Personal

People Don’t Buy During The Holidays?

December 26, 2016

I don't lose any sleep over this, but I roll my eyes when someone says...

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November and December are slower months!
No one is online during holiday time...
Don't even bother marketing or sending emails until January...
Don't you want to take some time off?

And my answers are:

Of course I take time off -- that's what scheduled blog posts and scheduled autoresponder emails put in the queue in advance are all about (bonus if people can't really tell if they're live or pre-scheduled)...

Many people (not you personally, but others) are working too hard and not working smart enough. They could get a lot more done in less time AND possibly use these few days off to plan their next move or squeeze in an hour here and there...

What about eBay? Amazon? Retail stores? There are tons of people buying. And if you say that's apples and oranges because I run an online business... well... aren't there some people out there who are using this end of the year time to look into running their own online business?

Sure, grandma won't buy an e-book or course but grandma might give those grandkids gift cards or money that they'll use to build their business

This is the last chance for many business owners to lock-in their purchases (business write-offs) for tax time -- for example, I bought myself Google Glass (now discontinued) during the holidays one year...

And most importantly, what's the difference if you setup a web page in late December 2016 that gets sales in January 2017? February or March 2017? You have to set it up in the first place...

"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." -- Zig Ziglar

What's the easy answer? You need to setup, at the very least, an opt-in page and a sales letter using Paper Template.

Of course take a bunch of time off to get that perspective, recharge your batteries and figure out your next move... but what counts is not so much thinking or planning, but ACTION...

Setting up a web page that sells something is the best ACTION you can take this holiday season, and using WordPress plus Paper Template is the best way to do it quickly while also having all the little features you need.

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080: A Day in the Life of Successful Internet Marketer Robert Plank

March 18, 2016

Ever wonder what those successful internet marketers do all day? Probably less than you, and that's why they make more money. Let's talk about how to "work" smarter (and not harder) to do more in less time, just like the "big guys" do...

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Catchphrase of the Week: make your own luck
Quote of the Week: "Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction." -- Harry S Truman
Marketer of the Week: Mark Hess (give your buyers exactly what they want, understand what leads them to buy from you, race to the inbox)

How to Be Happier, More Organized, and More Productive

Thought #1: What's Good About This?
Thought #2: Be Desperate to Reduce Clutter
Thought #3: Because I Can (silence the haters)
Try things out of curiosity to see what response I get.
If I repeat those things, then they worked! Watch that too.

A Day in the Life of Robert Plank

morning routine?
send a quick email every day
meditation? reading?
time management: don't check email in the morning, don't multitask, get everything done before the afternoon
appointment based business
Four Daily Tasks
Income Machine
help desk, checklist, system
send an email every day or build up your list to the point where sending an email is worthwhile.

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062: How Is Your Online Business (And Your Personal Life) Doing, on a Scale From One to Ten?

November 6, 2015

Are you scared? What if you became more aware of what made you anxious, scared, or nervous? Could you dissect those into smaller pieces? If you did, you'd be able to change and improve those small, manageable pieces...

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What if I asked you to write down a page of words to describe a "bad mood" such as: flustered, dejected, beat-down?
What if I asked you to then write a list of words describing a "good mood" such as: happy, energized, bubbly?

My guess is, that list of "bad mood" words would be longer than the "good mood" list. Let's change that for you.

To become more successful in both our personal lives and our businesses, we need to become more detailed about the positive things and less detailed about the negative. Whatever you apply more detail to is where your mind will focus.

What's the "trick" for overcoming that fear and thinking more positively and effectively?

Answer on a 1 to 10 Scale

When you go to the store, the clerk asks, "How are you?" Both of you are expecting your response to be a mono-syllabic "good" or maybe a "great."

Instead of doing that, ask yourself how you are on the 1-10 scale. Maybe you're having a "better than average" day, so you say 8.1.

Not only do you cause a "pattern interrupt" for the clerk, which might get you a nice laugh, but it will help you out by causing you to actually think about how you feel, instead of just replying generically with a word that has no real meaning.

Use the 1 to 10 Scale in Your Own Business

Okay, so we can see how evaluating yourself on a 1-10 scale can put you more ‘in touch' personally, but how does it help in your business? Here are a few examples:

Writing and Revising: The majority of people are not the greatest writers but if you are in internet marketing, you have to put out content. You need to be able to put out on okay first draft and for the most part a first draft is good enough. This isn't school and you're not going to triple your income by making some small edits to an email.

If you're writing a book, you might need to spend more time than on a blog post, but the principle is the same. We don't want to spend an hour writing 1 chapter of a book and then spend 5 hours doing edits.

How do you edit quickly so you don't consume all of your time? Again, the answer is scale from 1 to 10. Once the book is written (and it's been typed/spell-checked), you could just skim paragraphs and rate each one on a scale from 1 to 10 for substance.

Then, you quickly average those to get an "overall" rating. If you come up with an 8 or 9, great. But, if you come up with a 7.0 book, and you wanted an 8.0, your strategy would be to just go through and focus on fine-tuning the lower-rated paragraphs.

Overall Business Strategy: What if you're not making enough money from your online business? What if someone asked you, "How are you doing with Facebook ad campaigns?" If you answered with "good" or "okay", that's not going to help. "Good" is not measurable and it's an "automatic" response, instead of one that forces you to look for clarity.

Use that 1 to 10 scale to pinpoint issues. Rating gives you better accuracy about what/where the problem is and where you'll improve it.

Here are 10 areas that you could focus on and maximize to improve your business overall and make more money.

Time management and Mindset
Building the List
Email Follow-up and Auto-responder sequences
Membership Retention
New Customers
Joint Ventures
Free Traffic
Paid Traffic
Info Products and Recurring Income
Big-Ticket Sales and Coaching

Write a number next to each of those above items. Look at these factors individually and "score" them. This draws attention to areas where you'll capitalize to improve the overall picture.

For example, if a real problem that you have is not emailing, rate that lower. If you need more traffic, then you'd rate those lower.

Doing these one by one will help you think of solutions to improve that specific aspect of your business. Then, look at that average number. You'll see where you are and where you're headed.

Today's Winning Quotes

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, but small minds discuss people." (Eleanor Roosevelt)
"I found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances, be more active and show up more often." (Brian Tracy)
"1 in 160 are Millionaires in the U.S. 1 in 1460 are millionaires in the world." -- Dan Kennedy

Check out Robert's proven method for writing a winning e-book at Make a Product, his A-Z strategy for developing your own "free traffic-generating" podcast at Podcast Crusher, or his fun and easy course on creating your own graphics at Graphic Dashboard.

You can also get more personal guidance in his monthly mastermind at Double Agent Marketing.

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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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050: Fifty Game-Changing Internet Marketing & Online Business Breakthroughs from 37 Mentors Including Mike Filsaime, Armand Morin, Jim Edwards, Stu McLaren & Others

August 8, 2015

An action-packed 50th Episode Anniversary Special with 50 Game Changing Internet Marketing and Online Business Breakthroughs from 37 Mentors...

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Four Daily Tasks

You need to be completing 4 Daily Tasks. Before he realized this, Robert would have days where he'd knock out 20 or 30 tasks and then weeks would go by where he was burnt out and couldn't get the motivation to get anything done.
As soon as he realized the 4 Daily Tasks Principle, things really changed for him.

Today, of all the things you need to do, think about the 4 most important:

Send out emails
Run pitch webinars
Set up sales letters
Set up "buy buttons"
Contact affiliates to promote our products
Of all of those things, what is going to move you along the path of making money TODAY? That's where you should be concentrating.

On a weekday, you want to do (3) 45-minute tasks and (1) 15-minute task. On a weekend, do (4) 5-minute tasks. For more info, check out Robert's book called Four Daily Tasks.

List, Traffic and Offers

Everything you do in your online business goes to one of these 3 categories: list, traffic, or offers. If it's not, it's probably not making you any money which means it's not essential.

List: building your list or sending emails to your list
Traffic: doing ads, blog articles for SEO, podcasts for SEO, working with your affiliates to drive more traffic to your site (p.s. all of this is also building your list).
Offers: information products, iPhone apps, coaching programs, affiliate links that you promote.

Of all the things you could do today, you want to do something that meets at least one of these aspects as part of your 4 daily tasks. It's easy to get caught up in what you should do first, the "chicken or the egg" syndrome.

Robert's program, Income Machine can help with this. It shows you how to fill up the list, traffic and offers by still only completing 4 daily tasks. It shows you the 8 things to set up to satisfy having a good list, having decent traffic and having at least 1 or 2 offers for someone to buy. What you'll discover:

How to choose a niche
How to set up a website
How to set up an Opt-In page
How to set up an email follow-up sequence
How to set up a blog,
How to write a sales letter
How to start a membership site
How to drive traffic to your sites

Check out Robert's book called List, Traffic, and Offers. And, now for 50 Great Business Lessons from Robert's Mentors...

Mechanics, Marketing, Business, Branding and Strategy

Allen Says: If you just have a sales letter, a payment button, a download page and a short report solving a problem, that's all you need to get started. Robert has started a lot of auto-pilot business just from having these 4 simple components.
Gary Ambrose: One person CAN do everything. Gary is one of the first people Robert ever joint ventured with.
Lance Tamashiro: A big result can be too scary for potential buyers. Go for a small achievable results in a short amount of time. Lance is Robert's business partner.
Gary Ambrose: It's all about the Joint Venture. It's better to have an okay product with a lot of great affiliates and traffic rather than a spectacular product with no affiliates. This does not mean to put out bad products, but there is a point where it's good enough and it's more important to have good marketing than a perfect product and average marketing.
Armand Morin: Double your prices. It sounds scary but all you need to do is edit a number on a website. If you want to make 10x your income, are you going to build up your list by that much or are you going to charge more?
Josh Anderson: If you're making a newbie product, the budget for that is $100. That's a price point that doesn't hurt much for anyone that's new to a niche.Once you've done that, you can think about what else you could include in that $100 product and that is your upsell.
Eric Louviere: Create a technology or a term that's more than a thing that already exists. If you tell someone that you have a copywriting course, that's okay, but if you call it the ‘copywriting and persuasion course' or the ‘hypnotic persuasion course', you're making it more than something else.This is the same principle Robert used when naming Income Machine. No one else has a term like that. And, there's really not a term for all those things bundled together.
Michael Gerber (from the E-Myth): Checklist your online business processes so that they are repeatable. Robert has never met Michael personally but The E-Myth is one of the best business books he's ever read.
Big Jason Henderson: Deliver downloads in a membership site even if it's a single-payment low-ticket item. If you're making all of these sales on your information product, why not put the product into a membership site so that you can show them upsells, etc.?
John Calder: Get out more. There are places that you hang out, like FB groups, forums, etc. and if you're not careful, it becomes an echo chamber. You get locked into a certain way of thinking.
Allen Says: No one wants to hear you saying "we here at Beltman industries..." What they want to hear about is you as an individual and real person. It's tempting for people to go all over Facebook and pretend to be Trump International and to seem really big, but it's better to be just an individual person.

E-mail Marketing

Eric Louviere: Go on a site called EzineArticles.com, search your niche, pick out 3 articles. They will allow you to take up to 25 articles from any niche. Their condition is that you copy the entire article with everything intact including their byline. You can paste all 3 of these articles into a word document.Then sandwich your own gigantic links in the text between their own links in the bio boxes. Even if you're brand new in a niche and don't have time to write original articles, get 3 of these together in a logical sequence and then sandwich your links in between them so you're still abiding by the terms but you're also making something that leads back to your sites.
Ryan Deiss: You don't want to have an opt-in bribe promising 7 Ways to do xyz, 7 tips for xyz Why? Because customers don't want to wait around for all 7 things.
Mike Filsaime: Email every day. It's okay to email old offers. When someone joins your list, the first 7 days especially, they're the most active they are ever going to be.
Robert Puddy: The best day to send an email broadcast was yesterday. The 2nd best day is today. This is a huge newbie problem. It doesn't really matter as long as you send something. Don't be superstitious. You're missing out on opportunities.
Jim Edwards: Blend content and pitch in your email. When we build this list of subscribers, it's really tempting to give them lots of advice and helpful tips and freebies and goodies. You intend to warm them up and then hit them with your paid product in 2 or 3 months. You've overwhelmed them and you've gotten stuck in the Friend Zone.Because you've given them all this stuff for free, when it's time to sell, they've either cooled off or figured they have everything they need for free. It's too much of a shock for them to switch gears into paying you.
Brian Garvin: Send new subscribers daily pitch emails, especially the first 7 days. If someone opts in on a Monday-are you really going to wait?
Jason Parker: Commit to emailing for the same offer all week long What Robert learned from him unintentionally was that if you have something for sale, you need to dedicate a week to doing that. If someone is mailing for the same offer all week that tells you it's selling. If they're changing it every day. that tells you it's not selling.
Marlon Sanders: Your list gets trained. If you send your list free stuff every day for 6 months and then you ask them to buy something, they're not going to buy. But, if you send offers to them every now and then, they're used to you being the person who has things for sale. They also get trained for high-ticket and low-ticket. Mix it up. There's a real danger in offering them low ticket for too long. And, they're not trained at all if you don't email them regularly.
Michael Fortin: Every post on your blog is another possible email in your follow up sequence.
Armand Morin: The "Why didn't you buy?" email. See Robert's episode #48 for a full explanation on this concept.At the end of 7-10 days you have a lot of people warmed up but are on the fence. Out of all the possible things you could do or say in an email this gets the most responses.
Gary Ambrose: Combine 3 things that don't belong together to create kooky and creative emails. The emails that are going to get you the most opens and clicks are the "weird" ones because they stand out.
Steve Schneiderman: Unintentionally, he taught Robert to mix up email subject lines. What irritated him about being this guy's subscriber was that literally every week or two he would send out an email titled "An Update From Steve Schneiderman" instead of having interesting subject lines. Robert never opened these "update" emails.
David Cavanagh: Sometimes you just need to sell something quick for $10 to wake your buyers up, to get the juices flowing again.

Product and Content Creation

Jason Parker: Taught Robert that you don't delete your websites, your blog posts, etc. If you have a .com website out there, even if it only made 1 sale a year, that would double the money you're paying to keep that domain going. What can it hurt? Robert has a lot of old products out there. They still work they are still functional and still make occasional sales. Why cancel out all the effort you originally put in?
Paul Myers: Sell the notes based on actions you're actually taking. Let's say you learn something, like WordPress blogging. You can buy some courses on WordPress and go in and play with it. You yourself might figure out a better way to do it, especially if you're applying it to your specific niche (i.e. WordPress for carpet cleaners). Now, you have a personal checklist, notes, etc. Make a case study of yourself and sell those.
Mike Filsaime: Solve a problem, and then sell a product about how to solve it, and then sell a product about you made money selling THAT product.
Jim Edwards: Taught Robert about how to do video and not to overthink it. Jim used to do a lot of video blogs using Camtasia.
Wes Blaylock: You don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Ben Prater: Simplification. Create "simple ware" type of software that only does one quick thing. You don't need to create the next Microsoft Word or Adobe Photoshop. A lot of people try to compete on features but what if you made a piece of software that was just a one-click?
Stu McLaren: Create a product that other businesses use daily and that their business depends on. Stu invented WishList Member. He told Robert to make a product "call home" and have other businesses depend on it. This is where the product stops working if someone discontinues their membership in your site.
Matt Bacak: The A9 method. He taught Robert how to recycle a single article into blog posts, press releases, videos, etc.
Brian Garvin: Give your affiliates a lot of tools to promote your product. Articles, affiliate banners, tweets to paste, Facebook posts, extra audio files they can give away, etc. Make it easy for them to ‘sell' you.

Productivity

Tim Ferriss: The Pareto Principle or the 80-20 Rule. He didn't invent this but he made it famous. 80% of your actions only generate 20% of your income, but the other 20% generate 80% of your income.
It's a matter of optimizing, rearranging and prioritizing.
Tim Ferriss: Parkinson's Law. The time it takes to complete a task expands to fill the time that you've allowed to do it. Tim is also the author of The 4-Hour Work Week.
Jeanette Cates: Make any decision in 6 seconds or less.
Steve Manning: The secret to writing a book in 14 days is to write under pressure. Set a timer and write as fast as possible Write everything as if you're responding to questions. It's easier to do that then to formulate statements.
Lance Tamashiro: You have a 3-day window on any of your projects from "idea formation" to "burn out." If you have an idea, do everything you can to get something out on it in 3 days or less.

Copywriting

Marlon Sanders: Just list 10 reasons why someone should buy from you. That makes for a good enough sales letter.
Ken Evoy Which sells more copies? A beautiful website with no text on it? Or, an ugly website with text on it?
Gary Halbert: Blind, Strategic Headlines. It's like an exciting mystery. How do I make more money on my house by taking it off the market? Someone has to know the answer to that.
Eugene Schwartz: You have 4 marketplace cycles: Novelty, enlargement, sophistication, and abandonment over and over again and it happens with everything.
Joe Sugarman: Explain away the objections. Just bring it up immediately and explain why it doesn't matter.
Mark Joyner: Print the price on the button.
Ray Edwards: There won't be a replay (for webinars). It adds a sense of urgency
Michael Fortin: Avoid Upsell Hell. Just have one upsell.
Joel Spolsky: Split testing. You send half your visitors to webpage A and half to webpage B.They have a slight difference between them. Look at the visitor value. One site has $10 product and one has $20. On website A, 100 people purchased at $10 and on B only 70 people bought at $20. Yes, you made more sales at website A but you received more value from website B. In other words, what makes you the most money, not just the most sales.

Personal Growth

Ray Edwards: Keep your own side of the street clean. Don't complain. What is it going to accomplish?
Dave Ramsey: Live below your means. It makes everything you do a lot simpler.
Gary Bencivenga: Ask your subconscious for an answer to a problem you're having. Write it down before bed and sleep on it. Your subconscious will answer you.

Bonus piece of advice from Ryan Healy:Read fiction books unrelated to internet marketing to keep your creativity and motivation going. You can't be all marketing all the time. It's overwhelming. Your brain needs a break.

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046: Did You Send Out Thank You Cards to Your Customers Yet?

July 11, 2015

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No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you're still way ahead of anyone who isn't trying.

Very few marketers even make the effort of doing Thank You cards. Should this be part of your everyday routine? Are there tasks that are a "better" use of your time?

Maybe. But, what if, no matter what niche you're in, you just singled out 4 random customers today and just jotted down 4 quick Thank You's? It would take just a few minutes out of your day but put you way ahead of the curve.

You just want to thank your customers for buying from you. There's no "sell", no discount and no hustle. You are just thanking them for their business. They are part of your success. Here are your tools for "Thank You" productivity...

Thank-You Tool #1: WPKunaki

On Robert and Lance's website, MembershipCube.com, as well as their other membership sites, they use a plug-in called WPKunaki, which is an address collector.

When someone joins their membership site, the plug-in pops up and asks for their mailing address and runs it through the address validator. Lance would be really crazy not to be collecting addresses.

It's nice to have it on hand. He can use it for Thank You cards, he can use it to send them webinar or DVD copies as just a quick bonus. He can also use it for geographics to target customers later for Facebook ads.

Thank-You Tool #2: Phone Calls

Sometimes Lance will even call them on the phone.

If someone just bought a $7 e-book from you, they're not expecting anything at all, not even an auto-responder-generated email. So, if you make that call, you're way ahead of anyone else.

If someone bought from you and you contact them the same day, they are going to just be happy and not have any complaints.

Thank-You Tool #3: Send Out Cards

This is a service that will allow you to send traditional cards to your customers. These are NOT electronic cards. They are "paper" cards like you would get at the store so they are very personal, not "mass e-mailed" and they won't go to your customer's spam folder or look like another sales push.

There are also gift options within the Send Out Cards system that you can send to your customer as well.

To learn more about how Send Out Cards can help you personalize your relationships with your customers, go to DoubleAgentCards.com.

Thank-You Tool #4: Google Drive

If you have a Gmail account, you also have a drive account. If you don't already have one, go get one. It's free.

You can create any doc and have it be in your Google Drive, where you can now access it from anywhere.

A good idea here is to keep a journal of different contacts/activities that have with your customers. Here is where you can keep a journal of the Thank You cards that you send out.

"Cheesy" Marketing

You want to stay away from cheesy marketing. Many marketers tell you to look up today's holiday and give your customers a "special discount" for that day (example: a "Boxing Day" discount) or to look up your customers' birthdays market to them on their birthdays.

It sounds like a good idea but all these marketers who teach this have never personally marketed to me on in this way. They've really just posted an occasional sale here and there when they're probably running low in their bank account.

It makes more sense to just sell what you sell and be consistent. You don't have to have sales all the time if you're thanking your customers for being there.

The 1-4-15-80 Rule

This is an important concept that Robert talks about in his program Double Agent Marketing and its accompanying book. It's how your list is broken down:

About 1% will buy everything you put out.
4% will buy most of your stuff.
15% won't always buy high-ticket items but they will probably buy things where they can do a payment plan.
Then, your last 80% will probably not buy anything products/services over $20.

If that disappoints you, you can build a bigger list OR you can take better care of your list.

Even if your list is not that big you can still make sales. If you wanted to make $50K/month, would you rather have 100 subscribers and 50 sales of $100 each, regardless of the type of products? Or would you rather have 10,000 subscribers that only purchased $5 items. Robert has asked this of several of his customers and overwhelmingly people would rather work with the first option.

It's not necessarily about getting floods of people but about building a decent size list and really adding value in cultivating relationships with those who want to buy the higher-level products. It doesn't take much to:

Mail them a DVD (Kunaki.com for DVD production)
Mail them a book
Send them Thank You cards (Vistaprint.com for address labels and postcards)
Give them a phone call

Avoid the 3-inch DVD Syndrome

There are small writeable CD's. When Robert was first starting out, he saw these and thought, "Hey, cool I can fit this mini CD into a normal sized envelope. I can record something and send it out and I am going to make so much money."

If no one cares or no one plays it and it doesn't lead to anything it's not going to get you anywhere. In other words, something has to bring the customer back. It has to be intensely valuable and/or make the customer feel very valued.

Some Fun and Creative Marketing Ideas from Robert

One time for an event he took out Facebook ads that were so narrowed and targeted that the ad was basically just showing down to the 1 person he had picked out in Facebook.

For the one person he wanted to see it, he would put their name in the ad and their picture. He did successfully sell seats to seminars just based off this ad.

Another time, he went to Amazon and bought a huge box of microwave popcorn. He left the individual packages all sealed up in plastic and sent 100 of them out with copies of a quick letter. The letter basically said, "Here's some popcorn to watch this movie" and the URL in the letter went to an online "movie" that was pitching a live event. He spent $200 or $300 altogether on this marketing and sold seats to his event this way. It was a good return on investment.

An idea he's pursuing now is to send out copies of his Double Agent Marketing book to his customers along with a highlighter and a letter that says something along the lines of "this book has so much valuable information you'll need an extra highlighter."

Closing Thoughts

Don't do this to prospects or to people you plan to joint venture or network with. Do it low tech. once you start getting fancy it really kind of backfires.

These "Thank You" and marketing ideas are for your current customers, your best buyers and those you want to come back. Do it "low tech." Once you start trying to get "fancy", it really looks cheesy and can backfire. You just want to say Thank You and do something fun for them.

You can always reach Robert at his email via robert@robertplank.com. He would love to hear from you about your business and what marketing you're doing that is working successfully, and is happy to hear your questions. He may even feature your question on the show!

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Happy Holidays 2012 from Robert Plank (Free Kindle Books for You)

December 25, 2012 • 51 Comments

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year... today I want to give you three of my bestselling Amazon books 100% for free. Here they are:

I recommend you Ctrl+click to open each of those links in a new window, then the page "should" say purchase price for today only is $0.00, click the button and add them to your account, even if you don't have time to read them yet.

You can read these books whether you have an actual Kindle reading device, an iPhone or iPad (just install the app), or read it directly through your web browser.

Please claim your three books, post a comment below letting me know you've done it, give each book a quick read and leave me a quick review on Amazon. Thanks again!

Specialized Knowledge: How to Make $50 (or More) Every 5 Minutes, All Day Long, By Clicking a Few Buttons (Just Like I Did at Age 17)

August 26, 2011 • 37 Comments

Let me tell you something.

Do you want to know the first time I saw a balance of 1000 bucks in my PayPal account?

It was 2002... geez, a decade ago now, I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school. I lived with my parents. And you know what I was doing to make my money?

Installing a link tracker plugin. I had programmed it, and people could buy it for 67 bucks (I think)... I would get 1/3rd of that money. Better than working at McDonald's at that age, right?

But the big bucks came in when someone bought that plugin... many people wanted "someone else" to install it.

5 Minutes = 50 Dollars

The price was $50 bucks per install. What they didn't know is it took me about 5 minutes to FTP up files, chmod files, create a database, import that database, create a cron job, edit a config file... in other words, my "specialized knowledge" was worth every penny to them even though I could do it fast.

As you can imagine, it didn't take long to fill up to 1k...

And that paid for college. I'll admit I needed help from my parents for the first year living alone, but never fully. They gave me "some" money for rent. I paid the rest of my rent, plus school, plus food, cable, internet, clothing, all that good stuff...

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I still believe that if you're starting out, the fastest way to make money is freelancing: performing a service in exchange for pay.
You can get paid more per hour if you do whatever it is you do FAST
You get paid even MORE than that if you have a SPECIALIZED SKILL and differentiate yourself

What's a specialized skill? Let's think about this...

Scenario #1: WordPress Installer

How much would someone charge you to install WordPress? 10 bucks? But what if...

You installed WordPress on their domain
You loaded it up with a beautiful looking WordPress theme
You customized it with all the SEO, social media, discussion, and traffic plugins they need
You setup their blog to retweet and post to their fan page every time you made a post
You loaded up the blog with YouTube videos, EzineArticles and PLR articles
You contacted 25 professionals in their niche asking for guest blog content
You brought people to the site to leave comments
You setup their autoresponder, optin form, and popup on that blog

Now how much is that worth? 100 bucks MINIMUM... and it still takes you under an hour of work.

Scenario #2: Offline Business Setup

A few months ago I had dinner with a small business who was getting his website setup. His "coder" gave him...

A professional design (magazine style WordPress theme)
"About Us" and "Photos" pages (content supplied by the business owner)
A Facebook Like button (installed a plugin)
Business information and a Google Map to the location (installed a plugin)
Coupon and QR code (installed a plugin)

That took even less time and the business owner was happy to pay over 1000 dollars for it. Just something to think about... but what about this?

Scenario #3: Membership Site Ninja

I know a couple of people who are the "modern day equivalent" of what I used to do. They are membership site installers. Their full-time living consists of:

Installing WordPress
Adding a good looking theme
Setting up membership site software
Add a simple sales letter with a payment button
Setup "free" and "paid" levels
Install a forum
Install backup and monitoring plugins

Average price these people ask for membership site installations: $4000. For MAYBE an hour of work if you're slow and a riveting, action-packed re-run of "Mama's Family" is playing on your TV in the background?

My head is spinning right now with so many ways you can look at what freelance services other people are providing, and put your own "twist" on it. Here are some more examples...

Article writer: in addition to writing the articles, you could submit the article to 20 article sites, AND login to their blog once per day to post the articles they hired you to write
Copywriter: in addition to writing their sales letter, you could write and schedule the autoresponder emails, setup the thank you page offer and upsell, setup the affiliate program, and contact 20 joint venture partners
Graphic Designer: in addition to creating someone's logo, you could create their 3D cover, affiliate banner graphics, sales letter "doodles" and minisite design
Product Ghostwriter: in addition to writing someone's product, you could put it on Kindle and CreateSpace for them
Resale Rights Seller: in addition to selling resale rights to your report or membership site, you could install the sales letter and download page on their site for them

And how do you get these jobs? Easy... contact anyone who sells a WordPress plugin, WordPress theme, article creation course, graphic creation course, copywriting course... get yourself listed in their product and download page.

Remember, that's how I got all my "$50 installation in 5 minutes" jobs came from... someone bought the link tracking plugin, and they had all the instructions to install it themselves, but that download page said: contact this guy if you want to pay 50 bucks to get it installed.

Quick question: What have you done, heard of, or plan to do to make more money with freelancing and done-for-you services?

Where to Meet in Los Angeles, Sept 23 2010

August 15, 2010 • 51 Comments

Update: We're going with Sherm's suggestion and meeting on September 23rd 2010 from 4:30PM to 7PM at:

Melody Bar & Grill
9132 S Sepulveda Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Neighborhood: Westchester / LAX

Who will be there: Robert Plank, Lance Tamashiro, Sherm Cohen, Wal Gifford (chunked out), Robert Vance, Rodney Daut, Evelyn Brooks, Dennis Barakos.

You guys voted for where we should meet for my 26th birthday and the majority said: Los Angeles!

Now my question for you is:

1. Are you "probably" coming, or "definitely" coming?

2. What bar in the LA area should we hang out at?

Preferably I want this near the airport, and there is no set time... people can just come and go throughout the evening.

Go ahead, answer those 2 questions for me right now so I can at least have a head count.

26th Birthday: Where Can We Meet?

August 2, 2010 • 113 Comments

My 26th birthday is coming up in a few weeks, on Thursday, September 23, 2010. I'm having my "real" birthday party a few days before because on Thursday I'm going to be traveling to JVAlert Live in Denver.

Here's my question to you: what major city close to you, can you get to on Thursday, not for anything major, just to hang out at a bar where I buy you a drink?

I don't want to fly into the northwest, southwest, midwest, northeast, or deep south, and I'm staying in the United States... so that pretty much leaves these choices:

Update: Here's what you guys voted...

Los Angeles, CA (17 votes)
San Francisco, CA (10 votes)
Las Vegas, NV (7 votes)
Salt Lake City, UT (3 votes)
Denver, CO (6 votes)
Dallas, TX (9 votes)
Austin, TX (9 votes)
Atlanta, GA (12 votes)
Orlando, FL (6 votes)
New York, NY (7 votes)
New Orleans, LA (2 votes)
Washington, DC (2 votes)

Which of these cities can you be in to meet me on Thursday, September 23, 2010? Go ahead and vote with your comment below. I'm not sure if I'll be doing it yet, it depends on the votes.

New Apple iPhone 4

June 24, 2010 • 20 Comments

My new iPhone 4 showed up a day early (Wednesday)... some lucky people even got theirs on Tuesday!

I did have to wait a few minutes for it to activate with AT&T, and for it to sync my iTunes movies and songs... but once that was all done... well you check it out!

Check it out... ability to use FaceTime for video calls, you can choose the front or back camera when taking photos... it's thinner, lighter, faster, and better looking.

Apple already introduced multitasking to the old (3G and 3GS) phones on Monday, so I've already been able to stream music from a radio station via Pandora while checking email or browsing the web on my phone.

iBooks (book reader) is new, even though we already had the Kindle app
Netflix app is coming so you can stream movies to your phone (like you already can with iPad)
iMovie is coming out soon which will let you edit videos with all the features as the desktop version
Farmville is coming to iPhone pretty soon as well

What phone do you have? (Come on Droid people, let me have it!) Are you getting this new phone?

Ban People Who Forget to Use Their Real Name?

July 24, 2009 • 64 Comments

Quick question:

Should I delete comments from people on this blog who post with names like "Affiliate Store" or "Forex Business Credit"... a handle instead of their real HUMAN name?

fake-names When you do that on my blog, I feel like I can't use your name when I reply to you... I feel like you're only here to get linkbacks to your site, and it messes with my search engine relevancy.

You market the most effectively when you can show you're a real person... that's why so many people put their picture on their sales letter, create video, use their real names on forums, post blog comments with gravatar images, and sell using webinars.

Should I delete those comments, yes or no?

Robert Plank Retires!

May 15, 2009 • 26 Comments

I mentioned this in passing in a couple of blog posts recently, but after meeting Joe Lavery in Orlando, he had no idea I'm now doing internet marketing full time, so here it is:

I Quit My Day Job on March 25, 2009!

I should have quit a year ago, or even sooner. The only things holding me back were: health insurance (my self-employed plan is now $125/month), money reserve (I have enough to last me a couple years), and pissing off the people who trained me (which was a stupid reason anyway).

March 26, 2009: Immediately after quitting my day job, I stepped on a plane to Dallas, Texas for AM 2.0 to meet Armand Morin, Ryan Deiss, Ray Edwards, Ryan Healy, and Mary Wilhite for the first time ever.

I was totally ready to tell Armand that I quit my day job so I could attend as Jeanette Cates's guest, but the only interaction we got to have was him yelling at me for pricing my stuff too low. At least I got to tell Ryan Deiss that fact, even though I'm not sure he knows who I am.

The next two weeks after returning included knocking out as many points as possible for Armand's AM 2.0 Platinum 100-point checklist, launching our most profitable webinar ever ($17,000 on the launch), and updating Action PopUp, WordPress Crusher, 47 Hour Report, creating Split Genie, and running a couple webinars with Ryan Healy and Derek Franklin.

April 17, 2009: Back on the road... flew out to Austin, Texas for Eric Louviere's MemberSnap seminar after super-programmer Henry Fuentes invited me. I brought my business partner Jason Fladlien along, especially because Marlon Sanders had been e-mailing us but liked him way better, so I figured the three of us could hang out.

We sat in the seminar a grand total of 25 minutes all weekend, and talked with Marlon most of the time. He taught me most of what I know now about "branding" (yuck) and positioning and basically made me paranoid about everything going on with internet marketing.

April 23, 2009: Mass Control 2.0! I only had a couple of days to stay at home before waking up early Thursday morning and heading south on California Highway 99 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and finally to San Diego, California... six hour drive from Turlock.

I wasn't registered for the conference so I made sure to stay far, far away from that conference room. I chilled with Lance Tamashiro most of the weekend, and got to meet David Risley (who confused Frank Kern for Kid Rock), met Jason Moffatt for about ten seconds (who was busy macking on some chick), met Alex Jeffries (who I'd never heard of but he was a big hero of Lance's), Ryan Wade (ViralTweets), Joe Lavery (long time customer) and who could forget Dale Maxwell the colon cleanser.

April 29, 2009: Time to co-host my own workshop at the Impact 100 event in Orlando, Florida. Through a strange twist of fate I stayed at the same hotel I stayed at ten years ago when I was in high school for the Future Business Leaders of America. Jason Fladlien, Mary Wilhite and I hosted the "Niche Riches for Beginners" workshop.

Jason talked about the niche selection system, Mary presented on webinars, I dissected list building and traffic, Jason explained copywriting, I talked about product creation and basically got in everyone's face and made sure all 16 participants gave me their name, phone number, webinar topic, and time and date they were going to present that webinar. We presented from 9AM to 5PM (with breaks).

Joe Lavery was there again, so was Charlie Fry from the Video Sales Tactics class... he flew out from Philadelphia just to see us which I thought was cool. All theparticipants in that class were AWESOME... and the three of us had so much fun that we are hosting another workshop, the "Action Seminar" in Dallas, at the end of May:

Dallas Embassy Suites
4650 W Airport Fwy
Irving, TX 75062

Friday, May 29, 2009 from 9AM-5PM (Workshop)
Saturday, May 30, 2009 (Networking Breakfast)

I'll have more info about that later including where you can register. It will only cost $97 to attend and we'll have Jeanette Cates (the Tech Tamer) and Marc Harty (PR Traffic) onboard as guest speakers.

That's what I've been up to for the past month and a half since I retired from my day job: four seminars in a month.

I heard once that if you quit your job, the LAST thing you should do is immediately sit in front of your television set... either get a new job or go on vacation, so I went on vacation.

But now for the more important question: how do I manage my time now that I don't have the day job to hold me down? How do I make sure I get enough accomplished, still have enough free time, and don't goof off with my newfound free time? I've already got that covered, and I'm ready to explain my day to day system to you for free, but I need something from you first:

Ten comments under this blog post.
Ten tweets about this post (Twitter icon is on the bottom of the post)

Once I those those two things from you guys, I'll spill the beans about exactly how I manage my time and how I maintain my business day to day. Thanks guys! Leave your comment below...

Banned From YouTube

April 27, 2009 • 101 Comments

As some of you noticed, I was banned from YouTube. No reason given!

That account had 160 videos, 50 subscribers, has been around for 2 years and responsible for a couple of extra accidental sales per week. Some of the videos on that account had over 2,000 views.

Long story short: the Thursday morning of April 23, 2009 I drove from Turlock, south down Highway 99 and then Interstate 5 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles then finally San Diego to meet a few people who were in town for Mass Control 2.0.... Jason Fladlien, Lance Tamashiro, Dale Maxwell, David Risley, and Bryan Blyss (Faceman).

Tragedy Strikes!

We check into Jason's room at the Hard Rock Hotel, break out the laptop like usual internet marketing nerds and check out our Video Sales Tactics blog. Try to play the latest YouTube video I have posted there... and it's been "removed for terms of use violation."

That's weird, I say... and try to play another YouTube, same message. I load my YouTube profile... it says, "This account is suspended." Try to login to that account, same deal.

YouTube never sent me any e-mail about any videos being a problem or about the account being taken down. YouTube has no phone number of e-mail address, but after filling out a 10-part form I was able to get this canned response:

Hi robertplank,

Thanks for your email. Your "robertplank" account has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines. Your account has now been terminated. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.

YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When a video or account is brought to our attention we investigate and take action if necessary.

We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our
Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.

Regards,

Roberto
The YouTube Team

So YouTube tells me my account violates their community guidelines, but won't tell me which ones, and it's obviously none because their community guidelines refer to copyright infringement, anything illegal, hate speech, etc. of which my account had none. It was ALL talking head and PowerPoint how-to videos.

The icing on the cake is that being "suspended" from YouTube not only means your account is gone, but you aren't allowed to create any new accounts. (The guys from Traffic Geyser told me to create a new account at a friend's house, but there's no way I'm doing that.)

That Sucks!

The lesson to all this is: post videos in Camtasia format on your blog so you aren't stuck with a bunch of "this video has been removed" links all over your blog. I have the originals of all those videos and YouTube only accounted for 5% of my traffic, but it still sucks.

Build your own site, not someone else's. You shoud be posting your YouTube videos on your OWN blog, including hosting the video itself. It's just like how you should be posting your own articles to your blogs, and not just EzineArticles.

Matt Levenhagen responded to my tweet on Facebook and mentioned sxephil (Philip DeFranco) who is one of my favorite YouTubers, who does this too. Use your videos to get people offsite and on your list so you can continue posting videos on your blog.

As far as why I was banned? The only thing that makes sense is Traffic Geyser. It looks like I was wrong, other internet marketers not using Traffic Geyser have been banned for the same reason...

What Does All This Mean?

The moral of the story is YouTube throws great parties, but is not trustworthy enough to watch your kids. Use YouTube as a traffic source, not a place to store all your content.

That's the true story of the last YouTube ever posted by Robert Plank... what are your thoughts on this? Make sure to comment below!

$30K Month: Success!

March 2, 2009 • 55 Comments

Some of you guys have been asking how I did on the $30K month for February... the answer is: I passed with flying colors!

I made it past $30K on Thursday the 26th, with two days to spare. Here's a breakdown of it:

Day job: $2,500.00
Launches and trickle sales: $22,207.03
Affiliates: $4,846.44
Membership site: $869.06
Webinar future payments: $2,000
Total: $32,422.53

Affiliate sales are way up, just about quadrupled. I planned to a product launch, resale rights offer, price increase, and e-class per week... but the two product launches went very well and I took a little bit of Eric Holmlund's advice and focused devoting 80% of my time to marketing.

I hit $30K with just two product launches that went VERY well, two resale rights offers that went VERY well, and one e-class. Here's a list of my accomplishments for the month:

Made 986 sales.
Wrote 5 sales letters.
Wrote 6 blog posts.
Sent 33 e-mails to my list.
Paid nearly $1000 in PayPal fees!
Recorded 50 videos on one Sunday.
Wrote 2 guest posts, a 9-part guest video series, hosted a 90-minute webinar with a stranger and appeared on 2 interviews.

Tell me why I work a day job again? When I just made more in one MONTH from internet marketing than I make a whole year the day job? Oh right, "health insurance." (rolls eyes)

Instead of going on and on about myself, I'll leave you with a few lessons I learned from the $30K month that you can apply in your business right now:

Lesson #1: Focus on what makes money first. If freelance makes you the most money, freelance first to hit your daily goals and then work on long-term stuff like product creation or joint ventures when you're ahead. Personally, I got a product launch out of the way and then I was free to go about promoting it.

Lesson #2: Have a weekly goal. $30K broken down into 4 weeks is $7500 per week. So each week, all I had to do was think, what did I need to do to get that $7500? Usually a couple of product launches and affiliate sales. $7500 in a week is much less intimidating to me than $30K in a month. If you're not on that level yet, try for even $750 in a week.

Lesson #3: Have an accountability partner. I couldn't have made it this far without Jason kicking my butt every step of the way, and Jason couldn't have made it to $20K without me asking him why he hadn't launched anything that day.

Lesson #4: Never complain. Another big timewaster and a great way to waste the entire week feeling bad about yourself. If you have time to complain, you're not busy enough. This doesn't mean giving up your personal life or anything like that. But if you sit at the computer 3 hours a day, you had better be working on internet marketing all 3 hours instead of complaining!

Lesson #5: Do as much with the time you have as you possibly can. Get an early start to the day if possible, and NEVER EVER do any internet marketing work at your day job unless it's before, after, during lunch or on breaks. My girlfriend wakes up at 5 AM most mornings to babysit, so I got her to wake me up before she left so I could work without any distractions.

What did you think? Do you have close-ended monetary goals for each month and each week? An accountability partner? If not, maybe you need my Time Management on Crack productivity report and videos to get you where you NEED to go.

What's my goal for March 2009? $31K. What's your goal for this month? Please comment below with your goal and how you plan on getting there.

Sorry, But You’re An Idiot!

January 1, 2009 • 25 Comments

A while ago I dealt with a guy on a public message board (not the one I usually frequent) who said something along the lines of this:

I've never seen a sales letter actually implement any of this JavaScript or PHP interactive sales letter stuff.

Every time I see one of these sales pages, I check out the site for every person leaving a testimonial. The truth is that nobody is actually using this stuff... is it a case where the emperor has no clothes?

What a dumbass question!

What proceeded was, several of us replied to him but he seemed to be off in his own little world.

Guess what, if you go to the Clickbank marketplace and choose the top sellers in ANY niche... most of them use some sort of pop-up, lead capture, survey, peel away ad, walk on video, or chat agent setup.

Most of what goes on is invisible to you because they'll use all kinds of personalization, landing pages, dynamic autoresponder follow-ups, sublisting, and all that.

If you are trying to tell me that adding PHP has no affect on your sales, or hurts them? Gimmie a break!

You can still sell a product with good copy and no PHP and JavaScript tactics. But good copy plus PHP scripts? Unstoppable!

You could add an exit pop-up to turn lost sales into opt-ins. Or simply add a countdown timer or interactive sales letter... it's up to you.

Dual Monitors

December 16, 2008 • 30 Comments

One thing I forgot to mention the other day about my Camtasia PowerPoint process is that I now have a dual monitor setup:

On the left is my new computer that came this week. It's one of those iMac ripoffs where the whole computer is contained within the monitor. It's an AVERATEC F1 D1002UHCE-1.

2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E4600, 2 GB DD2 memory, 320GB SATA hard drive, 22 inch monitor, Nvidia GeForce 8400 256 MB graphics card, built-in wifi, memory card, DVD burner, webcam, TV tuner. I upgraded from a Shuttle, little toaster shaped computer I bought a couple years ago.

I like tiny computers... less clutter.

But I plugged my 19-inch monitor from the old computer into the back and now I have a second monitor. Great for recordnig those Camtasia PowerPoints as you can see in the picture.

I configured PowerPoint to display the actual slide show on the right monitor, and show "presenter view" on the left so I can see what slides are coming up next.

Yep, if you go to "Set Up Show" in PowerPoint you can not only specify which monitor will display the presentation, but also what resolution to resize it to... I tell it to resize to 640x480 for the presentation.

What's more, if you use the REAL PowerPoint (not OpenOffice like some people named Jason) and you install Office first, then Camtasia, they will add a little button to the "Add-Ins" tab of Camtasia to start the slide show and start recording with one click.

I click ONE button, it resizes my second monitor to the low resolution for recording, starts the slide show, and starts recording. As soon as the slide show is finished, it resizes the monitor to the old resolution and asks where to save the Camtasia recording.

Super cool, right?

The one-click thing might sound stupid, but I'm recording so many videos for the Daily Seminar that I'm at the point where I need it.

I've used dual monitors at work for over a year now and it makes you way more productive in other ways. You can code in one window and read instructions in the other... edit graphics in one window and write in a document on the other. But Camtasia recording is by far my best use for dual monitors.

Do you have a dual monitor setup? If you don't, why not? What desktop setup do you have to get the most productivity?

Recession?

December 9, 2008 • 31 Comments

What are you working on this week? I'm cranking out a bunch of content for a new membership site...

Lots of marketers the past couple of months are using the economic recession as a hook to sell their stuff. "This system will help you profit in a recession..." I'm sure you're tired of it. You can't have a Unique Selling Proposition if it's not unique!

It's not just the internet marketing niche either. I got this e-mail from Experts Exchange (a programming forum) a few weeks ago:

"If you had invested in the S&P 500 just before Thanksgiving 2007, and cashed out just before Thanksgiving 2008, you would have lost 41% of your money."

Boo-frickin-hoo. I lost $30k in cash to the stock market the first month of this year. The value of my home has dropped $137,000 in the past 5 months on a city block where at least 30% of the homes were in foreclosure when I moved in.

One of my relatives was laid off this month, and you know what he immediately did? He didn't feel sorry for himself -- he started looking for another job. He has a savings account that will last him a little while and doesn't have a ton of debt that will eat him alive.

Another friend of mine just bought a brand new car and a house for his wife and kid, neither of them are college educated, they work "average" jobs and they can actually afford the payments.

For my business partner and I, 2008 was our most profitable year ever. I just made close to $5000 selling a 7-pack of PHP scripts, and another $4000 before that selling a 23-page PDF report, using minimal outside advertising. It was almost 100% in-house e-mail marketing. He is close to $100k in income for the year.

We both bought homes this year, and we're both taking our girlfriends to Hawaii for New Years at the end of December.

I don't have to tell you about how there are more cars on the road, more people in lines at stores and in the movies now than ever...

The whole point of a "recession" is to weed out the weak businesses. You can either watch the news way too often, believe the world is going to end tomorrow, and let it depress and demotivate you. OR you can realize that there are people out there giving up (just because they hear bad news) and you can get ahead of them.

You might have already read the story below. It's "The Man Who Sold Hot Dogs!"

There was a man who lived by the side of the road and sold hot dogs.

He was hard of hearing so he had no radio. He had trouble with his eyes so he read no newspapers. But he sold good hot dogs.

He put up signs on the highway, stood on the side of the road and cried, "Buy a hot dog, mister?" People bought. He increased his meat and bun orders. He bought a bigger stove to take care of his trade.

He finally got his son home from college to help him out. But then something happened. His son said, "Father, haven't you been listening to the radio? Reading the newspapers?

"There's a big depression. The European situation is terrible. The domestic situation is worse."

The father thought, "My son's been to college, he reads the papers and he listens to the radio, and he ought to know." He cut down on his meat and bun orders, took down his advertising signs, and no longer bothered to stand out on the highway to sell his hot dogs.

His hot dog sales fell almost overnight. "You're right, son..." The father said to the boy. "We certainly are in the middle of a great depression."

D'oh!!

Do you belong to any clubs or memberships to network and get more ideas, do you know what you want in 2009 and do you know what you have to do to get it? Heck, what can you do differently in the next three weeks that hasn't worked for you this year?

Please comment below, and let me know what you are working on for the remainder of this year. And guys, PLEASE don't turn this into a political or economic discussion. The whole point is that politics and economics won't affect your business unless you let it. Your bad attitude will KILL YOU if you let it.

Am I Evil For Working At a Day Job?

November 11, 2008 • 99 Comments

My question to you today is: does working at a day job make me evil?

I have been balancing the day job and internet marketing thing for years. It's not that bad. I'm getting my first 3-5 year computer programming job on my resume, lots of free training that would otherwise cost $5000, really good health insurance, and a reason to get up in the morning.

I don't always work 9-to-5 hours. Some days I work 6AM to 2:30PM, or 10AM to 6:30PM. It's also not the most challenging job. I don't have to work overtime, I'm not on-call, I don't take my work home. So I'm free to do internet marketing stuff after work, during lunch, and on weekends.

Quick Story:

Sometimes I forget to pick up my paycheck at my day job. Last month when I went to the receptionist to pick it up, one of my co-workers, a really cool woman in her 40's, noticed I'd taken a while to pick up my check.

She commented, "Someone else must be making those Mustang car payments..."

I told her nope, I pay for my car, but I wasn't making payments on the car... I bought it for $20,000 in cash last year.

She was surprised. I shrugged and said I'd saved up some money. I forgot to add that I own a home at age 24, or that I pay double into my principal every month.

I also kept quiet the fact that I'd launched a product the night before, and made more in 90 minutes than she made in 30 days.

How about the fact that I dropped two months worth of pay at that job for a one week vacation in Hawaii during the winter break?

No one at work knows my secret, that I make more than my boss, his boss, and his boss. Out of 800+ employees at my place of work, the only people who take home more money than me are the president and his 10 vice presidents.

When do you think I should quit?

When I have a year's worth of income in savings? Don't give me that, "Quit when your internet job has replaced your day job" line. I did that years ago.

I'm not going to be one of those guys who quits without health insurance. When did you quit and do you have health insurance? Who is your provider?

Once you lost that "time crunch" to get back to your day job, did it kill your productivity?

I am completely lost here... I had planned on being self employed right out of college but this REALLY nice and easy day job fell into my lap. Some days it keeps my busy, some days I get bored and wish I could take a road trip or something.

Stay or quit? Please tell me in the comment box below. If I don't get ten replies maybe I'll just quit regardless.

Homeowner

June 19, 2008 • 36 Comments

I am now the OWNER of a 2200 square foot, 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, cute yellow corner house... and I'm 23!

I am no longer going to screw around with the stock market. That $30,000 loss in January still stings a bit. That was supposed to be my financial shortcut to getting a house and it had the opposite effect.

My goal now is to work like crazy and build up exactly 2 years worth of living expenses, then throw more money at that house to cut the payments in half.

Comment below if you feel like congratulating me.

Steven, What the F???

March 5, 2008 • 17 Comments

How the heck do you get a business partner motivated?

There is this guy, Steven Schwartzman. I have been working on internet marketing stuff for years... but... he can't freaking get a product launched to save his life!

My first contact with him was in 2003. I spent a week writing a PHP script for him, he paid me $650 for the job, it was all done and ready to sell. I even thought up a cool name for it. (HyperSplitter.)

We both made money, right? Wrong. In 2004... I get a message from him saying he needed some bug fixes. He waited so long to launch the product that some of PHP's changes broke the script.

I made the changes... then in 2005, I get a call from someone else saying, "Check out this web site... Hypersplitter.com. The script isn't for sale but I want you to look at the features on that site and clone the script. I would have bought resale rights but he isn't offering those either." I'm not even making that up... I really did get that phone call from Jaime Ojeda!

I think Steven eventually launched it but it only made a few hundred dollars. No big deal except it took him YEARS to launch it. Come on, Steven!!!

The guy is a great copywriter and he comes up with really great ideas for products. But he can't follow through! Everything he makes is half finished.

When I visited him last August he was working on a membership site. The last thing I said to him in person before getting on a plane and flying 3,000 miles back home was, "Promise me you'll have that product launched by the time I get back." It still hasn't been launched!

He does great when he's working for other people (writing copy and headlines) but for his OWN stuff... he just can't do it. He was supposed to write a report and registered a GREAT domain for it, but waited so long... that the domain expired... and copywriting legend HARLAN KILSTEIN snatched it up!

It was for that reason that I mentioned in Fast Food Copywriting about Mark Joyner's policy to never use the word "wait." You shouldn't be "waiting" on anything... ever.

Do everything you can right now. Focus on one thing and get it launched.

Steven had to study to take the LSATs for law school, he was sick for a while, he took a family trip to India and another to Portugal... okay, that's all behind you, it's time to get to work. Steven, can you launch just ONE product by the end of the week?

Come on dude. You come up with the BEST ideas I have even seen. If you just put products out consistently, you could be more popular than Brausch.

I'm sorry if I seem like a jerk here, or too nosy, but I want you to do well. All you need to do is keep posting special offers, keep building a list, and only work on things that will make you money. Not spending days helping someone else put up a web site for free.

Looking at my launch calendar over the past several years, I noticed that in 2006 I was lucky to even post one WSO. These days I feel guilty for going more than 5 days without posting one or sending a mailing out to my list.

Can you do one thing every day?

Please, give Steven some advice on staying motivated.
He NEEDS to get his ass in gear.

Financial Goals

January 15, 2008 • 21 Comments

What do you do with the leftover internet marketing money you have laying around?

The easy answer is, reinvest it back into your business. That doesn't work for me because I very rarely do any outsourcing or advertising.

Okay, so what about financial goals? I already own a car, there are no specific places I want to travel.

I want a house. Actually I want a condo... I don't want to have to deal with keeping up a yard or mowing the lawn or any of that stuff.

With a 30-year fixed mortgage at 8%, I could get a $100,000 loan for equal to the same rent I pay now, living in a 2-story townhouse, with no roommates. Okay great you say, what homes in California sell for that much?

There are condos down the street slightly larger than my apartment... PLUS a garage... that sold for $250k this summer... that are now $160k. If I can put $50k down, my monthly mortgage payment on that thing would be close enough to the rent I'm paying now for me to be happy.

So how have I been doing? Since buying my car with all cash in June (I should have had it financed... but that's another story) I added $20k over time into a stock brokerage account.

With a little bit of work and a LOT of aggravation I built that up into $30k by December. I learned a lot along the way. I avoided so many of the usual stock trading newbie mistakes.

It was way too emotionally taxing to gain $1000 in the morning on some days only for the gains for the day to go back down to $0 by the end of the day. I would check several times daily, sometimes every 5 minutes.

What I learned quickly is that I was creating another job for myself. It wasn't even a fun job. Either I gained some money and started worrying about losing it, or I lost money and worried about how I was going to get it back.

I was a freaking full-time gambler and I didn't even realize it. So where do you stick your leftover money?

Figure out a way to reinvest it back into your business. You need to find some way.
Put it in a savings account and slightly beat inflation.
Put it in a CD for a 4% yearly return.
Invest it in an index fund or money market account for a 5% return.

I no longer daytrade.

Whatever you do, don't create extra work for yourself. Don't create an extra job. Your time is way more important than any amount of money.

What are your financial goals? (Seriously, post here and share them with me.)

What do you do specifically to reinvest your profits back into your business?

Would you still pursue internet marketing and create products for fun if you had all the money in the world?