Susan Mershon, The Techie Mentor, teaches the strategies, skills & systems you need to design, build & grow a thriving Virtual Assistant business. She explains what you need to know to get over the hesitation of hiring a freelancer, and the many options available to you, for example, a website audit.
Quotes:
“For many of us, myself included, we pour so much time and energy into developing our business—through blood, sweat, and tears—that it almost feels like a family member. It's like a baby to us, which creates a trust issue when it comes to handing over control.” – Susan Mershon
“You have to understand that your time is more valuable sometimes than doing a lot of the admin or technology work yourself.” - Susan Mershon
“If you can find somebody that you can partner and trust with, you can fly because you have a peace of mind that you didn't have before.” - Susan Mershon
Takeaways:
01:57 Investing in expert help upfront can save months of trial and error and accelerate your business's financial success.
09:04 Your time is more valuable than struggling with technical tasks you don't enjoy or understand well.
14:13 Business systems are repeatable assets that, when set up correctly, can generate consistent income with minimal ongoing effort.
18:01 Start small with virtual assistants - a two-hour trial can help you build trust and understand their work style without massive commitment.
22:31 Outsourcing isn't about kicking back, but about freeing yourself to focus on business growth and what you're passionate about.
Colleen Keith is a Graphic Designer and WordPress Stylist that offers reliable and versatile creative design services to entrepreneurs, startups and growing companies. Truly believing that you must be the change you want to see, she only works with and supports clients that are making a positive change in society and the world. While now based in Germany, she's originally from Vancouver and started her business in Sydney, Australia.
Colleen tells us what we need to know about WordPress, especially how to make a website look great by starting with the "demo" in any theme. She also explains how to hire the right person to create your website, how to manage expectations, stay productive, focused, and on-track with our goals.
Quotes:
“I'm here to help you create any type of site you want. I'll do my best to ensure it looks great and show you how to maintain its appearance over time.” – Colleen Keith
“I work at the client’s pace. My goal is to simplify things for them, as my job is to make their lives a little easier.” - Colleen Keith
“As an entrepreneur and freelancer, I understand the costs faced by individuals working independently, so I strive to offer affordable solutions to my clients.” - Colleen Keith
Takeaways:
01:42 WordPress offers more control and flexibility compared to other website builders, allowing entrepreneurs to customize their sites easily.
11:30 Free consultations can be a low-risk way to get professional insights and potentially solve business challenges.
24:27 When hiring a web designer, have a clear vision of your website's end goal to save time and reduce costs.
36:01 Choose a designer who aligns with your business values and is committed to helping you understand and manage your website.
40:44 Consistency in branding, work ethic, and daily effort is crucial for entrepreneurial success.
Michael Jones knows how to clean up broken or hacked WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal websites. He worked for the first company to use an affiliate marketing program, the first company that was hacked, was at Yahoo! the day of their "Denial of Service" attack. He found a niche for website repair and security.
It comes down to 2 things: COMMUNICATION, good or bad, if you can articulate and be honest, you can win over both happy and unhappy customers. And number 2, don't over promise and under deliver. Tell it like it really is.
Quotes:
“Your best defense against anything that happens on the internet is to have a backup of your website.” – Michael Jones
“Never upgrade a live site. There are so many tools out there that you can use to clone a website and put it in a subdirectory, upgrade it there, make sure it all goes well, and then move it over.” – Michael Jones
“If they want you, they're going to get you. The only thing you can do is start playing games with them until they get tired of you and move on to the next victim.” – Michael Jones
Today we're talking about WordPress and our brand new course WP Crusher which shows you everything you need to know about creating a point-and-click website, adding content, making it look the way you want (themes) doing what you want (plugins) all on a site that's fast, secure, easy to backup, and is a site that you control.
Quotes:
“Let someone else worry about the design. You focus on what makes you great.” – Robert Plank
“Whatever gets the job done is fine, and WordPress is what gets the job done. It allows you to start off quickly and easily with just the basics.” – Robert Plank
“People would always rather click around on something different. They'd rather get distracted than just buy.” – Robert Plank
Takeaways:
08:17 Choosing the right hosting, domain, and plugins is crucial for a successful WordPress website.
13:03 Membership sites can be simple solutions for sharing knowledge and creating additional income streams.
17:04 Focus on creating valuable content and solving problems, rather than getting stuck on perfect website design.
23:46 WordPress is a powerful, user-friendly platform that allows anyone to create websites without advanced technical skills.
25:06 Regular updates and basic security measures can protect your WordPress site from potential vulnerabilities.
Everyone is guilty of this at one time or another, even me sometimes...
Getting too carried away and biting off more than you can chew...
Filling up the "to-do list" (yuck) with way too much "stuff"
Then, it's a huge distraction and that big long list becomes a thing you're scared to look at, or maybe even you feel bad when you do...
I can also relate to my mindset ten years ago when even five minutes of money-making activities per day seemed like "too much work" for me...
Send a quick email in the morning? I can't do that every day...
People tell me to blog or post a daily video? How will I have time for anything else?
"Forget about a daily podcast..." I expected myself to post once a day for maybe 4-5 days and then quit!
Sound familiar? Of course it does... don't pretend it doesn't!
So what changed? This...
Insight #1: Exterminate "Not-Invented-Here" Syndrome and Used the Right Tools
Don't invent from scratch if you can help it.
In this day and age, you don't need to know HTML, CSS, how to edit graphics and upload files. Just use WordPress, grab whatever beautiful theme you want to use for your design (most look like you paid thousands of dollars), and you can grab whatever plugins you want to add pop-ups, social share links, and so on.
Just grab what gets it done now instead of delaying yourself months or even years for no reason...
Insight #2: Stop Switching Gears and "Chunk" Instead
Speaking of WordPress, use its scheduling feature. Scheduling is one of the few hidden "Easter eggs" hidden in WordPress and I'm constantly amazed at how few people know that this is a thing...
Here's how it works: let's say you create a WordPress blog and you decide that once per day, you want to post a new video reviewing the latest iPhone or Android app...
That's a huge time commitment. Literally every day, you're going to have to login and research that latest app. There's no guarantee that you'll find something good. Maybe you won't be motivated that day. Maybe you'll have something better to do or a huge emergency will come up and stop you...
And then... you might miss a day, two days, a week, and then think to yourself... it's been three months since I posted a video about the latest app. It wasn't a priority then, so why should it be a priority now?
Posting one or two videos didn't seem to get me much traction, and maybe if I'd posted 50 to 100 videos I'd see real results, but who has that sort of patience?
Solution: Schedule several posts every time. With WordPress, you can add a new "post" (journal entry) and Publish it, or set it to go live instantly. Or, you can change the date to go live tomorrow, in a week, or two weeks.
WordPress has built-in drip content (just set the date and time of your posts into the future) without any special plugins.
Just imagine, on a Monday, grabbing five YouTube videos from various sources reviewing the latest apps (with your link at the bottom) and you'll set those posts to go live on Tuesday morning, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
Or, how about this: on April 1st, schedule two weekly posts in advance. That means that on April 1st, you just scheduled posts on your blog for April 1st and April 8th...
Then, on April 8th, you already had that day scheduled. You schedule your two videos to go live on April 15th and April 22nd...
Keep this up for 10 weeks (three to five minutes per day) and by June 3rd, you're already scheduled ahead to mid-August. And by August, you're scheduled ahead until the following year.
Just by posting more than what you need, the website (WordPress) will work on autopilot for you, even after you've put it out of your mind. Constantly switching gears and putting out fires is a MASSIVE time waster. Avoid it by chunking up your tasks and scheduling things out on autopilot for many weeks to come.
Insight #3: Imagine a Clear CONCRETE Vision of What the Future LOOKS Like
It sounds super hokey, but most self-help (Napoleon Hill type of stuff) revolves around you using your imagination to imagine a clear picture of your goals...
That way, not only will you know you're headed in the right direction, but you'll also get that perspective to deal with life's small setbacks, and you'll have the motivation (and enthusiasm) you need to complete consistent daily actions every single day.
As they say:
"Whether you believe you can or believe you can't, you're right!" -- Henry Ford
"Don't wait. The time will never be just right." -- Napoleon Hill
"Successful people look for problems to resolve, whereas unsuccessful people make every attempt to avoid them." -- Grant Cardone
"A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities, and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties." -- Harry Truman
Again, as cheesy as it sounds, it's important that you let in a consistent flow of self-help information. That means that even if all you can manage is a 10 minute morning walk every day...
Search YouTube, iTunes and Audible for anything relating to: self-help, self-improvement, productivity, motivation, Napoleon Hill, Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes, Wayne Dyer, Les Brown and listen to just a few minutes every day
Speaking of Audible (Amazon's audio book marketplace), install the app on your phone so that you can listen while driving or taking walks, even just a few minutes a day (just 5 minutes a day is 30 hours per year)
If you're really stuck, search YouTube for things like "guided meditation focus" or "NLP anxiety" or even "negative self talk" or "procrastination" to solve whatever mental problem you're working through (and we're all working through things... if you're not, then you should be)
Take a few minutes to write down (or speak out) your thoughts and feelings to reduce your raw uncontrollable emotions into words that you can work through (we offer the Four Daily Tasks bullet journal for this)
Just imagine if you scheduled 20, 100, or even 200 daily or weekly blog posts into the future. That not only frees up time for you to focus on more important things, but it'll also encourage you with the progress you've made AND it'll toughen you up and build that "productivity muscle" so that the effort that it used to take you to schedule a quick blog post (find a YouTube video online and schedule it)... could now be applied to:
you hiring a writer on Fiverr to crank out a pack of ten articles... schedule them
you could write up your own articles, dictate your own podcast episodes or record your own YouTube videos to post to your blog
scheduling ahead of time as far as you want
I used to think that posting to a site even THREE times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) was work. But think about it. There are "roughly" four weeks in every month. Three times per week is only 12 pieces of content -- grab a couple interesting YouTube videos, news items or blog posts to report about...
Insight #4: Consistent Daily Action & Small Wins
Let me sneak in one more of those dreadful "motivational" quotes: "People often say that motivation doesn't last. Neither does bathing. That's why we recommend it daily." -- Zig Ziglar
Here's an analogy for you: let's say you've been exercising and dieting diligently, and one day, you decide to eat two extra-large pepperoni pizzas in the space of 10 minutes. Will you instantly gain weight and become a huge fat slob? Of course not.
Let's say you've been eating fast food five times a day and ballooned up to 300 pounds or more. If you suddenly ate a salad for one single meal and went back to fast food, it wouldn't make much difference, would it?
Moving back to entrepreneurship and making money: what if you spent every day caught in that typical pattern of "work-TV-sleep?" And maybe once a month, you "dabbled" in internet marketing, just a little bit? No progress...
What if you woke up just one hour earlier and dedicated that one hour to: creating a product, writing sales copy, building a list, running ads, and sending emails? HUGE results added up over time...
Unfortunately, way too many internet marketers and work-at-home entrepreneurs have the wrong mindset. They think that if they just "put in the time" or "wait out their problem" then eventually... someone will see it their way... not gonna happen.
Imagine if Apple had stopped innovating with the Macintosh and there was no iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Apple Watch, MacBook, or iMac. Just Macintosh version 10.0 with a "faster" processor and floppy disk drive... BORING!
What if Amazon only sold books? What if you couldn't buy almost any item online from them? What if they didn't sell groceries? What if they never created services like S3 which power Netflix and Dropbox?
What if Google never experimented with AdWords (their main money maker) and stayed with organic search only? They would have gone the way of Yahoo!, Excite, Altavista, Dogpile, DMOZ, and the rest
Do you remember when MySpace was "the" top website people logged into? Maybe Facebook would have followed suit if they hadn't bought Instagram, adopted "sharing" and absorbed the live streaming stuff from Periscope and SnapChat?
Now look -- I think we both know that looking at Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook give you EXTREME examples of what to do and what not to do:
Banish "not-invented-here" syndrome and use what already exists. If you want to reinvent a website from scratch, you're basically starting over at the beginning of the internet (the 1990's, and you remember how those websites looked) -- why not start at 2017 with tools like WordPress?
Chunk your tasks to avoid switching gears: instead of psyching yourself up to write a single blog post (or record a podcast, film a vlog, post to Facebook, email your list), why not use that same time to crank or two or three, or even ten? So that you have a machine that continues to produce money for you weeks from now on automatic pilot, even when you're not thinking about it?
Use your imagination for good instead of for evil. The average person gravitates to what "could" go wrong if you took a risk and moved outside of your comfort zone. It's easy, and it only takes a moment, to think -- What if I'd created that product? Contacted some affiliates? Finished that sales letter and added a buy button? It's hard to do in real life, but EASY to imagine "if" you'd tried it and failed... then you could say, it's a good thing I didn't play with that internet marketing thing. It's a good thing I didn't listen to any self-help stuff. What a waste "that" would have been. Be better. Instead of worrying about what COULD go wrong, ask yourself, what COULD go right?
Keep up the process daily!
That doesn't mean you should just phone in it, wait your turn, put in the hours, or "hold out" until your idea makes money. Self-awareness and course-correction are HUGE in our line of work (being in business for yourself).
Even if you're pressed for time with a day job, being old and dealing with health issues, dealing with family, divorce, kids... you're not the first human being in history to deal with such things. I honestly believe that no matter what your situation, you can carve out an hour (maybe two) per day to grow your internet business.
"If you really want to do something you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse." -- Jim Rohn
Start with our WP Import plugin. With it, you'll be able to schedule out a bunch of blog posts in advance: buy private label rights articles, hire a freelance writer on Fiverr, or write them yourself.
Grab any of the 28,000 articles we include as a bonus to our plugin. Or find 10-20 YouTube videos and use our bulk post feature to schedule all that content on one page:
“Constantly switching gears and putting out fires day after day is a massive time waster.” – Robert Plank
“Instead of worrying about what could go wrong, ask yourself what could go right and keep up the process daily.” – Robert Plank
“Even if you're pressed for time with a day job, or you're old and dealing with health issues, family, or divorced kids, you're not the first human being in history to deal with such things.” – Robert Plank
Takeaways:
04:40 WordPress scheduling allows you to create content weeks or months in advance without daily manual work.
06:15 Self-help and motivational content can reshape your mindset and drive entrepreneurial success.
07:20 Using existing tools and platforms saves time compared to building everything from scratch.
08:10 Dedicating just one hour daily to your business can create substantial long-term results.
15:30 Small, consistent daily actions compound into significant progress over time.
I strongly believe that you should use WordPress to run your websites because it's easy to setup, and you can add whatever you want onto it... add a quiz plugin, add an opt-in form plugin... you and your websites can stay on the cutting edge without coding, FTP, or geek stuff...
Plugins make your site "do those extra things"... and THEMES change how your WordPress sites look. Don't like that site design with the black background and 2 sidebars? Click a button and now you get a white background with 1 sidebar...
That's what great about WordPress themes... instantly change the look and feel... so what's my problem with it?
In my experience, 50% of the time, I buy a theme (usually 200 to 300 bucks) because of the demo they show me. It looks great -- I think to myself, I'll change this text, I'll remove this section, this is going to be the best looking site anyone's ever seen...
I buy the theme and set it up... and either I can't even get it to load up the "demo" or it turns out the demo involved some custom coding, custom CSS and custom graphics and there's no way I can match it...
Lance and I recently setup a theme and in order to get it to look as good as the demo, it took us about an hour on Skype (us, both computer geeks), and we had to install 6 additional plugins and set about 20 different settings JUST to get it to that demo mode... nevermind customizing the site...
When WordPress themes are concerned, I feel very "baited and switched" at times and I have to do a ton of customization just to make a landing page look decent...
Do you want to know what "just works" out of the box? Paper Template does.
With Paper Template, you can use any WordPress theme you want (even the default one) and then say... I want JUST this one page to be a landing page (sales letter, opt-in form, thank you download page, etc.) and please leave the rest of my site alone...
Or... set all your pages as Paper Template pages...
It's mobile responsive and is a plain white piece of paper OR you can click a button and give it a more modern look... those fancy fonts, bright colors and full-width web pages... it's all possible using the Paper Template plugin for your WordPress landing pages:
It's great if you want to skip the hassle and headache of "those" WordPress themes where the demo looks great but isn't customizable. Paper Template is the perfect solution for you if you want to create those "money pages" quickly within WordPress.
The good news is that 2016 (and 2017) is the best possible time to setup your web pages because it's easier than ever... and web pages have never looked better than ever!
You used to have to learn HTML, CSS, uploading FTP files, maybe even a little scripting and then you'd have to test things with Internet Explorer and Netscape browsers until you had it right...
Now, many things are point and click, such as with Paper Template.
(click to see a quick video demo)
WordPress (click a button and you have a blog)
Paper Template plugin (install and now you can create sales letters and landing pages within WordPress)
add any other plugins you want to add a contact form, legal pages, pop-ups, caching, security, SEO...
So, it's a great way to get started fast and do all the things you want... BUT...
I honestly don't believe that the "hosted platforms" are really up to snuff. If you use some sort of hosted service that runs it all for you:
you are now tied to their business (if their sites are down for 2 hours, your site is down for 2 hours)
they don't do everything (maybe they're missing an autoresponder)
you have to take a bunch of extra steps anyway to host your own .com domain and make it look like it runs on your own websites (sometimes you have to install your own WordPress blog, and their WordPress plugin on your site, just to run their service... weird)
they might not do all the cool stuff that you want. For example, with WordPress you can just grab a quiz plugin if you want that. Grab a contact form plugin if you want that. On a hosted service, you have to wait for them to "get around to it"...
I honestly believe this is the best of both worlds... easy to setup, uses WordPress, create landing pages in addition to your blog or let it take over your site... and then add plugins or tweaks as you wish. The Paper Template WordPress plugin lets you have your cake and eat it too.
What would you do if suddenly, tomorrow, you were no longer allowed or able to use WordPress for your websites? And you had to go back to HTML, FTPing files... sounds terrible, right?
Well... there is a secret "new frontier" for you and your WordPress sites and that's managing them remotely. You can see all your sites in one place, update all sites, 1-click login to any WordPress site, compare sites and add plugins...
I could never go back to NOT using a tool to manage all my WordPress sites in one place (such as Website Remote) -- it's like being without WordPress, or without GPS, or without a car to drive...
AND -- Lance, myself, and our team have been adding some cool new features to our Website Remote tool:
1. Website Groups: you can now "bunch up" your sites and say... let me only update this group of my 10 client sites. Or install this one plugin on my 25 test sites...
2. Cloud Storage: we now give you 1GB of free storage with Website Remote so you can store your favorite plugins in one place (perhaps premium plugins or maybe free plugins that are hard for you to find, or you forget to find) -- and choose a plugin in that cloud storage and send it off to one, all, or some of your websites
3. Plugin Packages: you can also "bunch up" your plugins... and say, here are my 5 bare essential plugins for SEO and security... here are the 10 plugins I use for a membership site, here are the 20 plugins I use on a test site...
You can mix and match plugins in a package. You can choose 3 of your plugins from the cloud and combine them with 10 free plugins, for example...
So -- that means you can login to Website Remote today, click the "Essentials" and "Membership Plugins" packages (bunched up plugins that are some you uploaded and some free ones) -- and maybe click the "Client Sites" and "Membership Sites" groups you created...
And basically install 15 plugins on 35 of your WordPress sites, without having to login, remember passwords, or upload each and every time...
This is HUGE (yuuuuge), we believe this changes the way you'll use WordPress forever, and it's only 99 cents to get started today:
Today's Sponsor: Backup Creator (starts at just $7) Today's Quote: "The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake. You can't learn anything from being perfect." -- Adam Osborne
Wake up early, make the bed, break up the day, drink water, exercise
Four Daily Tasks spaced throughout the day (and don't "cheat" or be an idiot about your schedule)
When you're "blocked" -- stop, don't force it
Website Backups
WordPress, Backup Creator
Set automatic offsite backups (set it and forget it)
Amazon S3, Dropbox, and Google Drive
Flow State
Get to ANY money making level as fast as possible (Profit Dashboard for Fiverr, Income Machine for WordPress)
Figure out your click-by-click process: support desk, installing WordPress, recording podcasts, creating YouTube videos... that way it doesn't matter how many you have to create
Get rid of the clutter: more ideas, more possibilities, split focus is NOT good -- knock out what needs doing and be done with it.
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!
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
HostGator: This is for web hosting. After you buy your domain name, your site has to "live" somewhere. This is web hosting and fou can get this at DoubleAgentHosting.com.
AWeber: This is an autoresponder, your essential tool for building a list and keeping in contact with your customers. Get this at DoubleAgentAutoresponder.com.
WordPress: This is a free tool that you "place" at the front door of your site. It lets you edit your site and pages without having to know how to write or edit HTML code. You can just click around and create any extra webpages that you like using plugin's and tools that WordPress uses.
Once you get webhosting via DoubleAgentHosting.com, there's a special button where you can install WordPress on the front door of your site. Its' going to make creating all the pages we talk about today super simple.
Robert has a WordPress plugin called Paper Template that makes everything look like a plain piece of paper that you can customize. You can also buy Robert's course, Income Machine (www.incomemachine.com), which includes Paper Template as well as Member Genius, which is a plugin that allows you to take payments on your site and is integrated with PayPal.
Must-Have Web Pages
"Front Door" of your site (www.example.com): This is where your sales letter lives. You want to have a place for someone to buy something from you. This page, the sales letter, also has your buy button. Additional tip: when purchasing a domain, also buy a .com, not a .org or a .net.
Membership area of your site (www.example.com/members): When people have purchased your product, they go to a page where they create an account and then get access to the members' area.
This is a protected area where they can download the product and intake any additional content that goes with the product, such as videos, etc. Also, if they ask for a refund or stop paying installments, their access to this section can be shut off.
Training Page (www.example.com/training): This is where you put your 1-hour pitch webinar replay for your product/service. It makes everything simple and easy because you can use your webinar training as anything thing later on (i.e. a 'bonus') and just call it 'live training'.
Record your webinar using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page.
Demo Page of your site (www.example.com/demo): Here is where you can put a 5-minute demo of something you have in your product/course. This is where you'd put something exciting, such as 'before and after' pictures, evidence of your 3x income generation after flipping a house, or a trick that your software can do.
Just like for the training page above, record your demo using Camtasia, put it on YouTube, place that video code on this demo page, and then below that have a link that takes them back to your sales letter page/front page.
Nice-To-Have's
Opt-In Page (www.example.com/free): This is where you have just some simple free gift so that people will opt-in to get it, thereby joining your list.
Download Page (www.example.com/gift-download): This is where they're redirected to download the free gift. You have a link below that download for them to hop back to your sales letter.
Contact Page (www.example.com/contact): An easy form for people to fill out to contact you so that you don't have to share your email address. This is where they can ask questions, ask for interviews, etc. They could send tech problems here but it's better if you have a Help Desk page, which we'll mention in just a few minutes.
7 Extra Pages For No Extra Charge!
Blog Page (www.example.com/blog): This is where you put any articles and/or videos you find interesting to your niche. There are places on this page for them to go to your Opt-in page (and get on your list) or go directly to your 'front door'/sales letter site and buy your product.
Affiliate Center (www.example.com/affiliates): A page that tells others how they can recommend your course and make a profit from selling it themselves. This is also where you'd have banner ads and swipe copy for your affiliates to use so that they can more easily promote you.
To see an example of how this looks, go to the Action PopUp affiliate page. The easiest way to have an affiliate program when you start out is through ClickBank.
Robert's Member Genius plugin functions with ClickBank. You can get Member Genius by itself or by joining Income Machine to get the complete system including the sales letter plugin, blog, autoresponder, and traffic training, and more.
Support Page (www.example.com/support): This is your Help Desk page. We use ZenDesk for this.
Secret Door area (www.example.com/secretdoor): When Robert and Lance do a launch the best way to fire people up is to announce that they will be closing the offer soon. But sometimes you want to experiment with cold traffic like FB ads, etc.
That means, you take your sales letter and use a WP plugin called Post Duplicator to make an exact copy of the sales letter where you've now opened the button back up to buy but you don't advertise that it's open to your list.
Essentially, you're trying to see if your ads work and the only way to tell that is if you have the sales closed to the public and so any sales you get that are from this Secret Door page you know are from ad driven traffic.
Welcome Page (www.example.com/welcome): This is your upsell page. If someone buys Paper Template, they would be redirected to this page that says something along the lines of "Welcome to Paper Template, but do you want to buy Income Machine too?"
The cost would be the price difference between your large package (the upsell) and the product they just purchased.
Coaching Page (www.example.com/coaching): Offer coaching that is specific to the product that you are selling. For example, if you were selling a course on playing guitar, here is where you would offer say, 4 one-on-one sessions for customers that are still having problems or want to advance even more in guitar playing.
Your copy would say something similar to "Are you stuck? You came to the right place! In just 4 sessions with me, we'll get your roadblocks taken care of."
Your coaching should have a large dollar amount attached to it. Even if you have no clients or just a few taking part, it's fine. It is just an opportunity. Provide a link for them to go straight back to your .com front door site if they don't' want coaching.
Application Page (www.example.com/application): This is where a customer submits an app for your coaching program. You ask them specifics such as:
"What is the URL where you need help?"
"What is your monthly budget?"
"What are you looking to get out of the coaching? Is there anything else you need? "
You can use Google Forms to set this up. Once they hit submit, it notifies you. It will pile in the responses into a google spreadsheet.
Use a scheduler called TimeTrade to schedule a Skype call with them to discuss this further. The ones that you want to talk to, you then send them to your coaching page to join up.
When people talk about their favorite WordPress plugins, you usually hear things about SEO plugins, security plugins, or backup plugins. By the way, the best backup plugin for WordPress is Backup Creator and the plugin you should use to manage, bulk load, and mass update your WP plugins is Plugin Dashboard...
But anyway, imagine having "chunks" of text for your WordPress site that you could re-use where-ever you want. You use shortcodes for this. For example, I have a podcasting plugin on my blog that I use to post audio episodes of my iTunes radio show. (Podcast Crusher shows you how to use the PowerPress plugin in WordPress to create an unlimited number of podcasts)...
If I ever want to display the current podcast episode more than once in a post, for example, one player at the top in addition to the one at the bottom, I just have to add this code to my post:
[ podcast ] (Without the spaces around those hard brackets.)
That's a WordPress shortcode. You post the "code" anywhere in your posts and pages and when it's "rendered" for public viewing, people see the podcast audio player as opposed to that "short" code.
WordPress Post Snippets allow you to do this: create any number of shortcodes such as: [ webinarcrusher ]. I can set that snippet to display a huge headline advertising my Webinar Crusher product, a link to it, maybe open that link in a new window, even toss in some bullet points and a banner.
Now anytime I want to link to Webinar Crusher, I just add the [ webinarcrusher ] shortcode (the video below shows how it's point and click simple) into my posts anywhere I want to mention it:
I used to use the WP Post Signature plugin (also free) to display the same link and ads under EVERY blog post, but I now prefer using WordPress Post Snippets because I have more control over what posts link to what offers.
The first 9 minutes of that video show how I use it on my blogs and sales letters. But after the 9 minute mark, it gets REALLY crazy... because you can pass VARIABLES into Post Snippets!
What does that mean? Well, you can create a post snippet called "offsite" that takes in variables called "url" and "title"...
Then set your "offsite" post snippet to this in your Post Snippet settings:
<a target="_blank" onclick="return confirm('Are you sure you want to leave this site?');" href="{url}">{title}</a>
This looks a bit geeky, but it's some HTML code that displays a link on a web page, and when someone clicks that link, a pop-up appears asking people if they REALLY want to leave the site.
Whenever you want to link offsite but you want to display that warning that they might not want to leave, just add this "snippet" or shortcode into your posts:
[ offsite url="http://www.incomemachine.com" title="Income Machine" ] (again, without the spaces)
Adding this shortcode will "plug-in" the "url" we passed (which is "http://www.incomemachine.com") and the "title" (which is "Income Machine") right into that code I showed you a minute ago, into the {url} and {title} sections of that code.
As I said, this might be a "little" advanced for you personally, but I've found it very helpful for re-using that "repeat" code in my membership sites if I have to display a lot of graphics, video and audio players, and download links.
Enjoy using WordPress Post Snippets in your WordPress sales letters, blogs, and membership sites!
I honestly believe that this year (NOT next year) and this month (NOT next month) is the month and year that you'll create that website that makes money, update or re-do an already money making site or whip out that brand new stream of income...
For a few reasons:
This thing called "WordPress" that allows you QUICKLY to point and click your way to type in whatever content you want (without a lot of technical skills)
WordPress plugins that then take what you've written and change the look and feel (for the most part, remove the sidebar) so you have a FOCUSED (single call to action) landing page
Everyone says people have a "lower attention span" these days... which means you can get away with a shorter sales letter, shorter sales video, AND if you just run a few ads (like Facebook retargeting) then you can leapfrog ahead of your competition
I know it's easy to get "confused" about which web host to use, what theme to have, which plugins, what color and font to have on your web pages... heck, I've even seen people try to "code" their own HTML web pages as if it was 1998 (and remember how those pages looked?)
Component #1:
WordPress (Posts and Pages)
Look, we both know that you're probably not in the web design business, the computer programming business, the shopping cart business. If you're doing any of this right, then you have a PASSION for a niche like guitar, learning a language, losing weight, etc.
Even as a nerdy computer programmer, I don't want to have to re-invent the wheel from scratch every time! I want to type out what I want, click a button, and it's done. Ready to collect email optins or take payments. I don't want the "solution" (a really complicated page building system with 100's of choices) to be more confusing than the problem (not having a web page to begin with).
That's why when it comes to any web page including a blog, sales letter, optin page, webinar registration page (so I can drop a retargeting pixel), or webinar replay page...
I No Longer Upload and Edit
HTML Files on a New Site!
Instead, I point and click WordPress pages...
The next thing I need you to know about blogs and WordPress: posts and pages. POSTS are really only relevant when you're talking about a straight up blog, online journal. New post on July 1st, here's my diary entry. New post on August 1st, diary entry.
A PAGE is navigation. On a blog you're talking about "Contact Me" pages, "About Me" pages, "Best of This Blog" pages. The Contact Me page doesn't have a date on it, it's just there.
I like to think of posts as journal entries going top to bottom, pages as going left to right.
That's where Paper Template comes in. Using WordPress, you can install our "Paper Template" plugin which will allow you to create a "piece of paper" looking landing page in addition to your blog.
For example, I have my blog at RobertPlank.com, and I can create an additional PAGE at RobertPlank.com/free that's a landing page, a forced optin page, and I don't have to "link" it from anywhere else on my blog if I don't want to.
This landing page is called an OPTIN PAGE which is that white piece of paper with a headline explaining some freebie I'm giving away (like a short report), three bullet points (explaining the short report), a sentence telling someone to fill in the form below, and an optin form to enter in their name and email address.
They fill it in, they get that bribe in exchange for their name and email address and they can UNSUBSCRIBE at any time.
If I really want to make money I can install WordPress at the "root" of a domain, the .com, like WebinarCrusher.com, and then install Paper Template onto that WordPress site, create a "paper" page and then set it as the front page of the site.
So someone goes to the "root" of WebinarCrusher.com, they aren't looking at an HTML web page where I had to edit CSS code and upload images, they're looking at a WordPress PAGE that I edited (it just happens to be the front page).
Not sure what to place on that sales letter? Glad you asked... Paper Template has a 1-click pre-written sales letter. It drops in all the basic components you need on a sales letter...
3-part who-else headline, 3-part anticipation subheadline, establish the problem and alternatives, huge breakthrough, vague solution, solid solution, detailed explanation, who's it for, how it's delivered, breakdown of each module, offer stack table, price reveal, guarantee certificate, priority order form, all that good stuff.
Don't be overwhelmed. Just delete what you don't need and edit the headlines and text of what's remaining... by the way, Paper Template also comes with pre-written headlines and bullet points so you can drop in what you need anywhere and just fill in the blanks.
Instead of confusing ourselves with 10, 20, 30 different types of landing pages (Under construction page??? Coming Soon page? Sold Out page?) let me make it simple for you, Paper Template has these "types" of web pages (almost identical but with different placeholder text written in):
Optin Page (ask for an email address)
Sales Page (present an offer and ask for the sale)
Webinar Signup Page (let's skip this, it's just a fancier 1-click optin page but for a webinar)
Webinar Replay Page (also skip this, it's a "wider" version of our piece of paper with nothing on the page but a headline, video and link to go to the sales page after they're done watching)
Download Page (piece of paper web page with no links to it that offers a PAID product for download)
Gift Page (same as above but it's a FREE product for download after someone registers on an optin page)
Let's get to it...
I'm going to explain a few steps that I take when setting up these funnels so bear with me if I'm brain-dumping a few things at you:
Register a .com domain name (cost is $10) that contains your niche keyword and a filler keyword, for example, WebinarCrusher.com contains the word "webinar" but I can't register Webinar.com so I go with WebinarCrusher.com
Install WordPress and Paper Template and set a "sales letter" (one single piece of paper template that explains an offer with nothing else to do at the bottom other than buy) with a payment button on the bottom (we prefer PayPal). You can check a box in your Paper Template settings to make this the front page, as in WebinarCrusher.com
Set the "download link" someone goes to after paying (this is a setting in your PayPal button) to WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz -- this will be another of our WordPress PAGES -- we can always rename or move to a membership site later but it's keep it simple. The front page is the sales letter, this "download123xyz" will be a page with videos or links to PDF files where they download our course
After creating that button, go back to your WordPress site and create a new page with the "Download Page" template (which contains verbage like what they can expect to see on their credit card statement, delivers the download, links to an upsell, etc.
Only four steps to have a web page that promises something for sale and delivers that download.
I know people geek out about things like a "video sales letter" -- guess what happens with those these days? They find no one's going to sit through a 90 minute video like they did a couple years ago, so they add a couple bullet points under it... more headlines... an offer stack. Next thing you know, it's a long form sales letter, should have used Paper Template.
OR you might see "web 2.0" web pages. They're very wide, taking up most of the computer screen (good luck making that look good on a tiny phone screen, Paper Template is responsive).
These web 2.0 pages will usually have lots of columns (not too great for readability and the "bucket brigade" trying to pull them to the end of your sales letter).
Usually they'll have one color background for the first chunk of the page (like blue) and then a different background color dividing the rest of the page (such as a white background)... so it's more or less a long form sales letter, only wider, and with two different background colors...
Either way, I believe that the TEXT on a web page is more important than your design or even fancy video -- ugly pages sell. I wish for my own ego's sake that wasn't true but that's what I've observed since making these "paper template" web pages.
If you want to get really fancy then here's how I build out my funnel for a FRONTEND site:
Install WordPress on the .com level like WebinarCrusher.com: this one WordPress site will hold all my PAGES like the sales page, optin page, download page, etc.
I create a "sales page" Paper Template page and set it to the front page of the site: WebinarCrusher.com
Add download page at WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz: so WebinarCrusher.com -> WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz
When you're ready to setup an optin page (which I like to do for cold traffic), then you'll create a "gift download" page. I prefer to either paste three EzineArticles into a Google Drive and save as a PDF, or grab a YouTube video (even one of my own) as a free gift. This just delivers something for free (hidden from navigation) and links to the sales letter at the bottom: WebinarCrusher.com/gift-download -> WebinarCrusher.com -> WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz
Now we need to create a page that asks for the optin at WebinarCrusher.com/free. Don't worry, it's just a click away. Explain the free gift on a SHORT web page (with three bullet points) and use an autoresponder service such as Aweber to collect their email address: WebinarCrusher.com/free -> WebinarCrusher.com/gift-download -> WebinarCrusher.com -> WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz
If I want to get fancy and create something like an upsell page, I just create another "sales page" template in there at WebinarCrusher.com/offer and I could change the funnel sequence to:
An upsell page is nothing more than a web page with a button to buy and an additional link under that button saying "No thanks, take me to my download page."
If I wanted to create a membership site in the future, I would use something like Member Genius and setup a SECOND WordPress site at WebinarCrusher.com/members (and have all my protected content in there) and setup the payment button to go to the registration page for that membership site instead of just "WebinarCrusher.com/download123xyz" but let's not get TOO technical...
Once you have that funnel setup you can do lots of interesting things like add countdown timers to those optin pages and sales letters (sparingly) which is built into Paper Template...
You can make use of re-usable "snippets" of code, for example if you want to place tracking codes on different pages or different payment buttons (we like to offer a 1-pay and a 5-pay payment plan on most sales letters) -- also built into Paper Template.
Paper Template will also manage your on-site and off-site redirects. You could for example, cloak your affiliate link, redirect an old deleted page to something new, or even shorten some of your own affiliate's links, and track the clicks over time -- built in.
Real quick, the final piece that ties it all together. When creating one of these new sites from scratch I like to use Plugin Dashboard to drop in all the plugins I need in one go.
I'm talking about your security plugins, SEO plugins, backup plugins. I'm talking about all the "little things" you always forget to do in WordPress like setup the link structure, set the sitewide title and contact email, and yes, even install plugins like Paper Template.
There is a "Paper Template" checkbox inside of Plugin Dashboard. The only information you need to give it is your license key and license email address (it automatically fills it in if you have that open in another browser tab) and it pulls it down from the cloud, activates it and you're ready to click your way into sales funnels and profits using WordPress.
Tools You'll Use
WordPress (free and installs easily using "SimpleScripts" in most web host control panels)
Paper Template (just $47 for the Ultimate version and allows you to create & manage WordPress landing pages)
Get all the latest insights with membership sites, passive income, mindset, and more.
About Robert & The Podcast
The Marketer of the Day Podcast interviews entrepreneurs who have been through “the struggle.”
They’ve experienced the headaches of repeat failure, trial-and-error, scaling, delegating, course-correcting, and getting their online businesses to succeed beyond their wildest dreams… and want to help you get to where you need to go.
