Strategy: Do you want to know what works when you're building a real business and making real money online?

A. Create an information product and a download area for people to get it after they buy
B. Make a sales letter that explains why it's so great
C. Get traffic to it and build a list of prospects and buyers

That's it. List, traffic, and offers -- this worked back in 1997 when all you needed was a website to get traffic, in 1999 when all you needed was an affiliate program to get traffic, in 2002 when all you needed was search engine listings to get traffic, in 2005 when all you needed was a list to get traffic, and even in 2007 and beyond when all you need are joint venture partners to get massive traffic.

Tactics: Do you want to know what doesn't work?

1. Free for all link pages
2. Doorway pages & search engine cloaking
3. Safelists
4. Email co-registration
5. Traffic exchanges
6. Paid leads
7. Guaranteed optins
8. Tell-a-friend
9. JV giveaways
10. Ad swaps
11. Warrior special offers
12. Auto-bloggers
13. Traffic loopholes
14. Social media
15. "Traffic getting" software

What's funny is that even if you haven't heard of every single one of these so-called "business models" -- they're the same traffic technique (which doesn't work, or only works for a couple months) -- then a year later it comes back under a different name...

Funny, right?

I know it's easy to get distracted by all these fancy terms and techniques but this is what you REALLY need to do:

A. Make a Product & Put It In a Membership Site

1. Run a 4-week webinar class (using GoToWebinar) solving a problem in your niche
2. Put those recording into a membership site (using Wishlist Member) and get them transcribed into reports
3. Create a piece of software (using WP Notepad) or buy resale rights (Master-Resale-Rights.com) that solves your problem in a "push button" way and add it to that site

B. Build a List & Send Them to Your Sales Letter

1. Capture the buyers of your membership site into a mailing list using Aweber
2. Pull out ONE module or ONE bonus of your paid course, give it away for free and create a landing page where people can sign up and upgrade to the paid version
3. Email your list every day

C. Drive Traffic to Increase Your List Size

1. Setup an affiliate program and link to it in your product and in your membership site to recruit your buyers into affiliates
2. Make at least 1 forum post every day and post at least 1 article every day until you have 100 articles and 1,000 forum posts
3. Pay for at least 1 source of paid advertising even if it's just an email solo ad or a banner ad on a blog

That's what works for me, now YOU tell me... what works for you? What was your biggest breakthrough when it came to making a product, building a list, getting traffic, and making money? Go ahead and tell me in the comments below.

When people come to your sales letter, how many of them actually buy? When they come to your optin page, how many of them signup to your list? Do you even know?

Here's something you CAN know with 100% certainty. Consider these three pages:

• A sales letter you haven't put online yet
• A sales letter with all the text on it but no order button
• A sales letter with some or no text and an order button

Yep... even if your sales letter totally sucks, if it has an order button, people can buy!

Maybe you told shared the details in person, on a webinar, on the phone, or on a forum... they still have a way to buy.

You might not have the "perfect" headline or "perfect sales letter" but there's no such thing as a "perfect" order button.

Either it's there or not. You can mess around with making it bigger, putting fancy stuff around it... but if I can't buy, I can't buy. Even if you have the BEST "everything else."

Before setting up a web page, whether it's a sales letter or email optin page, make the button first!

1. It's a lot better than staring at an empty page
2. You can always go back and make parts of the page better later
3. You know you're not going to feel like doing it later
4. You actually have to let it be "good enough" because someone might find it and buy

Do you put your optin button / order button on your web page the very first thing? If not, are you going to do it from now on?

Why do I keep seeing people leave posts on their Marketing Blog just to post about it?

If you are adding content to your blog "just because", you are adding an extra chore for yourself, you are preventing yourself from actually getting real work done, and you are missing out on a lot of the opportunities having a blog can give you.

As you probably know, Google loves blogs.  And that means if you blog about one of your products, or about your niche, or about something that you are doing, it is going to be ranked highly in the search engine, especially when that is brand new.

That means that if you just blog about any old subject, you are going to get ranked highly for no reason at all.  But if you are about to come out with a new product or are about to re-launch an existing one, you should be blogging about it - that way it shows up in the search engines. And when you send your list to that blog, you are already overcoming many of the objections they are going to have when it comes time to buy.  Plus your subscribers now feel that you are giving them value and not simply hard-pitching them.

The next time you make a blog post, stop and think for a second:  "What can I talk about that will get people ready for my next product launch or re-launch?"

There is also nothing wrong with recycling your auto-responder content.  And this can go either way. If you have an auto-responder broadcast or follow-up that got a lot of response, there is nothing wrong with expanding that into a blog post, or even just posting it as is.

Likewise, if you had a really good blog post that got tons of response a year or two years ago, but people simply can't find it now, there is nothing wrong with scheduling that as an auto-responder follow-up.

We all need more follow-up emails in our auto-responder sequence.  You should definitely start off with ten - but you have less than two years' worth of an auto-responder sequence, you should add a little bit to it every month.

And finally, while it is great to make a blog post about an upcoming product, it is even better to blog about that once it is now live.  I don't do this as often as my pre-launch posts, but every now and then I will create a blog post and disable comments, and make the Call to Action at the end of that blog post via a link to whatever it is I am talking about:  I hard-sell people directly on the blog.

Most bloggers seriously underestimate the power of the Call to Action - whether that is to get comments for social proof, to make your upcoming launch look even better, or just to promote something you have just launched.  Or even to re-launch something you launched in the past.

And that is the correct way to blog about your business. Frame people and pre-launch them for whatever solution is coming up from you.  Recycle your auto-responder follow-ups - and even use those blog posts as auto-responder follow-ups.  Market the stuff you already have.  And deliver a strong Call to Action to get people to take action and do something at the end of your blog post.

Which of these three items are you missing in your blog?  Please share this with me in the form of a comment below and let me know what you are going to do better in your blogging business next time you make a post.

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...

There are many things that I do on a daily basis that almost are not worth my time – things like maintaining a free blog or submitting free articles or posting on forums or even updating my Twitter status.

None of those things directly make me as much money as landing a new joint venture, as writing a sales letter, sending out emails or running a webinar course.

Why do I do them? Because they demonstrate social proof. If someone is thinking about buying from me and they look me up, they'll find hundreds of articles, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of forum posts.

What will I find when I look you up? Will I find lots of social proof or will I find negative social proof? I'll find a lot of good things about you if you follow these 5 steps.

Element #1: Blog Comment Scarcity Or Blog Responses

You probably do have a blog, right? If I go to it, will I find it's being constantly updated or it has not been updated in the last several years? Are there lots of posts or only 1 or 2? And out of those posts, are lots of people commenting? I decided very early on that when I created my blog, I wanted to have lots and lots of comments.

Otherwise, it would look like I was talking and no one was listening.

When I make blog posts and I get dozens, if not hundreds, of comments for every post, everyone can see how much of an authority I am. When you have the same thing, people can see how much of an authority you are. I got a lot of comments on my blog at first by limiting posts to only 10 comments.

I told people that if I got 10 comments on my blog, then I look at either the post content, otherwise I would stop.

Eventually, I escalated this to saying after I had 10 comments, I would close comments completely and now I have this at 100 comments per post and that's how and why you should have blog comment scarcity and blog responses.

Send traffic to your list, to your latest blog post, but have some kind of deal either that you will turn off comments or stop writing unless you get a certain number of responses because people read but they don't like to respond.

Element #2: Price Scarcity

How do you show that what you're offering has lots and lots of value but still get people to buy when you are first launching it and don't have a huge list? If you're entering a new niche or at first building a list, offer your product at a low price but set a deadline for when you will increase that price and then actually increase it.

This way, if people are buying your product for $20 but you are about to increase it to $50, people realize that the regular prize is $50. Don't run a discount because that will anger your early adopters, but this way, you will reward your fast action-takers and early adaptors by letting them buy low, and then once you have a proven selling record and you have testimonials, now you can increase the price at the time and date you said you would.

Element #3: Webinar Replay Scarcity

Are you starting to see a pattern where I'm talking about social proof?

People can be trained to give you a certain reaction. When you make a blog post, you train them to leave comments. When you are increasing the price, you train them to buy. The same should be true for your live instructions. When I run a webinar, I want the maximum number of people to show up live. When somebody shows up live, they're kind of a captive audience.

They can't fast-forward, they're usually not multicasting and they're sure as heck can't pause your presentation either. It's as close to real life as possible.

That's why you shouldn't always offer a replay of your webinar. Maybe you're not going to offer any kind of replay of your webinar or you're going to offer a replay only available for the next 48 hours or even you're only going to offer a replay inside of your paid membership site.

Either of these 3 strategies will motivate people to attend your webinars live and even if they don't believe you now, they will believe you after you stick to your guns and do what you said you will time and time again.

Element #4: Testimonial Follow-Up

The number one problem I see with sales letters is a lack of proof – why should I buy from you, why should I trust you if you can't show me anyone else who has benefitted from your training? That's why the easiest form of social proof is the testimonial.

Ask your buyers what they thought of the product they just bought from you. What I like to do is add this message as an autoresponder follow-up in my autoresponder sequence. This means that when someone buys from me and joins my list after 7 days, which is enough time to look at whatever product they just bought, I will ask them what they thought of it and have them directly reply to me and then I will use their testimonial on my sales letter.

It's important though to ask not for a testimonial but for an honest review, good or bad.

Element #5: Feedback Survey

I told you a little bit about getting testimonials and training people not just to read your emails but reply to them as well. I use this in many of my pre-launches when I ask people things like "do you want to see this product, do you want to see me explain programming?"

And then the next day, I will tell people how many responses I got. This does many things. First of all, it shows everyone that there is a high demand for what I am about to offer and it makes people part of the process. It makes them know that they have an interactive role in my marketing. When they respond to me, their "yes" answer goes into the total number of yesses I receive over email.

If you take any of those 5 elements of social proof, blog responses, price scarcity, replay scarcity, testimonial follow-ups, or feedback surveys, you should notice a slight increase in sales, a slight increase in response, and a slight increase in popularity.

Are you using any of these 5 elements yet? And which one?

If you're not using any of the 5, which one do you plan on using within the next week? Please leave me a blog comment below with your speedy response.

If I ask someone why an email I sent didn't get a lot of clicks or why an offer I'm promoting didn't get as many sales as I would like or even when a blog post doesn't get as many comments as I'm used to, the usual cop-out I hear from other marketers is "your list must be burned out."

We've all wondered about this at one point or another. In fact, at one time, Lance and I thought we had burned out our list when we're mailing for a $200 training course.

Then, flash forward 6 months later when we're launching a $997 training course 1 week, a $497 training course a couple weeks later, and a $27 per month membership site at the same time and everyone is buying in, and in fact, the people who buy now tell us the price should be higher.

What's the difference? The difference between that $200 era and the $1000 era is that we trained our list not just to receive these offers but also to purchase and be happy at a certain price point.

Burnout Myth #1: Non-Responsive List

If you think your list is non-responsive, the problem is either from your traffic source or from your marketing.

I have seen way too many marketers come out of the gate one day and say, "here you go, here is my $1000 training course."

They have no teaching, no build-up and no pre-launch and they just expect people to purchase their $1000 course at a moment's notice. When people tell me that they do not purchase a certain product because of price, the problem could be that they can't afford it and would never buy under any circumstances or it could be they just did not have enough advanced notice to clear their credit card or save up that money.

That's why you need a pre-launch sequence and you need to mail more often.

This leads me to many marketers recommending that you only mail your list once a month or once a week. But the problem with that is we need to push a lot of people into buying an offer quickly, you really do need to mail them once a day during your launch sequence, and I see marketers try to get by with mailing just once a week or just once a month, and then when they have to mail once a day, the subscribers aren't used to it.

The solution is to mail everyday, whether you're selling, teaching, or doing a little bit of both.

Mail everyday, mail more often, and mail on topic. If somebody is telling you to buy their AdWords product over and over again and then one day turned around and tried to buy a product about forum marketing and there was no transition whatsoever, there is no consistent marketing message.

Have a real launch, email every day, and email at least 5 times when you're promoting something new.

Burnout Myth #2: It's Too Expensive

If no one is buying the things you have to offer at any price, consider where your traffic is coming from. I built my traffic up from a free forum but what I did differently is most of my subscribers had to buy something from me before they could get on my list.

They were all people who have been proven to have a credit card, have room in their credit card, and trust me enough to pay me. If you're building a list from ad swaps, safe lists, or JV Giveaways, you're getting the worst subscribers possible.

You're getting people who have not been proven to buy anything but who you do know get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails everyday for other free offers. You need to build a better list. Build a list that gets traffic from a better neighborhood. Get joint ventures. And above all, make a better offer.

It's one thing to offer a 100-page eBook or 5 hours of videos but what will those videos allow me to do? If you just tell me you are selling a real estate course, that's not very exciting, but if you told me that this course could get me to find the perfect property to flip in one day and I could flip it in one week and make a certain amount of money, that would be more exciting for me.

You need to position your offer to be more benefit-based and to be more exciting and fast and explain the answer to the question "what's in it for me?"

You might have to weed out freebie stickers. If there are some subscribers who yell at you or ask you repeatedly to drop the price, there's nothing wrong with removing them from your list if they are never going to buy from you. It seems harsh but you are doing them a favor because they don't like your emails.

Burnout Myth #3: The Wrong Niche

If I subscribe to your email list about copywriting and one day, you started emailing me about stock market trading, why should I even care? I didn't come to you as the authority for stock trading. I came to you as the authority to copywriting. You need to give your subscribers what they want.

If somebody joined your list because you offered them a free report on copywriting, give them more stuff about copywriting, give them a course they can join on that same subject.

Don't hop around in different niches. Give them the same stuff that they want and need. And build your list from the correct source. If you have a copywriting product, build your list from a copywriting forum, not from a stock trading forum and vice-versa.

You might not have to give up and change your niche overnight... just start offering your list what they want.  What they'll buy.

Did this post help you overcome any of the 3 myths of subscriber burnout? They were a non-responsive list, a list that thinks your stuff is too expensive, and a list that's in the wrong niche. Which one applies the best to you, 1, 2, or 3? And what are you going to do now?

Comment below telling me, please!

Why is it that people pay you money for your services, products and memberships?

It really helps to figure out not just how people found you, but what is their reason for joining your community? That way, when you send emails and write sales letters, you can appeal to all the groups.

I can't speak for anyone else, but here are the reasons I buy your stuff...

The Entire Step-By-Step Training

Four years ago, I joined a Membership site from Jim Edwards that taught everything I needed to know. It taught how to create videos, how to make reports, gave me tips on sales letters... And a lot of the things I learned were not taught directly to me. They were things I observed from his marketing and his videos.

I joined that site as a relative newbie because I wanted to learn and apply one hundred percent of what he showed me.

That training helped me get over a lot of obstacles. For example, I had not ever created video. I had some idea in my head that I needed to have green screen, that I needed to have different camera angles and different screens. But most of his videos were simple PowerPoints. At the time, PowerPoint videos were not very common. And that was the biggest benefit I got from learning and taking all his training, was making PowerPoint videos.

Eventually I outgrew that training and quit. But I short-cut a lot of things that I might have taken a long time to figure out, or maybe would not have figured out at all.

The Quick Fix

I have joined other membership sites, just to get one piece of the training. It is very important that when you join some kind of site, you know what your goal is.

Jeanette Cates delivered a three-month training program about product creation. And although most of the things she taught I already knew, I joined because I wanted to get motivated enough to record more audios. That was my one goal from joining: to record more audios.

I joined the site, picked up some extra tips about how to make my audios better, recorded them and then showed them to her for accountability. I also used those audios to build my list, and I reported back to her about how many opt-ins they gave me and how many sales those led to.

More often than not, I will join someone's site just for one particular thing. This is why, in addition to explaining the step-by-step of what they are getting in your sales letter, go into the details. Tell them EXACTLY what result they will get from your training - because you never know what outcome people are looking for.

Community

I have joined a number of monthly membership sites, just to get my name out there. It is one thing to leave blog comments, or post on a free forum. But the audience there has not been proven to buy anything.

On the other hand, if you join somebody's "$100 per month training" and are allowed to leave comments or make forum posts, you know that every single person reading your messages has at least $100 per month to spend on some form of training.

Also, because it costs money to get into this community, it is more exclusive, which means it is a smaller crowd, which means you have less competition as far as getting your information read.

Some of my best connections came from the inside of these communities.

Brownie Points

When a friend of mine, Stu McLaren, offered training about his WordPress Membership Software, I joined - even though I had previously taught similar membership training.

I joined this site basically to become the "Star Student." I listened to all the training calls, read all the blog posts, and when he had call-in days, I made sure to have some kind of question, to make sure I understood all of the content. And I contributed a couple of things just to make sure all the bases were covered with his training.

Although you should definitely position your sales letter and marketing materials to "Why newbies can best benefit form your course," keep in mind that some experts may join, to keep their own training up-to-date, or even show support for you.

And those are the four reasons why I buy eBooks, reports, services and memberships. Did I leave any reasons out? What is the top reason YOU join someone else's community or pay them money for something?

Let me know down below, in the form of a very brief comment.

Price training your list and your customers IS real. If people are used to getting everything from you for $10, there's going to be a price shock if you jump to $500.

So you're stuck working way too hard trying to land 10-dollar cheapskate customers.

You need to work your way up to at least 100 bucks per sale.  Consider if you want to raise 700 bucks... you can either make 7 sales at $100, or 100 sales at $7. Which do you think is easier?  Getting just seven sales.

If you give away all your good information for free, or you're afraid to sell anything... then your list gets used to that!

You're Stuck in the "Friend" Zone!
Not a Good Place to Be (Remember High School?)

On the other hand, if you consistently launch products at $97 or $497, then your list is used to that and it isn't a problem.

This is why Lance and I have never offered live training for under $247, and recently never under $497, and from now on very rarely under $997. Plus, when it comes time to put those people into membership sites, we don't offer a "pay it all at once" option.  I want people to get used to paying a small amount every month.

Are you starting to understand why Visa and MasterCard killing free shipping offers, one dollar trials, and hidden continuity is a blessing in disguise for your business?

You shouldn't be racing to be cheaper than your competitors... you shouldn't be in a race to cut the price lower and lower.  You should be rewarding your early buyers, bumping up the price and being more EXPENSIVE than your competitors... because you deliver more value than them.

So how the heck do you retrain your subscribers and ensure you never take part in that "race to free?"

Solution: The Seven Dollar Bump

From now on, if someone asks if they can get that product of yours at a discount, you can tell them: "The current price is the discount."

Take anything you are still selling at 7 dollars and tell your list, the forum you're on, whatever audience you have... that you're increasing the price to $17 in four days.

If you need to offer a special deal on a webinar or in a forum, then add a bonus or launch it at that forum, and raise the price later... but never cut the price.

How do you think I'm going to feel if I buy something from you at $197, and then six months later I see it "for sale" for 20 bucks?  Can I get my $177 back?!

Here's what I did back in my WSO days, leaving everyone else scratching their heads wondering why their products weren't selling: after selling a set number of copies, I closed the offer and re-opened it at a higher price.

Lance did this with our Niche Invasion System product.  Launched our 1 hour webinar at $7, after a few days bumped to $17, and now it's at $27 about to go even higher.  Every time, it converts better at the higher price point.  Every time.

And Now, My Favorite Statistic Ever...

Check this out.  Announcing that my "Five Minute Copywriting" product was increasing from $19.95 to $27 in a few days, doubled the conversion rate from 5.3% on November 19th to 10.4% on November 23rd.  To this day it still converts at 8.2% ... imagine that, a higher price AND a higher conversion rate!

Visitor value is your conversion rate times the price. "Five Minute Copywriting" was worth ($19.95 times 5.3%) = $1.06 per visitor, then jumped to ($19.95 times 10.4%) $2.07 per visitor and is now ($27 times 8.2%) $2.21 per visitor.

Bump the Price By $10 Every Time,
and Watch the Conversion Rate!

I use Google Website Optimizer so I can measure my conversion rate AND split test at the same time.  When a split test finishes, I increase the price by 10 bucks.

If at some point the price resistance is too high, like at $47 or $97, then I'll tack on an extra bonus to justify the price.

What a crazy idea... instead of discounting your offers, how about try some good old-fashioned marketing?

Increase the price instead of dropping it. Close down your offer after a certain number of seats are sold instead of opening up MORE slots.  Upsell instead of downselling.

Your time is worth way too much to be selling 6 DVDs for 30 bucks, a video training course for 7 bucks, or even $50 access to a site with 100 products in it. Take part in the race to charge more than everyone else.

Question: What's your highest priced product?  What are you doing to justify that high price? Please answer in a comment below... go ahead, leave a comment right now...

Are you ever middle of helping someone and suddenly it hits you... and you think, "I can't help you anymore?"

That's what happens when I come across someone who is in "demo mode."

Maybe you do this or you've come across someone who does this every now and then.  These are people who always setup web sites called "Test Web Site." Or blogs called "Demo Blog."  Or membership sites called "Temp Membership Site."

Come on man... tests are for students, demos are for little battery-powered keyboards and temps are for offices.  I honestly want you to make an actual product, an actual membership site, and an actual blog.

Lance and I talked about this in one of our private coaching calls but I think a lot of you can benefit from this advice as well...

Don't Ever Create a "Demo Blog" Ever Again, Pretty Please!

If you're showing a friend how to do something like create a squeeze page, or making a video about how to setup a download page for one of your products... or you're in a class that teaches you how to write a sales letter... then guess what, do it for real!

You don't know if an affiliate will promote it... or a guru will recommend it... or it gets picked up by the search engines or a social bookmarking site like Digg.  If you have your site out there, ready to sell, then that particular problem is solved forever, and you can start getting traffic.

I know it's scary, but guess what... the more you put stuff out there, the less scary it'll be.  How else are you going to become an authority on any subject?  How else are you going to get known for creating such and such product?  How else are you going to build a list, or build a following of any kind?

Here's a Big Secret...

I'm only well known in my niche because I put out a lot of products and send a lot of e-mails.  That's it.  Look at people who are way more famous than me and you'll see that all they did, was put out a lot of something.  Created a lot of YouTube videos.  Wrote a lot of print books.  Left more testimonials and blog comments.

Participated in more interviews than the average person.  (The average person records zero interviews per year.)

Before I ask something of you, I want to take a quick moment to tackle the common objections sandboxers tell me... just to make sure you can avoid their mistakes...

Excuse #1: I'll Figure it Out Later

No you won't.  Honestly, I never get "everything" right when sending an e-mail or launching a product.  Sometimes I'll forget to mention the URL, I'll leave out the guarantee, I'll mistype the download URL... these things happen!

So why try to do it twice (once for practice and once for real).  There are only so many hours in a day and when you do twice the work, it takes you twice as long.  Plus... you're excited about launching your product now, but who knows if you'll be excited in a couple of weeks?

Do it now, so you don't have to do it again.

Excuse #2: I'll Look Stupid

The only way you'll look stupid is if you have one of those sites that says "demo site" this and "test PDF" that.

This is a personal issue for me because we recently held a challenge in one of our private coaching classes.  That particular week, people had to write a sales letter promoting their membership site.

I felt like being a nice guy so I spent about two and a half hours recording Camtasia videos critiquing 19 sales letters in a row. Telling them what to change based on my experience, what stuff to remove, what to change in the headline, what to add... all that good stuff.

One guy asked, why didn't I get a critique?  And I said because your order button is labeled "Test Button."  And when I join your membership site it says, "Here's a test download link until I get something real setup."

Really?  You couldn't just upload your half-finished product and call it version 1.0?  Couldn't have bought resale rights? Couldn't have outsourced it?

Someone else said, I bought resale rights but I set this up as a test site.  This isn't a real site.  Why did I waste time trying to help you out then?

Excuse #3: I Don't Have Time

This is my favorite.  Look, we have all been guilty (including me) of spending a bunch of time explaining why we don't have time to do the things we actually need to do.  As in, write a big long e-mail that takes 60 minutes to write saying why we don't have 30 minutes free to setup that squeeze page, write that barebones sales letter, record that video product, and so on.

The times I was most busy, is when I was the most productive.  When all I had to worry about was being in college and freelancing, I totally kicked back.  If I only got 10 hours of sleep, I told myself I was sleep deprived.  If there was a day when I went to class AND had to program, I said forget it... I'm so overworked!  I went to bed between 2AM and 5AM every morning.

And yet... when I had to juggle college, internet marketing, dating multiple women in parallel, and a 20 hour per week day job all at the same time... I got the most out of every day. I completed school assignments at least a week before they were due -- usually the day they were assigned.

I went to sleep before 10AM 10PM and woke up around 5AM to knock a few things out during the quiet hours of the morning.  I used a calendar, an autoresponder, voicemail, all that good stuff... because I had to.

Now It's Your Turn...

There simply isn't any reason to setup a test site of any kind.  Your time every day, your time every year and your time alive is limited.  So I want to get your over your hurdles.  So here's the deal with you leaving a comment...

• Option #1: "I'm Better Now." Tell me what you did to get out of the sandbox.  When did you stop creating test sites and started making real sites?  What got you to do it?
• Option #2: "Still in the Sandbox." Are you still convinced you need to create test sites instead of real sites?  Tell me why and I'll talk you out of it.

I'm really looking forward to your comments... this is a real personal subject for me... so leave a comment below and let me have it!

Check this out... you can now paste your GoToWebinar invitation link into Action Comments!

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Awesome new feature!

I own almost everything you produce Robert. I love the ability to be able to automatically add people to my list.

J.R. Jackson, JRJackson.com

Super Robert,

That's pretty innovative man. You're a brilliant marketer.

Jason Parker, ProIMer.com

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