Recent Updates
What Makes Money: List, Traffic, and Offers
Strategy: Do you want to know what you need when you're building a real business and making real money online?
A. Create an information product and a download area for people to get it after they buy
B. Make a sales letter that explains why it's so great
C. Get traffic to it and build a list of prospects and buyers
That's it. List, traffic, and offers -- this was true back in 1997 when all you needed was a website to get traffic, in 1999 when all you needed was an affiliate program to get traffic, in 2002 when all you needed was search engine listings to get traffic, in 2005 when all you needed was a list to get traffic, and even in 2007 and beyond when all you need are joint venture partners to get massive traffic.
Tactics: Do you want to know what doesn't work?
- Free for all link pages
- Doorway pages & search engine cloaking
- Safelists
- Email co-registration
- Traffic exchanges
- Paid leads
- Guaranteed optins
- Tell-a-friend
- JV giveaways
- Ad swaps
- Warrior special offers
- Auto-bloggers
- Traffic loopholes
- Social media
- "Traffic getting" software
What's funny is that even if you haven't heard of every single one of these so-called "business models" -- they're the same traffic technique (which doesn't work, or only works for a couple months) -- then a year later it comes back under a different name...
Funny, right?
I know it's easy to get distracted by all these fancy terms and techniques but this is what you REALLY need to do:
A. Make a Product & Put It In a Membership Site
- Run a 4-week webinar class (using GoToWebinar) solving a problem in your niche
- Put those recording into a membership site (using Wishlist Member) and get them transcribed into reports
- Create a piece of software (using WP Notepad) or buy resale rights (Master-Resale-Rights.com) that solves your problem in a "push button" way and add it to that site
B. Build a List & Send Them to Your Sales Letter
- Capture the buyers of your membership site into a mailing list using Aweber
- Pull out ONE module or ONE bonus of your paid course, give it away for free and create a landing page where people can sign up and upgrade to the paid version
- Email your list every day
C. Drive Traffic to Increase Your List Size
- Setup an affiliate program and link to it in your product and in your membership site to recruit your buyers into affiliates
- Make at least 1 forum post every day and post at least 1 article every day until you have 100 articles and 1,000 forum posts
- Pay for at least 1 source of paid advertising even if it's just an email solo ad or a banner ad on a blog
That's what works for me, now YOU tell me... what works for you? What was your biggest breakthrough when it came to making a product, building a list, getting traffic, and making money? Go ahead and tell me in the comments below.
How to Make Your Words Sell: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
Is it okay if I share with you the ONE formula that appears everywhere, again and again... and if you keep it in your back pocket every time you assemble a sales letter, create a blog post, make a product, send an email, and even deal with everyday relationships, you'll always win?
If I share this formula with you, will you check and make sure your web pages pass the test so you can convert as many people as possible?
I hope you've heard of this formula, and it's this: attention, interest, desire, action...
Every time you put out any piece of writing, video, or even live presentation -- run it through this filter. Here's what I mean...
- Get someone's attention using a shocking statement or headline
- Build interest by agitating your problem or setting up a question
- Setup the desire for your solution by revealing it and explaining it
- Tell people what to do now by telling them to take action
If you've even given (or read) a course, presentation, sales letter, or any other message that was missing an opening, seemed to "linger" too much on a problem, jump into a solution without addressing it, or had everything right except the end -- it was probably neglecting one or all of the above steps.
And I want to multiply your conversion rates by making sure you follow these simple rules. You can get as creative as you want as long as you follow this four step formula. Check it out...
ATTENTION:
Sales Letter Headline or Blog Post Title
When I write blog posts, I like to split the title into two parts: what I'm talking about (the feature), and the result of it (the benefit)... just look at my last few blog post titles here:
- Specialized Knowledge: How to Make $50 (or More) Every 5 Minutes, All Day Long, By Clicking a Few Buttons (Just Like I Did at Age 17)
- Speed Copywriting Explained (Assemble a Web Page That Gets People to Buy From You In the Next Few Minutes)
- It's Simple, So It Must Not Work: How You Too Can Make Several Thousand Dollars in a Weekend
- Website Backup: Keep Your Site Safe, Instantly Clone Your Blog, and Get Things Done Anywhere
- The Accordion Method (And Now You Never Run Out of Content Ever Again)
Now I have blog post titles that are both short, and long!
With sales letters, it's even simpler. The headline isn't necessarily the title of the web page we're on, it's just the HEADER that gets us to continue reading...
Think about the first thing you want to say to your visitor to keep them alert, on your web page, and hungry for more. Whatever you say should answer "most" of these questions:
- What's in it for me? (promises a clear benefit)
- What's my problem or solution? (without giving away your product yet)
- Why should I even listen to you? (get attention either with a question, challenge, or shocking statement)
- Is this newsworthy? (something new and unique that's worth reading about)
- Do I have a reason to continue reading? (does it lead to another thought?)
Yes, I'm saying that your headline should contain all of these items...
More often than not I'll have that headline big, red, centered, bolded, and in quotes at the top of that web page, but what's more important than the formatting is that the WORDS are impossible to ignore. For example:
- "How I Made an Extra $101,934.10 In 80 Days From 4 Low Ticket Products (With Zero Traffic and a Tiny List) Using One Very Special Piece of Affiliate Software..."
- Backup, Clone, Protect... WordPress Plugin Makes It Simple For You To Backup, Restore And Protect Your WordPress Blogs And Sites Anytime You Want With Just A Few Easy Clicks...
- "How Would You Like My Instant Formula For Creating High-Impact, Persuasive, Converting Sales Letters in the Next Few Minutes?"
- "If You're Feeling Completely Overloaded, Unorganized and Feel Like You're Always Running Out of Time..." You Need to Get a Grip on (and Control of) Your Time Management Skills!
And I'll usually add a subheadline that COMPLETES the thought that the headline first created. Why? Because it gets people reading further down, and then further, until the next thing you know, they've read the whole sales letter all the way down to the buy button.
INTEREST:
Problem or Big Picture
You've got my attention, but I'm not ready to buy your product yet. And even if I was, I need to know you can actually UNDERSTAND and SOLVE my problem... which is why you need to tell me what problem I'm having and how can you really help me solve it...
I need to stress here that we're not introducing your product yet. I see too many sales letters start off with, "I want you to buy my product right now." You're jumping the gun.
This is the STORYTELLING section. Introduce the problem so that I have to find out how it ends -- with the introduction of your product.
You should probably answer these questions:
- Who are you and why are you qualified to help me?
- What exactly is my problem and what's the "difficult" solution?
- What do I need to know and what issues did I not even consider yet?
- Why are you better than anyone else?
Check out the deck copy for "Membership Cube" to see what I mean...
For the last several years internet marketers have told you how easy it is to setup your membership site and get a flood of people paying you every month for your services, your expertise, and your information. But there are just a few problems...
It's Not As Easy As "They" Say It Is...
These Are The Same People That Told You
"All You Need Is a Website"
- Where will you get the content for this membership site?
- How will you get people into it, and keep them from dropping out?
- What software will you use for the membership, and what plugins?
- What the heck will you do next?
How Did That Work Out For You?
I Can Tell You From My Own Personal Experience:
Membership Sites Are The Best Thing
To Ever Happen To Me!It IS possible to profit from a membership site as long as you make the right decisions. But don't worry, we've already made the tough decisions for you in our simple step by step system.
I'm confident in those steps because these are the same steps Lance and I have implemented to create 20 membership sites -- 19 of those sites were created in the past 12 months. And guess what, they've all made money: some as little as $2,000 and some well over $100,000.
Do you see what we're doing? We're educating our prospect about why membership sites are so valuable and differentiating from the competition (especially membership software that doesn't come without training) and saying, you need to listen to us.
One reason I really like telling a story in copy is that it doesn't feel like an ad. But far too many copywriters get stuck on the story, the whole sales letter is one long story, and people still don't know what they're buying. That's why you need to get to the third stage WELL BEFORE the halfway point in your copy...
DESIRE:
Solution or Exact Offer
At this point, you'll reveal YOUR product in that sales letter, meaning a huge headline with the name of the course or item, and a graphical representation, it's just that simple. If I can't easily tell that you're selling an ebook, or video course, or membership site, or physical seminar, or physical item -- in under a minute just by scrolling through -- then you need to make it clearer.
In the "interest" stage you've already done the clever storytelling... now you need to tell me what it is you want me to buy:
- What's the exact name of your product and what's in it?
- What's in each module, why is each module important and why is it given in the order you show it?
- What bonuses are you giving me?
- What is each component worth on its own? (dollar value)
- What is the total value of this product you're about to give me? (total up the dollar values)
- What actual price is it going to cost today? (much lower than the total value)
You'll want to end the "desire" stage by listing everything people get in a two-column table... first column, the name of the module they're getting; second column, the price tag on it.
It may seem tedious to total up each $197 or $297 price tag on your individual modules to get a total of $2,217.00, but believe me, it'll look way more impressive when you then DROP the price to $97 or $47 or $27. Very few people do this on sales letters, but they need to!!!
It's super important that you lay out the ENTIRE offer in the "desire" section. Yes, even the bonuses. Lay out the ENTIRE offer before you ask for the sale, including bonuses.
Have you ever noticed that on some sales letters, you scroll to the bottom, then scroll back up to look at something, then back down? That's not good and when I do that, I notice it's usually because someone got my attention, laid out the story, the entire offer, even showed the guarantee and asked for the sale -- and THEN introduced bonuses! Big mistake.
Now people know we relate to their problem and have the credibility to solve it, we've revealed that product and explained our offer -- and at the end, listed everything in the package and revealed the price... what's left? People will know to order on their own, right?
Wrong! Every time I specifically tell people reading a blog post, sales letter, or email optin form -- to fill out the form, conversion rates go up. We can never make it OBVIOUS enough...
ACTION:
Why To Buy (or Comment) Now
This is probably the most cookie-cutter part of any sales letter, but it's still important. You need to tell me:
- What's your guarantee? (30 days or 60 days? Can I get my money back for any reason?)
- What price are you charging? (state it again, make it as simple and clear as possible)
- How do I order? (i.e., "click on the button and pay $97 to JumpX LLC")
- What are the technical requirements to run your product? (i.e., Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, WordPress)
- How soon until I receive your product after downloading? (i.e., instant delivery)
In an optin form we're asking for their name and email address, in a blog post we're asking for a comment (easy to get if you ask a question at the end of your blog post), and on a sales letter we're asking for people to buy.
The Entire Formula Revealed
I know that was a lot to take in, but here's the whole AIDA formula laid out for you:
- A1: What's in it for me? (promises a clear benefit)
- A2: What's my problem or solution? (without giving away your product yet)
- A3: Why should I even listen to you? (get attention either with a question, challenge, or shocking statement)
- A4: Is this newsworthy? (something new and unique that's worth reading about)
- A5: Do I have a reason to continue reading? (does it lead to another thought?)
- I1: Who are you and why are you qualified to help me?
- I2: What exactly is my problem and what's the "difficult" solution?
- I3: What do I need to know and what issues did I not even consider yet?
- I4: Why are you better than anyone else?
- D1: What's the exact name of your product and what's in it?
- D2: What's in each module, why is each module important and why is it given in the order you show it?
- D3: What bonuses are you giving me?
- D4: What is each component worth on its own? (dollar value)
- D5: What is the total value of this product you're about to give me? (total up the dollar values)
- D6: What actual price is it going to cost today? (much lower than the total value)
- A1: What's your guarantee? (30 days or 60 days? Can I get my money back for any reason?)
- A2: What price are you charging? (state it again, make it as simple and clear as possible)
- A3: How do I order? (i.e., "click on the button and pay $97 to JumpX LLC")
- A4: What are the technical requirements to run your product? (i.e., Adobe Reader, Windows Media Player, WordPress)
- A5: How soon until I receive your product after downloading? (i.e., instant delivery)
I hope that pushes you in the right direction with your...
- Sales Letters: Attention-grabbing headline, interesting story, desirable offer, and order button as the call-to-action
- Webinar Pitches: Start with a big promise (attention), demonstrate something live on the call (interest), explain your offer (desire), and tell them where to buy (action)
- Email Marketing: Send an "attention" email hinting at a problem, an "interest" email agitating that problem, a "desire" email introducing your solution and URL, an "action" email with just your URL... and repeat the process
- Information Products: Start each chapter of your report with a bold claim (attention), give them the big picture (interest), explain the step by step process (desire), and end with an assignment (action)
So what's the verdict, does your sales letter pass this 20-point checklist? (It's okay if it doesn't yet.) What's the URL to it? Go ahead and respond with your answer below.
Top 5 Productivity Devices of 2011
I honestly want to make sure you are doing something every day and making progress towards making more money every single day you are online. That's why, since it's November now and Christmas is coming up, I want to share with you which items I use every single day to stay happy, get things finished and enjoy life...
Philips Hf3485 Wake-up Light Plus ($150)
http://youtu.be/BdboMtXfa9w
It's really important to wake up early and get as much accomplished in your business before noon. When I had days off in college, I'd sleep until 12PM to 2PM and not really get anything done on a typical day -- not good! But when I had to balance internet marketing and a day job, I found myself waking up early (5AM or 6AM) and I'd get more finished during that one focused hour than I used to do in a week.
Now that I am full time with internet marketing, it's even more important wake up early (and usually go running or swimming) so that I can hit the ground running every morning and have afternoons and evenings free to relax and unwind. Routine is important. I don't use the alarm clock function on this, but when I wake up, I reach over and turn on this light. It shines a very bright light that completely wakes you up and gets you ready to hop out of bed in just a few minutes.
Cuisinart SS-780 Coffeemaker ($169)
I'm not a huge coffee drinker, but I do like to make tea or hot chocolate and on occasion put some ice cubes in a mug and pour iced coffee. This machine is amazing. You put a cartridge on the top of the machine and it makes one cup for you at a time (you can adjust what size your "cup" is) then you just throw away the cartridge or "K-Cup." They make several flavors, my favorite is the Chai Latte. If the machine is off it takes about 3 minutes to warm up and then about 30 seconds to make a cup. If the machine is already on standby then it literally takes 30 seconds to make yourself a cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa and then you're back to writing some emails, making some products and generating some traffic.
G-SAFE 2TB ($560)
We all take backups for granted. It's not an exciting subject even though at some point or another we have all lost files we wish we could get back. I used to store all my files on my hard drive... bad idea. Then I tried putting things on a USB stick... also a bad idea. External hard drive... even worse! And Internet bandwidth is not yet fast enough where we can store 100% of our files online in the cloud (especially video), so here is the next best thing.
This is external hard drive that connects using USB2. If your computer has an E-SATA port then it will run even faster. But I store all my videos, products, articles, graphics, all my large files on this device. It holds two 2TB hard drives but what makes this special is it "mirrors" the data on both drives. It's basically a constant backup. So if one hard drive ever fails (it hasn't happened yet) you can slide it out, stick a brand new hard drive in its slot without even turning it off, and it will back up all your data to that 2nd drive.
iPad 2 16GB 3G ($579) & Logitech Zagg Keyboard ($102)
It takes a lot of willpower not to use my iPad at home to play games all day, but when I'm traveling it's a must-have. It's a lot more convenient than taking a laptop on the road: it's lighter, smaller, and the battery lasts a lot longer, and although it can't do 100% of the things a laptop can, it's pretty close.
When I travel, I put movies (sometimes internet marketing courses) on my iPad, I can browse the internet, play games, write emails to my list, use a word processor. But the biggest headache is the keyboard. I've tried a few iPad 2 keyboards and this is my favorite. It connects via Bluetooth so I can use this keyboard for my iPhone as well, it stands up and doubles as a case. It's also not too small which has been my complaint with many of these keyboards. I have used my iPad 2 and Logitech Zagg keyboard to write articles, emails, and sales letters from the plane.
Roku Player ($100)
If you haven't removed live TV from your home yet, I would encourage you to. Just the fact that I can't waste time flipping channels or watch reality TV gives me extra hours of free time every single day. If you're single or live alone then this is your motivation to make friends. If you have a family then this is your way to spend more time with them. But I'm not saying remove all TV, just live TV.
This box costs 100 bucks (one time payment) and plugs into your TV whether it's HDMI or Composite-RCA, and then connects to your home network over Wifi. It streams all Netflix movies right onto your TV. If you subscribe to Hulu Plus (7 bucks a month) then it streams about half of all Comedy Central, NBC, ABC, FOX. Whatever movies or TV shows aren't on there are probably available for you to buy on Amazon Instant for about 2 to 4 dollars. I consider this a far better (and cheaper) alternative to using cable TV.
I hope that gives you something to get yourself if you want to be more productive, someone who has a birthday coming up for a loved one for the upcoming Christmas season. What item do you use to make yourself more productive?
Membership Sites Explained
Do you have a membership site setup yet? (it's okay if you don't)
When you sell products and services online, you can't avoid the steps that people need to take in order to buy from you:
- View your offer on your sales letter
- Pay you money using your payment processor
- Collect that offer on your download page
And you can literally take any payments without software of any kind. I did that for the better part of the 2000's. It was simple:
- Add HTML page called index.html to your website (presenting your offer)
- Add HTML page called download123xyz.html to your website (presenting your download)
- Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to download123xyz.html after checkout)
- Right click and copy button from PayPal (and paste on the bottom of index.html)
Sounds like a great way to get started but why wouldn't you want to set things up this way?
- Your buyers aren't added to an email list for updates (unless they signup themselves on your download page)
- You can't easily provide lots of bonuses or drip content (refund reducers)
- There's no community (customers can't talk to each other)
- The download page can easily get passed around (you have to rename the page every week)
- It's almost impossible to charge a monthly fee and keep track of who still gets access
- You have to manually setup a new download page for EACH product you want to sell
Instead, you should use a membership site to handle your product downloads, here's all you have to do:
- Add HTML page at www.example.com/index.html (presenting your offer)
- Install WordPress and Wishlist Member at www.example.com/members (presenting your download)
- Create a membership level called "Full" so when someone buys, they get access to everything for now (you can add more levels later)
- Add your blog posts or pages (click "Add Post", type a title and type out the content or paste in the video)
- Login to PayPal, create a Buy Now button that charges $17.00 (and sends people to a special link provided by your membership software)
That's a "slightly" more involved, but you basically go through the same steps, and now:
- Your buyers specify their own unique username and password that they can't share and can always recover (using "lost password" tool)
- Your buyers can get added to your email list for updates (when you specify it in the membership settings)
- You can add more levels and sell an unlimited number of products or packages from the same website
- Any WordPress plugin (including popup software, drip plugins, forum add-ons, and tracking software) can run inside your membership site
- You can easily drip or manually add bonuses for your buyers to reduce refunds
- You can easily switch the payment button to charge in installments, or a monthly fee, for access
- If someone refunds (takes the money back) or cancels (stops paying a recurring payment) they lose access
Do you have a membership site? If so, what's so special about it? If you don't have a membership site, what's stopping you and what are you planning?
Specialized Knowledge: How to Make $50 (or More) Every 5 Minutes, All Day Long, By Clicking a Few Buttons (Just Like I Did at Age 17)
Let me tell you something.
Do you want to know the first time I saw a balance of 1000 bucks in my PayPal account?
It was 2002... geez, a decade ago now, I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school. I lived with my parents. And you know what I was doing to make my money?
Installing a link tracker plugin. I had programmed it, and people could buy it for 67 bucks (I think)... I would get 1/3rd of that money. Better than working at McDonald's at that age, right?
But the big bucks came in when someone bought that plugin... many people wanted "someone else" to install it.
5 Minutes = 50 Dollars
The price was $50 bucks per install. What they didn't know is it took me about 5 minutes to FTP up files, chmod files, create a database, import that database, create a cron job, edit a config file... in other words, my "specialized knowledge" was worth every penny to them even though I could do it fast.
As you can imagine, it didn't take long to fill up to 1k...
And that paid for college. I'll admit I needed help from my parents for the first year living alone, but never fully. They gave me "some" money for rent. I paid the rest of my rent, plus school, plus food, cable, internet, clothing, all that good stuff...
Why am I telling you all this?
- Because I still believe that if you're starting out, the fastest way to make money is freelancing: performing a service in exchange for pay.
- You can get paid more per hour if you do whatever it is you do FAST
- You get paid even MORE than that if you have a SPECIALIZED SKILL and differentiate yourself
What's a specialized skill? Let's think about this...
Scenario #1: WordPress Installer
How much would someone charge you to install WordPress? 10 bucks? But what if...
- You installed WordPress on their domain
- You loaded it up with a beautiful looking WordPress theme
- You customized it with all the SEO, social media, discussion, and traffic plugins they need
- You setup their blog to retweet and post to their fan page every time you made a post
- You loaded up the blog with YouTube videos, EzineArticles and PLR articles
- You contacted 25 professionals in their niche asking for guest blog content
- You brought people to the site to leave comments
- You setup their autoresponder, optin form, and popup on that blog
Now how much is that worth? 100 bucks MINIMUM... and it still takes you under an hour of work.
Scenario #2: Offline Business Setup
A few months ago I had dinner with a small business who was getting his website setup. His "coder" gave him...
- A professional design (magazine style WordPress theme)
- "About Us" and "Photos" pages (content supplied by the business owner)
- A Facebook Like button (installed a plugin)
- Business information and a Google Map to the location (installed a plugin)
- Coupon and QR code (installed a plugin)
That took even less time and the business owner was happy to pay over 1000 dollars for it. Just something to think about... but what about this?
Scenario #3: Membership Site Ninja
I know a couple of people who are the "modern day equivalent" of what I used to do. They are membership site installers. Their full-time living consists of:
- Installing WordPress
- Adding a good looking theme
- Setting up membership site software
- Add a simple sales letter with a payment button
- Setup "free" and "paid" levels
- Install a forum
- Install backup and monitoring plugins
Average price these people ask for membership site installations: $4000. For MAYBE an hour of work if you're slow and a riveting, action-packed re-run of "Mama's Family" is playing on your TV in the background?
My head is spinning right now with so many ways you can look at what freelance services other people are providing, and put your own "twist" on it. Here are some more examples...
- Article writer: in addition to writing the articles, you could submit the article to 20 article sites, AND login to their blog once per day to post the articles they hired you to write
- Copywriter: in addition to writing their sales letter, you could write and schedule the autoresponder emails, setup the thank you page offer and upsell, setup the affiliate program, and contact 20 joint venture partners
- Graphic Designer: in addition to creating someone's logo, you could create their 3D cover, affiliate banner graphics, sales letter "doodles" and minisite design
- Product Ghostwriter: in addition to writing someone's product, you could put it on Kindle and CreateSpace for them
- Resale Rights Seller: in addition to selling resale rights to your report or membership site, you could install the sales letter and download page on their site for them
And how do you get these jobs? Easy... contact anyone who sells a WordPress plugin, WordPress theme, article creation course, graphic creation course, copywriting course... get yourself listed in their product and download page.
Remember, that's how I got all my "$50 installation in 5 minutes" jobs came from... someone bought the link tracking plugin, and they had all the instructions to install it themselves, but that download page said: contact this guy if you want to pay 50 bucks to get it installed.
Quick question: What have you done, heard of, or plan to do to make more money with freelancing and done-for-you services?
Speed Copywriting Explained (Assemble a Web Page That Gets People to Buy From You In the Next Few Minutes)
Most people I know hate writing of any kind. And even the ones I know who LIKE writing... usually hate copywriting.
When I'm talking about copywriting today, I mean putting a web page online that gets people to buy...
It tells people about your report, book, video course or membership site in an exciting way.
"You mean I can't just say anything I want? I have to be careful about what I write? I have to write in a way that grabs my readers and doesn't let go? Sounds like a lot of work..."
Not really, when you have a formula. When you have a step by step system to follow you can do this quickly, almost without thinking, which means you knock it out in just a few minutes while you're still excited about it.
This is really important: I prefer knock out an article, sales letter, graphic, or web page in 5 minutes... make it completely shippable... and look at it later. You can take a break, clear your head, look at it with fresh eyes and put another 5 minutes into it. You can get sales and make tiny adjustments to make it sell better.
That "sounds" great, but how do you do it? Let me show you how I came up with this idea of speed copywriting...
The best skill you could ever have is writing bullet points. You turn a feature (what something is aka the boring part) into a benefit (what it does aka the outcome) and that's a bullet point.
Take your strongest bullet points and those are your headlines. Take your longest bullet points and those are your sentences. You DON'T have to make it any more complicated than that!
Here's one brand new way I thought of to think of benefits... I have many ways but this is something I thought of on a recent coaching call, on the fly. Anyone can do this.
Step #1: List what the feature is (table of contents)
Step #2: Add a second sentence at the end of that table of contents... this sentence MUST begin with the word "Imagine..."
Step #3: Delete the first sentence and the word "Imagine" so you're left with the benefit
Here we go... let's pretend we have a course teaching WordPress and it contains the following videos...
Video #1: How to install WordPress using Fantastico
Video #2: How to install your theme
Video #3: Which plugins to install
Video #4: How to add content
Now let's add a second sentence to each of those. Each sentence will begin with the word "imagine" which does several things: it continues our original thought, makes the statement a little more vague, emotional, and most importantly focuses on the outcome...
Video #1: How to install WordPress using Fantastico: Imagine in just a couple of clicks and just a few seconds you now have your entire WordPress blog installed... it's easy when you know how and now you can fire your webmaster or tech guy forever...
Video #2: How to install your theme: Imagine never needing a graphics designer or webmaster even again... just choose from thousands of professionally designed designs for your blog so you get a website that looks exactly the way you want it...
Video #3: Which plugins to install: Imagine having a blog that automatically submits your content to search engines, links to affiliate products to make you money, builds you a list of email subscribers, and more... in just a few clicks, for free...
Video #4: How to add content: Imagine being able to add a new "post" to your website from any computer or telephone, or even watch others build your web presence for you... that means written articles, audios, and videos that all bring people to your website, and keep them there, every single day...
Easy, right? I just added four sentences... and now we have our four bullet points:
- In just a couple of clicks and just a few seconds you now have your entire WordPress blog installed... it's easy when you know how and now you can fire your webmaster or tech guy forever...
- Never needing a graphics designer or webmaster even again... just choose from thousands of professionally designed designs for your blog so you get a website that looks exactly the way you want it...
- You can have a blog that automatically submits your content to search engines, links to affiliate products to make you money, builds you a list of email subscribers, and more... in just a few clicks, for free...
- Add a new "post" to your website from any computer or telephone, or even watch others build your web presence for you... that means written articles, audios, and videos that all bring people to your website, and keep them there, every single day...
It’s Simple, So It Must Not Work: How You Too Can Make Several Thousand Dollars in a Weekend
Let me tell you how my weekend went.
We made 8 sales of $97 Newbie Crusher, 3 subscriptions into $97/month Membership Cube, 1 signup to $97/month Webinar Crusher, a sale of a $49.95 product I haven't promoted in years, a couple of $7 products sold, a few $47 copies of Action PopUp, a few $47 modules of Double Agent Marketing also sold, a $197 product sold...
And a bunch of recurring subscription payments to take up the slack!
I'm saying this not to brag or make you jealous but to tell you how I did it...
Step 1: Setup a membership site to deliver the download
Step 2: Setup a sales letter to explain the offer and take payments
Step 3: Setup a page giving away a free gift upselling to the paid product
Step 4: Sent an email to my list telling them to click on a link
That's it. It really is that simple, and most of the time I even skip step three to make it even easier.
But most people won't do it, because it's too easy... what's the loophole?
"It's Simple, So It Must Not Work!"
It must not work. You must not be doing what you teach. Let me apply my own "twist" to this system. Let me try re-teaching it to others without actually doing it.
I see the same thing when it comes to "four daily tasks."
At one point I averaged how many things I really accomplished in one day. Some days it was 10 things, some days 0, some days 2, some days 5.
But on average -- I completed FOUR sixty minute tasks.
On days I completed more than four things, guess what?
- I didn't actually COMPLETE four things
- I cut up my tasks into "too small" chunks
- I was tired the next day and didn't get anything done
I've tried using fancy to-do lists, software, timers, and schedules. The only thing that will work LONG TERM for you is to do four things a day.
And if you don't know what four things you should be doing today, then:
- Setup a membership site
- Setup a SIMPLE sales letter that takes payments
- Create an optin page
- Send an email to your list
Finish four things today. Not 6, not 2, not 3, not 7, not 100... four. Then tomorrow, finish four more things, and so on. On average you'll get more things COMPLETED than those people who do 22 things one day, and 0 the next.
Overcome Procrastination Once and For All (Almost Instantly) in 4 Easy Steps
You only need to know (and implement) four things in order to overcome procrastination... so that you can take action, get results, make money, repeat it, and make it last.
First, we need to pick some simple task that you know you need to do, but aren't doing. For some of you it's quitting your day job. For others it's putting an information product out there. Maybe for you it's something as simple as writing (or dictating) one article every day.
Step 1: Side-by-Side "Ben Franklin" Comparison
The "Ben Franklin" comparison is where you have two columns. In one column you list your reasons for doing something, and in the other you list your reasons NOT to do something.
Most people do it wrong. They try to see HOW MANY things they can list in each column, and the column with the most things is the winner.
Instead, set a timer for 4 minutes and ist the "top four reasons" to do it and the "top four reasons" not to do it. That's it. If you list more than four, cross out some so you get the 4 most important, and if you have trouble thinking of four then any four will do.
I'll give you a couple examples...
- Quit Day Job: reasons to stay (reliable income, social interaction, daily routine, health insurance) vs. reasons to quit (more income, more fun, more freedom to travel, more free time)
- Launch Infoproduct: reasons not to launch (safer, no work, easier to stay anonymous, no risk of refunds) vs. reasons to launch (money, fun, growth, contribution)
- Getting Joint Ventures: reasons not to contact people (no chance of rejection, people are awkward, it's easier, ) vs. reasons to contact people (it's what successful people do, it doesn't take too much time, there are huge rewards, it's always good just to keep in touch)
Look at that, when you list things side by side it seems ridiculous to keep a job. It seems ridiculous to stay in a stay job, to not launch an information product, and makes it a necessity to get JVs.
When I was thinking about quitting my day job, both sides were pretty even for me, so I had to tip the scales in one direction or another... and once it was out of balance... I quit. But the key was chunking it down and focusing on just one specific thing.
Now you've measured the risk vs. the reward and you have a logical bird's eye view of WHY are you doing this that you can fall back on later.
Step 2: Pattern Interrupt to Minimize Bad Habits
You know what you need to be doing, now to get some kind of instant change you need to STOP one bad habit that keeps you from your goal. Back when I had my day job, and I was doing internet marketing, I was day trading stocks on my phone. I was always stressed out and sometimes it took effort to go even 10 minutes without checking my stocks.
Here's how I fixed the problem: I put a rubber band on my wrist. Every time I was about to check my stocks, I would snap that rubber band and move it to the other wrist.
I know that the reason most of you aren't productive is because you have that habit to check emails, check forums, check Facebook, check your stats or play computer games. Whenever you're about to do it, do the rubber band trick until you've accomplished your tasks for today.
Step 3: Conditioning & Anchoring
You'll start to notice that you'll start to associate pain with whatever bad habit you're getting rid of (let's say checking email) because every time you want to do it, it hurts.
Replace that old "checking your email" task with something productive. Let's say it's creating a report. Open your Word document or whatever tool you use to create a product, and the whole time you're working on it, force yourself to smile.
This does something really weird. Your brain is used to being happy, and then smiling. But it works in the other direction too. When you smile, you become happy.
When you continuously smile while typing and working on your product, then working on your product will make you happy.
If it makes you happy, then you'll want to do it more!
This is the same reason why physiologist Ivan Pavlov could ring a bell every time he fed a dog... and then eventually, just ringing the bell would get the dog to salivate. Because you're much smarter than a dog, you'll use this strategy to reward your good habits and get out of your comfort zone.
Step 4: Consistent Action (4DT)
Now that you'll have something that works, you'll want to repeat it, right?
That's where you'll use the same productivity advice I've given on every interview for year and probably will continue to give for the rest of my life...
Four Daily Tasks: At the beginning of the day, choose just four tasks you'll complete that day to move you in the right direction.
Accountability Partner: Tell someone (whether it's a business partner, spouse, parent, child, friend, neighbor, roommate) what your four tasks are, and at the end of the day, report back to them and tell them what you did or didn't finish, and why.
Time Boxing: Figure out how long a task will take you (for example, if finishing that report will take you 60 minutes), time it with a timer, and when that timer goes off, then put it online and step away from the computer. This ensures you'll stay focused and get that task completed QUICKLY.
And that's how you overcome procrastination: figure out what you want to do and Ben Franklin it, pattern interrupt whatever normally distracts you from making progress, condition yourself to enjoy it and use Four Daily Tasks to keep taking consistent action.
Website Backup: Keep Your Site Safe, Instantly Clone Your Blog, and Get Things Done Anywhere
1. Setup a backup of your ENTIRE account or your ENTIRE server in cPanel/WHM. Do this long before anything goes wrong... preferably one that automatically runs once per week and backs up via FTP to an offsite server... email your web host if you need help setting this up.
Seriously, don't even bother with any automatic WordPress backup plugins, just backup your ENTIRE account... this makes sure all your files, databases, email accounts, and everything is kept safe... not just your WordPress blog.
2. Backup your desktop files on a G-Safe redundant external drive and using offsite backup service Carbonite. Don't store everything on a memory stick or your computer's hard drive... it WILL fail eventually.
3. Install Roboform Everywhere on your computer. This software stores all your passwords in the cloud so it can sync with all your computers including your laptop and smartphone. You also don't have to spend 30 seconds logging into every website. If you only logged into 10 websites per day (think Facebook, email, your membership site, forum, someone else's membership site, YouTube, Twitter, a news site, another forum, and your hosting account) that's 5 minutes per day, which is 30 hours per year you're saving.
An added bonus is that it will auto-generate every password for every site for you... so you use a "master password" to let Roboform do its thing, but it fills out an extremely hard to guess password... and it uses a different password for every single site.
4. Bookmark each of your login pages and membership sites in your browser, organize them in folders, and use Firefox Sync to back it all up. I save my most visited sites in my "bookmarks toolbar" that appears at the top of my browser window. On this toolbar, I have:
- one bookmarks folder for News Headlines
- one bookmarks folder for Forums
- one bookmarks folder for Classes (recurring membership sites)
- one bookmarks folder for Products (standalone membership sites)
- one bookmarks folder for Dashboard sites (for travel, Google Website Optimizer, EzineArticles, and other training I'm taking
- one bookmarks folder for cPanel (site backends I login to)
5. Install the Maintenance Mode plugin on your blogs and WordPress membership sites in case you need to take them offline quickly. This is a free plugin you can install from your WordPress dashboard where you can take your entire site offline to outside visitors in one click... useful if you are tweaking your theme or if a plugin fails.
When does all of this come in handy? Last night I needed to take about 20 sites down in a hurry while a problem was fixed overnight... so you know what I did?
- I went to the "Classes" folder on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, right clicked, and chose "Open in All Tabs" ... this opened each of my membership sites in a different tab
- I logged into each of these sites with 1-click using Roboform
- Enabled the Maintenance Mode plugin on each of these sites
And there you go, in a couple minutes, temporarily took my sites down so I could fix them.
What's your best tip to keep your business running smoothly?
Plimus Bans Internet Marketing Products (Because of $37 Clickbank-Style Offers)
Plimus (the payment processor) has now officially banned internet marketing products:
Valued Plimus Affiliate,
We wanted to advise you we are no longer supporting Internet Marketing (IM) and Business Operations (Biz-Ops) products, for which our records show you are an affiliate. This does not affect any previous sales referrals you are due payment for. Payouts of those will proceed without issue. Since the product is no longer offered on Plimus there will be no future commissions to be earned.
Thank you for marketing one of our vendor products. We hope you will go to the Plimus Marketplace and find new products for you to promote and earn commission on. If there is something we can do to assist please do not hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
The Plimus Team
I'm actually surprised it took this long. If you haven't heard of Plimus, here's what happened. You may have seen "blind offer" sales letters... the ones that say: you don't deserve to be on this page, make money from home, earn a residual income, run this software and make money.
"You're 6 clicks away from making a million dollars."
"Don't trust the gurus, they lie to you,
by the way I am a guru, you should trust me."
"If you want 6 times as much money just run the software 6 times."
Most of this "traffic" and "marketing" software was usually something simple like a domain name finder, email harvester, blog comment spammer, bulk page generator or something similar... not even worth $10.
The sales letter hyped up the "results" of the product showing you tons of earnings screenshots... telling you this ISN'T AdSense, this ISN'T SEO, this ISN'T product creation... buy here to find out what it is.
As you can imagine the refund rate on this was pretty high. Payment processors like Clickbank can tolerate a pretty high refund rate but this was even too much for them.
What happened: these products were banned from Clickbank they all moved to Plimus... and now they're banned from Plimus.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a small percentage of marketers "ruining it for the rest of us" ... it was bound to happen eventually, just like:
- "Biz opps" and "multilevel marketing" are banned from PayPal
- "Internet marketing" mailing lists are banned from MailChimp
- "Non-typical results" are banned according to the FTC
- "Make money online" products were originally banned from Facebook Ads
- "Work from home" videos are recently being banned from YouTube
- "Get rich quick" products are banned from Google AdWords
- "Social media" products are banned from Clickbank
- "Public domain" (non-unique) content was recently banned from Amazon Kindle
The moral of the story is: tell me exactly what your offer is and be very careful about relying on results and income claims to make your sale.
If you're selling software, I just want to see screenshots. If you're selling information, I just want to know what the information is. And most importantly (this was huge back when AdSense courses were coming out)... if your system makes $10,000 per day... why is it only $37???
What do you think about all this?
