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The Ideal Clickthru Rate for Your Squeeze Pages, Sales Letters and Blog Posts

When creating your forced optin pages or e-commerce sales letters, or even blog posts... how do you know if it's fully optimized?  How do you know whether or not you are throwing away e-mail subscribers, sales, blog commenters, and fans without even realizing?  I want to tell you what kind of conversion rate you should expect when testing out your pages using Google Website Optimizer or Google Analytics.

A forced e-mail optin page, or squeeze page, is a web page where the only thing a person can do is subscribe to your e-mail list or leave.  I like to put these in front of my sales letters, so people need to commit to a small action (subscribing to my list for more information)... that way I can follow up with them even if they don't buy.

But Most People Overcomplicate This Process!

Your forced optin page should only contain one headline, three bullet points, and instructions about what to do next.  (Opt-in to your list.)  If you do this correctly, you should expect 50 percent, or half, of your targeted visitors, to subscribe... all while your competition overthinks the process and only gets a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate.

After they have opted in, even if you are mailing them a free gift in exchange for signing up, send them to an offer page (or sales letter) where they can buy something from you.  Similar to the forced optin page, this should be a site where all they can do is either buy or leave.  There are no other links in this long, one-page web site.  Even if you don't think you are any good at convincing someone to buy from you... tell them a quick story, your argument for why your solution is best... and a set of bullet points telling them why they should get it now, and what benefits they will receive once they get their hands on it.

If I experience a 1 to 5 percent conversion rate, I'm happy. Even if you experience a little bit less than this, you can split test your web site and even get it critiqued by a professional copywriter at a fraction of the cost that it would take to get it done from scratch.  The copy will actually come out better because you know your product better than anyone else.

That covers forced optin pages and sales letters, but what about other kinds of web sites such as blogs?  What kind of conversion rate can you expect from alternate sources of traffic such as Twitter or article sites?  The answer is that you shouldn't care.  Your time is better spent optimizing your squeeze page or sales letter than worrying about your free traffic sources.  They are tough to measure, and after all, it's all "extra" traffic.

Those are the results you should expect from your well-optimized web pages: 50 percent conversion on your squeeze page and 1 percent conversion on your sales letter. As for your traffic sources, worry about your own sites.

What's your conversion rate? Do you even know (it's ok if you don't) ... just post your answer in a comment below.

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The Number 1 Way to Create Your Next $97 Or Higher Training Course

I really do want you to succeed and the way I made the change from a college student with no money to someone who had a residual income was by phasing out freelancing and creating info-products.

Freelancing is good to start off but you definitely need to establish yourself as an authority in your niche and make a product that people can buy that has your name on it that proves you know what you're talking about and teaches them what you know.

I have made all kinds of training courses about PHP, webinars, list building, WordPress and more and I want you to do the same in whatever niche is your favorite with these simple steps.

Step 1:  Four Part Outline

You can take any problem and solve it in 4 steps. If you take it in even more steps, you aren't solving it simply enough. Let's use creating a website as an example. Here's 4 steps: Get a domain, get a web host, set up a WordPress blog, write your first post. How about writing a sales letter.

Have a headline that tells a story, list benefit bullets, explain features, then demand a call-to-action. If you're explaining something to someone, the best way is in 4 steps. No more, no less. Figure out how to solve a problem in 4 steps.

Step 2: Audio Dictation

Most people hate writing. I have gotten to the point where I liked writing but still it's not my favorite thing to do and I know that I could speak more consistently and faster than writing. I'm pretty sure you are the same way. Hence, you know your subject well enough that for each of the 4 steps, you can explain at least 3 things about it. Let's go back to the webpage example before where I said you need a domain name, a web host, a WordPress blog, and content.

When I explain how to get a domain name, I could tell people why you should only stick with dot com, how to decide on the perfect domain name that's not too long but is also short and explains what it is you're going to be offering.

I could tell people which registrar to get their domain and then what to do after, which could – this is into the second part, the web host – how to choose a web host, how to register with this web host, how to set up automatic billing, how to connect that domain name to the web host and how to get support from that web host and so on.

If you can talk for even 10 minutes about each of these 4 things, that's a 40-minute audio product. That's almost a complete CD. Chances are that especially on some of the advanced topics, you might talk for longer than 10 minutes, and if you can speak for an hour, you're doing great.

Step 3: Sales Letter

From that 60-minute audio, I'm sure you can find lots of things to talk about, reasons why your audio is the best, what people can expect to get out of the audio when they're done and why you are the most authoritative person to listen to. Your sales letter doesn't have to be that complicated.

If you can list 10 good reasons why people would want to buy what you have to offer, you can take some of the better reasons, turn them into sentences, take the really best reason, turn it into a headline, add an order button, and you have a basic sales letter.

Now, all you have to do is promote it to your list and to high-traffic areas, like forums, and get a handful of initial sales. Now, what re you going to do with that money?

Step 4: Reinvest Into a Transcript

Every minute that you speak is about 150 words of written material or a little over half a page.

That means your 60-minute audio is going to be over 30 pages in length. That's a complete report.

If you can add in things like bullet points or checklists, the report will be even longer, but the point is you now have a book and an audio book to distribute digitally, and that means that if your audio was only $10 or $20, now that it is bundled with the written version, it is now $30 to $40.

(Optional) Bonus Step #1: Membership Site

You do want to get that price point to $100, don't you?

Then put it all into a membership site. The simple fact that people can come back into your membership site for eternity, even if they lost their password, is worth slightly more. I have bought CDs of software before that charged me an additional $5 to have a lifetime download area. In this case, don't give people the choice, make them purchase access to this membership site where they will receive your report, your audio, and lifetime updates.

At any point in the future, if you decide to sit down and speak for 10 minutes, that is a bonus that can be found in your member's area. That means at this point, you now have your membership site priced at $50 or $60.

(Optional) Bonus Step #2: Live Q&A Bonus After Six Months

Now, here's the final step towards getting people to the $100 mark. There's something weird about the price point between $50 and $100 and that's why people don't really by in that range. If someone is willing to buy or pay you more than $47, they're probably willing to pay $97.

Don't bother pricing at $57, $67, $77, or $87. Just skip right to the $97 mark. I only price in this range if I am steadily increasing my price to $97.

Because you're a marketer, you could price your training at whatever it's worth and whatever you want. What I like to do is offer a live Q&A or a question and answer bonus, people can ask me any question they want for an hour or 90 minutes.

Once that's done, I will put the recording in the member's area and now, that member's area contains a report, an audio, additional bonus audios, and a Q&A video webinar recording, which is all worth much much more than $100 but just because you like your subscribers so much, you are going to price it at $97 and that price will be a bargain and that's why you take one idea and turn it into a $97 or a higher training course.

If in the future you want to increase the price beyond $97, throw in some live training and make it a webinar course.

Is this the way you create your $100 training courses? What is your method? Please explain it to me...

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Four Ways to Get More Out of Your Followers by Challenging Them to Take Action

If you've seen any of the comments on this blog, you know that my posts get a lot of response.

If you've been inside any of my paid webinar classes, you know that I have a lot of successful case studies and success stories from people who did exactly what I told them to.

How do you clone exactly what I did? You use one of these 4 methods to get your followers to take action.

"Know" Phase #1: The Blog Comments

Something you can do right now without launching a new product, even without making a new blog post, is look at the most recent post you've made on your blog and cap the number of comments at 10.

Put a note that says "as soon as that blog post gets 10 comments, you're going to disable comments." You would not believe how many people have told me at live events that they had no interest in leaving a comment on my blog until they heard that they might miss out on it. That's how most of your viewers are as well. They are just barely on the fence about whether or not to comment.

It's up to you to give them that one extra reason. If having 10 blog comments seems like a lot, here's a secret. You should be replying to your blog comments. This means that if 5 people leave comments on your blog and you reply to each individual comment with a comment of your own, that equals 10 responses total. When I say you should cap your blog post at 10 comments, you really only need 5 people to leave comments and then for you to respond to each one.

At first, you might have to pay people $1 per comment or have some of your friends leave comments, but after a few posts, when the social proof is there, people will leave comments as long as you are sending traffic there from your forum and from your list.

"Like" Phase #2: The Retweet Campaign

When I launch a blog post, after it has filled up the 100 or so comments I like to have, I will close out comments and then mail my list a second time, telling them to re-tweet that blog post.

In the past, I tried to tell people to comment and re-tweet but this works a lot better if you devote one day and one email just to commenting, and after you've gotten what you wanted, devote one day just to re-tweeting one of your posts. On my blog, I use the TweetMeme plugin and just by having that button there, I do get 10 to 20 re-tweets or one click mentions on Twitter.

But when I specifically ask people to re-tweet, it jumps to 50 to 200 re-tweets. That means that 200 different people have mentioned that specific blog post on Twitter which gives me more traffic and more social proof, and I like that at this point, the comments are turned off because that means anyone who comes to my site now has to sign up to my mailing list to be notified when they can comment again.

You can also have fun with this re-tweet campaign by re-tweeting your blog post once per day to drive the count-up and add some kind of prize. For example, if you can get 20 re-tweets of your latest blog post, you will make another blog post this week.

"Trust" Phase #3: Free Live Webinar

Most people have no strategy when they're leaving a blog post. I always do.

When I make a blog post, it's usually to pre-launch my next class or my next email offer. You should be doing the same.

Use the responses you got from that last blog post to create your presentation or to improve the next class you will be offering.

Even if you only have 10 comments, you can pick out about four things that people are having trouble with.

For example, I once made a post on my blog called Forfeit the Race to Free, telling people not to gravitate towards trials but instead be moving their price higher, and although a lot of people agreed with me, some people told me things like they were at first afraid to launch their product and now this advice got them to do it. Some other people argued that more people bought at a low price, which in my experience was false. More people bought at a higher price.

My favorite response to that post was that some – one of my commenters told me that somebody didn't buy from them because the price was too low and the average person thought that because it was so cheap, something must be wrong with it.

All those responses can make a great presentation or augment a presentation that's already ready because it speaks directly to people's fears and frustrations and the best part is you can use the same language, the same phrases people say to you and use that to make a killer headline based on your pressing issue.

"Close" Phase #4: Pitch And Close

You've already taught people something from your emails leading up to your blog post, from your blog post itself, and during your free live webinar. At the end of that free live webinar, all of that info should be coming in together - the emails, the blog posts, the comments, and this live training into a relevant and special offer.

You gave people a lot of tips on overcoming roadblocks but now it's time for them to pay you to get access to the step-by-step how-to system to get them from point A to point B.

Make it a special offer just for people on the call that will be increasing in price soon, have a real deadline so that there is real scarcity, and send them to at least a short sales letter explaining your offer exactly in black and white terms. That way, when people join your class or purchase your report or get your video series, they know exactly what they are getting.

Is your business model anything close to this, the KNOW, LIKE, TRUST, and CLOSE step-by-step system? If not, why not and how soon are you going to implement this? Comment!

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5 Elements of Social Proof to Explode Your Business

There are many things that I do on a daily basis that almost are not worth my time – things like maintaining a free blog or submitting free articles or posting on forums or even updating my Twitter status.

None of those things directly make me as much money as landing a new joint venture, as writing a sales letter, sending out emails or running a webinar course.

Why do I do them? Because they demonstrate social proof. If someone is thinking about buying from me and they look me up, they'll find hundreds of articles, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of forum posts.

What will I find when I look you up? Will I find lots of social proof or will I find negative social proof? I'll find a lot of good things about you if you follow these 5 steps.

Element #1: Blog Comment Scarcity Or Blog Responses

You probably do have a blog, right? If I go to it, will I find it's being constantly updated or it has not been updated in the last several years? Are there lots of posts or only 1 or 2? And out of those posts, are lots of people commenting? I decided very early on that when I created my blog, I wanted to have lots and lots of comments.

Otherwise, it would look like I was talking and no one was listening.

When I make blog posts and I get dozens, if not hundreds, of comments for every post, everyone can see how much of an authority I am. When you have the same thing, people can see how much of an authority you are. I got a lot of comments on my blog at first by limiting posts to only 10 comments.

I told people that if I got 10 comments on my blog, then I look at either the post content, otherwise I would stop.

Eventually, I escalated this to saying after I had 10 comments, I would close comments completely and now I have this at 100 comments per post and that's how and why you should have blog comment scarcity and blog responses.

Send traffic to your list, to your latest blog post, but have some kind of deal either that you will turn off comments or stop writing unless you get a certain number of responses because people read but they don't like to respond.

Element #2: Price Scarcity

How do you show that what you're offering has lots and lots of value but still get people to buy when you are first launching it and don't have a huge list? If you're entering a new niche or at first building a list, offer your product at a low price but set a deadline for when you will increase that price and then actually increase it.

This way, if people are buying your product for $20 but you are about to increase it to $50, people realize that the regular prize is $50. Don't run a discount because that will anger your early adopters, but this way, you will reward your fast action-takers and early adaptors by letting them buy low, and then once you have a proven selling record and you have testimonials, now you can increase the price at the time and date you said you would.

Element #3: Webinar Replay Scarcity

Are you starting to see a pattern where I'm talking about social proof?

People can be trained to give you a certain reaction. When you make a blog post, you train them to leave comments. When you are increasing the price, you train them to buy. The same should be true for your live instructions. When I run a webinar, I want the maximum number of people to show up live. When somebody shows up live, they're kind of a captive audience.

They can't fast-forward, they're usually not multicasting and they're sure as heck can't pause your presentation either. It's as close to real life as possible.

That's why you shouldn't always offer a replay of your webinar. Maybe you're not going to offer any kind of replay of your webinar or you're going to offer a replay only available for the next 48 hours or even you're only going to offer a replay inside of your paid membership site.

Either of these 3 strategies will motivate people to attend your webinars live and even if they don't believe you now, they will believe you after you stick to your guns and do what you said you will time and time again.

Element #4: Testimonial Follow-Up

The number one problem I see with sales letters is a lack of proof – why should I buy from you, why should I trust you if you can't show me anyone else who has benefitted from your training? That's why the easiest form of social proof is the testimonial.

Ask your buyers what they thought of the product they just bought from you. What I like to do is add this message as an autoresponder follow-up in my autoresponder sequence. This means that when someone buys from me and joins my list after 7 days, which is enough time to look at whatever product they just bought, I will ask them what they thought of it and have them directly reply to me and then I will use their testimonial on my sales letter.

It's important though to ask not for a testimonial but for an honest review, good or bad.

Element #5: Feedback Survey

I told you a little bit about getting testimonials and training people not just to read your emails but reply to them as well. I use this in many of my pre-launches when I ask people things like "do you want to see this product, do you want to see me explain programming?"

And then the next day, I will tell people how many responses I got. This does many things. First of all, it shows everyone that there is a high demand for what I am about to offer and it makes people part of the process. It makes them know that they have an interactive role in my marketing. When they respond to me, their "yes" answer goes into the total number of yesses I receive over email.

If you take any of those 5 elements of social proof, blog responses, price scarcity, replay scarcity, testimonial follow-ups, or feedback surveys, you should notice a slight increase in sales, a slight increase in response, and a slight increase in popularity.

Are you using any of these 5 elements yet? And which one?

If you're not using any of the 5, which one do you plan on using within the next week? Please leave me a blog comment below with your speedy response.

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3 Myths of Subscriber Burnout

If I ask someone why an email I sent didn't get a lot of clicks or why an offer I'm promoting didn't get as many sales as I would like or even when a blog post doesn't get as many comments as I'm used to, the usual cop-out I hear from other marketers is "your list must be burned out."

We've all wondered about this at one point or another. In fact, at one time, Lance and I thought we had burned out our list when we're mailing for a $200 training course.

Then, flash forward 6 months later when we're launching a $997 training course 1 week, a $497 training course a couple weeks later, and a $27 per month membership site at the same time and everyone is buying in, and in fact, the people who buy now tell us the price should be higher.

What's the difference? The difference between that $200 era and the $1000 era is that we trained our list not just to receive these offers but also to purchase and be happy at a certain price point.

Burnout Myth #1: Non-Responsive List

If you think your list is non-responsive, the problem is either from your traffic source or from your marketing.

I have seen way too many marketers come out of the gate one day and say, "here you go, here is my $1000 training course."

They have no teaching, no build-up and no pre-launch and they just expect people to purchase their $1000 course at a moment's notice. When people tell me that they do not purchase a certain product because of price, the problem could be that they can't afford it and would never buy under any circumstances or it could be they just did not have enough advanced notice to clear their credit card or save up that money.

That's why you need a pre-launch sequence and you need to mail more often.

This leads me to many marketers recommending that you only mail your list once a month or once a week. But the problem with that is we need to push a lot of people into buying an offer quickly, you really do need to mail them once a day during your launch sequence, and I see marketers try to get by with mailing just once a week or just once a month, and then when they have to mail once a day, the subscribers aren't used to it.

The solution is to mail everyday, whether you're selling, teaching, or doing a little bit of both.

Mail everyday, mail more often, and mail on topic. If somebody is telling you to buy their AdWords product over and over again and then one day turned around and tried to buy a product about forum marketing and there was no transition whatsoever, there is no consistent marketing message.

Have a real launch, email every day, and email at least 5 times when you're promoting something new.

Burnout Myth #2: It's Too Expensive

If no one is buying the things you have to offer at any price, consider where your traffic is coming from. I built my traffic up from a free forum but what I did differently is most of my subscribers had to buy something from me before they could get on my list.

They were all people who have been proven to have a credit card, have room in their credit card, and trust me enough to pay me. If you're building a list from ad swaps, safe lists, or JV Giveaways, you're getting the worst subscribers possible.

You're getting people who have not been proven to buy anything but who you do know get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails everyday for other free offers. You need to build a better list. Build a list that gets traffic from a better neighborhood. Get joint ventures. And above all, make a better offer.

It's one thing to offer a 100-page eBook or 5 hours of videos but what will those videos allow me to do? If you just tell me you are selling a real estate course, that's not very exciting, but if you told me that this course could get me to find the perfect property to flip in one day and I could flip it in one week and make a certain amount of money, that would be more exciting for me.

You need to position your offer to be more benefit-based and to be more exciting and fast and explain the answer to the question "what's in it for me?"

You might have to weed out freebie stickers. If there are some subscribers who yell at you or ask you repeatedly to drop the price, there's nothing wrong with removing them from your list if they are never going to buy from you. It seems harsh but you are doing them a favor because they don't like your emails.

Burnout Myth #3: The Wrong Niche

If I subscribe to your email list about copywriting and one day, you started emailing me about stock market trading, why should I even care? I didn't come to you as the authority for stock trading. I came to you as the authority to copywriting. You need to give your subscribers what they want.

If somebody joined your list because you offered them a free report on copywriting, give them more stuff about copywriting, give them a course they can join on that same subject.

Don't hop around in different niches. Give them the same stuff that they want and need. And build your list from the correct source. If you have a copywriting product, build your list from a copywriting forum, not from a stock trading forum and vice-versa.

You might not have to give up and change your niche overnight... just start offering your list what they want.  What they'll buy.

Did this post help you overcome any of the 3 myths of subscriber burnout? They were a non-responsive list, a list that thinks your stuff is too expensive, and a list that's in the wrong niche. Which one applies the best to you, 1, 2, or 3? And what are you going to do now?

Comment below telling me, please!

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The Future Has A Lot Less Buttons And Levers: Choices Are Bad

I hope you are noticing this: The more successful solutions out there reduce the number of choices.

I first noticed this a couple of years ago when I bought a special box that attaches to my TV called a NetFlix Roku. What this box does is it connects to my Netflix service over Wi-Fi and streams movies and TV shows to my TV.

Sounds complicated, right? But it's not! The funny thing about this remote is that it has only got nine buttons: It has got a Home button, an Enter button, four arrows (like left, right, up, down), a Play and Pause button, Rewind and Fast-Forward. That's it!

There is no Channel Changing button, there is no Volume button, no Mute button. Not even an On/Off button.

That's Right!

The Roku device remains On for as long as it is plugged in! It is one of my favorite devices to use because I can literally use it within seconds of taking it out of the box.

Here is something else to think about: Video cameras. For a long time I resisted buying video cameras. It is so difficult to decide which one to get. I didn't want to get a video camera that used tape, even digital tape, and I wasn't sure if I should get a camera made by Sony, Kodak or some other manufacturer.

But I did buy the Flip camera years ago. The great thing about the flip is that it really only has one Big Red Button. Much like the Roku remote, it has a couple of extra buttons, such as Pause and Play (that's one button), the Trash button, and buttons to navigate between videos and zoom in and out. But the button usually almost always used is that Big Red Record Button.

You want to record new video? Take it out, hit the Big Red Button - it records. You want to stop? Hit the Big Red Button again.

That is compared to other cameras which are better in quality and have better features, but the problem is they have too many features. For example, with the Kodak Zi8, I almost bought it because it has an external microphone. But everyone I have seen record with it has to navigate through different menus to choose what quality they want to record with, and other settings, before they can record it.

I don't care about that! I want to just hit one button and it records.

Think about the iPhone: again, almost no buttons. It has got a Lock button, volume controls, a Silent button and a Home button. That's it. No buttons for dialing or going through different menus. That is all handled in the touch screen.

If you don't have a touch screen phone, I would recommend you borrow someone's iPhone and try to do a conference call. It is amazing how it can generate new menus and give you new buttons to push when there were none there previously.

Same deal with the iPad, Droid, Kindle and other touch screen devices with almost no buttons. It is super simple and super intuitive to use - and requires almost no documentation.

Think about WordPress: I think what makes WordPress special is that it simplifies everything. You can literally set it up in a few seconds and write your first blog post in a few minutes. The interface for writing new posts and activating plugins is far simpler than any other blogging platform I have ever seen.

And the blogs that are the most accessible are the ones that remove features. They might remove things like the dates, or the ability to leave comments on posts, just to make it easier to get to the information.

Now that I have told you how much I like the Roku, the flip, the iPhone and WordPress, it's your turn!

What Are You Doing To Remove The Buttons?

Do you offer two Order buttons on your sales letter: maybe a way to fully buy your product and another offer as a payment plan?

What would happen if you split tested, only showing one of those buttons? Would it make it easier for people to join your program?

When someone logs into your membership site, is it clear what they should look at first? In other words, are your posts listed in chronological order? And do you have some kind of welcome message or welcome video when someone first joins?

When I read your report, am I going to find clear, step-by-step instructions about what to read first and where to go from there?

And, most importantly, what should I do when I'm done? So tell me, how are you removing multiple choices and multiple calls to action that don't matter?

What are YOU doing to remove the buttons? Comment below.

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I’ll Take You to a $5000 Seminar July 20-22, in Las Vegas, for Free

I have never offered anything like this for free.  In July I'm getting trained by a guy who has made 1 million dollars in 90 minutes, speaking at a seminar.

I want to take you as my guest to Armand Morin's "Persuasion X" speaker training seminar in Las Vegas, Neveda on July 20-22, 2010. That's a Tuesday through a Thursday.

I have spoken on stage four times. A couple of weeks ago, Lance and I presented on membership sites at a seminar in Minneapolis to a room of 50 people.

7 people had already bought our $997 package in the past, but we got 7 new people to pay us $999.

Think about that, $7000 bucks from a 90 minute presentation, that I would have done for free anyway.

If you ever want to speak from the stage, if you want to get better from with your webinars, or even just become more confident, then you should come to this very secret seminar.

All I want from you, is to tell me why I should take you as my free guest. But here's the thing:

1. It's up to you to drive or fly to Vegas on your own.
2. You are on your own, hotel and food-wise.
3. I don't want you sitting next to me at the event, go find your own friends... the room is full of proven five thousand dollar buyers
4. You will get to meet with me, and talk to me at the seminar

Like I said, this seminar literally costs $5000 but I want to take you as my free guest so you can find out:

  • How to become an in-demand professional speaker
  • Persusasive presentation
  • Control and lead your audience
  • Hypnotic speech patterns
  • Structure your offer so it makes the most impact with your audience
  • How to sell membership products from the stage
  • Exact PowerPoint designs to increase your sales from the stage
  • How to "work" the stage: where to stand and what to do with your body, plus the most POWERFUL closing sequence ever created

Go ahead, tell me why I should take you as my free $5000 guest.  If you have the best answer, I'll buy your way into this $5000 seminar.

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You Think Too Big And It Is Hurting Your Business: Why Gary Vaynerchuk Was Wrong

If you never had the chance yet to read Gary V's crush it book, I definitely recommend it. In fact, if you ask me privately I have tons of copies of it and I am willing to give you one for free.

Gary took his father's liquor store and turned it from a $4 million dollar business into a $50 million dollar business.

The biggest lesson I got out of his very quick read was this: When you are a self-employed entrepreneur you are going to work harder and you are going to work more hours than someone who has a day job.  It doesn't matter, if you are going to be doing something that is fun that excites you to get out of bed in the morning.

Gary talks a lot about getting noticed by the big media companies on social media like twitter, facebook and you-tube.  I think a lot of marketers take that advice too far, especially when pursuing the getting bought out model.

In case you weren't paying attention during the first dot com boom of the late 90's and early 2000's.  The idea is that you mass tons and tons of users get tons of market penetration while breaking even or even losing money, in the hopes that some big company will buy you out for $100 million dollars.

You-tube lost money for years even after they were bought out by Google, until recently.  Facebook lost money until it partnered with Microsoft and started displaying ads.  MySpace lost money until it was bought out by Rupert Murdock, and the list goes on.

Chances Are: You Won't Get Bought Out By Someone Else!

You can't count on that payday. If you are already making millions of dollars a year and can afford to lose money for years and years, that's fine.  Ignore my advice.

If you are trying to make a living, and build a business you need to make some kind of profit.  It is NOT evil to make money! Although people like Gary V. have enough money to think big, you are still starting out and you need to think small.

When you pay $20 dollars for advertising, just try to get $20 dollars back.  On a regular basis, I will post form offers or create pay per click campaigns for load to your products to make some of the money back, and to attract affiliates, and to get a few extra leads.

If I spend $20 dollars to promote a free offer, and I get 20 opt ins out of that promotion, I know I have made my money back.  I know I get more than $1 dollar per subscriber on my list.

When I find affiliates, I have no problem giving them bulk of my profits. I pay 60% commission to my affiliates with lifetime tagging.

I know a lot of people who offer 100% commission on the front end, and 0% on the back end.  What does this mean? It means that you might have a report selling for $20 dollars that up-sells people to a certain course for $100 dollars.  You have a $20 dollar front end, $100 dollar back end.

When an affiliate promotes that $20 dollar product, if it makes a sale they get all the $20 dollars and none of the $100 dollars.  What I do instead is give 60% of both.  That means if they make a sale at $20 dollars, I will give them 60% or $12 dollars of the $20.  When somebody then buys the $100 dollar product, I will give the affiliate $60 dollars of that as well.

Again, I don't mind giving away that high commission because I would not have made that sale without that affiliate.

Affiliate Sales Are Just "Extra!"

Even if you do want to get yourself bought out some day, you need to show some kind of earnings potential.  You-tube, and facebook, and twitter can easily sell because they've massed  millions of users.  Just in case you don't make it to the millions of users, try to monetize the few number of people you have.  That way you will find it easier to devote the time to a site that is making money versus a site that might make money sometime in the future.

I do agree with most of what Gary says. I don't want you to repeat the same mistakes made during the dot com bust, which was losing money for years in exchange for users.  You don't have to give away everything for free.  Your knowledge and your services are worth something.  You are just going to have to trust me on this.

Do you agree or disagree with what I had to say today? Leave me a comment below right now giving me your quick and honest opinions.

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WordPress 3.0, WordPress 3.1, and WordPress 4.0 Explained

You probably didn't notice, but the other day I upgraded this blog from WordPress 2.9.x to WordPress 3.0.
Luckily, the update was not that drastic. My theme and my plugins seem to be working the same, and the interface is almost identifical.

But Here's the Big Question:
Should You Upgrade?

  • YES, if you are running a free (open) blog such as RobertPlank.com, to get used to the new features and take advantage of themes that use the new functionality.
  • NO, if you are running a mission-critical WordPress membership site, especially if it's hosted with Wishlist Member.

Three First impressions About WordPress 3.0

  1. Better looking Dashboard with a "notification" area (like Facebook)
  2. Batch updating of plugins (now if only the updater wouldn't stall on my server)
  3. New theme-dependent things like menus, featured image, and standardized way of changing your header graphic

Three Things You Might Not Have Noticed

  1. WordPress MU (MultiUser): so you can create a blog network if you change your config file
  2. author specific templates: if you know how to rename your theme files, you can give different users a different admin interface
  3. custom post types: you could create an e-commerce store or article directory in WordPress easily without "fudging it" using pages.

3 Things to Look Forward to in WordPress 3.1
(coming August 2010)

  1. newer HTML editor: local autosave, paste with formatting, and faster performance such as showing text while resizing
  2. prevent comment impersonation: if someone tries to leave a comment on your blog, and that email address belongs to a registered user, require them to login
  3. email authentication: users can login using their email address and no longer have to remember usernames, only passwords.

4 Things I Want to See Before WordPress 4.0

  1. better plugin updater: mine still times out, I at least want a progress indicator, and maybe even the ability to update a plugin WITHOUT going into maintenance mode or halting the entire thing
  2. official plugins: please build the All in One SEO Pack, Robots Meta, Google Sitemap, Subscribe to Comments, Twitter Tools, Get Recent Comments, List Category Posts, MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer, WPTouch, and Psychic Search plugins right into WP so I don't have to install them by hand on every single blog I setup
  3. automatic update: I really don't see this coming until WordPress 4.0, but I would like a Windows-like function to automatically check, and update, the blog, theme and plugins overnight
  4. big picture stats: when I login to the dashboard, I want to see the word count of my entire blog, the average word count of my posts, my top commenters, the average comment length, how many posts per month, how many comments per day, how many hits per day, and how many searches per day my blog is getting

What do you think about the new WordPress?  Have you upgraded yet or are you waiting until a more stable and tested version?

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New Apple iPhone 4

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

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

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

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

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

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

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