Archive for January, 2016

073: Multi-Pass Copywriting: Kick Off That Sales Letter with Just Ten Bullet Points

• January 29, 2016

If you feel like there are holes in your internet marketing knowledge, that maybe you're trying to learn college calculus but can't add two plus two, then this is the podcast episode for you!

Many marketers are obsessed with split testing, funnels, and setting up 1-click upsells, but they don't even have a buy button on a sales page.

Can I walk you through what I tell someone if they're struggling, can't get a sales page figured out, and just need a quick web page online?

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The first thing is that you should have a copy of Paper Template (just $7 dollars) installed on WordPress, because you can easily click and create anything you want. But now what do you write on that web page where you want people to enter their email to subscribe? What magic words do you place on a web page where you want people to click and pay you money?

Marketer of the Week: Robert Puddy
Robert Puddy

I created a couple of products and launched a couple of services with Robert Puddy back in the day. His big thing then was creating traffic exchanges to bring in lots and lots of hungry traffic.

His biggest site is Launch Formula Marketing (now Login Frequency Marketing). Puddy monetizes unsubscribes from his list (link them to SpamAssassin with your affiliate link), even lost password pagees (Roboform). Make them login to your site every day, for example, to watch a webinar.

Wise Words This Week

When we get overwhelmed, we often use multitasking to get back on track. It often causes more problems than it solves. Usually when you split your attention, you’re giving half the effort and producing half the results. The solution is to develop "single-handling" activities. --- S.J. Scott

Copywriting Shortcut

AIDA/WWHW: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Why, What, How-To, What-If.
Keep it stoppable stupid, look with fresh eyes, bottlenecks

  • Who Else Wants To... (this headline is my squeeze page starter)
  • Imagine... (starter for emails)
  • What Would Happen If... (starter for webinars)
  • Quick Question... (starter for sales letters)

PHASE I: Minimum Viable Product

  1. Headline: Who Else Wants To?
  2. Ten bullet points: why should I get this?
  3. Price and buy button
  4. WWHW re-ordering

PHASE II: Fundamentals

  1. Button, stack, headline (in that order)
  2. Product breakdown (individual modules)
  3. Problem agitate solve (story)
  4. Four objections (no need, I don't believe you)

PHASE III: Persuasion

  1. Four stages of awareness
  2. Cialdini 6 elements
  3. Typos and numbers not adding up

PHASE IV: Window Dressing

  1. Case studies and testimonials
  2. Graphics
  3. Jump links

Resources

  • Paper Template (This is the WordPress plugin I use on all my sites for sales letters, optin pages, webinar replay pages, and more.)
  • Fast Food Copywriting (Here's how I churn out attention-grabbing, high-converting sales pages in just a few minutes on-demand.)
  • Speed Copy (The complete course on how to make a full-time income with money-making web pages)

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072: Uncover Your Inner Genius and Unlock Your Creativity (On Demand)

• January 23, 2016

Maybe you're bored in your internet business right now because there's no real risk, challenge, or excitement in your business? This especially happens if you fall into the trap of "lying" because nothing is real. Let's get you creative so you can think your way out of your current predicament (even if that problem is boredom)...

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Creativity doesn't only mean "get a bunch of ideas." Notice how the word "create" is in it? Creativity = to create. Make something new and valuable. Idea or invention.

  • Why slow down? If you're on a roll, keep going, so during slow times when you're tired, your past self (on a timer) is like an extra employee you don't have to pay.
  • Four minute mile: 100 article days, book in an afternoon, class in an afternoon, airport product. $2k product twice a week. Hack a 100k income, how many products to sell to achieve that goal. $1000 per hour income (webinars). 1 hour per week full time income (Amazon). 1 hour per day income (Fiverr). Think your way out of a situation.
  • Albert Einstein made creative breakthroughs by asking interesting questions, such as: what would it be like to ride a wave of light?

Distill the noise down: do you take 20 pages of notes at a seminar/webinar or 5 bullet points / key takeaways?

Separate the forest from the trees! Getting so bogged down by the details you don't see the big picture, end goal, reason why, do's and dont's. Presentation on 187 types of content? A mile wide and an inch deep. Solve some problems instead. Good for pitching/presenting, bad for a product.

Our Marketer of the week is Ken Evoy from "Make Your Price Sell." He was the first marketer I've seen with a dynamic price. For example, you sell a product where the price increases by 1 penny every minute.

Let's break the stages of you unlocking your creativity and solving any problem into four steps: WHY (reframe), WHAT (mindmap), HOW (insight), and WHAT-IF (creative flow):

Step A: WHY Reframe (change the interpretation)

Hit the problem from multiple angles with probing questions. Questions must be answered! Here's what you need to ask from yourself:

A1: What's the big problem? What happens without this solution? (common enemy)
A2: What am I solving? (specific goal)
A3: What's the current way to solve it?
A4: Why is my solution better?

  • Who am I solving it for?
  • Why does this even matter?
  • What can I learn from this?
  • What's funny about this?
  • How do I start this?
  • What do I do after this?

During this stage, our goal is childlike curiosity (kids ask lots of questions but adults are set in their ways). We want to limit perfectionism and take up exercise such as free-writing. Apply random words to your situation. Think of as many "C" words as possible, for instance. Criticizing in this stage is only good if you ask: how could I have done better? You need to think up good possibilities and ideas to shoot down later.

Step B: WHAT Mindmap (branch out)

Get the structure, outline, manipulation, trimming, and the sequence.

B1: Brain dump sub-problems.
B2: Get it dialed in: Diverge (go big, seek out) vs. Converge (decide, connect, guidelines, reduce). Combine, split, add, remove, edit
B3: Professor Elliot Eisner: boundary pushing (rules are constraining, let's bend them), inventing (useful combinations), boundary breaking (least common: opposite thinking, gap filling, the rules themselves are the problem), aesthetic organizing (order from chaos: most common)

  1. Boundary pushing: can we shave one second off this plugin? Remove one step from the process
  2. Boundary breaking: we host this software for them.
  3. Aesthetic organizing: for example, in every 10-episode chunk of my podcast, I'll plan on having one episode about WordPress, a case study episode, a product pitch, mindset episode, marketing, writing, and so on.
  4. Inventing: A or B eye doctor test: does it work better as "A" or work better as "B"?

Step C: HOW Insight (Professor Arne Dietrich Creativity Matrix)

This is the step where you think of the solution, but you don't implement yet. The reason why you might feel you've "hit a wall" is because you're only using one type of creativity. There are four:

MATRIXSource: http://kauaidesign.com/2012/10/four-kinds-of-creative

C1: deliberate vs. spontaneous, cognitive vs. emotional.

  • Deliberate cognitive: Thomas Edison (I haven't failed, I've just found 10,000 ways it won't work). Build knowledge, pay attention, make connections
  • Deliberate emotional: ah-ha moment. Flash of insight, emotions/feelings. Bad chain of events leads to a revelation.
  • Spontaneous cognitive: Isaac Newton and the Apple. Eureka, dopamine, out of the box unconscious thinking.
  • Spontaneous emotional: Einstein. Epiphanies from artists and musicians. Least controlled.

C2: How to get to these quadrants: Knowledge + time = DC, Quiet time = DE, Escape (incubation) = SC, Random = SE

C3: You need all four.

  1. Einstein's combinatory play: stop working on the problem. Ideas come to you when you're in the shower.
  2. Don't let "that" person's negativity get inside your head.
  3. Magic wand thinking: if there were no limitations, what would I come up with?
  4. Paint yourself into a corner to get out of your comfort zone. Take a risk.
  5. State change: exercise, take a break, Aaron Sorkin shower, Winston Churchill nap

Step D: NOW Creative Flow (it all falls into place)

Implement the solution!

D1: Anthony Robbins would say you're looking for a Type 1 experience that: feels good, is good for you, helps others and helps the greater good
D2: Repetition is the mother of skill: Unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence.

  1. Figure out your routine: write every day, certain hours of the day. What motivates and demotivates you.
  2. Rush to get things done during alone time.
  3. Blue backgrounds = creativity, red backgrounds = attention to detail
  4. Brain tricks. Set a time limit. Get back to a state when you were excited, crazy, unstoppable

What's great about this system we've laid out is that there's a huge "well" of techniques and ideas you can draw from anytime you're stuck thinking of a save to "save" a dead launch, increase your income, revive a dead email list, or even flesh out the chapters of your next book.

Speaking of your next book and eliminating your writer's block, we highly recommend the Make a Product course to get your next book finished and published on Amazon within the next few days.

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071: Procrastination Solver: How to Achieve Absolute Razor-Sharp Focus and Improve Concentration On Demand

• January 16, 2016

 

Are your goals S.M.A.R.T. goals? Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Tune into today's program to uncover the tried and true techniques (16 total) to keep yourself motivated, focused, out of the procrastination zoned and focused on getting it all done and achieving that goal:

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Our marketer of the week is Jim Edwards from TheNetReporter. My biggest takeaway from him: just point and shoot PowerPoint for your video. It doesn't need to have quick cuts, fancy edits or be professionally done -- at all.

General Motivation

  1. Four Daily Tasks: Business-Building, Deliverable (no degrees of doneness, no chipping away, no to-do lists)
  2. Seinfeld calendar (do something small every day so the cycle isn't broken) + 5 day sprint
  3. Formula and checklist: for example, 3 part podcasts and "research heavy" blog posts: 100 solutions, group into 4-5 categories and whittle down so it's all meat and no grissle, which leads us to...
  4. Reduce and rearrange the raw materials -- SIMPLE mindmapping with FreeMind helps with this.

Absolute Focus

  1. Dual monitors: left for viewing, right for creating
  2. Remove: distractions, phone, social media, email, TV, news
  3. Clear the clutter: delete temporary EverNote notes and delete after you've made the blog post or product. Clear off desktop items at the end of the month. Quick calendar reminders later in the week to "check on" things and then delete.
  4. Micro-projects: start on Monday, end on Friday or Saturday. You can restart on Monday, but don't leave things open-ended. (Optimistically pessimistic.)

Procrastination

  1. What quick 10 minute activity have you been putting off? Do it now.
  2. Accountability partner. Call every hour if you have a really bad "problem."
  3. Shut down distractions. Close tabs, uninstall Facebook.
  4. Change the pattern. Commit. Don't ask yourself how you "feel" about it. It's a must.

Concentration

  1. What are the top 3 things to focus on? Avoid going an inch deep and a mile wide.
  2. Meditation (meaning silence and reflectiveness).
  3. A state change is as good as rest.
  4. Appointment based business: webinars, meetings, Google calendar, TimeTrade coaching calls.

Wise Words to Live By

Three simple rules in life: 1. If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. 2. If you don't ask, the answer will always be no. 3. If you don't step forward, you'll always be in the same place.

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise. -- Oscar Wilde

You may think the grass is greener on the other side, but if you take the time to water your own grass, it would be just as green.

Philosopher Karl Popper: True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

Resources

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New Month’s Accomplishment: This is A Way Better Alternative (and Solution) to New Year’s Resolutions

• January 9, 2016

New Year's Resolutions don't "work" and a "New Month's Accomplishment" is what you need instead. Let me explain...

New Year's "resolutions" are silly for a few reasons...

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They usually aren't S.M.A.R.T. goals (specific, measurable, achievable, results-oriented, and time-bound). SMART goals are pretty self explanatory but let me lay it out so there's no confusion: when you set out to do something, make sure that it's:

  • simple and clearly defined (specific)
  • something tangible so it's 100% clear whether or not you accomplished that goal (measurable)
  • enough of a stretch to move you out of your comfort zone, but not a shot at the moon (achievable)
  • all about an outcome instead of an activity (results-oriented)
  • in such a timeframe that it creates a sense of urgency for you (time-bound)

I think when most people set a goal that they're serious about, they intuitively and automatically make it specific, measurable, and achievable. The two biggies here are "results-oriented" and "time-bound."

Issue #1: You're Not Results-Oriented & Time-Bound

People don't know WHY they're doing something, for example, someone tells me their big goal is to write a book for their business. Why? Just because. Someone told them to do it. There's no real plan beyond that, and their heart isn't in it (no emotional reason-why) so it's just not going to get done. (It probably won't get started.)

The average person makes a silly goal like, "I'm going to run 2 miles every morning all this year." That's bad. It's open-ended, and it's not time-bound. A better goal would be that you're going to walk 10 minutes every evening for one week, and that's it! Nothing recurring.

Issue #2: Your Goals Are Too Big

Second problem, the goals are the wrong size. Usually too big. They're so big that you've subconsciously set yourself up for failure before you even started. You could have made your goal "write a 1/2 page blog post" but instead you said you'd write a 200-page book, including editing.

Can you please be honest with yourself? If you don't want to do anything different this year to grow your business and change your life, I honestly think that's okay, but ONLY if you're honest with yourself about it. That leads us to...

Issue #3: Belief & Honesty

Third, there's no real belief behind these S.M.A.R.T. goals. Maybe you're going through the motions and setting these goals because you think you "should", and you feel "bad" for not having one. Maybe you feel excited when you plan it out. But that excitement wears out in a few days, doesn't it?

The problem with a New "Year" resolution is that you probably start thinking of a goal around December 1st (Thanksgiving is over and it's holiday time), decide on that goal around December 5th, and then give up on the goal completely by December 15th. A small portion of people make it until January 10th, and even less until February 1st.

Gym-Collage

The solution to your "belief" crisis is to gain a small victory so you can not only see what's possible, but you've also broken that vicious cycle of:

feel bad -> over-engineer a pie-in-the-sky solution -> give up on it -> feel bad again

The Answer: New Month's Accomplishment

I have a better path for you and it's actually pretty simple:

  • Don't wait until January 1st to do something different
  • Don't have a huge year-long or recurring goal (just hit the next milestone)
  • Do something SMALL and ONE-TIME, like writing one blog post or going on one walk (anything is better than nothing)
  • Don't tell others you're going to do it (just do it and brag about it later)
  • Use the new month as an excuse to run a new "experiment", but keep doing more what's making money and less of what's not making money

Let's just call this a "New Month Accomplishment." This way, it's something small and S.M.A.R.T. that you can knock out. The reason why the end-result is so small is because the journey is more important than the destination, you're trying new things (and re-visiting old things that worked but you forgot), and if you get some small successes, you're more likely to be happier and more confident about those small achievements of yours. You're more likely to repeat those things and make them good habits.

What's Your New Month's Accomplishment?

My "New Month's Accomplishment" for January was recording an audiobook. That's something I've wanted to do for a few years, and I have eight books on Amazon at the moment, but no audiobooks. A few days ago, I sat at the computer, and did nothing that day but dictate (read aloud) the first half of my first book (100 Time Savers).

That took almost exactly two hours. The next day, I didn't check my email or Facebook until I recorded the second half (two hours), then adjusted the audio according to ACX's (Amazon and Audible's) specifications, and sent it off. It takes a few weeks for them to approve the audio book, so I'm just waiting on that.

My business partner Lance Tamashiro's New Month's Accomplishment (just from my observation) was sending a handful of thank you cards to some of our customers. This is something we used to do every day, but we stopped and forgot about it. Now we're doing it again. Simple!

Let's say you're sick of that messy garage. Instead of making a "commitment" (yuck) to "try" to "clean up better" this year, take one of item out of that garage, take a picture of it, and list in on Craigslist within the next few minutes. Done! New Months' Accomplishment finished.

If you have trouble writing: Ernest Hemingway only wrote 500 words a day, but he did it every day. Stephen King writes exactly 2,000 words (7 pages) daily. If he hits 2,000 words and he's in mid-sentence, it doesn't matter, he stops!

If he writes 1,500 words and gets to the end of the book he's writing, he types THE END and writes the next 500 words for the next book. Your New Month's Accomplishment could be to only write 500 words tomorrow. Don't worry about the next day or month or the rest of your life, just get 500 words out of the way.

I'm curious to know what your New Month's Accomplishment is, but don't tell me!

In fact, don't tell anyone what you're doing. Finish something simple that you can complete in a day (or two at the most), or preferably just 10 minutes today, and now you've finished more than those schlubs who "planned" their "resolution" for the "New Year" and never even started.

Also see: Time Management on Crack to beef up your productivity, Income Machine to get that passive income system of yours up and running, and Make a Product to publish that book on Amazon.

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070: Use Content Marketing to Reach Critical Mass, Flood Your Internet Business with Accidental Sales and Get to the Next Income Bracket (Without Being a “Me Too” Marketer)

• January 2, 2016

I'm finally starting to get it. The newbie mindset (or clarity mindset). Your training should "lean" towards the newbies and making a sense of the mess, with some how-to thrown in.

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If you don't have a blog, YouTube channel, an affiliate program, and lots of free content or search results where people can find you, then that's yet one more tool that your competitors have at their disposal, that you don't.

  • Useful content: weekly podcast, weekly video, weekly blog post.
  • Ideas: roundup your favorite links, post an embed reactor (a YouTube video and your opinion underneath it), become a "data scientist" and share your results
  • Think beyond just a blog: guest posts, podcast, book, viral videos
  • Mild keyword stuffing: use phrases people are searching

Marketer of the week: Steve Celeste from InternetPursuit.com

(Steve Celeste wasn't actually his real name, and his blog is long gone, but you can check out an archive on the Wayback Machine.)

Steve Celeste's blog and marketing training gave me the idea of creating a "build it to sell it" site. We used that model on DailySeminar.com. I didn't want to commit to a chore of having to crank out membership content on a regular basis, so we listed it for sale even as we were launching it. I also made sure things like the Clickbank account, membership software, etc. were all things that could be detached.

The site only had 53 members paying $47/month, but we had 55 "weeks" of content (20 minute Monday training, 20 minute Tuesday training, 20 minute Wednesday interview, Thursday bonus report, and Friday question day) created in advance. That part took about 40 hours of total "work" -- mostly recording training. We launched it on December 15th of (year removed but it was over 8 years ago). By February 27th of the following year, we had a buyer for $32,000 for everything. $32,000 from 40 hours? That's not a bad payday.

How do you decide what info to give away or charge for? The answer: Use the "William Shatner" model (he has 228 acting credits on IMDB, appeared as himself in 357 more appearances, 9 CDs on Amazon, and 70 books on Amazon). Keep putting stuff out there.

Reasons People Buy From You

  • They love you: they buy everything you put out (top 1%)
  • They want it (fad or trend): You got in front of a wave, i.e. everyone's talking about membership sites or one click funnels so you're teaching that
  • They need it: you're solving a real problem (people will always need to know about affiliate programs, copywriting, etc.)
  • Fear, convenience, entertainment

What path brings people to you? Our favorite Platinum studnet (Dr. Charles) came from a Jeff Mills guest webinar we presented, then he attended our live event in Salt Lake City and joined our Platinum there. Another Platinum client came from a one-time $997 mastermind session we both attended in Las Vegas. Yet another Platinum student of ours came from a speaking gig where I presented an pitched a $997 offer in San Diego.

Blogging and podcasting the "random-ness" (mindset etc) has put me on a path for the big ideas for books and courses. Here's where I stay in inspired and get a "feel" for what's popular and what people want to hear (without becoming a copycat or a me-too):

It's also been helpful seeing bloggers like Tim Ferriss from the Four Hour Workweek write long-form blog posts in an era where people are trying to tell you that attention spans are down. John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire consistently publishes 5 podcast interviews per week (now well over 1100+) which I find super cool. IMNewsWatch is yet another example of sites that put out tons and tons of helpful free content that lead to things to buy.

Follow a formula with your writing, like this:

  • How to (3 things -- each crazier than the last), without (blank) -- add a keyword or two if you can
  • Questions, categories: create some kind of order or structure from the huge mess of possibilities
  • 7 ways, 12 tweaks, 35 websites

You don't have to write "poetry" as you're not Seth Godin. Provide value and don't worry about rhyming, or being catchy.

Tip of the Week: I use Zapier to either propagate social media, or notify you every day to produce or publish that content. The most prolific writers have a schedule.

Five Steps to Profitable Content Marketing

Part 1: Consistent podcasting. Join us inside of PodcastCrusher.com to get your podcast up and running in 5 minutes, so you can double dip untapped search results and get listed in BOTH Google and iTunes.

Part 2: 5 minute YouTube videos all week to capture those searches. What do people actually search for? Check out 100 competing YouTube videos with high view counts and group them 4-5 categories. If you haven't experimented sending your subscribers to a video or blog post, you need to. It stirs up the list and gets people to login again.

Part 3: Blogging ideas. Here are some ideas if you're stuck:

A. Why did you get started? Early successes and failures
B. What angers you? What's being done wrong in your industry and what are you reacting to?
C. Or, just give me something helpful

Part 4: Book. Combine your your best stuff (greatest hits) into a Word document. MakeAProduct.com shows you how to use Kindle and CreateSpace to put out your hardcover and softcover books.

Part 5: Accidental sales. This is where you have so much free stuff out there, that it's hard to tell where your sales exactly came from... iTunes, YouTube, Kindle, your blog, or just a plain Google search. Put out something high ticket, or something with a payment plan and yearly support. This is great for software.

Now that you've used content marketing to feel your niche out... what does their business depend on? What tool or service could you put out there to 10X their business and make them depend on you, in a good way? Maybe you create template sites for offline businesses and charge $2400/mo to keep them going (like Lance and I do). Maybe you create a managed AdWords ad maintenance service, or a Facebook ad service.

The point is, many marketers have a scarcity mindset when it comes to being helpful and putting out content. They're "afraid" of sharing anything cool because they're worried that sharing something for free takes out of a paid product.

My answer to that is to use that free content marketing as a way of getting the bugs out, and build something software or service based into your products so it doesn't matter how much "free" information is out there. They still need your software (or tool) to make it happen.

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