Robert Plank

Finally, in 2008, I decided to quit my day job.  I haven't quit yet because there are a few things I need to do, but I answered Eric Holmlund's day job quitting questionaire, and in the Daily Seminar I've already scheduled a video explaining the way I determined scientifically when I should quit my job.

Now on to the questions... you should answer these questions too, if you need to know if it's time to quit yet!

1) Is your job hurting you?
No, actually it includes a training budget which has beefed up my resume and is giving me the initial 3-5 years of experience I'll need if I fail and need to get another job.

2) Do you have a vision and a solid plan for your business?
Definitely.  I won't go into detail but I have a few high ticket items and webinars mapped out.

3) Do you already have a written goal for quitting your job?
Yes.  I'll be out after March 2009, but before the end of June 2009.  I want to have $60K in savings by then but even $30K will work.

4) Are you committed to the business? (Required)
The past five years would say so!  I have been working on my business during my lunch break at work, after work, and every day on weekends.  My girlfriend helps motivate me, and my accountability partner motivates me.

5) What do you have to lose? (If you have little or nothing to lose, it’s a good time to quit)
Not much to lose.  It might be tough to get re-hired somewhere else.  I could lose my house but I have savings. Worst case scenario, I could sell off some resale rights.  Worst-worst-case scenario, I could freelance to get some quick money.

6) How long will your savings last?
With my current lifestyle: 6 months.  If I cut everything down to the bone, 8 months.  So right now I could last till June 2009 or August 2009... just that fact alone makes it seem STUPID to keep working.

7) How much income is your business bringing in?
Last year, just over $100,000.  My monthly expenses are under $4000, so I am making more than double what I need every month.

*Quit your job and go full time at the point where your business is bringing in the minimum that you need to make ends meet.

What are you willing to sacrifice?
I have no problem cutting back on the seminar travel or not going out as often.  I

9) Do you trust your gut? (And is it usually right?)
I trust it, and it's almost always right.

10) Will you dare to do what others only dream of?
Yes.  My day job makes me feel extremely isolated.  I want to hang out with friends more often, I want to get a laptop and hang out with my nephew before he grows up.

Can you do me a favor and answer any of these questions for yourself?  You don't need to answer every single question, just the one that's most important to you.

In the Daily Seminar membership site Jason and I launched yesterday, we're going to be opening up parts of our business that we don't like to give away for free...

Here is my long term business plan... otherwise known as a map of all my current upsells:

It's a slightly out of date map but you get the idea.

That chart tells me exactly what I need to work on next.

I update it regularly (using Visio) but I used to do the same thing with my whiteboard.

Each of those boxes represents a sales letter. When they try to order, the arrows represent the different upsells that I present to them. So they can either: yes, I want to order this package... or say, no, I want this bigger package, and get moved to the next box.

As you can see, the PHP in a Box, Full Blast PHP, and Guerilla PHP stuff is on the bottom. Three packages around $100, upselling into a $200 bundle and then up to a $300 bundle.

I've blurred out the stuff that's not released yet (most of it is very close to being released). Obviously it all points to a giant package in the middle that I will price at $1000.

The ovals represent surprise bonuses I still need to integrate into my products. I'm applying the Ben Prater Refund Reducing Formula on those as loyalty bonuses... autoresponder follow-ups timed a week or two after a purchase. I offer that bonus in exchange for a testimonial about the orignal product.

The dotted lines represent upsells that I haven't connected yet. If I was working and was in a copywriting mood, I should probably spend 30 minutes writing the 1 page sales letter that upsells Full Blast PHP into the PHP in a Box plus Full Blast PHP bundle.

The white boxes mean they are products without video. The red boxes mean those products do have video. Common sense tells me that if I am in product creation mode, I should finish up the videos for Simple PHP 1, 2, and 3.

Because THAT means I can upsell visitors to a $100 product, upsell those to a $200 product and finally a $300 product just by writing a couple more pages of sales copy.

If a box has an "F" letter it means I am satisfied with the number of automatic followups that buyers of that product receive. When I am in followup creation mode I take one quick look at this chart and work on followups for a box missing an "F."

If a box has a "T" it means I'm satisfied with the number of testimonials for that product. If I feel a product is lacking in testimonials I can blast a quick mailing to my sublist for that product, check my old threads or blog comments to canniblalize into testimonials. Maybe even single out some of my active buyers and interview them over e-mail, and turn that into a testimonial.

I teach in Fast Food Copywriting that the only reason you are after testimonials is for proof. You don't need testimonials to sell a product, only to give proof.

Each box also has a bount of the number of scripts, price, video running time, and download size so that I can easily total them up in any bundle to give a "thud" factor -- when I say a product has 2 gigabytes of content, people say, "Wow!"

Reminder: Daily Seminar still has seats available!

Although Dr. Mike Woo-Ming wasn't the nicest guy at the Warrior Event in Austin, he did have a lot of really good information.

He gave me a really cool AdWords idea: Instead of blindly bidding on a keyword, he chose the top ten sites in the Google search results for that keyword, then placed AdWords ads and limited them to appear on AdSense ads for those pages that appeared in the top 10.

Not just those domains... those exact pages.

At the end of his talk, Mike said, "I don't do memberships... I do continuity."  He didn't explain himself and I had to ask him about it during the hotseat Q&A session on the final day.

Here's the explanation: Running a membership site is too much work.  If you don't provide new content to a membership site every couple of days, people will complain and unsubscribe.  If you want a recurring income you can still promote membership sites... as an affiliate.  Don't be responsible for the membership content.

Before coming to the event, I was against starting a membership site.  During the event I was ready to start my own membership... but that little bit talked me out of it.

Now, I'm back in!  Why?

Jason and I have enough content.  (I don't think I could start a membership site on my own.)  We have a huge stockpile of content ready to go, we got a lot of practice pumping out products quickly from our Product University class.

Look at that, 16 live posts and 80 scheduled posts... for a total of nearly 100 posts!  I am finishing up March 2009 this week.  That's the only way to do it... knock out one month completely, knock out the next month completely...

Our original plan was to kill ourselves and spend 1 week out of every month recording 25-ish interviews.  That would have been stupid and would have burned up our content too fast.

Instead, we scheduled the interviews once per week. To fill out the rest of the week, Jason and I each recorded some 20-minute videos on our own.  (When making the bonus materials for Product University we got a lot of practice pumping out 20-minute video products quickly.)

So, our formula consists of: Monday, a video by me... Tuesday, a video by Jason, Wednesday, one of our interviews converted into video... Thursday, some product we had secured the rights to... Friday, a question and answer session... and if we still had stuff to give, we'd fill up Saturday and Sunday too.

Why not join to see for yourself how we structured it?

We've filled up every single day of the month so far.  Since it's all scheduled several months ahead of time, all we REALLY have to do is answer blog comments.  We've had a couple minutes every day to fill up a Saturday or Sunday slot too.

We also know the demand exists. Our own product creaton low ticket items sold well.  Our high ticket items sold well.  Now it's time for the next step (recurring).

One last thing.  You don't have to kill yourself when you make a membership site.  Just figure out a way to schedule content to get released most days of the week (like on a blog).

We almost killed ourselves trying to come up with content the first time around.  When we did the Product University class, we hosted TWO webinars per week when one would have been fine.

Heck, how much PLR or MRR content is sitting on your hard drive? Could you assemble some of that into a membership site?

Or maybe you just freelance.  If you are a successful freelancer you know that your best business comes from repeat clients... so why not get them in a membership site?  If you're a writer, guarantee a certain number of articles per month.  If you're a copywriter, guarantee a number of autoresponders, solo ads, or sales letters per month.  And so on.  Why go to all that trouble of begging for money every month?

Add ten comments to this blog post for the next big thing I changed this year!

During lunch at the Warrior Event in April, I was with the group at a really cool Mexican restaurant and I sat next to an attendee who was an NLP copywriter.

No, it wasn't Steven Schwartzman, actually I can't remember the guy's name.  He was new to the warriors but he really knew his stuff.  (He taught coaching in the dating and hypnosis niches).

I explained to him that one of the weakest points in my business system is joint ventures.  I am not a people person.  Even though I have a large buyers list and people like Eric Louviere said I was a really popular, I didn't believe him because I don't have any really good contacts.

Some of those people on my customer list include Allen Says, Paul Myers, Willie Crawford, Marlon Sanders, Marc Harty, Mike Filsaime, Armand Morin, Tony Blake, Ewen Chia, David Valleries, Dave Miz, Kevin Riley, Paul Kleinmeulman... I could go on.

I'm still a nobody because these guys are flooded with joint venture requests... I don't offer any high ticket, high commission, recurring, multi-tier products.  I still have a long way to go.

This NLP guy gave me a cool idea to start small... and that's to create joint products... but not in the usual way.

As Willie Crawford said in his talk about joint ventures at the seminar, you need to hand everything to them on a silver platter.

NLP guy's suggestion: Ask the joint venture "target" to ask his list for their best question about your topic... whatever topic you are an expert in.

Then, answer those questions and give it to that list owner as a product... that they have exclusive rights to... that ends in a call to action to buy YOUR product, with their affiliate link.

You could host a teleseminar or even just record a skype conversation where you discuss the answers.  Maybe cut them up and make a podcast.

Transcribe them so you have an autoresponder series.

That's how you create a joint product.

That's what Jason Fladlien and I did later this year after the Philadelphia JV Alert seminar in June.  We recorded a bunch of Skype interviews... and guess what... we'll be adding them to Daily Seminar every single week.

Have you created any joint products?  Do you have any joint product tips to share?

Stu McLaren (The Nicest Guy on the Internet) interviewed me live last night in between Jim Edwards and Joel Comm.  When he asked me what's the most signifcant change I made in 2008, the very first thing that came to mind, and therefore the thing I blurted out, was "automation."

If you can write a quick e-mail, or article, or blog post, chances are you can write 2 more really quick posts, even if they say nothing but, "Remember a few weeks ago when I said this?"   Then lead into the exact same call to action...

Answering Stu's question reminded me of when I was at the Warrior Event in Austin earlier this year, when I picked up a really great tip from Ron Capps -- the NicheProf!

We were talking about sending offers to your list and how we both sometimes send new offers to our list for old products.

Ron will send a mailing out to his list promoting a product,
then send the same offer out again in 90 days!

On average, he promotes the exact same offer 5 or 6 times (one time every ninety days) before it completely runs out of gas.

That is a freaking cool way of looking at mining gold from your list.

That's what our plan is with the Daily Seminar membership site... simply because of attrition.  I launched my first recurring membership site almost three years ago and it began with a big splash, but we didn't market it after that, and the membership slowly died off.

But you can do that with your one time products as well!

Two Products a Week?!

At one point many people on forums thought I was a machine -- that I pump out two products a week consistently. Not true. I just have so many products I created in the past year or so that it seems that way.

People forget. People don't read every single e-mail. People will look at your offer and save it for "later" ... which ends up being never.

In fact I promoted a product from 2001 (Software Secrets Exposed) ... all I did was I took an old product, slapped a dimesale onto it and told my list. $1200 in a day -- on a SUNDAY -- probably about an hour's worth of work total.

Nevermind the costs I put in, I'd already broke even on the resale rights from an earlier promo I did for that product.

The best thing was... because I had it on a timer... I didn't even do any work that day.

Your Mission (Should You Choose to Accept It)

Here's what I want you to do: The next time you send a mailing out to your list, write the mailing a second time and save it as a timed mailing to get sent out 90 days from now.

If you do that now, then just before Valentine's Day 2009, you'll get a nice little surprise bump in income!

It doesn't have to stop there. You know that 2001 product? Someone bought it and saw the 2001 copyright and asked how could the info still be relevant.

I responded with an e-mail explaining how 100% of the stuff in the book still applies today and how all the predictions Ben Prater made in 2001 are now true today.

After responding to that message, I worded it into a quick follow-up and added it to my autoresponder to go out SIX months later. Hit on an extra benefit in the follow-up that people missed or forgot about!

p.s. How's this for automation?  I wrote this blog post on April 24, 2008, when I was in a blog writing frenzy, and scheduled it for December 2008... so I wouldn't overload my readers.  It's only now being published 5 months later.  Just before it went live, I took about 60 seconds to make it current.  Best of both worlds.

Here's what we learned today:

1. Send the same offer to your list every 90 days.
2. You can promote the offer 5 to 6 times. (Over the course of 18 months.)
3. Have it on a timer so you don't have to worry about it.
4. If you can take the answer to a common fear and turn it into a sales message, do it!

Have you resurrected any dead offers successfully?  What about when you failed, how was that different?  Please leave a quick comment below.

In April 2008 I attended my very first real seminar.  We socialized at the bar every night (Thursday night through Sunday night) and one of those nights, starting drinking in a group of people that included Bruce Wedding -- copywriter!

Bruce is slightly ahead of where I'm at (he does $4000 copywriting jobs) and he spoke a little bit about how he has been trying advertorials.

An advertorial is exactly what it sounds like: an ad that teaches some kind of information.

I wrote a sales letter a couple of days after returning from the event and it was an advertorial. I wrote it like an action-packed article and it ended up being a 20 page sales letter.

If you know my PHP products, I sell a package of seven scripts... each script contains source code, PDF instructions, and a how-to video.

I was able to split the long sales letter into seven sub-letters. There was an overarching story throughout the whole thing, but each sub-product had its own story.

I registered seven extra domain names (each for its own script), put each sub-page as its sales letter, put up an order button and upsold it all to the main product.

Don't forget, I also wrote solo ads and setup affiliate programs for each product.

A lot of work, but there you have it... 8 products!

Tomorrow, Jason Fladlien and I are launching the Daily Seminar where we give advice about how we create products quickly, write sales letters quickly, sell without selling, and more stuff... we give advice every weekday!

Gimmie ten comments down below and I will share the next tip with you.

Guys, I'm launching a membership site next Monday (December 15th) at 10:00 AM PST.  Just wanted you to be aware.

2008 was my most important year in marketing.  I changed a heck of a lot of things and actually took my marketing seriously.

The first thing I changed: a longer stream of upsells.

I've only started using upsells this year.  An upsell is where you sell a low-ticket item for $27 and just as your visitor goes to order, you give them a choice to either pay the $27 or $97 for a higher ticket item.

Even better, get the $27 order first and on the thank you page, give people the choice between clicking over to the download or giving you the extra $70 for the full package.

Attending seminars made me realize how short sighted I was.  Many of the attendees sell products in the $600 range and upsell coaching packages all the way up to $10,000.

As soon as I arrived home from my 4 hour flight and 90 minute drive from the airport, I changed many of my upsells that went from $27 to $97... to upsells that went from $27 to $97... to $197... and finally to $250.

I would bump the upsell to $500 or more but Clickbank has my price limit set at $250.

Do you have an upsell for your product?  How many steps?

Please fill up this entry with ten comments so I can share the next big thing I changed this year...