Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes

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!

Reading time: 5 - 8 minutes

This is something I was thinking about presenting at my next live seminar but I'll share it with you here anyway...

It's something that most people who teach "productivity" leave out, and I see marketers FORGETTING this over and over again, even though they should know better.

This is "supposed" to be a programming concept but when I worked with other programmers, almost none of them knew about this, let alone implemented it...

It's Keeping Your Stuff SHIPPABLE!

I'll explain.  Think about the order you see items (as a buyer) in a "fully optimized" sales letter...

1. Free article or video you post to recruit affiliates
2. E-mail ad sent by an affiliate
3. Affiliate link you click on
4. Squeeze page
5. Pre-sell e-mails
6. Sales letter
7. Checkout page
8. Upsell page
9. Download page
10. Surprise bonus
11. Second upsell
12. Post-sale follow-ups

The thing is, if you actually complete these steps in order -- you'll almost NEVER finish!  Every time I've tried completing these steps in "order" ... I've never finished.

Imagine That, Someone Like Me Not Finishing Something!

That's because you have to get all the way to step #6 to even write the sales letter... and to #9 to even create a product!  You've run out of gas before you even created the product.  What in that list could you do without, if you really really had to?  I'll tell you right now:

1. Free article
2. Solo e-mail ad
3. Affiliate program
   
4. Squeeze page
5. Pre-sell e-mails
6. Sales letter
7. Checkout page
8. Upsell page
9. Download page
10. Surprise bonus
11. Second upsell
12. Post-sale follow-ups

All you need is the sales letter, payment button, and download page to deliver the product.  If you wanted to quit at that point, you could.  I have.

Finish your product and have the sales letter and download page COMPLETELY ready to go before you do any sort of pre-launch, webinar pitching, affiliate promos, or anything for that product.  If you think that's too much to ask... then make it version 1.0 of your product.

You Can Always Go Back and Improve It Once You Have the Bare Essentials Out of the Way!

This is the exact order I setup this 12-step sales process:

1. Download page
2. Checkout page
3. Sales letter
4. Upsell page
5. Affiliate link
6. E-mail ad
7. Free article
8. Squeeze page
9. Pre-sell e-mails
10. Second upsell
11. Post-sale follow-ups
12. Surprise bonus

You can literally stop at any point along this path.  If you only create the product, then it's a bonus to another of your products.  If all you have is a payment button... guess what, I have sold products without a sales letter -- just from a webinar.

If you have steps 1 thru 3 finished, then you have a regular sales process.

Anything After That is Just Extra!

Is an affiliate program or an upsell something that will boost your sales?  Definitely.  But you need to create the bare minimum shippable product FIRST, I'm telling you!

This also applies to your whole product line, not just the funnel for one product.  Maybe you have heard this nonsense about what "they" tell you your product line should look like...

1. Report
2. E-Book
3. Video
4. CD
5. DVD
6. Teleseminar
7. Webinar
8. Seminar
9. Personal Coaching
10. "Done For You" (aka Glorified Freelancing)

Do you need to have all of this stuff setup before you launch anything?  Of course not.  My business thrived for years only selling reports and videos.  I've been presenting with webinars since 2008.  I've co-hosted two seminars in the past year but there's too much overhead with those.

All You Really Need is Just ONE THING in That List!

Preferably a report, e-book, video, or webinar.

There is absolutely no shame in writing short reports.  A year ago I wrote a report called "E-Mail Marketing on Crack" in one afternoon and made $2,000 on the front-end and $2,000 later selling resale rights licenses.

On another day, I ran 13 hours of webinars... and at the end of the day I was so excited, that I immediately outlined my "16 Copybombs" video, and recorded 2 hours of videos in one take... which brought me 225 sales at 7 dollars ($1,575).

Both of those products are sold with the worst sales letters I have even written.  I can't even tell you how they convert since I never setup split testing.  I don't have affiliates.

$4,000 and $1,575 from a couple of hours is better than $0 from a couple of hours, right?

One Last Thing...

I wrote AND SCHEDULED this blog post for several days in the future, before mailing for it or even announcing it.  Because if I wrote the blog post and then didn't feel like sending the pre-launch e-mails, I could launch the blog post as is.

Question: Do you operate under an almost paranoid "I'm completing the steps in an order where I can quit whenever I want to?"  Because that's how I roll.  If you disagree with this, is it because you don't know, or do you just think I'm a total idiot?

Looking forward to your comments below...

Reading time: 3 - 5 minutes

I just came back from the 2nd Warrior Event in Raleigh, North Carolina where I was a speaker.

Speaking of webinars and seminars, remember the "Which Test Won" game we played on the webinar a few days ago?  I showed you how:

• What converts BETTER than a squeeze page giving a free gift?  One of my $7 reports selling almost the exact same thing!
• Removing three words from a headline TRIPLED conversion rates -- an EXTRA $625 from every 500-something clicks
• Adding a small logo to another sales letter boosted conversions from 1.99% to 3.57% -- an EXTRA $846 from every 1000 clicks

When you split test you make those small tweaks.  But if you don't even have a product of your own, or a sales letter, then it's impossible to split test those pay raises!

Here's Something Crazy...

When I was on stage at the warrior event, I asked this question...

"Who here has an autoresponder, like Aweber?"
Almost everyone raised their hand.

Then I asked: "Who knows what a squeeze page is?"
Very few people (under 30 percent) raised their hand.

I didn't even ask who had a squeeze page, just who knew what one was.

Are you kidding me? Take your existing sales letter template, stick in a headline offering a free gift, three bullet points, big red arrow, testimonial, and opt-in box on a page...

That Would Take You a Few Minutes to Setup!

Another question I asked the crowd: "Who here has Camtasia screen capture software?"

Very close to 100 percent raised their hand.  But very few even had a product.

I asked the same question when I co-hosted an all day workshop in Orlando, Florida back in March.  Again, the response to "who has an information product" was under half.

We confirmed this on our latest webinar as well.  When we asked...

"Who Has An Information Product?"
44 Percent of People Said, ZERO!

It's so easy... even if they hadn't created a product... just buying PLR rights to something and putting it online would have counted.

What's really cool is that half of people who had a product... had FIVE or more.  Once you create one product, it's addicting, fun, and profitable.

If you have the fastest computer, best software and most helpful training tools... but you haven't done anything yet, what does it matter?  A product isn't a product unless you launch it.

Before you think about doing those split tests, running those PPC ads, or even creating that membership site... TEST the market first.

• The best way to create a product: find a hungry market, solve a problem with a 7-dollar quick fix by recording a 60-minute screen capture video, then create upsells later
• The best way to create a buyer's e-mail list: capture an opt-in after the sale and sell as many copies of that low-ticket offer as you can, even if it costs you $1 per conversion
• The best way to keep that e-mail list growing: create a squeeze page offering a free gift, that redirects to your sales letter and follows up 10 times, once a day, pitching them your offer

What would it take for you to create a video product, or put a private label rights product up for sale to test the market?

Have You Done It Yet?

What would it take for you to overcome the fear and procrastination so you can be seen as "the guy who wrote the book?"  In other words, be the freaking EXPERT in your niche?

What ONE LITTLE ACTION could you do within the next 30 minutes (after leaving a blog comment) to get you pushed in the right direction?

I'm looking forward to your thoughts below.

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Funny quick story to tell you about today. I launched my 16 Copybombs report on autopilot over the weekend... I actually put it together back in early June but my autoresponder was filled with blog posts and e-mails about Product University 2.0 at the time, so I had to schedule it.

Long story short, I messed up the download link and when I checked my e-mail today (Monday -- I never check e-mail on weekends) to find literally over 100 e-mails from my buyers asking where the file was.  Some of them e-mailed me 2 or 3 times about it.

Replying to 100 people, sounds like something that might take all day or even all week, right?  Wrong... when you're Robert Plank it takes 20 minutes.

Because I have a separate autoresponder list for each product, and I automatically capture my PayPal payments to those lists, I blasted the corrected link to that list... but I still needed to reply to those 100 messages to make sure everyone got the new link.

As you know I use Gmail and I use it PROPERLY.  Get an e-mail, either respond to it or not, and then either Archive or Delete it. Delete means you'll never need that message again.  Archive means you can get back to it by clicking "All Mail" or searching for it, but it's out of your Inbox now.

My second secret weapon is the "Send & Archive" button in Gmail. You can install this by going to Gmail Labs -- there's a green beaker icon in the top right corner where you can add experimental features to Gmail.  Hit Ctrl+F to search the page and type "archive" and you'll be brought right to it.

Enable the app and now when you reply to a message, you can hit "Send and Archive" which will send you response to that person and then archive the message.  When that person replies to you, it'll show their conversation in the thread, but for now, it's out of your inbox.

That's how I responded to 100 e-mails in under 20 minutes.  First I checked the boxes for the e-mails I didn't need to reply to, like notifications of payments and so on.  Hint: You can tick one checkbox, hold down the Shift key, tick a checkbox 10 messages down, and all the checkboxes in between will be checked.  Very powerful.

After clearing out the messages I didn't need, I opened the first e-mail complaining about no download link.  I typed a quick response, copied it to the clipboard, then did a Send and Archive.  From that point on, it took me about 5 seconds to skim each e-mail and 5 seconds to paste and do a Send-Archive.

If you need to send a bunch of messages fast, that's the way to do it:

1. Clear out the messages you don't need (Shift-click checkboxes then Delete)
2. Copy and paste the message you need to repeat.
3. Send-Archive each message.

I customized a couple of the responses which is why it took me a whole 20 minutes to reply to 100 people.

I have a whole section on e-mail productivity in my 100 Timesavers product if you're interested.  (I know you are.)

What's your best e-mail productivity tip?  Leave me a comment telling me below...

Reading time: 1 - 2 minutes

As soon as I started putting my goals down, I got a lot more productive.  I'm not saying you need to plan the rest of your life out or anything, but you need to know where you're headed... so you know what needs to come next.

List last year (2008), this year (2009), 2010, 2011 and 2012.  Next to each year, write what you'll have accomplished during that year.  Write each thing in the present tense, as if you've already done it.

I'll go first...

2008: I bought my first house.  Attended my first few seminars.  Co-hosted 2 e-classes. (DONE!)

2009: I quit my day job and visited Orlando, Dallas, Austin, Iowa City, San Diego, Chicago, and Buffalo.  Had my first several $30K months, sold a membership site for $32K.  (DONE!) Haven't done this part yet: setup 20 recurring membership sites by year-end.

2010: Paid off 50% my mortgage and had my first $50K month.  Sold at least ten copies of a $1997 package from the stage.

2011: Paid off my mortgage.

2012: Own at least one million dollars in cash and assets.

Now it's your turn.  List each year from 2008 to 2012 and list what you have (or have yet to accomplish) each in the present tense.

I look forward to your comment below...

Reading time: 1 - 2 minutes

1. Do you have your autoresponder broadcasts every day for the rest of the week already scheduled?

2. Every time you mail out to your list, do you archive it as a followup so new subscribers get it as well?

3. When you broadcast to your list, do you schedule a similar mailing 90 days from now?

4. Is your web hosting, mortgage, autoresponder, and all other bills possible setup on autopay?

5. Do you have at least 10 blog posts scheduled in advance, even if it's only one per month?

6. Do you have autoresponder broadcasts scheduled to send traffic to those blog posts?

7. Does at least one of your autoresponder sublists contain 10 followups or more?

Do me a favor.  Answer each of these 7 questions with a yes or no, as a comment below.  (Hey that rhymed!)  Then tell me which of your "no's" you will correct within the next 24 hours.

I need 10 comments to keep this party going...

Reading time: 1 - 2 minutes

Nothing for sale today.  If you're on my list you saw the PLR Copywriting 4-week e-course Jason and I are running.

I'm going to give you a peek at what happened inside the member's area at the end of the first class, just so you can see what happens when you combine proven step-by-step solutions with CHALLENGES (instead of homework) with accountability... the productivity level reaches a kind of critical mass:

Question: What was your favorite webinar series and why? What would you want to see on the inside if I offered a HUGE webinar course for you guys?  Answer in the form of a blog comment below.  I appreciate it.

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

I wrote a little bit this past weekend.  I got so excited about the talk I'm going to give at the Action Seminar on MAY 29th (not April... I'm such a dork) about balancing your day job with internet marketing and manufacturing your next video product line... that I updated my Time Management on Crack report.

It would be bragging to tell you Jeanette Cates, Marlon Sanders, Mike Paetzold, David Deutsch, David Risley... plus 494 other smart people paid me money to get access to the information in that package.  (My high school graduating class was smaller than that!)  Did they invest to get access to my four levels of productivity, or to get access to my 13 unique systems for writing articles, making videos, writing sales letters, creating products and getting traffic?

Maybe they joined for the bonuses like the video that showed me writing a sales letter in one hour with no edits, or the bonus video that explained 17 additional "Motivationality" milestones, or even the bonus BONUS 90-minute "Take Massive Action" webinar recording... who knows?

Whatever the reason, I've edited the book to add 10 additional procedures on everything from screen capture video recording, article videos, talking head flip camera videos, webinar production, getting a virtual assistant, building your "brand" including a USP and a blog... the stuff that you not only need to know, but repeat enough so that it's INTUITIVE so that in the future all you really need to do is flip to that page and follow the step-by-step procedure to accomplish that task.

The book was 10,000 words long.  I went in and removed about 3,000 words, then wrote 13,000 more words to cover all 23 procedures.  Now it's exactly 20,000 words... not 19,997 or 20,003... twenty thousand words, I guess I'm weird like that.

Big Problem: I haven't released it yet.  I need 10 honest reviews I can use before I release it to you guys (people who already bought get the update for free since I provide 750 days of updates).  And then version 2.0 is yours.

If you haven't bought Time Management on Crack yet, get it.  If you have it, please leave a comment below telling me:

1. What one thing is taught you about time management that you didn't already know.
2. What is reminded you about time management that you knew but forgot.
3. What you're going to do in the next 7 days now that you have this information.
4. Your name, your URL, and your picture.

Comment below with those 4 items, list it in that numbered format so I know you hit on all four elements, and answer questions 1-3 in complete sentences (you only need one or two sentences).  Once I get that from ten of you, everyone who bought will get the updated report.

On your mark, get set, GO!!!

Reading time: 4 - 6 minutes

When I was working at a day job, I probably only had 1 to 3 hours to put into my business each day, so I crammed in whatever I could every day.

Now that I have a lot more time to put into this, I categorize each day of the week to PRIMARILY complete a certain task... I picked up this tip years ago from a report written by Willie Crawford.

Here is what I do during the week. I'm always improving my systems so you won't always see this formula but here is what I plan for...

Monday: Writing Day. Write all e-mails to be sent out the rest of the week.  I tend to launch (or relaunch) one new product a week, so all I need to do is think about four things to mention about what I'm launching (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and write those as four quick e-mails.

E-mail marketing is always quantity over quality anyway, so why not send short and to-the-point e-mails that blend content and sales (which makes it okay to end each daily tip with a pitch).  If I'm feeling nice, I might hit them four days of the week with regular e-mails and then a blog post on the fifth day.

But the point is, I get all my e-mails queued up one day so I don't have to worry about sending e-mails the rest of the week.

Tuesday: Customer Service Day. Here is where I knock out all the refund requests, lost download links, and so on.  I answer customer service a little bit each day but I get so much, if I answered customer service first thing every day, I wouldn't get anything done.

Right now, the majority of my support requests come from Action PopUp, which is silly because if people read the instructions and tried things like disabling other plugins temporarily, making sure all files were uploaded, and testing the plugin on the default theme, it would eliminate 90% of all problems.

But people still need my help and I'm happy to help them.  Tuesday is where I clear out customer support so that I'm about 24 hours behind instead of my usual average of 3 days.

Wednesday: Webinar with Jason. Without webinars, Jason and I could not have had several back to back $30K months.  I'll be honest, our latest webinar didn't sell out as well as I thought as it would and I fell to $21,000 in April. But I've still made roughly $110K in the first four months of 2009.

We run the rolling four week webinar model. We have a big launch and create a four week e-class on a topic... anything from video selling to product creation... have a 90-minute webinar once a week and fill in stuff in a private blog in between.  At the end of week number four, we sell them on the NEXT four week webinar.

It's a great model and I can actually get customers to do things they wouldn't do if they bought a stupid e-book from me.  During the day I add content to that blog for the week, then at night I co-host the webinar.  Right now we're smack dab in the middle of Webinar Crusher.

Thursday: Webinar with Lance. Since the April dip I decided to get a second e-class going to target a whole other crowd of buyers... Lance's new-school low ticket buyers who appreciate a good funnel.  Same rolling four-week model.  Right now we're hosting the Blog Invasion System.

Friday: Product Creation Day. I keep pushing so that if I want to create a product, I do it in a day... or at least a weekend.  On Friday I'll either write a report, or knock out a bunch of PHP scripts or WordPress plugins.  If I'm on a roll this will usually carry over into the weekend.

The weekend is usually a mix, but I definitely ignore most e-mails until the weekend is over.  I definitely spend a lot of time away from the compuer on the weekends but I make sure to put at least 5-10 minutes in.

There you have it, my day-to-day system...

• Monday: Writing Day
• Tuesday: Customer Service Day
• Wednesday: Jason Webinar
• Thursday: Lance Webinar
• Friday: Product Creation Day

What's your daily system?  Do you even have one?  If not, post a comment below and make one up.  I need 11 comments and 11 tweets to this post if you want me to keep adding to this blog...