Archive for July, 2010
How to Complete a Week’s Worth of Work in One Day
- You're overwhelmed by all the new offers you see.
- You're switching between too many tasks every day.
- You're doing too much of the work yourself.
- Your to-do list keeps getting bigger (not shorter) and you can't prioritize.
- You procrastinate and can't seem to finish what you start.
- You're a perfectionist.
- You're unhappy.
- Choose one "computer free" day of the week, and one "email free" day (even when you're at the computer).
- Only focus on ONE project this week, such as launching a new product, finishing that sales letter, or creating that membership site content. Everything else can wait.
- Outsource just one thing. I recommend you dictate ten articles (2.5 minutes each) and send them out to get transcribed, that saves you one day of work.
- Throw away your whiteboard and only write down four daily tasks instead of having a long to-do list.
- Reward yourself with 30 minutes of TV, a bowl of ice cream, or the rest of the day off for finishing your project early.
- Be "perfectly complete" instead of "perfectly perfect." In other words, try to win the high score. If your goal was to write 10 articles and you wrote all 10 before your deadline, you scored a "perfect" 10 regardless of the quality of those articles.
- Use the extra money from internet marketing to go on a vacation, pay off your mortgage faster, spend time with your family, or send your kid to college. In other words, use the money to do something you enjoy.
30 Day Blogging Challenge Aftermath
As you probably noticed, last month, I made 30 blog posts in one month (instead of my usual 1 to 3).
Why did I do it? I wanted to see if it would build my list faster, make me more money, and make more connections with the other participants of the challenge.
How did I do it? I outlined a few lists like "5 Elements of Social Proof to Explode Your Business" ... "11 Easy-to-Implement Ideas for Your Next Webinar to Ensure Maximum Attendance, Interest, and Profit" or even "12 Can't Miss Rules of Highly Effective Membership Sites" ... dictated them, got them transcribed, and scheduled all 30.
How long did it take? It took about two days to make all the posts. Half a day to outline everything, a day to dictate, then half a day to schedule and edit the transcribed posts.
What were the results? I'm glad you asked... the big reason I did this was to get more email subscribers. In May (before the 30 Day Challenge) I got 1,867 new e-mail optins... and in June (during the challenge), I only got 1,537 optins.
In other words, blogging 30 times in 1 month instead of once per month... got me the same number of optins!
But Didn't It Get You MORE Audience Participation?
Good question. In May (before the challenge), I had 198 comments on my blog. In June (during the challenge), 660 comments.
30 times the work, to get triple the comments. If I had spaced out those 30 posts into 3 posts per month, I would have 10 months of blogging scheduled and out of the way to get the same comments.
But Weren't those all NEW Commenters?
Let's look for fresh blood. In May when I had those 198 comments, 78 comments were from people who had NEVER commented on my blog before -- 39 percent.
In June, out of those 660 comments, 83 comments were from brand new people on my blog -- 13 percent.
See what happened there? Triple the comments, but the exact same amount of new people.
I segmented my list for this month and only sent ONE sublist a notification about a new post on most days. But even when I mailed the WHOLE list about a blog post, it usually got the same number of comments.
But Did the Challenge Make You More Money?
My earnings in May after commission, fees, and expenses: $19,400.71. June earnings after expenses: $21,412.78.
Before you say, "The blog challenge made you an extra 2000 dollars..." Keep in mind I have a lot of recurring membership sites and autoresponder followup sequences, so you can't automatically assume that this extra 10% boost in income was due to blogging.
Will it Pay off in the Long Term?
I'll have to check back in a month or so to see if this extra 30,000 words of blog content gets me more search engine listings, but for now, it didn't get me a big boost in traffic.
RobertPlank.com had 6057 visitors in May, and 8586 in June. A 41% boost, but not 30 times or even 3 times the traffic as a normal month.
Did Anyone Comment Every Day?
At the beginning of June, I asked you guys to promise to leave a comment once a day every 30 days. Almost everyone said something like, "No, I won't do it. I'll forget."
It looks like Melanie Kissell and Henrik Blunck both managed to leave me a comment every day for a month, so I want you to leave a blog comment congratulating them right now.
Persuasion X Winner
The winner who I'm taking as my guest to Persuasion X, a $5000 seminar, is: Pamela Miles!
Here's what Pamela had to say:
I hear that this truly is Armand's best event. I know that I really need this information to fully capitalize on the opportunities that are going to be presenting themselves with the new weight loss concept I'm bringing to the world! I've been approached by a doctor out of Texas who has offered to take my product to the board of her hospital (which also owns several hospital corporations) about having me speak at their monthly Healthy Women Conferences at their various locations around the country. I don't have a lot of public speaking experience...so if I can learn from the best...I'll really be able to catch up to speed fast!
Plus I need a chance to redeem myself (insiders Cara, Robert & Lance will know what I mean) 🙂
There were 9 people in the running... so why did I choose Pamela over everyone else?
1. Not only has she taken many of my classes, I had already seen Pamela at other seminars so I knew she would have no problem getting there. It's the worst when you choose a winner, and they can't make it.
2. She was one of the only people who didn't seem offended when I said I don't want to sit next to the winner at the conference.
3. She stated not just what she wanted to get out of the event, but what she was going to do AFTER the event.
If you didn't make it, no hard feelings... it's not you, it's me. I wish I could take all 9 of you.
Here's the mean part: In exchange for being able to go to this $5000 seminar for free, I made Pamela promise to have her entire business setup by October 2, 2010... including an optin page, autoresponder sequence, joint ventures, paid advertising, affiliate program, articles, an improved sales letter... all of it.
She didn't know I was going to be stating this in public. I just set a reminder in my Google Calendar to check back in October, and tell YOU guys if she succeeded or failed.
Now that you know this, go ahead right now and post a comment: congratulating Pamela, and telling her "good luck" ... she's got literally 100 items to add to her business in the next 3 months.
I want to have a bunch of "good lucks" under this post... comment below right now, ok?
Offer a Payment Plan Or Not?
Any time somebody teaches membership sites, you always see the question come up, "Should I offer a payment plan or should I offer some kind of a trial?"
And while it seems like a lot of fun, and while it seems like you might get a lot more subscribers and customers into your funnel by offering a payment plan or a trial period, I recommend you stay away from them, for these three reasons:
You are always training your subscribers (whether you realize it or not); you are training your buyers as well; and trials just plain suck and attract the wrong kind of customer that you do NOT want to be a part of your business.
How Do You Train Your Subscribers?
Even if somebody doesn't see everything that happens behind closed doors within your membership site; even if they have not bought a lot of things from you, they still see the way you market your stuff.
If you are always offering a payment plan, or if the reason for you offering a payment plan is because no-one is buying, you look desperate! If you are not emailing to your subscribers enough, then they get the feeling like you are not much of a marketer.
If you keep dropping the price or keep piling in more bonuses without actually marketing your product, you look like somebody who will simply pile on more "stuff" in order to get a sale; and not really marketing and not convincing people and giving real good REASONS for them to join.
And let's say somebody does join. You are training those buyers as well. If someone is used to only paying you $1 or $5, and they have been doing it for years, it might be a little bit of a struggle to get them to the $100 or higher mark.
It might take a little bit of time - but if you can get your buyers to pay you more money to get more stuff, instead of paying you less money to get less stuff, they will be used to dedicating a larger portion of their monthly budget to getting your solutions. And that includes payment plans and membership sites.
I am totally for having a membership site where with every payment they get some new kind of concern. But too many times I see launches happen where someone is offering a product for $100, and people split it up over five payments: they pay five times but they only get one thing at the very beginning! How much sense does THAT make?
And the reason why many marketers offer payment plans like this is to claim a high number of sales. They get a lot of people to pay them $20 and then they claim that every sale was a $100 sale, when really it was only a $20 sale, and many people canceled along the way - because after all, why should somebody continue making payments if they already got the product they paid for?
Payment Plans Are Good If There Is Ongoing Content...
But they are not good if there is just a single-time delivery and you are doing it to inflate your sales numbers.
And finally, payment plans, and trials, and low barriers of entry just suck! I have tried membership sites with and without a trial - and with the trial there were lots more dropouts. There were a lot more people not logging in and not using the material because they didn't really have any motivation to; the price was low enough that it didn't really hurt their pocketbook, and they didn't have a good reason to make their money back - because there was so little to make back.
Trials really do suck. The new credit card laws are moving everyone slowly away from trials. And I would definitely recommend you TRY marketing your site without a trial. If you are having difficulty, it might be because you haven't trained your subscribers or your buyers enough. Tell them why you are not offering a trial, and turn it into a good selling point.
For example, there is no trial because you want to reduce the number of people who get access to this information; there is no trial because you want them to take action on what you show right away; maybe certain bonuses are worth a certain amount of money and a trial would cheapen that.
And that is why you should only offer a payment plan for ongoing content, not for a single-time product: because it trains your subscribers, it trains your buyers - and trials draw in the worst kinds of customers.
Do you offer a payment plan or not on your website? And what is the reason? Please comment below telling me.
iPhone 5 Wishlist: 30 Things I Want to See in the Next Big Smartphone
It's pretty amazing when you stretch your imagination a bit and think about new uses for existing technology.
I'll give you an example: years ago I had the FIRST script that caused Clickbank ads to appear on your site looking like AdSense.
It sounds silly now, but this was back when Clickbank was hot and AdSense was hot.
Although I was first, I had about ten (mostly free) competitors within the first 14 days of launching, including people like Joel Comm and Armand Morin.
How did I Differentiate Myself?
1. My script was the only one that was contextual... the ads were targeted to the content "magically" just like AdSense... no one else had this feature.
2. There was a built in referral system for points, only a couple other people had this feature.
3. It showed images of over 750 Clickbank products directly in the ads, no one else had this feature.
4. It allowed anyone with the script to establish their own pay-per-click AND/OR traffic exchange network... no one else came close to this feature.
And Now You See Phones That Let You...
1. Use it as a turn-by-turn GPS.
2. Let you access your usual time-wasting sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, from anywhere.
3. Take HD photos and videos.
4. Turn it into a roaming wifi-to-3G hotspot.
Every time a new iPhone, Blackberry or Droid comes out, it adds new things people can do with phones. On that note, here's what I want to see in iPhone 5:
Likely Features
1. 128 GB storage (reasonable to expect by summer 2011)
2. 12 hours of talk time (improved battery life)
3. Video calling with non-iPhone4's (iPhone to webcam)
4. Recurring billing for some apps in the App Store (added Feb 2011 - same apps had their own internal billing before this)
5. Built-in network file sharing (wifi and bluetooth) and the ability to download a FILE from the internet to the phone
6. Better Google Maps: works more like the Droid where it has voice recognition, turn by turn voice directions and a street view screenshot when you arrive (might happen when Google releases its free GPS app)
Communications
7. 4G network and gigabit wifi (maybe possible once iPhone isn't stuck with AT&T service)
8. Automatic syncing over Wifi (Steve Jobs has promised this eventually)
9. Tethering and mifi hotspot capability (available now with Verizon iPhone at least)
10. Incoming Skype calling (added Jan 2011)
11. RFID or digital wallet
12. FM/XM radio receiver or HD TV receiver (might not be necessary if there's 4G)
Hardware
13. Dual speakers for louder and better sound quality
14. Touch sensors you can program it like the "virtual buttons" on the front and back
15. Ability to stream video to TVs with a USB dock or wireless HDMI (now possible with Apple TV)
16. USB attachment instead of Apple's proprietary plugin
17. Smudge-resistant glass (might not be possible)
18. Keyboard attachment (both physical and bluebooth keyboards now available)
Software
19. A better notes app that acts more like EverNote and AudioNote combined
20. Better file management (plug into USB, drag and drop pictures and notes instead of importing)
21. Different skins or themes
22. Integrated RedLaser, Facebook, FlightTrack, Twitter, GPS, Bump, Amazon and Skype into the OS (seriously, buy out the "Bump" company, guys)
23. Integrated and standardized mobile banking
24. Gestures, i.e. put the phone into airplane mode by signing a figure-eight
Pie in the Sky Wish List
25. Unibody: no physical buttons whatsoever -- if combined with wireless charging they could make the phone waterproof and not only prevent damaged phones, but it would become an underwater camera and you could even make phone calls UNDERWATER and use the internet UNDERWATER
26. Call screening logic, such as: direct straight to voicemail after hours or from unrecognized numbers
27. Ad-hoc (phone to phone) wifi capabilities
28. Solar panels for recharging (Apple has this patent but it's still probably a few years away)
29. Facial recognition and "maybe" biometric (fingerprint) security if it can be accomplished with the camera
30. Presentation projector (maybe a 3rd party should create a special stand so it doesn't suck up battery life)
What features do you wish your phone had? Will smartphones 100% replace computers someday? Or do you think this is all ridiculous and a phone is just a phone, is doesn't need anymore features? Please comment below, right... now.
The Ideal Clickthru Rate for Your Squeeze Pages, Sales Letters and Blog Posts
When creating your forced optin pages or e-commerce sales letters, or even blog posts... how do you know if it's fully optimized? How do you know whether or not you are throwing away e-mail subscribers, sales, blog commenters, and fans without even realizing? I want to tell you what kind of conversion rate you should expect when testing out your pages using Google Website Optimizer or Google Analytics.
A forced e-mail optin page, or squeeze page, is a web page where the only thing a person can do is subscribe to your e-mail list or leave. I like to put these in front of my sales letters, so people need to commit to a small action (subscribing to my list for more information)... that way I can follow up with them even if they don't buy.
But Most People Overcomplicate This Process!
Your forced optin page should only contain one headline, three bullet points, and instructions about what to do next. (Opt-in to your list.) If you do this correctly, you should expect 50 percent, or half, of your targeted visitors, to subscribe... all while your competition overthinks the process and only gets a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate.
After they have opted in, even if you are mailing them a free gift in exchange for signing up, send them to an offer page (or sales letter) where they can buy something from you. Similar to the forced optin page, this should be a site where all they can do is either buy or leave. There are no other links in this long, one-page web site. Even if you don't think you are any good at convincing someone to buy from you... tell them a quick story, your argument for why your solution is best... and a set of bullet points telling them why they should get it now, and what benefits they will receive once they get their hands on it.
If I experience a 1 to 5 percent conversion rate, I'm happy. Even if you experience a little bit less than this, you can split test your web site and even get it critiqued by a professional copywriter at a fraction of the cost that it would take to get it done from scratch. The copy will actually come out better because you know your product better than anyone else.
That covers forced optin pages and sales letters, but what about other kinds of web sites such as blogs? What kind of conversion rate can you expect from alternate sources of traffic such as Twitter or article sites? The answer is that you shouldn't care. Your time is better spent optimizing your squeeze page or sales letter than worrying about your free traffic sources. They are tough to measure, and after all, it's all "extra" traffic.
Those are the results you should expect from your well-optimized web pages: 50 percent conversion on your squeeze page and 1 percent conversion on your sales letter. As for your traffic sources, worry about your own sites.
What's your conversion rate? Do you even know (it's ok if you don't) ... just post your answer in a comment below.
The Number 1 Way to Create Your Next $97 Or Higher Training Course
I really do want you to succeed and the way I made the change from a college student with no money to someone who had a residual income was by phasing out freelancing and creating info-products.
Freelancing is good to start off but you definitely need to establish yourself as an authority in your niche and make a product that people can buy that has your name on it that proves you know what you're talking about and teaches them what you know.
I have made all kinds of training courses about PHP, webinars, list building, WordPress and more and I want you to do the same in whatever niche is your favorite with these simple steps.
Step 1: Four Part Outline
You can take any problem and solve it in 4 steps. If you take it in even more steps, you aren't solving it simply enough. Let's use creating a website as an example. Here's 4 steps: Get a domain, get a web host, set up a WordPress blog, write your first post. How about writing a sales letter.
Have a headline that tells a story, list benefit bullets, explain features, then demand a call-to-action. If you're explaining something to someone, the best way is in 4 steps. No more, no less. Figure out how to solve a problem in 4 steps.
Step 2: Audio Dictation
Most people hate writing. I have gotten to the point where I liked writing but still it's not my favorite thing to do and I know that I could speak more consistently and faster than writing. 
I'm pretty sure you are the same way. Hence, you know your subject well enough that for each of the 4 steps, you can explain at least 3 things about it. Let's go back to the webpage example before where I said you need a domain name, a web host, a WordPress blog, and content.
When I explain how to get a domain name, I could tell people why you should only stick with dot com, how to decide on the perfect domain name that's not too long but is also short and explains what it is you're going to be offering.
I could tell people which registrar to get their domain and then what to do after, which could – this is into the second part, the web host – how to choose a web host, how to register with this web host, how to set up automatic billing, how to connect that domain name to the web host and how to get support from that web host and so on.
If you can talk for even 10 minutes about each of these 4 things, that's a 40-minute audio product. That's almost a complete CD. Chances are that especially on some of the advanced topics, you might talk for longer than 10 minutes, and if you can speak for an hour, you're doing great.
Step 3: Sales Letter
From that 60-minute audio, I'm sure you can find lots of things to talk about, reasons why your audio is the best, what people can expect to get out of the audio when they're done and why you are the most authoritative person to listen to. Your sales letter doesn't have to be that complicated.
If you can list 10 good reasons why people would want to buy what you have to offer, you can take some of the better reasons, turn them into sentences, take the really best reason, turn it into a headline, add an order button, and you have a basic sales letter.
Now, all you have to do is promote it to your list and to high-traffic areas, like forums, and get a handful of initial sales. Now, what re you going to do with that money?
Step 4: Reinvest Into a Transcript
Every minute that you speak is about 150 words of written material or a little over half a page.
That means your 60-minute audio is going to be over 30 pages in length. That's a complete report.
If you can add in things like bullet points or checklists, the report will be even longer, but the point is you now have a book and an audio book to distribute digitally, and that means that if your audio was only $10 or $20, now that it is bundled with the written version, it is now $30 to $40.
(Optional) Bonus Step #1: Membership Site
You do want to get that price point to $100, don't you?
Then put it all into a membership site. 
The simple fact that people can come back into your membership site for eternity, even if they lost their password, is worth slightly more. I have bought CDs of software before that charged me an additional $5 to have a lifetime download area. In this case, don't give people the choice, make them purchase access to this membership site where they will receive your report, your audio, and lifetime updates.
At any point in the future, if you decide to sit down and speak for 10 minutes, that is a bonus that can be found in your member's area. That means at this point, you now have your membership site priced at $50 or $60.
(Optional) Bonus Step #2: Live Q&A Bonus After Six Months
Now, here's the final step towards getting people to the $100 mark. There's something weird about the price point between $50 and $100 and that's why people don't really by in that range. If someone is willing to buy or pay you more than $47, they're probably willing to pay $97.
Don't bother pricing at $57, $67, $77, or $87. Just skip right to the $97 mark. I only price in this range if I am steadily increasing my price to $97.
Because you're a marketer, you could price your training at whatever it's worth and whatever you want. What I like to do is offer a live Q&A or a question and answer bonus, people can ask me any question they want for an hour or 90 minutes.
Once that's done, I will put the recording in the member's area and now, that member's area contains a report, an audio, additional bonus audios, and a Q&A video webinar recording, which is all worth much much more than $100 but just because you like your subscribers so much, you are going to price it at $97 and that price will be a bargain and that's why you take one idea and turn it into a $97 or a higher training course.
If in the future you want to increase the price beyond $97, throw in some live training and make it a webinar course.
Is this the way you create your $100 training courses? What is your method? Please explain it to me...
Four Ways to Get More Out of Your Followers by Challenging Them to Take Action
If you've seen any of the comments on this blog, you know that my posts get a lot of response.
If you've been inside any of my paid webinar classes, you know that I have a lot of successful case studies and success stories from people who did exactly what I told them to.
How do you clone exactly what I did? You use one of these 4 methods to get your followers to take action.
"Know" Phase #1: The Blog Comments
Something you can do right now without launching a new product, even without making a new blog post, is look at the most recent post you've made on your blog and cap the number of comments at 10.
Put a note that says "as soon as that blog post gets 10 comments, you're going to disable comments." You would not believe how many people have told me at live events that they had no interest in leaving a comment on my blog until they heard that they might miss out on it. That's how most of your viewers are as well. They are just barely on the fence about whether or not to comment.
It's up to you to give them that one extra reason. If having 10 blog comments seems like a lot, here's a secret. You should be replying to your blog comments. This means that if 5 people leave comments on your blog and you reply to each individual comment with a comment of your own, that equals 10 responses total. When I say you should cap your blog post at 10 comments, you really only need 5 people to leave comments and then for you to respond to each one.
At first, you might have to pay people $1 per comment or have some of your friends leave comments, but after a few posts, when the social proof is there, people will leave comments as long as you are sending traffic there from your forum and from your list.
"Like" Phase #2: The Retweet Campaign
When I launch a blog post, after it has filled up the 100 or so comments I like to have, I will close out comments and then mail my list a second time, telling them to re-tweet that blog post.
In the past, I tried to tell people to comment and re-tweet but this works a lot better if you devote one day and one email just to commenting, and after you've gotten what you wanted, devote one day just to re-tweeting one of your posts. On my blog, I use the TweetMeme plugin and just by having that button there, I do get 10 to 20 re-tweets or one click mentions on Twitter.
But when I specifically ask people to re-tweet, it jumps to 50 to 200 re-tweets. That means that 200 different people have mentioned that specific blog post on Twitter which gives me more traffic and more social proof, and I like that at this point, the comments are turned off because that means anyone who comes to my site now has to sign up to my mailing list to be notified when they can comment again.
You can also have fun with this re-tweet campaign by re-tweeting your blog post once per day to drive the count-up and add some kind of prize. For example, if you can get 20 re-tweets of your latest blog post, you will make another blog post this week.
"Trust" Phase #3: Free Live Webinar
Most people have no strategy when they're leaving a blog post. I always do.
When I make a blog post, it's usually to pre-launch my next class or my next email offer. You should be doing the same.
Use the responses you got from that last blog post to create your presentation or to improve the next class you will be offering.
Even if you only have 10 comments, you can pick out about four things that people are having trouble with.
For example, I once made a post on my blog called Forfeit the Race to Free, telling people not to gravitate towards trials but instead be moving their price higher, and although a lot of people agreed with me, some people told me things like they were at first afraid to launch their product and now this advice got them to do it. Some other people argued that more people bought at a low price, which in my experience was false. More people bought at a higher price.
My favorite response to that post was that some – one of my commenters told me that somebody didn't buy from them because the price was too low and the average person thought that because it was so cheap, something must be wrong with it.
All those responses can make a great presentation or augment a presentation that's already ready because it speaks directly to people's fears and frustrations and the best part is you can use the same language, the same phrases people say to you and use that to make a killer headline based on your pressing issue.
"Close" Phase #4: Pitch And Close
You've already taught people something from your emails leading up to your blog post, from your blog post itself, and during your free live webinar. At the end of that free live webinar, all of that info should be coming in together - the emails, the blog posts, the comments, and this live training into a relevant and special offer.
You gave people a lot of tips on overcoming roadblocks but now it's time for them to pay you to get access to the step-by-step how-to system to get them from point A to point B.
Make it a special offer just for people on the call that will be increasing in price soon, have a real deadline so that there is real scarcity, and send them to at least a short sales letter explaining your offer exactly in black and white terms. That way, when people join your class or purchase your report or get your video series, they know exactly what they are getting.
Is your business model anything close to this, the KNOW, LIKE, TRUST, and CLOSE step-by-step system? If not, why not and how soon are you going to implement this? Comment!
