One e-book is targeted at childless women in their thirties or forties who desperately want a baby, but can’t afford to keep waiting for Mr. Right. The other e-book is targeted at men of all ages who want to know how to eat, dress, and interior decorate like Sean Connery (but probably not the universally decried Roger Moore).

These two groups of prospective customers undoubtedly have very different interests, values, and motivations. Yet the people selling the e-books have the same basic business model: downloadable information products. And because they share the same business model, their opportunities and challenges are surprisingly similar.

Simply put, your necessary skills and responsibilities are determined more by your business model than by the market you serve.

This fact has several implications.

First, it helps to explains how Internet marketers (and businesspeople in general) can often move successfully between markets that seemingly have little in common.

Consider Eben Pagan, who made his first fortune selling dating advice to men, then did it again by selling dating advice to women–and yet again by teaching men and women how to make money online. (I’m guessing that his next venture will be a six-DVD set on how to raise a baby genius.)

Because Eben’s business model has remained the same, his skills have served him well in new markets–skills like managing people and systems, understanding consumer psychology, writing killer copy, and finding A-list JV partners.

The catch is that while your business skills will probably translate to new markets, your enthusiasm may not.

If you’re driven by the challenge of building a personal empire, by competitive rivalry, or by plain old-fashioned greed, it doesn’t much matter whether you’re hawking hemorrhoid remedies or horse-track betting systems. But if those motivations aren’t enough, then you need to be more selective.

The second implication is that turning your passion into a business may not be a sure-fire recipe for life satisfaction.

Dream jobs are often related to art, athletics, drama, music, non-profit work, or lying on the beach sipping umbrella drinks while being fanned by a bevy of young acolytes. Unfortunately, these fields are insanely competitive, low-paying, or both.

Therefore, experts on finding meaningful work will advise you to begin with your passion, then look for a more lucrative angle. Practically speaking, this usually involves some combination of consulting, information products, and physical products.

Not coordinated enough to be a NASCAR driver? Start an online store selling NASCAR memorabilia.

Too old to make it as a pro surfer? Open a surf shop.

That’s not bad advice. The problem is that operating an online store that sells NASCAR memorabilia has more in common with operating any other type of online store than it does with being a NASCAR driver.

Being passionate about NASCAR in no way implies that you will enjoy tweaking SEO, writing sales copy, or managing a team of article writers in the Philippines.

So before you get started building a business around your passion, think carefully about which business activities you enjoy, and decide which business model best fits your values and lifestyle.

Why Do Some People Dislike Life Balance?

Before I examine whether passion can replace life balance, I want to ask why some people dislike this seemingly innocuous concept.

I suspect that some people object to life balance because they believe it implies that each area of their lives should get an equal share of their time and energy. But I don’t think that’s what life balance really means. If you spend eight hours at work, does that mean you need to spend eight hours brushing your teeth? Obviously not. The goal shouldn’t be equal time, but enough time. Depending on how fast you floss, spending fifteen minutes a day on oral hygiene might constitute balance.

People also criticize life balance because they say it’s too constricting to try to achieve a perfectly balanced life every day–apportioning precisely 8 hours to your day job, a hour to your art, and 35 minutes reading a bedtime story to your kids.

I agree that it’s unnecessarily rigid to demand life balance within each twenty-four hour period. As Clay Collins has written:

Just as balanced eating doesn’t require that every meal contain all major food groups, balanced living does not require that every day include a “proper” amount of sleep, social time, spiritual time, work, and play. What’s important is that we get what we need from life, when we need it. What’s important is that we achieve balance over the course of weeks, months, years, or even a lifetime.

Danielle LaPorte seems to be getting at the same point when she writes that “It’s about an overall proportion in your life, not perfection.” (Italics hers.)

In her blog post, Danielle describes her life as wildly unbalanced on a day-to-day basis. Yet her life doesn’t seem quite so unbalanced if you look at it over a period of weeks rather than days.

“I ‘work’ on holidays,” she writes, but “Last Monday I stayed in bed and read all day.”

Again, she writes, “I can eat cereal every day for a week, wearing the same clothes, never leaving the house because I want to finish a book.” But on the other hand, “I like last minute trips out of town and not answering email for days.”

I don’t think it’s a problem if some of your days are short on rest, exercise, or social interaction. Sometimes your life will necessarily remain out of balance for weeks or even months–when you’re finishing a dissertation, for example, or starting a business, or when your baby is teething.

But at some point, you need to get the things you’ve been missing, or your health and happiness will suffer. And if you’ve just worked non-stop on a work-related project for a month, you need more than a single weekend of hiking and reading mindless novels to recuperate.

Why It Isn’t Enough to Do What You Love

One thing that Danielle and Clay don’t talk about is the fact that certain activities are more likely to be short-changed than others. Most of us spend a lot of our time on three activities: working, driving, and imbibing passive entertainment from a series of screens. Each year, the average American spends over 100 hours commuting to work, and 1,812 hours watching TV, but only 80 hours on vacation. (Obviously, there’s some overlap between those last two activities.)

At the other end of the spectrum, the activities that are most often short-changed are exercise, sleep, food preparation, and uninterrupted time with family and friends. The predictable results include obesity, chronic health problems, and social isolation.

Just because you enjoy your work doesn’t mean you don’t need physical activity, nor can work replace quality time with your family. As Corbett Barr points out:

There are plenty of great things in life that are enjoyable in moderate doses but dangerous when addicted to. Sex, drugs, adrenaline-fueled sports, watching TV, exercise and the Internet all come to mind. Some are dangerous to your health, others are dangerous to your mental state, your finances or simply because they cause neglect in other important areas of life.

Work is no different. If you love what you do, it’s easy to become consumed by it. If you let it go too far, you’ll start to neglect other things.

The book Three Cups of Tea is the inspiring story of one man’s heroic effort to build schools in Pakistan and Afganistan. It’s also a cautionary tale about the harmful effects of pursuing a passion to the exclusion of everything else.

After Greg Mortenson started a non-profit organization, he adopted a punishing schedule, routinely getting up at 3:00 a.m. so that he could phone his contacts in Pakistan. He stopped mountaineering and gained a lot of weight. He also reportedly isolated himself from other members of his organization and refused to delegate.

In the book, Greg’s wife is quoted as saying that “I told Greg I love how passionate he is about his work. But I told him he had a duty to his family, too. He needed to get more sleep, get some exercise, and get enough time to have a life with us.”

That’s good advice for all of us–whether we’re just doing trying to make a living, or shuttling between Montana and Northwest Pakistan on a mission the change the world.

1. Front-end Product

This is the initial product that customers purchase from you. It will typically be priced between $20 and $100. It will also be either an information product or a drop-shipped physical product that can be sold automatically with little or no effort on your part. Coaching and consulting services don’t make good front-end products, because they’re very time-consuming to provide.

Keep in mind that much of the revenue from your front-end product will go to advertising. In fact, some marketers don’t even try to make a profit from their front-end products. Instead, they break even or even lose money on the front-end, then make their money on the back-end.

2. Back-end Product

As you might have guessed, a back-end product is something you sell to a customer who has already purchased a front-end product.

Assuming that your front-end product delivered a lot of value, you’ve already won the customer’s trust. This means that if you charged $100 for your front-end product, you might be able to sell your back-end product for $500 or $1,000. (Of course, you’ll need to deliver a lot of value to justify that higher price tag. And if your front-end product was junk, you probably won’t get many takers for your back-end offer.)

One of the best things about back-end products is that you’ve already paid your customer acquisition costs on the front-end. Therefore, if your production costs are low, the revenue from your back-end products can be almost pure profit.

3. Upsell

Upselling is the process of taking prospects who are already interested in buying something from you, and persuading them to move up to a more expensive product or service.

You can upsell at the time of purchase, or you can upsell after the purchase. Except for your cheapest, most bare-bones front-end product, anything you sell can be an upsell.

An upsell might take the form of a premium version of a product that you encourage prospects to buy instead of the basic version. For example, it’s common practice to sell a basic e-book for $47, and a “deluxe version” for $57. Ten dollars might not sound like a lot, but think of it this way: If if costs you $30 to sell one e-book, then the premium version makes you $27 instead of $17. In other words, you make nearly 60% more money every time a customer opts for the premium version.

An upsell can also be a related product that you encourage your customers to purchase in addition to the product they are attempting to purchase. Amazon.com does this all the time. For example, if I’m interested in the novel The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Amazon invites me to buy that book along with The Passage for “an additional 5% off Amazon.com’s everyday low price.”

The Sales Funnel

A related marketing concept is the sales ladder. Some people use the term sales funnel, which is basically synonymous. Each “rung” of the sales ladder is a different product or service. As customers climb the ladder, they come to trust you more and more–assuming that you deliver on your promises. This means you can sell them progressively more expensive (and higher-value) products. For example:

1. A PDF report or video (free). Though less extensive than your paid products, your freeline product still needs to deliver substantial value.
2. Your front-end product ($47). E.g, a 50-page e-book, plus several bonus reports.
3. A mid-level product ($97). Perhaps a more extensive version of your e-book, with audio or video content.
4. A membership site ($97/month). Likely includes video training, forums, and a weekly conference call. Unlike the lower rungs, this option allows customers to interact with you and with other members.
5. Your “Inner Circle” ($497/month). Features one-on-one telephone coaching and a yearly in-person conference, plus “backstage access” to all the content you create.

Doors vs. Ladders

Everything I’ve said so far is a preamble to my main point: Some markets have lots of rungs in their ladders, while a few have just one. In the past, I’ve referred to these two types of markets as binary and non-binary markets, but those terms aren’t very memorable.

Instead, I propose to use the term door markets to describe markets that offer lots of potential for back-end products and upsells. In contrast, I will use the term door markets to refer to markets in which your first sale will probably be your last.

Door markets are often markets in which marketers typically promise a complete “instant cure” for a problem. They’re also markets with low co-morbidity.

What’s co-morbidity? It’s a medical term that refers to the tendency of certain diseases to occur together, but it has also been used by marketers to refer to the fact that if a consumer is interested in one product, they’re often interested in related products as well. For example, a small business owner who buys an e-book on how to get started blogging is also likely to be interested in a copywriting course, an logo design service, or a membership site on small business marketing.

Door Markets

• Acute health problems: Acne, bad breath, hemorrhoids, yeast infections.
• Addiction: Nailbiting, smoking.

That’s a pretty short list, isn’t it? I initially included a lot of other markets, but they aren’t really as limited as they seemed at first glance.

For example, if you sell someone a plan on how to build a gazebo, they’ve probably had their fill of gazebos at that point. On the other hand, there is likely some comorbidity here. You know that the average customer is probably a male, married homeowner who enjoys building projects. Perhaps he would be interested in a building plan for a swingset.

Again, someone who buy a Windows registry cleaner is unlikely to buy another registry cleaner from you if that one doesn’t work. But you know that they have a Windows PC, which means they’re comorbid for plenty of other problems. (As a Mac owner, I can’t resist a cheap shot at Windows.)

Perhaps acne and nailbiting are comorbid as well. Personally, I doubt that people who have those problems have many other things in common.

Door Markets

The prototypical ladder market is a market that involves an activity that involves skill. It takes a lot of education and practice to become competent in these fields, and even more to attain mastery. For example:

• Arts and crafts
• Athletics
• Business development
• Career development
• Dating and relationships
• Martial arts
• Personal growth
• Photography
• Writing

There are many factors to consider when you are selecting a market. All else being equal, however, a ladder market is better than a door market because it gives you more room to grow.

Which of the following questions could get an employer in hot water if he or she were to ask it during a job interview?

A. “What kind of name is that?”

B. “Are there any holidays on which you cannot work?”

C. “Do you belong to any groups, clubs, or societies?”

D. All of the above

(For the answer, scroll down to the end of this review.)

The HR Answer Book was published in 2004, when the economy was far stronger than it is today. In a few places, the book’s age is showing, as when the authors write that “western society is moving up in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The security items of food and shelter are generally taken for granted….The pivotal elements in the ‘offer package’ of today focus on tailoring the job to the individual needs of the employees in the workforce.”

For the most part, however, The HR Answer Book remains relevant. The authors wisely steer clear of “abstract HR theories or fleeting ‘management trends du jour’ in favor of the concrete realities of recruiting, training, managing–and sometimes terminating–today’s employees.

The book’s intended audience includes HR managers in small to midsize organizations, as well as executives and managers in organizations that lack a dedicated HR department.

The HR Answer Book covers a wide range of HR issues. Just take a quick glance at the table of contents:

1. Employee Selection
2. HR Policies
3. Performance Management
4. Training and Development
5. Employee Relations and Retention
6. Compensation
7. Benefits
8. Regulatory Issues
9. When Bad Things Happen to Good Employers
10. Termination and Discharge

HR can get pretty complicated, especially when you consider the need to comply with numerous regulations.

For example, it’s illegal to question a prospective employee about his or her finances during a job interview. But it’s okay to run a credit check.

Likewise, asking a candidate if he or she has ever been arrested is verboten. Because most arrests don’t lead to convictions, asking about arrests “can be interpreted as biased against particular minority groups.”

In contrast, it’s okay to ask about convictions, as long as you have a compelling business reason for doing so. Actually, failing to investigate an employee’s criminal record could lead to liabilities if the employee ever harms a coworker, a customer, or a member of the general public.

Yes, this stuff is pretty complicated, which means that The HR Answer Book will come in handy if you have to deal with HR issues, but your company doesn’t have an exhaustive HR policy manual.

By the way, the correct answer to the question at the beginning of this review is D, all of the above. If you didn’t guess correctly, you should definitely check out The HR Answer Book before you conduct another interview.

Like The HR Answer Book, which I have previously reviewed, Staffing the Contemporary Organization is billed as a comprehensive manual for HR people, but it’s equally useful for any manager who deals with HR issues as part of his or her job.

The book covers a wide range of HR topics, including the following:

• Employment law
• Job analysis
• Recruiting and interviewing
• Selecting and selection tests
• Appraisals and employee development
• Administration
• Career planning
• Measuring the effectiveness of the HR function

Although the basics of staffing remain fairly constant, human resources departments do need to take into account social, legal, and technological trends. In the Preface, the authors discuss eight trends that are changing the way HR functions are performed:

1. New state and federal legislation has made it harder for HR managers to comply with regulations.
2. Recent decisions by the Supreme Court and the Circuit Courts have clarified the courts’ positions on issues such as affirmative action.
3. Many states have passed reference-checking laws that allow HR managers to release information about the job performance of former employees without fear of liability.
4. The number of employment law tort cases has risen dramatically.
5. The boom years of the 1990s have given way to a period of economic uncertainty.
6. As corporations strive to become leaner and more efficient, they are increasingly turning to temporary workers or independent contractors to fill staffing needs.
7. New technologies such as social media and computerized testing have affected the way companies recruit and manage employees.
8. HR departments are being required to demonstrate how they provide value. In-house HR functions that don’t contribute to the bottom line are at risk of being outsourced.

HR issues are clearly complex. To guide you through them, you need a good reference book. But which one?

Both The HR Answer Book and Staffing the Contemporary Organization are useful, even necessary, but neither is as fun to read as Guy Kawasaki or Seth Godin. Between the two, however, The HR Answer Book is the more approachable. In comparison to Staffing the Contemporary Organization, it takes a less theoretical approach. It is also broken down into smaller chunks, making it easier to consult when you are in doubt about a specific situation.