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The Worst Kept Secret of Internet Marketing: Email Every Day, Sell Every Day, Make Money Every Day
If you're struggling to make money right now, or you feel your business has plateaued and you're trying to get it back to where it once was... OR you're doing great and you want to do better...
"What's the most effective thing
you can do right now
to EXPLODE your business?"
Let me tell you three things that WON'T help... or at least, these aren't the answers I'm looking for...
It's not "expanding your social media presence" -- look, I created a LinkedIn group with the rest of them that's now just under 1,000 members. We've got a few Facebook fan pages for our business (plus some other niches) and a FB group where people login and post every day. Google+ Communities are too new for me. A Twitter account I never really use, 7k followers...
Writing a book? You should have one but there are more urgent matters you need to attend to...
Information product? The "perfect" home study course or membership site that took you 2 years of content creation to finish? Or a "steady stream" of 7 dollar products that make you 500 bucks each? Not so much...
The secret to consistent income is sending consistent emails consistently.
MEANING: Email Every Day!
I'm looking at 2,706 broadcast emails I've sent in the past 5 years alone and here's what I can tell you...
- People are going to drop off your list no matter what you do (1% list decay every single day)
- You can email for the same offer 45 days in a row and people will buy every single day (Newbie Crusher, Paper Template, Backup Creator)
- You can expect a 2% clickthrough rate from your entire list every time you mail -- but you can mail 5-10 days in a row to get 10%-20% of your subscribers to click
- Your subscribers are the hottest within the first 7 days -- so email every day when someone joins your list
I don't know how your business is doing personally (but I do care)... but if you plan on going to an offline event anytime soon, as this question to an internet marketer: "Where is your optin page and where can I join your list?" You probably won't get a URL as an answer.
Thinking back to some random conversation years ago. Someone asks me why webinar attendance was down industry-wide. He mailed to a webinar and only had 100 people register, only 33 showed up, he didn't make too many sales...
After some questioning, I realized he'd only mailed once. With a very uninteresting webinar title. At the last minute. He fooled me at first when he said his list was 50,000. I had to find out the hard way that "fifty thousand" included his Twitter followers, Facebook friends, YouTube subscribers... not the same thing.
Is Facebook eating all our lunch? Yes! Are email opens down, email clicks down, blog comments down once people get to the page? You better believe it!
Of course people would rather click the "like" button, share a 1-sentence post with friends, post a cute picture of a puppy, or get distracted by 1,000 other things on the page.
Here's another scary thought... I took an a forced optin page that converts at 42.9% to cold traffic, promoted it on Facebook... only a 1.29% optin rate! (direct linking on the news feed, running ads, placing inside a fan page iframe didn't make any difference... they ALL remained around a 1% optin rate)
It's like Facebook has turned our brains into BROWN SLUDGE!!!
So internet marketing as we know it is DEAD?!?
What's the solution? Is it to pack up your blog, pack up your website, shut down that sales letter, stop emailing, and move it all to Facebook?
No. Look, you might love Facebook a bunch, but it's "just another traffic source" just like EzineArticles is just another traffic source and AdRoll is just another traffic source and podcasting is just another traffic source!
- Keep the email list, free gift, optin page, sales letter, keep sending broadcast emails and save your best emails into your followup sequence
- Keep running ads and tracking your links so you know what converts and what doesn't
- Keep engaging your list by asking them questions and doing crazy things (mail your physical book to the first 20 responders, pay people $1 to attend a webinar or comment on a blog post, limit your blog to 10 comments or your sales letter to 1000 sales) -- BE INTERESTING (UNLIKE MOST PEOPLE!!!)
- Keep getting your subscribers to take action (consume your freebie, login to the membership, comment on your blog post, read your sales letter)
- Keep building your list any possible way that you can
- Keep networking with other marketers, use TimeTrade to schedule interviews and setup an affiliate program using Clickbank and Rapid Action Profits
The other day I literally killed a few dozen of my old websites... most of PHP and JavaScript training courses I'd pumped out over the years. Why? Because I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but I only have about 20 products that have REALLY made sales in the last year.
And out of those... 4 of them are "home run hits" that make sales every single day, so I've built my funnels around them!
If your list has gone cold, tell them why you've been missing and what they can expect from you in the next 30 days.
If you've stopped building your list, figure out where you can get 200 clicks back to your sales letter -- that's 100 opt-ins (just not from Facebook!)
Speaking of Facebook, start posting your links -- and sometimes your entire emails -- as status updates for extra traffic. Post them on the groups you own, your own timeline, fan pages you run and boost those posts for 7 dollars.
The number of comments on this blog post proves it... the "traffic" hasn't gone anywhere. We just have to be more interesting in order to get more engagement than the clicking of a "like" button.
Question: What are can you do this week to rise to overcome the FACEBOOK SLUDGE that seems to be stealing our traffic and taking everyone's attention away?
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Magic Offers: How to Run Strategic Product Launches and Increase Sales (Using This Method That’s Better than Copywriting)
Product launches have been on my mind the last couple of weeks, not just because Lance and I run a 1-hour webinar launch just about every week, but we have recently come off of a "tear" of lots of NEW product launches (as opposed to us running webinars to promote existing ones)...
- Our Product University live event
- Updating our Webinar Crusher course to version 5
- Updating Setup a Fan Page to version 2
- Updating Newbie Crusher to Income Machine
Plus of course re-launching those old classes that we created initially as live webinar courses, then repackaged into home study courses – including a member's dashboard, transcripts, affiliate program, evergreen webinar replay, post-sale autoresponder sequence, all the usual "product" stuff.
And when I see other internet marketers try to do the same for their business, they fail to think and act in strategic terms. They incorrectly focus on the MECHANICS they think they need, like creating a blog post with 2000 Facebook comments. Making 4 pre-launch videos. Creating a report (or whitepaper) about the product they're about to create.
These are things that DON'T make the difference
between a successful and unsuccessful product launch!
Things No One Cares About
- How much time you spent creating your product
- How many pages, megabytes, or minutes of video you have
- A too-big 3 to 5 hour webinar
- A too-long launch sequence of videos that takes 4 weeks
- How great, smart, or rich you are
- Wordplay, hypnotic language, the confusion close
"Tricks" That Get People to Buy (Sometimes)
- Time running out
- Offer closing
- Price increasing
- Limited seats
- Disappearing bonus
- Price (high or low)
What Actually Works
- What they'll know
- What they'll GET and HAVE
- Cost of NOT doing it
- Repeat success or exponential success
- Speed
- Ease of use
- Power and effectiveness
- Hungry crowd
- Compelling magic super-offer that combines logic (and proof) plus emotion
The Answer You've Needed All Along
Here's how to think "strategically" about your product sales and launches.
I keep scouring books, courses, and the internet for something better than WWHW, Eugene Schwartz, and Robert Cialdini but I haven't found it yet.
Basic sales copy tells us to structure a sales argument in this way:
- Attention (promise)
- Interest (problem)
- Desire (solution)
- Action (buy it now)
High school English class told us to structure our writing like this:
- Why (why is this important)
- What (what am I going to discover)
- How-To (how do I do this thing)
- What-If (what are the possibilities once I take this action).
Eugene Schwartz tells us there are five levels of marketplace sophistication: novelty, enlargement, uniqueness, sophistication, and abandonment. But if you think about it, you can combine #3 and #4 so it's just...
- Novelty (something is new to the marketplace)
- Enlargement (bigger claims)
- Sophistication (faster and better)
- Abandonment (too complex and back to the original)
Robert Cialdini tells us there are six social weapons of influence to get what we want. Let's organize this as well...
- You use Authority (why people should listen to you) in the Attention phase of sales copy
- Liking (why you are similar) and Reciprocity (I'll give you something, like free information, now you owe me in return) introducing a Problem
- Desire, which is where we explain our solution, uses Consistency (get people to agree with you every step of the way), and Social Proof (how have others used it)
- In the final phase, Action, where we want people to buy, we use Scarcity the most (buy this now or else something bad will happen).
AIDA, WWHW, Eugene Schwartz, Robert Cialdini,
all just different ways of saying the same thing.
What's a "Strategic" Product Launch?
It's where your email sequence, videos, sales letter, pitch webinar, everything all matches up to a consistent message and MOST people think they have to flood the marketplace with information, list 53 different components potential buyers need to have. Nope, you just need to walk them through the FOUR STEPS.
The only way I've found to do it, that works every time, is to list out the ALTERNATIVES people might take (but you make fun of them) so that the only logical and emotional course of action is to buy from you.
Let's take our Webinar Crusher product for example...
Alternative #1: Don't run webinars. Alternative #2: Run webinars from free services. Alternative #3: Run evergreen webinars.
Alternative #4: Run webinars using our Webinar Crusher system.
At each point along the way we make fun of each alternative and point out its disadvantages to the extreme. There actually is a method to this madness:
- Alternative #1: Not Doing It ("Novelty" or "Attention” or "Why Is It Important")
- Alternative #2: The "Too-Big" Solution ("Enlargement" or "Interest" or "What Do I Do")
- Alternative #3: The "Too-Complex" Solution ("Sophistication" or "Desire" or "How Do I Do It")
- Alternative #4: Your Solution ("Abandonment" or "Action" or "What-If I Use Your Solution")
Just by listing these four things, we've structured most of our sales letter, the webinar pitch, the email launch sequence, everything. We didn't brain-dump a laundry list of alternatives that sent people elsewhere. We didn't jump in with our solution right off the bat. We've LOGICALLY listed out the possible avenues while EMOTIONALLY exhausting people with the pain and frustration of those other guys without specifically calling them out.
Too many times, I see people in an uninteresting niche, with a boring product and offer, or the wrong positioning, just trying to make it work. For some reason they think that more traffic, more subscribers, more affiliates will help... a slick sales pitch, fancy videos, or amazing sales letter graphics will help. They won't.
What will help? Having the right offer, in front of the right crowd, and presenting it in this (4-step) process.
Please comment below: Do you think that 4-step sequence will make it easier for you to come up with sales copy, webinar presentations, email sequences, and more?
Product University: Attend Offline Events and Quickly Grow Your Business in the Process
Let's talk about offline events. Seminars, workshops, masterminds, intensives, whatever you want to call them. Getting off your butt (off your "but" too), off the computer, onto a plane and to a hotel for 2 or 3 days where you get to interact with people just like you.
If you're "new", you need to attend these events for the training sessions – and probably to buy someone's course from the stage. If you're experienced, you need these events to network, make some joint venture connections with people just like you.
I'm talking about attending at least 1-2 events per year. I don't want any excuses. You need to go. It's a cost of doing business and if you spend too long cooped up at home, you're going to wonder why you aren't relevant anymore, what happened to your affiliates, and therefore your traffic, list, and sales.
If you're young with no family then you need to see the world anyway. If you're old with a family then take them along, not into the conference room at the event but take them so they can do the touristy stuff on their own and hang out at the hotel.
These things called offline events are on my mind because Lance and I just wrapped up our event called "Product University." It was the first event we had run in two years, and THAT event was the first event I had hosted in two years. Our next one is in Salt Lake City October 12-13 and you should attend.
Pitch-Fest vs. Pitch-Free?
Sure, some of these events are "pitch-fests" (I still learn a lot from those though), some are "pitch-free" (a bad excuse for speakers who don't know how to close onstage), some of the people you meet are all about getting their business card in your face, others have the tired "I have an idea so you can do all the work of implementing it for 50% of the business" approach, a few will talk your ear off, plot world domination with you and want to be your best friend... but the majority of the people you meet at these events are cool people just like you, a lot of them are in your niche and just want to make a new CONNECTION that might pay off in the future.
I speak on just a FEW stages per year to stay relevant. Lance and I are reluctant to host a bunch of offline events because we could just as easily run a webinar to generate a few tens of thousands of dollars without having to promote it for several months, deal with the hassle and expense of traveling and renting the conference room, dealing with the equipment, making sure everything goes smoothly. But it is a lot of fun to host an event every now and then.
"Two-Day Intensive" Explained
The way we run these events is slightly different from what we usually see from others and here's why...
1. First of all, it's just us two speaking for the whole event – mostly because we trust very few people ALTHOUGH having one or two guest speakers in the future (who promote the event through our affiliate program) would go a long way towards getting more people to attend
2. We run the events for two days (Saturday and Sunday) instead of three days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) because a 1-day is too short and a 3-day is too long – I have attended a few events where hardly anything happened on that last day
3. No PowerPoints, SOME very minimal software demonstrations on the laptop and projector, it's mostly teaching using markers and a flip chart
4. Eight 90-minute sessions total (morning, before lunch, after lunch, then a Q&A session to wrap up the day, for both days) – we had each session's topic planned in advance and probably 5 bullet points so we knew what areas we wanted to cover. Only one of us would be the "presenter" (i.e. Lance presenting on affiliate programs while Robert is the sidekick with the occasional comment, or Robert presents about product launches while Lance interjects)
5. We never did a hard-pitch, but we did mention several URLs and we soft-pitched our Double Agent Marketing Platinum Coaching Program at the end of the day on Saturday (just before the Q&A session)
6. We recorded the whole event (audio only, so we didn't have to deal with lighting) and posted those inside the member's area whether people attended or not. This lead to a bunch of extra overseas sales and I think is a much better alternative compared to people selling the live stream of their event for 10 or 20 dollars
7. We bundled the event (for a short time) with our Income Machine course. Income Machine is $97, the event is $197, but when we launched Income Machine (about a month before the event), we said that Income Machine is $197 and includes Product University. But Product University is $197 and comes with Income Machine for free – this is called the double close
IMPORTANT:
Know WHY You're Running an Event!
Nothing too major. I don't know if you are at the point in your business where you can or even want to host an event, but if you do, make sure you know WHY you are running this event. If you're only running an event because you've seen someone else do it, it seems cool, or your customers are bullying you into it (I have seen all three) then forget about it.
The reason we ran our event earlier this month was to add a few people into our Platinum program, which we did and is the reason why the event made money.
I have also seen several up and comers lose money running an event on purpose in order to build a list. They run an event for a few hundred people, get a few big-name speakers to promote the event (50% commission), speakers pitch products from the stage (50% commission), and the event organizer spends 30 thousand bucks on the huge conference room and the add-ons the hotel requires, only make 20 grand back after all is said and done, but now has this list of very hungry buyers, in fact some of the best people in their niche, who will buy over and over again and take action and get huge results.
Then again other marketers who should know better run events and get all the meals catered, hire musicians, magicians, and hypnotists as part of the event and lose big money, then burn themselves out and you wonder why this person hasn't run an event in the last 5 years.
What's my point? When it comes to offline events...
- Attend them. Go to every session, hang out in the bar or the lobby instead of hiding in your room on your laptop. You'll have plenty of time for that at home. Keep attending them but be sure you know what your goal is each time (i.e., more affiliates, solve a specific problem in your business, join a mastermind, buy a product that solves a problem you've been having in your business)
- If you want to be a speaker, attend events, make friends with the event organizers, make a speaker sheet (a list of your products, URLs, speaking topics, your bio and testimonials of you as a trainer), create a book that proves you know what you're talking about (using our Make a Product system, takes 1 hour, is 30 pages long, free to publish on CreateSpace, costs $20 to get transcribed, $20 to edit, and $5 for the book cover), and run webinars consistently (at least one per month) to stay sharp and flesh out your "message"
- If you're running events or plan on running events, know ahead of time what your backend will be for the event (mastermind or coaching program is great) and keep it simple and low-budget, also keeping in mind that if someone attends an offline event who’s on your list, they probably own most if not all of your existing products
You can't ignore offline events but I hope to see you around, especially in Salt Lake City this coming October 12th-13th for Product University (it will be the FIFTH time we're running it!)
018: Setup Your Income Machine Including a Blog, Optin Page, Followup Sequence, Sales Letter, Membership Site, Traffic and More (That Makes Money While You Sleep)
If you've ever found yourself working too hard, spinning your wheels, and wondering if there was some "missing piece" to getting a passive automatic recurring income up and running, then this may be the most important podcast you'll ever hear. Click the "play" button right now to discover how to setup the entire income machine, including:
- Step 1: Niche (not baby boomers, something more like "golf" or "self defense")
- Step 2: Website (a real .com name containing your keyword)
- Step 3: Optin Page (headline + 3 bullet points)
- Step 4: Followup Sequence (at least 10 emails, one a day)
- Step 5: Blog (update monthly)
- Step 6: Sales Letter (one single call to action)
- Step 7: Membership (doesn't mean recurring)
- Step 8: Traffic (Facebook, AdWords, affiliates)
"Setup Your Income Machine" FREE Report
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Go ahead, check it out right now, and be sure to also leave your comments below.
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017: Make Money Using Facebook Traffic, Ads and Fan Pages
Listen to today's exciting episode of the Robert Plank Show to discover...
- Why your competitors are making more money than you (with less effort) and how to stop them in their tracks starting today
- How most people market on social media the wrong way -- and how you can use it to multiply your business
- The only three types of Facebook fan pages you'll ever create, and which one you'll use (sometimes more than one)
- The exact steps we use to go from an idea to consistent Facebook leads and sales (easy repeatable process)
- And more!
"Make Money Using Facebook Traffic" FREE Report
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Be sure to listen now and then join our Setup a Fan Page Facebook traffic training program if you haven't already.
What did you think of the podcast? Are you getting traffic from Facebook yet?
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Strategy vs. Tactics: How to Give Yourself an Instant Pay Raise By Getting to the Root of Your Marketing Problems WITHOUT Resorting to Cheap Gimmicks!
I thought I was so clever. Back when I was a teenager, I had what I thought was a great idea... write an e-book teaching how to program PHP scripts for web pages, load a bunch of tools onto a "three inch CD" for 20 bucks and sell a million copies.
Have you seen those 3-inch CD's? Basically, when you load a CD disc onto the CD tray, there's a smaller "indent" where a smaller sized CD fits. Here's where I thought had hit the jackpot: a three inch CD would fit into a standard sized envelope and would mail with just one stamp.
There's only a few gaping flaws with that line of thinking and that's...
- People weren't going to buy my product "just" because it's on a CD
- That time I "might" have spent burning CD's and mailing them would be better spent: improving the product, the copy, the advertising, even making more products
- Delivering a "real" product, digitally, with an instant download, would take up zero time, with zero cost, and customers would get the product instantly after buying
My mentor at the time (Teresa King) told me to test the product online first. If it sold well and people were actually ASKING for a physical version, and were willing to pay more to justify the cost, then it would be a hit...
What's the moral of the story? Mailing a product on a disc isn't a business model, and it's probably the LAST thing you should think about... only after a product is already selling, and even then, that's one of those little "gimmicks" you add to get a 1% or 2% boost to your profits. It's a TACTIC, not a STRATEGY.
Be very very careful about relying on too many tactics to make money. You'll market yourself into a corner and wonder where it all went wrong, and here's why...
Superstitious Marketing!
Has anyone given you "weird" marketing advice like this?
- Always price your products ending in "7"... like 27, 49, 97!
- Always put the text "Add to Cart" on your order buttons
- Always have an orange order button and nothing else
- Only email your list once per week
- Run a "dime sale"
- Don't ever launch a product unless you have testimonials
Here's what happened: someone had a successful sales letter and a winning product, so they decided to run some split tests... send half their traffic to the $17 price, half to the $19.95 price. Half of their traffic to the blue order button, half to the orange order button.
These gurus have given you a list of "best practices" to put onto your website so that you don't have to start from scratch. Have this white background. Use that red headline. Place your testimonials in little blue boxes.
What's the problem? Poor misguided newbies (and not-so-newbies) see this list of best practices and think... if I make sure my video autoplays on this web page, if I have a 30-day guarantee... then I can put any old piece of crap on the market, and it will sell!
Can I told you what I did years ago to dramatically boost my product sales?
- I limited the number of digital copies of my product I was selling... and it worked ONCE!
- I warned about (and then increased) the price of my product... and it worked ONCE!
- I increased the price with every sale... and it worked ONCE!
- I added a countdown timer... and it worked ONCE!
These tactics boosted sales, but they weren't the ONLY reason I made sales. It enhanced something that was already selling (mostly by making it novel and newsworthy) . If you put out a bad product that doesn't work, or no one wants it, or no one needs it, then these gimmicks won't help you. And even if they do, they only work once or twice before your audience gets used to it and you have to think of a new gimmick.
Could your webinar convert better? Is your sales letter not selling? Here's an idea... learn selling. THE FUNDAMENTALS.
Why Your Sales Letter Isn't Selling
I can look at most sales letters and in seconds, notice at least 10 BASIC things that hurt sales. Fix them and you'll notice an improvement, keep those things in mind for your next launch and it'll pay off again and again...
- Is your headline interesting enough to pull me in and get me to keep reading your web page?
- Do you identify the serious problem that brought me to your web page, align with my values and then transition into the solution, your product?
- Do you CLEARLY introduce your product and only ask for the sale once you've explained what it is? (once you're "earned the right to sell to me")
- Can you find large chunks of text that you need to break up into smaller paragraphs, add bullet points, headlines, and graphics to make it easier to read?
- Is your copy "story heavy" (too much story before introducing the offer) or "offer heavy"? (explaining the offer without building its importance up first)
- Do you have multiple links and buttons on the page that your visitors can click – that drops them down into your order form area?
- Do you have an offer stack where you list all the components of your course in one single place, building up the total value and then revealing the low price?
- Do you clearly explain what price people will pay? (don't make them click through to find out, just freaking tell them)
Do you see what I mean? Very basic things that will help you much more than running an automated webinar, adding a countdown timer, ending your price in $9.99. You'll actually make improvements to your web page that make sense.
If you want to add your picture to that sales letter or not, up to you. If you want to add a logo, I would, and it's increased conversions, but it's up to you. Giant red headline with quotes around it? Be my guest.
An autoplay audio button has always given me a tiny conversion boost. A graphical representation like a 3D cover or 3D box would be awesome... but a polished turd is still a turd!
It's not just sales letters. I once attended a webinar where the presenter was inexperienced, nervous, afraid to sell at the end, messed everything up by offering a Q&A session at the end, and lasting for 3 hours when 1 hour would have done the job.
You could tell by his energy level on the call, and by his email follow-up sequence afterwards, that the webinar didn't sell. Instead of figuring out WHY it didn't sell (strategy), he resorted to the gimmicks (tactics) and spent a week editing the recording to remove all the "umm's", discounted the price, made every mistake and still wondered why it didn't sell.
Real Live Case Studies to Back It Up
I can think back to story after story where... we were selling a 4-module course on WordPress that wasn't selling, I recorded a 12-minute video in the middle of the night showing one single plugin that was part of the course, and woke up to over $16,000 in PayPal the next morning... because I discovered what the marketplace was demanding, and adjusted my marketing so that it made it clear that I was the one to give it to them...
Years ago, Lance and I launched a course on membership sites that we thought wouldn't sell. We were hoping for ten to twenty thousand dollars in sales over a 2 week period. The marketplace wanted a "drip content" plugin at the time, that was our positioning, and BOOM! Over $35,000 in sales in the first 5 hours...
And another time, we launched our outsourcing course explaining how at the time, I'd had over 1.3 million words (something like 150 hours) of audio turned into articles, reports, products, and books. The problem? No one cares about YOUR 1.3 million words, and no one is ASKING to have 1.3 million words transcribed. Instead, we switched it to a short PowerPoint video demonstrating how if anyone had just 3 minutes, they could create an article, chapter, or blog post. Finally, something people needed, wanted, were asking for, willing to pay money for, that was powerful, easy, and fast, that we could provide.
Would we have turned any of those launches around by adding a "FAQ section" or a countdown timer? Without actually fixing the REAL problem? I doubt it.
Just something to think about.
016: Use Video with Camtasia, FreeMind, PowerPoint, and YouTube to Make Money Online
Go ahead right now and check out the reason why I was able to quit my job, create a full time income and shortcut months into minutes by clicking the record button, showing a few things on my screen, clicking the "Save" button and turning it into money.
"How to Use Video to Make Money Online" FREE Report
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Topics covered...
- How to create a video sales letter (plus the 3 things most video sales letters leave out)
- Technical details (the software and hardware I use for everything from small tutorials to full blown products)
- How to even turn scary things like "presenting webinars" into a total breeze and repeat the formula over and over again
- How to personally connect with your best customers, clients, prospects, mentors, joint venture partners, and more!
Listen right now and leave a quick comment letting me know what you thought of this week's show. Comments will be closed after 50 comments, the transcript will be posted after 10 comments (although it may take a few days for the transcriber to deliver it for me).
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Fixed-Term Payment-Plan Membership Sites: Why No One Wants Your $9.95/Month Interview Site (and How to Make “Retirement Money” from One Site)
It really chaps my hide. When I see someone taking forever to write a long book, instead of writing an "e-book" that doesn't help anyone and only makes you $10 per sale... instead of trading your time for money with a 1-on-1 coaching program... my answer is to create a membership site. But what chaps my hide is that the number one reason people hesitate or avoid membership sites altogether is because they think a membership site means MONTHLY CONTENT!
"Writing" or "recording" consistent monthly content, or creating a "constant stream of products" is probably the worst way to make money. You might as well be writing articles for $5 per hour, coaching on the phone all day for $10 per hour or setting up hundreds of Made-For-AdSense sites that only generate $1 per year in income.
The Problem Is: There's No Room to Grow
(But I Have the Solution For You)
When you create monthly content, you're constantly struggling and working just to MAINTAIN the same level of income. That's no good. You stop and the money stops. Wouldn't it be better for the money to keep flowing in, and you only put in extra time when you want to INCREASE that level of income?
Everyone brand new to making money online tells me their goal is $10,000 a month. $10K monthly is more money than they know what to do with. It would pay off a mortgage, debt, travel, family, and make for a very comfortable full time income anywhere in the world.
The logical conclusion is... if I want $10,000 every month, I "only" need to get 1,000 people to pay me $9.95 per month. Simple, right?
This is backwards thinking. Your only idea so far is a number (the price). Then you think... I'll choose a niche like dog training, I'll create about a year's worth of videos, articles, tips, audios, resources and drip it out. And THEN... I'll schedule thought leaders in my niche (other dog trainers) and record another interview every month. That way I won't have to do any work creating the content month after month.
- People will join and never cancel... right?
- I can hide and they'll automatically pay month after month... right?
- Anyone has 10 dollars every month to spare, so I can add whatever I want in the site... right?
Unless your site delivers a service that peoples' businesses absolutely depend on (like web hosting, webinar service, an email autoresponder, payment processor) then your interview site is a LUXURY site, and it's the first thing they'll cancel!
By the way, you don't want to provide a mass-market monthly service (like an autoresponder) for several reasons. First, it's very competitive and hard to compare/differentiate/beat multi-million dollar companies like Amazon.com, Aweber, GetResponse, InfusionSoft, and more. Second, there are just too many expenses involved and it's tough to make a profit. Third, you become a commodity! If your web host is down for 1 hour in a month, people quit. If you charge $9/month and someone else charges $8/month, and it's easy for people to switch, they quit!
A monthly service won't cut it, an interview or "tips" site won't cut it, so what will? A fixed term membership site that solves peoples' problems! More on that in a minute.
Here's why "monthly forever" (continuity) sites also don't make sense from a marketing and copywriting perspective: what about Month Five?
Tell me about your monthly dog training interview site. You have two choices. Either you can leave the details out and say... just pay me monthly for this site, it's just 30 cents a day. Or, you tell me about your upcoming training... which is great for the first month...
But what happens when you'll be able to stop your dog from pooping on the carpet by the end of the fifth month. Really? I have to wait 150 days, 20 weeks, for that?
You're either trying to solve a non-urgent problem (something where I can wait two months), or you are solving an urgent problem but you're taking too long to get to it.
You can make money from a never-ending monthly interview site, but the reason people buy (and stay) is because they're buying based either your personality (they buy everything you release anyway) or they buy for LUXURY of getting new ideas and distractions. These are only the top 1% of your subscribers, so most of them aren't buying (no matter what you do), and you're giving your best stuff away for 10 bucks!
This is the solution:
Step #1: Choose the End Result
Know your marketplace well enough to uncover how to make ALL THEIR DREAMS come true within a VERY FOCUSED SUB-TOPIC within 21 days.
The key here is to deliver TANGIBLE results but also deliver something people want. For example, in 21 days from now, you can have an affiliate program completely setup including tools, traffic, and automatic marketing.
Step #2: Outline the Course
Break that 20 day plan into four milestones, one every 7 days, including TODAY! Each milestone is about 1-2 hours of training. Not five minutes, not all day, just 1-2 hours. That means I can show you...
- Milestone 1 (how to get the affiliate program online) the day you get it, on day 1
- Milestone 2 (connect the affiliate program to a membership site) comes on day 7
- Milestone 3 (setup on multiple affiliate marketplaces) on day 14
- Milestone 4 (re-launch your affiliate program) on day 21
I show you how to create a podcast (internet radio show). Module 1, setup and submit to iTunes. Module 2, create longer podcasts with music and graphics. Module 3, market the podcast on social media and special directories. Module 4, how to make money with that podcast.
These are almost always screen capture videos (show your screen and speak out your voice) where you ACTUALLY SHOW yourself going through the steps. Setting all these things up, not just discussing or lecturing.
Every module along the way gets you one step closer to that end goal of having an affiliate program with all the bells and whistles, a podcast that makes money, a sales letter that converts. Every module or milestone comes with a built-in DELIVERABLE. Go through this module and you'll have this result.
They are clearly separated BUT they're all important and they're not just meandering from one topic to another. Each one builds on the previous.
Step #3: Transform it into a Magic Offer
Package it all together into a magical, sexy, unbeatable, irresistible, juicy offer. Everyone else tries to compete by:
- Loading in 50+ videos (I think you mean OVERLOAD 50+ videos)
- Reducing the price down to $9.95 (how many copies will you have to sell)
- Promising bonus after bonus (now the offer is just confusing)
- Adding numbers and numbers, X number of minutes and pages (too much work as a buyer)
Sure, you can get your videos transcribed, add screenshots and package them into reports, organize that membership site with tables and pages. I guess you could add a FAQ or Q&A session or two, which makes me think your core training isn't helpful enough.
BUT what if that podcasting course included (in addition to the 4 how-to screen capture videos in a membership site with transcribed and screenshotted reports)...
- An easy to follow checklist to reference again and again anytime you want to publish a new podcast episode
- A built-in community (usually just comments within the site) to ask questions
- A built-in traffic exchange where you can submit your podcast and get a jumpstart on your number of listeners and sales
Basically, everything you need to make it almost IMPOSSIBLE to be without a podcast of your own this week or this month... without piling on bonus after bonus (which just confuses your offer). And, if copycats come along and create their own knockoff course... just ABSORB THE CHANGES!
Either that "other guy's" bonus doesn't matter, or it's something you can duplicate in your own way and make better.
Step #4: Assemble Your Sales Letter
Create one single web page (with nothing to click on other than your a buy button )so people actually know what they're buying. But when I tell you to "write a sales letter", you get scared...
Sales letters have gone through several cycles. First, people wrote big long direct response style letters where you couldn't really tell if you were buying a book, video course, software, membership site... or even what was in it. Or even what the price was!
Then people moved on to video sales letters. Same idea, just as long and boring – if not even WORSE because you had to sit through 90 minutes of PowerPoint slides.
And finally, WordPress-based graphics heavy multi-column sales letters... basically 5-10 bullet points listing a few sections, and that's it! A site that looks pretty but doesn't convert well because it's so generic.
Do you see the common problem with sales letters? Whether they're long, short, video, or WordPress-based... the problem is CONFUSION!
That's why the most important thing in your sales letter (second only to the buy button) is what I call a "1-sheet." List every all four modules of your course, plus the exact bonuses, checklists, and software. WARNING: you might actually have assign INTERESTING names to your modules and checklists to pay people to pay attention.
For bonus points, make it a stack table... meaning, assign a dollar value next to each module (what it's worth), total up all the value, and then drop it down to the actual price.
A sales letter only needs to do four things but it NEEDS to do these four things, and in this order:
- Attention: Identify their problem and WHY they ended up on your site
- Interest: Agitate the problem and explain WHAT they've tried that didn't work
- Desire: Clearly and dramatically introduce your solution including each HOW-TO step of it
- Action: Tell them to buy right now instead of later, get them excited about the WHAT-IF they buy
That's as simple as I can make it. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Why, What, How-To, What-If. If your sales letter is story-heavy, offer-heavy, price-heavy or guarantee-heavy... it needs re-adjusting. If you are missing pieces or they are in the wrong order, tweak it.
If you wanted to be really lazy, title your headline as, "Who Else Wants to (blank), (blank) and (blank)" and list each bullet point as: "How to (blank)," "How to (blank)" and, "How to (blank)."
(To really crush it, model the sales letter into about 20 PowerPoint slides and present it on a live 1-hour webinar telling people to buy at the end.)
Step #5: Create the Content of Your Fixed-Term Membership Site as Live Webinar Sessions
Schedule each module as a 90-minute live training session.
Create a FEW PowerPoint slides just to announce and then later recap your how-to training. Explain EVERY click and actually do it. Present with GoToWebinar and record with Camtasia. After just four 90-minute sessions spread out over three weeks (day 1, day, 7, day 14, day 21) you're done.
Setup WordPress and place the videos inside a Wishlist Member site and then sell the recordings – but call it "training" and not "replays" or "recordings."
"But What About My $10,000 per Month Recurring Income?"
I don't know what your personal situation is, but I'm convinced that most people want a $9.95/month membership site because they want a site that's an easy sell (who wouldn't want it?) BUT they also want to stop building a list once they hit 1,000 subscribers.
You heard right. The $9.95/month wanna-be's want a $9.95 per month site, with 100% a retention rate (exising members staying in) and a 100% conversion rate (new members joining) and 1,000 email subscribers. (In reality you would need 100,000 targeted subscribers.)
I don't want 5,000 subscribers because what if I make a typo in my email, and lots of people see? Or if 1% report my emails as spam, that's 500 spam complaints. My autoresponder will cost me $30/month instead of $10/month, I'm not sure if I can afford that even at $10,000 per month profit.
Not you, of course!
Here's the reality. Not only do I believe it's tougher to sell $9.95 per month forever than $99 one time, you'll get massive cancellations month after month.
You might have heard people like Jimmy D. Brown claim that the "average membership site retains members for three months" and I've seen many, many, many people worry about retaining members (even they don't have a membership site) along with what price to charge (even if they don't have a membership site).
Look...
- Make your membership site a how-to course (instead of tips and interviews) and you'll increase retention
- Make your membership site single-payment or fixed-term (with an end date) and you'll keep the average person in for longer than they'd stay in a "monthly forever" site
- Add assignments (challenges) to your membership site so people can clearly measure their results and you'll increase retention
- Add a tool or software inside your membership site that they'll lose if they cancel and you'll increase retention
Honestly, as soon as I shifted my thinking from: dripping, dishing out content in little bitty pieces, adding filler content, worrying about "how much content per week" is enough... and into: getting people from point A to point B, I created sites faster and made more money with them.
I have plenty of membership sites where the content is all delivered upfront, and people continue to make payments for months to come. Our "Make a Product" system allows anyone to dictate out articles and a book. It's $197 when paid upfront or $39.95 spaced 31 days apart for five total payments.
No Drip Content with Zero Percent Financing
If they stop payments they lose access to our tools that make article and book dictation possible.
We make more sales because of the payment plan. About half of people take the payment plan. Way more than half of the people completed all five payments. It's as simple as can be!
We do this with Newbie Crusher which is $97 (or two payments of $49.95 spaced 31 days apart), Speed Copy ($497 or five payments of $99.95 spaced 31 days apart). Note: Speed Copy drips out a little bit (one module every 30 days with bonus reports and videos in-between) but the content finishes before the payments do and people don't cancel... because they COME BACK AND RE-USE the tools and the training even after they've completed the course.
If you're THAT worried that people will join and then cancel, JUST TRY THE PAYMENT PLAN OPTION! You can always remove that button later, and if people cancel partway through, they lose access. It doesn't cost you any extra money or take any extra time and it'll make you more money.
I can't estimate your own numbers, but you can expect HALF of your buyers to pay full price, HALF of them to take the payment plan. HALF of those will complete all payments, and the other HALF of payment plan buyers about HALFWAY through. It's spooky how dead-on the numbers are for me.
Now all you have left is to...
- Step #1: Choose the End Result
- Step #2: Outline the Course
- Step #3: Transform it into a Magic Offer
- Step #4: Assemble Your Sales Letter
- Step #5: Create the Content of Your Fixed-Term Membership Site as Live Webinar Sessions
So go ahead right now and stop worrying about pricing, retention, or content -- launch your membership site that solves peoples' problems.
015: Run a Webinar Class to Create Instant Products and Make Recurring Money Online Using GoToWebinar, Camtasia, and PowerPoint
If you want to make a nice bundle of money online in a short amount of time, without doing a lot of work, and help the largest number of your customers at the same time, then you need to run a webinar class. I started doing this in 2008 (the same year I bought my house), more than doubled my online income the following year AND quit my job just a few shorts months after I started doing webinars...
"How to Run a Webinar Class" FREE Report
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Do you like the sound of getting paid for a product before you create it? What about making $497 or $997 per sale instead of a measly $5, $10, or $20? Today we're going to cover how you can use this thing called a live webinar to create information products that make you money before you create them, as you create them, after you create them, and over and over again.
As someone who wants to make money from the information you have, this is the best, the fastest and the most profit-producing way to make money from your knowledge and create these things called information products. Topics covered:
- The exact steps you need to take today to go from idea to a real life rapid product launch
- The secret to modularizing your upcoming course (that way it's easy, fast, and fun for you to create -- PLUS your customers get quick and massive results from your training -- so they'll buy from you over and over again)
- My personal secret to customer engagement, retention, and results that most product creators miss -- but now you have the secret weapon
- How to run a webinar business so it doesn't take up any longer than 1-hour per week
Check it out right now! This is a "normal-length" episode so you can listen to it even if you're a hurry, this is perfect timing for you if you're sitting on the fence about joining our upcoming Webinar Crusher class and need one last thing to push you over the edge...
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:56 — 25.6MB) | Embed
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