Knowing Where to Tap

[Loren Woirhaye]

Knowing Where to Tap

You guys know the story about the lady who calls an
expert plumber to fix her boiler because other plumbers
couldn't do it?

The guy taps on the pipes, listening carefully. Nods
his head, pulls out a ball-pean hammer and whack the
boiler. Problem solved. Took him 2 minutes.

He takes a break and joins the lady for some coffee while
he writes up the invoice. They chat amiably - yet when
she gets an eyeful of the bill her jaw hits the deck.

"You only spend 2 minutes and you are charging me $200?"
She exclaims.

(at this point we could go into porno territory but that's
not what this is about and you should be ashamed for having
such a dirty mind).

"Well, ma'am," the master plumber drawels,"it's right there
on the invoice - $2 for the tapping and $198 for knowing
where to tap."

###

Knowing where to tap.

For a long time in this business I had no idea where to
tap. I got better though and now I have a clue.

Today I typed in URL for a business that should be pretty
good at the web. I estimate that their domain-name
is worth about $100,000 just for top-of-mind awareness.

YET - I type in the url "website.com" as I often do in
my sloppy way, expecting my browser to just figure out
I mean http://www.website.com - and you knwo what?

It takes me to a page that says this:

Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)

So I'm thinking "What the heck? is the site down? That
could cost them a lotof money with such a great domain
name"

So I type in www.website.com and up comes their website.

###

Now the thing is - I know where to tap. I know how easy
it would be to fix their hosting so they aren't leaving
all kinds of lazy people like me thinking website.com is
down... when in reality it's not down, it's just next
door at www.website.com.

All they need is the address painted on the curb. Easy
fix. Could be worth $10k to them this year easily.

How do I approach them and how much do I charge?

Any thoughts. I'm laughing at this and I don't want to
rip anybody off, but seriously, this business is doing
something extremely stupid and I deserve to profit, right?

[JohnMcCabe]

If you have any clue about how much traffic they actually get now, and what that traffic is worth, charge them that amount.

I.e., if they get 100,000 per month and each is worth 10 cents, charge them $10,000 to add $110,000 potential to their bottom line over the next 12 months.

Just don't tell them where to tap.

As for how to approach them, I'd have to think about that one...

[John Taylor]

How weird Andy Henry has website
and a set of products called Knowing
Where Tap and I thought you were
looking for a review!

John

[Andyhenry]

I love that story so much I made it a brand that I'm releasing information products under.

(Thanks for the mention John)

Good timing too - Knowing Where To Tap Volume 2 comes out on Monday.

I also thought from the headline it was someone asking about my products

Andy

[a2dsilva]

Knowing where to tap is a good story. If one does a website review prior to meeting with a business owner you could probabky easily identify at least a mininum of 5 ways (to tap) and tell the owner about them one-on-one of atleast 3 of them. Tell them that the last 2 you would have to hire you as it would made a significant impact to their busiess eg. Autoresponders and call to action.

[milla]

That reminded me of a Brian Tracy audio I listened to but the tapping was being done on a nuclear power plant and the guy took 2 days and charged 10K.