Product Creation
064: Short and To the Point Landing Pages: Where’s the Dang Buy Button? A Confused Mind Never Buys, So Sell What You Sell!
Internet marketer of the week: Ray Edwards. Creator of the Rapid Writing Method. He absorbs what Brendon Burchard, Michael Hyatt, Dave Ramsey all do very well -- branding and unification.
A huge breakthrough I got out of his "Writing Riches" book was that just taught straightforward copywriting. Not a lot of silly stories or parables mixed in like others teach you "should" have in a book. What a concept!
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Common Cop Outs (That We Just Solved in Today's Show)
- My niche is people with money! Who wouldn't want it?
- My niche is young people because they're smart, or old people because they have all the money
- Split test it!
- I'm going to provide value and give everything away for free
- I'm still learning
- I have an idea but it's already been done before
- I have an idea but I'm waiting on someone else to do the work
- I'm "waiting" for the right time
A Confused Mind Never Buys!
- Delayed buy button and I can't buy, or I can't buy on an iPad
- I optin and I can't buy right away, I have to wait for your sequence
- I have to buy 3 upsells just to get the thing I actually wanted (Lance says: sell what you sell)
- Blogging or posting without purpose (Add Signature plugin and URL dropping)
- Too many choices: 2 or 3 at the most. More choices = "experimental" pages (yearly and trial)
- Optin page: headline, 3 bullet points, call to action, optin form (no video, no testimonials)
- Sales letter: have you noticed they're way shorter? very few words, even. Software is all about the screenshots and features.
Short & To the Point Landing Pages: Keep it Shippable
- Make the buy button first, before anything else
- Then headline and subheadline
- Then the offer stack (what's in it)
- Then flesh out the bullet points (dream product), story and transitions
- Then create the product after all that!
- (PLR placeholder is optional)
Quick Questions Answered in Today's Program
- To replay or not to replay?
- Non fast forward video?
- Squeeze page? What's the exact structure?
- What niche? Healthy, wealthy, or wise
- What product? Solve an actual problem that's easy for you, tough for others, that people are willing to pay money for, that's repeatable in checklist form, but there's still enough wiggle room for people to be creative. It gets them there and delivers a FAST result
- Testimonials? Don't let that hold you back from launching. No review copies, but have an email sequence asking how they like it. When people use it and respond, piece together a testi from their response.
- Upsell? This is another "goodie" you don't need right away. It shouldn't "just" be something "bigger" or something lazy like resale rights. It should be "the bigger picture."
Five Dimensions of Knowledge from Jonathan Wells of AdvancedLifeSkills.com
- What we actually know
- What we think we know
- What we would like to know
- What we don't need to know
- What we used to know
- Let's add two more (the hardest ones to sell to you have to "sneak them" inside other ones: what we don't know we don't know, and what we need to know
Internet Marketing
- World's largest taxi service owns no taxis (Uber)
- Largest accommodation provider owns no real estate (Airbnb)
- Largest retailer has no inventory (Alibaba)
- Most popular media company creates no content (Facebook)
- Largest movie house owns no theaters (Netflix)
- Largest software vendors don't write the apps (Apple & Google)
Today's Quotes from Henry Ford
- You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do.
- Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
- Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Attributes That Should Be Running in Your Head all the Time, Consistently
- New Things Coming Down The Pipeline: There is no such thing as luck. (Scientific studies have disproved luck.) You just have to keep putting offers out there and promoting them.
- Follow-Through: Finish what you start (focus, minimum viable product, iteration, debugging, refactoring)
- Self-Actualization: Know the difference between a lost cause, an offer that's "close" but needs tweaking, and a "home-run" that you should keep rolling.
- Creativity: New ways of solving the problem bigger and faster while working under limitations (and making old tired concerts new and exciting to prospects)
Easy & Repeatable Solutions to Your Current Problems
- Make a Product: Publish your book on Amazon
- Webinar Crusher: Run pitch webinars to make high ticket sales
- Backup Creator: Backup & clone your WordPress sites
- Website Remote: Manage all your WordPress sites in one place
- Paper Template: Create landing pages (opt-in pages & sales letters) in WordPress
- Income Machine: Create your entire system (including membership site) using Backup Creator, Paper Template, Member Genius
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063: Website Remote: Get Out More, Grow Your Internet Business, Make More Money, Have More Fun, and Increase Your Productivity Without Burning Out or Creating a New “Job” For Yourself
We recently launched our Website Remote service. It allows you to centrally manage and update your WordPress sites.
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We created it because there was no good way to manage all our WordPress sites from one location. The other solutions that "tried" to do it, sucked!
Solve a real problem. It doesn't matter if "a" solution already exists. It probably sucks. Yours will be better.
When we put Website Remote together, and had our new affiliates sell and market our existing Backup Creator plugin, I had a few realizations...
Realization #1: Get Out More
You don't have to confine yourself to little sites like the Warrior Forum. You can use other peoples' land to build a list, but don't live there.
This is true when it comes not just to pricing and positioning your products, but also what advice or training you listen to.
Your business is your business. You're free to charge whatever price you want, limit the number of sales, email as often as you want. Update your blog or submit podcasts as frequently as you feel like, because you can. You don't need any reason for why you're doing what you're doing in your online business, other than because you can.
Realization #2: Eat Your Own Dog Food
If you actually use the products you create and sell, then you can't use because it's something that helps your business regardless of how slow or quickly it sells.
The programming term "eating your own dog food" means that if you use the thing you sell every day, then you'll transform it to a piece of crap into something that's useful.
To make our tool useful, we iterated. I created a simple version of our tool, and had Lance login sight unseen and show me how he was using it, and where he got stuck, to see his thought process. This is called hallway testing.
Because of "dog-fooding", we added SSL support for our Paper Template, Member Genius, and Video Player plugins this month, and made them all compatible with WordPress caching plugins, because we needed those things in place for our launch.
This past couple of weeks, we launched our new version of Backup Creator (3.0) and had an army of affiliates make us a bunch of sales, without us using our list at all. We gave away 100% commissions, and the point wasn't to make money but to recruit some new affiliates and build a list of buyers.
Realization #3: Treat Your Business Like a Real Business
We created the minimum viable product (version 1.0) and the launch deadline pushed us into gear and got our priorities in order.
Get that first version out there, and market the hell out of it. Don't make any rash moves like offering discounts or lifetime access which shouldn't be on your radar for a long time until you can "run the numbers."
Price your offers where there's buying resistance. Don't give into the mob. You might just need better marketing.
We need to do a little better with the positioning on Website Remote to compete against free, inferior, and generally worse "similar" products (not necessarily competitors).
Realization #4: Follow the "Four Daily Tasks" in Order to Get Everything Done
Four Daily Tasks means you should complete four business-related tasks, each in one sitting (three 45 minute sessions and one 10 minute session). Every day, complete the four tasks that get you closer to making more money.
I'm at my best when I alternate days between proactive business-building tasks (traffic and product creation), and on alternate days, business-maintenance tasks like answering support desk tickets.
Automate your business as much as you can, for example, queue up autoresponder emails for the week so there are no distractions.
Simple Words of Advice
It takes the same amount of energy to feed your dreams as it does your fears.
Make a list of things that make you happy. Make a list of things you do every day. Compare the lists. Adjust accordingly.
12 things successful people do differently:
- They Create and Pursue FOCUSED Goals
- They Take Decisive and Immediate ACTION
- They Focus On Being PRODUCTIVE, Not Just "Busy"
- They Make Logical and Informed Decisions
- They Avoid The Trap Of Trying To Make Everything "Perfect"
- They Are Willing To Work Outside Of Their Comfort Zone
- They Keep Things SIMPLE
- They Focus On Making Small, Continuous Improvements
- They Measure and TRACK Their Results and Progress
- They Maintain a Positive Attitude and LEARN From Mistakes
- They Spend Time With Successful and Motivational People
- They Always Maintain a Balance In Their Life
And finally, be sure to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (link below) and grab your Website Remote account to remotely manage and control your WordPress sites.
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060: Graphic Dashboard Case Study: How to Make Money Selling Your Systems, Checklists, Notes, Templates and Tools
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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047: The Mom Test: Is It the Reason Your Internet Marketing is Suffering?
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Don't be another statistic! Run your online business model, product, and sales letter through "The Mom Test" to discover how to sell faster and easier without resorting to painful "copywriting" or piling a lot of extra money into your business. It'll simplify your internet marketing...
Bad situation: A lot of internet marketers too caught up in ‘jargon’ and reinventing terms for concepts that already existed + a lot of people not wanting to look stupid and admit that they don’t know what something is = missed sales .
Too many marketers get too involved in making simple concepts difficult OR they are so vague and oversimplified that they sound ‘sketchy’.
Your marketing should ideally be able to pass "The Mom Test"...
Piece #1: Can You Explain What It Is That You’re Doing Online In A Way That Your Mom Could Understand It?
In other words, can you explain it to someone who isn’t "stupid" but is not necessarily internet-savvy and has zero interest in "internet tech stuff."
Piece #2: Are You Solving A Real Problem?
Figure out what people want to know and where they are personally stuck and how you can help them.
Example: Your niche is the stock market. Most people just want to know how to get started, how to trade some simple stocks. They want to learn how to buy a stock, read the stock quotes and make some return on their investment. They don't need to know the inner workings of Wall Street. THAT is not a real problem you are solving.
Piece #3: Can You Explain It In Less Than One Minute Or In One Sentence?
Just "state the facts."
Uber is a good example. Instead of saying, "I am a freelancer for a website that facilities transportation and is in direct competition with more traditional ways of hiring drivers for important events", etc., you would say, "Uber is a Peer to peer taxi service that costs less than traditional taxi service."
Piece #4: Do You Have A Physical Item?
Tangible items tend to lend credibility, especially to people who are unfamiliar with internet technology and feel that they need to see and touch something for it to be legitimate.
Let’s say that everything you have for sale is 100% online and is in the form of digital downloads.
- You can put this internet-based digital information (ex: a 4-module course) on a physical product like a DVD and puts it with a service called Kunaki.
- Robert uses Sony DVD Architect to create the DVD and Kunaki is company that specializes in DVD replication, packaging and distribution.
- Another option: take several of your blog posts, cut and paste them into Word and then turn those into an e-book.
- Go to Amazon KDP to create a Kindle format version of your book, and CreateSpace to create physical/printed copies of your book.
Robert's course, Make a Product, has a lot more information for you on how to publish your own e-book in less than 24 hours. Go check it out!
Piece #5: Is This Something That Can Change A Life Within 1 To 30 Days?
If it takes longer than 30 days it’s not exciting and you’re probably not doing a very good job marketing.
You need to have a set goal in mind of what your customer is going to achieve or will have been able to produce, as a result of their learning from you, WITHIN 30 days. Will they be able to play guitar? Will they have their own membership site up and running?
Closing Thoughts
- The average person, whether they’re a mom or not, does not understand a lot of the "technical stuff" and think that everyone on the internet is a "crazy new start-up."
- This is not about having an elevator pitch or a customer avatar.
- This is about explaining things in real, simple language and understanding that just because something might be exciting to you or seem simple to you, it might be going over your customers’ heads. Play it safe and dumb it down.
Ask your list and get feedback. Probably 80% of your list thinks that you’re too advanced.
Newbies are going to outnumber experts. The things that are going to keep bringing in leads are your simple things, the ones that are the "first step."
Yes, you want to have high-ticket items that are more advanced but don’t forget about your lead generation, introductory products. People want to know the basics.
[makeaproduct]
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044: Offer vs. Product: The Easiest and Fastest Way to Make Money Online with Your Membership Sites and Websites, Plus: The Power of the Magic Wand
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The Difference Between an Offer and a Product
The Product: This is a solution to a problem. Also called an "information product"
The Offer: Is the whole package grouped/stacked in a way that's really "sexy"
Let's Break Down Information Products
Here's a little exercise for you:
Go to ClickBank.com. At the top there is a tab that says "Marketplace." Click on the magnifying glass. It shows top offers on this site. These are real things that people are looking for-i.e., infertility cures, how to play piano, etc. Since people are looking for them, you know now that these are subjects that people are willing to pay for if you provide an "information product" that will help them fix it.
An Information Product can be an E-book, a video, or a PDF file. It just needs to be digital.
An Information Product is a step-by-step repeatable solution to a problem many people have.
Let's Break Down Offers
An offer is how you "package" the Information Product.
Most solutions involve combining 2-3 things, if not more, so those become your "offers."
This is the "extra stuff" that people will find exciting and desirable.
For example, if your Information Product is an E-Book on "How to Play Piano", your "extras" could be that you're going to teach them how to read sheet music or you're going to teach them how to play the most popular 5-10 songs right off the bat. You could include a monthly video meetup (via Skype or Google Hangout) to talk about what they're learning.
Now, they're not getting "just a book." Anyone can go buy a book and they probably already have and didn't find the answers they were seeking. You are here to take it to the next level and give to them what other's didn't.
What Do You Need To Sell Effective Offers?
Good Copy!
Here are Robert's "Geeky Copywriting Terms"...
Product-see above.
Features-what it is. In this example, it is an "extra" on how to read sheet music.
Benefits-what you can do with it once you learn it. Once you learn how to read sheet music, you can literally read limitless songs. The benefit is WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH IT. What people are REALLY looking for is what THEY can get out of your training.
The Hook-what the offer hinges on. This is where you boil down your offer to the coolest thing you have included and inform about it in a short, concise sentence. This is what most of your marketing and your follow up emails and your sales copy is going to hinge on. Most people are going to be sold on the one thing because it's the coolest thing you have going on.
Let's put ourselves in the mind of your prospect . Someone just wants to play the piano. They want the shortcut. Your "Hook" would be: PLAY GUITAR TODAY.
That's an easy way to find a hook-take something that people expect to take months or years to learn and show them how to do it in a REALLY short time.
On his IncomeMachine.com, he teaches the 8 things you need in under 3 days. Shows people how to stop spinning your wheels and get something completed.
The formula is: How to get something big in value for little in money in a short amount of time without a lot of unnecessary stuff and fluff.
The Magic Wand-what would you add into this package if you could wave a magic wand, if anything was possible? It doesn't have to be practical. Think big and open up that creativity.
A Short Little Break for Some Quick Thoughts from Robert
Dunning-Kruger Effect: intelligent people tend to underestimate themselves while idiots tend to be overly confident and very often loud. That's okay. Just rest in the knowledge that if you're quiet but very capable that's okay too.
Facebook: Everybody's Facebook persona is better than real-life. When you see someone on there who's bragging every day, just know that they're more than likely overcompensating.
Thank You: Just say "Thank You" when you receive a compliment. It's that simple.
And, now…back to the show!
Let's Talk About Consistent Passive Income
This is your goal in Online Marketing. You want to get to a point where people are continuing to buy from you but you are not working harder than ever to keep up. The goal is to work less and continue having income and grow and excel.
People make a lot of mistakes in this area. Here's where they fall down:
- People think that you can just create a membership site at $5 or $10 a month. They believe they will get 50k customers at a tiny monthly cost who will never remember to cancel it. That's not a way to make money. The way to find real money is to find solutions for people, price it reasonably, have happy buyers on your buyers list and continue to sell to them.
- People just load up their site with interviews, articles and tidbits, etc. That's a lot more work for you and it has no substance and more fluff for them. Again, the way to find real money is to find solutions for people, price it reasonably, have happy buyers on your buyers list and continue to sell to them.
- People want to give a "bulk discount" or a short "free trial" with a payment later on. That's just gimmick-y. You only want to price low (and it needs to be a high value product) if you're trying to build a list to sell higher-priced products later.
- People use "geeky" research tools. Doing all this research on your competitor's blog posts and ads and pricing is not productive. You don't want to look to your competitors just for their pricing. To make this productive, you need to be concerned with what their hook is and come up with something better. The core of your marketing should be fixing a problem your customer has in a unique and fresh way.
- People load up their site up with 20 bonuses, 1000 hours of video, etc. No one cares how many hours or years you worked at something. What they care about is "is this solution going to fix my problem?"
- People get too close to their offers and too in love with their own stuff. They are so worried about having stuff and more stuff, that they end up just churning out crap. Again, think of a problem you're solving, create a product to solve that problem, throw in some offers that mean something and that you can keep active on a consistent basis for people to continue to buy packaged just as it is.
To see the way Robert markets, go to his sites BackupCreator.com and MembershipCube.com.
Okay, I've had enough problems! Let's Talk SOLUTIONS!!
What Makes Good Offers... What You Need to Know:
- Not all websites can be recurring membership sites. For ex: "Dollar Shave Club." You're not a startup. You're here to start making money, not invest millions.
- You need to solve a real problem 1-30 days. This is why Robert likes FIXED TERM membership sites. It's easier to make the course and sell it over and over again. The average attrition rate for membership sites is 3 months. If you charge someone $10/month and they only stay for 3 months then you've only made $90 and you constantly have to come up with new content to hopefully even keep them on your site. INSTEAD, solve their problem in a shorter amount of time, package it that way, that's what's on your sales and membership page(s) and you can keep selling that same product over and over again for $150. It's easier to sell once than to keep people engaged indefinitely.
- Sell what you sell. Sell what you sell at the price you always sell it at and make it really easy for the customer to buy it. No one wants to wait 2 hours on a video for a "buy button" at the end and no one wants to pay $100 today and see it discounted to $50 the next day. Both of these tactics will just annoy potential customers.
- Stomach buying from your competitors. That's right, buy your competitor's product. See what they're leaving out and how you can maybe do something better than them. If they're champions, then figure out how you can emulate them.
- Eat your own dog food. Use the products you sell. Make it clear on your site to your potential customers that you use them.
- The Magic Wand (yeah, it's that important we said it twice!) Do something fantastic. If you're Information Product is teaching them how to have their own membership site, do the initial set-up for them and your information product is how they can "run it."
How Do You Present an Offer?
First is The Core Offer. Tell them how many modules they're getting (the ideal number is 4). Every 60 to 90 minutes they get to the next milestone.
Tell them about the bonuses (which are also digital, like PDF checklists). Then, here is the physical bonuses (it could be anything from a DVD to a handheld video recorder, depending on the product you're starting with and the cost).
The FOUR Questions that will determine what you include in your total offer package:
- What do people need to fill in the gaps? Could you send an iPod or camera to record video? Can you hook them up with an adwords coupon to help get them started?
- What new problems do they have now that they solved the first problem? For example, they set up the membership site, now they need content. So, now you have a training on how to record and publish PowerPoint content using a video player.
- Is there anything that can be a shortcut for them? An external service, a "Done-for-You" or even a simple calculator
For example, in DropshipCEO.com, Robert offers a built in software tool that generates an email to all the customers requesting them to leave an Amazon review.
Is there something huge and cool that you could put in the offer that makes them say "Gotta Have It." For example, In Robert's SpeedCopy.com, he includes his huge swipe file.
The "Ultimate Offer Master List"
You need to go "Deeper Focus." Really hone into those things your customer desires.
- Template or Checklist or a Swipe File: For example, a Checklist with How to Play Guitar would ask, "what kind of guitar do you have/plan to buy? Do you plan to play acoustic or electric? Did you buy extra strings?, etc. etc. You want to group these in 10-question sections by break-down of the subject. One guy who does real estate includes a swipe file of all of his successful real estate ads
- Software (can be Web-Based or External): For example, WPNotepad.com lets customers track their own progress through their program on your membership site.
- Or, you could offer a coupon for an external service, like a coupon for Camtasia Studio software.
- Or, it could be a bundled service. Customers who purchase the program at WebinarCrusher.com, get automatic account with "GoToWebinar."
- "Done- for- You": Just like it sounds... do something for them. If you're teaching them the Amazon FBA program (Dropshipceo.com), offer to make their first call to a supplier WITH THEM.
Go for the Low-Hanging Fruit (stuff that's pretty easy to do)
- Mixed modalities: Make audio and/or video for things that are also written. Or, if your Info Product is already in video, provide them with an accompanying manual (use Lulu.com for this)
- Resale Rights: This is a right to resell this and that part of your course. Don't sell the entire course. But, you can give sell them re-sale rights on maybe 3 of the videos in the program.
- Personal coaching: Statistically, only about 5 -15 % of your customers will actually talk to you. Use TimeTrade.com to put up a special link in your site where they can schedule a time to talk to you. Or, give them access to text you with questions (use a Google Voice number for this).
Extra content: interviews with experts. Extra resale rights you bought and re-packaged from a site like Master-Resale-Rights.com. (just don't tell them you did that)
"Go Large" with Enlargement
- Extra Live Webinars: like a monthly recurring webinar where your customers can have a Q & A session.
- Physical items like DVD's: (use Kunaki.com) or cameras, etc as discussed above
- Offer them "community": Facebook Groups or Forums (the tricky part about forums is either a ghost town or a mess that you have to moderate).
- Certification Directory: Dr. Charles runs membership sites for different surgery procedures. As part of other doctors paying him monthly for access to the instructional videos, they're part of a directory. Then, when Dr. Charles advertises, and someone seeks him out, they will find a physician near them trained in his methods.
- Live event: "I'm going to teach you how to do this at this time and this place" on't offer this without an actual date or hotel booked. Or, you can rent out a smaller space, like a loft (check out AirBNB.com).
- "Bundle It": Buy a program from this site and get access to an additional site.
10 Built-In Benefits that Should Come with Every Offer
- Proof and results
- Customer support
- Uniqueness
- Up to date
- Price
- Guarantee refund
- 24-7 access
- Lifetime upgrades
- Access to course forever
- Community (means what you want it to mean as much or as little as you want)
Robert's Closing Thought: When someone google searches your name what comes up? Make sure it's what you want them to see!
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042: Finish Now, Revise Later (How To Actually Get the Results and Income You Want in Your Internet Marketing Business)
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Tune in today (in fact, right now) to discover how to "get your head on straight!" Get your business built up to the level you want, as fast as you want, while you're excited each and every day and growing bigger and bigger every day...
Someone who hates you normally hates you for one of three reasons:
1. They see you as a threat
2. They hate themselves
3. They want to be you
Today's program is going to be very different than the normal format because we're going to jump around between real money-making case studies, mindset, mistakes I've made and the things YOU PERSONALLY can do to incrementally improve your business as your income increases and you gain simplicity and clarity along the way -- finish now and revise later!
How do you get the results and the income you want from your internet marketing business?
Tip #1: Self-Actualize
Be aware of the little crutches you fall back on daily that keep you from achieving your goals and keep you from being confident. When someone asks how you're doing, instead of saying "Good", change it up to "Fantastic", "Wonderful", etc…
Also, be aware of these "negative" words, Robert's 3 pet peeves:
- Try: sounds like you're not even going to attempt it, whatever "IT" is. It is like you are giving yourself permission to fail. Instead, say "I'm going to do"
- Work: sounds like something you don't want to do, like labor. Instead, say "I am (doing) this today", for ex. I am formatting my website today. Use an action.
- Start: just like "try." Sounds like you're only going to get halfway done. Instead, use action again, such as "I am meeting a client today about my product."
If you complain all the time, you cement your ideas. If it's your belief that internet marketing is a scam or that you have to make only minimum wage, or someone else has to lose for you to win, anything you discover or new information, will only reinforce that. If information comes in that contradicts those beliefs, you're going to find a mental block/way around it instead of being inspired by it.
Tip #2: The Rule of FOUR: The Best Way of Increasing Productivity
Complete 4 tasks every day. They can be 4 big things or 4 small things but the best combination is 3 things at 45-60 minutes and a 4th thing at about 15 minutes.
Fancy planners and endless to-do lists get so bogged down and leave you feeling unmotivated.
Successfully finish 4 tasks today, call it a day, and you are ready to succeed again tomorrow!
Robert's program, www.incomemachine.com, has a Facebook group where each member posts their 4 things for today, every day.
Tip #3: Finish Now, Revise Later: The Substance of Today's Podcast
You do NOT have to wait for something to be perfect. Finish it for NOW and you can make revisions later. What matters is that you have something on the table NOW that you can offer customers.
Why does Finish Now, Revise Later work?
You will start earning money to keep motivated and productive and inspired to keep growing and developing your business.
You can see what sells and what doesn't. You want to concentrate on your best sellers.
It's very important to start selling your product so you can see how people use it. You don't want to keep adding elements to it that people may not use and therefore waste your time and effort.
Example: Netscape Navigator "Blink Tags." Developers did this because it was "fun" to develop-but it doesn't make any money. In the same way, a lot of internet marketers spend entirely too much time on business cards, fancy logos, building Twitter followings, but those things do not make money. Get a product out there that does!
Let's talk about "Backup Creator" (www.backupcreator.com)
This is a WordPress plug-in that allows you to back up your WordPress site, as well as clone it so you can keep using it to make new sites.
This took about 3 days to make and it was not perfect but Robert and Lance put it out anyway because it was finished ENOUGH. It functioned and it did what it promised to do. Along the way, there were little hiccups and de-bugs they've had to make but if they had waited the last 3 ½ years until they thought it was perfect, they would have lost 3 ½ years of income PLUS the opportunity to see what worked and didn't. Along the way, they've made some upgrades and now it's just a matter of maintenance. At time of airing, Backup Creator is powering about 85 THOUSAND sites-imagine if they had lost all that opportunity by constantly waiting to "finish."
Tip #4: Avoid the "Money Zone"
What is the money zone? It is the zone of your lowest to your highest income.
If you are in the "money zone", you are either in a situation where you will make a certain amount of money no matter what happens in your life, which is holding you back AND the flip side of that is when you have an upper limit, no matter what you do, you'll always find a way to self-sabotage getting past that point.
You don't want to be TOO tactical OR too strategic.
Tactical: you're only looking ahead to your next installment, say $100.
Strategic: you're planning 10-20 years down the road
The first step to fixing this is realizing you have this mindset and start to think differently. Just TODAY, think about what you can do differently to increase your income NOW.
For example, with Backup Creator, Robert and Lance thought what else can they do to increase money on the success they were already having with this product?
They started the Developer License that people can purchase as an add-on after purchasing Backup Creator. It is no extra work for them to maintain, it is simply a license for buyers to use it with their own clients to keep producing new sites. This is an additional income stream. They thought not just about their next $100, they had ideas of increasing their success, but they didn't get so far ahead that they got bogged down in details and couldn't make another move.
One final thought:
Be very careful with lifetime memberships. You really have to analyze the averages that people pay, how often they renew, etc. You do not want to offer a lifetime membership on a product that people would continue to renew on a yearly basis because in the end you will sell yourself short, have to keep working to add new upgrades and content, and start working on a less by less hourly basis.
For more great guidance and tips on Robert's system, you can also visit www.incomemachine.com.
This will help you get something out there, get to your first $100 or $1000 and get yourself motivated!!
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All-in-One Money Making System Now
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041: Anything is Better Than Nothing (Step by Step Passive Residual Income)
If it's important, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse. -- Jim Rohn
If you don't build your own dream, someone else will hire you to build theirs. -- Tony Gaskins, Jr.
Join us on today's episode of the Robert Plank Show where we discuss passive income, your point and click online funnel, and more, including:
- 8 things to give up: 1. self rejection, 2. negative self-talk, 3. criticising others, 4. being a people pleaser, 5. fear of failure, 6. procrastination, 7. holding onto grudges, 8. expecting perfection
-
Three areas of your business: list, traffic, and offers
-
How to Setup Your Income Machine for Passive Recurring Income: niche (NameCheap), site (HostGator), optin (Paper Template), autoresponder (Aweber), blog, sales letter, membership site (Member Genius), traffic (Podcast Crusher)
-
Be aware of your own cognitive dissonance: we choose our beliefs first, then find evidence to back it up
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Physical Products: Kunaki for DVDs, CreateSpace for Books, Lulu for Manuals, Amazon FBA for Everything Else
Selling any kind of physical product online is easy, and FREE -- "they" usually just take a cut -- if you know where to look...
- If you want to sell a box of physical DVD's or CD's, Kunaki.com is the cheapest (and IMO easiest) place to do it -- just upload your DVD and artwork for the disc and case -- or use their built-in artwork creator
- To sell a physical book (softcover or hardcover) that's at least 25 pages in length, whether it's 6x9 or 8.5x11 or any weird size, use CreateSpace.com -- upload your interior (Word document), graphics for front cover, back cover, and spine (they also have a cover creator)
- If you need to get some books and manuals printed PRIVATELY, such as manuals ("textbooks") as a bonus for something like a paid course, use Lulu.com. Once again, upload Word document, upload cover or use their editor -- but the difference here is your books are NOT out in the open publicly. You order them on your own and set your individual customer's address as the shipping address
- To sell just about anything else, from a product like a supplement or kitchen utensil you sourced from China, or "As Seen on TV" items you picked up at the local discount store, use Amazon FBA. What's great about Amazon is you can either ship the items yourself, or mail them all at once to Amazon's warehouse and THEY will handle delivery to those individual customers
If you want me to walk you through the exact process, claim your access to our Make a Product course for Kunaki and CreateSpace, and Dropship CEO for mastery on Amazon FBA.
Avenue #1: DVD/CD Boxes with Kunaki
Avenue #2: Physical Book with Amazon CreateSpace
Avenue #3: Sell (Almost) Any Physical Product Using Amazon FBA
Can I see what you are selling these days? What is the URL to your physical product?
Templatize It: Where is Your Sales Letter and Information Product?
If you take longer than three days to go from having an idea for an information product to having a buy button online, then you're doing it wrong. I want to ask this to you today, but you don't have to answer it:
If you HAD to put that info-product online within the next three days…
if you absolutely had to, were required by law,
faced death and the loss of your family if you didn't…
you'd find a way, wouldn't you?
REAL Information Products (Most Info-Marketers Miss This)
Let me explain an information product: people have always and will always want to discover how to play golf or learn the guitar…
But they don't want to walk into a music shop and have someone pitch to them, they're afraid of looking foolish, they don't want to pay hundreds of dollars a week to a guitar teacher… they don't want to a commit to a community college class or have a family member teach them…
They need you to give them a "package" usually of pre-recorded videos that get them from point A to point B. You're cutting through the "academic" crap and actually SHOWING the simple way (you actually explain a part of guitar playing and then play it on-camera).
Because you're ROCKETING towards the goal of them being able to play these three popular songs on guitar, you can avoid the long tedious "intros" or fanfare about the history of the guitar. You just get right to it. Get right to your system.
Fear of Launching
It frustrates me when I meet someone at an offline event, for example, and then I "run into" them a couple years later on a forum or Facebook group and I see that they're still not making money yet…
I don't have to tell you why this is:
Reason #1: no real sense of urgency: this person has another stream of income so there's no real motivation to make any money online
Reason #2: fear: it's as simple as that. I remember having my first information product (a collection of PHP scripts like a calendar plugin, quiz plugin, basic email autoresponder, etc.) ready to go and WAITING for a week. I asked this person and that person if I should put it out now, or wait longer? What if it was a flop? Shouldn't I add more bonuses? Was the price right?
In reality, I was asking around for the answer I wanted all along. I was hoping someone would tell me: don't put that product out yet, wait 6 months until this happens, or spend 3 months adding these bonuses so you can double your sales. Yeah right.
Let's say you had that guitar course. What's the harm in buying up what's called "private label rights" (just do a Google search) about guitar? Someone's already recorded videos doing what you want to teach, that you can buy for $20 or so.
After it's COMPLETE and selling, you can go back and decide if you're unhappy with the existing videos. Maybe you want to change the course to recommend the ONE specific guitar for beginners? And provide your Amazon affiliate link and also get them to buy a specific tool to make learning the chords easier -- or perhaps you mail this to them as part of the course…
Do you get it? Get something simple online (as simple as possible), focus on making sales NOW and improve later. It'll never be perfect, just improve incrementally.
"Lack of time is actually lack of priorities."
-- Timothy Ferriss
Reason #3: confusion: that all sounds great, but how the heck do I buy these resale rights? How do I record video? What do I use to host my site or my files?
24-Month Shortcut: Use PayPal to Take Payments
What about taking payments? Seriously, I've seen way too many people LOSE OUT on their internet marketing success, or have it delayed by TWO YEARS or longer just because they were confused about how to take online payments. I can't use PayPal… they don't have a 1-click upsell and they don't let me take offline credit cards! Maybe I should use Stripe, InfusionSoft, Ontraport?
Question: do you have a 1-click upsell ready to go? No you don't… that's something you can add later and it's not going to make or break your initial product sales…
I understand… you "might want" to take direct credit cards someday. But how about you forget about that for today and cross that bridge when you come to it?
The answer: use PayPal. Just do it! Not because it "has the most bells and whistles" but because you'll have something up and running today.
Income Machine System
As far as hosting your site, our Income Machine shows you how to register a domain name with NameCheap, get a Baby Account with HostGator, point your domain to your web hosting, now someone can type in Example.com (get a dot-com and not a .net or a .biz or anything like that) and end up on your (blank) website.
"Great things are done by a series of small things brought together."
-- Vincent Van Gogh
What do you put on that website? WordPress, so that you don't have to learn HTML coding or how to upload files, and then our Paper Template so you can have one of those "piece of paper" looking sales letters…
With Paper Template, you can click one button and create a sales letter (pre-written, just fill in the blanks and delete what you don't need). Click another button to create a simple download page (hidden from your navigation and the search engines).
If this all seems confusing, it doesn't have to be… inside our Income Machine course, we give you a clone that you can stick on your site so you have SOMETHING setup that you can edit…
At this point you have a "template" of a sales letter (the front page of your site or the .com) and a "template" of a download page (one single page). Now what???
Step 1 of 3: Resale Rights & Download Page
As I said before, resale rights are a great starting point for your product because it means you can setup something for now and improve later. You can pay somebody a one-time fee (usually $10-$20) and in exchange, get the rights to place their videos and sales letter on your own site, keep all of the money, and make any changes you want including putting your name on it, rename the product, edit it as much as you want.
I know what you're thinking. Resale rights, only 20 dollars, it must be crap. A lot of resale rights are low-quality, especially things like written articles, but in my experience, PLR video is usually decent. Sometimes you get stuck with a bad PowerPoint-based product, but most of the time the videos show them actually taking some action.
For 20 bucks they'll give you a large 400 MB sized zip file with videos. Download, right click and unzip, verify that you're allowed to sell them and do what you want with them. Then re-zip JUST the video files. They're usually MP4 or AVI files. In Windows, select the files you want, right click, Send To, Compressed Folder.
What do you do with that zip file? WordPress has a way for you to upload SMALL files such as images, but for a larger download, you can use your web host's cPanel File Manager to upload right into what's called your WordPress "upload" folder. You don't need to install any software to upload files to your site.
Then you can browse to the Download Page on your WordPress site and link to that zip file for someone to download. As a bonus (if you know how to do this) you can upload the MP4 files individually to your YouTube account and set them to "unlisted" so they aren't public but you can place them right there on your download page.
Step 2 of 3: Sales Letter & Payment Button
You have a way for someone to claim and get their download, now let's create a way for someone to pay you money and get access to that download. (It's a lot easier by going backwards in this way.)
PayPal allows you to create a "buy now" button (we also show this inside our Income Machine course) where you basically tell PayPal: I want to sell a product with this name (what people see on the checkout page and on their payment receipt), for this price (i.e. $7.00 one-time), and send them to this specific URL only if they pay. This is your download page.
Once you've created the button (hosted at PayPal), they give you a special link or button you can place on your page. Guess what? If you had nothing else but a "piece of paper" template with nothing on it other than that button, you still have something for sale!
If you have five minutes of free time, stick a headline at the top of the page. Paper Template has dozens of headlines built in (I've distilled all of the various headlines that make sense on the Internet down to just a few). We are the only sales letter plugin out there with a built-in swipe file.
If you have five more minutes, add ten bullet points under the headline giving people just ten good reasons to buy your course on guitar, or ten things they'd walk away with after completing your paid course.
Step 3 of 3: Membership Site & Email Sequence
Notice I deliberately left out the "fanciness" that comes later. You have two choices: either try to ten things in "parallel" (at the same time), get tripped up, eek along and have ten things at 10%, ten things at 20%, ten things at 30%... or do it in "series" (one after another). Knock out your download page. Knock out your payment button. Knock out that basic sales letter.
THEN you can add in fancier stuff later. An easy example is your membership site. Create a separate WordPress installation in your "members" folder, create a SINGLE PAGE download area, and create your new payment button and switch it out onto the sales page. (Income Machine includes our Member Genius membership plugin.)
Keep in mind this is a membership site where people only pay ONE TIME and only get access to ONE PAGE. The only improvement is that they now create an account to login and get back to that single download if they need it. If you want to add a 2nd page, other levels such as an upsell. That comes later.
Most people are setting things up in the wrong order. They create the "nice-to-haves" first instead of the "must-haves." They create their opt-in page first, their email autoresponder sequence, then they get tired and don't actually create something to sell. Complete things that make money first!
Templatize It!
What makes money: sending paid traffic to that sales letter, breaking even on the ad cost, and building a list of buyers. Joint ventures and affiliate traffic. Building your list. Mailing offers to your list.
"The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."
-- Chinese Proverb
What good is the best information product in the world if no one actually buys it to see it? Get it online, get it selling, and when you're looking to improve that product… instead of throwing out the whole product to start over, think about this instead:
What step-by-step checklist or template can you give someone to make better sense out of those existing PLR videos?
No one cares about how many years you've studied guitar, how many hours the videos are (in fact, if you say there are 100 hours of videos, it talks me OUT OF buying), or how many pages are in the transcript.
They don't even care about "work" or "learning." They care about getting the result they paid money for, while having the most fun, doing the least amount of work, and getting it in the shortest amount of time!
That means your guitar course can have an additional checklist that says… buy this specific guitar, buy these strings, buy this pick, buy this equipment. Master these finger positions. Show you can properly mark time in this way. Play the background part for these five very simple songs. Play these five simple guitar solos.
Give people some easy tasks to check off. You can create any kind of checklist or fill-in-the-blank component in your membership site using our WP Notepad plugin.
If you can get rights to a piece of software or app that helps people to play the guitar, or recycle your early profits into outsourcing such a thing, that's another component you can use to improve your offer. Add in a 30-minute video Skype consultation (using TimeTrade to schedule the appointments) keeping in mind that only 10% of your customers will take you up on it, you'll record it and add it to a section of the member's area, and it's something you probably would have done for free anyway!
"There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing and be nothing."
-- Elbert Hubbard
The easiest way to start making passive income is with an information product. The quickest and simplest way to sell that kind of product is with a piece of paper looking web page such as Paper Template.
My question to you today is:
Where is your sales letter?
Be sure to post a URL below with a page of yours that has a WORKING buy button.
I'm curious and I'll be checking it out soon. Thanks.
Income Machine: How to Finally Stop Wasting Time, Generate the Income You Want and Live the Lifestyle You Deserve
Henry Ford says, "Whether you THINK you can or you can't, you're right!"
I turn 30 years old in less than 24 hours (be sure to leave me a quick "happy birthday" below) and I'm sure when you yourself turned 30, 40, 50 you probably got a little too nostalgic and made yourself feel bad about all the progress you didn't make while ignoring the progress you DID make...
I don't have all the answers, but I know that when I was 20 years old I was barely scraping by (trading time for dollars), when I was 25 I made some of the easiest money I'd ever made in my entire life (products and membership sites) and after age 25 I saw the cashflow cliff approaching... our niche getting too crowded and "tired" and I adjusted by making our courses high ticket and software low ticket to build the list...
I was introducing Lance Tamashiro (my business partner) on one of our webinars and I literally had no idea what to say to introduce him. Suddenly it hit me...
We all go through four stages in our online business: (1) bright shiny object mode, (2) learning mode, (3) fed-up mode and (4) making money from a "real" business
It's okay to build your test sites and goof around with WordPress or PHP plugins for the first few weeks... or maybe 1 day a week... but if you aren't making money from your online efforts, it's going to get boring FAST...
Most business owners also don't realize that they can BACKSLIDE from Level 4 (a real business that makes money) and fall way back into Level 2 (learning mode) -- for example, deleting old sites that no longer get traffic or spending 6 months moving everything to a new shopping cart system, eek!
I go through growing pains in my business all the time and I want to help you with those CHOICES you'll make (that no one else can make for you):
Decision #1: Fastest Way to Make Money?
The cop-out (but truthful) answer is: solve real problems that are hard for others, in demand by others (meaning lots of people already pay money for it) easy for you, and fun for you!
That means if you can show someone how to improve their golf game, you need to be firing on all cylinders. Setup a worker account on Fiverr.com and offer to critique peoples' golf swing (they send in a video). Record and post a quick 5 minute video every day about something golf related. Publish a quick article every day with something golf related. Buy other golf instructors' $97 courses and find what they're missing, or what unique twist you could bring to your own future "how to" golf membership course...
Decision #2: What Niche Do You Choose?
(a marketable skill like real estate, stock trading, playing guitar, dating, losing weight). This needs to be a "desperate" but not a "poor" niche. For example, coupon collecting and debt reduction seem like poor niches to me (unless you can find someone making good money with it).
A better alternative would be a course on people who want to build $500,000 of wealth into a million dollars or the 1 million dollars they saved for retirement into 5 million, don't you think?
Decision #3: What Price to Charge for Your Course?
Make it $97 with a 90 minute 4-step video plus a bonus report just to reduce the number of decisions you have to make at this point. The cliche is to have 10X the value and I agree with it. So sell a $97 course with $970 of value in your video and report
Decision #4: How Often and What Time of Day to Mail?
Controversy time. There's a Chinese proverb that says, "The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago." The way it applies to you with internet marketing is that you should have made that information product (membership site, course, whatever you want to call it) 3 months ago, you should have started building a list 3 months ago... but!
Today is close enough so get to it now and clear everything out of your schedule THIS WEEK other than making that product so you can start to make money from it. A piece of advice you're not going to like, but you're going to follow if you want money: send an email to these subscribers (even if it's only a list of 100) at LEAST 3 times a week, preferably 5 times per week or every day.
I won't go off on a tangent here, but you will lose 1% of your subscriber list every day, that's just how internet marketing works, and if it's up to you to generate enough traffic to MORE than replace that 1% of your list. People unsubscribe, that's just what happens.
Be CAREFUL of this: when people say... you email too much. Or I'm unsubscribing from you because you're trying to sell me something. In my case, didn't these people join my list because they wanted to be better marketers and site builders? And yet they don't like it when I'm marketing to them? Or showing them how to solve this problem they signed up to my list to solve?
I hear all the time, "I like such-and-such marketer because he didn't have anything for sale and he didn't try to sell me anything." Is that really the person you want as a mentor? Just something for you to think about.
Decision #5: Best Way to Build a List and Get Traffic?
The toughest question of all, right? Once you create that site, how do you get people to see it? I'm always reluctant to answer this question because 80% of the time, people don't even have something for sale so they're trying to put the cart before the horse: looking at a problem they're going to have in 30 days to avoid doing anything TODAY.
The easy "traffic" answer is to use a site like Fiverr to get 10 articles written, submit them to article sites, setup a free blog where you post these articles with links back to your sites. Setup AdWords ads, Facebook ads, retargeting, find a marketplace like a forum where people can trickle in every day. Setup an affiliate program, recruit your buyers into affiliates and also contact at least 5 people per day for either you to interview them about their product or you to be interviewed about your product (I use TimeTrade for this).
Decision #6: How to Tie it All Together?
I'm probably getting ahead of myself AND revealing too much at the same time, but inside our Income Machine course, we show you how to get it all setup and we basically say...
- Use NameCheap to register a .com domain name (don't register this before joining our course because there are a few things to keep in mind that we don't have time to show here)
- Use HostGator to host your website itself and WordPress to make it point and click easy
- Inside Income Machine, we have a 1-click clone that will setup Paper Template on your "front-end" site (.com) to hold your opt-in page at Example.com/free (build a list) and sales letter at Example.com (sell a product)
- Next, you setup another WordPress blog at Example.com/blog to hold your free articles and videos, and link back to that optin page
- You 1-click clone our "back-end" site at Example.com/members to deliver your products, upsell and manage your members
- You can now do the fun "traffic" stuff like article marketing, joint ventures, an affiliate program, podcasting, paid traffic, and more...
These Are the Pieces of Your Income Machine Once It's Setup
- Niche & hook (domain name)
- Web hosting (online presence)
- Optin page (lead capture: Example.com/free)
- Autoresponder sequence (automatic email followups in case they don't buy)
- Blog (search engine traffic: Example.com/blog)
- Sales letter (something to buy: Example.com)
- Membership site (deliver what they bought: Example.com/members)
- Traffic (articles, joint ventures, affiliate program, podcasting, paid traffic)
Do you see what I mean that you have to crawl before you run? Once again, thinking back to my "not making money" days vs. making money now (I have been full-time since 2009) -- when I wasn't making money, I wasn't "really" trying and my focus was split 1000 different ways. Compared to now, when I do just ONE thing at a time.
Productivity Milestone #1: Four Daily Tasks
It frustrates me when people use productivity software or crazy mindmaps, grids, and schedules to complicate their lives. What ALSO frustrates me is when people say they took 3 weeks off of their business to "rest" or "clear their head." Here's an idea... take that vacation when your business is cranking out money for you!
Just complete three 45-minute tasks and one 15-minute task that moves you closer to you making more money. Multitasking is a MYTH. Checking Facebook and LinkedIn doesn't actually move your business forward, does it?
Productivity Milestone #2: Webinars & Membership Sites
Our Platinum coaching students tell us that these two things are what revolutionized and boosted their income. If you're selling a high ticket course (over $197) then you need to deliver it as one live session per week for 4 or 8 weeks...
If you want to sell several copies of that course, run a free webinar where you teach for 45 minutes and sell for 15 minutes at the end. You're also going to need a membership site to manage all those members. After paying you, they create an account and can login forever.
Productivity Milestone #3: The Right Mindset
Zig Ziglar says, "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Neither does showing, so that's why we recommend it daily." You are going to be your own worst enemy, but if you can nip your problems in the bud you can be one of those "entrepreneur" people with a good attitude who can also think themselves out of a problem even if the deck is stacked against you (i.e. small list).
Make Some Dang Money!
Beware of comparing yourself too much to others (you don't know what goes on with that "happy family" behind closed doors), keeping up with the Joneses (i.e. too big of a house with 3 cars), or living the nomad lifestyle (visiting a new foreign country every week) -- pay off your mortgage instead.
If someone's criticizing you, it's probably because they're deeply insecure about that subject.
Be careful of the "good" and "bad" language you use. I'm not saying you need to be in denial about a problem, but minimize complaining and only complain about something if you have a way to solve that problem, because we all have problems and it's up to YOU as a PROBLEM SOLVER to decide either how the problem doesn't matter or how to break that problem down and solve it!
80% of your activities are a waste so do a bunch of different things: coaching program, membership site, low ticket product, service... and figure out which 20% makes you the most money so you can increase that. HINT: you need to actually COMPLETE these projects and websites and get TRAFFIC and BUYERS to find out what makes money and what doesn't.
Separate the forest from the trees. If you've found a way to make $1000 dollars per week, that's great. But if you're working 50 hour weeks and you're scrambling to "launch" the next money making biz-opp that doesn't really help anyone and only makes money because people can't figure out how to cancel or refund... that's not sustainable.
What IS sustainable is solving a real problem someone has, AND you can do that most effectively by figuring out what makes you the most money. What makes the most money for our business... emailing the list and running pitch webinars. Things like podcasting and blogging, or even speaking at events... makes SOME money and it's fun to do on occasion but it's not the MAIN 20 percent, you see?
Model what you see the money makers doing in your niche. That means you need to "rise above being a geek." Instead of teaching some obscure traffic loophole or even a course about how to get better grades in school (who is really going to buy something like that?), how about you sell something that people are going to use every day?
Why do you think I stopped selling "how to learn PHP programming" courses and instead focused on how to add these things to your sales letter, or a popup plugin like Action PopUp? Or plugins like Backup Creator, Paper Template, and Member Genius? (Those three all available inside Income Machine, by the way.)
Because I experimented with services, coaching, products, and software and after seeing how each one sold, I was able to figure out what the BUYERS (and not just what the complainers) wanted, and moved our business into selling items that people use in their business every day...
If you too want to discover how to create a REAL online business that lasts through age 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 for you, so you don't have to "scramble" or "reinvent yourself" every 3 months, you'll want to check out our Income Machine course right away and setup the system and funnel that all successful online businesses have:
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