Let’s just jump right in and get to the point. Today, I learned that I am a failure.
Well, at least as an affiliate marketer. I’m trying to decide if I really care one way or the other about this, but let me rewind a bit and give you some of the backstory that brought me to this conclusion, so you’ll have context.
You may not have even realized that I am a marketer. After all, the site is called Higher Ed Career Coach, and most of the articles you find here are about job searching in higher education, and issues related to the changing landscape of higher ed. The ads you see are pretty much relegated to the sidebar and I took off some of my more sales-ey content a while back, including my Amazon.Com widget, my “book an appointment” Tungle calendar link, and the easy links to my shopping cart and Paypal payment buttons. You might even think the site is only about free career advice.
It’s not. The whole thing is an ad. And not a very good ad, at that. Sure, the articles can create discussion, and the podcast on BlogTalkRadio can offer different insights from guests, and you’ll certainly get the occasional articles that are really about me and the business. But the real goal of this site and my other site (Higher Ed Life Coach) are really the front gates for my business, and I’m not doing the best job with the selling part of things. It’s not why I went into business. I had more idealistic goals. I went into business to help people get jobs and find balance in their lives and careers (another thing I’d failed at plenty, myself, but learned a lot from.)
But I realized a few months back that I needed to get more comfortable with selling, because a business can’t just be about ideas and motivation. It has to be about action.
So I did a couple of things. First, I joined Third Tribe Marketing (affiliate link), a site founded by Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse and Sonia Simone, to try and learn how to do this without being annoying. Second, I redesigned my sites to be cleaner and to get away from Adsense ads, because their strange algorithms pull in all sorts of advertising content, and there is little you can do to truly control what ads end up on your site. It’s annoying, and I hate it. So I took a new approach, and joined affiliate networks and chose companies I have used or feel that readers can actually get some value from. But I never figured out the right way to draw attention to them, and to let people know why they are there, without being sales-ey. So people haven’t been buying.
In a recent post in the Third Tribe forum, Chris Brogan put it simply. He asked members if they were hinting or selling. And I realized I have only been hinting. And that’s pretty damn annoying, too. So it’s time I “man up” and let you know more about what I am going for with this site, with my business, and about why I participate in affiliate programs. The more you know about me and what I stand for, the better you will be able to decide how my sites and I can serve you better. And, if you can’t get past the idea that I am also looking to make money, as well as assist, enlighten, and occasionally entertain, then I guess you’ll probably be looking elsewhere for this sort of information.
It’s my sincere hope that you’ll stay on as a reader, and help me get where I am going with this. And not just for my sake, or the sake of my bank account. (Let’s just say that I’m fine in that area, for the most part, and that money is not my primary motivation for doing this. I actually believe that coaching helps people, and that I am good at helping people.There is a legitimate need for coaching in the higher ed space, and I feel that coaches need to come out of the ranks of our institutions and help others find the way. I’m uniquely qualified to do this, because I have known both great success and major failure in my career (and my life) and I love sharing what I have learned. Especially what I learned from failures.
If some parts of my life and career only happened to serve as a warning to others, then I am honestly okay with that.What value would they have as distant memories and trivia, when they could be signposts in the road, steering others in the right direction?
Monday: More on me, my business model, and where I see affiliate marketing and pa
The last few weeks have been interesting to me. With the exception of August 1999, when I was in-between jobs, I worked on college campuses during the busy back-to-school rush for all of my adult life. So it was weird to not be getting ready for new staff, RA training, and welcome week.
I expected this August to be different, in terms of how busy I would be, but that hasn’t been true. I’ve had a lot of client appointments lately, as some finally found themselves full-swing back into searches that had stalled for a while, and realizations that the grad school applications they’d been thinking about in theory need to find their way to paper (or electronic) form sooner than later. All the sudden, following up on a site redesign, some emerging partnerships, the development of some e-books, seminars and workshops moved from my “get to that soon” list to “Oh, crap, I really have to get in gear with that” list. And I realize that I wasn’t paying attention.
It reminded me a lot of my time on campus, and all that goes into getting ready for a successful year. I wonder now why I expected it to be different. There are so many things that pull at our attention and all too often, we drop the ball, and miss the important details of what is going on around us. Today, I was catching up on Twitter (something that often distracts me, but that oddly, during this time, I have been able to tune out) and I saw this tweet from my friend and coaching buddy Monica Moody.
The link she mentions in her tweet goes to a YouTube video of an interesting psychology experiment about attention. And a reminder that, as Linda Loman pleads in her famous monologue to son Biff in Death of a Salesman, “attention must be paid.” (Video embedded below.)
As you get into full swing of the back-to-college season, and all the stresses that come with it, how are you paying attention? What will you be missing? And how can you keep yourself from missing the “invisible gorilla?”
Please share your thoughts in the comment section.
Today it was my pleasure to be a guest on Dennis Charles’ new BlogTalkRadio show, “Build Your Career with Passion.” Dennis is a coach that works with recent college graduates to make successful transitions to the world of work. Through his Fourth Wave Institute, he is working on ways to help people build their careers upon the foundation of their passions.
I met Dennis through my involvement inThird Tribe, a great online community put together by Chris Brogan, Brian Clark, Darren Rowse and Sonia Simone, to help businesspeople learn to market themselves authentically and to leverage the potential of social media to expand their networks, find others with similar interests, and become more effective. Dennis is an amazing person and has been a guest host on my show a few times.
I hope you will listen to the episode and check out some of the other great interviews he is doing. I think you’ll find them very interesting and inspirational.
Thanks to everyone who gave their input on who should be recognized as the Higher Ed “Who-Do?” of the month for July. After considering suggestions, I posted a poll last week with four nominees: Ed Cabellon, Eric Stoller, Rey Junco and Women in Housing. 41 people participated in the poll. The results are included below.
All the nominees were extremely worthy, and have made great contributions to higher ed, so Ed Cabellon, our “Who-Do” of the month for July 2010, was in great company. Ed will receive a lovely certificate (suitable for framing) and will receive consideration for this year’s “Who-Do Highsman” award, which will be announced in late May or early June 2011. The other nominees are still eligible for future consideration, so please send along your suggestions to me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com or @hiedcareercoach on Twitter.
Congratulations, Ed! You are doing great things to introduce new people and ideas to the higher ed community through your blog, twitter, and your live screencast interviews. Thanks for all you do, “Who-Do!”
It was Will Durant who stated, ‘Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance”. How then, are we to build successful higher education institutions if the institutions are not progressive and are not willing to admit their own ignorance?
Having managed recruiting (admissions and marketing), operations, and academic retention departments for both for profit and state universities, while also holding executive positions in Education Lead Generation ( marketing companies that advertise and collect information on prospective students looking for information and school options) and enrollment management companies, I have worked in every aspect of higher education and bring a unique perspective to the industry. That perspective is this:
The higher education industry is insane. Our education system has been failing because we continue to employ the same methodologies that are not moving the country forward. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. It’s time for the Higher Education Industry to stop being insane. It’s time for innovation.
1. Don’t be pigs
Schools make a lot of money. Society, as well as our government, places the blame on the for-profit universities and while they are called “for-profit”, a Bachelor’s degree from a for-profit university is less than half the price of a school like University of Michigan. The reason we blame the ‘for-profits’ is because we can see their growth as they’re public companies, but just because we don’t see the Profit and Loss Statements for state universities, does not mean the money is not there. Next time you’re at a state university and walk by the football stadium, think of the cost of building and maintaining it. Now think about the unnecessary costs of the rest of the sports arenas or stadiums. This does not come for free. There are innovative models in the higher education space that are both affordable as well as profitable. If a school like the American College of Education (for-profit university) can offer Regionally Accredited Masters degree programs for $6,950 and still be profitable; why does another for-profit school need to offer the same degree at five times the price? Stop being pigs! If a school needs to, offer the program at two or three times the price; but more importantly, focus on how to decrease your costs pass those savings onto your students. It starts with the commitment to innovation from within a University.
2. This simple concept will reap enormous results:
Higher Education Institutions cut their prices, more students will enroll.
Because you will have more “scale” or number of students to serve, you may have a smaller margin, but will bring in more operating income by year’s end.
Because the rates are less expensive, there will be fewer students taking out student loans; aiding the schools with the 90/10 rule as well as decreasing cohort default rates.
Ultimately, you’ll have a higher graduation rate (or net tuition revenue) because students will not be dropping out due to financial burdens.
The model has been proven to work. Why have none of the other schools adopted it?
3. Surprise Educators! Higher Education is a business
It may be a business that is non-profit, it may be a business we also consider a “service”, it may be a business with a great mission; but still a business. The academic community’s lack of progressive thinking is impeding the betterment of the higher education industry. Many state universities and community colleges are realizing that it is less expensive, more convenient, and that more students are able to be served online, yet the academics are pushing back. Why?
If I were a teacher, I would want tenure. Tenure is part of the ‘business’ aspect of their jobs. The more revenue a school brings in, the higher the likelihood is that their instructors will obtain tenure. This is business. Stop fighting it. Teachers say that the reason they do not want to go ‘remote’ or ‘scale too quickly’ is because the students may not learn as much; there may not be as much interaction; they may have to change their syllabi. Having taken and built online courses, I can attest that this is all not true. If the teacher wants to have the same interaction as in their classroom, there can be chat rooms, discussion boards, or interactive webinars. There are hundreds of instructional and curriculum designers that have overcome all of the obstacles these teachers are running from. Academics preach to be proponents of learning. However it would appear that the educators are balking against learning how to ‘teach’ in different ways. This is a paradox that makes no sense. We cannot continue to be public university elitists and not think about how to increase your student base while not decreasing your academic value. It is the obligation and the job of the academic departments to aid in figuring out how to do this; not fight against it.
4. There are companies to help; Find them
Numerous companies foresaw a need; a need for companies that serve all facets of the Higher Education Industry. These companies are now thriving and while most of the for-profit schools utilize some of their services, state schools and community colleges have begun to as well over the last few years. If you are an educator and reading this – find a company to partner with that can help you. This is the only way you will stay competitive in the market and scale your school’s student base with no monetary risk to your school. More importantly, these companies will not change your curriculum or requirements; your academic standard remains the same; these companies work with you to put your current curriculum online. Companies like Presidium and ESM are support companies with extensive call center and business process knowledge. While slightly different (Presidium is huge with over 700 clients-many which are community colleges-and offers not only support services, but also technology services; ESM is well-known for their focus on state schools and business processes), both are experts in the student support industry. They both have the business intelligence and operational expertise to manage thousands of calls at any one time. A school cannot afford to support this.
If you truly want to get in the game, there are then companies like Colloquy and Enrollment Online Services Corp (EOServe). I refer to these as the “A to Z” solution. Both partner with schools and manage all aspects of their programs; marketing, enrollment, financial aid packaging, retention support, their own LMS (learning management system) and even work with the academic departments to implement their curriculum online. Again, the academics do not change. EOServe works with historically black colleges and utilizes the eCollege Platform. Colloquy is the only player in the market that does not standardize their solution and has a global understanding and international presence. The relationship between these companies and the schools are symbiotic. They become the university; the relationship is transparent. It is companies like this that every school should meet with.
As the government is furiously seeking out ways to better our education system, we, as an educational community have a choice: We can either fight their ideas of regulation or we can be proactive and be proactive quickly, employing the methods above. This is my challenge to the education industry; employ or test the methods listed above, even pick one or two to start. You will not be disappointed and we, the industry, will continue to better lives without the oversight of government regulations.
Work with Sean. I help higher ed professionals take control of their careers with tailored services including resume and CV development, LinkedIn profile optimization and networking strategy, interview coaching, and one-on-one career guidance.
