Recent Updates
Private Label Rights: 4,444% ROI
Private label rights means: you sell someone your product and give them permission to rename and repackage the book under their own name.
Here is why offering private label rights guarantees you will stay poor forever:
(Keep reading below to watch a SECOND video that shows how I ended up making $1200 from this venture in 24 hours... in other words, I made 44 times my money back!)
Go to eBay and search for "private label rights" or "master resale rights."
You will find all kinds of e-books and software that originally sold for $100... for under a dollar.
If you offer private label rights to your products, your hard work is going to end up in the eBay graveyard.
Here is what I did today:
8:46 AM: I saw a product for sale with private label rights and I bought it.
10:00 AM: I work a day job so during my mid-morning break, I quickly edited the Word document to change the e-book name. I also changed the name so I would appear as the author.
I ran into a roadblock... he provided layered graphics so I could easily change the name on them... but I didn't have the correct fonts installed on my system. I uploaded the files and went back to work.
11:30 AM: I got out of a meeting at work and took my lunch break. During that lunch break I found the CD with the fonts I needed, changed the graphics, setup the payment buttons, and sent a quick mailing to my list of 11,000 subscribers telling them about the product.
I should note that it took me years to get this list built up by releasing product after product. This is also a list that is very relevant to the product and therefore very interested in it.
Are you still building some generic incestuous list of internet marketing leads? Stop that now!
11:54 AM: The first sale rolls in as I eat the last of my re-heated macaroni and cheese (cooked it the night before... this ain't no crappy "boxed" stuff!). I hop in my car and drive the half mile down Monte Vista Avenue back to work to arrive right at noon.
That's It!
The rest of my work day consisted of working at my day job. I didn't do any other internet marketing work.
The Result:
A $27 investment on a private label rights product, in the morning, launched just before lunch and broke even before 12:30 PM.
By the time I checked that page after the end of the work day, I brought in 110 sales from a 12-cent dimesale which totals $732.60 (before fees)!
Where on Earth can you LEGALLY pay $27 and get $732.60 back in just a couple of hours?
I'm sitting on $700 profits for 20 minutes MAXIMUM of work on my part... I just made the equivalent of a week and a half of pay from my day job... during my coffee breaks!
Meanwhile, poor Jake has sold 8 copies at $27... which makes $216, minus $20 to run the WSO, minus whatever it cost him to write the sales copy and create the graphics... maybe he didn't break even.
Oh Well... Thanks for the Cash, Jake!
What lessons have we learned today, kiddies?
Lesson #1: Offering private label rights is a great way to devalue your product.
Lesson #2: If you can find someone dumb enough to offer private label rights for a product that happens to match your list PERFECTLY, grab it as soon as you can and put it up for sale that same day.
Lesson #3: You HAVE to do it that same day. By "put it up for sale" I mean the order link is live and you send a mailing out to your list. If you "wait" even one extra day, you won't feel like doing it anymore. I guarantee it.
You have to be faster than a speeding bullet when it comes to buying (and using) private label rights products... before someone beats you to it.
Can you please comment below and tell me if...
- You've offered private label rights in the past (and regretted it / didn't regret it)
- You've bought private label rights... did you forget to actually use them? How much money did you make?
You’re Fired!
Imagine for a second that you have a full-time employee working on your business. (Maybe you already have one.) I don't mean a pay-per-job kind of employee, I mean a salaried employee you pay every single month.
- You pay for this person's health insurance.
- You pay for sick and vacation days.
- You pay into their retirement account.
Their job is to build you a web presence and create new products and sites, write sales copy, buy advertising, and so on.
Despite all this, your employee frequently visits forums, checks e-mail, chats in instant messengers, and generally puts out products at a snail's pace... let's say 1 or 2 products per year when he could be producing one per month, easily.
Now that you've got that pictured in your head, tell me... are you that employee?
Do You Deserve To Be Fired From Your
Self-Employed Internet Marketing Job?
I am still following the daily video challenge and I hope you are too.
I recorded five videos instead of just one on Monday, to make up for my trip away from home at Disneyland... that was some nice downtime and recharged my batteries, by the way.
When I record a daily video:
- I make sure Camtasia is running, and that I have my headset on so I can talk about what I'm doing.
- I open up Notepad and write "Appointment with myself: Finish chapter 5 by 6:30 PM" (I set that to whatever the time is half an hour from now and whatever chapter I'm working on.)
- I set my alarm clock for 10 minutes -- use a kitchen timer or Cool Timer.
- I haul ass for ten minutes and stop immediately when it runs out, then explain what I'll be doing for the next ten minutes.
The above formula works wonders to keep me motivated.
Sometimes I'll start out and not feel like working, but within a couple of minutes I'll be in the exact mood I need to be in.
I recently discovered another hidden bonus about recording yourself at work: You have indisputable proof that you are working!
If you are one of those people trying to convince a spouse or family member that you are doing more than just clicking around on the Internet all day, give them access to the daily videos you are recording.
(Show them how to fast-forward to skip the boring parts.)
You can respond by saying, "Look, today I wrote 50 pages."
Or, "Today I wrote four sales letters."
If you didn't meet your goals, you can explain in the video, exactly why you didn't write that many pages or why you didn't make as much money as you wanted to that week.
Heck, it could also remind you what you were working on yesterday.
- Are you using a similar formula?
- Are you using video to document your work?
- Do you have some OTHER tip to keep yourself motivated so that you don't disappoint the people in your life?
- Should you really be fired from your self-employed job (or at least put on probation) and what will you do to make up for it?
Please comment below and let me know... I would really appreciate it.
Do You Watch Your Own Videos?
I'm five days into the Robert Plank Daily Video Challenge and using Camtasia I've recorded 6 how-to videos I'm going to use in an upcoming paid product, one video documenting a task and one video going over my progress for the day.
My formula is: try to record a video for a paid product, if I don't have time for that, keep the video rolling while I do something to improve my business... and don't stop the camera until I'm done. (This REALLY keeps me on task.) If that fails, open up Notepad and go over what I did that day. I plan for 5 minutes and that usually ends up taking 20 minutes.
Then, watch that video you just recorded from start to finish.
This is what professional actors and public speakers do to train themselves to actually look presentable.
You'd be surprised at how many people DON'T do this. Just look at how many chipmunk-infested Camtasia vids are floating around out there.
There Are People Out There Who Are Supposedly "Experts" at Video
Who Are Hard to Watch.
When you talk with your hands, it's distracting and you look like an idiot! There is absolutely NO REASON for you to use 2-3 different nervous hand gestures with every sentence.
When you talk for 2 minutes before you start to say anything new, you've lost my interest. Do you have a lame video with flashy graphics than says nothing but, "Welcome to my web site?" Get rid of it! If someone missed the first 2 minutes of your video, would it still make sense? Then start at that 2 minute point next time.
That's part of the reason why I said don't freely share the videos for this challenge. You see dumbasses on forums who record videos of themselves edited together with stock footage, and the video says NOTHING of value. They just post it all around in a pathetic attempt to bring in traffic.
When you do something in a video that could have been explained in text, you're stupid. That's why I use Camtasia so much, so I have something to show people other than my ugly mug.
Think about newscasters. They speak for a short time and then cut to a clip of what they were talking about. If you had the TV on mute the whole time, you could still figure out what was going on. At the very least, you would know to UNMUTE that segment.
Your videos are never going to be perfect so don't worry about that part.
Here is my mindset when I'm recording a video: "If I was doing this live at a seminar, would it still be acceptable?"
It's ok to record the video in just one take. It's ok to pause or screw up a sentence every now and then. But is your video so bad that it's cringeworthy?
The only way you're going to rise above that is by WATCHING those cringeworthy videos and then doing better next time.
I'm not saying I'm the best person in the world at recording videos, but I can tell you that watching my own videos has cured:
- A tendency to talk too fast. People told me they had to watch my videos multiple times to understand everything. Now my 10 minute videos are more like 30 to 45 minutes.
- Minor speech impediments. When I first started to record videos, I sounded out-of-breath. I mumbled, I slurred my words and sometimes stuttered. Now, I project my voice and always keep in mind to give people a chance to let what I just said sink in... all without thinking about it!
- Nervousness. Have you ever had one of those classes in school where the teacher always called on you and put you on the spot? At first it was really nerve-wracking, but by the end of that class you had a handle on it. The pauses I make in my videos are logical pauses, not nervous pauses. I also keep my hand off the mouse as much as possible so I'm not talking with my hands (in a Camtasia video sense).
Do you watch your own videos? If not, it shows.
Please, comment below and tell me if you watch your own videos.
If not... watch one of your own videos right now and tell me what you need to improve.
Daily Video Challenge
I added a small daily task to my schedule, starting yesterday, that I CHALLENGE you to try:
Record One Video Every Day
This is going to be a daily video diary for your business. (I recommend a Camtasia video, not a webcam video... but in some niches, Camtasia doesn't apply very well.)
Here are the rules:
Rule 1: I don't want you to show it to anyone other than yourself, just stick it in a folder somewhere. You can turn this into a paid product, or show it to ONE business associate but do not just give it to the general public for free.
Rule 2: I don't care what it's about as long as it relates to your business. Yesterday I spent 18 minutes explaining why February 2008 was my best month, passing up June 2007, and what things I did different than last year. You can record for 5 minutes or 30 minutes, but it has to be in one take.
Rule 3: If you end up showing it to someone else, it has to be a paid product. Membership video, DVD, one time product, whatever... just DON'T give it away as a blog post.
I was just thinking last night that recording videos is something I can't do consistently. I can write consistently because I have lots of practice, especially from posting in this blog. But videos... out of the 20+ infoproducts I have out there, 14 are video-based. Videos are my weakest skill at the moment.
Do you remember my three tips to fast infoproduct creation? Let's see how they stack up against the daily video challenge...
- It doesn't have to look good, just be good. That's the whole idea here. You spend 5 minutes creating the sloppiest video ever, because the video DOESN'T have to be that great and no one is going to see it.
- Get excited about your topic. You're choosing what to talk about so why not? I think that if you make enough videos on enough subjects, you will find something to talk about that you are excited about.
- Practice. You're recording a video EVERY DAY. This technique is practice... by definition. You'll establish good habits for yourself and in no time, videos will be a cinch for you to make.
Can you get to recording your video already? If you're worried about taking time out of your day, limit yourself to five minutes.
The video you record might end up being your next product.
The video could just be you going over your to-do list for the day... describing what you did and didn't accomplish. Maybe you'll watch it again 6 months from now and notice how your business has changed over time.
You might record yourself putting a product of yours to use... now you have an excellent how-to video to bundle with your product. You've just cut down on customer support requests.
Heck, I plan on doing a couple videos of nothing but me working on my project. What a great way to keep yourself on task!
If you know the cameras are rolling, do you think you'll get distracted and check e-mails, instant messages, and forums? Or do you think you'll actually focus on one single thing till it's done?
I thought so.
Please, leave a comment here and let me know if you accept this challenge. If you want to give me a little hint about what your first 5 minute video will be about... go for it... but you don't have to.
If you read through this whole post and DIDN'T comment, that tells me you're chickening out.
You're not a quitter... are you?
How to Break Into Any Niche Part 3: Virginal Markets
If you have spent even 3 weeks or less learning about Internet marketing, I'm sure you have heard about blogging, videos, squeeze pages, pop-ups, and autoresponders.
Everyone in internet marketing uses them. There's one problem with that: EVERYONE IN INTERNET MARKETING USES THEM. When you are in the internet marketing niche and use autoresponders, you are Superman and you are still stuck on the planet Krypton -- you're just like everyone else.
If you take all the internet marketing techniques you know into other niches, you become a guy who can fly around in the air while everyone else is stuck walking from place to place.
Say you are in the fly fishing niche. Everyone else is being non-imaginative and tossing up poorly made web pages with hundreds of articles and no call to action. Or placing AdSense on pages and not trying to make the site sticky with an autoresponder newsletter or with backend products or paid memberships
No one is making YouTube videos, displaying one time offers, or split testing. You will be the guy setting up joint ventures while everyone else is still trying webrings and link exchanges.
If you take what you know about internet marketing and apply it to a sleepy, underdeveloped niche, you will become Superman. You will kick ass.
Never sell to the "how to make money" niche. It is full of people with no money lying about how they made money, or people with no money wanting to make money.
If you have to do internet marketing, narrow it down. Internet marketing is too broad of a niche. That's like having "computers" or "computer programming" as your niche... it's too damn non-specific. Instead of internet marketing, focus on search engine optimization, or article marketing, or Web 2.0 promotion (Squidoo, StumbleUpon, MySpace) ... don't be the same as everyone else.
Don't be the same as ANYONE else, in fact.
Don't try to sell your niche stuff to internet marketers. If you are breaking into a new niche you have to start from scratch. The exception to this is if you want a jumpstart, create something that's NOT just an e-book -- a DVD or CD -- and sell resale rights to the internet marketers.
NEVER offer private label rights. In doing this you are creating more competition for yourself but you are getting your name out there.
Don't brag about or mention your extra-cirricular efforts to other internet marketers. If word gets around that your niche is lucrative and an easy target you could get some fellow Supermen trying to take away some of your action.
This is why some hardcore niche marketers will use a fake name, register a totally new business name and host their sites on a separate server with WHOIS protection to keep their real identity secret.
I don't do the fake name stuff with my PHP niche because I am just outside of the internet marketing niche. My niche is where PHP and internet marketing overlap. I teach site builders how to write PHP scripts. So I am not teaching something as advanced as the techie people who want to learn programming as a career, but slightly more advanced than people watching WordPress videos or learning Flash and HTML.
My competition consists either of rockstar programmers who know a lot but can't or won't teach it to dummies, and have more fun talking about XML processing or RAID arrays instead of the easy stuff I teach. I also have competition who are internet marketers but not rockstar programmers, who pass along little tips but don't understand PHP enough to write their own code. They only know how to pass along other peoples' stuff.
To sum breaking into virginal markets using your existing IM skills:
- Be unique.
- Get into a niche that you know like the back of your hand.
- Stay away from the how to make money niche.
- Use your internet marketing skills to outperform everyone else in non-IM niches.
- Don't talk about your efforts with internet marketers.
- Know exactly what kind of people you are selling to.
- Know exactly who your competition is and what kinds products and web sites they have.
Once you've got that site setup, use:
- The 5 Minute Article method to get an infoproduct developed quickly in a couple of hours.
- Fast Food Copywriting to put together sales letters quickly.
- PaySensor to handle PayPal payments and deliver products to customers via email.
- Action PopUp to gather leads and stick them into a mailing list like ListMail or Aweber.
- JV Plus along with a system like Clickbank to turn competitors into your affiliates.
- Sales Page Tactics to increase your conversion rates even more.
My question to you is:
What is your best tip to establish yourself in a new niche?
Remove Chipmunks from Camtasia Videos
Eugene Humbert, cool guy that he is, sent me an e-mail the other day letting me know that my Camtasia videos were producing weird "chipmunk" sounds.
This only happens with recent (version 9) versions of the Adobe Flash player. There's an easy solution:
Download the Camtasia Audio Bug Fix.
(The zip file is located at the bottom of that page.)
TechSmith solved this in Camtasia 5.02.... but I still use Camtasia 4 because I want my videos to look the same. By the way, this is ADOBE's fault and not Camtasia's.
The cool thing about this tool is, you can drag a whole FOLDER containing your SWF files, and the tool will find the SWF files even if they are buried deep inside other folders.
Last night, I de-chipmunked 14 video products. It didn't take that long at all because I used the above method.If you want the technical explanation of why this had to be done, Flash 9 can't properly play MP3 in SWF files that is encoded at a non-standard bitrate (it only understands bitrates that are a multiple of 11.025 Hz). The audio fixer quickly re-encodes the MP3 audio stream in your Flash file.
Why was all this extra work for me a good thing? It enabled me to finish adding affiliate programs to ALL my infoproducts.
All my products now have the affiliate subdomain trick built-in, as well as solo ads, an affiliate page for quick copy and pasting, and a call-to-action in the final chapter explaining to readers how to join the affiliate program for the product.
Heck, I've even JV Plus enabled all those products on this blog.
Before I encountered this chipmunk emergency, I was lazily working away, putting up maybe 3 or 4 affiliate pages per day. That was a task that I told myself I'd finish FIRST before anything else. So, I had to hurry up and finish all the solo ads before I could begin de-chipmunking.
I whipped out Microsoft Excel, copy and pasted all the product links on this blog's sidebar, then made a column for each thing I had to do for the site (write the solo ad, link to the affiliate page, setup an upsell, write the call-to-action, update the PDF file, de-chipmunk) and I just plowed through it. Because I had to.
So, don't forget to de-chipmunk your Camtasia videos if you haven't already.
Steven, What the F???
How the heck do you get a business partner motivated?
There is this guy, Steven Schwartzman. I have been working on internet marketing stuff for years... but... he can't freaking get a product launched to save his life!
My first contact with him was in 2003. I spent a week writing a PHP script for him, he paid me $650 for the job, it was all done and ready to sell. I even thought up a cool name for it. (HyperSplitter.)
We both made money, right? Wrong. In 2004... I get a message from him saying he needed some bug fixes. He waited so long to launch the product that some of PHP's changes broke the script.
I made the changes... then in 2005, I get a call from someone else saying, "Check out this web site... Hypersplitter.com. The script isn't for sale but I want you to look at the features on that site and clone the script. I would have bought resale rights but he isn't offering those either." I'm not even making that up... I really did get that phone call from Jaime Ojeda!
I think Steven eventually launched it but it only made a few hundred dollars. No big deal except it took him YEARS to launch it. Come on, Steven!!!
The guy is a great copywriter and he comes up with really great ideas for products. But he can't follow through! Everything he makes is half finished.
When I visited him last August he was working on a membership site. The last thing I said to him in person before getting on a plane and flying 3,000 miles back home was, "Promise me you'll have that product launched by the time I get back." It still hasn't been launched!
He does great when he's working for other people (writing copy and headlines) but for his OWN stuff... he just can't do it. He was supposed to write a report and registered a GREAT domain for it, but waited so long... that the domain expired... and copywriting legend HARLAN KILSTEIN snatched it up!
It was for that reason that I mentioned in Fast Food Copywriting about Mark Joyner's policy to never use the word "wait." You shouldn't be "waiting" on anything... ever.
Do everything you can right now. Focus on one thing and get it launched.
Steven had to study to take the LSATs for law school, he was sick for a while, he took a family trip to India and another to Portugal... okay, that's all behind you, it's time to get to work. Steven, can you launch just ONE product by the end of the week?
Come on dude. You come up with the BEST ideas I have even seen. If you just put products out consistently, you could be more popular than Brausch.
I'm sorry if I seem like a jerk here, or too nosy, but I want you to do well. All you need to do is keep posting special offers, keep building a list, and only work on things that will make you money. Not spending days helping someone else put up a web site for free.
Looking at my launch calendar over the past several years, I noticed that in 2006 I was lucky to even post one WSO. These days I feel guilty for going more than 5 days without posting one or sending a mailing out to my list.
Can you do one thing every day?
Please, give Steven some advice on staying motivated.
He NEEDS to get his ass in gear.
How to Reduce Refunds
Ben Prater is a guy I have never exchanged words with, unfortunately. He is an expert Internet marketer and has a way of reducing refunds that is pretty damn effective.
He is similar to me because he sells infoproducts in the "make your own software" niche, but he focuses more on the managerial, engineering part of that niche than I do. I am a do-it-yourselfer, he is an idea guy.
I'll never forget his best product… called,
"Software Secrets Exposed."
His sales letter sells you the story of what you can do with his book – his friend at Microsoft who worked in a high tech office and went to the Ferrari factory himself to make sure they painted his six-figure car the exact shade of purple he wanted.
I bought his book in 2003, before a lot of people had thought to direct sales into autoresponders or even save those leads at all. But Ben had thought of that.
You buy from him and you are automatically added to a follow-up series that sends you an automated, personalized message every few days.
When you first purchased, you got the book. After 7 days he sent a 30-page bonus report with a sample blueprint (just like the ones he talks about how to make in his original book).
He sent out more bonus reports after 14, 30, 45, and 60 day periods. They were either bonus chapters that wouldn't have fit anywhere in the book, or interviews with others – which are even easier to make than reports!
He didn't always simply give away the bonus materials… sometimes he asked for something in return.
For example, in one follow-up he offered a report on a related subject – but to get the report, you needed to provide a testimonial for his original "Software Secrets Exposed" e-book. Look at that sales page, it overflows with glowing testimonials!
If you can spread out the bonus items like he does, you will cut down on refunds because those people who refund immediately won't get the bonus items. If you can string them along for long enough, they might pass up the refund period!
When information is cut up into pieces it has a greater "thud" factor. Five twenty page reports all with their own sales letters have a higher value than a big 100 page book, even if contains the exact same information.
Spreading that information out over time gives it even MORE value, because your customer is more likely to read the information given to them in pieces than trying to sift through a huge pile of stuff the day they purchase.
I'll admit, I don't have a follow-up series for every product -- that would take time away from creating new products -- but every now and then I choose one product randomly and spend a minute or two writing a follow-up for it.
It doesn't have to be anything super valuable. You could:
- Remind them to download the product. (7-day followup)
- Ask what they thought of the product... which you can then use as a testimonial. (14-day followup)
- Offer an affiliate link and a solo ad they can copy and paste and send to their list. (30-day followup)
- Send a special discount link to another one of your related products. (45-day followup)
- Give them a surprise bonus report. (60-day followup)
That's how you reduce refunds. Advertise these items in the sales letter as a 7-day bonus, 14-day bonus, and so on.
On a forum I called this strategy:
"Turning a one-time product into a short-term membership site."
If you give a refund, immediately zap them from the update list and block their IP address from your site.
Recently, I paid through the nose for the rights to Software Secrets Exposed, setup a web site and an affiliate program, and added the bonus reports as autoresponder follow-ups just like Ben did.
Do you have any advice on how to reduce refunds? I don't mean legal issues like disputing transactions with PayPal, but ways to turn refunds into a good thing. (In this case adding more long-term value to a product.)
JV Plus
Wow. I just stayed up all night creating a product, debugging it, writing the instruction manual for it, making the sales copy, and setting up the payment process.
The product I just made is called JV Plus. It allows you to turn ANY site (even this blog) into an affiliate program... cool, right?
Try it out. Just take ANY page on this site... for example:
http://www.robertplank.com/jv-plus
And stick your Clickbank ID in the "www"... for example...
http://stevenss.robertplank.com/jv-plus
Now you get credit for the sale of ANY of my Clickbank enabled-products I link to from my site! (Almost half of my products are on Clickbank.)
This script drops right in to any site... it doesn't matter what kind of site it is. I've never seen anything like this script before... that's why I made it!
You can check out the product here:
http://www.JVPlus.com
Okay, it's contest time. I deliberately violated one of the copywriting rules in Fast Food Copywriting on the JV Plus sales page... can you figure out what it is?
Winner Announced: Mark Squance guessed that the "big mistake" I made on that page was having a video longer than 2 minutes. He won a free copy of JV Plus plus $20 sent to his PayPal account.
