Archive for August, 2011
Specialized Knowledge: How to Make $50 (or More) Every 5 Minutes, All Day Long, By Clicking a Few Buttons (Just Like I Did at Age 17)
Let me tell you something.
Do you want to know the first time I saw a balance of 1000 bucks in my PayPal account?
It was 2002... geez, a decade ago now, I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school. I lived with my parents. And you know what I was doing to make my money?
Installing a link tracker plugin. I had programmed it, and people could buy it for 67 bucks (I think)... I would get 1/3rd of that money. Better than working at McDonald's at that age, right?
But the big bucks came in when someone bought that plugin... many people wanted "someone else" to install it.
5 Minutes = 50 Dollars
The price was $50 bucks per install. What they didn't know is it took me about 5 minutes to FTP up files, chmod files, create a database, import that database, create a cron job, edit a config file... in other words, my "specialized knowledge" was worth every penny to them even though I could do it fast.
As you can imagine, it didn't take long to fill up to 1k...
And that paid for college. I'll admit I needed help from my parents for the first year living alone, but never fully. They gave me "some" money for rent. I paid the rest of my rent, plus school, plus food, cable, internet, clothing, all that good stuff...
Why am I telling you all this?
- Because I still believe that if you're starting out, the fastest way to make money is freelancing: performing a service in exchange for pay.
- You can get paid more per hour if you do whatever it is you do FAST
- You get paid even MORE than that if you have a SPECIALIZED SKILL and differentiate yourself
What's a specialized skill? Let's think about this...
Scenario #1: WordPress Installer
How much would someone charge you to install WordPress? 10 bucks? But what if...
- You installed WordPress on their domain
- You loaded it up with a beautiful looking WordPress theme
- You customized it with all the SEO, social media, discussion, and traffic plugins they need
- You setup their blog to retweet and post to their fan page every time you made a post
- You loaded up the blog with YouTube videos, EzineArticles and PLR articles
- You contacted 25 professionals in their niche asking for guest blog content
- You brought people to the site to leave comments
- You setup their autoresponder, optin form, and popup on that blog
Now how much is that worth? 100 bucks MINIMUM... and it still takes you under an hour of work.
Scenario #2: Offline Business Setup
A few months ago I had dinner with a small business who was getting his website setup. His "coder" gave him...
- A professional design (magazine style WordPress theme)
- "About Us" and "Photos" pages (content supplied by the business owner)
- A Facebook Like button (installed a plugin)
- Business information and a Google Map to the location (installed a plugin)
- Coupon and QR code (installed a plugin)
That took even less time and the business owner was happy to pay over 1000 dollars for it. Just something to think about... but what about this?
Scenario #3: Membership Site Ninja
I know a couple of people who are the "modern day equivalent" of what I used to do. They are membership site installers. Their full-time living consists of:
- Installing WordPress
- Adding a good looking theme
- Setting up membership site software
- Add a simple sales letter with a payment button
- Setup "free" and "paid" levels
- Install a forum
- Install backup and monitoring plugins
Average price these people ask for membership site installations: $4000. For MAYBE an hour of work if you're slow and a riveting, action-packed re-run of "Mama's Family" is playing on your TV in the background?
My head is spinning right now with so many ways you can look at what freelance services other people are providing, and put your own "twist" on it. Here are some more examples...
- Article writer: in addition to writing the articles, you could submit the article to 20 article sites, AND login to their blog once per day to post the articles they hired you to write
- Copywriter: in addition to writing their sales letter, you could write and schedule the autoresponder emails, setup the thank you page offer and upsell, setup the affiliate program, and contact 20 joint venture partners
- Graphic Designer: in addition to creating someone's logo, you could create their 3D cover, affiliate banner graphics, sales letter "doodles" and minisite design
- Product Ghostwriter: in addition to writing someone's product, you could put it on Kindle and CreateSpace for them
- Resale Rights Seller: in addition to selling resale rights to your report or membership site, you could install the sales letter and download page on their site for them
And how do you get these jobs? Easy... contact anyone who sells a WordPress plugin, WordPress theme, article creation course, graphic creation course, copywriting course... get yourself listed in their product and download page.
Remember, that's how I got all my "$50 installation in 5 minutes" jobs came from... someone bought the link tracking plugin, and they had all the instructions to install it themselves, but that download page said: contact this guy if you want to pay 50 bucks to get it installed.
Quick question: What have you done, heard of, or plan to do to make more money with freelancing and done-for-you services?
Speed Copywriting Explained (Assemble a Web Page That Gets People to Buy From You In the Next Few Minutes)
Most people I know hate writing of any kind. And even the ones I know who LIKE writing... usually hate copywriting.
When I'm talking about copywriting today, I mean putting a web page online that gets people to buy...
It tells people about your report, book, video course or membership site in an exciting way.
"You mean I can't just say anything I want? I have to be careful about what I write? I have to write in a way that grabs my readers and doesn't let go? Sounds like a lot of work..."
Not really, when you have a formula. When you have a step by step system to follow you can do this quickly, almost without thinking, which means you knock it out in just a few minutes while you're still excited about it.
This is really important: I prefer knock out an article, sales letter, graphic, or web page in 5 minutes... make it completely shippable... and look at it later. You can take a break, clear your head, look at it with fresh eyes and put another 5 minutes into it. You can get sales and make tiny adjustments to make it sell better.
That "sounds" great, but how do you do it? Let me show you how I came up with this idea of speed copywriting...
The best skill you could ever have is writing bullet points. You turn a feature (what something is aka the boring part) into a benefit (what it does aka the outcome) and that's a bullet point.
Take your strongest bullet points and those are your headlines. Take your longest bullet points and those are your sentences. You DON'T have to make it any more complicated than that!
Here's one brand new way I thought of to think of benefits... I have many ways but this is something I thought of on a recent coaching call, on the fly. Anyone can do this.
Step #1: List what the feature is (table of contents)
Step #2: Add a second sentence at the end of that table of contents... this sentence MUST begin with the word "Imagine..."
Step #3: Delete the first sentence and the word "Imagine" so you're left with the benefit
Here we go... let's pretend we have a course teaching WordPress and it contains the following videos...
Video #1: How to install WordPress using Fantastico
Video #2: How to install your theme
Video #3: Which plugins to install
Video #4: How to add content
Now let's add a second sentence to each of those. Each sentence will begin with the word "imagine" which does several things: it continues our original thought, makes the statement a little more vague, emotional, and most importantly focuses on the outcome...
Video #1: How to install WordPress using Fantastico: Imagine in just a couple of clicks and just a few seconds you now have your entire WordPress blog installed... it's easy when you know how and now you can fire your webmaster or tech guy forever...
Video #2: How to install your theme: Imagine never needing a graphics designer or webmaster even again... just choose from thousands of professionally designed designs for your blog so you get a website that looks exactly the way you want it...
Video #3: Which plugins to install: Imagine having a blog that automatically submits your content to search engines, links to affiliate products to make you money, builds you a list of email subscribers, and more... in just a few clicks, for free...
Video #4: How to add content: Imagine being able to add a new "post" to your website from any computer or telephone, or even watch others build your web presence for you... that means written articles, audios, and videos that all bring people to your website, and keep them there, every single day...
Easy, right? I just added four sentences... and now we have our four bullet points:
- In just a couple of clicks and just a few seconds you now have your entire WordPress blog installed... it's easy when you know how and now you can fire your webmaster or tech guy forever...
- Never needing a graphics designer or webmaster even again... just choose from thousands of professionally designed designs for your blog so you get a website that looks exactly the way you want it...
- You can have a blog that automatically submits your content to search engines, links to affiliate products to make you money, builds you a list of email subscribers, and more... in just a few clicks, for free...
- Add a new "post" to your website from any computer or telephone, or even watch others build your web presence for you... that means written articles, audios, and videos that all bring people to your website, and keep them there, every single day...
It’s Simple, So It Must Not Work: How You Too Can Make Several Thousand Dollars in a Weekend
Let me tell you how my weekend went.
We made 8 sales of $97 Newbie Crusher, 3 subscriptions into $97/month Membership Cube, 1 signup to $97/month Webinar Crusher, a sale of a $49.95 product I haven't promoted in years, a couple of $7 products sold, a few $47 copies of Action PopUp, a few $47 modules of Double Agent Marketing also sold, a $197 product sold...
And a bunch of recurring subscription payments to take up the slack!
I'm saying this not to brag or make you jealous but to tell you how I did it...
Step 1: Setup a membership site to deliver the download
Step 2: Setup a sales letter to explain the offer and take payments
Step 3: Setup a page giving away a free gift upselling to the paid product
Step 4: Sent an email to my list telling them to click on a link
That's it. It really is that simple, and most of the time I even skip step three to make it even easier.
But most people won't do it, because it's too easy... what's the loophole?
"It's Simple, So It Must Not Work!"
It must not work. You must not be doing what you teach. Let me apply my own "twist" to this system. Let me try re-teaching it to others without actually doing it.
I see the same thing when it comes to "four daily tasks."
At one point I averaged how many things I really accomplished in one day. Some days it was 10 things, some days 0, some days 2, some days 5.
But on average -- I completed FOUR sixty minute tasks.
On days I completed more than four things, guess what?
- I didn't actually COMPLETE four things
- I cut up my tasks into "too small" chunks
- I was tired the next day and didn't get anything done
I've tried using fancy to-do lists, software, timers, and schedules. The only thing that will work LONG TERM for you is to do four things a day.
And if you don't know what four things you should be doing today, then:
- Setup a membership site
- Setup a SIMPLE sales letter that takes payments
- Create an optin page
- Send an email to your list
Finish four things today. Not 6, not 2, not 3, not 7, not 100... four. Then tomorrow, finish four more things, and so on. On average you'll get more things COMPLETED than those people who do 22 things one day, and 0 the next.
