What is pbn and how we use it.

The sun's peeking out and you wake up, stretch, and climb out of bed. You grab your beverage of choice and head to your desk.Waiting in your inbox is an email from your favorite client. They loved what you just sent them. They want to hire you for a new project.

Better yet, they're asking if they can please put you on retainer.You smile and keep scrolling.In the next email, another ideal customer sends you a similar message.Your work is amazing. You're expensive but you're worth it.Your time is valuable and they want more of it.

They ask — politely — if you can fit them in for another big project next month.But wait, there's more.You keep scrolling and find two more emails from clients who love what you do, respect your time, and want to pay you big bucks to get access to more of it.

How to charge more for creative workWhat needs to happen to make this dream scenario your new reality?It starts with you.If you want to charge big bucks for the creative work you do, you have to start by believing you deserve to be well paid for your solutions.

Then, you need to act like you deserve to earn more. Everything you do — seen and unseen — needs to telegraph to the world that you're worth it.Let's start by reviewing what to look for in an ideal customer. If you're not attracting ideal customers now, this is where you need to start.

There are three must-have qualities that make customers ideal — and they all matter. I'll draw them and explain them below.Quality #1: Your ideal customer has a problemYour ideal customer has a problem, challenge, or need that's impacting their life, their job, or their business.

An example problem:Your ideal customer's product sales are way down and their income is, too.Quality #2: Your ideal customer is aware they have a problemIt's not enough to have a problem — lots of people walk around with problems they're not aware of. We're looking for people who are feeling the negative impact of their problem.

Important: It's not your job to educate people about their problems. If you want new customers faster, capture them after they're aware of their problem and are ready to move toward solving it.An example of problem awareness:Your ideal customer sees that the weak link in their sales process is their sales email sequence.

They identify the problem!Quality #3: Your ideal customer has enough money to solve their problemThis last quality? It's the one that matters most. It's also the one that many people forget to prioritize.It's crucial that your ideal customer has a problem and is aware of the problem.

But …If they don't have a budget for solving that problem? They're not your ideal customer. No matter how much they love your work, need your work, and send you fan letters about your work.Example:Your ideal customer dips into their marketing budget to hire you to rewrite their sales email sequence.

They love your work and they want to pay you well to get access to your skills!Want to earn more for your creative work? Protect your golden eggsThis past week, I finished reading Chillpreneur by Denise Duffield-Thomas.Denise shares an unforgettable analogy in her book.

Once you understand it, you'll automatically value your time and energy — and be willing to charge more for it.Denise talks about Aesop's fable, "The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs."Quick refresher: A farmer has a goose that lays one perfect golden egg every day. He takes the eggs to market and sells them.

He slowly accumulates wealth.One day, he begins to feel impatient. He doesn't want to wait 24 hours for a new egg. So he cuts open the goose to extract all the gold at once.Except there's no mass of gold inside the goose — just goose guts. The goose expires — and so does the farmer's consistent source of wealth.

When Denise tells this story, she emphasizes that we're not the farmer — we're the golden goose!It's our time, energy, and creativity that produce the golden eggs. If we don't protect our time and energy, we can't produce solutions that build our wealth.

Our golden eggs will dry up and completely end our source of revenue.Start here: Value your own timeReady to start treating yourself like the kickass golden goose you are? This is the first step toward earning more. When you value your own time and take care of your own energy, it'll be easier to charge for the value you deliver.

Start with the baby steps below. Schedule your "stop" timeEver find yourself staring into your screen, bleary-eyed, trying to squeeze out a few more drops of creativity before you end your day?We've all been there.Is that any way to treat a golden-egg-laying goose?Think about what time you normally stop working — on average.

Got it Dial that time back 15 minutes and make this your new "stop time."Set an alarm on your phone with a happy sound that'll remind you that it's time to take off, relax, and recharge.Do this for a few days and then — if you dare — dial your time back 15 more minutes.

How early could you stop working and still lay a golden egg every day?If you're having a difficult time making this work, consider adding in a 30-minute reminder that pops up half an hour before your stop time. This will help you remember to start your end-of-day routine, whatever that is.

Time block your breaksTime blocking refers to the practice of looking at the hours you'll work each day and planning out how you'll use them.Time blocking keeps your work on track and helps you make progress.When you want to earn more money with your daily schedule, I recommend adding some breaks into your plan, too.

Decide what you need in order to keep your creative energy high. What works best for you?Frequent, short breaks throughout your workdayOne long mid-day break to get fresh air, eat a leisurely meal, connect with a friend, or fit in some exerciseA combination of both of the aboveWhat does your creative, emotional, and physical golden goose need to keep laying those beautiful, revenue-generating eggs?

Whatever it is, block it into your calendar. Your break times are every bit as important to your creativity routines as your work times.Prioritize your day — sticky note styleHave you ever had a day where you worked all day long, you were exhausted by the end, and when you finally stopped, you couldn't point to a single thing you accomplished?Been there.

Done that. I've got a solution!To finish your most important tasks every day, start with a sticky note.Pick three things you want to be absolutely sure you finish.Write them on the sticky note. You may do more than what's on the sticky note. But write down the three things you for sure want to complete.

Here's mine for today:If they don't fit, you're probably trying to do too much. Your time and energy are scarce — that's why they're valuableOnce you've fully embraced the idea that your time and energy are finite resources, it's easier to recognize that they're valuable.

To increase your revenue, you have to earn the most you can with the limited time and energy you have.Read on to learn how to translate your high-value time into high-value invoices.Do this to charge more for your creative workDo you charge for creative work by the hour or the project? (It's a trick question.)

Please don't charge by the hour. And don't charge by the project, either.Charge by the transformation you deliver.You've probably heard this before. "Charge for the value you deliver — not the time."But if you have a service-based offer, you're probably taking your limited time and energy into account when you estimate your projects.

You may be thinking, "This project will take me 10 hours to complete, so:My hourly rate x 10 = More or less what I'll charge for the project."But there's a problem — this mode of calculating your fee doesn't scale over time and allow you to charge more for creative work.

The better you become, the more you should earnThe problem with estimating your fee based on the time you spend doing the work? As you get better at what you do, you'll get faster.If it takes you 10 hours to write a sequence of 5 emails now, in a few years you'll get them written in just 4 hours.

That doesn't mean you're going to charge less later on — it means you're going to earn more! And that's how it should be — as you get better at your craft, your earnings should increase.Here's a trick you can use to adjust for your growing mastery of your craft.

Increase the hourly rate you multiply by as you get better and faster.In my former design and marketing agency, I used to ask myself the opposite of "How low can you go?" I'd wonder, "How high can I go?"As my skills increased, I got faster. When I started my business in 1992, I was multiplying the hours I thought a project would take by $75 to calculate my value-based project fee.

Before long, I bumped it up to $90/hour. $150/hour. $300/hour. $500/hour.My skills grew, my prices went up, and my revenue kept growing.Even better, as my prices increased, the quality of the clients I attracted went up. (Strange how that happens, isn't it?)My high-level clients respected my skills and my time.

That's because I first respected my skills and my time enough to charge for the value I was delivering. Want to quickly get used to charging more?Figure out how long a project will take you to complete.Add 25% to cover any unexpected developments (this is my diplomatic way of saying "sh*t happens, so let's calculate it into the equation").

Double your current hourly rate and multiply the hours you need for the project by your new, doubled hourly rate.Write the total number on a piece of paper and look at it for a bit. Step up to that new, larger number and own that value.Then hold your head high and look your prospect straight in the eye (or straight in the inbox, as the case may be) and tell 'em what you're worth.

Ready to increase your rates? Don't miss this simple way to earn more as you make the changeFeeling like you want to charge more for creative work after reading this article? Great.Keep in mind that rate increases can quickly increase your cash flow if you turn them into a promotion. Here's how to do that:Let current clients know you're raising your rates and when that's going to happen.

Invite them to reserve your future time at your current rate if they pay you in advance.Give them a deadline for making the payment.Send them several reminders before the deadline expires.When you do this, you'll have a nice influx of cash from clients who pre-pay for your work in order to lock in your "old" (current) rate.

That's a quick way to move from your current revenue level to the next one!The dos and don'ts of raising your ratesAs you gain skill, you should proudly charge more for your valuable work.Do not:Sheepishly share your plan to increase rates.Apologize for your prices going up.Be embarrassed you may become unaffordable for some.Do:Set a date for the rate increase and commit to it.

Announce the rate change privately to current clients.Estimate all new projects using the new rate after it changes — do not go back to the old rate ever again, no exceptions.Earning more means embodying a new, higher-earning you. Own it and you'll get it.How to say "yes" to earning more with your creative workLet's review everything that needs to happen so that you can charge more for creative work.

Pinpoint your ideal customer Remember, your perfect customer:Has a problem that's impacting their life, their job, their business. Is aware that they have a problem and is ready to move toward solving it.Has enough money to solve their problem. They must be ready to invest in your solution.Guest posting/Guest blogging is not just about getting backlinks.

It is an opportunity to target new audience, increase subscribers, grow your online audience and build relationships with other niche influencers.Guest blogging can benefit you if you do it right. It's a game not everyone can play, but to play well and win, you would need to know a few things and follow certain steps.

The first thing you should do is to determine the purpose of your guest blog. Why do you want to publish your content on other sites? As I said earlier, for a backlink or getting more followers. This should not take much time but is more important.

The second most important step is to find guest posting opportunities. Not every site on the internet accept guest posts but a few of them do. Everyone wants to publish content on top guest blogging sites but very few of them get through successfully.

Most of the guest bloggers intend to write for getting backlinks. To do this right, you would need to take care of few things. To publish your post on high authority sites, you would have to write high quality content. Otherwise, targeting multiple less authority sites would be the ultimate goal.

To help you get out of the research process I have listed below a big list of sites that accept guest posts. Before reaching out for guest posting, make sure your site has quality content, otherwise you would be looking to reduce bounce rate. As a marketer, you probably don't need anyone to tell you how valuable content is to your marketing efforts.

You're already creating content: I bet you have some high-quality blog posts and resources for your audience members and that your email campaigns and social feeds share that content with subscribers and followers.But what about the people in your audience who've never heard of you — who aren't already browsing your site.

subscribed to your communications? What are you doing to reach and engage them where they are? In a comprehensive strategy, that's often where guest posting comes in. Simply put, guest posting is when you, as a guest, submit an original post to a targeted publication that your audience trusts.

Done right, guest posting is a win-win situation for everyone: You get to expand your reach and share your expertise by getting your content in front of new readers, and the publication gets the chance to run new content that shares diverse insights and ideas with its readership.

This all might sound too good to be true, until you remember that editors aren't going to publish just anything. If you're pushing lazy content to editors, nobody wins. It's up to you to create and submit content that's so good no editor could possibly reject it.

But how do you do that? Creating content that editors will approve is much easier when you know what editors want to publish, so my team at Influence & Co. went straight to the source. We surveyed editors at online publications to learn what they're looking for in guest posts they accept, and we compiled our research and analysis in.

"The State of Digital Media 2018."Here are a few things from our report to consider if you want to submit a guest post that editors will love. Things to Consider Before You Submit a Guest Post1. Consider why editors want you to submit a guest post in the first place.

As I stated earlier, your guest blogging outreach has to be a win for everyone involved. A publication editor's goal is not to increase your readership and make you look smart. That's your job. An editor's job is to build up her publication and share fresh, expert ideas with her audience.

In fact, those fresh ideas are the biggest reason editors accept guest posts. More editors cited a contributor's unique perspective and expertise as their reason for accepting guest content than any other reason. So, when you're thinking through topics to blog about, take that into account.

Few things turn an editor off more than receiving content that's a jumbled, disorganized mess. An editor is, well, someone who edits things, but that doesn't mean he's going to do a rewrite on your submission to make it work for his publication.Rather than asking your editor to clean up messy content,

submit a guest post that's already been professionally edited. This might sound like common sense, but I bet that all publication editors have received at least one pitch that contained enough typos and other mistakes to make them cringe a little.Whether you have an editor on your staff or you hire a freelancer to proofread your post.

that step can save you (and the editor you're working with) a lot of time. Seventy-one percent of editors say that editing content can lead to a delay in publishing, so if you want your post to be accepted and published sooner rather than later, edit it before you send it.

After you've created your content and it's ready to be pitched, you have one final step: actually sending it to the editor. How effective is it when you attach your precious content to an email that reads: "Give this a read when you have a chance?" Not very.

No editor's going to give you a chance if that's all you can muster.Editors are busy people: 76 percent of editors publish between 1 and 10 guest articles every week, and 94 percent say they plan to increase or maintain the current amount of guest content they publish this year.

That's a lot of opportunity, yes — but it also means there might be some competition for attention.Editors don't have time to carefully examine every single pitch that's sent their way. If you want to submit a guest post that an editor will love, then you have to break through the inbox clutter with a pitch that stands out.

Your pitch email to an editor should reflect the effort that you've put into the content itself: It should be well-written, clearly organized, and engaging. Use a descriptive subject line, open with a personable greeting, include a synopsis of the content, and — most importantly — demonstrate respect for the editor's time and schedule.

When editors can see that you've put effort into your pitch email, they'll be more likely to consider reading the content you've invested so much effort into crafting.Guest blogging opportunities are an effective way to expand your readership, but when it comes to creating and pitching your content.

the audience that you and the editor share should be your main concern. Remember that guest posts should be a win-win agreement between you and the publication. If your submission isn't offering value to the target publication, you won't see it published. Make it easier for the editor to serve his or her audience, and your pitch will be a breeze.