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One of the most common expressions we hear in modern life is the old cliche, "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade."

That means, of course, that you should look for ways to turn problems into advantages.

Lovely thought. But most people haven't a clue how to do it in anything like a consistent fashion. I'm going to show you how, and make it easy in the process.

Ready?

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I'll give you two examples to get you started.

The first happened recently. Someone we'll call Jerry emailed me with a question. It boiled down to a common enough situation.

Jerry had done a lot of work for a client in creating a web site and promotional materials, along with search engine pages that were ranking pretty well.

The client, whether through malice or misunderstanding, didn't want to pay for the work. Jerry wanted to know how to go about collecting from the client, and whether he was being unreasonable in how he was looking at the situation.

I looked at the emails from the client, and it was immediately clear that there was no sense talking to him any further. For whatever reason, he had stopped listening and was in repetitive redundancy mode. Same response, no matter what was said to him.

That's a huge Clue: Dump the client.

Be nice if possible, be rude if necessary, but dump the client.

The only real exceptions to that rule are cases where you can wake the client up (unlikely) or where there's a lot of money involved, you have a good lawyer, a clear and unbeatable signed contract, and you don't mind losing huge amounts of time to win a Pyrrhic victory.

Way too little money invested to be worth it in this case.

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So, I asked myself: Can this content be used by Jerry or sold to someone else?

Selling to someone else would have been problematic, for a number of reasons. But...

I thought about it for a few minutes, looked at the competition for the original client, and spotted two different
ways that Jerry could make a lot more for his time investment than the client would ever have paid him.

The first was to have the product duplicated and use the existing copy to sell a new version. That didn't present a
challenge, as the original was based on open source code that anyone can use, and it is not an unusual or original product.

The cost to create a better product would have been $200 or less. The residual income would be more on a monthly basis than the total investment in both marketing collateral and product development.

Not a bad deal.

The second was to spend an hour or so lightly editing the content and using it to promote a simple and effective
affiliate product. I'd estimate that the monthly residual income from using the site and pages that way would be more than the one-time income from creating it.

Also not a bad deal.

Both methods could make Jerry's lemon into some sweet, not to mention self-refilling, lemonade.

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Here is the de-mystified process for turning lemons into lemonade. Ask two questions:

1. What assets exist in this situation?

2. How can those assets be used in different and more productive ways than originally planned?

Yeah. It's that simple.

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So, how do you recognize the assets in a situation? Virtual assets are one of three Cs:

Content, contacts or capabilities.

That's it.

Content is whatever the visitor can see in a browser or download to their computer.

Contacts include people the project gives you existing and/or probable access to. That means known individuals, traffic, and leads or subscribers likely to be generated by the work.

It also means affiliate programs that are appropriate to use within the context of the site or other content.

Capabilities are usually a function of software or bandwidth. Autoresponders, graphic rendering, audio streaming, product delivery, etc.

It can be very easy to miss things when considering what assets are available. Use that list to help jog your memory.

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Let's look at a different kind of lemon: Marketing approaches that are questionable, whether because of real ethical problems or simply perceptions you don't want to create.

Here's one that happened recently.

An author was doing a promotion for his new book on lead generation. He's the one who offered 0ver $52,000 in "free gifts" (207 of them) for buying his $14.95 paperback book through Amazon. The proceeds are going to Habitat for Humanity.

Before I get started here, I should mention that I don't think the people running the promotion have anything but honest intentions, and I absolutely believe that the money raised will go to Habitat.

You can read about the offer at:

http://www.theultimateleadgenerationplan.com/

That said, there are some real problems with this campaign.

The first is the requirement that people sign up for another list for most of the "free gifts." Yes, there are a lot of marketers who will say that's to be expected. The problem is, it's not stated up front.

It's also not something most people would expect when they hear that gifts have been donated to help a charity. In fact, the page says:

"The partners that have provided these bonuses have learned what you will learn in 'The Ultimate Lead Generation Plan' and are excited to share this gifts without cost or obligation when you order at least one copy of this amazing book."

That copy specifically says "or obligation." When I looked at the list of gifts and checked the links, a big percentage required a subscription.

That is an obligation. Not a huge one for any one gift, but an obligation nonetheless. And if someone wanted to take advantage of all they'd been promised, they'd have had to sign up for a
whole lot of lists.

I was rather surprised at the number of people who simply made their offers available without sign-up, and asked for the subscription separately. I had an interesting reaction to that. It made them look better, and the ones who didn't live up to the promise look worse, at the same time.

All that would have been necessary to prevent the "looking worse" would have been to mention the requirements up front.

Or leave them out.

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The page also claims this to be "the largest online book launch in history." I don't know quite what they base that claim on, but it seems a little premature, given that it was made before the launch started.

That's not really serious, as it has nothing to do with the offer made to the visitor. It just struck me as... odd.

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Then there are the "gifts" themselves. I saw several there that I'm pretty sure never sold for what the claimed "value" is, if they were sold at all. Not something I can prove, but it did create an unpleasant impression of the people offering them.

The "gifts" cover just about every subject you can imagine that could relate to business. And a few that relate only in the most indirect ways. It's a hodge-podge of topics and suppliers.

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If you already see the problems with this, the next question is, how do you use the same promotional strategy without getting caught up in the challenges that exist here?

You'd use the same process you'd apply to adapt a promotional system from another industry, or to fix one that's become outdated or less effective in your own.

1. Define your purpose.

2. Clarify the situation.

a. Identify the goal of each section of the process.
b. Identify the problems that keep it from being what you want.
c. Determine what needs to be changed (tweaked).

3. Sharpen the contrast between the resulting process and the flawed one it came from.

4. Fine-tune and roll it out.

Now, let's apply this formula to the "Amazon Best Seller" process that was used in the promotion I described earlier and see what we come up with.

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First, the purpose.

The "best seller" label was clearly one of them, as evidenced by this tagline from the end of one of the emails I got as a result of buying the book:

#1 Best Selling Author (...Because of you)

... and, from another email:

#1 Best Selling Author of... The Ultimate Lead Generation Plan

I haven't yet seen anything pointing toward this being an affiliate recruiting process. I haven't seen any back end offers, but they're almost certainly in the wings waiting.

So, we'll assume the author's purpose is to get the "best seller" label, raise money for Habitat, and build a list for future offers.

The money for Habitat is a Good Thing. No problem there.

The "best seller" label is problematic. It is misleading when viewed by anyone who assumes it to have been achieved according to normal standards.

Building a list of customers is good, but you have to wonder if it will be as responsive if the buyers feel the same way I did when they see what's involved in the "free gifts."

That potential reaction could well be amplified by the fact that a charity was involved. People may feel that the charity was only used to get them in the door, so the author and the partners offering "gifts" could get exposure to more people.

I have no way of knowing if that's going to be a large problem or not. The author doesn't, either, since so few people will usually be annoyed enough by these things to say much about it.

Thing is, it doesn't have to be even a potential problem.

More on that later.

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For the contributors, the purpose is almost certainly to get more leads.

The way this thing is set up, it encourages people to whoop and holler to get the attention of visitors to the download page. After all, they're competing with 206 other people to get the sign-ups before the visitor decides they've had enough.

That creates pressure to exaggerate, while needing to keep the descriptions short. The main way that manifests is in large "retail value" statements. Those lead to inflated expectations, untargeted sign-ups, and unnecessary skepticism.

This situation also encourages people to use throw-away email addresses. Mailboxes that exist only to grab what they can from such promotions, without having to read the stuff they don't
really want.

It also makes it tough for the visitor to find the things they're really interested in. That doesn't help anyone, and results in leads that are much less targeted than they might otherwise be.

And, since they're liable to end up signing up for things that aren't very targeted, the partners are likely to encounter the effects of lead exhaustion even if they don't themselves over-mail them.

This is... less than optimal.

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Okay. We know the purposes and the problems. Now what?

That's the trick after all, innit?

First, the changes I'd make to the back end.

I'd organize the bonuses by category, so people could choose things that better fit their interests. I'd forbid any reference to retail pricing at all, and suggest that partners write up a strong benefit statement instead. Tell them what they'll get from the bonus, in clear terms that actually fit what's being offered.

Have an idea in mind of how each category fits with the product you're promoting.

If you have the technical capability, I'd suggest wiring it in to the notifications you receive from your payment processor. Send a password to the email address used for the order, and tie it in to that address. If that's beyond your technical chops, let them create the username and password after ordering, but again, make sure it's tied to the email address.

The idea behind using the address they give when they order is simple: It avoids the problem of throw-away addresses.

When they request any bonus, an email should be sent to the list they're signing up for, and they should have to confirm the subscription to get the download link. (Don't worry. We'll tell them up front they're going to be subscribing.)

Tell them what will be getting sent to them, and how often. Before they subscribe.

Limit the number of bonuses they can get with each order. A maximum of 10 is a nice number for this. Make them choose and everyone will end up with much better leads.

If it's a charity thing, it might be a nice touch to have a counter showing approximately how much money has been raised over how long a period of time.

Starting to see where I'm going with this?

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Okay. Now for the front end.

The landing page for the promotion is going to sell the offer. That's where you set the expectations for your prospective customers. If you want the offer to be a success for you AND your partners, it's a good idea to put more effort into it than just, "Buy my book (it's great) and we'll give you a Zillion Bucks worth of free stuff!"

It doesn't have to be 40 pages, but it should be a real sales letter.

The book is going to be inexpensive in most cases, usually under $20 for this sort of promotion. A few paragraphs of well-written copy and some endorsements is enough.

Think about it... Do you really need much more than that to buy a $20 hard-copy book in a bookstore?

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Next, you tell them you're going to give them cool extra stuff for buying on the day of the promotion. Or through whatever link you want. Whatever your requirements are.

Immediately tell them why.

Tell them what's in it for you. For example:

"I bet my brother-in-law a case of beer that I could sell 1000 copies of my book in the first (day|week|whatever). He's a pain in the butt, and always hassling my wife about my business. We do well, but he's got her forever worried. I intend to shut him up for good."

You could just as easily say, "I want to kick this book off right, so I got some friends to help me out."

Any reason will work, as long as it's true and believable.

It helps somewhat if the audience can empathize with your goal. People with online businesses all know someone like the brother-in-law in the example above. ;)

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Now you tell them why your partners are helping you promote the book. One approach to this might be:

"My book provides the basis for helping a lot of businesses. I want to make sure you get as much as possible out of your purchase, so I approached some folks I know who can provide more specialized information, no matter what field you're in.

"I put together a collection of 207 products that you can choose from. But we all know that the folks who need the information the most will grab as much as they can, and will get confused by that much stuff sitting on their hard drives. What you really need is a good start and ongoing expert training.

"So, we've set it up so you can pick any 10 of the bonuses. Along with each of them, you'll get updates on the topic, in the form of a newsletter from each person whose work you find relevant to what you need to learn most to build your business.

"The bonuses include..."

Then give a solid outline of the categories and some of the actual bonuses.

The sample copy above is rough, but it makes the point.

It creates scarcity for a very real and believable reason. It makes the subscriptions sound like what they (hopefully) are - ongoing help toward success.

It makes the whole deal much clearer, and gets rid of any possible feelings of having been misled.

It does something else that's pretty handy, too.

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If you want to raise money for a charity with your roll-out, you can do that. But what about later?

Well, if you can arrange bonuses that are available on an ongoing basis, you can use the "create your own bonus package" as a tool for affiliates.

This is especially powerful if you can get the partners to create or offer bonuses that really aren't available elsewhere.

Why would they do that? Well, think about it...

Anyone grabbing those bonuses through your page is someone they know spends money online and has a strong enough interest in the topic to choose them over the 200 other people offering stuff.

That's not a bad thing, right?

I'll take those leads. All day long.

How about you?

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Some people will suggest that it might be harder to get people to contribute bonuses if they don't think they're going to get a high percentage of the people buying your book to subscribe to their lists.

Maybe. Depends on how you approach them. If you tell them how you're going to arrange the offer, the smart ones will realize that they're going to get highly targeted prospects who actually buy things related to their fields.

If you let them know you're planning on keeping the offer open for everyone who ever buys your book online, the ones who would have done it for a one-shot deal would be silly to refuse.

But wait... there's more!

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If you have a book on something with wide appeal like, say, lead generation, this adds significantly to your affiliate marketing power. You could create special landing pages focusing on how your book could help people in XYZ field, and highlight the additional bonuses available that would appeal to people in that market.

By the way, if you sell general market products, there's a serious pointer in that last paragraph... ;)

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There's a lot more I could add to this, but I've already gone on for almost 3000 words.

That's how you fix broken or less than optimal processes. If you don't think this applies to you, take a few minutes and re- read this with your own business in mind. There is nothing here that can't be applied to virtually every business that operates online. And most of the ones offline, too.

There ya go. Paul's secret recipe for lemonade.