Recent Updates
2009 Goals
As soon as I started putting my goals down, I got a lot more productive. I'm not saying you need to plan the rest of your life out or anything, but you need to know where you're headed... so you know what needs to come next.
List last year (2008), this year (2009), 2010, 2011 and 2012. Next to each year, write what you'll have accomplished during that year. Write each thing in the present tense, as if you've already done it.
I'll go first...
2008: I bought my first house. Attended my first few seminars. Co-hosted 2 e-classes. (DONE!)
2009: I quit my day job and visited Orlando, Dallas, Austin, Iowa City, San Diego, Chicago, and Buffalo. Had my first several $30K months, sold a membership site for $32K. (DONE!) Haven't done this part yet: setup 20 recurring membership sites by year-end.
2010: Paid off 50% my mortgage and had my first $50K month. Sold at least ten copies of a $1997 package from the stage.
2011: Paid off my mortgage.
2012: Own at least one million dollars in cash and assets.
Now it's your turn. List each year from 2008 to 2012 and list what you have (or have yet to accomplish) each in the present tense.
I look forward to your comment below...
Automation Checklist
1. Do you have your autoresponder broadcasts every day for the rest of the week already scheduled?
2. Every time you mail out to your list, do you archive it as a followup so new subscribers get it as well?
3. When you broadcast to your list, do you schedule a similar mailing 90 days from now?
4. Is your web hosting, mortgage, autoresponder, and all other bills possible setup on autopay?
5. Do you have at least 10 blog posts scheduled in advance, even if it's only one per month?
6. Do you have autoresponder broadcasts scheduled to send traffic to those blog posts?
7. Does at least one of your autoresponder sublists contain 10 followups or more?
Do me a favor. Answer each of these 7 questions with a yes or no, as a comment below. (Hey that rhymed!) Then tell me which of your "no's" you will correct within the next 24 hours.
I need 10 comments to keep this party going...
The Number One Product Creation Myth is…
... That you need to add "professional quality" audio and video into a product. The truth is you can get away with what I call the "lens cap strategy" ... you'll know exactly what this means when you get inside Product University 2.0... but more about that on Wednesday's training call.
Remember, products are not just e-books. Videos can be products on their own... streaming videos, downloadbale videos or even DVDs. You can use audio to create CDs, offer them for download or even stick them onto your sales letter to increase conversions.
Here's something you can do to enhance your sales letter in the next five minutes: whip out an audio recording program like Audacity or Camtasia, put that USB headset of yours on your head, and record you reading the most powerful part of your sales letter.
That's the beauty of audio: you can read what's already on the page word for word and people will still get extra value of it because it makes your message more impactful.
You might choose to read your guarantee word-for-word. Or maybe the description of your bonus items, or your headlines and the deck copy below the headlines. Then slap it on an audio button and guess what... you've added personality.
But what's great about those little USB headsets you can find on Amazon.com is that the audio quality is so good, you don't need a hiss filter. You don't need a preamp or an equalizer. You don't need anything because it plugs right into the USB port and does not use your sound card. Continue Reading »
Product Creation Confessions
Be sure you're registered for the product creation call on Wednesday, July 1st at 5:00 PM Pacific. I can't stress this enough:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/408406978
But I have a confession to make before the call. The price of this course will be $997.
To be honest, I'm scared. I have charged $997 before, but never for an e-course.
Then again, most of my courses are $200 to $400 for a four week course, and this is an 8-week course, so it's really not that big of a jump.
I also remind myself that when you join this course, I'll show you how to create a 7 dollar product to sell FAST. How to create a freebie to build a list for that product. How to create a $27 and $97 product. How to establish a $27 a month membership site with almost no extra effort...
Plus, you get all the list and traffic in place to get some consistent sales.
Just one of those seven things would be worth $997 on its own. Even back in the day... I'm talking 2003 and 2004, I'd get an idea for a product, whip it out in a day or two, post it in the right community and pull out $400 overnight with no list.
400 bucks overnight... and then the product was still mine to continue marketing! Continue Reading »
Writing a Sales Letter is Hard?
Product creation myth number two is that: writing sales copy is hard.
You know what I'm going to say in response to that, right?
"FALSE!!!"
Just like you, I let sales copy be yet one more excuse not to launch a product. I didn't have 20 thousand dollars or even a thousand dollars lying around to pay someone to make my site sell, so what was I to do?
My mentor at the time just said... list some bullet points. And that really is all you have to do. Choose ten things about your prdouct that people would really like. What does it teach them that no one else does? What skill do people walk away with? How soon do they see results and how dramatic are those results?
Think of ten great things about your product that say great things about it, that don't actually give the chapter titles away. Then take the strongest bullet point in that list, move it to the top, make it larger, and now you have your headline. Continue Reading »
A Product Launch is Impossible Without Affiliates?
All the time I get replies from internet marketing newbies with resentment about being kept out of the "good ol boys" club. You know how it goes... you get the same exact copy and paste e-mail from 30 people on the day a product launches, and the process continues over and over... week after week...
Why can't your product be in that rotation? "It just isn't fair!"
You know what? I learned at a very young age that you don't want to be in that club. When you get stuck in one of these "syndicates" ... people will promote YOU but now you're obligated to promote other peoples' products, even if they're similar to yours or even not that great.
Even if you apply this on a smaller scale... like you mail for one person if he mails to you, you will probably still lose. A lot of marketers will use their sublists of freebie buyers to promote your stuff... meanwhile you mail for the other guy using your small list of BUYERS... and whatever hard work you've done to acquire those buyers is out the window.
That's because your buyers will end up on that other guy's list, and he'll have no reason to get you to promote anymore, plus those buyers of yours will be much less responsive since that other guy is marketing to them now.
So, myth #3 is you don't necessarily need "affiliates" ... you just need a source of traffic. Getting affiliates and joint ventures to promote is an easy way to get a lot of traffic fast but you can do it without being stuck in ad swap hell. Continue Reading »
Make a Product Faster than You Ever Thought Possible
Myth #4 is that making a product takes a long time. FALSE. I have written a 23-page e-book in one afternoon, launched it, then recorded the videos that night.
Fact: Jason Fladlien and I filled out a DAILY membership site with one year of content (all of 2009) in just a couple of months.
Fact: For our second webinar class, Product University, we filled up 25 hours and 3 gigabytes of content in only four weeks, and that was a "side project" ... in addition to our usual product launches.
Think for a second about what it would be like to have 25 hours of content. You could have articles written based on that content. Cut it up into a 52-week fixed term membership site. Spliinter some of those products as upsells or downsells.
Have you seen the movie Swingers with Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn? There's a scene where Jon Favreau doesn't know how to introduce himself to a cute girl, and Vince Vaughn says:
"That girl over there is like a little bunny. And you're the big giant bear. And you say, I don't know how to kill the bunny with these big giant bear claws!"
That's the exact position you're in when you have a ton of content to repackage. You've already done the hard work, so all you have to do is throw some stuff together and attack "the bunny" -- your prospects.
The only way to do that is to focus on one project at a time, so if you're the kind of person who has 5 or 10 half finished or 95 percent finished e-books... yes I'm talking directly to you individually... choose just one of those almost-finished books, get it finished as soon as possible (TODAY), and get it published.
Even if you think that's tough, the solution from me and Lance Tamashiro is coming in just a few days. Maybe you won't be able to crank out content as fast as I can, but even just a couple of shortcuts can reduce your product creation time by 50% or 75%.
Leave 10 comments below to get access to myth number 3 about product creation...
Be the Product Creation Incredible Hulk in 2009
Robert Plank here to disspell myth number 5 about making products and that's... people think creating products is hard.
Infoproduct Myth #5: Creating Products is Hard!
(Hint: It's Not! It's Only in Your Head!)
False. If you can get into the correct mindset, you'll actually have fun making a product. That's why you need to learn how to "hulk out" into a writing frenzy, or record a webinar and get the audio transcribed by your assistant.
I use a combination of time-boxing and question formatting to write articles quickly, and if those articles run over length then guess what? Those become the chapters of my e-book.
The days of the 600-page, 200-page, or even 100-page e-book are long over. Shoot for a goal of 10 to 30 pages and sell it for 7 dollars. Add a bonus to that product and now you can sell it for 17. Record just an hour of video and now it's worth 27 dollars. Throw a webinar on top of that and now you have a 47 dollar product to sell... in a single day.
Video is pretty easy too, as long as you don't script it. Whip up a PowerPoint presentation then stand it front of a Flip camera, web camera or digital camera and advance the slides using a clicker remote or even your mouse if you want to keep it simple.
The two factors that make you "think" prdouct creation is hard are confidence and completeness. Fortunately, if you can get excited about your topic you can overpower that confidence problem pretty easily, and your need to get that thing launched as quickly as possible before anyone else does will override your need to make it "complete" -- because no product ever will be.
At this point you might be wondering what this is all leading up to. Lance Tamashiro (who was a top student in many of my classes) has now graduated to become a co-host.
Lance and I have teamed up to provide you something very soon that has to do with product creation, but it is very different than the offers you've seen from me and unlike anything you've seen from anyone else. Keep your eyeballs peeled and I'll pass more details onto you as I get them.
What can you do right now? Leave me a comment below so that I can share myth number 4 with you once I get my ten comments...
Competition in Your Niche Keeps You Product-Less?
The stumbling block I want to smash into a million pieces today is the belief that if you try to enter a niche, and there's competition, it's not worth marketing.
Infoproduct Myth #6: Competition!
False. Even years and years ago, in 2003, I knew people who said the market was saturated with internet marketing products. Saturated with affiliate marketing products.
But let me ask you something, how many affiliate marketing products and internet marketing products have launched in the past six years? Do you think one a day? Do you think even MORE than one a day?
Even if we went on the low end of one new product a day, that's over 2000 new products just in the internet marketing niche.
My definition of "competition" is simply that other people have blazed a trail for you. If you research a niche and no one's selling in it... guess what, it means you probably won't sell in that niche and you saved yourself a lot of time.
If you do have competition, you don't have to compete directly. If you're unique, you can occupy different areas of that niche. Or if you offer a complementary solution, that competitor is now your affiliate or your business partner.
Infoproduct myth number five is coming tomorrow, same time same channel... as long as 10 of you leave comments below this post today.
