Robert Plank

Do you have a membership site setup yet? (it's okay if you don't)

When you sell products and services online, you can't avoid the steps that people need to take in order to buy from you:

1. View your offer on your sales letter
2. Pay you money using your payment processor
3. Collect that offer on your download page

And you can literally take any payments without software of any kind. I did that for the better part of the 2000's. It was simple:

1. Add HTML page called index.html to your website (presenting your offer)
2. Add HTML page called download123xyz.html to your website (presenting your download)
3. Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to download123xyz.html after checkout)
4. Right click and copy button from PayPal (and paste on the bottom of index.html)

Sounds like a great way to get started but why wouldn't you want to set things up this way?

• Your buyers aren't added to an email list for updates (unless they signup themselves on your download page)
• You can't easily provide lots of bonuses or drip content (refund reducers)
• There's no community (customers can't talk to each other)
• The download page can easily get passed around (you have to rename the page every week)
• It's almost impossible to charge a monthly fee and keep track of who still gets access
• You have to manually setup a new download page for EACH product you want to sell

Instead, you should use a membership site to handle your product downloads, here's all you have to do:

1. Add HTML page at www.example.com/index.html (presenting your offer)
2. Install WordPress and Wishlist Member at www.example.com/members (presenting your download)
3. Create a membership level called "Full" so when someone buys, they get access to everything for now (you can add more levels later)
4. Add your blog posts or pages (click "Add Post", type a title and type out the content or paste in the video)
5. Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to a special link provided by your membership software)

That's a "slightly" more involved, but you basically go through the same steps, and now:

• Your buyers specify their own unique username and password that they can't share and can always recover (using "lost password" tool)
• Your buyers can get added to your email list for updates (when you specify it in the membership settings)
• You can add more levels and sell an unlimited number of products or packages from the same website
• Any WordPress plugin (including popup software, drip plugins, forum add-ons, and tracking software) can run inside your membership site
• You can easily drip or manually add bonuses for your buyers to reduce refunds
• You can easily switch the payment button to charge in installments, or a monthly fee, for access
• If someone refunds (takes the money back) or cancels (stops paying a recurring payment) they lose access

Do you have a membership site? If so, what's so special about it? If you don't have a membership site, what's stopping you and what are you planning?

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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?

1. 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.
2. You can get paid more per hour if you do whatever it is you do FAST
3. 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?

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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...

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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:

1. Setup a membership site
2. Setup a SIMPLE sales letter that takes payments
3. Create an optin page
4. 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.

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You only need to know (and implement) four things in order to overcome procrastination... so that you can take action, get results, make money, repeat it, and make it last.

First, we need to pick some simple task that you know you need to do, but aren't doing. For some of you it's quitting your day job. For others it's putting an information product out there. Maybe for you it's something as simple as writing (or dictating) one article every day.

Step 1: Side-by-Side "Ben Franklin" Comparison

The "Ben Franklin" comparison is where you have two columns. In one column you list your reasons for doing something, and in the other you list your reasons NOT to do something.

Most people do it wrong. They try to see HOW MANY things they can list in each column, and the column with the most things is the winner.

Instead, set a timer for 4 minutes and ist the "top four reasons" to do it and the "top four reasons" not to do it. That's it. If you list more than four, cross out some so you get the 4 most important, and if you have trouble thinking of four then any four will do.

I'll give you a couple examples...

• Quit Day Job: reasons to stay (reliable income, social interaction, daily routine, health insurance) vs. reasons to quit (more income, more fun, more freedom to travel, more free time)
• Launch Infoproduct: reasons not to launch (safer, no work, easier to stay anonymous, no risk of refunds) vs. reasons to launch (money, fun, growth, contribution)
• Getting Joint Ventures: reasons not to contact people (no chance of rejection, people are awkward, it's easier, ) vs. reasons to contact people (it's what successful people do, it doesn't take too much time, there are huge rewards, it's always good just to keep in touch)

Look at that, when you list things side by side it seems ridiculous to keep a job. It seems ridiculous to stay in a stay job, to not launch an information product, and makes it a necessity to get JVs.

When I was thinking about quitting my day job, both sides were pretty even for me, so I had to tip the scales in one direction or another... and once it was out of balance... I quit. But the key was chunking it down and focusing on just one specific thing.

Now you've measured the risk vs. the reward and you have a logical bird's eye view of WHY are you doing this that you can fall back on later.

Step 2: Pattern Interrupt to Minimize Bad Habits

You know what you need to be doing, now to get some kind of instant change you need to STOP one bad habit that keeps you from your goal. Back when I had my day job, and I was doing internet marketing, I was day trading stocks on my phone. I was always stressed out and sometimes it took effort to go even 10 minutes without checking my stocks.

Here's how I fixed the problem: I put a rubber band on my wrist. Every time I was about to check my stocks, I would snap that rubber band and move it to the other wrist.

I know that the reason most of you aren't productive is because you have that habit to check emails, check forums, check Facebook, check your stats or play computer games. Whenever you're about to do it, do the rubber band trick until you've accomplished your tasks for today.

Step 3: Conditioning & Anchoring

You'll start to notice that you'll start to associate pain with whatever bad habit you're getting rid of (let's say checking email) because every time you want to do it, it hurts.

Replace that old "checking your email" task with something productive. Let's say it's creating a report. Open your Word document or whatever tool you use to create a product, and the whole time you're working on it, force yourself to smile.

This does something really weird. Your brain is used to being happy, and then smiling. But it works in the other direction too. When you smile, you become happy.

When you continuously smile while typing and working on your product, then working on your product will make you happy.

If it makes you happy, then you'll want to do it more!

This is the same reason why physiologist Ivan Pavlov could ring a bell every time he fed a dog... and then eventually, just ringing the bell would get the dog to salivate. Because you're much smarter than a dog, you'll use this strategy to reward your good habits and get out of your comfort zone.

Step 4: Consistent Action (4DT)

Now that you'll have something that works, you'll want to repeat it, right?

That's where you'll use the same productivity advice I've given on every interview for year and probably will continue to give for the rest of my life...

Four Daily Tasks: At the beginning of the day, choose just four tasks you'll complete that day to move you in the right direction.

Accountability Partner: Tell someone (whether it's a business partner, spouse, parent, child, friend, neighbor, roommate) what your four tasks are, and at the end of the day, report back to them and tell them what you did or didn't finish, and why.

Time Boxing: Figure out how long a task will take you (for example, if finishing that report will take you 60 minutes), time it with a timer, and when that timer goes off, then put it online and step away from the computer. This ensures you'll stay focused and get that task completed QUICKLY.

And that's how you overcome procrastination: figure out what you want to do and Ben Franklin it, pattern interrupt whatever normally distracts you from making progress, condition yourself to enjoy it and use Four Daily Tasks to keep taking consistent action.

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1. Setup a backup of your ENTIRE account or your ENTIRE server in cPanel/WHM. Do this long before anything goes wrong... preferably one that automatically runs once per week and backs up via FTP to an offsite server... email your web host if you need help setting this up.

Seriously, don't even bother with any automatic WordPress backup plugins, just backup your ENTIRE account... this makes sure all your files, databases, email accounts, and everything is kept safe... not just your WordPress blog.

2. Backup your desktop files on a G-Safe redundant external drive and using offsite backup service Carbonite. Don't store everything on a memory stick or your computer's hard drive... it WILL fail eventually.

3. Install Roboform Everywhere on your computer. This software stores all your passwords in the cloud so it can sync with all your computers including your laptop and smartphone. You also don't have to spend 30 seconds logging into every website. If you only logged into 10 websites per day (think Facebook, email, your membership site, forum, someone else's membership site, YouTube, Twitter, a news site, another forum, and your hosting account) that's 5 minutes per day, which is 30 hours per year you're saving.

An added bonus is that it will auto-generate every password for every site for you... so you use a "master password" to let Roboform do its thing, but it fills out an extremely hard to guess password... and it uses a different password for every single site.

4. Bookmark each of your login pages and membership sites in your browser, organize them in folders, and use Firefox Sync to back it all up. I save my most visited sites in my "bookmarks toolbar" that appears at the top of my browser window. On this toolbar, I have:

• one bookmarks folder for News Headlines
• one bookmarks folder for Forums
• one bookmarks folder for Classes (recurring membership sites)
• one bookmarks folder for Products (standalone membership sites)
• one bookmarks folder for Dashboard sites (for travel, Google Website Optimizer, EzineArticles, and other training I'm taking
• one bookmarks folder for cPanel (site backends I login to)

5. Install the Maintenance Mode plugin on your blogs and WordPress membership sites in case you need to take them offline quickly. This is a free plugin you can install from your WordPress dashboard where you can take your entire site offline to outside visitors in one click... useful if you are tweaking your theme or if a plugin fails.

When does all of this come in handy? Last night I needed to take about 20 sites down in a hurry while a problem was fixed overnight... so you know what I did?

• I went to the "Classes" folder on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, right clicked, and chose "Open in All Tabs" ... this opened each of my membership sites in a different tab
• I logged into each of these sites with 1-click using Roboform
• Enabled the Maintenance Mode plugin on each of these sites

And there you go, in a couple minutes, temporarily took my sites down so I could fix them.

What's your best tip to keep your business running smoothly?

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Plimus (the payment processor) has now officially banned internet marketing products:

Valued Plimus Affiliate,

We wanted to advise you we are no longer supporting Internet Marketing (IM) and Business Operations (Biz-Ops) products, for which our records show you are an affiliate. This does not affect any previous sales referrals you are due payment for. Payouts of those will proceed without issue. Since the product is no longer offered on Plimus there will be no future commissions to be earned.

Thank you for marketing one of our vendor products. We hope you will go to the Plimus Marketplace and find new products for you to promote and earn commission on. If there is something we can do to assist please do not hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,
The Plimus Team

I'm actually surprised it took this long. If you haven't heard of Plimus, here's what happened. You may have seen "blind offer" sales letters... the ones that say: you don't deserve to be on this page, make money from home, earn a residual income, run this software and make money.

"You're 6 clicks away from making a million dollars."

"Don't trust the gurus, they lie to you,
by the way I am a guru, you should trust me."

"If you want 6 times as much money just run the software 6 times."

Most of this "traffic" and "marketing" software was usually something simple like a domain name finder, email harvester, blog comment spammer, bulk page generator or something similar... not even worth $10.

The sales letter hyped up the "results" of the product showing you tons of earnings screenshots... telling you this ISN'T AdSense, this ISN'T SEO, this ISN'T product creation... buy here to find out what it is.

As you can imagine the refund rate on this was pretty high. Payment processors like Clickbank can tolerate a pretty high refund rate but this was even too much for them.

What happened: these products were banned from Clickbank they all moved to Plimus... and now they're banned from Plimus.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with a small percentage of marketers "ruining it for the rest of us" ... it was bound to happen eventually, just like:

• "Biz opps" and "multilevel marketing" are banned from PayPal
• "Internet marketing" mailing lists are banned from MailChimp
• "Non-typical results" are banned according to the FTC
• "Make money online" products were originally banned from Facebook Ads
• "Work from home" videos are recently being banned from YouTube
• "Get rich quick" products are banned from Google AdWords
• "Social media" products are banned from Clickbank
• "Public domain" (non-unique) content was recently banned from Amazon Kindle

The moral of the story is: tell me exactly what your offer is and be very careful about relying on results and income claims to make your sale.

If you're selling software, I just want to see screenshots. If you're selling information, I just want to know what the information is. And most importantly (this was huge back when AdSense courses were coming out)... if your system makes $10,000 per day... why is it only $37???

What do you think about all this?