Recent Updates
Seven Cruel Myths that Keep You Product-Less!
Bottom line. You need to have at least one product, preferably five, in any given niche. I would prefer ten but let's not get carried away.
Even if you're an affiliate promoter... guess what, you have a bribe to get people to opt-in or even a bonus if people buy from your link: info-product.
If you are strictly a freelancer... the best possible way to get lots of people banging down your door to pay you money for services is to publish a product to PROVE you know what you're talking about: info-product.
If you're a public speaker it's just about REQUIRED that you have some kind of book before presenting on stage.
And even if you already have a product, or a few... more can't hurt, can they?
So allow me to share with you the first myth that keeps you without a product, so you and I can overcome it.
Myth #7: You Need To Be Authoritative In That Niche To Have A Book
False. Dr. Phil (a 245 pound overweight man) sells weight loss products. Kim Cattrall (from Sex and the City) wrote a book on how to have endless orgasms and then divorced her husband because he wanted too much sex. Take your pick. You don't have to prove you can do something, or even that you follow that advice, only that you can get others to follow that advice.
I have a problem with personal and group coaching if you aren't the expert, but when that situation comes up, you can interview guest experts to host webinars for you or even write your book for you. Plenty of people use pen names or partner with real experts in a niche.
Want infoproduct creation myth number six? Great... all you need to do is leave a comment below telling me you want it... do that right now. I need 10 people to tell me they want it.
Three Instant Product Improvements So You Can Double Your Prices Before Dinnertime
Today I'm asking you why the heck is your product (if you even have one) so freaking identical to everyone else's?
To be honest, most people think all they have to do to create a product is write some stuff in Microsoft Word, save as a PDF, and setup the thank you page and sales letter.
And guess what... they're right!
The good and bad news... most people stop there. Let's just say that's good news because when you put a tiny bit more effort into your product, you can rise above the rest of the crowd.
The first thing you can do is add a pre-sell funnel. All you need to do is write a couple of articles based on the content of your e-book. Flip to three random pages of that 10 or 20 page manual, think about what it describes, and write that thing it describes as a question. Then answer it... there's your article.
If writing an article is hard for you, then pay somebody $10 per article to write a question that answers it. Do that four times and you're only out 40 dollars.
Or even better, buy private label rights that allows you to turn the information into a free e-course (only if it's stated in the license) and setup your follow-up sequence in just a few minutes.
Don't even overthink it. Create a four-part follow-up sequence in Aweber, plus one additional follow-up asking people why they haven't purchased. Create a quick PDF report using EzineArticles. Use that PDF as a bribe to get people to opt-in on a squeeze page.
That way even if they don't purchase immediately, you can keep following up with them, automatically.
Speaking of private label rights, something else I do if I feel worried about getting sales... is buy a private label rights product in my niche, and tack it onto the offer as a bonus. (We even discussed this in the PLR Copywriting class last night.) Bam, you've just doubled the value of your product.
Now get this. The easiest, fastest, and CHEAPEST way to enhance your product's value is to hold a webinar. I tried launching an e-class ONLY on webinars a few months ago, but the launch bombed.
Do you want to know why? Because most people are CHICKEN about hosting their own webinars!
But the funny thing is, those people that actually overcame their fears and did it, admitted that once that actually tried it, it wasn't that hard. And using the proper shortcuts, these people became affluent in webinar hosting in just a few short weeks... when otherwise it could have taken months or years.
You simply can't argue with 50 products created in 28 days... especially when 11 of those were made on the same day!
I'm thinking about hosting a new product creation class. With all the products I've launched, plus the fact that I've co-hosted a product creation class before, and even spoken about the subject live, makes me more qualified to teach it than just about anyone else.
Add to that the fact that my webinars get people to actually go out and DO stuff, and you quickly realize there's no one else who can teach you and make you do it like I can.
Would you guys have any interest in taking a product creation class from me? Even if you've already created products, just to pick up the shortcuts (especially those I've picked up in the last six months), absorb new confidence and skills (like making webinars), and being accountable to take action and finally get that product out there?
Comment below with "yes" or "no"... "yes" meaning you'd join an 8-week product creation class if I offered it.
As your reward, I'll redirect you to a signup page where you can get on a free live webinar with me on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 to find out how to make a product a day...
Traffic Bad Boys
Traffic Bad Boys is a site Jason Fladlien and I launched during the first week of our PLR Copywriting class -- DURING the end of the first class. It was pretty crazy, we showed our students how fast and easy it is to build a site consisting of private label rights material.
I don't usually read what other people say about me. But I just read a bad review about Traffic Bad Boys, actually a bunch of bad reviews written by just one guy. And I'm smiling and laughing about it. You know why? Because the only bad things he had to say about it were:
1. I was banned from YouTube, so I "must" be bad. (Not a good assumption.)
2. Someone blogged about me a couple years ago calling me the next Mike Filsaime in a good way, that reviewer found it and tried to spin that as a bad thing.
3. The Traffic Bad Boys site contains master resale rights material, so it must be bad. (False... in the AM2.0 Platinum Google group full of $100K+ earners we recommend master resale rights products all the time.)
For that class, we took 7 products we had rights to, cut them up into pieces and dripped them out onto a membership site for 7 dollars a month.
The reviewer joined for one day, couldn't wait for the rest of the month or even the rest of the week, cancelled immediately and wrote a bad review about us... even though all he had to base it on was the first 20 pages of the material.
So What Does This All REALLY Mean?
It means you need a $7 product for two reasons: to get people on your list, and to get people OFF your list.
You can't always land a $97 or $497 or $997 sale immediately, you have to build trust. Get them to say yes to something small and then build them up with upsells.
But when you price so low you're also attracting bad buyers... it's a fact of life. When those people cancel, you can't take it personally, it's just part of the weeding out process.
You need to weed out those people complaining about having to pay an entire dollar for each product, complaining about having to wait for the rest of the material when they haven't even read what they already have.
(It would be stupid to put your best stuff into your free products and $7 products... save that for your high-end stuff.)
You can't pack the member's area with more stuff because then people will join and complain about being overwhelmed... been there, bought the t-shirt with the Daily Seminar membership.
The Solution!
If you're offering a $7 per month membership site, put $7 of content into it every month... no more, no less. (That's exactly what we did.) That sounds like common sense, but far too many people take bad customers personally and overcompensate.
If you were selling everything in that first month for a one time $7 payment, you would value-stack so that the information was already worth at least $50 or $100. There's no need to further bloat that up to $200 or $300 of value every month just because it's recurring.
Your information and your advice needs to be expensive so people will take it seriously. That's the real lesson you should take away from what happened with Traffic Bad Boys.
Do you find when you price higher you deal with better customers, yes or yes? Leave me a comment below to share your thoughts with me.
Here’s What You Get in a Robert Plank Webinar Series…
Nothing for sale today. If you're on my list you saw the PLR Copywriting 4-week e-course Jason and I are running.
I'm going to give you a peek at what happened inside the member's area at the end of the first class, just so you can see what happens when you combine proven step-by-step solutions with CHALLENGES (instead of homework) with accountability... the productivity level reaches a kind of critical mass:
Question: What was your favorite webinar series and why? What would you want to see on the inside if I offered a HUGE webinar course for you guys? Answer in the form of a blog comment below. I appreciate it.
Aftermath from the Action Seminar
Hey guys, I'm finally back from the Action Seminar which I co-hosted with Mary Wilhite and Jason Fladlien. It's been a long week. After hosting that event in Dallas for two days I hopped on a plane directly to Chicago for three days at the AM2 Platinum retreat.
The first day of the Action Seminar was pretty fun... Jason and I both spoke twice, Mary Wilhite spoke, Marc Harty and Jeanette Cates spoke.
The second day was an all-day mastermind session. It was pretty cool when Jason dictated copy to David Burch (one of our old students). At one point we created a free report, squeeze page, and thank you page for Roderick Martin -- including a Flip video of him thanking people for opting in and asking to call his phone number for a free consultation.
Yes, we even uploaded that Flip video to YouTube right in front of everyone and watermarked it. It was pretty cool.
But the rest of the crowd didn't have anything specific to ask. They'd spend 5 to 10 minutes explaining every little detail of their business, and then ask, "What now?" Which was annoying, especially when Jason and I are internet marketers.
We spoke about product creation, time management, passion marketing, video creation, and e-mail marketing so why ask something completely unrelated to those things? I'd rather people asked questions in areas where we were experts so we didn't have to guess. I'm good (probably one of the best) at fast infoproduct creation, fast PHP programming, fast copywriting.
But offline marketing? I won't touch it. Nothing wrong with that... it's just not my area of expertise.
Anyway, that's me catching up. Do you ask ten cent questions or thousand dollar questions? Comment below and hit the submit button within the next 5 minutes.
Three Ways To Double Your Internet Income
Guest blog post by Jason Parker
Hello readers of Robert Plank. A little bit about me... I'm a pro internet marketer with my own LLC and I also work behind the scenes for a multi-million dollar IM information empire.
Since I'm well-connected with some of the richest internet marketers online, I hear about new tactics almost every week, and about future tactics before they're even revealed. For example, I knew the ins-and-outs of micro continuity last year, and now Russell Brunson is exposing it to the world. I knew about CPV advertising through Zango before it was even semi-exposed (now Zango is shutting down, and the honey hole is about to be gone).
My point is, in my environment I get to test the effects of marketing tactics all day. Through this process I've come up a set of bread-and-butter tactics that can blow your income through the roof. If you want to double your income, implementing just 1 of these 3 ways can make that happen for you.
Double Your Income Way #1:
Swap JV Contact Info
Perhaps the most powerful tactic I've ever used to explode my income is dead simple and makes you think, “Why didn't I think of that?†The secret I'm talking about is swapping JV contact info.
Step #1: You go to your Top 5 joint venture partners and say, “I'll give you the names and e-mail addresses of my Top 4 JV partners if you give me the names and e-mail addresses of your Top 4 JV partners. Also, I'll e-mail each of my JV partners and give an endorsement for you by saying you and I have successfully made money together in the past, while you do the same for me.â€
Step #2: You set up JV deals with your 20 new JV partners. Some ideas are to... Do ad swaps, which means you send an e-mail with a naked link to your list for them, and they do the same for you. Or you can cross promo your products using affiliate links. Or you can even set up a webinar or call, split the cash from the pitch at the end, and make some serious loot. The beauty of JV deals is that you're getting free, endorsed traffic to your website, and that's one of the most profitable types of traffic you can get.
Step #3: After the successful JV deal, you go back to Step #1, except this time you trade JV contact information with your 20 new JV partners. Let's say you trade your Top 5 JV partner contact info for their Top 5s. Now you have 100 new JV partners.
Keep in mind you may not have exactly 20 or 100 new JV partners, because you'll find you'll start penetrating different internet marketing circles and you'll be reaching the same people. For example, you might break into ClickBank Circle A, then CPA Marketers Circle A, then ClickBank Circle B, then PPC Affiliate Circle A. Instead of staying in the same circle of JV partners, this tactic allows you to join multiple circles, and potentially you'll start reaching the “Guru†circles. What you'll mainly find, however, are circles of mid-level marketers who are making $3,000-$15,000 per month who have lists between 5,000-20,000 or another big resource to leverage like a high traffic authority site.
Double Your Income Way #2:
Hands-Off Multiple Streams Of Traffic
I work for a company that makes 1 sale every 3 minutes online, and this is how they do it. We get traffic from a lot of quality sources... SEs (Organic), Articles, Press Releases, Joint Venture Traffic, PPC, CPA, CPV, Video Traffic, Podcast Traffic, Twitter Traffic, Facebook Traffic, Forum Traffic, Social Bookmarking Traffic, MySpace Traffic, Ezine Solo Ad Traffic, Offline Ad Space Traffic. That's what I call multiple streams of traffic!
Can you imagine what it would be like trying to get traffic from all these sources everyday? Exausting and time consuming. To tell you the truth, we are getting this traffic in an almost completely hands-off way. And the secret is this... You open up a new source of traffic and you get it going until it's profitable, then you hand it off through outsourcing. The same person who handles your PPC, may also handle your CPV and CPA since they're all 3 very mathematical. The person or company that handles your SEO, might also do your articles, videos, and podcast because they're similar and work together. The person who builds your Twitter following, also does your other social media marketing.
Double Your Income Way #3:
Consistent Traffic To High Quality And High Converting Continuity Program
Once you have a continuity program that's both quality and converts high for your clients or the type of prospects you attract, then it's a good idea to funnel 100 or more hits to that program every day. This can also be your own continuity program or a recurring commission affiliate program. If you have a content website that gets a lot of traffic already from quality sources, then you might be OK putting a banner for the continuity program on your site. (Are you promoting a one-time sale product right now? Why would you promote a product on your website to get only one-time sales when you can get 2-4 low-end sales out of the same customer and still funnel them into the high end stuff?) If you're primarily an e-mail marketer like me who doesn't have an authority site and relies on 100-1000 hits of quality traffic per day, then you can promote the continuity program in a lot of different places in order to drive consistent traffic to it.
Place #1: A Banner Ad On Your Opt-In Thank You Page. This is where I drive a lot of daily traffic to a continuity program. Not only does this build paid subscriptions, but I find that the banner alone makes me profit on the frontend for whatever advertising I'm doing. If you're constantly building your list, then you should be able to send 50-250 hits per day to the continuity program.
Place #2: Global Fields P.S. In your Global Fields for any autoresponder, you can place a signature that's automatically shown when you blast an e-mail. I have 2 P.S.s The 1st P.S. invites my subscribers to reply to my e-mails so we can build a relationship. The 2nd P.S. is where I drive 25-100 hits per day to the continuity program.
Place #3: Forum Ads. You can buy ad space above the fold on a related forum, rent out the signature file of a member on a forum who has a lot of posts, or if you sell to internet marketers, then you can buy Warrior Forum Classified ads. Using these tactics you can expect to drive another 50-250 hits per day to the continuity program.
Let's say you use all of these tactics and the continuity program pays $48.50 per subscriber per month. For you it's converting at 2% since the continuity program has a 30 day trail period. If you can send 125-600 hits per day into that continuity program from these quality sources above, then you can expect to add 2-12 subscribers per day. If you add 2 subscribers per day for 30 days, then you just potentially created a recurring $1,455 per month income stream. If you add 6-12 subscribers per day, then you'll potentially create a $4,365-$8,730 income stream every 30 days.
Reality... Add in average retention rate. About half of those who pay the 1st month are likely to pay for 4 months in a row. Subtract pending commission due to bounced charges. Subtract those who cancel during trial period (very few do if the continuity program is high quality). Add in your new subscribers with the ones you've retained. And that's how much money you're making from the continuity program each month.
Have you used any of these techniques? If not, what's the ONE technique Jason got you to add to your bottom line? Leave a comment with your name below right now.
The Proper Way to Send Autoresponder Followups
As an autoresponder email marketer, you need to realize that your readers' inboxes are pounded with offers and content every day, so you need to do something different to stand out from the crowd.
Send short follow-ups instead of long e-mails. If you rely on one single e-mail to pitch a product, you have to understand that many people will lose your e-mail in the clutter, or won't be bothered to actually read the e-mail.
For this reason, you need to break your messages into tiny pieces. I prefer 100 to 400 words for e-mails... anything more than a few pages is too much. Instead of one long e-mail explaining your entire offer, schedule one e-mail that warms up your list.
Schedule another to send out the next day explaining the offer in one page or less. The next message can hit on benefits you missed the first time. In the next message, hit on the technical details... and in the mailing after that, ask: Why have you still not bought? You can get really creative.
Finally, take a second to think about your email subject lines. These are your headlines. Try to come up with something creative and relevant, rather than something overly boring or hype-filled. What e-mail subject lines have grabbed your attention recently? What about headlines on a sales letter or text on a newspaper ad? Model your subject lines after those headlines.
Those are my main tips to properly market to people using an autoresponder: Sublist with each product, and send short, to the point e-mails with clever headlines. With just a little bit of creativity, you can have an awesome autoresponder that converts like crazy and performs better than 98% of the other marketers out there.
Time Management on Crack 2.0
I wrote a little bit this past weekend. I got so excited about the talk I'm going to give at the Action Seminar on MAY 29th about balancing your day job with internet marketing and manufacturing your next video product line... that I updated my Time Management on Crack report.
It would be bragging to tell you Jeanette Cates, Marlon Sanders, Mike Paetzold, David Deutsch, David Risley... plus 494 other smart people paid me money to get access to the information in that package. (My high school graduating class was smaller than that!) Did they invest to get access to my four levels of productivity, or to get access to my 13 unique systems for writing articles, making videos, writing sales letters, creating products and getting traffic?
Maybe they joined for the bonuses like the video that showed me writing a sales letter in one hour with no edits, or the bonus video that explained 17 additional "Motivationality" milestones, or even the bonus BONUS 90-minute "Take Massive Action" webinar recording... who knows?
Whatever the reason, I've edited the book to add 10 additional procedures on everything from screen capture video recording, article videos, talking head flip camera videos, webinar production, getting a virtual assistant, building your "brand" including a USP and a blog... the stuff that you not only need to know, but repeat enough so that it's INTUITIVE so that in the future all you really need to do is flip to that page and follow the step-by-step procedure to accomplish that task.
The book was 10,000 words long. I went in and removed about 3,000 words, then wrote 13,000 more words to cover all 23 procedures. Now it's exactly 20,000 words... not 19,997 or 20,003... twenty thousand words, I guess I'm weird like that.
Big Problem: I haven't released it yet. I need 10 honest reviews I can use before I release it to you guys (people who already bought get the update for free since I provide 750 days of updates). And then version 2.0 is yours.
If you haven't bought Time Management on Crack yet, get it. If you have it, please leave a comment below telling me:
- What one thing is taught you about time management that you didn't already know.
- What is reminded you about time management that you knew but forgot.
- What you're going to do in the next 7 days now that you have this information.
- Your name, your URL, and your picture.
Comment below with those 4 items, list it in that numbered format so I know you hit on all four elements, and answer questions 1-3 in complete sentences (you only need one or two sentences). Once I get that from ten of you, everyone who bought will get the updated report.
On your mark, get set, GO!!!
Internet Marketing Time Management
When I was working at a day job, I probably only had 1 to 3 hours to put into my business each day, so I crammed in whatever I could every day.
Now that I have a lot more time to put into this, I categorize each day of the week to PRIMARILY complete a certain task... I picked up this tip years ago from a report written by Willie Crawford.
Here is what I do during the week. I'm always improving my systems so you won't always see this formula but here is what I plan for...
Monday: Writing Day. Write all e-mails to be sent out the rest of the week. I tend to launch (or relaunch) one new product a week, so all I need to do is think about four things to mention about what I'm launching (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and write those as four quick e-mails.
E-mail marketing is always quantity over quality anyway, so why not send short and to-the-point e-mails that blend content and sales (which makes it okay to end each daily tip with a pitch). If I'm feeling nice, I might hit them four days of the week with regular e-mails and then a blog post on the fifth day.
But the point is, I get all my e-mails queued up one day so I don't have to worry about sending e-mails the rest of the week.
Tuesday: Customer Service Day. Here is where I knock out all the refund requests, lost download links, and so on. I answer customer service a little bit each day but I get so much, if I answered customer service first thing every day, I wouldn't get anything done.
Right now, the majority of my support requests come from Action PopUp, which is silly because if people read the instructions and tried things like disabling other plugins temporarily, making sure all files were uploaded, and testing the plugin on the default theme, it would eliminate 90% of all problems.
But people still need my help and I'm happy to help them. Tuesday is where I clear out customer support so that I'm about 24 hours behind instead of my usual average of 3 days.
Wednesday: Webinar with Jason. Without webinars, Jason and I could not have had several back to back $30K months. I'll be honest, our latest webinar didn't sell out as well as I thought as it would and I fell to $21,000 in April. But I've still made roughly $110K in the first four months of 2009.
We run the rolling four week webinar model. We have a big launch and create a four week e-class on a topic... anything from video selling to product creation... have a 90-minute webinar once a week and fill in stuff in a private blog in between. At the end of week number four, we sell them on the NEXT four week webinar.
It's a great model and I can actually get customers to do things they wouldn't do if they bought a stupid e-book from me. During the day I add content to that blog for the week, then at night I co-host the webinar. Right now we're smack dab in the middle of Webinar Crusher.
Thursday: Webinar with Lance. Since the April dip I decided to get a second e-class going to target a whole other crowd of buyers... Lance's new-school low ticket buyers who appreciate a good funnel. Same rolling four-week model. Right now we're hosting the Blog Invasion System.
Friday: Product Creation Day. I keep pushing so that if I want to create a product, I do it in a day... or at least a weekend. On Friday I'll either write a report, or knock out a bunch of PHP scripts or WordPress plugins. If I'm on a roll this will usually carry over into the weekend.
The weekend is usually a mix, but I definitely ignore most e-mails until the weekend is over. I definitely spend a lot of time away from the compuer on the weekends but I make sure to put at least 5-10 minutes in.
There you have it, my day-to-day system...
- Monday: Writing Day
- Tuesday: Customer Service Day
- Wednesday: Jason Webinar
- Thursday: Lance Webinar
- Friday: Product Creation Day
What's your daily system? Do you even have one? If not, post a comment below and make one up. I need 11 comments and 11 tweets to this post if you want me to keep adding to this blog...
