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!

Get Action Comments »

That means your blog commenters can tick one checkbox under your comment form and get subscribed to your webinar.

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

Get Action Comments Here »

Traffic Bad Boys is a site Jason Fladlien and I launched during the first week of our PLR Copywriting class -- DURING the end of the first class.  It was pretty crazy, we showed our students how fast and easy it is to build a site consisting of private label rights material.

I don't usually read what other people say about me.  But I just read a bad review about Traffic Bad Boys, actually a bunch of bad reviews written by just one guy.  And I'm smiling and laughing about it.  You know why?  Because the only bad things he had to say about it were:

1. I was banned from YouTube, so I "must" be bad.  (Not a good assumption.)

2. Someone blogged about me a couple years ago calling me the next Mike Filsaime in a good way, that reviewer found it and tried to spin that as a bad thing.

3. The Traffic Bad Boys site contains master resale rights material, so it must be bad. (False... in the AM2.0 Platinum Google group full of $100K+ earners we recommend master resale rights products all the time.)

For that class, we took 7 products we had rights to, cut them up into pieces and dripped them out onto a membership site for 7 dollars a month.

The reviewer joined for one day, couldn't wait for the rest of the month or even the rest of the week, cancelled immediately and wrote a bad review about us... even though all he had to base it on was the first 20 pages of the material.

So What Does This All REALLY Mean?

It means you need a $7 product for two reasons: to get people on your list, and to get people OFF your list.

You can't always land a $97 or $497 or $997 sale immediately, you have to build trust.  Get them to say yes to something small and then build them up with upsells.

But when you price so low you're also attracting bad buyers... it's a fact of life.  When those people cancel, you can't take it personally, it's just part of the weeding out process.

You need to weed out those people complaining about having to pay an entire dollar for each product, complaining about having to wait for the rest of the material when they haven't even read what they already have.

(It would be stupid to put your best stuff into your free products and $7 products... save that for your high-end stuff.)

You can't pack the member's area with more stuff because then people will join and complain about being overwhelmed... been there, bought the t-shirt with the Daily Seminar membership.

The Solution!

If you're offering a $7 per month membership site, put $7 of content into it every month... no more, no less.  (That's exactly what we did.)  That sounds like common sense, but far too many people take bad customers personally and overcompensate.

If you were selling everything in that first month for a one time $7 payment, you would value-stack so that the information was already worth at least $50 or $100.  There's no need to further bloat that up to $200 or $300 of value every month just because it's recurring.

Your information and your advice needs to be expensive so people will take it seriously.  That's the real lesson you should take away from what happened with Traffic Bad Boys.

Do you find when you price higher you deal with better customers, yes or yes?  Leave me a comment below to share your thoughts with me.

$30K month is going very well, last night's launch of Time Management on Crack put me over the $26,000 mark. I've got two offers lined up for this week but I might only need one to push me over my goal.

This is what I've been doing the past week.  Product launch was just about automated, so I went on the "lecture circuit" to land a couple of joint ventures, have fun and add value.

Last night, Jeanette Cates interviewed me about time management... which was the perfect time to launch the time management report.  We shared a ton of tips with her subscribers and had fun.

You know what, a short time ago my sister sent me a job posting for a teaching position up in the mountains at a community college close to Yosemite National Park.  More money than I make at my current day job and less hours.  No master's degree or teaching credential required, just a bachelor's degree which I have.

Here's what I would have done if I was laid off from my current job and really needed that job: I'd implement stuff from Time Management on Crack!   It's not what you think: let me explain...

I would look at the exact job description and do a search for resumes plus some of those descriptions to see how people were customizing their resumes to fit that kind of job... measuring marketplace demand!

I'd use my copywriting skills, especially the A.N.S.W.E.R. formula explained in the time management report to draft one heck of a benefit-oriented cover letter that showed my personality, presented an irresistible offer and gave a clear call-to-action (call me up and tell me I'm hired).

Finally, and I wouldn't spend longer than an afternoon on this, I would take 30 minutes to find a handful of pain points based on the subject they wanted me to teach (I think it was PHP programming).  I'd find the things community college students have the toughest time learning about PHP.

Then I'd use my 5x10 video creation formula to solve those problems and make a DVD demonstrating PROOF that I know what I'm talking about, with the URL embedded in the three ways I explain to have a call-to-action in video.

I know a lot of places only accept online resumes these days, so I might have to settle for making it web video and adding the URL in the cover letter and resume.

I'd send that out, and if I ever felt like I had nothing to do while "waiting" for a response, I would put those videos on a blog at the same URL I provided in the resume, stick the videos on there, and use the R.A.T.G.U.M. blogging formula to whip out a bunch of blog posts in an hour... even more proof.

Worst case scenario, not hired.  Then I have to be willing to relocate a little bit.  I'd go to job sites like Monster.com and apply for similar positions and have a kickass web site to show that will stand out better than 95% of the other applicants.

Regardless if I was hired or not, how hard would it be to turn that proof into a product?  Surely I must have come across a few gotchas, do's and don'ts... I could turn my job posting process into a system, turn the cover letter and videos into templates and give a step-by-step of what I did EXACTLY.

How hard would it be to create a product like that, if you already DID anything in it? It would be tough to keep it under 20 pages... real tough.

Anyway, copywriter Karl Barndt is interviewing me tonight about e-mail marketing for his blog, that'll be a lot of fun.  In the meantime check out Time Management on Crack if you haven't already.

For you commenters, the question of the day is: if it was an emergency and you absolutely HAD to get a day job... what internet marketing skill would you use to make yourself irreplacable?  I need 10 comments to keep this party going... thanks.

My question to you today is: What's your goal for next month, as in how much money do you plan on making?

Is it consistent with your previous months?

In 2008 I logged several $10,000 months and several $15,000 months. But I've only broken above the $20K per month glass ceiling once or twice... so when we were in Hawaii, I said to Jason, "Let's make sure that in February 2009, we both make at least $30,000 profit that month."

Do you think I'll fail or do you think I'll succeed?

I don't want to reveal too much, but here's what my personal plan is:

• Co-host two e-classes, one at the beginning and one at the end of that month.
• Launch one new product per week.
• Launch one new resale rights offer per week.
• Re-launch one existing product per week.

I've never been that great at pay-per-click, joint ventures, recruiting affiliates or any of that good stuff, so the above plan will have to do.

I already have product #1 for the month finished, now I'm busting my butt to get a bunch of trivial stuff out of the way, so it dosen't take up my time during the $30K Month.  Here's what I have to get out of the way in the next 48 hours:

• Record the rest of my weekly Daily Seminar videos... through the end of December 2009.  (I only have content scheduled up to September 2009).
• Solve all the issues people are having with Action PopUp conflicting with other plugins. (Don't want to be overwhelmed with customer support next month.)
• Get Daily Seminar listed for sale on SitePoint. (I don't want to have to wait until March to put it up for sale.)

So, will I meet my goal?  $30k per month is just $1071 per day.  What is your goal for next month?  Comment below and please be honest.  No one will make fun of you if it's only $3k or $1k or $300...