Archive 1: 2012-2016

061: Supercharge Your Inner Game: How to Stop, Avoid, Destroy & Overcome the Negative Thinking Patterns in Your Life (and Become Happier Without Losing Your Edge)

October 30, 2015

I'm going in for surgery on the ankle today (Friday) and it has me thinking a lot about being negative (or rather, avoiding or "fixing" that negativity that creeps up), being honest and owning up to things like procrastinating without labeling and feeling sorry for yourself, so you can actually make progress on yourself -- because no one else will do it for you.

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As internet marketers, we need to motivate ourselves. Let's be real... sometimes stuff just happens.

You have to find the good in situations, get some perspective, and be honest without feeling sorry for yourself and labeling your situations or the emotions. Then, you are better able to look at things in a positive light.

Be Honest With Yourself

This is probably the most important thing we're going to talk about today. Just think about how you would answer these questions and we're going to talk about some solutions afterwards.

Do you find yourself filtering out the positive things that happen to you? Or, do you minimize all the good things while only focusing on one negative circumstance?
Do you blame yourself for everything that happens, even if it is out of your control?
Do you always expect the worst in any situation?Do you only see things in terms of black and white?

If any of these 4 things apply to you, then you might have some negativity problems. Let's talk about some ways to combat those.

Approaches, Strategies and Solutions

Do you have a support system that gets you out of that "rut" you sometimes fall into? It's tough to go it alone. Just explaining the problem or the frustration itself can help you get past it.

Are you preventing the problem before it even happens? "Play out" the scenarios of what could happen. A good strategy here is to make a list of the "enemies" you're fighting against and categorize the fears. Out of those, what's the simplest one to take care of?

Let's say your situation is that you're going to be broke and your fears about it are losing your car, your marriage breaking up, and becoming homeless. Which one of these can you work on first and easiest?

A lot of the issues that led you to a problem are by you not getting out of your comfort zone or not having real goals to drive you.

Let's use the money example again. You are basing all of your income hopes on this one product launch and it doesn't go well and you're afraid you're going to lose it all.

Then, it would be time to get out of your comfort zone and do things you might not want to do so you don't lose your shirt. Things like joining Fiverr, freelancing, getting a part-time job, etc. "Always do what you're afraid to do."

Are you aware of simple mindset tools? It's simple. There are simple mindset tools and strategies all over the place-you can just search the internet for "self-help mindset." For Robert, there's no one solution. There's probably 5 or 6 at any given time. it's a matter of identifying which one works for the situation.

A mindset is also called "a state", which is a collection of emotions that can get you thinking and acting in a certain way. Sometimes you just need to "change your state." Maybe you've been in front of the computer for too long working on a problem. Go for a drive. Go to a movie.

It might also mean removing the triggers that put you in that state. If you get in a ‘bad mood' from something that you can remove, then do so.

Think about the words you're using. We tend to describe "positive" feelings in one syllable words, like "good" while we use big words for negative feelings. Start replacing the ‘positive' feelings with big words, like ‘fantastic', ‘fabulous', etc. They're less automatic, meaning we have to think about them more. The more you think about something…you guessed it-the more it becomes your ‘state'.

Think about the words that you're using to describe situations. Turn "negative words" into "challenge" words. Instead of something being a "disaster", call it an "adventure."

7 Quick Exercises To Turn Negativity on its Head

1. What's good about the situation? What could be good about it? Take the negative and make it a positive. If you're a procrastinator, and you're close to a deadline, now you're not a slacker; you are motivated to get the project done.

2. What are 3 things you're grateful for today? The sky is the limit!

3. What small step could you take today to fix your situation? Are you thinking about going back to school? Print out the college brochure. Do you need or want to replace your old car? Get a catalog for the new one you like.

4. Are you predictable? What usually sets you off? And, what can you do to avoid it? Expecting a bad result "off the bat" is a typical coping mechanism for a lot of people. But, negativity is a self-fulfilling prophecy so just don't do it this time. Just tell yourself you're going to expect the best this time. Break that pattern.

5. Do you journal and meditate? Both of these turn your thoughts into words so you can make sense of them and seek out a solution. The plus to journaling is it can help you to identify those triggers that set you off.

6. If you have a negative person in your life, how do you deal with them? It sounds simple, but tell them the thing that's bothering you. If they can't change it, you have to. Call them less. Don't go ‘hang out' with them unless it's necessary to see them for family events, etc.

Remember: Negativity is contagious.
The more you're around it, the more it infects you.

7. Can you identify your own negative thought patterns? Do you find yourself the "victim" in most situations? In life, you can be the hero, the villain, or the victim. It's easiest to see yourself as the victim and hardest to see yourself as the villain. Why? Because if you're the villain, then you might be the problem and you might have to change.

In many situations, it's helpful to take a step back and say "The thing I'm doing right now-maybe it's not working", "Am I really doing the right thing?", "Maybe I need to change".

There 7 "Flavors" of the Negative Mindset

The Echo Chamber: "If you think you can or you can't, you're right."

Negativity leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. You end up attracting more negativity and then you surround yourself with other miserable people because misery loves company. Pretty soon it's a merry-go-round of negativity.

Your Solution: Anticipate the best. Stay away from other negative people.

The "I Told You So" Syndrome: Many people will root for someone else to fail so that they can be right.

It's easy for someone else to make fun of you and look for you to fail because they hate themselves, they want to be you, or they're threatened by you. It's easier for them, instead of being as good as you, to tear you down and root for you to fail because when you do, they were right all along.

Your solution: Success is the best revenge.

The "Realistic" Fallacy: This sounds like, "I'm not being negative, I'm just being realistic." The problem with being "realistic" is that it causes you to give up too soon.

The other side of the coin, being "unrealistic" is another form of self-sabotage. Sometimes people set huge, huge unattainable goals.

Your Solution: Just look at the situation for what it is. Don't make it huge and don't belittle it. Give it all you've got but don't make it so unattainable that you'll never achieve it.

Social Policing: Setting absolute rules for society. Why don't they play by your rules?

"I never lie, so neither should anyone else, ever.", "It's so unfair that they get away with that and I don't.". This is playing the victim again.

Your Solution: Don't try to apply so many rules to everything and pick your battles.

Mind Reader Pitfall: Many negative people somehow think that they have been granted the ability to read minds. They just know what someone else is thinking and can anticipate everything that person is going to say and do, generally for the worst.

Your Solution: Give people the benefit of the doubt. You don't know what else they're going through.

Overgeneralizing: Be careful about thinking that things "always" seem to happen to you. Most of the things that happen to you are random and happenstance. Fate is not conspiring to give you a bad day. This is victim mode again.

Your Solution: The only time you should even let this enter your mind is if you're going to use it as motivation for you to discover better things.

Playing the Tape: You think about what others might say and their reactions to everything you're doing.

It's a bad place to be when you're letting someone else live in your head rent-free. You're letting them control you.

Your Solution: find a better, more positive, person to ‘talk' in your head, someone who supports you.

Seven Helpful Thoughts

"I'm not smart." We all think we have more common sense than we have. If we think we've seen it all, there's no point to keep driving. You need to be a little bit naïve. It keeps you learning.
Negative people are negative about everyone and everything. Don't take it personally.
It is what it is. Sometimes stuff just happens. Stop worrying because you're bigger than your problems and you can choose to ignore those bad incoming thoughts.
Control what you can control. You don't have to take responsibility of everything good and bad that happens. If you are little more optimistic and happier to do things for your business you'll probably make more money which will lead into a feedback loop.
Imagination can work for or against you. Turn the things that you don't want to focus on into tiny, silly little hallucinations and transform the good things into big powerful things.
Replace what you delete in life. If you decide today to stop talking to everyone negative, you might find yourself with no one to talk to. Instead, replace talking to the bad people with new people. Join a new group or club. Join a different mastermind. Devote the time you used to spend on bad habits to doing something positive.
You can't compare your inside to someone else's outsides. Robert calls this "The Facebook Projection." Many people put on a "face" of living in paradise, although they have the same ups and downs as you or they might even be a total fake. Don't worry more about someone else than you do about yourself.

Closing Thoughts

When you're faced with feeling negative, narrow it down to one of the "mindsets." Then, you can approach it with a solution.

Understand that for so many people, the worry, stress, and fear of the upcoming situation is almost worse than the event itself. Redirect that negative energy.

If you see someone doing better than you, you don't need to take that personally. There's no point in comparing yourself to others. It's a losing game. Realize that you are on a different path than that person.

Join Time Management on Crack to Claim Your
Productivity and Mindset Training Now

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Making Money in Bed: Ten Quick Pieces of Internet Marketing Advice from a Guy with a Broken Ankle

October 23, 2015 • 53 Comments

I broke my ankle in two places this past Saturday evening. I was dancing at a wedding and walked over a wet spot on an already shiny, slippery, coated cement floor. There was water (or maybe wine) spilled in a little spot that I didn't see, and I slipped and landed on it with all my weight.

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The technical term is a "fibular and medial malleolar fracture" and they had to reset (or I guess "reconfigure") the bones (very painful) and I'll be hopping around on crutches for a few weeks and keeping it elevated in bed.

What I found interesting is that the orthopedist, emergency room doctor, nurse, etc. kept asking me... what do you do for a living? Is this going to affect your work? Luckily I've "worked" from home for 6 1/2 years and I'm glad I don't have to worry about that kind of thing.

In fact, the last couple of days have been hugely productive in my business. I've been making leaps and bounds in productivity, getting my upcoming "Website Remote" wordpress tool ready for our November 11 launch date, even from bed (currently "My Little Pony" sheets):

I'll give you ten quick reasons why you can run a business, even if you're bedridden and only have a few hours per day:

Lesson 1: The Best Productivity Tool at Home: Camtasia + GoToWebinar + Google Calendar

Many internet marketers consider themselves in "learning mode" which really means they're spending all their time studying (and doing a good job of it) but not implementing, but if they are implementing, they're just dabbling, taking action on the fun or small stuff, and not what's going to make them money. Or they can self-label as a "procrastinator" which is just a fancy way of feeling sorry for yourself.

The best thing I did in my online business (which I delayed for years) was recording video for products instead of writing them. You can whip up an easy $47 or $97 product in 1 to 3 hours -- do it all in one take and don't worry about the "umm's."

Don't nickel and dime yourself looking for "free" or "cheaper" alternatives. You'll end up piecing together lots of things that don't do what you want and wasting money and time on the wrong tools.

Use Camtasia (free trial) and a $30 Logitech ClearChat USB headset. Show whatever you need to show on your screen (PowerPoint, web browser, or software) to teach someone how to do something (edit video, trade in the stock market, soup up your race car).

Then, use GoToWebinar to meet and record each "module" of your course if you want to do it live (using Camtasia to save the video for sale later). Use GoToWebinar for a bonus Q&A session and even to pitch the course later. We give you a free GoToWebinar at WebinarCrusher.com and even if you were a cheapskate, you could knock all this out within 30 days and only have to make one payment.

Also use Google Calendar to show up on whatever webinar Q&A, product creation, pitch sessions, or even meetings. Use them to meet your deadlines, i.e. even just to create one 1-hour module each day for 4 days, whip up a 1-hour sales letter on the 5th day, and so on.

Lesson 2: The Best Productivity Tool Away from Home: iPad + LogMeIn + Evernote

What do you do if you're not at home? What have I been doing while laying in bed and still building my business?

It's simple. You don't need to drag the computer to bed or find a crappy iPad version for the apps you want to use for coding, word processing, and web page editing. Heck, you can get most things accomplished using a web browser...

But for many desktop tasks such as coding and web page editing, I prefer to use LogMeIn, which is a remote desktop program. Install the LogMeIn "control panel" on your desktop, and then you can remotely control it from your iPad. See your screen, click, drag, and type.

I use an iPad Air. You want to get the cellular version so you can connect even if you're not on Wifi (AT&T only costs me $29.99/month for this). A 64GB iPad Air 2 costs $729 and a 32GB iPad AIr 1 costs $579. Either price is more than worth it for the ability to use the internet anywhere without a bulky laptop or a tiny phone.

An important accessory is the Logitech Ultrathin iPad keyboard which is much better than Apple's iPad keyboard, although I don't use it as often as you think. I use it for typing blog posts and reports, but not for coding. The only trick to getting the keyboard is that you have to be very careful to get the right one for your iPad (iPad Pro, iPad Air, etc.) because all iPads are different sizes now.

I prefer remote desktop when I'm using the iPad because I can set something in motion (like processing a video), and then come back to it later. I can start typing a document, or edit a web page, and close the connection, then come back later and all my old windows are still open.

If I don't have the time or the connection to hop onto a remote desktop just to write a quick note, Evernote is good for jotting down "scraps."

Lesson 3: Your Goal is the Minimum Viable Product or "Version 1.0"

There's no point in having the fanciest tools (like iPads) or the best productivity strategies (like Four Daily Tasks, staying off Facebook and email) if it's not actually leading somewhere.

You should actually be excited about your business instead of just "going through the motions." (Imagine that.)

Can you make money from a course where the sales letter has typos and the paid product is 2 hours of video? Will fixing those typos or upping it to 3 hours double or triple your income? Probably not.

What will make you money is sending traffic to that COMPLETE system. Contact joint venture partners, buy some banner ads, mail youir list. You can't make one sale with something that's incomplete. You need a sales letter, download area, and payment button, even if it's "just good enough" to get you by for now.

Lesson 4: Have At Least 20 Buy Buttons or "Things" For Sale

I'm not saying you need to go crazy, but if you don't have 20 "things" you can buy, then you need to setup those 20 things over the next 12 months. I'm not saying you need 20 $997 courses.

But what if you bought from resale rights and setup a $27 package this coming Friday, including the download page, sales letter, and payment button? What if you setup an upsell for someone to buy coaching from you?

What if you whipped up your own $97 video series next week? Created a sales letter with your affiliate link, listing the exclusive bonuses you'll provide if someone buys through that link.

And once you find your "big hit" -- repeat the process and setup more membership sites, build the list bigger.

That way you can focus on helping your buyers and not just the freebie "tire kickers" who never buy and just complain.

We're just talking about setting up something that is complete. That could just be that you buy one, or a few private label rights products, and fiddle around until you're selling a pretty cool "package" that you can call your own.

Lesson 5: Make Consistent Progress Every Day

Have you noticed that I keep listing the same things, those things that actually make money, as opposed to bright shiny objects? List building, product creation, traffic, conversion tweaking, upsell funnels.

You don't need to reinvent the wheel from scratch or think of a new technique every time you want to make money. You also shouldn't be desperate for money at any point.

If you're pressed for time, then even putting in five focused minutes of setting up a web page and writing sales copy is more than most people (who aren't trying).

Lesson 6: Sell Both High and Low Ticket

I'm also tired of hearing of people thinking they need to pigeon-hole themselves into being "just" an affiliate marketer, just a product launcher, just a $7 buyer, just a $997 buyer. What a bunch of crap...

The only way to really know what's going to make you money is to put out (and update, and market) your products. See what sells the best, and repeat that. Usually, those things that you "think" will sell, will be your flops, and you'll be shocked at the products that take off.

For example, our Backup Creator plugin is protecting nearly 100,000 WordPress sites now, and I still don't know why it's such a popular product with us, but I don't need to know why, only that it IS popular, so I'll put more time and energy into it.

Lesson 7: Email Every Day

This is the worst kept secret in internet marketing, it's the technique I use when I want to increase my income, and it's something "timid" marketers are afraid to do.

There's nothing wrong with contacting your subscribers every day or several times per week. You don't need to "bombard" them with a new offer every day. It's actually better to continue a campaign (giving different reasons to click over and check out the same offer throughout the week).

Your subscribers are listening to other marketers, and they're playing on Facebook every day. So what's the difference if you dispense some free advice, send them to blog posts and podcasts, or short videos, and there happens to be a button to click or a link to buy at the bottom of the page?

Keep that list alive. If you don't email that list often enough, it will whittle down to nothing. Either schedule your upcoming email autoresponder messages 5 days at a time or spend 5 minutes every morning knocking it out.

Lesson 8: Have a Content Piggy Bank

Search engines like Google (plus social media neworks too, I guess) reward you for giving away lots and lots of free content. But they're going to punish you if you flood a bunch of stuff quickly and then neglect your blog for months or years.

Most marketers bite off more than they can chew when it comes to blogging. This means they blog daily for 30 days. Then there's nothing for a month. Then one post. Then nothing for two months. Then a single post. Then nothing for 6 months. Not good.

This is exactly why, for years, I only blogged (or podcasted) once per month, because I knew that was within my means. I had a pool of reserve content (some people call it a content piggy bank), that way I could schedule it all out, rearrange it later, and have posts and podcasts coming out even if I didn't know what to talk about that week or I "wasn't in the mood."

Have at least two podcast episodes or blog posts in-the-can. You don't want to be living paycheck-to-paycheck with your content.

Lesson 9: Focus On What Makes Money Sooner, Not Just What's Fastest, Easiest, or the Most "Fun"

It's fun to start and end projects. The first problem with that is that no project of ours is ever really "finished." So all you're left with is coming up with new ideas, registering new domain names, creating new graphics, writing "chapter 1" or making "video 1" of your new course.

You need absolute focus. You know what's the most fun? Making money. You don't need an office or business cards. You don't need to agonize over the perfect logo or color scheme for that next app of yours. Especially if thinking too much will delay you making money even for a few days.

You need better marketing which usually means better strategy, more traffic, making a better use out of your list, talking about the things your subscribers worry about (NOTE: worry about and not necessarily think about).

There's no reason for lazy marketing. Discounts are a "drug" that you'll hit for a big boost of income, but do it too much and you'll notice that without that discount, your sales will drop because you've now trained your customer to wait for the discount and punished them for paying full price. The solution: only use price discounts (even early bird pricing is a price discount) sparingly and use decent marketing (like mailing more often) instead.

Scarcity is a lesser "drug" that hurts your business just the same if you use it too much. You know what I'm talking about. Only 100 copies will be sold. This offer closes this coming Friday for two months. It's okay to use as one of the tricks to pull out of your marketing hat but it shouldn't be your entire business model.

Lesson 10: Beware of the $10,000 Per Month Comfort Zone

You need to treat your business like a real business. That means havng real deadlines. Would you be fired if you couldn't bring the good stuff in your business? Think about it.

Let's say you were hired as an internet company's copywriter. If your copy didn't bring in sales, maybe you'd split test, tweak the copy, or poll your list to figure out what to improve. If you were hired as a company's email marketer, and you went 2-3 weeks without sending a simple email to that list, wouldn't you be fired?

Years ago, I was told to write down my goals and I wrote down that I want a specific house (got it a year later), a specific car (bought it in cash a year later), and that I also wanted a $10,000 per month income, thinking that was all I ever needed.

There are a couple of problems with that. I'm not even going to get into how your expenses match your income unless you have a budget, you get slammed with taxes (even if you structure everything the way you should, you can only minimize them, not avoid them). =

The real problem with ramping your business up to $10k per month (which is really just 3 sales at $97 per day, or 2 coaching clients and 2 sales at $97 per day, or 1 coaching client plus one $97 per day plus your spouse's income, etc) and then stopping, is that you'll get comfortable.

Imagine if you stopped attending events, stopped with the joint ventures, shut off your traffic, didn't create any new products, stopped running webinars, didn't take any new risks...

You might be comfortable for 6, 12, maybe even 18 months. Your income might even "maintain" even if you didn't do anything new or build your list. The problem is when it starts to shrink. It might shrink slowly, you might play mindgames with yourself and try to say this is just a "phase" in your business, or that you're just having a couple of bad months...

But if your income is flat, you should be just as frightened as if it's taking a dip.

It's a slippery slope for your income to dip, then you lose interest in your business, then your income dips more, and you lose more interest... and the next thing you know, you're not interested in re-treading that old trail you went through a decade ago to get "back up to" $10,000 per month or higher.

Instead of going through all that, I would rather do the small things NOW to avoid a huge headache in the future, and that should be too. Like I said, that doesn't mean throwing out your websites for new ones, or becoming a workaholic, or anything like that. It means your #1 goal in your business is to make money, and then you can get excited about making more money, which in turn makes you even more money, so money becomes the "drug" or "high" that continues to move your online business forward.

Don't get comfortable with your income level, even if it's at some level about $10,000 a month. You should always want more, and you can get more just by doing something as simple as staying focused and making daily progress, even if it's just 5 minutes a day.

I'm still having lots of fun with my online business, even with a broken ankle, because it's still making me lots of money every day, and I hope yours does too. I also hope that our "Website Remote" plugin on November 11th (remote WordPress management tool) helps you make a lot of money, which equals lots of fun, which equals even more money in your online business.

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060: Graphic Dashboard Case Study: How to Make Money Selling Your Systems, Checklists, Notes, Templates and Tools

October 16, 2015

Find a new product idea, build a course and implement a repeatable system for a constant revenue stream.When you're creating a product, you need to have WWHW in place.

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WWHW is your "system." You need to have a system in place so you stay on point, lay out each point you promised in your sales letter, and know when you've gotten to the finish line.

What-these are the steps you're going to take. For example, you're going to show how to log in to a site, you're going to show how to install a plug-in.

Why-this is why the customer wants to use it. For example, to make money.

How To-this is your media component. For example, a video on how to use WordPress. You will be showing your customers from beginning to end what the process looks like.

What If-this is the challenger at the end.

When you're making your membership site, you want to lay it out in modules.

Four modules are ideal, at about an hour each. Each module is a milestone in the process.

You want to be 100% clear what the end goal is going to be in each module.

Now, let's put these into practice by doing a case study of Robert's Graphic Dashboard (www.graphicdashboard.com)

Graphic Dashboard Case Study

Graphic Dashboard is a course on how to use Pixlr, which is a free software program for graphics creation (www.pixlr.com).

For reference, we are going to point out that some time ago, Robert bought a course on how to create graphics in PhotoShop. It was full of useless and/or very advanced topics such as how to rearrange toolbars and a long explanation on how to do 3D graphics. This product was meant for people who didn't even know how to do 2D yet!

You don't want to do what "PhotoShop Guy" did so that's why Robert and Lance didn't spend oodles of time on how to make 1000 different shapes.

Instead, you want to show your customers something they can actually use today.

Think of it like this: You want to teach them the equivalent of making $1 million in 5 minutes. Okay, that sounds a little far-fetched but the point is, your goal is to tell your customers how they can use your product right now to make money.

That means not playing around (like "Photoshop Guy" and the toolbars), but doing something practical and useful like making a logo or a banner.

If you teach someone how to create a banner, you've given them the heads-up on creating affiliate banners. They can start getting affiliates to make money!

Creating Your Modules

Next, you take that goal (i.e. teaching them something practical that earns money) and use that to create your modules.

Each module is going to have the WWHW elements and each will have a measurable milestone the customer will reach by the end of the module. For Graphic Dashboard, the modules are:

Module 1 is how to create affiliate banners.
Module 2 is how to list your graphics-making services on Fiverr to make some money
Module 3 is how to make digital 3D product covers
Module 4 is how to make book covers and DVD graphics

The 4 Stages of Figuring out Your "Hook" for your modules are:

The Hobby Mindset

This is playing around and researching to see what will sell.

"Crack the code" to start making money from it

Once you've figured out what will sell, this is how it can be applied to start making money with it.

Systematize It

"Template-ize" your service and your delivery system.

Trim the fat the fat to make it fast, fun and profitable.

Get it down to a 1-2-3 system that can be duplicated time and again for quick, achievable results.

The Sales Letter

Now, you put together your sales letter outlining your 4 modules and how customers can quickly benefit from each thing you're teaching.

Important Point: Why is Robert not using PhotoShop instead of Pixlr?

PhotoShop is a paid product belonging to someone else. The customer would already have to have PhotoShop.

He doesn't want to have to convince someone to use PhotoShop in his sales letter because then they would have to leave his site to go buy it. It gives them time to hesitate.

Tip: If you don't have an alternative, like Pixlr in this case, your best bet would be to bundle that product into your course (and then price accordingly).

What just happened? We went from a boring PhotoShop course with a lot of blathering on about nothing useful to how to use Pixlr to make money with short, to-the-point, easy to follow steps!!

With this repeatable system, you could teach all kinds of stuff, everything from how to become an Uber driver to how to rent your home using AirBNB.

The "Now What" and Going "Evergreen"

"Evergreen" means that your product can be sold perpetually.

Now, with the Internet and how quickly software and sites change, this can be a little tricky.

But, that's okay! It just means you might have to go in now and then to update some of your slides or update some of your features to reflect changes and make new iterations (i.e. version 2.0)

Every time you make a new iteration, you also update your sales letter and pitch and this product can be sold again and again to your list.

When you have a system, like the WWHW, that you apply to producing your courses, it is an easy matter just to make some updates because your approach is reproducible each and every time.

Today's Takeaways and Tips

Have a system. Don't ramble. Don't go off-course. Make something that can be reproduced over and over.

Have a defined Point A and Point B. ‘Show' AND ‘tell your customers how you're going to get them there.

Do video-not just audio, especially if your course involves how to do anything online. Imagine if you were trying to learn MS Excel from a CD!! Your customer won't be able to use it effectively.

Additional Links

Master Resale Rights: www.master-resalerights.com

This is a great resource to pick up additional courses that you can include on your own membership site.

If you love this show, please go give us a review on iTunes at www.robertplankshow.com/itunes

If you have any questions or comments OR you would like to be interviewed on this show, please contact Robert via his email Robert@robertplank.com.

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059: A Tale of Two Traffic Sources: Solo Ads vs. Affiliate Networks

October 10, 2015

The good, the bad and the ugly about solo ads vs. affiliate networking...

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There are many ways to get traffic. Some of the older ones include fads such as:

Joint Venture Giveaways: someone would sign up and have access to multiple giveaways that they could then send to their list. Everyone in the network would be cross-mailing their own lists, offering these giveaways, to attract traffic to their site.
Viral Reports: you have a special report (i.e. how to set up a basic WordPress site) and mail it to your list and the link back to your site is included in the report. For each of your subscribers that passes it on and gets a new subscriber to sign up, you could pay them a $1 per new subscriber.
Traffic Exchanges: this operates similarly to the JVG above where there's multiple people in the network. You would join it and then everyone is rotating through viewing multiple sites and each one you view gets you a credit. With these credits, you could then buy banner ads, etc. to drive people back to your site where they would hopefully buy your product.
Co-Registration: you would sign up with several other marketers and basically cross-promote. As subscribers signed up for your list, they were signing up for other lists in the same group as well.
Safe Lists: join an email-based community with several other marketers. It's really just marketers mailing other marketers each day.
Renting/Buying a List: you can choose parameters and order a list from a site like InfoUSA, to market to and pad your own list. Even if they don't opt-in, you can create retargeting ads that follow them around the internet.

All of the above have either gone "out of style" because they didn't work forever, or because they became illegal under the CAN-SPAM Act. Now, the major forms of driving new traffic are Solo Ads or Affiliate Networking.

Solo Ads

Solo ads are when you pay someone else to mail out your offers to their list. You are paying someone else, who already has an established list, for email leads. It sounds good in theory. What are the pitfalls?

It's a great way for the solo ad seller to make money, not necessarily you and probably not you. They don't have to expend any effort-they are not marketing their own product and they are not having to take the time to research affiliate programs.

Not everyone's lists are created equal. You don't really know where they got the names on their list from. Some are built from questionable traffic sources.

Example: AdFly. The traffic you get from using Ad.Fly is mostly from interstitial ads, the ads that are placed before you can see articles and videos, etc. It's very untargeted traffic because you can't enter keywords. There is nothing that you have that everyone wants to buy. So, in this case you'd be paying someone to send ads to a list where subscribers aren't even interested in your niche.

You could be paying $1 per click if your squeeze page is on target and converts at 50%, which is a good conversion rate. Tip: for a good squeeze page, see our Backup Creator squeeze page.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Over a 1-year period, Robert purchased $1912 in solo ads. For that $1912, he got 3209 clicks, which resulted in 1059 email opt-ins and $502 in sales. This appears to be a $1500 loss but you can keep marketing to them (until and if they opt-out) and generate additional sales later.

The good news is that 3209 new subscribers quickly builds your list-if you have a big list, you'll be excited to send out those emails for potential sales, which is the name of the game in internet marketing. Sales!

Caveats & Advice

The best solo ad sellers that will bring you success are likely those that don't do it as their only income. They may just be doing it for a time while they are on vacation, have family matters to attend to, or are between projects. Robert's experience with solo ad ‘only'

You need to put back about 20% of your business income into ad spending so solo ads aren't the worst thing and you SHOULD experiment with new types of traffic. It's not going to be the huge payday you're hoping for but you can build a list that will earn you income over time.

Make sure you have a link tracker like AdTrackz where you can create subcampaigns for each solo ad. That way, you can determine exactly how much traffic you actually generated from each solo ad campaign. Ideally, you can and should also create a spreadsheet that keeps track of all of your solo ad spend, your clicks from the sellers, the opt-in rate for each subcampaign, and any sales.

Affiliate Networks

The best way to get loads more traffic is to create a paid product and put it a on paid affiliate site, such as ClickBank or JVZoo. Our Member Genius plugin supports both these platforms.

When you put that product up on one of those sites, anyone can sign up to be one of your affiliates. You can also immediately offer the affiliate program option to all of your buyers after they purchase your product by giving them the link to register.

You position it as, "Thanks for buying my product! Did you know you could have this for free if you become an affiliate and sell it just 1 time?!" When someone signs up to be one of your affiliates, you give them a special link. When one of their friends or subscribers wants to buy the product, it sends the traffic back to your site and your affiliate gets a commission.

You want to make it easy and profitable for your affiliates-give them a reason to market YOU above others. Have your email(s) ready for them, your banner ads, etc., so that they don't have to do any work for you. Give them a really good commission-50% and 100% are good.

Tip: to check out a good affiliate site, go to the Backup Creator affiliate program.

Today's Take-Aways

You need to build a list somehow. Solo ads and affiliate marketing can be part of your strategy in addition to: having a blog to take advantage of SEO, having a podcast, running Facebook ads, running Bing ads.

Tip: to learn to podcast like a pro, go to Podcast Crusher.

Affiliate marketing can also be a great option for you to bring in income if you don't have a product ready, if you're between projects or you need to be away from your business for a period of time.

Don't be afraid of Affiliate Marketing-it's not evil and you won't burn out your list if you deliver some really cool value along with the product that you're selling.

One Last Word of Wisdom

Don't be negative. Just don't. Negativity leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy and confirmation bias (choosing only to hang on to things that reinforce our beliefs). If you're upset and frustrated, turn that into fuel.

Ask yourself, "What's good about this?" even if it means you just learned 10 ways not to do something. Have an "abundance mindset." Know that you'll succeed.

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058: The Three-Day Window for Enhanced, Increased, and Amazing Productivity

October 2, 2015

It's very easy when you first start your internet business, working from home, to fall back into those habits that you have from working for an employer, where you have to fill up 8 hour days one after the other and no "project" really ever has to be done for you to make income.

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Or, some of those very things that led you to develop an internet-based business, such as wanting to dream ‘big', form your own partnerships, etc., but all of those ideas will not make any money if you do not implement them.

It's easy to get pulled into "Scope Creep", where you continue to add more and more features or additional webpages, upsells and bonuses, etc., instead of just focusing on ONE thing and pushing it out there.

These are all productivity killers. Instead, you want to think in "Three Day Window" terms.

Principles of the Three-Day Window

What is it? The 3 day window is the time period from "idea" to "implementation." You have 3 days to get it to a stopping point that if you had to sell it right then you could.

It's okay if it's not perfect. You NEED to make some websites that you will look back on later and be embarrassed by. What IS important is getting in the habit of getting your ideas implemented and out there.

What if it's lacking some features? You still put it up for sale in its "basic version" at a discounted rate. Instead of your end goal of $97, you sell the basic at $7.

Don't sell your first version with multiple features. You can't be sure that your customers want all these "bells and whistles." What's exciting to you is quite probably not exciting to them.

It's better to put the product out there and get feedback of the most wanted features and use that to develop your "deluxe" version. As you continue to refine it, you can roll out "iterations" later and charge the higher price(s).

Iterations: these are releases each time the product is enhanced/improved, i.e. Version 1.0, 2.0., etc. When Robert created Backup Creator, it only took him 3 days from start to finish to get his first version out. In that first 3 day version, it did do the basic backups. Then, in future iterations, they added additional backup capabilities (i.e. to Amazon S3), cloning abilities, and other features.

Why Just 3 Days?

If you don't set yourself an "end" date, you will run into issues such as:

You spend too much time working on it and get burnt out or bored. Or, you end up doing a lot of things that are not productive or they're fun but they don't really increase your sales, such as spending 2 hours to make a 2-minute sales video.

You could have spent that same 2 hours doing at least 2 of your 4 Daily Tasks:

A better choice than a video would be to build a bigger list. Examples: contacting affiliates, running ads for traffic to your site, knocking out a great sales letter

For more information on 4 Daily Tasks, you can check out the Four Daily Tasks book and Facebook group.

You need to think in "milestones" and take a scientific approach. The scientific approach will help you create a framework or "Spec" for your project. Within that framework, you can then be creative.

For example, if you make a video: You need to set up how many segments it's going to be and the length of time for each. Then, within those measured segments, you can be creative about what you're going to feature.

Today's Take-Away's

Don't be the guy (or gal) that has a bunch of stuff on their hard drive without taking any action to put it out there. Use the "4 Daily Tasks" Method to be productive. Do something every day that will result in sales.

There's no point in pulling "all-nighters." You're fooling yourself with a lot of empty time. It's more important to have something imperfect that is functioning and earning you money because a lot of work with no income results in boredom and burn out.

Join Robert's "4 Daily Tasks" group
Get his course on time management: Time Management on Crack

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057: 10-7-4: The Best “Mind-Hack” to Generate Unlimited Ideas and Master Your Content Creation

September 25, 2015

One of the best ways to make money online is to create content that solves problems but a lot of us struggle with writer's block. The answer to that "blank page" is to have a system.

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Don't be afraid that using a system or a template will result in something that is bland and not unique. It's quite the opposite. The best thing about using a system is that you get the thing DONE.

Three Elements of A System

The system component-you can think of it as your approach, the actual "1-2-3" of getting words on paper. For example, if you're creating a 400-word article, don't say 400! That sounds huge.

Instead, break it down into: Title, Intro, 3 points, Summary, and a Call to Action. Now, what if each of these sections was 50 words? Sounds a lot better, right? You can make things even easier by turning everything into a question.

This is a really easy way to do it. Act like you're having a conversation with someone about your subject and think what they would ask about your subject. The answers become your text.

Example: What are the 3 things I need to have when playing the guitar? Instead of your title being "Guitar Basics", it becomes, "How Do I Play the Guitar Quickly?"

Another Approach is "So What?"

This is really helpful in a sales letter. If you notice you have a weak headline and bullet points, pretend someone is saying to you "So what?"

You are forced to answer back with something compelling and exciting and emotional. Now, you have script that will hold your buyer's attention!

Keep in mind that with sales letters (and with books), you are going to lose someone every 10 minutes. So, for every 10 minutes of reading, you need to have something really exciting and compelling to keep them engaged.

Make your buyer say "I don't know", with your email headlines.

This is the most effective approach for email marketing.

We want to present a question that arouses curiosity.

Ex: Don't do a headline like "Simple Guitar Playing."

Instead, your headline should be "Are you missing out on these 3 simple guitar tricks?"

Then, your buyer is saying, "I don't know. Am I? Let me click over to this link and see".

Type out sentences that are only 7 words in length. It sounds silly, but it forces you to keep your language simple. Outside of academia, you don't want to use complicated language and long sentences. It turns internet readers off.

Think of keywords if you're really stuck. If you are still really stuck, think in terms of keywords. Have one keyword for each of your 3 bullet points.

For example, if you're writing about webinars, your keywords are: "title, date, and time."

Then, your first bullet point is on "I create a compelling title for my webinar", the 2nd bullet point is, "The date is more important than you might think because of your demographic" and the 3rd point would be, "Consider your customers' time zones carefully when you're scheduling."

Time Management: Give Yourself a Time Frame

You really need to do this. If you give yourself unlimited time, the odds are you will sit in front of that blank page for 5 hours with no results.

At one point, Robert spoke out 100 articles in one day. How?!!?

If you try to think of 100 subjects that your business covers, you're probably going to get overwhelmed and walk away. Instead, think of just TEN subjects and then break those down into 10 prompts (or questions) for those categories.

For example, if your business is guitar instruction, your categories might be: equipment, beginner, advanced, starting a band, album recording, etc. Then, for equipment, you'd have "acoustic vs. electric" as a prompt. For starting a band, a prompt would be "how to book shows."

With this approach, Robert just started answering and recording the questions/prompts, one after the other and each one took about 3-4 minutes.

For this, he used his Logitech Headset and Camtasia for recording. He gave himself 1-hour blocks for each category. If each prompt = 4 minutes, you can do 40 articles and have about a 20 minute break.

That timeframe sounds really tight but if you force yourself to cram a lot into a little space of time, you end up with something better than if you had all the time in the world to blather on.

The Motivation: this one is simple. For most people, that's the money. You need to put content out there if you're going to sell anything.

The "10-7-4" Mind Hack

It's easiest to think of 10 things that people need and want to know about anything. This mind hack gets you trained to brainstorm quickly and then easily find the best to offer your customers.

It's super easy. Think of 10 questions. Write them all down. Cross out the weakest 3. Now you have 7 points left. Here's how you use them! For an e-book: You now have 7 chapters. Pick the best 4, which are going to be aimed at your beginners and basic knowledge. Put those in the front. Leave the rest for the remaining 3 chapters.

For more info on how to jet-fuel your e-book writing and publishing, go to Robert's course at Make a Product.

For a Sales Letter: you have 7 modules now that you can offer in your product you're selling. Your best 4 are going to be what your program actually is and the remaining 3 modules can be your bonuses.

For more info on how to write a great sales letter FAST, check out Robert's course called Speed Copy.

For a Webinar: compress your 7 down to 4. Most webinars should only contain about 4 in an hour's time. Then, those 4 can actually mirror the 4 modules of your product. You can use the additional 3 points to interweave throughout your presentation but you're focusing on your best 4.

For a great course on how to start and run your own webinars in no time flat, check out Webinar Crusher.

Today's Take-Aways and Some Extra Advice

You need to be excited about the content that you're creating so that you will finish it.

Don't use $10 words. Write the way you actually talk. If you write an "English paper", you'll lose customers.

If you can dictate your articles, etc., that's even better. Usually, the way you FIRST said something is just about right.

It's more important to have it all down and edit later than have nothing. If you keep trying to edit while you're writing, you will never get anything done. It's important to create and put out a lot of stuff because you don't know which is going to pan out.

You want to get to the point where you are churning out content in one-take and you have a pool of content. You need to have a system, time management and motivation working together.

If you love this show, please go give us a review on iTunes.

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How to Create a Sales Page in WordPress

September 23, 2015

056: Seven Web Pages You Need to Create for a Successful Product Launch, and Re-Launch, and Consistent Residual Passive Income (Plus 7 Additional Bonus Pages At No Extra Charge)

September 19, 2015

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Setup Your Site the "Right Way"

Namecheap: Get your domain name at DoubleAgentDomains.com.
HostGator: This is for web hosting. After you buy your domain name, your site has to "live" somewhere. This is web hosting and fou can get this at DoubleAgentHosting.com.
AWeber: This is an autoresponder, your essential tool for building a list and keeping in contact with your customers. Get this at DoubleAgentAutoresponder.com.
WordPress: This is a free tool that you "place" at the front door of your site. It lets you edit your site and pages without having to know how to write or edit HTML code. You can just click around and create any extra webpages that you like using plugin's and tools that WordPress uses.

Once you get webhosting via DoubleAgentHosting.com, there's a special button where you can install WordPress on the front door of your site. Its' going to make creating all the pages we talk about today super simple.

Robert has a WordPress plugin called Paper Template that makes everything look like a plain piece of paper that you can customize. You can also buy Robert's course, Income Machine (www.incomemachine.com), which includes Paper Template as well as Member Genius, which is a plugin that allows you to take payments on your site and is integrated with PayPal.

Must-Have Web Pages

"Front Door" of your site (www.example.com): This is where your sales letter lives. You want to have a place for someone to buy something from you. This page, the sales letter, also has your buy button. Additional tip: when purchasing a domain, also buy a .com, not a .org or a .net.

Membership area of your site (www.example.com/members): When people have purchased your product, they go to a page where they create an account and then get access to the members' area.

This is a protected area where they can download the product and intake any additional content that goes with the product, such as videos, etc. Also, if they ask for a refund or stop paying installments, their access to this section can be shut off.

Training Page (www.example.com/training): This is where you put your 1-hour pitch webinar replay for your product/service. It makes everything simple and easy because you can use your webinar training as anything thing later on (i.e. a 'bonus') and just call it 'live training'.

Record your webinar using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page.

Demo Page of your site (www.example.com/demo): Here is where you can put a 5-minute demo of something you have in your product/course. This is where you'd put something exciting, such as 'before and after' pictures, evidence of your 3x income generation after flipping a house, or a trick that your software can do.

Just like for the training page above, record your demo using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page.

Nice-To-Have's

Opt-In Page (www.example.com/free): This is where you have just some simple free gift so that people will opt-in to get it, thereby joining your list.

Download Page (www.example.com/gift-download): This is where they're redirected to download the free gift. You have a link below that download for them to hop back to your sales letter.

Contact Page (www.example.com/contact): An easy form for people to fill out to contact you so that you don't have to share your email address. This is where they can ask questions, ask for interviews, etc. They could send tech problems here but it's better if you have a Help Desk page, which we'll mention in just a few minutes.

7 Extra Pages For No Extra Charge!

Blog Page (www.example.com/blog): This is where you put any articles and/or videos you find interesting to your niche. There are places on this page for them to go to your Opt-in page (and get on your list) or go directly to your 'front door'/sales letter site and buy your product.

Affiliate Center (www.example.com/affiliates): A page that tells others how they can recommend your course and make a profit from selling it themselves. This is also where you'd have banner ads and swipe copy for your affiliates to use so that they can more easily promote you.

To see an example of how this looks, go to the Action PopUp affiliate page. The easiest way to have an affiliate program when you start out is through ClickBank.

Robert's Member Genius plugin functions with ClickBank. You can get Member Genius by itself or by joining Income Machine to get the complete system including the sales letter plugin, blog, autoresponder, and traffic training, and more.

Support Page (www.example.com/support): This is your Help Desk page. We use ZenDesk for this.

Secret Door area (www.example.com/secretdoor): When Robert and Lance do a launch the best way to fire people up is to announce that they will be closing the offer soon. But sometimes you want to experiment with cold traffic like FB ads, etc.

That means, you take your sales letter and use a WP plugin called Post Duplicator to make an exact copy of the sales letter where you've now opened the button back up to buy but you don't advertise that it's open to your list.

Essentially, you're trying to see if your ads work and the only way to tell that is if you have the sales closed to the public and so any sales you get that are from this Secret Door page you know are from ad driven traffic.

Welcome Page (www.example.com/welcome): This is your upsell page. If someone buys Paper Template, they would be redirected to this page that says something along the lines of "Welcome to Paper Template, but do you want to buy Income Machine too?"

The cost would be the price difference between your large package (the upsell) and the product they just purchased.

Coaching Page (www.example.com/coaching): Offer coaching that is specific to the product that you are selling. For example, if you were selling a course on playing guitar, here is where you would offer say, 4 one-on-one sessions for customers that are still having problems or want to advance even more in guitar playing.

Your copy would say something similar to "Are you stuck? You came to the right place! In just 4 sessions with me, we'll get your roadblocks taken care of."

Your coaching should have a large dollar amount attached to it. Even if you have no clients or just a few taking part, it's fine. It is just an opportunity. Provide a link for them to go straight back to your .com front door site if they don't' want coaching.

Application Page (www.example.com/application): This is where a customer submits an app for your coaching program. You ask them specifics such as:

"What is the URL where you need help?"
"What is your monthly budget?"
"What are you looking to get out of the coaching? Is there anything else you need? "

You can use Google Forms to set this up. Once they hit submit, it notifies you. It will pile in the responses into a google spreadsheet.

Use a scheduler called TimeTrade to schedule a Skype call with them to discuss this further. The ones that you want to talk to, you then send them to your coaching page to join up.

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Podcasting Secret Training: What I’ve Discovered from Three Years of iTunes Podcasting (Using LibSyn and PowerPress) to Increase Sales and Traffic (And What You Can Do Too)

September 13, 2015

Just like anything in life, it's a good idea to know WHY you're doing something, as opposed to only "going through the motions"…

And if you're only dabbling, if this "internet marketing" thing is only a hobby to you, then it's likely you haven't found very much success because you rarely finish the things you start. If you actually want to make money, it's time to stop dabbling and actually create something. Don't "start" to create something. Actually make that single membership site, add that affiliate program to it, and get some traffic…

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You need to go all-in. The first problem I see with people going all-in is that they keep changing what they're going "all-in" for, which really isn't going "all-in." You probably know what I'm talking about. Changing to a new niche every month. Only focusing on Pinterest marketing one month because "everyone's" talking about it. Only focusing on Kindle comic books the next month because "everyone's" talking about it…

Let's separate the forest from the trees: the only things you need to focus on in your business are your list (so setup an opt-in page and follow-up sequence), traffic (setup a retargeting pixel, run Facebook ads and have an affiliate program) and offers (promote affiliate products and sell your own products).

When it comes to list, traffic and offers, there's the MUST-HAVE's (sales letter, email autoresponder) and the NICE TO HAVE'S (blog, podcast, Facebook fan page, etc.)

You "could" run your business without a blog (the website you see here) and you could run your business without a podcast (an internet radio show where you post audio episodes on your blog and they also appear in places like the Apple iTunes store).

BUT, if you already have SOME kind of sales letter and opt-in page in place, your blog is the TRAFFIC method to get more clicks onto your webpages and a PODCAST is a really easy way to consistently update that blog even if you have just a few minutes every week…

I highly recommend our Podcast Crusher course to get your podcast setup. You use your existing blog (or setup a new one) and use a special plugin called PowerPress and a file hosting service called LibSyn. You don't want to host your podcast audio files on Amazon S3 or on your own web host for a number of reasons. The biggest one is that it's easier to look at your stats. You can tell which episodes get the most play and that tells you what kinds of podcast episodes to create in the future.

The Robert Plank Show premiered on September 13, 2012.
I'm not a super prolific podcaster but I've published 56 episodes with exactly 41 hours of audio content in those three years.

I want to get you into podcasting (or BACK into podcasting if you've neglected it) because the traffic is steady consistent, as long as you publish consistently which is probably the #1 most important thing when it comes to podcasting…

Podcasting is just audio blogging that happens to get listed on Apple iTunes. Let's just call it what it is. In the past, when I had something to say, I'd spend a couple hours typing out some big long post (kind of like I'm doing to you now). When I want to put out a new podcast:

I spend about 10 minutes figuring out some bullet points (if that), and I hit record

I speak out my podcast "episode" in one single take, about 30-40 minutes. The "ideal" podcast length is 20 minutes, but that's a little short to cover the things I want to cover, although I don't want to go over 60 minutes

After recording the audio, I spend about 1 minute adding intro and outro music. Important: I don't edit out any "um's" or "ah's" or anything like that

It takes another 1 minute or so to properly "tag" the file for podcast players and add things like my cover graphic into the file

About 1 more minute to upload the audio file to the special hosting service (just wait for a simple file to upload)

Finally, I go to my WordPress blog at RobertPlank.com, click Add New Post, paste in the podcast title and "show notes" – basically, the bullet points I created to structure the show. This is a 30-second process. More recently, I've hired a person to listen to the podcast and type more detailed notes that I'll paste in later…

It's a 6-step process that takes 33-and-a-half minutes. Most people don't have a podcast even though it's easier to create than a blog post. Just speak your thoughts and then go through the checklist to publish it.

What I Didn't Do Correctly In My Podcast

Getting "some kind" of podcast online, even with just one quick 5-minute episode with zero music (that's how we have you create your first podcast episode inside Podcast Crusher) is more than most of your competitors will do.

BUT! Since launching the podcast, I've noticed many other internet marketers start podcasts, and they've done what I can only call a "podcast launch." I'm not sure if someone's teaching it in a course, but here's what I'm seeing new podcasters do:

Launch about three 5-10 minute podcast episodes the first day, and then another quick 10 minute episode after two days, then another 10 minute podcast another two days later

Get about 200 reviews to their iTunes podcast that very first day. It's very important that all 200 reviews roll in within those first 24 hours

With any luck, this will get you in the New & Noteworthy section of iTunes and possibly in the top 20 of your podcast's category (internet marketers use the "Management & Marketing" Business subcategory)

Wait a second... how do you get 200 podcast reviews within a 24 hour period? The internet marketers I've seen have been paying for them on Fiverr which I consider a blackhat technique. I'd be worried about getting banned from iTunes, and it will set you back a couple thousand bucks to hire all those reviews, but that's how many marketers are doing it. 200 reviews in 24 hours.

The next thing I didn't realize until recently was that you should be checking your rankings in iTunes. Open up the Podcast app on an iPhone or iPad and click on the "Top Charts" button, then browse to your category.

It's huge if you get into this "top 300" in a category even if you're near the bottom. My podcast has steadily climbed the rankings, then fell back down, and I've seen others rise fall in the rankings as well.

At the very least, when you check out this list you'll know what a successful podcast looks like.

Mistake number three: I wasn't consistent at first with my podcasting. Here's my podcast posting frequency:

11 new episodes in 2012
17 episodes in 2013
15 episodes published in 2014
16 episodes published in 2015 (so far)

There were no new episodes between November 2014 and March 2015, but other than that, I've posted "just under" one new episode per month. In 2015, I've been posting weekly from July and now well into September.

What I Did Right With My Podcast

There are a lot of things I did correctly with my podcast that you can learn from. First of all, I didn't start posting podcast episodes every day and then burn out after a month like many bloggers. I recorded a handful (five episodes) and only published a few.

There's something encouraging about being a couple of weeks ahead on your podcast. I'm not saying you have to plan and film an entire year's worth of podcasts or anything like that. Actually, if you did that, you'd probably record a lot of bad episodes. But I want you to record podcast episodes close to TWICE as quickly as you publish them.

That means if you're planning on publishing a new podcast episode every week, record a quick one on Monday and another quick one on Friday BUT only publish one of those two. That way you can keep building up a "pool of content" and you have one in your back pocket if you don't feel like recording that week.

Next, hire someone to listen to your podcast and type up some shownotes. The "show notes" are the text that appears on your blog for that podcast episode. It's also viewable in most podcasting apps when someone listens to your show.

Posting "just" the podcast audio player alienates the readers on your list, but when I pay to get it transcribed, I end up with a transcript that sometimes 5,000-plus words… too long to put into a blog post. I put it all into a PDF document but that's still a lot for someone to read.

The answer: pay someone on Fiverr.com (the cost is $15 to $30) to listen to your podcast, and not type up a transcript, but take "notes" so you can post your summarized content as your show notes.

Another thing I did right: recording one-take content. Just imagine if you left edit-points throughout a 20 minute podcast, or you spent 3 hours removing the "umm's." Treat it like a radio show. You're allowed to stop for a second and say "umm" if you want. It's your show. Record all your podcast episodes in one-take. It's great practice for future products and webinars.

I'm also glad I created a Facebook fan page for The Robert Plank Show which has now grown into nearly 15,000 fans. You should have a fan page for your podcast as well.

Something most people miss out on is SEO with their podcast episode titles. If you publish a podcast and your blog post title says something like, "How to Record a Video" … that's one thing.

But what if you titled that podcast episode, "How to Record Screen Capture Videos with Camtasia and Upload Them to YouTube?" Now when someone searches iTunes for the terms "screen capture" or "Camtasia" or "YouTube", you'll show up in those search results.

As far as I can tell, iTunes only counts your blog post titles in these results and not the contents of your show-notes. But it amazes me when people put out podcast episodes that are only one or two words long, when they could be showing up in more places.

I'm not the kind of person who wants to run an "interview show" where I have a new guest on my podcast every week, but this is why interview shows (besides being easy to create) are an easy podcast traffic source. If you interview a Michael Gerber type of celebrity, then that podcast episode where you interviewed him shows up when someone searches for his name.

Heck, even if you're too chicken to have guests on your show, review their products and books. You can create an episode talking about Seth Godin's latest book and show up in podcast searches, for example.

Podcast Format & Formula

Our Podcast Crusher course shows you all the fancy details, like how to record and properly tag your podcast episodes, where to host them, what settings on your WordPress podcasting plugin to customize, how to promote that podcast, and more.

When I first created my blog, I noticed a handful of people always reading the blog at any given time. With the rise of attention-stealing sites like Facebook and a few Google slaps, I noticed the traffic drying up. Good news: now that I've been podcasting consistently, I always see a handful of people browsing the site. The traffic came back!

Numerous studies show that 20 minutes is the ideal length for a podcast. I've listened to podcasts on a 5-minute format, and that's not enough time to make more than one or two points. 10-minute podcasts are a little better, but as a listener, I find myself waiting for 2 or 3 to pile up, and then I listen to all those in a row.

On the other hand, when someone pumps out 60, 90, 120 minute podcasts… it takes me at least 4 separate sessions to get through them all, and the number one reason I unsubscribe from a podcast is because too many unplayed episodes pile up.

20 minutes is the ideal length if you can manage it. Most of my episodes unintentionally last about 40 minutes, but I do my best to keep them from getting any longer.

My personal formula for the best podcast episode possible:
Three sets of three bullet points each.

Just like with any content you create, you should be solving a problem which means either answering a common question or explaining an obstacle you overcame. If you can channel the frustration of others doing the wrong thing in your industry, even better. It will be impossible to shut you up in that case.

What do I put into those three sets of bullet points? We have three bullet points about the problem we're setting up and the alternatives or solutions that didn't solve that problem. Then, three more bullet points detailing the steps you'd take to solve that problem. And then, three additional bullet points on the actual case study of yours that used those steps to solve the problem.

Here's how I mapped out my 51st episode of the podcast, "Rise Above Being a Geek"…

What Problem Are We Setting Up?

How to complete projects instead of "chipping away" at them and get "something" for sale?

How to avoid being an "upsell hell" marketer who sells at $17, $27, $37?

If you give a mouse a cookie problem, going down a long path where nothing is complete

What Steps Can We Take to Solve That Problem and Rise Above Being a Geek?

Avoid OR

Tell and show what they'll do once they take your training

Superhuman demonstration w/ easy button

What Does This Look Like in the Real World?

Checklist Marketing: WP Notepad

Internet Marketing Basics sounds boring: Income Machine is a better system

Real life demo: Podcast Crusher

(There are other types of podcasts such as 10-part and 14-part list posts, but those are simpler... just go through the list.)

When I actually talk during the podcast, the length of each section gets pretty uneven, which is okay, because I can spend more time on the interesting stuff.

Ideas for Podcasting Content

If you've setup your iTunes podcast using our Podcast Crusher training, and you're still stuck, here are some starters for your at least your next six episodes:

Interview show: have a real conversation about something you genuinely want to know about, ask them questions they don't normally hear
How did you get started online?
What tools do you use in your online business?
Compare two schools of thought (i.e. Dave Ramsey vs. Robert Kioysaki) -- which is the best?
What's a common "saying" you can use to make a point? (i.e. The Mom Test, Self-Recharging Bank Account, Copycat Marketing)
What have you been up to in the past 30 days of your business? (live case study) -- i.e. backing up your website and what tool you used (not a list of possible tools)

The bad news about all this is, the information I've just shared with you is useless unless you setup your own iTunes podcast using Podcast Crusher. The good news is that once you have a guide, it's easy to setup your podcast and you could be listed on iTunes by this afternoon.

If you want to win at the content marketing game, have something setup, keep it online and update it as often as you can, once a week if possible. What's also great about building your own website and creating your content is that you can do it on YOUR terms. If I decide I want to decode a 5-minute, or 40-minute podcast, I can.

If I type out a 200-word or 2500-word blog post (like this one) I can do that and no one can tell me otherwise. However, I'll use the TEMPLATE or the GUIDE for a successful podcast to ensure I knock that "nice-to-have" task out within one sitting, and get back to the "must-haves" that bring me all my online income.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:40 — 34.5MB) | Embed

055: Time Management Hacks: Install These Quick Computer Programs Today to Get Yourself Over the Hump, Complete All Your Projects, and Have More Fun

September 11, 2015

When we run our own businesses and don't have a "boss" to answer to, it can be easy to fall back into old habits of goofing off. It's easy to fall back into the habit of filling up time because when you worked at your "day job", the objective was to fill up 8 hours a day.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:30 — 41.7MB) | Embed

Today, we're going to talk about getting all that clutter that we're used to from a day job out of the way.

Quick Computer Programs Everyone Can Use to Improve Their Productivity

Online Stopwatch: Use this to time yourself doing a task so that you truly commit to getting it done in a certain amount of time, i.e. knock out a blog post in 10 minutes instead of thinking about it for an hour.

Camtasia: This software can record everything you're doing online. This is excellent software for recording tutorials, software walk-through demo's, etc. You can simultaneously record your processes as well as your spoken audio. We'll talk more in depth regarding Camtasia a little later in the episode.

Google Calendar: This is free and you already have it if you have a Gmail account. If you don't, you can just go to www.google.com/calendar to get it. It's great because you can synchronize it to your iPhone and iPad as well as share it with other users, such as spouses and business partners. It will send you popups/emails for upcoming appointments. Don't schedule EVERYTHING you do on your calendar-you'll just end up creating a glorified to-do list. Use it for essential appointments, such as meetings and webinars, etc.

Don't forget to check out Robert's Book, 100 Time Savers for more useful advice.

Essential Software/Programs for Internet Marketers

Camtasia Studio (again): You can record a full video and save that but also have the option of saving just the audio portion. You could use the audio for doing something like a podcast.

You can even record tutorial videos or "helper videos" just for yourself. If Robert has a particular process he has to go through, that he doesn't want to forget, he can record the entire process and then post that video to YouTube.

Some examples would be how to convert a .wav audio file to an MP3 file:

... Or how to convert any graphics file into a JPEG thumbnail:

... Or how to upload a book to CreateSpace:

Now that you have this process, you don't have to write it down on a piece of paper or make extensive notes. Your entire tutorial is accessible anywhere you can access internet to get to YouTube.

Access Robert's video tutorials at his YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe too.

GoToWebinar: Use this software for setting up all of your webinars.

WordPress

Most all other things that Robert needs to accomplish in his business can be taken care of through WordPress and various WordPress plugins.

He uses a plugin called Paper Template to create landing pages, opt-in pages, download pages, thank you pages, etc.
He uses a WordPress plugin called Member Genius to take payments in combination with PayPal.
Then, he uses a plugin called Backup Creator to back up his WordPress sites and if you back it up to another place (i.e. your hard drive, etc.), you've now cloned that site and you can use it over and over (with editing) to produce multiple sites.

These are all plugin's that Robert has created and you can get all of them in one package by joining Income Machine today.

Additional Software/Programs You'll Find Useful

GoodSync: Developed by the same creators of RoboForm, it allows you to synchronize your folders with FTP websites, Dropbox or Amazon S3 buckets.

Let's look at this scenario: When you record a video that you want to put online (like your membership site), first you have to record it, then you have to edit it, then you need to produce it and save it to a folder on your computer, then you would have to open up an FTP program (like FileZilla), then you have to drag the file over and wait for it to upload to your website, at which point you probably go create or edit a webpage and finally your video is there. It's A LOT of steps.

GoodSync automatically uploads certain files to your website. You specify which folders it syncs when a new file is added to that folder. So, essentially, as soon as you would produce and save the edited file from above, GoodSync would automatically recognize it as new and sync it over to your website.

It's skipping an entire step of you having to open the FTP website and wait for your videos to upload.

As part of Robert's sites, Webinar Crusher and Double Agent Marketing, he and his business partner Lance run monthly Q&A video calls. They record them using Camtasia, perhaps do a little editing and then save them. As soon as that step is done, GoodSync recognizes there's new files added to those folders on his computer and it uploads them to the websites so that the replay is always available.

RoboForm and LastPass. If you don't have Roboform, get it. You want to use the "Roboform Everywhere" option.

Roboform remembers all of your passwords and stores them, encrypted, in the cloud. If you ever have to reinstall your computer or certain programs, you can retrieve those passwords from Roboform. You don't have to remember your own passwords for multiple sites and you don't have to have them written down ANYWHERE.

There is also a RoboForm app for smartphones, tablets, etc. There is also a master password to RoboForm so no one can just get on your computer and have access to everything.

LastPass is great for for shared sites.

Jing is useful for capturing screen shots that you can then send as a file. That way, you don't have to send them an entire tutorial or video, etc., just the one piece that you're discussing.

You can then save that screen shot as a file to the public folder in Dropbox.

Dropbox iss similar to GoodSync in that you have folders that syncs up to the cloud.

It's good for sharing files with others but you can also use it between your own computers. For instance, you could edit a file on your laptop, save it to the Dropbox folder, and then it's the exact same version on your computer when you get home from a business meeting.

Dropbox has a public folder that you can save videos and documents to. No one else has access to it until you provide them with a link from that public folder and now you can share those certain files with them. It's also free (up to a point).

Google Sheets: The free Google equivalent of MS Excel. Just like with Google Calendar, you can share your "sheets" with or without editing privileges. It's handy for having documents that you share with your business partners, employees, and outsourcers/freelancers.

This is part of Google's "Google Drive" products which are free software programs almost identical to Microsoft Office products that are browser-based (instead of computer-based).

Google Chrome Bookmarks Bar: This is obvious but most people don't think to use it. Most of us are familiar with bookmarks but we have 100's of them in different folders that we never even use.

Instead, use the Bookmarks Bar for your most common sites that you go to EVERY DAY. You can also use it to bookmark certain docs that you're constantly using (like a Google Sheet) and editing and when you are done with that doc, you can just delete it off your bookmarks bar. The doc still exists but it's no longer a bookmark.

Additional Sites/Timesavers

Fiverr: A website for getting quick outsourcing work done at a fairly inexpensive rate, such as graphics, transcriptions, video editing, etc.

Backup! Backup your desktop, your files, etc. The time IS going to come when a computer crashes, you lose files, etc. Spending time on recovering files or creating new ones is a productivity killer! Here are some options:

Backup Creator: automatically backs up your WordPress sites. If you have a cPanel and/or dedicated server, use their backup options.
CloudBerry Backup: backup your desktop/any files you specify to an Amazon S3 bucket.
G-Safe: An external hard drive with 2 internal hard drives.
Amazon AWS Import/Export: You can mail an external hard drive to Amazon with specifications as to which S3 Bucket you want it saved to, they will do the upload for you, and mail you back your hard drive. It costs about $120 but it's worth it if you have a slow internet connection to get that "first" offsite backup in place.

Don't forget to relax! Give your brain a little bit of a rest and enjoy some podcasts (free at iTunes, Stitcher, and other podcatchers) or listen to an audiobook via Audible. Robert recommends you take in some fiction and turn off "marketing mode" for just a little bit!