Day 14 - What the heck is Value?

This question comes up from a conversation (online, of course) which one of you inspired.

An essay in The Online Sunshine Plan covers this somewhat - "Adding Value" pages 193-200.

Value, commercially, is measured by price.

Price, as Robert Kiyosaki and others define it, is the agreement between the buyer and seller. In other words, it's something both sides feel is a workable truth for them.

The ancient Polynesians (Huna) had this as one of their 7 Principles: "Effectiveness is the measure of truth."

Which of course means that something is useful to you if you consider it helpful. It also means that philosophers and engineers are two side of the same coin - they both appreciate things that work.

This comes up at this point - my last lesson (promise) before I start the "Secret Sauce" series - because it's a stone we haven't turned over yet.

Money roughly means "value", but that is a poor translation. Money is just a symbol which means whatever people consider it means. And so governments make money mean different things all the time. To their mind, inflation is a good thing, because people are "making more money" every year. (The only people who make money are the printers.) And what means "poor" in this country really just means the minimum level for handouts keeps rising above even inflation.

Salaries roughly state the value a person brings to that company. Very roughly.

An example of value: a person I knew for awhile said he was able to pay for several fishing trips to Alaska by running a little classified ad in hunting journals (a few decades ago) about how to save money on razors to make them last longer. It was a single sheet of paper he mailed back to them. (Solution: put the blade into mineral oil after use - it was the oxidizing that dulled the blade.)  By getting a few bucks each time, these added up.

And maybe that wouldn't work today as people throw away everything.

What's valuable is between you and the other person you are exchanging with.

So this is the same point of tuning into your community in order to find out what they are interested in and what their problems are. At that point you are able to figure out what is probably valuable that you can offer. And "price points" are monetary equivalents of the rough value. Too high and they think you are full of it. Too low and they think something is wrong with it.

Give value in excess.

The point of this may seem obvious by this point. You want to give more away than you take in. This almost guarantees your success in the future. Always give a baker's dozen, or add in a sampler of a similar product to try. Give an over full portion than asked for.  And ensure that the quality of what you produce is extremely high, much greater than advertised or promoted.

You can work this back from the Golden Rule, but you already know that if you were given much in excess of what you agreed to buy, you'd come back to that person again for more. If this happened every time, you would certainly tell all your friends about that person and his wonderful products. If you then were given a check for every friend who signed up, then of course you would be inclined to tell more people about that valuable product.

And so it has always been through the ages.

Such is the exact reason I took up this study and  am writing this today. There are natural laws at work, far beyond the judgment of mere governments and their lawyers. They are immutable. If followed, they will give you success. If ignored - failure.

Part of the market research you do is to find exactly what and how much of that is considered to be valuable. What solutions are better than others and will give you more return? What does the community talk about and how can you help them solve it?

Keywords is the tip of the iceberg for marketing research. That only tells you where to look. Listen to the forums (or ghost them) and read what goes on. In this, you will find your community's concerns - and hints about the valuable solution(s) you can offer to help that community grow.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump: "Value is as value does." Be valuable and give only extreme value with everything you do. Make this your next habit to acquire. And also work to associate mostly or only with people who have this as their own lifelong habit.

Once this becomes second-nature, then life will become even easier and more rewarding.

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The real point to this is that you are improving everything you touch - which is so rewarding it lifts your heart every time. And that is the key to all of this - creating.

And why I discount "competition" or "attacking" or any of these approaches to viewing life. Marketers who want to "dominate" are in this same channel. They all consider that everyone out there is somehow different from them - they are someone to beat or to win against.

Inherent in that idea is that someone out there is a lesser being than you and you should profit at their expense. This is patently false - since the Golden Rule (and even more ancient philosophies) state that we only win by helping others.

Help - Create - Love. These are all terms which are so close to each other as to be synonyms. So "Love your neighbor as yourself" takes the "conventional" ideas of Internet Marketing to different levels. Consider that you are here to help as many people as possible. And that these people in turn will help you. You exchange valuable items with each other.

And that is marketing. If you look it over, this matches all the definitions I or anyone else has laid out for this.

Once you get the real concept of value - and work out for yourself what is the best way you can personally contribute true value to everyone around you - then your life becomes blissful and your smile shows the honest care you have for everyone you meet. And this is no matter how they treat you.

Whatever you think of Jesus' sayings, you have to admit he was right on the money with a lot of things. Like that "turn the other cheek" concept fits how to meet with others and treat potential clients. If your solution doesn't match their problem, perhaps you can learn from this and either improve your solution, or develop another one. But getting "upset" with their apparent attitude toward you or life won't improve your or their lives. So let it go and see the worth that's actually within them.

Yes, there's deep and thick philosophy behind everything I do - and I hope to help you find some very basic truths while you learn about how to earn income online.

Because I'm only here to help.

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Today's freebie is "The Golden Rules of Acquiring Wealth" - which is based on P.T. Barnum's "The Art of Money Getting."

Your assignment is to go shopping - window shopping:

a. Look at all types of stores - expensive, high-end ones as well as discount houses.
b. Look over things which appeal to you, for any reason.
c. Review in your own mind what value these thing have for you and how they would improve what part of your life.
d. Repeat this in store after store until you can quickly see the apparent value in the objects you see.
e. If you then want to review online stores, then do the same thing. Also look at ebooks and info-products. See what value they are apparently offering and whether you think the price is worth it.