Archive for June, 2010
12 Can’t Miss Rules of Highly Effective Membership Sites
I don't care what niche your membership site is in, what software is running the membership site or even how big the membership is, you should be following all of these 12 rules of membership sites.
Rule #1: Autoresponder Reminders
Whether your membership site is filled with audio clips, videos, articles, or even PDFs or software, you simply cannot expect your members to always remember to log into your site everyday or every week. Set up some kind of autoresponder reminder system so that if someone has been in your membership site for 7 days, then on the 7th day of your autoresponder, it reminds them and tells them to come back to the membership site.
Rule #2: Drip Content
Don't give everything in your membership site away at once. You should be giving your members something new every week if they are charged on a recurring basis, but even if they are charged one single time, it can't hurt to record a couple of extra bonus videos that are dripped out throughout the refund period.
This will reduce your refunds and complaints and also keep people from cancelling and rejoining your membership site at a later date.
Rule #3: Offer Extended or Bonus Trickle Training
One of the best ways to get your customer to love you is with surprised bonuses. That means if you are offering extra training, either in a recurring or one-time membership site, don't announce every single thing you're offering them. Make at least a couple of the extra items be a pleasant surprise.
Rule #4: Stick to One Niche
I can't tell you how many membership sites I have joined that either ran out of ideas, go off-topic or just don't have anything interesting to say in their membership. Have a clear point to your membership site. Is your membership site about weight loss, real estate, copywriting? Whatever it is, make it totally clear what your members are buying into.
Rule #5: Cut Off Access For Non-Payment
If you joined a gym membership and didn't pay, you would no longer be allowed to access that gym's facilities, right? If you stopped paying your cable bill, you would no longer be able to watch TV. The same is true with your membership site. People are paying for access to your training and your content and if they are no longer paying, they should no longer have access.
Rule #6: Deliver Your Training Step By Step
You really do need to not only keep your training simple but offer a clear outcome. The easiest way to do this while also appearing as the best authority on your subject is to set up your training in a step-by-step fashion.
For example, if you are teaching a course about blogging, the first set of training should be about how to set up that blog and then should gradually go into how to create the content. That way, if someone is already somewhat experienced with blogging, they will get caught up, but the new members will not be left in the cold.
Rule #7: Remove The Word "Or" From Your Training
When your members are learning something new from you, no matter what the subject is, it's tough enough to figure it out just by following your step-by-step progress. Don't make it any more complicated than it has to be by sticking the word "or" in there. If you're teaching blogging, teach WordPress blogging, not WordPress or movable-type or pMachine. Whatever the subject is, remove as many choices as possible and teach people to do things the way you do them.
Rule #8: Create Multiple Levels of Your Membership Site
The great thing about membership site software is that you don't have to have a lot of different memberships set up. If you want to offer multiple products in the same site, you offer different membership levels.
People buy the beginner's blogger WordPress level and then later on, buy the advanced blogger WordPress level and be in the same membership site but get access to a new set of content. If you come out with advanced bloggers version 2.0, you can add those posts in layer and use the same membership site to host it all.
In addition, if you want to run a special promotion or give a certain group of people a bonus that only they can get, all you have to do is make a new membership level. You don't have to make a brand new membership site.
Rule #9: Set It Up Quickly
Way too many people spend 6 months or longer working on their content to try to make their membership the best it can possibly be, but the problem with this is that you are not spending your time on things that might make you money and your membership itself might not even be something people want. You need to set up your membership site as quickly as possible and then course-correct once people join.
That leads me to...
Rule #10: Only Be Ahead Of Your Last Subscriber
Like I said, you might be creating a bunch of content for nothing. It's also more important to have a lot of paying members in your site than to have a lot of content. You might have 6 months of content that nobody wants, but if you have one month of content that a lot of people want, you can justify the extra time you're spending and create more of that same content.
Rule #11: Avoid Lifetime Buyouts
You created your membership site, especially if it's a recurring one to get yourself a lot of easy automatic monthly income, right? Then why would you throw it all away by offering a lifetime buyout option?
This is where members can, instead of paying a monthly fee, pay you one single fee and get the entire membership content at once, even if it's 6 months, a year or longer.
Not only does this kill your monthly income, it trains your subscribers not to pay you on a monthly basis, plus it is going to overwhelm them getting all the information at once.
And the final rule of setting up highly effective membership sites is..
Rule #12: Set An End Date
Unless you have tons of content, you won't necessarily be excited about your membership site in 6 months or a year from now. For that reason, why would you want to keep your membership site going forever and ever? Unless you are 100% sure you are still going to be excited about maintaining this membership site in 1, 2, or even 3 years, set at end-date for your membership sites.
I prefer 6 months (sometimes 8) because that gives me long enough time to say everything I want to say even at the advanced level but it doesn't give me too much to handle.
And I know that if I have even more to say, I can see how this first six-month membership site works out and then create a second membership site.
And those were the 12 can't miss rules of highly effective membership sites.
Which one did you like the best and how soon are you going to apply it to your existing or current membership site? Leave a comment below explaining yourself.
How To Get More Comments On Your Next Blog Post… And Every Single One After That
When you add new content to your blog, you need to have more social proof. You can't have one of those sad little blogs where most of the posts have zero comments. You need comments on your posts - and lots of them!
Why is it that I get way more comments than your blog does?
It is because I have experimented with different things that DON'T work, and things that DO work. But lucky for you, I am only going to share with you strategies that get you more comments on your blog with very little effort.
Comments On Other People's Blogs
What if once per day, before you did anything else that day, you spent just three minutes going to one person who has previously left a comment on your blog, clicking into their blog, and leaving a fast response under their most recent entry?
That means that just a few minutes of work every day equals seven people per week who feel obligated to leave comments on YOUR blog.
Just remember, you get what you give! If you leave a "Me too" comment on their blog, expect a "Me too" comment back. However, if you add a short and simple response that contributes and adds to the conversation, you can expect those people to do the same.
What's great about this strategy is you can keep returning the favor over and over, when other people leave you a blog comment, and phase out the people who don't.
The result is a very strong inner circle of people who you can count on to comment on your blog.
Email Your List Telling Them To Comment
Here is a much easier way to get traffic to your blog and get them to comment. Send an email message to your list, telling them to go right now and leave a comment.
This does not have to be a long email, and you don't have to copy and paste the blog post into that email. In fact it is better if you simply send a short message saying, "I left a blog post. Go here and comment right now." And link directly to your individual blog post.
Comment Record With The "Get Recent Comments" Plugin
With WordPress you can add different modules, or widgets, to your sidebar, including one that lists the recent comments. However, the built-in "Recent Comments" plugin for WordPress doesn't say much, it only makes a list of the recent names of people who have commented on your blog.
However, the "Get Recent Comments" plugin, which is an additional plugin for WordPress, will list everyone on your sidebar who has commented recently. It will show their name and the first part of their comment. That means if someone is returning to your blog, they can see what new comments have appeared since their last visit, and click directly on one and reply to it.
This makes it easy for people to remain in the conversation, especially people are leaving comments across multiple posts.
Comment Scarcity With The "Call To Action" Plugin
I have a special Call to Action plugin that will not only add a simple arrow underneath your blog post pointing to the comment forum, it will display a message telling people to comment.
And you can optionally close comments after a certain number of comments or quota has been met. You could say that you are only allowing ten comments per post. After that post has ten comments, it is now closed up and no longer accepting new blog comments.
Comment Follow-Up With "Subscribe To Comments"
One of my Top 5 all-time favorite WordPress plugins is the "Subscribe to Comments" plugin. What this plugin does is it adds a checkbox to the comment form. If someone leaves a comment and this box is checked, WordPress will send them an email every time a new comment has been placed on this post.
This means that if somebody leaves a comment on your blog on Monday and then someone comes back and comments on Wednesday, that original person can come back and respond because they received an email telling them there was a new comment.
Comment Bribe With "Action Comments"
I have a plugin called "Action Comments" which adds an additional checkbox to your comment form which allows people to get onto your auto responder list.
Think about it: when somebody leaves a comment on your blog, they are already typing their name and email address in order to identify themselves in that comment. However, by checking this additional checkbox, you can also subscribe them to your list.
Why would anyone want to get subscribed to your list, you ask? You can notify them of future blog posts AND you can create an opt-in bribe, such as an audio or a report containing your Top 5 blog posts, in one convenient location.
People are leaving a comment and they see a checkbox that asks if they would like to have a free bonus. They comment, they get their free bonus, and now they are on your list and can unsubscribe at any time.
But the beauty of this is that next time you have a blog post, when you email your list, that person who subscribed to your blog from leaving a comment, will be directed to leave their next comment.
And those are 6 incredible ways to get more comments on your blog posts: Comment on other blogs, mailing your list, using the "Get Recent Comments" plugin, using the "Call to Action" plugin, the "Subscribe to Comments" plugin and the "Action Comments" plugin.
Are you using any of these methods on your own blog? Are you missing any of them? (Which ones?)
Please post a comment below with your response.
Are You Using Psychic Search Yet? 10 Seconds To Install And You Will Never Run Out Of Good Blogging Ideas Again
Why is it that I never run out of things to say on my blog, in my sales letters, in my reports, and in my daily auto responder emails, while so many other marketers are out of business or have simply stopped updating their blog?
You can't think of 100% of your ideas in a vacuum. You need a source of inspiration - and what better source of inspiration than the people who are already reading your blog? That way you can be sure that the things you are writing about are the things they want.
So How Do You Figure Out What People Want?
I am not very trusting about survey results because people will tell me the things they WANT to know, but not the things they need. Those can be two separate items.
I will give you an example. Many people say they want to know about article writing. But what they are really looking for is the end result of that: traffic. Therefore they might be searching through my blog about ways to get traffic, but if I asked them what they wanted, they would say, "Articles."
It would be a much better idea to write a blog post about articles, but position it in a way that they get more traffic with those articles.
I don't trust survey results because people lie or they just don't know what they want. It is a much better idea to monitor what they are doing. And that is exactly what the Psychic Search plugin does. To find it, just do a Google search for "Psychic Search."
This is a WordPress plugin that keeps a log of every search someone has looked through your site with. If somebody goes to that search box in your sidebar and types in the word, "Articles," Psychic Search is going to make a note of that. If ten people came to your site last month and searched for "Articles," It is going to make a note of that too.
That means it groups all the searches together and you can see what terms have been searched the most.
The next time you feel Writer's Block, go to that Psychic Search tab in your WordPress Admin Dashboard and look at that list to get ideas.
What's great about this plugin is if you took it one step further and also listed "Searches without any results." If someone typed in the word, "Articles" and found seven blog posts by you, then great - they have probably found the answer to their question. But if they typed it in and got zero results, wouldn't you like to know that?
Psychic Search will give you a second group of search results that were people who typed in one thing but got no blog posts.
That Way You Know What Holes To Plug With Your Training!
And the final feature of Psychic Search is that they will store the searches people typed into Yahoo, Google, and MSN in order to find your site. If somebody searched "Article marketing" in Google and clicked on a blog post from Google, the plugin makes a note of that and therefore gives you even more ideas about what to write.
If you find yourself getting fifty or one hundred page views per month from a specific search result, it is a good idea to write more about that subject because you will get ranked even higher in the search engines.
And that is why I like the FREE Psychic Search plugin - because I don't trust people's direct answers, I can see everything someone has typed into my search box on my blog, I can see which of those searches had no results AND I can see what searches comes from the search engines.
What is your best tip to overcoming Writer's Block and maintaining a fresh stockpile of blogging ideas so that you can always write something new?
Let me know in a comment below.
Eating Your Own Dog Food: Make More Money, Reduce Refunds And Minimize Customer Support
In programming, there is a phrase called, "Eating Your Own Dog Food", which to my surprise almost no marketers know about it, almost no MBAs know about it, and almost no programmers know about this phrase. It is so important, not just in programming, but in writing, in real life, in presenting and in copywriting.
Here's What "Eating Your Own Dog Food" Really Means...
It means test your stuff!
When you think of dog food, it's not very appetizing is it? You probably would not eat it. But what if you had to? If you had to eat dog food, you might make it with better ingredients. You might make it with different ingredients so that it would taste better for you.
It is the same idea with your own websites and reports. If you were the one using your software programs, if you were the one using your blog or your membership site, what would you change to make it easier for you to find your own information?
Think about Microsoft Word. When you open up Microsoft Word, what is the first thing that happens? It automatically opens up a new blank document. You don't have to navigate to open up something new. By default, it guesses that you are going to write something brand new. It saves you a little bit of time every time you open up that word processor.
What about the iPod music player? I notice that sometimes when I am listening to my iPod or iPhone and I yank out the ear-phone jack, the music player will automatically mute itself. Back when I had a DiscMan, WalkMan, or tape recorder and I was listening to something through head-phones, and the head-phones were accidently disconnected, it would immediately switch to the speakers.
Nine times out of ten, I did not want it to broadcast out of the speakers. That's why when they created an iPod they added this extra feature so you would not accidentally broadcast your music.
It makes it much more convenient because if you are listening to something on your iPod or iPhone and you are done listening through the head-phones, simply unplug and it mutes itself.
I use this logic all the time in the real world. For example, back when I had a day job, I created a web page that submitted a form that took a while to load. People testing it noticed when students were waiting for this long form to load, they would click the submit button multiple times.
What I did was greyed out these submit buttons, so after they clicked it once, they could not click it again. You might see this in sites such as PayPal. When you click the pay button, you only want to pay once.
The best story of Eating Your Own Dog Food, which I am not sure is true, is from Michael Fortin. Apparently, Michael released some kind of VHS video tape about copywriting. He sold a thousand copies. Only one person asked for a refund. The person said that the video tape was blank. As it turned out a mistake was made and all 1000 video tapes were blank. Because no one had tested it, and none of the customers had even played the tape, nobody knew the tapes were blank.
How Do You "Eat Your Own Dog Food" in Your Business?
Do you have instruction manuals or software manuals? If you keep getting the same questions asked over and over, integrate those into your manuals. I have revised my manuals for products such as "PaySensor" and "Action PopUp" hundreds of times to the point where the first page gives people the quick-start guide.
Certain phrases people still miss, even with the written instructions. I have bolded, made them red, and increased the font just to cut down on the amount of customer support. On my blog, I have adjusted things such as moving the search box higher in the side bar. I've used plug-ins such as Psychic Search to figure out what people are looking for and what they aren't finding.
After I setup a membership site, I create a user-level account to see what my users see when they first join it. This is how I sometimes can catch that the category bar is missing, or that the site needs a search box, or that certain posts need to be stickied or moved to the top so people can easily find information, or even create special side bar widgets that give easy links so they can quickly navigate to different areas of the site.
Even if none of these options apply to you, read your own reports, your own articles, your own blog posts. You might notice that you are not giving a clear picture of what needs to be done. Maybe you need to add a step by step blueprint or checklist. If you follow along the different steps you are providing in your report, you are missing a crucial chapter.
For example, in one of my reports I talk about how to dictate a lot of articles and get them transcribed. I noticed going back weeks later using my own report, I missed the step about getting applicants who transcribe a job to take a test. I filled in that missing chapter.
This should be common sense. I still have to tell it to you: Eat Your Own Dog Food! Test your stuff.
Use Your Own Sites, And See How Your Front End Appears To People Who Are Trying To Find You!
If people are searching a certain phrase in Google to find you, what are they searching for? When people are on your sales letter and there is a video on that page, is it clear where the play button is? If someone goes through the check-out process of your site, is it clear how they can get their download? Do you have an email follow up sequence in place to ensure that they download your product, that they consume it, and that they actually get to the end and get the results they were looking for? If not, you have more work to do.
You will thank me later because you will reduce refunds, spend less time on customer support, and make more sales by Eating Your Own Dog Food.
Question Time! Do you eat your own dog food? In what way? How are you going to do a better job of dog fooding in the future?
Comment below, right now. It's 100% free.
How To Use Google Website Optimizer To Make More Money In The Next Five Minutes
Are you split testing yet? Split testing is the internet marketing equivalent of flossing -- but it doesn't have to be anymore!
Marketers usually lie and tell people they split test, but if we are lucky, they do it once a month, and not on a daily basis. Like both things, the irony is that it only takes a few seconds and it saves a lot of frustration later.
Do you ever wonder if you might have a better headline than the one you are using now? Do you ever wake up at night wondering if you should charge less or more than what you are charging now? What if that extra bonus on your sales letter is reducing your sales? Should you use long or short copy or even a video sales letter instead of a written one?
You can all these questions for your particular niche, your audience, and your offer by split testing. Once you split test, nobody can argue with you. Because Google Website Optimizer, like most of Google's services, run on their server and not yours, it is pretty easy to set up. You just have to copy and paste a few lines of code onto your web page.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yTjj9MnzRYI am going to give you the basic steps of setting up your own split tests right here.
Step 1: Create Two Versions Of The Same Page
You first need to decide what you are going to split test. I start with the headline. Here is something interesting, I once increased conversions by 19.6% just by adding quotes around my headline. What does this mean? It means for every $100 dollars that I made from that site. By having quotes around the headline, I would instead make $119 dollars. For every $1,000 dollars I made on that site. Instead by having quotes around the headline, I would make $1,196 dollars. You can see how that adds up over time.
The most aggravating thing about split testing is you don't always know exactly why a certain change makes a difference. Maybe having quotes around my headline makes it look more official and gets them to read longer. I'm not sure. I do know from testing that it works.
If you don't know what to split test, enter quotes around the headline, remove a couple of words from the headline, or remove or add a sub-headline. Just make a quick change, don't over think it. Spend about 10 seconds making a slightly different version of your sales letter.
Now you should save that new sales letter as index2.php. It means that your normal sales letter is named index.php. You alternate sales letter is called index2.php. Once you get Google optimizer set up, it is going to send half your traffic to index.php, the other half to index2.php to figure out which one gets you more sales.
Step 2: Create Campaign
The next step is to create your Google Website Optimizer Campaign. If you have an AdWords account, you can simply log in, go to the reporting tab and click on website optimizer. If you don't use AdWords, just go to Google and search for Google Website Optimizer and you will find a page to sign up. It's free and it's easy.
Once you are logged in, you should see a link that says Create Experiment. You are going to click that link and create an A/B Experiment. GWO allows you to either run AB test, which is what we are doing where you compare two versions of a page versus multivariate, which requires a lot more traffic which we are not going to use.
Click on A/B Experiment, go to the next step and then create an experiment name. Most people skip this step, name is something stupid like split test 1. Name it the name of your site, plus whether it is a sales letter or squeeze page. For example, Action Pop Up Sales Letter would be the name of my Google Website Optimizer experiment.
The next step is to identify the pages you want to test. You are only comparing two versions of a page, so you are going to put in the URL to your original page. For example, www.actionpopup.com/index.php and then you are going to name and give the URL for your alternate page, for your variation page. For example, "Subheadline" that way you know what the difference is between your original and alternate sales letter. You are going to add the page variation URL, for example www.actionpopup.com/index2.php.
Finally, you are going to give them the URL for your conversion page, for example www.actionpopup.com/thankyou.php. This way the service knows what your two test pages are and what is your download page, click continue.
Copy and paste the tracking code from this service. Website Optimizer is going to give you four pieces of code. It will tell you exactly which pages to place it on. For the original page, that index.php file. It's going to give you a control code to place at the top of the page.
What this is going to do is decide if your visitors should be viewing index.php or index2.php. It will make sure that an equal amount of traffic will be sent to both pages.
Next it is going to give you two pieces of tracking code, one code to place at the bottom of index.php and one to place at the bottom of index2.php. Even though this code looks scary, it is just a hit counter. It is going to figure out how many people viewed your index.php file and how many viewed you index2.php file.
Finally it is going to give you conversion code which you place on your download page. This is another hit counter that will only count if someone gets to your download page.
Step 3: Let It Run
Can you see how all the pieces are working together now? When somebody comes to your site, first it is going to decide to send them to index.php or index2.php. Let's pretend they got sent to index2.php, it's then going to load the tracking code and say "ah ha" they viewed index2.php. Then the person might leave or they might buy. If they do buy, they will end up on your download page and then website optimizer will make a note of that, and notice that index2.php happens to make this particular sale.
Let it run until the end. This service will keep track of which page is winning and will run a statistical formula to decide when it is time to stop split testing.
If one of your pages, either index.php or index2.php got a lot more sales than the other, it will decide the clear winner. For example, your index2.php page with the quotes on the headline might be the winner, and now you know you have improved your conversion rate and have more money.
Delete index.php and replace index.php with index2.php since it is now the clear winner. You are not done. Now it is time to start the process all over again and split test the next thing you want to test. Maybe another change to the headline, a logo, bigger buy button, whatever you want, stop guessing and start split testing with Google Website Optimizer today.
Are you split testing yet? If not, what's your deadline for your next split test to go live? Comment below please...
Roboform: Software Program That Gives You 120 Extra Hours Per Year?
Wouldn't it be cool if there was a software program out there, that can save you 20 minutes a day (which frees up five days per year?)
There is, and you might already be using it.
It's called Roboform.
Roboform remembers your passwords and makes it so you can login to all your favorite web sites with one click.
Even if you don't have to rummage around for that password, the act of typing in that password -- even if it's just for a few seconds -- and waiting for the page to load... adds up very quickly if you visit several sites each day like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, forums, Gmail...
So one day you can save 20 minutes a day RIGHT NOW is to install Roboform.
Want to save 21 minutes a day instead of 20 minutes a day? That means you gain 126 extra hours a year instead of a measly 120.
Just use ONE PERCENT of the advice I give you in my "100 Timesavers" report... and you'll get 6 hours.
Then use one more to get another 6 hours. Over and over.
6 Ways to Drip Content Automatically
The biggest benefit you can give to yourself as a business owner is to remove yourself from the equation. That means automate as much of yourself as possible ahead of time so your daily tasks do not become chores.
You might be surprised at all the ways you can pre-schedule your content and your marketing ahead of time and I'm going to explain six ways to do that right now.
1. Blog Drip
When someone says the phrase "drip content" to me, the first thing that comes to mind and the first thing that should come to mind to you is dripping out content on your WordPress blog.
WordPress is the #1 blogging platform and my favorite feature about it has always been that you can schedule content ahead of time with no additional plugins needed. When you're writing a blog post, you can choose to submit it right now or you can change the date on it so it appears as if it was written a long time ago, but you can also change the date to a date in the future – for example, date it to be next week or next month.
That post will remain in a scheduled state until the next week or next month and it will automatically be published for you on a timer. You can set not just the date but the time of day so you know exactly when that next post is coming out.
I highly recommend that instead of sitting and writing out your blog's next week's worth of content, write 4 or 5 short posts and schedule them one month apart. That way, you have the next several months of blog posts already scheduled. And guess what else, if you're using WordPress to run your membership site, you're dripping out content inside your paid membership site as well.
2. Autoresponder Drip
The next easy way to drip content is with your email autoresponder.
You might not have notice it yet but your autoresponder gives you the ability to pre-schedule posts in the same way as your blog. You can write an email that will be sent to your list and set it to tomorrow's date or next week's date, which means that you can write your next month or your next week's worth of autoresponder emails and not have to do anything for that amount of time. You could go on vacation for the next week, schedule your next week's worth of emails and now your business will run even though you are not present.
When you are launching a product, one email simply won't cut it. You need to give people multiple reasons to go check out your offer. You need to give people multiple email reminders getting them to look at your webpage. When you're running a webinar, you should send several emails leading up to the webinar to make sure everyone is on the call.
When you make a blog post, you should send traffic to that blog post and even send reminder emails, which means you can schedule your blog post and schedule your autoresponder emails for that blog post.
3. Sales Letter Drip
If you know a programmer for about $5, you can get content on your sales letter dripped out. There's a little thing called "if else" statements.
That means if you want to slowly increase the price of your product – say increase it by $10 once a week for 5 weeks, you can at a special bit of PHP code that will replace your order button with a new one at a higher price every few days. You can run seasonal specials. For example, every month you could rotate in a different bonus for your offer to give different people a reason to get in.
4. Squeeze Page Drip
You can apply the same "if else" technology that you use on your sales letter to your squeeze page as well and you can use it to do the same things – rotate a monthly or weekly offer, and this can be a different headline, a different bonus or even an entire page swapped out for another.
You can switch out one of your opt-in forms after 2 months for a different one and have the first opt-in form send people to a page where they are supposed to re-tweet one of your free audios, but after 2 months, now direct them to a page where it sends them to your blog, which is now filled up with content.
More often than not, if I have a hard deadline for something, if I know I'm going to increase the price, change the headline, change a redirect, I will set it on this timer instead of doing it manually because otherwise I know I might forget.
5. Social Media
Now that you've dripped out your blog post, install a WordPress plugin such as Twitter Tools to leave a Twitter post or a tweet everytime you make a new blog post.
Also, if I know I'm going to be tweeting about something for the next week or two, I will use a scheduling service such as SocialOomph (formerly TweetLater) to write tweets but set a publication date on them, which means I can write 10 or 20 tweets a time which will be posted once a day or once a week.
If you don't know what kind of scheduled tweets you should put out there, just use 30-day reminders. If you're posting about a blog post today, schedule another tweet in 30 days, reminding people about that old blog post.
6. Traffic Drip
Even third-party services allow you to drip out your content, even if your content appears on other people's sites.
The Traffic Geyser service allows you to upload up to 90 videos at once and determine when they will be scheduled. (I wish Tube Mogul did too.) When I was using this service for videos, I would record 90 videos at once, upload 90 videos and set the publication date for each and everyone - meaning that I could leave it alone for 3 months and it would send out a new video to the video sites once per day.
EzineArticles even has a premium option which means you can schedule all your articles and determine what date they will be published. Meaning, you can use the same strategy, write or outsource 90 articles, upload and schedule them all and the next 3 months' worth of traffic building are now automatic.
I hope that one of those 6 ways to drip content automatically opened your eyes and made you realized that doing things on a consistent basis doesn't always involve you and doesn't always have to be a chore.
So, which one do you like the best? The blog drip, autoresponder, sales letter, squeeze page, social media, or traffic drip? Post below, letting me know. Thank you.
How to Create the Perfect Information Product and Make Money Doing It
I know you have at least one idea for a product. Maybe you haven't made a product yet or you've made many products in the past.
How do you know that your big idea is something that everyone else is going to pay money for? We're going to figure out right now if your idea will be profitable in two stages – the research stage and the creation stage.
Stage 1: Research
I don't believe in doing more than 30 minutes of research to figure out if your idea will make you money. I say this because I know of too many marketers who have spent a month or 6 months or a year researching as an excuse not to do anything. Let's spend 30 minutes and figure out if your idea is worth it.
The first thing you should do is check forums. What's the hot topic inside the #1 forum in your niche? When I go to my favorite marketing forum, I find that the threads with the most replies are about articles, membership sites, and ClickBank.
When I go to my favorite programming forum, most of the replies are about PHP frameworks, WordPress plugins, and outsourcing.
Don't bother making a report about something unless it's a hot topic that a lot of people in your small niche are talking about. I'm not a believer in going mass market unless you have a lot of money to invest. If you're just starting out on a niche, start in the niche.
Now that you know what everyone is talking about, figure out what people are paying for. You have friends in the same niche you're in, right? What have they all bought recently? What big launches are going on in your niche? What have you personally paid for? There's no point in getting into a niche unless people are willing to spend a bare minimum of $100 on you.
I have bought products showing me how to make a software outline, how to write faster, how to create video, how to make audio products, and they have all accelerated my path towards getting things done.
The final part of your research now that you know what people are talking about and what people are buying is finding out what your competitors are doing. Go to Google and search for the niche you're in.
If you are thinking about creating a course on how to sell on eBay, search the forum you're on for the word "ebay." Search Google for "eBay eBook," "eBay guide," "eBay course," "eBay video." Go on amazon.com and look for books in that niche and DVDs in that niche as well. This is good because not only does it show you what areas to target but also what your price point should be.
You should match your price point fairly well to your competitors but price slightly higher, that way you will have a higher perceived value.
Stage 2: Solve It
Now that you've done your research, you should know how to adjust your idea to deliver the best solution by answering people's questions on forums, figuring out what they're paying for and duplicating or doing the job better than your competitors. Now, it's time to create the product.
I have never spent more than a few days making a simple lead generation product, and by lead generation, I need a product that's $100 or cheaper. Your product will be a lot better if you write it without distractions and write it as fast as possible. You can always go back and make version 2.0 later.
What's more important than spending or wasting a lot of time on creating a product is to add your own "how to" information. I can go online right now and find lots of tips and advice about placing an eBay ad.
I can find lots of videos on YouTube showing me the mechanics of placing an eBay ad, but I want you to show me what makes an eBay ad profitable. I want you to tell me exactly what steps I should take from start to finish from having something to sell on eBay to actually placing the ad and making the sale and what to do after that.
Also think about what simple problem can you solve for them. For some people, an eBay problem might be that they cannot get people to read their ad.
The sooner you make your info-product not just "how to" but also problem and solution-based, the more people are going to benefit from your book, the better reviews it's going to get and you'll have an easier time making a sale. And finally, what success stories can you gather from the people who use your product?
Here's something to think about. If someone has not yet bought your eBook or home study course, all they have to go on is your pitch page or sales letter.
That's why you need to make your sales letter as best as it can possibly be and the way I like to make a sales letter better is to gather testimonials or proof and show that on the sales letter – so, people who have not yet bought can see that others have benefited from this training.
And that's how you're going to create the perfect info-product and make money doing it. First, researching it in forums by what's making money, what your competitors are doing, and then create that product by offering your own unique how to, solving a problem, and gathering success stories from those people whose problems you have solved and place it back on the sales letter.
Did this help you make your next info-product? Where have you been lacking?
In the research stage or in the creation stage? And how will you get better? Leave me a blog comment below right now while it's still fresh on your mind.
The 10 Emails You Should Send to Your List Right Now
Although writing reports and making products, submitting articles, and writing blog posts are all great ways to get traffic, you need to follow up with people who are already on your email subscriber list.
Most people, probably including you, do not have enough emails in their autoresponder, and that means when someone joins your list, they don't know what to do or where to go.
I want to help you and give you 10 free email templates to fill up any autoresponder follow-up sequence that needs filling in no time flat. Here are 10 different types of emails you can send to your list either for the same offer or different offers.
Email #1: The Hard Pitch
The easiest way to get somebody to buy something from you is to be direct – ask them for that sale. Even if you're not a writer, you probably already have a sales letter or some kind of pitch page or pitch video that you can swipe from in your email copy. Copy and paste chunks of your sales letter and make each chunk an individual follow-up.
If there's a really good testimonial on your sales letter, that can be a follow-up. If within your sales letter, you give away some kind of free lesson or free tip when you set up your pitch, use that as an autoresponder follow-up. Chances are you already wrote most of your email sequence and don't even realize it.
Email #2: Reminder For That Hard Pitch
Because email is getting more and more competitive and the internet is becoming more and more crowded, many people might not have even seen your email coming to their inbox. If they have seen it, they might have read the email but forgot to click the link. They also might have opened your email, read it and clicked the link but have not yet bought.
That's why you should send them reminder emails about your previous emails just to make sure they have received your information. You'd be surprised at how adding this one email will improve your traffic and click-through rates.
Email #3: The Quick Tip
You want to be recognized as an authority in your niche, right? You want people to want more from you, right? That's why if you can give people a quick tip, one small piece of advice they can read in a minute or less about your niche, schedule that as an email.
If you are teaching people about copywriting, a simple tip to share could be to write 10 or more headlines to settle on the perfect headline.
This way, you're not divulging your entire formula but getting them on the right track and getting them to think in the same way you do. It's also a simple piece of advice they can pluck out and apply to their business right away. You're delivering value and now it's up to them to decide if they want to purchase more value from you.
Email #4: Free Blog Post Reminder
Sometimes, I write quick tips that end up being very long. Instead of sending very long emails, I will post that longer tip to a blog and then send traffic to it. This way, this is free training out in the open, so they still get some free advice, but there's also the possibility for search engine traffic for people to link to it and above all, provide feedback in the form of comments that I can then respond to in public.
Email #5: Post-Sale Content Consumption Reminder
Just because you've given somebody something doesn't mean they have necessarily used it. Just because somebody joined your list in exchange for a free report doesn't mean they've downloaded or even read that report. It's up to you to make sure they do and it's easier than ever before to do that because autoresponders are automatic.
Whether somebody got a free report or paid for a training course from you, figure out where they should be after 3 days and schedule a quick email saying something like: "Have you opened up the report yet, have you read the first page. If you have, you should be writing your first headline," for example.
What about after 7 days? Maybe by then, they should be on page 10, at which point they know how to format a sales letter. What about after 14 days? Maybe by then, they should be creating their very first sales letter and it can't hurt to remind them to open up the report, free or paid, flip to page 10 or 20 or wherever they should be and complete the assignment in that report or at least supply the knowledge to their business.
Trust me, you are not being a bother. Most people who sell products don't follow up and don't make sure that people get the most out of their money.
Email #6: Part 1 And Part 2 (Dangling Carrot)
You definitely want to train your subscribers to be look out for the next email from you. The most common sensible way to do this is to add the phrase "Part 1" to your subject line or to the body of your message.
Let's pretend that in your free copywriting course, you were helping people decide if they should offer a 30-day guarantee or a 60-day guarantee. On one day, you could tell people "here is why you're going to want to have a 30-day guarantee" and at the end of that message, instead of going into the 60-day guarantee, you could tell them that there is a very important time when the 60-day guarantee makes more sense than a 30-day guarantee and to look out for the next email from you tomorrow explaining that.
This gives subscribers a good reason to check in tomorrow and at the same time provides them with a quick training course that doesn't last for too long.
Email #7: Broadcasted Personal Response
Let's use the example of the copywriting course again. What if one of your subscribers who has not bought emails you and asks how long someone can expect to take to write a sales letter or how quickly they can have a sales letter out in the open? You might be tempted to send them a quick response.
But what if you spend a couple of extra seconds on that response and made it about half a page long? Well guess what, now you have an additional email you can send out to your subscribers. If one person asks that question, chances are 10 others have the same question but didn't bother to email you.
That means that your entire list can benefit from one person's answer, plus at the same time you've devoted extra effort into answering that person's question, so everybody wins.
Email #8: Why Didn't You Buy?
If I don't know what to put in my autoresponder sequence next, I'll ask people why didn't they buy. I'll explain to them that I've already gotten around all their objections, I've already given them all the free training they need, the only thing that's left for them to do is buy and take the next step.
It seems like a silly or a pointless email to send but this kind of email gets me the most responses more than any other email I have ever sent to my list and it works over and over again in any niche for any product.
Email #9: The Relationship Builder
When I'm going through the product launch process, I like to ask subscribers what's holding them back or what have been their experiences in this niche. People might say for copywriting that they hate writing and then I will know in my launch emails or in my sales letter or maybe even in the exact product to explain how to write sales copy by dictating it.
If someone has a really good case study – for example, they found that their short sales letters converted better than the long sales letters, I can use their case study to prove my point. It all comes back to using real results and real people in your marketing than making new things up.
Email #10: Commitment and Consistency
I want to save you a lot of missed opportunities when marketing to your list by telling you right now that people love to respond to things. Look at how many letters to the editors are on the newspaper or how many text in votes come on American Idol or how many people call in to radio stations.
If your subscribers can change the direction of your emails or of your marketing, they feel involved. If you're launching a new product but it's not out yet, what would happen if you emailed your list and asked them if they are planning on buying this product?
Justify this by saying you want to know how many people will be in the membership so you know how much time to devote to it or how many people will be attending your webinar so that you know how long to run it or my personal favorite, will you comment on my blog so I know how many comments to leave open before closing up that blog post.
By getting people to agree to something before they buy, even if it's just with a simple email message, they will feel like they have to do what they promised. If somebody promises to attend your webinar but later on they missed it, they'll feel bad because they promised something to you and did not deliver. This is definitely a fun tactic you should try to not only get more response from your list, but make them feel more involved as well.
I hope now that you've discovered these 10 types of emails to send to your list that you no longer have writer's block when it comes to sending out today's email, tomorrow's email or even filling up an entire autoresponder sequence.
Which one of these was your favorite? Please leave me a comment below letting me know and how you are personally going to use this in….
Don’t Tell People Everything You Know
I am going to tell you something right now that I hope will get you over that hump of making your next information product. It should also change your minds about what your customers are actually paying for and what information you should be giving away.
My mentor for many years was a guy called John Calder. He was really arrogant (which is a good thing!) and the best piece of advice he ever shared with me was, "Don't tell people everything you know."
But what does that mean?
Leave Room For A Sequel!
Here is something to think about: How come every movie you watch does not end with all the characters dying? Because there is a chance that the movie will get a sequel and that some or all of the characters can be in movie number two.
The same is true with your report creation. Do you try to put everything you know about a certain subject in one report? Sure! Can you put EVERYTHING there is to say in that report? Of course not!
A great example is my "Time Management on Crack" report. This is something that started off with me just explaining how I get things done, how I'm so productive. Then, I later added in formulas for writing, for blogging, for video creation and so on.
In fact, it has now tripled the size and got ten times' as much information - and I am still adding to it! But is that my only product about time management? Of course not!
Lance Tamashiro and I have a Membership site all about time management called, "IM Productivity Secrets." I also have a report called "100 Time Savers" that lists 100 quick and easy things you can use to save a minute a day.
Even though "Time Management on Crack" is the best report anyone could ever get about time management, I do have a prequel to "Time Management on Crack," called "100 Time Savers" that is at a lower price point and gets people ready for the main course, and I have a sequel to "Time Management on Crack" called "IM Productivity Secrets" which is a monthly membership site that contains ongoing training. And none of these products have any overlap.
You don't have to give away every single thing you know, because you might have a Volume II of your product.
Keep It Simple!
Here is the next thing to think about: Do you know how your cable internet gets from your computer out into the world? Probably not. I don't know either. But I still can USE my internet.
Do you know how your power company pumps electricity into your home? I don't either. But I still know how to turn on a light switch.
I can teach subjects, such as time management, without knowing exactly how psychology works, or how everything in my brain works. People don't have to know all the details.
My copywriting report, "Fast Food Copywriting," doesn't explain every single facet about copywriting, because I don't KNOW everything about copywriting. What I do know is how to accomplish a task. And that is all you really should be explaining in your paid materials, is how you accomplish a task and how other people can do the same thing you do.
I have many home study courses teaching people various things about PHP and WordPress. All I do is show how to use a certain script or WordPress plugin, and how to tweak it. That's it! Do I explain in every single report exactly what a function or a variable is? Not necessarily. I just show how to put those things into action.
And that leads me to my final point about not telling people everything you know: You deserve to get paid for your expertise.
Here is a really easy formula to decide what information you should charge for, and what to give away. If the information you are teaching about your subject is a step-by-step "How to" process, people should pay for that. But if all you are sharing is a simple tip, that is free article content or blog post content.
Inside "Fast Food Copywriting," I explain my step-by-step process for copywriting. But I also have hundreds of articles about copywriting that explain simple ideas like a headline or bullet points.
In "Time Management on Crack," there are five productivity levels you can master. There are also over 28 formulas when it comes to article writing, report writing, copywriting, and more.
I share my general time management advice in articles and in my blog posts. But the "How to", the Step-by-Step, people have to pay for that.
I hope you are now ready to knock out that next article or report - because guess what? You don't have to tell people everything you know!
Did this blog post help you? Tell me in what way... that comment form won't bite.
