Archive for May, 2009

Three Ways To Double Your Internet Income

May 29, 200918 Comments

Guest blog post by Jason Parker

Hello readers of Robert Plank.  A little bit about me... I'm a pro internet marketer with my own LLC and I also work behind the scenes for a multi-million dollar IM information empire.

Since I'm well-connected with some of the richest internet marketers online, I hear about new tactics almost every week, and about future tactics before they're even revealed.  For example, I knew the ins-and-outs of micro continuity last year, and now Russell Brunson is exposing it to the world.  I knew about CPV advertising through Zango before it was even semi-exposed (now Zango is shutting down, and the honey hole is about to be gone).

My point is, in my environment I get to test the effects of marketing tactics all day.  Through this process I've come up a set of bread-and-butter tactics that can blow your income through the roof.  If you want to double your income, implementing just 1 of these 3 ways can make that happen for you.

Double Your Income Way #1:
Swap JV Contact Info

Perhaps the most powerful tactic I've ever used to explode my income is dead simple and makes you think, “Why didn't I think of that?”  The secret I'm talking about is swapping JV contact info.

Step #1: You go to your Top 5 joint venture partners and say, “I'll give you the names and e-mail addresses of my Top 4 JV partners if you give me the names and e-mail addresses of your Top 4 JV partners.  Also, I'll e-mail each of my JV partners and give an endorsement for you by saying you and I have successfully made money together in the past, while you do the same for me.”

Step #2: You set up JV deals with your 20 new JV partners.  Some ideas are to... Do ad swaps, which means you send an e-mail with a naked link to your list for them, and they do the same for you. Or you can cross promo your products using affiliate links.  Or you can even set up a webinar or call, split the cash from the pitch at the end, and make some serious loot.  The beauty of JV deals is that you're getting free, endorsed traffic to your website, and that's one of the most profitable types of traffic you can get.

Step #3: After the successful JV deal, you go back to Step #1, except this time you trade JV contact information with your 20 new JV partners.  Let's say you trade your Top 5 JV partner contact info for their Top 5s.  Now you have 100 new JV partners.

Keep in mind you may not have exactly 20 or 100 new JV partners, because you'll find you'll start penetrating different internet marketing circles and you'll be reaching the same people.  For example, you might break into ClickBank Circle A, then CPA Marketers Circle A, then ClickBank Circle B, then PPC Affiliate Circle A.  Instead of staying in the same circle of JV partners, this tactic allows you to join multiple circles, and potentially you'll start reaching the “Guru” circles.  What you'll mainly find, however, are circles of mid-level marketers who are making $3,000-$15,000 per month who have lists between 5,000-20,000 or another big resource to leverage like a high traffic authority site.

Double Your Income Way #2:
Hands-Off Multiple Streams Of Traffic

I work for a company that makes 1 sale every 3 minutes online, and this is how they do it.  We get traffic from a lot of quality sources... SEs (Organic), Articles, Press Releases, Joint Venture Traffic, PPC, CPA, CPV, Video Traffic, Podcast Traffic, Twitter Traffic, Facebook Traffic, Forum Traffic, Social Bookmarking Traffic, MySpace Traffic, Ezine Solo Ad Traffic, Offline Ad Space Traffic.  That's what I call multiple streams of traffic!

Can you imagine what it would be like trying to get traffic from all these sources everyday?  Exausting and time consuming.  To tell you the truth, we are getting this traffic in an almost completely hands-off way.  And the secret is this...  You open up a new source of traffic and you get it going until it's profitable, then you hand it off through outsourcing.  The same person who handles your PPC, may also handle your CPV and CPA since they're all 3 very mathematical.  The person or company that handles your SEO, might also do your articles, videos, and podcast because they're similar and work together.  The person who builds your Twitter following, also does your other social media marketing.

Double Your Income Way #3:
Consistent Traffic To High Quality And High Converting Continuity Program

Once you have a continuity program that's both quality and converts high for your clients or the type of prospects you attract, then it's a good idea to funnel 100 or more hits to that program every day.  This can also be your own continuity program or a recurring commission affiliate program.  If you have a content website that gets a lot of traffic already from quality sources, then you might be OK putting a banner for the continuity program on your site.  (Are you promoting a one-time sale product right now? Why would you promote a product on your website to get only one-time sales when you can get 2-4 low-end sales out of the same customer and still funnel them into the high end stuff?)  If you're primarily an e-mail marketer like me who doesn't have an authority site and relies on 100-1000 hits of quality traffic per day, then you can promote the continuity program in a lot of different places in order to drive consistent traffic to it.

Place #1: A Banner Ad On Your Opt-In Thank You Page.  This is where I drive a lot of daily traffic to a continuity program.  Not only does this build paid subscriptions, but I find that the banner alone makes me profit on the frontend for whatever advertising I'm doing.  If you're constantly building your list, then you should be able to send 50-250 hits per day to the continuity program.

Place #2: Global Fields P.S. In your Global Fields for any autoresponder, you can place a signature that's automatically shown when you blast an e-mail.  I have 2 P.S.s  The 1st P.S. invites my subscribers to reply to my e-mails so we can build a relationship.  The 2nd P.S. is where I drive 25-100 hits per day to the continuity program.

Place #3: Forum Ads.  You can buy ad space above the fold on a related forum, rent out the signature file of a member on a forum who has a lot of posts, or if you sell to internet marketers, then you can buy Warrior Forum Classified ads.  Using these tactics you can expect to drive another 50-250 hits per day to the continuity program.

Let's say you use all of these tactics and the continuity program pays $48.50 per subscriber per month.  For you it's converting at 2% since the continuity program has a 30 day trail period.  If you can send 125-600 hits per day into that continuity program from these quality sources above, then you can expect to add 2-12 subscribers per day.  If you add 2 subscribers per day for 30 days, then you just potentially created a recurring $1,455 per month income stream.  If you add 6-12 subscribers per day, then you'll potentially create a $4,365-$8,730 income stream every 30 days.

Reality... Add in average retention rate.  About half of those who pay the 1st month are likely to pay for 4 months in a row.  Subtract pending commission due to bounced charges. Subtract those who cancel during trial period (very few do if the continuity program is high quality).  Add in your new subscribers with the ones you've retained.  And that's how much money you're making from the continuity program each month.

Have you used any of these techniques?  If not, what's the ONE technique Jason got you to add to your bottom line?  Leave a comment with your name below right now.

The Proper Way to Send Autoresponder Followups

May 25, 200916 Comments

As an autoresponder email marketer, you need to realize that your readers' inboxes are pounded with offers and content every day, so you need to do something different to stand out from the crowd.

Send short follow-ups instead of long e-mails. If you rely on one single e-mail to pitch a product, you have to understand that many people will lose your e-mail in the clutter, or won't be bothered to actually read the e-mail.

For this reason, you need to break your messages into tiny pieces. I prefer 100 to 400 words for e-mails... anything more than a few pages is too much. Instead of one long e-mail explaining your entire offer, schedule one e-mail that warms up your list.

Schedule another to send out the next day explaining the offer in one page or less. The next message can hit on benefits you missed the first time. In the next message, hit on the technical details... and in the mailing after that, ask: Why have you still not bought? You can get really creative.

Finally, take a second to think about your email subject lines. These are your headlines. Try to come up with something creative and relevant, rather than something overly boring or hype-filled. What e-mail subject lines have grabbed your attention recently? What about headlines on a sales letter or text on a newspaper ad? Model your subject lines after those headlines.

Those are my main tips to properly market to people using an autoresponder: Sublist with each product, and send short, to the point e-mails with clever headlines. With just a little bit of creativity, you can have an awesome autoresponder that converts like crazy and performs better than 98% of the other marketers out there.

Time Management on Crack 2.0

May 20, 200930 Comments

I wrote a little bit this past weekend.  I got so excited about the talk I'm going to give at the Action Seminar on MAY 29th about balancing your day job with internet marketing and manufacturing your next video product line... that I updated my Time Management on Crack report.

It would be bragging to tell you Jeanette Cates, Marlon Sanders, Mike Paetzold, David Deutsch, David Risley... plus 494 other smart people paid me money to get access to the information in that package.  (My high school graduating class was smaller than that!)  Did they invest to get access to my four levels of productivity, or to get access to my 13 unique systems for writing articles, making videos, writing sales letters, creating products and getting traffic?

Maybe they joined for the bonuses like the video that showed me writing a sales letter in one hour with no edits, or the bonus video that explained 17 additional "Motivationality" milestones, or even the bonus BONUS 90-minute "Take Massive Action" webinar recording... who knows?

Whatever the reason, I've edited the book to add 10 additional procedures on everything from screen capture video recording, article videos, talking head flip camera videos, webinar production, getting a virtual assistant, building your "brand" including a USP and a blog... the stuff that you not only need to know, but repeat enough so that it's INTUITIVE so that in the future all you really need to do is flip to that page and follow the step-by-step procedure to accomplish that task.

The book was 10,000 words long.  I went in and removed about 3,000 words, then wrote 13,000 more words to cover all 23 procedures.  Now it's exactly 20,000 words... not 19,997 or 20,003... twenty thousand words, I guess I'm weird like that.

Big Problem: I haven't released it yet.  I need 10 honest reviews I can use before I release it to you guys (people who already bought get the update for free since I provide 750 days of updates).  And then version 2.0 is yours.

If you haven't bought Time Management on Crack yet, get it.  If you have it, please leave a comment below telling me:

  1. What one thing is taught you about time management that you didn't already know.
  2. What is reminded you about time management that you knew but forgot.
  3. What you're going to do in the next 7 days now that you have this information.
  4. Your name, your URL, and your picture.

Comment below with those 4 items, list it in that numbered format so I know you hit on all four elements, and answer questions 1-3 in complete sentences (you only need one or two sentences).  Once I get that from ten of you, everyone who bought will get the updated report.

On your mark, get set, GO!!!

Internet Marketing Time Management

May 18, 200921 Comments

When I was working at a day job, I probably only had 1 to 3 hours to put into my business each day, so I crammed in whatever I could every day.

Now that I have a lot more time to put into this, I categorize each day of the week to PRIMARILY complete a certain task... I picked up this tip years ago from a report written by Willie Crawford.

Here is what I do during the week. I'm always improving my systems so you won't always see this formula but here is what I plan for...

Monday: Writing Day. Write all e-mails to be sent out the rest of the week.  I tend to launch (or relaunch) one new product a week, so all I need to do is think about four things to mention about what I'm launching (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and write those as four quick e-mails.

E-mail marketing is always quantity over quality anyway, so why not send short and to-the-point e-mails that blend content and sales (which makes it okay to end each daily tip with a pitch).  If I'm feeling nice, I might hit them four days of the week with regular e-mails and then a blog post on the fifth day.

But the point is, I get all my e-mails queued up one day so I don't have to worry about sending e-mails the rest of the week.

Tuesday: Customer Service Day. Here is where I knock out all the refund requests, lost download links, and so on.  I answer customer service a little bit each day but I get so much, if I answered customer service first thing every day, I wouldn't get anything done.

Right now, the majority of my support requests come from Action PopUp, which is silly because if people read the instructions and tried things like disabling other plugins temporarily, making sure all files were uploaded, and testing the plugin on the default theme, it would eliminate 90% of all problems.

But people still need my help and I'm happy to help them.  Tuesday is where I clear out customer support so that I'm about 24 hours behind instead of my usual average of 3 days.

Wednesday: Webinar with Jason. Without webinars, Jason and I could not have had several back to back $30K months.  I'll be honest, our latest webinar didn't sell out as well as I thought as it would and I fell to $21,000 in April. But I've still made roughly $110K in the first four months of 2009.

We run the rolling four week webinar model. We have a big launch and create a four week e-class on a topic... anything from video selling to product creation... have a 90-minute webinar once a week and fill in stuff in a private blog in between.  At the end of week number four, we sell them on the NEXT four week webinar.

It's a great model and I can actually get customers to do things they wouldn't do if they bought a stupid e-book from me.  During the day I add content to that blog for the week, then at night I co-host the webinar.  Right now we're smack dab in the middle of Webinar Crusher.

Thursday: Webinar with Lance. Since the April dip I decided to get a second e-class going to target a whole other crowd of buyers... Lance's new-school low ticket buyers who appreciate a good funnel.  Same rolling four-week model.  Right now we're hosting the Blog Invasion System.

Friday: Product Creation Day. I keep pushing so that if I want to create a product, I do it in a day... or at least a weekend.  On Friday I'll either write a report, or knock out a bunch of PHP scripts or WordPress plugins.  If I'm on a roll this will usually carry over into the weekend.

The weekend is usually a mix, but I definitely ignore most e-mails until the weekend is over.  I definitely spend a lot of time away from the compuer on the weekends but I make sure to put at least 5-10 minutes in.

There you have it, my day-to-day system...

  • Monday: Writing Day
  • Tuesday: Customer Service Day
  • Wednesday: Jason Webinar
  • Thursday: Lance Webinar
  • Friday: Product Creation Day

What's your daily system?  Do you even have one?  If not, post a comment below and make one up.  I need 11 comments and 11 tweets to this post if you want me to keep adding to this blog...

Robert Plank Retires!

May 15, 200926 Comments

I mentioned this in passing in a couple of blog posts recently, but after meeting Joe Lavery in Orlando, he had no idea I'm now doing internet marketing full time, so here it is:

I Quit My Day Job on March 25, 2009!

I should have quit a year ago, or even sooner.  The only things holding me back were: health insurance (my self-employed plan is now $125/month), money reserve (I have enough to last me a couple years), and pissing off the people who trained me (which was a stupid reason anyway).

March 26, 2009: Immediately after quitting my day job, I stepped on a plane to Dallas, Texas for AM 2.0 to meet Armand Morin, Ryan Deiss, Ray Edwards, Ryan Healy, and Mary Wilhite for the first time ever.

I was totally ready to tell Armand that I quit my day job so I could attend as Jeanette Cates's guest, but the only interaction we got to have was him yelling at me for pricing my stuff too low.  At least I got to tell Ryan Deiss that fact, even though I'm not sure he knows who I am.

The next two weeks after returning included knocking out as many points as possible for Armand's AM 2.0 Platinum 100-point checklist, launching our most profitable webinar ever ($17,000 on the launch), and updating Action PopUp, WordPress Crusher, 47 Hour Report, creating Split Genie, and running a couple webinars with Ryan Healy and Derek Franklin.

April 17, 2009: Back on the road... flew out to Austin, Texas for Eric Louviere's MemberSnap seminar after super-programmer Henry Fuentes invited me.  I brought my business partner Jason Fladlien along, especially because Marlon Sanders had been e-mailing us but liked him way better, so I figured the three of us could hang out.

We sat in the seminar a grand total of 25 minutes all weekend, and talked with Marlon most of the time.  He taught me most of what I know now about "branding" (yuck) and positioning and basically made me paranoid about everything going on with internet marketing.

April 23, 2009: Mass Control 2.0!  I only had a couple of days to stay at home before waking up early Thursday morning and heading south on California Highway 99 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and finally to San Diego, California... six hour drive from Turlock.

I wasn't registered for the conference so I made sure to stay far, far away from that conference room.  I chilled with Lance Tamashiro most of the weekend, and got to meet David Risley (who confused Frank Kern for Kid Rock), met Jason Moffatt for about ten seconds (who was busy macking on some chick), met Alex Jeffries (who I'd never heard of but he was a big hero of Lance's), Ryan Wade (ViralTweets), Joe Lavery (long time customer) and who could forget Dale Maxwell the colon cleanser.

April 29, 2009: Time to co-host my own workshop at the Impact 100 event in Orlando, Florida.  Through a strange twist of fate I stayed at the same hotel I stayed at ten years ago when I was in high school for the Future Business Leaders of America.  Jason Fladlien, Mary Wilhite and I hosted the "Niche Riches for Beginners" workshop.

Jason talked about the niche selection system, Mary presented on webinars, I dissected list building and traffic, Jason explained copywriting, I talked about product creation and basically got in everyone's face and made sure all 16 participants gave me their name, phone number, webinar topic, and time and date they were going to present that webinar.  We presented from 9AM to 5PM (with breaks).

Joe Lavery was there again, so was Charlie Fry from the Video Sales Tactics class... he flew out from Philadelphia just to see us which I thought was cool.  All theparticipants in that class were AWESOME... and the three of us had so much fun that we are hosting another workshop, the "Action Seminar" in Dallas, at the end of May:

Dallas Embassy Suites
4650 W Airport Fwy
Irving, TX 75062

Friday, May 29, 2009 from 9AM-5PM (Workshop)
Saturday, May 30, 2009 (Networking Breakfast)

I'll have more info about that later including where you can register.  It will only cost $97 to attend and we'll have Jeanette Cates (the Tech Tamer) and Marc Harty (PR Traffic) onboard as guest speakers.

That's what I've been up to for the past month and a half since I retired from my day job: four seminars in a month.

I heard once that if you quit your job, the LAST thing you should do is immediately sit in front of your television set... either get a new job or go on vacation, so I went on vacation.

But now for the more important question: how do I manage my time now that I don't have the day job to hold me down?  How do I make sure I get enough accomplished, still have enough free time, and don't goof off with my newfound free time?  I've already got that covered, and I'm ready to explain my day to day system to you for free, but I need something from you first:

  1. Ten comments under this blog post.
  2. Ten tweets about this post (Twitter icon is on the bottom of the post)

Once I those those two things from you guys, I'll spill the beans about exactly how I manage my time and how I maintain my business day to day.  Thanks guys!  Leave your comment below...

Business Cards

May 3, 200913 Comments

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