’s what you’re getting – 6 hours of your life back that are worth $150 an hour, minus $100 for the tool); you would be in the minority.

Yes, that’s correct – most people will not pay $100 to make $800.

Why?

Because it’s just time.

It could be information. Will you pay $100 for a tip that will make you $800?

Most will not.

Why?

Because it’s just information. We can talk about the value of information or time all day, but the reality is that people pay to make more money not to save time.

But instead of showing you how to make $800, the system saves you 6 hours so you can do whatever you want with that time.

That’s not what sells.  The system didn’t give you $800 – it just gave you the time back so that you could do it yourself.

Confused yet?

My Business Ethics

For regular readers, you will know this; but for new ones I’ll reiterate it. I won’t sell a promise I can’t deliver upon. I won’t sell a product I don’t believe in. I won’t promote an affiliate product I would not use myself. To me integrity is more important than profits (in fact I have left a few jobs and turned down countless consulting gigs over this very principle even when there was a lot of money involved).

Our site, Certified Knowledge is a training site. We have tools that save people time. We have videos so that people can learn how to either make more money with their account or save money by getting rid of underperforming items.

In fact, I so believe in showing value you can see everything free for 7 days. There’s absolutely nothing hidden. You can even cancel online – there’s no hidden phone number to try and find.

While I’m transparent; I don’t sell money.

I sell time and advice. Two things that people don’t want to pay for (well, the smart ones subscribe and they are very loyal).

In fact, we only charge (this will go up in the future) $79 a month. We want it to be easy for businesses to get the training and tools they need for their business to flourish.

One of my favorite things to do is to watch businesses succeed. Sometimes I get to be part of their success, sometimes I’m not. However, I’m happy for them that they succeeded (assuming it was a good above-board business).

What is Your Value on Information or Time?

I spoke at a ‘salesy info marketing’ conference a few weeks ago that was very different from the conferences that what I’ve been to before. I’ve spoken at SES, Pubcon, SMX, ad:Tech, etc. In those sessions you want to give excellent info and then let the audience know who you are so they can find you afterwards so maybe you can do business.

With this conference most of the sessions ended with: And you can buy this product now for $x.xx (there was info in the actual presentations as well – some were excellent). It was interesting and very different than what I’m use to. Both the speakers and attendees mindsets are not what you encounter at ‘search’ conferences.

While there was a wide range of businesses, there were a lot of ‘info marketers’ there. You’ve seen their sites, long one page wonder sites that make promises (and some can deliver) that seem almost too good to be true.

While technically we are an info marketer, we’ve never treated ourselves that way. I think of us as an education and tools platform. Our goal is to make your advertising make you more money and / or to save you time via our tools and other data.

I talked to a lot of the attendees and some were already subscribers (which was good to meet some of you finally). There was one common thread among all of the attendees, “Is that all it costs?”, “Why don’t you charge more?”, “You’re priced too low”.

Most thought we should charge 300%-500% more, or only sell $5,000 – $10,000 yearly subscriptions.

Why would they say this if they would be the ones paying?

They understand the value of information.

They don’t want to make more than the Joneses. The attendees want to make more than they currently make regardless of what their neighbors are doing.

It was a refreshing reminder that there are two types of people. Those who want more than the Joneses and $79 maybe too much and those who just want to be better than they currently are.

So – what value do you place on information?