There’s always that tiny risk, yet many bloggers who are new to all this fear it almost out of proportion to the reality… You put your product out there, and somebody gets mad.

“You’ve sold out!”, they say.

How do you deal with the haters, if they happen?

There are two aspects to this that we discuss in this episode…

1. The truths about the haters
2. The truths about YOU.

It goes both ways. So let’s address this fear head on, in this episode of Coffee Break Blogging.

Now, let us talk about our topic of today which is… HATERS.

In the last many episodes of Coffee Break, we have been talking about various aspects of monetization. And in the last several episodes we have been talking specifically about pricing and how to determine price on your product and what to charge. In the last episode; Episode 136 I really kind of laid it all out and basically said you haven’t really even started unless you have got an offer; unless you put the offer on the table, and named your price. And until you have done that, you really have not even stepped up for the starting line, yet.

So with all that said, I want to go to the next topic here, and that is the…

Haters

Now, I want to speak, specifically to those of you who are afraid that your audience is going to retaliate when you put the offer out there and actually start charging for money. You are going to have people… It might not even happen; every audience is a little bit different, but there is always that fear that people are going to think that you sold out. And some people might actually say that you have sold out. Or they might say various other things and essentially they will just hate on you because you actually had the balls to go out there and name your price and ask them to buy something. It could very well be for your audience that that is just not going to be a problem.

So you got to keep in mind here that it could be that you are turning this into a much bigger deal in your head than it is actually going to be; in which case, I highly encourage you to forget about it and move on and just get it done… But we are going to talk about what do you do if it actually happen. Because if you do not have that confidence in place already, you are kind of sticking your neck out there with your first offer; you do not really know what to expect yet… And somebody comes out, even if it is only one person; and says you sold out and start calling you names, it can really affect your confidence. It can really have you second-guessing everything. It might actually have you feeling guilty for actually asking somebody to give you money.

That is not the way you want to feel about this. Because if you put something of value out there that you truly think is going to help people and you ask for money; the last thing you want to do is feel guilty about that because you are not doing anything wrong… This is the way the world works! This is how business transacts. You put value out there and those who want it, who think that they can use it, can buy it. Those who do not want it simply do not buy it. But the last thing that you want to waste your time thinking about is that those people who would not buy it can sit there and try to give you a guilt complex for offering it in the first place, okay?

So with that in mind, let us talk about few truths about haters. There are a few things that I want you to keep in mind, here, if this happens to you; or if you are afraid of it.

FEW TRUTHS ABOUT HATERS

1.You have got to truly ask yourself; and it should be an obvious answer… Who owns your blog? Who is the one doing all the work? Who is paying the hosting bill? It is not them! It’s you!

So with that in mind, do you need their permission to ask for money? Hell, no! You do not need their permission! It is your site, you own it, you are the one that does all the work to write great content for them, and if they don’t like the fact that you have asked for something to money; tell them to screw off.  Hopefully, you could tell them a little passionate about that. You do not need their permission. It is your site. Tell them to go pound sand, okay?

2. Those people who do that will very likely never be prospects for anything you ever did, anyway.

They are not prospects, they are never going to buy from you… So who cares what they have got to say?They are just messing with you. They are not potential customers. It is not like you took a potential customer and did something wrong with your product and they are like, “See, you did this wrong! I am not going to buy this, you have sold out!” Now, they’re never going to buy anything from you ever, anyway! That is; in very high likelihood, that is the exact case there.

3. They represent a small minority; a very small minority.

They can be the squeaky wheel, but they are small. It is not a big deal. There is a very small percentage of people that will say that. It is really easy, especially if you are lacking that confidence from within, to think that you get that one email and then your mind; it is like, you think a lot of people are thinking that. No. Very likely that is not the case. You just got one, maybe two people… And because they are small enough to bother to write you that email, they did. I mean, what are you going to do? Let them mess with your day? Why would you do that? I mean, you put yourself into that mindset… What does it take for some person to see a website that they have got nothing to do with; they do not put any work into, that person asked for money for something of value and they take the time to open up an email and write you a “nastygram”? What kind of a dick has to do that? So why waste your time with people like that?

4. Those people who do this are usually venting their own problems and they are just taking it out on you.

That is the real truth. They do not have the balls to say in person what they will say on the internet. And what happens is that they seek refuge in the supposed anonymous…. You do not know who they are on the internet; they are anonymous! They are kind of anonymous on the internet, you do not know who they are so they seek refuge in that and they think they can now say things that in real life they are probably small little people who will never say that to you in person. Okay? So, keep that in mind about the supposed haters.

Now, with the flip-side, I am not going to sit here and tell you that you have got no responsibility. So let us go into a few truths about you, here. We talked about them, we need to look at you because there is always responsibility on your part…

FEW TRUTHS ABOUT YOU

 1.If you “trained” your audience to only expect free stuff from you, then you run a little bit of a risk of having a few people speak up when you go to actually charge for something.

And so, I am a big fan of… If you are going to start a business online, you are going to “monetize,” do it early. Do not screw around and say “I am going to build my audience first and just make them love me with lots of free stuff for 2 or 3 years and then maybe I will charge for something.” No, no, no… That is a dumb way of thinking. You want to do this early because you do not want to bring a bunch of people onto the fold who think that everything you are ever going to do is… FREE.

The other thing is that this can off set the balance of exchange. I talked a little bit about the balance of exchange in Episode 132. So you can go back to that and check it out if you are not familiar with it; but essentially, how you price your product has a lot to do with how things are going to go after they bought it. People have this natural sense of exchange. It is kind of like you take people who spoil their children rotten and they just give them every darn thing and they never ask their child to do anything…

Haven’t you ever experienced that when you see a spoiled little kid and they are just basically being a brat… it is like they think that everything is supposed to be given to them on a golden platter? They are just not very pleasant people on many times. And it is because the balance of exchange is off. Now, if you off set that balance of exchange too far into a degree where you are giving them everything, you have never asked anything back; then it can create an off set on both sides. You can actually begin to resent your own audience, which is not the way you want to be.

Not only that… Your audience actually kind of feel at a gut level that things are a little off balance, here. Because we all have a natural innate sense of exchange. We want to feel that we deserve the things that we get. We might not always just come out and say that but it is kind of built-in to most of us. And if that is off set, there are some elements of guilt that can pop-in there.

And so if you are running a site and you are giving away massive value and you only do it for free; you have never asked for money and you are doing that for a long period of time, you are setting up a situation there where you are screwing up the balance of exchange with your own audience. So it is imperative that if you are going to give away a lot of stuff for free, that you have things for them to buy. Obviously, they do not have to buy it. If they don’t want it, they don’t buy it. But you need to have those things there for people to pay you back! And I am not a big fan of donation buttons, by the way. I see some bloggers doing that; I doubt they ever get used. You know… give people things for their money. Sell them a product. So that is a big truth. If you bear some responsibility, if you allow your audience to get to a point where you have people that react this way.

2. You need to have some real confidence that the product you are selling is truly going to be a win for the customer.

If you take something that some one little hater person says seriously, you need to first look at your product and be like, “Am I truly confident that this product is going to be a real game changer for the person that gets it?” If you are, if you know that you are going to deliver that outcome to them; you have got not doubt about it, then what your viewpoint should be is that it would be an absolute disservice to not sell it to somebody. That is the way you want to feel about it. So ensure your product is truly a win for your customer.

3. You want to make sure that you do not break any prior agreements that you have made with your audience.

If you have got an audience in place that expects free blog post and all of a sudden you say, “The whole site is now paid…” Well that is just ripping the rug from under them and that is not cool! So, you do not want to do things like that. You do not want to just say “No, all of sudden, all these stuff that was free is now suddenly paid.” That is just not a good way to do it. So do not break any prior agreements with your audience.

4. You want to ensure that you keep delivering value.

And what I mean by that is you do not want to break off communication with all these people out there whom you have been talking to for a long time with blog content and in the comments and all that and suddenly you just clam up and say you can’t talk to me unless you pony up. That is not a cool thing to do. You are actually taking all these lines of communication that you have with those people and you are just breaking them; you are cutting them, and that is a stupid thing to do. So you always want to make sure that all those lines of communication that were open for free with your audience remain so. And that the products that you offer are over and above that. For those people who want to take the next step and work with you more directly and get more predictable results on something, have those people buy. But you do not want to break off communication with everybody else who is not a customer of you. You never know, they might very well become a customer to you later.

So those are 4 different things that you need to keep in mind because you have some responsibility here. I do not want you to get into this weird mindset where you just dismiss every email you get that says anything bad and you are like… “Ep… Pfffttt… Screw it up, go away!” because I want you to see it, I want you to keep it in perspective when it happens but I also want you to realize that there are some responsibility there.

Now your reaction to that responsibility should not be “I feel guilty; I am now going to take this product off the market.” No, that is a dumb thing to do! What you should do is look at it from a perspective of “Am I cutting it any lines of communication? Am I truly providing value?” And if you are doing that, then you can go back to that hater and just dismiss them and have fun with it.

A Few Notes To Keep In Mind

Do not be surprised when small minds take issue with you when you have the balls to name your price and to clear your value in the world. Society is going to tend to have those few people in there that would try to suppress anybody who tries to stick their head above the crowd a little bit. For anybody who has the balls to say “Yes, I am valuable” and you stick your line to saying there will be those few in any society that is going to try to shoot your head off. Not literally, obviously, but they are going to do it with an email because they think that what they say matters.

And you got to keep it in mind this is just far from the course, do not let it face you. Be willing to take some responsibility for it; and as long as you are doing those things right, then you can go back to that person and you know… delete it or whatever. I know some people they get some fun replying to them, you could do that too, whatever… But you know, you have got to keep it in perspective and realize that this is just the way it happens. If you try to stick your head above the crowd, somebody is going to try to shoot it off, but most people are not like that. Okay?

So I am going to end off by inviting you over to the Blog Monetization Webinar. So much of what we have been talking about is covered in that webinar… I walk you through the entire business model that I am walking with you here with Coffee Break Blogging, but we do it in a much more succinct kind of a bird’s eye view fashion. And quite frankly, my goal is to get you to a point where you get a hater email. Wear that as a badge of honor because that means that you are doing something. 🙂 And I want to get you to that point! And the best way that I can get you to that point is for you to first understand the fastest and most efficient path forward. And that we talk about on this free training webinar. Just pick a date and time that works best for your schedule and I look forward to seeing you there.

Thank you so much I will see you next time! 😉