Recent Updates
Clickbank Allows You to Sell Physical Products
The other day I was on Clickbank requesting a price increase for my account. (So I can charge more for products.) Guess what? I discovered how you can sell physical products with Clickbank!
As you might know, Clickbank is a payment processor that you can use to handle payments. As far as I am concerned, PayPal is #1 and Clickbank #2. With PayPal you get paid instantly, but with Clickbank, you have access to 100,000+ affiliates to promote your stuff.
Clickbank handles all the affiliate payments and everything, and heck -- they even added support for recurring billing this year (membership sites) and an IPN so you can integrate it with a script.
The only problem? Clickbank only wants you to sell digital products. This is because they have a pretty buyer-centric refund policy and don't want to be like PayPal where it is a big issue to get the physical product back.
So with Clickbank you can have a membership site with affiliates, but no physical product delivery -- like Jim Edwards did with The Net Reporter. ($77 per month and in addition to access to the membership site, he mailed you a physical DVD video every month.)
Here's the loophole for selling physical products with Clickbank... I noticed the following in Clickbank's terms of service:
You may also offer shipped delivery of printed media (books, CD's, and DVD's) as a courtesy to qualified customers (e.g., US and Canada only), provided the shipped media is clearly complementary and not essential to the operation of the originally downloaded digital product.
After having a Clickbank account for 6 years, I never noticed that. What you have to do is provide your members with a hybrid delivery. (Coined by John Reese.) When someone buys this physical product from you, provide 100% of the content in downloadable form -- for instant gratification -- then ship the physical materials as bonuses, for added value.
That's what you should be doing with physical products in the first place and that's what I recommended to Steven Schwartzman when he was disappointed about the Five Minute Articles WSO. Sales picked up after he added the hybrid product delivery.
I am really resisting the push into physical products. I am looking at a gigantic map of how my upsells connect to one another (drawn in Visio). There are about 60 products in that map... not all of them are connected.
I showed that map to Steven Schwartzman and this is what he had to say:
In regards to the image...WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have nothing else to say about that except wow. It's amazing to see how many products you have when it's displayed like that. You can create a course on making those maps.
I recently recorded 4.5 hours of Camtasia PowerPoints for Software Secrets Exposed. This means now, not only do I offer the book, I also offer six 45 minute videos and six audio CDs.
The audio CDs are just the audio from the videos but it means you can burn them and listen to them in your car or whatever.
Should I have released this as a physical product?
- Maybe set the price low at $17 just for the PDF.
- They click to order, and have the chance to get just the audios at $37.
- They click to order, and have the chance to get the audios plus the videos for $47.
- They click to order, and have the chance to get the package for $97 as a set of 3 DVDs plus 6 audio CDs mailed to them.
There are some really good fulfillment services like SwiftCD where all the shipping info is grabbed from PayPal, but yet another drawback is getting my customers on my follow-up list as well for updates.
Could you please comment below and let me know if I should have released this update as a physical product? Have you yourself released a physical product?
Is it even worth the hassle dealing with the shipping problems and refunds... especially since with Clickbank, you can't get those physical items back?
Behind Schedule
I've been so behind schedule ever since I came back from the Warrior Event seminar in Austin. I have a ton of blog posts outlining a bunch of the stuff I learned... just be patient.
I've "only" put together 8 1/2 sales letters and recorded two e-classes. An e-class with me is approximately 30 daily episodes, each episode is about five minutes.
I make it a point to handle a finite number of projects at one time. Absolute maximum is four. The number I want is one. I usually end up working on about two projects at a time.
The problem when you promote stuff as an affiliate: you are the same as everyone else!
Why not add some of your own stuff as a bonus -- check out script number 7 of Top Secret PHP to learn how to modify OTHER people's pages and add your own affiliate bonuses.
I bought Kevin Riley's Recipe for Post Product Launch and was so impressed with it, I put together a PowerPoint presentation and recorded a Camtasia video of me dictating it.
When you buy that product through my affiliate link, I add you to an autoresponder and send you another five minute episode every day for a month.
It appears as if I'm putting 20-30 minutes a day into the class, recording the video, uploading it, sending out the e-mail message... when really, I recorded all the videos in a couple of hours and wrote all the daily follow-up messages in under an hour.
Think about recording PowerPoint videos the next time you promote an affiliate product.
People hate work and like having things laid out for them. It's easier to watch a little bit of video every day then try to crack a book... that's too much like school... yuck, I'm having nightmares already!
Just make a separate slide for each page to keep things simple. Make three bullet points for each slide summarizing the main points. Print out the entire book out on your printer.
Record your video and read the text word for word. When you have something of your own to add, just wing it.
When you're done with each page, pause the recording and see how long you've recorded. If you're close to five minutes, save the video and start a new one.
Why five minutes? Because Camtasia allows you to save to MP3 audio and those will be your CD tracks.
That's right, you just added even MORE value to your own customized affiliate product because you have the daily videos people can watch every day... and you've given them audios so they can burn them to a CD or to their iPod.
I've done this with one affiliate product and one product I bought rights to.
You could produce the video into a DVD as well if you felt like it.
I know many of you are resisting me here. But think about this... don't you want to be considered an expert in your niche? Every time you see someone speak on stage at a seminar... either live or when you watch it on a DVD... do you wish that was you presenting?
There is also that added bonus that after you read an entire book allowed, you become an expert on that subject. You know it backwards and forwards. If someone asks about a subtopic in that book, you could explain EVERYTHING!
This is how you will get to to that point. Not just by creating the video products but by getting lots of practice in, being an instructor.
I know you would rather host a seminar, charge $1000 per seat and get 50 attendees and make $50K in a weekend than launch a lousy $27 e-book and try to make that same amount of money over the course of a few years.
Am I right?
What do you personally do to differentiate yourself as an affiliate? Do you offer personal consultation? Bonus products? Daily videos? Something else I haven't thought of? Please, share with me... I need the usual ten comments.
p.s. If you want those videos, check out:
www.PostProductLaunch.com
DON'T purchase from that site just to see how I roll the videos out. I have no what I'm doing. I really suck.
Only check out that product if you're interested in grabbing new affiliates AFTER your product is initially launched, you want to know how to properly host your own seminars, turn customers into promoters, blah blah blah... 🙂
How To Break Into Any Niche Part 4: Don’t Burn Up Your Blog Too Fast
In the past we've talked about creating an autoresponder sequence to automate relationship building with your prospects or even your existing customers.
If you had 10 autoresponder messages, you wouldn't set them up to use them up in 10 days. You'd space them out to give subscribers a chance to take in the information.
Remember, you aren't only concerned with readers. The bottom line is how much money does your blog make... if it makes nothing then what's the point?
I'm not saying it has to make money directly with ad space or AdSense. If your blog gets you some regular traffic, which leads to more autoresponder signups, which eventually makes you more sales, then your blog is a source of income.
- You want to keep your readers' interest, but at some point get them a little bit bored so they'll check out one of your other products that sells something.
- You want to give other blogs and sites a chance to mention a recent article of yours before it's taken off the front page.
- Don't forget that search engines penalize sites that toss up too many pages too quickly and don't grow at an average rate.
Like I said when I started this blog, I wrote 50 blog entries before I made the blog public. I could post one entry a day and burn it all up in two months, then be left with nothing else to write. Or I could post one entry per week and last a year. I could post 2 entries a week and last 6 months before I had to come up with any new content.
Here are my tips about not burning up a blog too fast, based on my experience with running membership sites and watching other peoples' blogs start out well but eventually fail miserably:
- Have a reserve of emergency articles -- at least 6 months to a year's worth -- to continue populating your blog at a regular pace. This doesn't have to be a lot. If you intend on posting a minimum of one article per month, all you need are 6 to 12 articles.
- Don't post more than twice a week. Daily is too much even for active subscribers to keep up with.
- If your articles are 1000 words in length or longer, break them up into manageable 250-500 word pieces. You can perform a word count using Microsoft Word or any decent text editor.
- Post replies to comments for two reasons: to let your readers know that you are reading what they say and encourage them to keep commenting, and keep your entries fresh, even if they are a few days or weeks old.
Comment below and tell me if you have a reserve of emergency articles for your blog or if you just wing it... and if so do you post on a regular basis or whenever you feel like it?
Coaching: Do You Have Someone to Call?
For 2008 I told myself I was going to treat my internet business more like a business. As in, put work into it every single day (even if it was just a little bit) instead of putting a ton of work into it every now and then (which is a hobby).
It wasn't a "New Year's Resolution." Those never work. I just kept telling myself every day that I was going to have a business instead of a hobby, and after several weeks, it finally stuck.
Building A Business Requires Personal Coaching.
My friend Steven Schwartzman (I've mentioned him before) is my consultant. I have joint ventured with him on projects for the past five years and flew to New York last summer to meet him and attend a Warrior luncheon.
I make more money than him but that's only because I put out more products. As far as internet marketing experience goes, he and I are equals.
Earlier this year he got back into internet marketing after a break for several months -- he was studying for the LSATs to get into law school. I've made it a point to call him every weekday to ask him what he accomplished that day, then tell him what I accomplished that day.
I've noticed a gigantic boost in productivity by doing this. If I have nothing to report I feel like I'm letting him down, and I think it has the same effect on him. We motivate each other pretty darn well this way.
So far in 2008, I've earned $30,247.38 just from PayPal sales alone. That's not counting my day job, that's not counting my Clickbank income, that's not counting my stock trading income (usually that last one loses me money... I hardly do that nowadays anyway).
That's 1,762 sales in the past 100 days. That's right, doing some simple math in your head will tell you: 17 sales and $302.47 per day.
I've launched 24 products since New Year's.
I'm telling you, you need someone like this. I'm not talking about instant messaging, that is a huge time waster. You need someone to actually call on the phone (not Skype, you should be away from the computer) at the end of the day and talk for 5-10 minutes maximum about what you both accomplished.
It needs to be someone far away, it needs to be someone who does the same things you do (marketing on the internet). It can't be someone you know, it can't be a real friend or a family member.
At one point Steven was very sick, on the couch, watching Jeopardy, but we randomly got the idea to get him to watch some internet marketing videos so at least he can accomplish something until he gets better. In the meantime he assured me he was less than a day away from finishing his special report.
As soon as he was all-better, I'm bugged him on the phone every day until it was finished.
I have been feeling a little bit down from these product re-launches, because I put a lot of work into videos for existing products, but each launch only gets me a few hundred dollars because most of my list already owns these products and I deliver free upgrades. (For brand new products, I am used to bringing in a couple thousand dollars in the first few days.)
However, Steven assured me that, in his words, "A few hundred dollars a day is nothing to shake a stick at." It's consistent income and though I have seen several $100-$150 days lately.
My combined income, taking into account PayPal fees, Clickbank, and day job income, equals $34,000 year to date or $136,000 per year. Profit from the past 12 days equals $275 per day on average... or $100,000 annualized.
I must be doing something right. Considering I made $90,000-ish last year INCLUDING day job income, I could be in for quite a boost if I keep doing what I'm doing all year round.
Sometimes it only takes a simple comment like "it's nothing to shake a stick at" to put everything in perspective.
You don't need to spend $2,000 a month on professional personal coaching unless you are making so much money that you need to get rid of that $2,000 for a nice tax write-off... yeah, I wish I'd thought of that before getting my bigass five-figure tax bill this month.
(For the rest of 2008 I have to pay more money per QUARTER in taxes than I made in INCOME for an entire year just a few years ago!)
You just need someone to talk to on the phone. Someone who won't steal your ideas and won't lead you on the wrong path. They can be your equal, it doesn't matter... you just need someone to TALK to.
Could you comment below and tell me if you have a business mentor? Are they paid or free? How often do you communicate? Has it helped you?
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?
