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The Correct Way to Blog About Your Business
Why do I keep seeing people leave posts on their Marketing Blog just to post about it?
If you are adding content to your blog "just because", you are adding an extra chore for yourself, you are preventing yourself from actually getting real work done, and you are missing out on a lot of the opportunities having a blog can give you.
As you probably know, Google loves blogs. And that means if you blog about one of your products, or about your niche, or about something that you are doing, it is going to be ranked highly in the search engine, especially when that is brand new.
That means that if you just blog about any old subject, you are going to get ranked highly for no reason at all. But if you are about to come out with a new product or are about to re-launch an existing one, you should be blogging about it - that way it shows up in the search engines. And when you send your list to that blog, you are already overcoming many of the objections they are going to have when it comes time to buy. Plus your subscribers now feel that you are giving them value and not simply hard-pitching them.
The next time you make a blog post, stop and think for a second: "What can I talk about that will get people ready for my next product launch or re-launch?"
There is also nothing wrong with recycling your auto-responder content. And this can go either way. If you have an auto-responder broadcast or follow-up that got a lot of response, there is nothing wrong with expanding that into a blog post, or even just posting it as is.
Likewise, if you had a really good blog post that got tons of response a year or two years ago, but people simply can't find it now, there is nothing wrong with scheduling that as an auto-responder follow-up.
We all need more follow-up emails in our auto-responder sequence. You should definitely start off with ten - but you have less than two years' worth of an auto-responder sequence, you should add a little bit to it every month.
And finally, while it is great to make a blog post about an upcoming product, it is even better to blog about that once it is now live. I don't do this as often as my pre-launch posts, but every now and then I will create a blog post and disable comments, and make the Call to Action at the end of that blog post via a link to whatever it is I am talking about: I hard-sell people directly on the blog.
Most bloggers seriously underestimate the power of the Call to Action - whether that is to get comments for social proof, to make your upcoming launch look even better, or just to promote something you have just launched. Or even to re-launch something you launched in the past.
And that is the correct way to blog about your business. Frame people and pre-launch them for whatever solution is coming up from you. Recycle your auto-responder follow-ups - and even use those blog posts as auto-responder follow-ups. Market the stuff you already have. And deliver a strong Call to Action to get people to take action and do something at the end of your blog post.
Which of these three items are you missing in your blog? Please share this with me in the form of a comment below and let me know what you are going to do better in your blogging business next time you make a post.
Package Selling: Can I Buy This Car With No Tires?
One thing you are going to notice over and over again when you put out information products, when you offer your services - and more, is that the average person loves to save a couple of pennies, even if they have to bend over backwards to do it.
It is totally fine for your customers to do that when they going to Wal-Mart, but you should train them not to have that mentality with you. If somebody can't afford what you have to offer, or it is not the right fit, they simply shouldn't buy it!
When it comes to selling your product online, you need to be up-front and clear about what you are giving them; don't be afraid to say "No", and to market more.
Car with No Steering Wheel?
Let's say you went to a car dealership and you were going to buy a car; looked at the car and you said, "I like it but I already have my own steering wheel. Can you sell me the car without a steering wheel?" Or "I already have a stereo. Can you sell me the car without the stereo?" They would almost always tell you "No!"
But it aggravates me when I offer membership training that includes a membership plug-in and people ask, "Can you offer me the training without the plug-in and make it cheaper?"
A few years ago, when I didn't make as much money, I might have tried to negotiate with them. But nowadays it is a lot easier to simply say, "It is all a package deal." I don't try to sneak in any charges; I don't try to say that they pay once but accidentally get re-billed over and over. I am very clear about the monthly recurring - but they can't pick and choose what they want. The offer is "Take it or leave it!"
And it is totally okay to throw in extra features that you already offer, because many of these people who try to negotiate the price down don't look at everything you have to offer; they are only looking at the price. For example, if someone is trying to get my training without the plug-in, I remind them that after all the payments have been made, they are in for LIFE!
Lump Sum?
On the other hand, here is an offer I get every now and then: I get people asking me, "Can I simply pay you some lump sum fee and get access for life right now?" And what they are usually looking for is a way to cut the price because they are paying it all up-front.
As much as I would like to be the "Nice Guy", this gets back to the price training and customer training. I want my customers to get used to paying me month after month, and not buying the whole thing out - so I say "No."
Never be afraid to say "No." It's okay if this person who is asking you is not a perfect fit. This definitely does not apply to everyone. And this definitely does not apply to you. But I have found that if someone is trying to negotiate the price down with me, they are the kind of person who always is trying to find some extra reason for why they shouldn't do something.
For example, they are not buying because the price is too high. That is one roadblock they have put into place. Then, when this type of person finally gets in, they put in more roadblocks for why they can't watch the videos, why they can't take action on the things I've talked on, and why the things they have read about and been taught are not exactly the way they have implemented them.
I don't want that kind of person in my membership sites. I want the kind of people who are willing to try something once without trying to be fancy or reinvent the system until they have tried it. People like me! If someone is trying to remove the packaging or trying to buy your membership all up-front, don't be afraid to say "No."
So what do you do and say? How do you overcome these kinds of price objections or nickel and dime strategies? It's simple! You market more. You create a better sales letter. You split test. You add more follow-ups. You remind people more. You are more confident on your Webinars. And you price your OTHER products at the same level as the thing you really want them to buy.
You want to train people to pay you more. You don't want to be the "Bargain Basement marketer"; you want to be the marketer that actually gets people to do things.
What This Means for Your Offers
So when somebody asks you, "Can I buy this car with no tires?" (And by "car" I mean can they buy into your "Membership site with only half of the components for half the price") tell them "No!"
You made an offer. Everything in your membership site is totally necessary. So they have to pay the full price - and they get the whole thing.
Just remember, the average person loves to save a couple of pennies. But you need to retrain them so that they will actually get something out of your marketing!
This is just as much a favor for them as to you. Be clear about what you are offering, don't have forced continuity, don't fall into the trap of selling "life-time access", don't be afraid to say "No"; and market more, sell more - and price more.
Where to Meet in Los Angeles, Sept 23 2010
Update: We're going with Sherm's suggestion and meeting on September 23rd 2010 from 4:30PM to 7PM at:
Melody Bar & Grill
9132 S Sepulveda Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Neighborhood: Westchester / LAXWho will be there: Robert Plank, Lance Tamashiro, Sherm Cohen, Wal Gifford (chunked out), Robert Vance, Rodney Daut, Evelyn Brooks, Dennis Barakos.
You guys voted for where we should meet for my 26th birthday and the majority said: Los Angeles!
Now my question for you is:
1. Are you "probably" coming, or "definitely" coming?
2. What bar in the LA area should we hang out at?
Preferably I want this near the airport, and there is no set time... people can just come and go throughout the evening.
Go ahead, answer those 2 questions for me right now so I can at least have a head count.
It’s Easier To Edit Crap Than Air!
Are you experiencing writer's block in some form or another? Are you having trouble finishing that sales letter? Finishing that article? Finishing that chapter? Or even writing that blog post or email?
The most common problem I see with writer's block is that people are trying to make their writing perfect as soon as they write it. I am here to tell you that you HAVE to get over that! You cannot edit as you go along. You need to write first - and edit later.
You do that by dictating, by reading forwards and backwards, and reading aloud. It is more important than anything to get something on paper until you can edit it.
I once tutored someone in College who was trying to write an essay, and I literally saw her rewrite the same sentence TWELVE times until she had something she liked! This meant that in the time it took her to write one page, I could have written twelve pages!
This is One of Those Top Habits to Break!
You need to get used to writing down just the first draft of whatever you want to say. You know how to string together a sentence TALKING to someone - and that means you can put together real coherent talks. You need to write the way you talk!
For me, I can write a first draft pretty easily; but when I am stuck I do have to dictate it and get it transcribed. Maybe this is what you have to do: dictate it, then hand it on to someone on a service like Elance or oDesk and get them to transcribe it for you.
Now, what do you do when you have the text that comes back from the transcriptionist? It's time to edit it. If you are not careful, you are going to run across the same problem I explained with the College student who rewrote the same sentence twelve times over! The key to editing is you see what catches your eye and make it a little bit better. It is never, ever going to be 100% perfect!
All You Can Do is Make It a Little Bit Better...
Here is what I like to do: I like to read it first backwards and then forwards. Reading it backwards makes it seem less tedious and more like I am reading something new. It also helps with the transitions: if I made a very strange transition from paragraph to paragraph, it is much more easy to spot when you are reading backwards. Read the bottom paragraph first, then the second-to-last, the third-to-last, and so on.
If you spot a sentence that doesn't quite seem right or is too long, throw out small chunks - but not big chunks. I know you are tempted to rewrite the whole entire sentence from scratch - but 99% of your sentences are salvageable! Usually, you just need to rearrange some of the words or remove some of the words, to say the same exact thing; and now the same point has been made but suddenly it makes sense.
I know that when you write or when you talk, you don't speak gibberish! You DO have points you are trying to make; the only issue is what are the correct words and phrases to make those points?
Finally, something that helps me a ton with editing is reading what I just wrote aloud. Sometimes when I write things, they look okay in my head, but when I read them I realize how stupid it sounds; or when I really said one thing but meant another. Read it aloud - or even better read it aloud to a friend or have a friend read it back to you. You might cringe at first - but this will be really great for toughening you up and getting you used to people reading your material. After all, isn't that the point - for you to write something and then have somebody else read it?
One other big benefit I have noticed from reading my material aloud is that I notice a lot of repeated words and phrases I use when I talk and when I write. For example, words like "so", or "simply", or "like", or "however", or "but." It is okay to say these words every now and then, but if you notice you are saying these at the beginning of every sentence or every paragraph, these are problem words you need to keep notice of and just note to scan for these particular words; remove them from your writing - and it will suddenly look a whole lot better.
And that is how you are going to edit the things you write so that you can write quickly, but also write well. Simply dictate or quickly write out the first draft version first, before even going into editing mode. Never edit as you go. When you DO edit, edit very minimally. Read backwards and forwards and throw out the small chunks but not the big chunks. To help find things that need to be changed, read your work aloud, or even get a friend to read it - especially to notice the repeated words and phrases.
How much of a problem is editing for you? What is your best editing tip? Post a comment below telling me. Thanks in advance for that!
26th Birthday: Where Can We Meet?
My 26th birthday is coming up in a few weeks, on Thursday, September 23, 2010. I'm having my "real" birthday party a few days before because on Thursday I'm going to be traveling to JVAlert Live in Denver.
Here's my question to you: what major city close to you, can you get to on Thursday, not for anything major, just to hang out at a bar where I buy you a drink?
I don't want to fly into the northwest, southwest, midwest, northeast, or deep south, and I'm staying in the United States... so that pretty much leaves these choices:
Update: Here's what you guys voted...
- Los Angeles, CA (17 votes)
- San Francisco, CA (10 votes)
- Las Vegas, NV (7 votes)
- Salt Lake City, UT (3 votes)
- Denver, CO (6 votes)
- Dallas, TX (9 votes)
- Austin, TX (9 votes)
- Atlanta, GA (12 votes)
- Orlando, FL (6 votes)
- New York, NY (7 votes)
- New Orleans, LA (2 votes)
- Washington, DC (2 votes)
Which of these cities can you be in to meet me on Thursday, September 23, 2010? Go ahead and vote with your comment below. I'm not sure if I'll be doing it yet, it depends on the votes.
How to Complete a Week’s Worth of Work in One Day
- You're overwhelmed by all the new offers you see.
- You're switching between too many tasks every day.
- You're doing too much of the work yourself.
- Your to-do list keeps getting bigger (not shorter) and you can't prioritize.
- You procrastinate and can't seem to finish what you start.
- You're a perfectionist.
- You're unhappy.
- Choose one "computer free" day of the week, and one "email free" day (even when you're at the computer).
- Only focus on ONE project this week, such as launching a new product, finishing that sales letter, or creating that membership site content. Everything else can wait.
- Outsource just one thing. I recommend you dictate ten articles (2.5 minutes each) and send them out to get transcribed, that saves you one day of work.
- Throw away your whiteboard and only write down four daily tasks instead of having a long to-do list.
- Reward yourself with 30 minutes of TV, a bowl of ice cream, or the rest of the day off for finishing your project early.
- Be "perfectly complete" instead of "perfectly perfect." In other words, try to win the high score. If your goal was to write 10 articles and you wrote all 10 before your deadline, you scored a "perfect" 10 regardless of the quality of those articles.
- Use the extra money from internet marketing to go on a vacation, pay off your mortgage faster, spend time with your family, or send your kid to college. In other words, use the money to do something you enjoy.
30 Day Blogging Challenge Aftermath
As you probably noticed, last month, I made 30 blog posts in one month (instead of my usual 1 to 3).
Why did I do it? I wanted to see if it would build my list faster, make me more money, and make more connections with the other participants of the challenge.
How did I do it? I outlined a few lists like "5 Elements of Social Proof to Explode Your Business" ... "11 Easy-to-Implement Ideas for Your Next Webinar to Ensure Maximum Attendance, Interest, and Profit" or even "12 Can't Miss Rules of Highly Effective Membership Sites" ... dictated them, got them transcribed, and scheduled all 30.
How long did it take? It took about two days to make all the posts. Half a day to outline everything, a day to dictate, then half a day to schedule and edit the transcribed posts.
What were the results? I'm glad you asked... the big reason I did this was to get more email subscribers. In May (before the 30 Day Challenge) I got 1,867 new e-mail optins... and in June (during the challenge), I only got 1,537 optins.
In other words, blogging 30 times in 1 month instead of once per month... got me the same number of optins!
But Didn't It Get You MORE Audience Participation?
Good question. In May (before the challenge), I had 198 comments on my blog. In June (during the challenge), 660 comments.
30 times the work, to get triple the comments. If I had spaced out those 30 posts into 3 posts per month, I would have 10 months of blogging scheduled and out of the way to get the same comments.
But Weren't those all NEW Commenters?
Let's look for fresh blood. In May when I had those 198 comments, 78 comments were from people who had NEVER commented on my blog before -- 39 percent.
In June, out of those 660 comments, 83 comments were from brand new people on my blog -- 13 percent.
See what happened there? Triple the comments, but the exact same amount of new people.
I segmented my list for this month and only sent ONE sublist a notification about a new post on most days. But even when I mailed the WHOLE list about a blog post, it usually got the same number of comments.
But Did the Challenge Make You More Money?
My earnings in May after commission, fees, and expenses: $19,400.71. June earnings after expenses: $21,412.78.
Before you say, "The blog challenge made you an extra 2000 dollars..." Keep in mind I have a lot of recurring membership sites and autoresponder followup sequences, so you can't automatically assume that this extra 10% boost in income was due to blogging.
Will it Pay off in the Long Term?
I'll have to check back in a month or so to see if this extra 30,000 words of blog content gets me more search engine listings, but for now, it didn't get me a big boost in traffic.
RobertPlank.com had 6057 visitors in May, and 8586 in June. A 41% boost, but not 30 times or even 3 times the traffic as a normal month.
Did Anyone Comment Every Day?
At the beginning of June, I asked you guys to promise to leave a comment once a day every 30 days. Almost everyone said something like, "No, I won't do it. I'll forget."
It looks like Melanie Kissell and Henrik Blunck both managed to leave me a comment every day for a month, so I want you to leave a blog comment congratulating them right now.
Persuasion X Winner
The winner who I'm taking as my guest to Persuasion X, a $5000 seminar, is: Pamela Miles!
Here's what Pamela had to say:
I hear that this truly is Armand's best event. I know that I really need this information to fully capitalize on the opportunities that are going to be presenting themselves with the new weight loss concept I'm bringing to the world! I've been approached by a doctor out of Texas who has offered to take my product to the board of her hospital (which also owns several hospital corporations) about having me speak at their monthly Healthy Women Conferences at their various locations around the country. I don't have a lot of public speaking experience...so if I can learn from the best...I'll really be able to catch up to speed fast!
Plus I need a chance to redeem myself (insiders Cara, Robert & Lance will know what I mean) 🙂
There were 9 people in the running... so why did I choose Pamela over everyone else?
1. Not only has she taken many of my classes, I had already seen Pamela at other seminars so I knew she would have no problem getting there. It's the worst when you choose a winner, and they can't make it.
2. She was one of the only people who didn't seem offended when I said I don't want to sit next to the winner at the conference.
3. She stated not just what she wanted to get out of the event, but what she was going to do AFTER the event.
If you didn't make it, no hard feelings... it's not you, it's me. I wish I could take all 9 of you.
Here's the mean part: In exchange for being able to go to this $5000 seminar for free, I made Pamela promise to have her entire business setup by October 2, 2010... including an optin page, autoresponder sequence, joint ventures, paid advertising, affiliate program, articles, an improved sales letter... all of it.
She didn't know I was going to be stating this in public. I just set a reminder in my Google Calendar to check back in October, and tell YOU guys if she succeeded or failed.
Now that you know this, go ahead right now and post a comment: congratulating Pamela, and telling her "good luck" ... she's got literally 100 items to add to her business in the next 3 months.
I want to have a bunch of "good lucks" under this post... comment below right now, ok?
Offer a Payment Plan Or Not?
Any time somebody teaches membership sites, you always see the question come up, "Should I offer a payment plan or should I offer some kind of a trial?"
And while it seems like a lot of fun, and while it seems like you might get a lot more subscribers and customers into your funnel by offering a payment plan or a trial period, I recommend you stay away from them, for these three reasons:
You are always training your subscribers (whether you realize it or not); you are training your buyers as well; and trials just plain suck and attract the wrong kind of customer that you do NOT want to be a part of your business.
How Do You Train Your Subscribers?
Even if somebody doesn't see everything that happens behind closed doors within your membership site; even if they have not bought a lot of things from you, they still see the way you market your stuff.
If you are always offering a payment plan, or if the reason for you offering a payment plan is because no-one is buying, you look desperate! If you are not emailing to your subscribers enough, then they get the feeling like you are not much of a marketer.
If you keep dropping the price or keep piling in more bonuses without actually marketing your product, you look like somebody who will simply pile on more "stuff" in order to get a sale; and not really marketing and not convincing people and giving real good REASONS for them to join.
And let's say somebody does join. You are training those buyers as well. If someone is used to only paying you $1 or $5, and they have been doing it for years, it might be a little bit of a struggle to get them to the $100 or higher mark.
It might take a little bit of time - but if you can get your buyers to pay you more money to get more stuff, instead of paying you less money to get less stuff, they will be used to dedicating a larger portion of their monthly budget to getting your solutions. And that includes payment plans and membership sites.
I am totally for having a membership site where with every payment they get some new kind of concern. But too many times I see launches happen where someone is offering a product for $100, and people split it up over five payments: they pay five times but they only get one thing at the very beginning! How much sense does THAT make?
And the reason why many marketers offer payment plans like this is to claim a high number of sales. They get a lot of people to pay them $20 and then they claim that every sale was a $100 sale, when really it was only a $20 sale, and many people canceled along the way - because after all, why should somebody continue making payments if they already got the product they paid for?
Payment Plans Are Good If There Is Ongoing Content...
But they are not good if there is just a single-time delivery and you are doing it to inflate your sales numbers.
And finally, payment plans, and trials, and low barriers of entry just suck! I have tried membership sites with and without a trial - and with the trial there were lots more dropouts. There were a lot more people not logging in and not using the material because they didn't really have any motivation to; the price was low enough that it didn't really hurt their pocketbook, and they didn't have a good reason to make their money back - because there was so little to make back.
Trials really do suck. The new credit card laws are moving everyone slowly away from trials. And I would definitely recommend you TRY marketing your site without a trial. If you are having difficulty, it might be because you haven't trained your subscribers or your buyers enough. Tell them why you are not offering a trial, and turn it into a good selling point.
For example, there is no trial because you want to reduce the number of people who get access to this information; there is no trial because you want them to take action on what you show right away; maybe certain bonuses are worth a certain amount of money and a trial would cheapen that.
And that is why you should only offer a payment plan for ongoing content, not for a single-time product: because it trains your subscribers, it trains your buyers - and trials draw in the worst kinds of customers.
Do you offer a payment plan or not on your website? And what is the reason? Please comment below telling me.
iPhone 5 Wishlist: 30 Things I Want to See in the Next Big Smartphone
It's pretty amazing when you stretch your imagination a bit and think about new uses for existing technology.
I'll give you an example: years ago I had the FIRST script that caused Clickbank ads to appear on your site looking like AdSense.
It sounds silly now, but this was back when Clickbank was hot and AdSense was hot.
Although I was first, I had about ten (mostly free) competitors within the first 14 days of launching, including people like Joel Comm and Armand Morin.
How did I Differentiate Myself?
1. My script was the only one that was contextual... the ads were targeted to the content "magically" just like AdSense... no one else had this feature.
2. There was a built in referral system for points, only a couple other people had this feature.
3. It showed images of over 750 Clickbank products directly in the ads, no one else had this feature.
4. It allowed anyone with the script to establish their own pay-per-click AND/OR traffic exchange network... no one else came close to this feature.
And Now You See Phones That Let You...
1. Use it as a turn-by-turn GPS.
2. Let you access your usual time-wasting sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, from anywhere.
3. Take HD photos and videos.
4. Turn it into a roaming wifi-to-3G hotspot.
Every time a new iPhone, Blackberry or Droid comes out, it adds new things people can do with phones. On that note, here's what I want to see in iPhone 5:
Likely Features
1. 128 GB storage (reasonable to expect by summer 2011)
2. 12 hours of talk time (improved battery life)
3. Video calling with non-iPhone4's (iPhone to webcam)
4. Recurring billing for some apps in the App Store (added Feb 2011 - same apps had their own internal billing before this)
5. Built-in network file sharing (wifi and bluetooth) and the ability to download a FILE from the internet to the phone
6. Better Google Maps: works more like the Droid where it has voice recognition, turn by turn voice directions and a street view screenshot when you arrive (might happen when Google releases its free GPS app)
Communications
7. 4G network and gigabit wifi (maybe possible once iPhone isn't stuck with AT&T service)
8. Automatic syncing over Wifi (Steve Jobs has promised this eventually)
9. Tethering and mifi hotspot capability (available now with Verizon iPhone at least)
10. Incoming Skype calling (added Jan 2011)
11. RFID or digital wallet
12. FM/XM radio receiver or HD TV receiver (might not be necessary if there's 4G)
Hardware
13. Dual speakers for louder and better sound quality
14. Touch sensors you can program it like the "virtual buttons" on the front and back
15. Ability to stream video to TVs with a USB dock or wireless HDMI (now possible with Apple TV)
16. USB attachment instead of Apple's proprietary plugin
17. Smudge-resistant glass (might not be possible)
18. Keyboard attachment (both physical and bluebooth keyboards now available)
Software
19. A better notes app that acts more like EverNote and AudioNote combined
20. Better file management (plug into USB, drag and drop pictures and notes instead of importing)
21. Different skins or themes
22. Integrated RedLaser, Facebook, FlightTrack, Twitter, GPS, Bump, Amazon and Skype into the OS (seriously, buy out the "Bump" company, guys)
23. Integrated and standardized mobile banking
24. Gestures, i.e. put the phone into airplane mode by signing a figure-eight
Pie in the Sky Wish List
25. Unibody: no physical buttons whatsoever -- if combined with wireless charging they could make the phone waterproof and not only prevent damaged phones, but it would become an underwater camera and you could even make phone calls UNDERWATER and use the internet UNDERWATER
26. Call screening logic, such as: direct straight to voicemail after hours or from unrecognized numbers
27. Ad-hoc (phone to phone) wifi capabilities
28. Solar panels for recharging (Apple has this patent but it's still probably a few years away)
29. Facial recognition and "maybe" biometric (fingerprint) security if it can be accomplished with the camera
30. Presentation projector (maybe a 3rd party should create a special stand so it doesn't suck up battery life)
What features do you wish your phone had? Will smartphones 100% replace computers someday? Or do you think this is all ridiculous and a phone is just a phone, is doesn't need anymore features? Please comment below, right... now.
The Ideal Clickthru Rate for Your Squeeze Pages, Sales Letters and Blog Posts
When creating your forced optin pages or e-commerce sales letters, or even blog posts... how do you know if it's fully optimized? How do you know whether or not you are throwing away e-mail subscribers, sales, blog commenters, and fans without even realizing? I want to tell you what kind of conversion rate you should expect when testing out your pages using Google Website Optimizer or Google Analytics.
A forced e-mail optin page, or squeeze page, is a web page where the only thing a person can do is subscribe to your e-mail list or leave. I like to put these in front of my sales letters, so people need to commit to a small action (subscribing to my list for more information)... that way I can follow up with them even if they don't buy.
But Most People Overcomplicate This Process!
Your forced optin page should only contain one headline, three bullet points, and instructions about what to do next. (Opt-in to your list.) If you do this correctly, you should expect 50 percent, or half, of your targeted visitors, to subscribe... all while your competition overthinks the process and only gets a 10 to 20 percent conversion rate.
After they have opted in, even if you are mailing them a free gift in exchange for signing up, send them to an offer page (or sales letter) where they can buy something from you. Similar to the forced optin page, this should be a site where all they can do is either buy or leave. There are no other links in this long, one-page web site. Even if you don't think you are any good at convincing someone to buy from you... tell them a quick story, your argument for why your solution is best... and a set of bullet points telling them why they should get it now, and what benefits they will receive once they get their hands on it.
If I experience a 1 to 5 percent conversion rate, I'm happy. Even if you experience a little bit less than this, you can split test your web site and even get it critiqued by a professional copywriter at a fraction of the cost that it would take to get it done from scratch. The copy will actually come out better because you know your product better than anyone else.
That covers forced optin pages and sales letters, but what about other kinds of web sites such as blogs? What kind of conversion rate can you expect from alternate sources of traffic such as Twitter or article sites? The answer is that you shouldn't care. Your time is better spent optimizing your squeeze page or sales letter than worrying about your free traffic sources. They are tough to measure, and after all, it's all "extra" traffic.
Those are the results you should expect from your well-optimized web pages: 50 percent conversion on your squeeze page and 1 percent conversion on your sales letter. As for your traffic sources, worry about your own sites.
What's your conversion rate? Do you even know (it's ok if you don't) ... just post your answer in a comment below.
The Number 1 Way to Create Your Next $97 Or Higher Training Course
I really do want you to succeed and the way I made the change from a college student with no money to someone who had a residual income was by phasing out freelancing and creating info-products.
Freelancing is good to start off but you definitely need to establish yourself as an authority in your niche and make a product that people can buy that has your name on it that proves you know what you're talking about and teaches them what you know.
I have made all kinds of training courses about PHP, webinars, list building, WordPress and more and I want you to do the same in whatever niche is your favorite with these simple steps.
Step 1: Four Part Outline
You can take any problem and solve it in 4 steps. If you take it in even more steps, you aren't solving it simply enough. Let's use creating a website as an example. Here's 4 steps: Get a domain, get a web host, set up a WordPress blog, write your first post. How about writing a sales letter.
Have a headline that tells a story, list benefit bullets, explain features, then demand a call-to-action. If you're explaining something to someone, the best way is in 4 steps. No more, no less. Figure out how to solve a problem in 4 steps.
Step 2: Audio Dictation
Most people hate writing. I have gotten to the point where I liked writing but still it's not my favorite thing to do and I know that I could speak more consistently and faster than writing. 
I'm pretty sure you are the same way. Hence, you know your subject well enough that for each of the 4 steps, you can explain at least 3 things about it. Let's go back to the webpage example before where I said you need a domain name, a web host, a WordPress blog, and content.
When I explain how to get a domain name, I could tell people why you should only stick with dot com, how to decide on the perfect domain name that's not too long but is also short and explains what it is you're going to be offering.
I could tell people which registrar to get their domain and then what to do after, which could – this is into the second part, the web host – how to choose a web host, how to register with this web host, how to set up automatic billing, how to connect that domain name to the web host and how to get support from that web host and so on.
If you can talk for even 10 minutes about each of these 4 things, that's a 40-minute audio product. That's almost a complete CD. Chances are that especially on some of the advanced topics, you might talk for longer than 10 minutes, and if you can speak for an hour, you're doing great.
Step 3: Sales Letter
From that 60-minute audio, I'm sure you can find lots of things to talk about, reasons why your audio is the best, what people can expect to get out of the audio when they're done and why you are the most authoritative person to listen to. Your sales letter doesn't have to be that complicated.
If you can list 10 good reasons why people would want to buy what you have to offer, you can take some of the better reasons, turn them into sentences, take the really best reason, turn it into a headline, add an order button, and you have a basic sales letter.
Now, all you have to do is promote it to your list and to high-traffic areas, like forums, and get a handful of initial sales. Now, what re you going to do with that money?
Step 4: Reinvest Into a Transcript
Every minute that you speak is about 150 words of written material or a little over half a page.
That means your 60-minute audio is going to be over 30 pages in length. That's a complete report.
If you can add in things like bullet points or checklists, the report will be even longer, but the point is you now have a book and an audio book to distribute digitally, and that means that if your audio was only $10 or $20, now that it is bundled with the written version, it is now $30 to $40.
(Optional) Bonus Step #1: Membership Site
You do want to get that price point to $100, don't you?
Then put it all into a membership site. 
The simple fact that people can come back into your membership site for eternity, even if they lost their password, is worth slightly more. I have bought CDs of software before that charged me an additional $5 to have a lifetime download area. In this case, don't give people the choice, make them purchase access to this membership site where they will receive your report, your audio, and lifetime updates.
At any point in the future, if you decide to sit down and speak for 10 minutes, that is a bonus that can be found in your member's area. That means at this point, you now have your membership site priced at $50 or $60.
(Optional) Bonus Step #2: Live Q&A Bonus After Six Months
Now, here's the final step towards getting people to the $100 mark. There's something weird about the price point between $50 and $100 and that's why people don't really by in that range. If someone is willing to buy or pay you more than $47, they're probably willing to pay $97.
Don't bother pricing at $57, $67, $77, or $87. Just skip right to the $97 mark. I only price in this range if I am steadily increasing my price to $97.
Because you're a marketer, you could price your training at whatever it's worth and whatever you want. What I like to do is offer a live Q&A or a question and answer bonus, people can ask me any question they want for an hour or 90 minutes.
Once that's done, I will put the recording in the member's area and now, that member's area contains a report, an audio, additional bonus audios, and a Q&A video webinar recording, which is all worth much much more than $100 but just because you like your subscribers so much, you are going to price it at $97 and that price will be a bargain and that's why you take one idea and turn it into a $97 or a higher training course.
If in the future you want to increase the price beyond $97, throw in some live training and make it a webinar course.
Is this the way you create your $100 training courses? What is your method? Please explain it to me...
Four Ways to Get More Out of Your Followers by Challenging Them to Take Action
If you've seen any of the comments on this blog, you know that my posts get a lot of response.
If you've been inside any of my paid webinar classes, you know that I have a lot of successful case studies and success stories from people who did exactly what I told them to.
How do you clone exactly what I did? You use one of these 4 methods to get your followers to take action.
"Know" Phase #1: The Blog Comments
Something you can do right now without launching a new product, even without making a new blog post, is look at the most recent post you've made on your blog and cap the number of comments at 10.
Put a note that says "as soon as that blog post gets 10 comments, you're going to disable comments." You would not believe how many people have told me at live events that they had no interest in leaving a comment on my blog until they heard that they might miss out on it. That's how most of your viewers are as well. They are just barely on the fence about whether or not to comment.
It's up to you to give them that one extra reason. If having 10 blog comments seems like a lot, here's a secret. You should be replying to your blog comments. This means that if 5 people leave comments on your blog and you reply to each individual comment with a comment of your own, that equals 10 responses total. When I say you should cap your blog post at 10 comments, you really only need 5 people to leave comments and then for you to respond to each one.
At first, you might have to pay people $1 per comment or have some of your friends leave comments, but after a few posts, when the social proof is there, people will leave comments as long as you are sending traffic there from your forum and from your list.
"Like" Phase #2: The Retweet Campaign
When I launch a blog post, after it has filled up the 100 or so comments I like to have, I will close out comments and then mail my list a second time, telling them to re-tweet that blog post.
In the past, I tried to tell people to comment and re-tweet but this works a lot better if you devote one day and one email just to commenting, and after you've gotten what you wanted, devote one day just to re-tweeting one of your posts. On my blog, I use the TweetMeme plugin and just by having that button there, I do get 10 to 20 re-tweets or one click mentions on Twitter.
But when I specifically ask people to re-tweet, it jumps to 50 to 200 re-tweets. That means that 200 different people have mentioned that specific blog post on Twitter which gives me more traffic and more social proof, and I like that at this point, the comments are turned off because that means anyone who comes to my site now has to sign up to my mailing list to be notified when they can comment again.
You can also have fun with this re-tweet campaign by re-tweeting your blog post once per day to drive the count-up and add some kind of prize. For example, if you can get 20 re-tweets of your latest blog post, you will make another blog post this week.
"Trust" Phase #3: Free Live Webinar
Most people have no strategy when they're leaving a blog post. I always do.
When I make a blog post, it's usually to pre-launch my next class or my next email offer. You should be doing the same.
Use the responses you got from that last blog post to create your presentation or to improve the next class you will be offering.
Even if you only have 10 comments, you can pick out about four things that people are having trouble with.
For example, I once made a post on my blog called Forfeit the Race to Free, telling people not to gravitate towards trials but instead be moving their price higher, and although a lot of people agreed with me, some people told me things like they were at first afraid to launch their product and now this advice got them to do it. Some other people argued that more people bought at a low price, which in my experience was false. More people bought at a higher price.
My favorite response to that post was that some – one of my commenters told me that somebody didn't buy from them because the price was too low and the average person thought that because it was so cheap, something must be wrong with it.
All those responses can make a great presentation or augment a presentation that's already ready because it speaks directly to people's fears and frustrations and the best part is you can use the same language, the same phrases people say to you and use that to make a killer headline based on your pressing issue.
"Close" Phase #4: Pitch And Close
You've already taught people something from your emails leading up to your blog post, from your blog post itself, and during your free live webinar. At the end of that free live webinar, all of that info should be coming in together - the emails, the blog posts, the comments, and this live training into a relevant and special offer.
You gave people a lot of tips on overcoming roadblocks but now it's time for them to pay you to get access to the step-by-step how-to system to get them from point A to point B.
Make it a special offer just for people on the call that will be increasing in price soon, have a real deadline so that there is real scarcity, and send them to at least a short sales letter explaining your offer exactly in black and white terms. That way, when people join your class or purchase your report or get your video series, they know exactly what they are getting.
Is your business model anything close to this, the KNOW, LIKE, TRUST, and CLOSE step-by-step system? If not, why not and how soon are you going to implement this? Comment!
3 Myths of Subscriber Burnout
If I ask someone why an email I sent didn't get a lot of clicks or why an offer I'm promoting didn't get as many sales as I would like or even when a blog post doesn't get as many comments as I'm used to, the usual cop-out I hear from other marketers is "your list must be burned out."
We've all wondered about this at one point or another. In fact, at one time, Lance and I thought we had burned out our list when we're mailing for a $200 training course.
Then, flash forward 6 months later when we're launching a $997 training course 1 week, a $497 training course a couple weeks later, and a $27 per month membership site at the same time and everyone is buying in, and in fact, the people who buy now tell us the price should be higher.
What's the difference? The difference between that $200 era and the $1000 era is that we trained our list not just to receive these offers but also to purchase and be happy at a certain price point.
Burnout Myth #1: Non-Responsive List
If you think your list is non-responsive, the problem is either from your traffic source or from your marketing.
I have seen way too many marketers come out of the gate one day and say, "here you go, here is my $1000 training course."
They have no teaching, no build-up and no pre-launch and they just expect people to purchase their $1000 course at a moment's notice. When people tell me that they do not purchase a certain product because of price, the problem could be that they can't afford it and would never buy under any circumstances or it could be they just did not have enough advanced notice to clear their credit card or save up that money.
That's why you need a pre-launch sequence and you need to mail more often.
This leads me to many marketers recommending that you only mail your list once a month or once a week. But the problem with that is we need to push a lot of people into buying an offer quickly, you really do need to mail them once a day during your launch sequence, and I see marketers try to get by with mailing just once a week or just once a month, and then when they have to mail once a day, the subscribers aren't used to it.
The solution is to mail everyday, whether you're selling, teaching, or doing a little bit of both.
Mail everyday, mail more often, and mail on topic. If somebody is telling you to buy their AdWords product over and over again and then one day turned around and tried to buy a product about forum marketing and there was no transition whatsoever, there is no consistent marketing message.
Have a real launch, email every day, and email at least 5 times when you're promoting something new.
Burnout Myth #2: It's Too Expensive
If no one is buying the things you have to offer at any price, consider where your traffic is coming from. I built my traffic up from a free forum but what I did differently is most of my subscribers had to buy something from me before they could get on my list.
They were all people who have been proven to have a credit card, have room in their credit card, and trust me enough to pay me. If you're building a list from ad swaps, safe lists, or JV Giveaways, you're getting the worst subscribers possible.
You're getting people who have not been proven to buy anything but who you do know get dozens, if not hundreds, of emails everyday for other free offers. You need to build a better list. Build a list that gets traffic from a better neighborhood. Get joint ventures. And above all, make a better offer.
It's one thing to offer a 100-page eBook or 5 hours of videos but what will those videos allow me to do? If you just tell me you are selling a real estate course, that's not very exciting, but if you told me that this course could get me to find the perfect property to flip in one day and I could flip it in one week and make a certain amount of money, that would be more exciting for me.
You need to position your offer to be more benefit-based and to be more exciting and fast and explain the answer to the question "what's in it for me?"
You might have to weed out freebie stickers. If there are some subscribers who yell at you or ask you repeatedly to drop the price, there's nothing wrong with removing them from your list if they are never going to buy from you. It seems harsh but you are doing them a favor because they don't like your emails.
Burnout Myth #3: The Wrong Niche
If I subscribe to your email list about copywriting and one day, you started emailing me about stock market trading, why should I even care? I didn't come to you as the authority for stock trading. I came to you as the authority to copywriting. You need to give your subscribers what they want.
If somebody joined your list because you offered them a free report on copywriting, give them more stuff about copywriting, give them a course they can join on that same subject.
Don't hop around in different niches. Give them the same stuff that they want and need. And build your list from the correct source. If you have a copywriting product, build your list from a copywriting forum, not from a stock trading forum and vice-versa.
You might not have to give up and change your niche overnight... just start offering your list what they want. What they'll buy.
Did this post help you overcome any of the 3 myths of subscriber burnout? They were a non-responsive list, a list that thinks your stuff is too expensive, and a list that's in the wrong niche. Which one applies the best to you, 1, 2, or 3? And what are you going to do now?
Comment below telling me, please!
The Future Has A Lot Less Buttons And Levers: Choices Are Bad
I hope you are noticing this: The more successful solutions out there reduce the number of choices.
I first noticed this a couple of years ago when I bought a special box that attaches to my TV called a NetFlix Roku. What this box does is it connects to my Netflix service over Wi-Fi and streams movies and TV shows to my TV.
Sounds complicated, right? But it's not! The funny thing about this remote is that it has only got nine buttons: It has got a Home button, an Enter button, four arrows (like left, right, up, down), a Play and Pause button, Rewind and Fast-Forward. That's it!
There is no Channel Changing button, there is no Volume button, no Mute button. Not even an On/Off button.
That's Right!
The Roku device remains On for as long as it is plugged in! It is one of my favorite devices to use because I can literally use it within seconds of taking it out of the box.
Here is something else to think about: Video cameras. For a long time I resisted buying video cameras. It is so difficult to decide which one to get. I didn't want to get a video camera that used tape, even digital tape, and I wasn't sure if I should get a camera made by Sony, Kodak or some other manufacturer.
But I did buy the Flip camera years ago. The great thing about the flip is that it really only has one Big Red Button. Much like the Roku remote, it has a couple of extra buttons, such as Pause and Play (that's one button), the Trash button, and buttons to navigate between videos and zoom in and out. But the button usually almost always used is that Big Red Record Button.
You want to record new video? Take it out, hit the Big Red Button - it records. You want to stop? Hit the Big Red Button again.
That is compared to other cameras which are better in quality and have better features, but the problem is they have too many features. For example, with the Kodak Zi8, I almost bought it because it has an external microphone. But everyone I have seen record with it has to navigate through different menus to choose what quality they want to record with, and other settings, before they can record it.
I don't care about that! I want to just hit one button and it records.
Think about the iPhone: again, almost no buttons. It has got a Lock button, volume controls, a Silent button and a Home button. That's it. No buttons for dialing or going through different menus. That is all handled in the touch screen.
If you don't have a touch screen phone, I would recommend you borrow someone's iPhone and try to do a conference call. It is amazing how it can generate new menus and give you new buttons to push when there were none there previously.
Same deal with the iPad, Droid, Kindle and other touch screen devices with almost no buttons. It is super simple and super intuitive to use - and requires almost no documentation.
Think about WordPress: I think what makes WordPress special is that it simplifies everything. You can literally set it up in a few seconds and write your first blog post in a few minutes. The interface for writing new posts and activating plugins is far simpler than any other blogging platform I have ever seen.
And the blogs that are the most accessible are the ones that remove features. They might remove things like the dates, or the ability to leave comments on posts, just to make it easier to get to the information.
Now that I have told you how much I like the Roku, the flip, the iPhone and WordPress, it's your turn!
What Are You Doing To Remove The Buttons?
Do you offer two Order buttons on your sales letter: maybe a way to fully buy your product and another offer as a payment plan?
What would happen if you split tested, only showing one of those buttons? Would it make it easier for people to join your program?
When someone logs into your membership site, is it clear what they should look at first? In other words, are your posts listed in chronological order? And do you have some kind of welcome message or welcome video when someone first joins?
When I read your report, am I going to find clear, step-by-step instructions about what to read first and where to go from there?
And, most importantly, what should I do when I'm done? So tell me, how are you removing multiple choices and multiple calls to action that don't matter?
What are YOU doing to remove the buttons? Comment below.
I’ll Take You to a $5000 Seminar July 20-22, in Las Vegas, for Free
I have never offered anything like this for free. In July I'm getting trained by a guy who has made 1 million dollars in 90 minutes, speaking at a seminar.
I want to take you as my guest to Armand Morin's "Persuasion X" speaker training seminar in Las Vegas, Neveda on July 20-22, 2010. That's a Tuesday through a Thursday.
I have spoken on stage four times. A couple of weeks ago, Lance and I presented on membership sites at a seminar in Minneapolis to a room of 50 people.
7 people had already bought our $997 package in the past, but we got 7 new people to pay us $999.
Think about that, $7000 bucks from a 90 minute presentation, that I would have done for free anyway.
If you ever want to speak from the stage, if you want to get better from with your webinars, or even just become more confident, then you should come to this very secret seminar.
All I want from you, is to tell me why I should take you as my free guest. But here's the thing:
1. It's up to you to drive or fly to Vegas on your own.
2. You are on your own, hotel and food-wise.
3. I don't want you sitting next to me at the event, go find your own friends... the room is full of proven five thousand dollar buyers
4. You will get to meet with me, and talk to me at the seminar
Like I said, this seminar literally costs $5000 but I want to take you as my free guest so you can find out:
- How to become an in-demand professional speaker
- Persusasive presentation
- Control and lead your audience
- Hypnotic speech patterns
- Structure your offer so it makes the most impact with your audience
- How to sell membership products from the stage
- Exact PowerPoint designs to increase your sales from the stage
- How to "work" the stage: where to stand and what to do with your body, plus the most POWERFUL closing sequence ever created
Go ahead, tell me why I should take you as my free $5000 guest. If you have the best answer, I'll buy your way into this $5000 seminar.
You Think Too Big And It Is Hurting Your Business: Why Gary Vaynerchuk Was Wrong
If you never had the chance yet to read Gary V's crush it book, I definitely recommend it. In fact, if you ask me privately I have tons of copies of it and I am willing to give you one for free.
Gary took his father's liquor store and turned it from a $4 million dollar business into a $50 million dollar business.
The biggest lesson I got out of his very quick read was this: When you are a self-employed entrepreneur you are going to work harder and you are going to work more hours than someone who has a day job. It doesn't matter, if you are going to be doing something that is fun that excites you to get out of bed in the morning.
Gary talks a lot about getting noticed by the big media companies on social media like twitter, facebook and you-tube. I think a lot of marketers take that advice too far, especially when pursuing the getting bought out model.
In case you weren't paying attention during the first dot com boom of the late 90's and early 2000's. The idea is that you mass tons and tons of users get tons of market penetration while breaking even or even losing money, in the hopes that some big company will buy you out for $100 million dollars.
You-tube lost money for years even after they were bought out by Google, until recently. Facebook lost money until it partnered with Microsoft and started displaying ads. MySpace lost money until it was bought out by Rupert Murdock, and the list goes on.
Chances Are: You Won't Get Bought Out By Someone Else!
You can't count on that payday. If you are already making millions of dollars a year and can afford to lose money for years and years, that's fine. Ignore my advice.
If you are trying to make a living, and build a business you need to make some kind of profit. It is NOT evil to make money! Although people like Gary V. have enough money to think big, you are still starting out and you need to think small.
When you pay $20 dollars for advertising, just try to get $20 dollars back. On a regular basis, I will post form offers or create pay per click campaigns for load to your products to make some of the money back, and to attract affiliates, and to get a few extra leads.
If I spend $20 dollars to promote a free offer, and I get 20 opt ins out of that promotion, I know I have made my money back. I know I get more than $1 dollar per subscriber on my list.
When I find affiliates, I have no problem giving them bulk of my profits. I pay 60% commission to my affiliates with lifetime tagging.
I know a lot of people who offer 100% commission on the front end, and 0% on the back end. What does this mean? It means that you might have a report selling for $20 dollars that up-sells people to a certain course for $100 dollars. You have a $20 dollar front end, $100 dollar back end.
When an affiliate promotes that $20 dollar product, if it makes a sale they get all the $20 dollars and none of the $100 dollars. What I do instead is give 60% of both. That means if they make a sale at $20 dollars, I will give them 60% or $12 dollars of the $20. When somebody then buys the $100 dollar product, I will give the affiliate $60 dollars of that as well.
Again, I don't mind giving away that high commission because I would not have made that sale without that affiliate.
Affiliate Sales Are Just "Extra!"
Even if you do want to get yourself bought out some day, you need to show some kind of earnings potential. You-tube, and facebook, and twitter can easily sell because they've massed millions of users. Just in case you don't make it to the millions of users, try to monetize the few number of people you have. That way you will find it easier to devote the time to a site that is making money versus a site that might make money sometime in the future.
I do agree with most of what Gary says. I don't want you to repeat the same mistakes made during the dot com bust, which was losing money for years in exchange for users. You don't have to give away everything for free. Your knowledge and your services are worth something. You are just going to have to trust me on this.
Do you agree or disagree with what I had to say today? Leave me a comment below right now giving me your quick and honest opinions.
WordPress 3.0, WordPress 3.1, and WordPress 4.0 Explained
But Here's the Big Question:
Should You Upgrade?
- YES, if you are running a free (open) blog such as RobertPlank.com, to get used to the new features and take advantage of themes that use the new functionality.
- NO, if you are running a mission-critical WordPress membership site, especially if it's hosted with Wishlist Member.
Three First impressions About WordPress 3.0
- Better looking Dashboard with a "notification" area (like Facebook)
- Batch updating of plugins (now if only the updater wouldn't stall on my server)
- New theme-dependent things like menus, featured image, and standardized way of changing your header graphic
Three Things You Might Not Have Noticed
- WordPress MU (MultiUser): so you can create a blog network if you change your config file
- author specific templates: if you know how to rename your theme files, you can give different users a different admin interface
- custom post types: you could create an e-commerce store or article directory in WordPress easily without "fudging it" using pages.
3 Things to Look Forward to in WordPress 3.1
(coming August 2010)
- newer HTML editor: local autosave, paste with formatting, and faster performance such as showing text while resizing
- prevent comment impersonation: if someone tries to leave a comment on your blog, and that email address belongs to a registered user, require them to login
- email authentication: users can login using their email address and no longer have to remember usernames, only passwords.
4 Things I Want to See Before WordPress 4.0
- better plugin updater: mine still times out, I at least want a progress indicator, and maybe even the ability to update a plugin WITHOUT going into maintenance mode or halting the entire thing
- official plugins: please build the All in One SEO Pack, Robots Meta, Google Sitemap, Subscribe to Comments, Twitter Tools, Get Recent Comments, List Category Posts, MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer, WPTouch, and Psychic Search plugins right into WP so I don't have to install them by hand on every single blog I setup
- automatic update: I really don't see this coming until WordPress 4.0, but I would like a Windows-like function to automatically check, and update, the blog, theme and plugins overnight
- big picture stats: when I login to the dashboard, I want to see the word count of my entire blog, the average word count of my posts, my top commenters, the average comment length, how many posts per month, how many comments per day, how many hits per day, and how many searches per day my blog is getting
What do you think about the new WordPress? Have you upgraded yet or are you waiting until a more stable and tested version?
New Apple iPhone 4
My new iPhone 4 showed up a day early (Wednesday)... some lucky people even got theirs on Tuesday!
I did have to wait a few minutes for it to activate with AT&T, and for it to sync my iTunes movies and songs... but once that was all done... well you check it out!
Check it out... ability to use FaceTime for video calls, you can choose the front or back camera when taking photos... it's thinner, lighter, faster, and better looking.
Apple already introduced multitasking to the old (3G and 3GS) phones on Monday, so I've already been able to stream music from a radio station via Pandora while checking email or browsing the web on my phone.
- iBooks (book reader) is new, even though we already had the Kindle app
- Netflix app is coming so you can stream movies to your phone (like you already can with iPad)
- iMovie is coming out soon which will let you edit videos with all the features as the desktop version
- Farmville is coming to iPhone pretty soon as well
What phone do you have? (Come on Droid people, let me have it!) Are you getting this new phone?
Why Your Email Subscribers Hate You
The last time that you sent an email to your list, did you get less responses than you wanted? Did you get less sales than you wanted? I hope your answer to both of questions was yes. You should always be moving forward and growing. In order to take that next step, let's figure out what you are doing wrong in your email marketing.
You Don't Email Enough
When I explain list building and email marketing to most people their problem is that they don't contact their list enough. I know that this was my problem for years when I first built a list. I had no idea what to say to my list. I didn't know if people would even care what I had to say.
But guess what, they joined your list and the only way to find out if they like what you have to say, if they hate what you have to say, or even if they will unsubscribe is to email that list. You just won't know until you talk to them.
Please email at least once a week, if not more than once a week. Send them to your latest blog post. Cut, copy and paste your latest article in there. Buy a pack of private label-right articles and use those for follow up content. Pitch your latest offer and copy and paste chunks of the sales letter into your message.
You Email Too Much
The problem I see with those marketers who have built their list from a bad traffic source is that they email too much. People who have built their list from ad-swaps, JV giveaway, and even safe lists are dealing with such an unresponsive list. They have to email those people three or four times a day with different offers just to make any money at all.
The problem with this model is that it gets the gullible people to keep clicking and keep buying. But gets your real long-term buyers to leave your list. It is possible to hit your list too much, and too much is more than once per day.
The only exception to this is if I am launching a product and its launch day. For example, I am running a webinar, I will email three times a day. But on a regular basis, I will only email my list a maximum of one time per day.
You Email Crap
It is not enough to just email regularly or email just the right amount per week. You need to send people good emails. Do your emails blend your teaching and your pitching? If it is too much teaching or too much pitching, you are doing your subscribers a disservice.
Think about it, if all you are doing is pitching, then all you are saying is buy, buy, buy, buy. If all you are doing is teaching, you are giving them ideas, but you are not telling them how to take everything to the next level.
Your emails should be short and to the point. You should give people at least one thing to think about today, and then transition into some URL you want them to click on. That way, no one can complain.
Even if they don't like the offer you are giving them... they can at least read the email and not click the link at the end, so they will walk away with some free piece of advice.
It's Just Not A Good Fit
When people sign up for one of my free courses, or purchase one of my products. I let them know that they are getting on a list where they will receive updates from me about all my future products, not just the one they bought.
Some subscribers don't think that should be the case. That's okay, that's their opinion. What I know is that if there is someone online who I really like, whose products I like to buy, who I want to be like and emulate, I want to get regular emails from them. Because otherwise I will start thinking about and wondering what they are doing today and what their latest project is.
Your true fans want to know what you are up to, what you are launching, and how they can buy it so they can get more value out of it than the price they paid. Just like everything in life, it is not for everyone. That is why if someone wants to get off your list, it should be easy and permanent for them to leave.
Do you know now why some of your email subscribers hate you? Which of the four reasons above is the reason? What are you going to do differently in your email marketing now that you have this information?
Leave a comment below explaining yourself.
Build Up a Mailing List by Attracting Web Traffic
You send traffic to a squeeze page and people opt-in to a list. Then you send them more free info over time to build trust, and eventually start hitting them with offers related to that niche.
How the heck do you get traffic to that list?
Method 1: Join forums in that niche and post real content. Don't mention your site, don't try to sell people on anything, just participate in conversations and get people to recognize you. After you get 25 posts, edit your profile and place a link to that squeeze page in your forum signature.
Method 2: Create a blog. When news hits in your niche, write a blog entry about it, and add your link at the end. For example if a local news story about a cat massager business hits the news, talk about it and link to your squeeze page at the end. Locally hosted blogs like WordPress will "blog and ping" ... so your posts will hit the search engines in seconds. You can also get free accounts on services like Blogger.
Method 3: Article marketing. Write some articles and post them to those same article directories with a linkback to your squeeze page. If these get you lots of opt-ins, consider hiring freelance article writers to write these articles in bulk for you. Then guess what? You can post some of those articles to forums and post them to your own sites as blogs.
Method 4: Social networking. Join MySpace groups and post MySpace blog posts to your profiles with your articles. Get Camtasia Recorder, create PowerPoint presentations of your articles and record those videos. Then post them to video sites like YouTube and Revver, with your squeeze page URL watermarked right in and your URL in the video description.
Method 5: Create a free, lead-in product. Write your own articles and package them as a product, or hire someone to write articles and assemble those into a PDF yourself. Make sure the URL to that squeeze page is prominently displayed on every page. Then sell resale rights to a select number of people, or offer your product on giveaway sites.
Method 6: AdWords. That's probably the hardest method of them all, but what you can do is look at the ads that appear on the right hand side of Google searches that stay listed over time, and try to model those ads. Worried about paying too much per click? Look at the top 10 search results, choose to only show your ads in the content network, and say you only want your ads to appear on those top 10 pages.
If you don't know where to begin, I recommend you dedicate an entire week to doing nothing but method #1. Then dedicate the next week to method #2. All the way to method 5 (only try method 6 if you know what you're doing) and build up that mailing list.
11 Easy-to-Implement Ideas for Your Next Webinar to Ensure Maximum Attendance, Interest, and Profit
If you have not yet run your very first webinar, you are clearly missing out. Webinars are the fastest, easiest and most fun way to create video training and is also a great way to build a relationship, get the following and make some sales. I want you to pick one of the following 11 ideas and implement this on your next webinar.
Idea #11: Poll your audience before going in. The best webinars I've run are not ones where I've thought of the topic. It's where someone else gave me the topic to use. If you're going to be presenting a webinar about product creation, poll your list or your audience about what big problem they're having or what you should talk about. This way, the webinar will be about them instead of about you.
Idea #10: Ask the audience if they have heard of you. On every webinar I give, I ask the audience have they heard of me or have they been on a webinar with me. This lets me know where the traffic came from. Did this webinar – can this come from my list or from someone else's list.
This seems like a silly thing to do but it's very easy to add a poll to a webinar and I have been surprised by the results. On some webinars, I have only had 10% unknown people and on others, I have up to 80% of people who had never heard of me. In fact, one time when I gave a webinar for someone else's subscribers, more attendees on the call had heard of me as opposed to the list owner who got his subscribers on that exact same call.
Idea #9: Send extra reminders to attend. How many times have you signed up for someone's webinar and simply forgot about it until days or weeks later? I know I do all the time. For that reason, you need to send extra reminders for people to attend. I know that many webinar services such as GoToWebinar already send out reminders but those are cookie cutter emails that all look the same.
You're special. You're different. You can tell people what time webinar is in different time zones. You can tell people to set an alarm clock. You can give people extra reasons to attend and you can email them an hour or two before the webinar starts to make sure they are on right this second.
Idea #8: Start the webinar early with a countdown timer. Something that's kind of cheesy that I see on other people's webinars is if I join the webinar early, they might say something like, "Welcome to the webinar. We've got 6 minutes to go until we start." And then they repeat the same exact thing: "Welcome to the webinar. We've got 5 minutes to go until we start."
You sound like a robot! It is a good idea to start the webinar early because people might not be sure of the exact time or the exact time zone or they might just be joining to make sure they don't forget or that they're not late. What I like to do is show my screen of the webinar early and use a timer program such as Cool Timer to show a countdown clock right on the screen, so if people come half an hour or 10 minutes before, they can see how much time is left before we start and I don't sound like a robot.
Idea #7: Use proof. Whether your next webinar is a pitch webinar or a training webinar, why the heck should I listen to you if you don't know what you're talking about? That means if you're teaching me how to create a product, show me what some of your products are like or what some of your sale letters look like.
If you're explaining to me how would to find a niche or how to find a hook in that niche, go ahead and take the exact steps. Otherwise, it's not worth my time to attend your webinar.
Idea #6: Get a webinar partner to read and answer questions. I know that running webinar might be scary for you especially because there are so many controls to worry about and so many things that can go wrong. That's why it's a good idea to have a second person on the call with you to read the questions, to look at the question box and when it's an appropriate time, let you know what someone has typed for you to read and respond to.
There are also some questions people might type in the question box that are relevant just to them. For example, they might type in that they have just ordered but something has gone wrong with the order.
Instead of broadcasting your response by saying it loud, that webinar partner can privately type in a response just for that person while you train the entire group.
Idea #5: Have as much training as possible screenshoted out. Have you ever tried to demonstrate something, especially something technical or something on the internet to someone and it failed? We have all been there.
Murphy's Law tells us that if something can go wrong on your webinar, it probably will. That's why just as a back-up, it's a good idea to take screenshots of whatever you're going to show people and have it already placed in your Powerpoint presentation.
For example, if you are showing someone how to find a niche and how to write a report in that niche, do that before the webinar and take screenshots of you going to forums or thinking of an idea. That way, even if the forum you want to look at is not working, you can still flip through the Powerpoint presentation and you can make sure that the presentation does not go over time.
That leads me to...
Idea #4: Wrap it up and end with a bang. Movies and TV shows try to end in the most impactful way possible with something exciting, with a climax. Your webinars should be no different. It's a common problem to run a webinar for an hour only to see that it ends up running 3 hours or longer and it ends up losing the interest of many attendees.
I would rather you run a short 1-hour webinar that quickly delivers good value and has a solid pitch than one that has the same amount of content stretched out over 3 hours. You want to get in, make your point, and end with people learning something and ready to take some kind of action. End with a bang, not with a whimper.
Idea #3: Be honest. Running a webinar is a great way to personally connect with your subscribers because they can hear your voice, see your screen, and most importantly, you are live. But when you lie to them, it's counterproductive. That's why if you want to say how many people are on the call, either don't give an exact number or give the real number. If only 20 people are on your webinar, you can choose to just ignore that fact or say 20 people are on your webinar.
Don't lie and tell people that 100 or 300 people have attended when it's not true. Also, when you're taking questions, you don't have to think of your own questions or think of fake question-askers.
You don't have to say, “Joe from Mississippi asks, what's the fastest way to make a product?†Instead, anticipate questions. Tell people that the fastest way to make a product is in this fashion. Webinars are definitely not the place to fake it until you make it.
Idea #2: Blend content and pitch. The best sales letters in the world are the ones that educate while selling you at the same time. Your webinars should be no different. Give people on your webinar the first steps towards accomplishing some kind of tasks and lead them toward the ending, which is that your training is the best way to accomplish that. Make them aware of common problems or help them overcome common objections or give them some kind of process to get them started. That way, your pitch or your offer at the end is a logical next step after having taken your free training.
Idea #1: Give one single call-to-action at the end. At the end of every webinar, you should give people some direction as to what to do next. If you are running a webinar inside a paid training area, your call-to-action might be homework or a challenge.
People simply shouldn't be educated by you, you should tell them what to do now that they have this new information. If you're giving a free webinar, at the end you should tell people where to go to find out more about you or better yet buy from you. Don't give them 5 different URLs. Don't share with them your Twitter, your blog, and your LinkedIn profile.
Give them one single URL and repeat it a few times so that there is no confusion about where people are supposed to go next.
I hope that you picked one of those 11 easy-to-implement ideas and apply it on your next webinar. Which one was your favorite? Leave a comment below telling me right now.
12 Can’t Miss Rules of Highly Effective Membership Sites
I don't care what niche your membership site is in, what software is running the membership site or even how big the membership is, you should be following all of these 12 rules of membership sites.
Rule #1: Autoresponder Reminders
Whether your membership site is filled with audio clips, videos, articles, or even PDFs or software, you simply cannot expect your members to always remember to log into your site everyday or every week. Set up some kind of autoresponder reminder system so that if someone has been in your membership site for 7 days, then on the 7th day of your autoresponder, it reminds them and tells them to come back to the membership site.
Rule #2: Drip Content
Don't give everything in your membership site away at once. You should be giving your members something new every week if they are charged on a recurring basis, but even if they are charged one single time, it can't hurt to record a couple of extra bonus videos that are dripped out throughout the refund period.
This will reduce your refunds and complaints and also keep people from cancelling and rejoining your membership site at a later date.
Rule #3: Offer Extended or Bonus Trickle Training
One of the best ways to get your customer to love you is with surprised bonuses. That means if you are offering extra training, either in a recurring or one-time membership site, don't announce every single thing you're offering them. Make at least a couple of the extra items be a pleasant surprise.
Rule #4: Stick to One Niche
I can't tell you how many membership sites I have joined that either ran out of ideas, go off-topic or just don't have anything interesting to say in their membership. Have a clear point to your membership site. Is your membership site about weight loss, real estate, copywriting? Whatever it is, make it totally clear what your members are buying into.
Rule #5: Cut Off Access For Non-Payment
If you joined a gym membership and didn't pay, you would no longer be allowed to access that gym's facilities, right? If you stopped paying your cable bill, you would no longer be able to watch TV. The same is true with your membership site. People are paying for access to your training and your content and if they are no longer paying, they should no longer have access.
Rule #6: Deliver Your Training Step By Step
You really do need to not only keep your training simple but offer a clear outcome. The easiest way to do this while also appearing as the best authority on your subject is to set up your training in a step-by-step fashion.
For example, if you are teaching a course about blogging, the first set of training should be about how to set up that blog and then should gradually go into how to create the content. That way, if someone is already somewhat experienced with blogging, they will get caught up, but the new members will not be left in the cold.
Rule #7: Remove The Word "Or" From Your Training
When your members are learning something new from you, no matter what the subject is, it's tough enough to figure it out just by following your step-by-step progress. Don't make it any more complicated than it has to be by sticking the word "or" in there. If you're teaching blogging, teach WordPress blogging, not WordPress or movable-type or pMachine. Whatever the subject is, remove as many choices as possible and teach people to do things the way you do them.
Rule #8: Create Multiple Levels of Your Membership Site
The great thing about membership site software is that you don't have to have a lot of different memberships set up. If you want to offer multiple products in the same site, you offer different membership levels.
People buy the beginner's blogger WordPress level and then later on, buy the advanced blogger WordPress level and be in the same membership site but get access to a new set of content. If you come out with advanced bloggers version 2.0, you can add those posts in layer and use the same membership site to host it all.
In addition, if you want to run a special promotion or give a certain group of people a bonus that only they can get, all you have to do is make a new membership level. You don't have to make a brand new membership site.
Rule #9: Set It Up Quickly
Way too many people spend 6 months or longer working on their content to try to make their membership the best it can possibly be, but the problem with this is that you are not spending your time on things that might make you money and your membership itself might not even be something people want. You need to set up your membership site as quickly as possible and then course-correct once people join.
That leads me to...
Rule #10: Only Be Ahead Of Your Last Subscriber
Like I said, you might be creating a bunch of content for nothing. It's also more important to have a lot of paying members in your site than to have a lot of content. You might have 6 months of content that nobody wants, but if you have one month of content that a lot of people want, you can justify the extra time you're spending and create more of that same content.
Rule #11: Avoid Lifetime Buyouts
You created your membership site, especially if it's a recurring one to get yourself a lot of easy automatic monthly income, right? Then why would you throw it all away by offering a lifetime buyout option?
This is where members can, instead of paying a monthly fee, pay you one single fee and get the entire membership content at once, even if it's 6 months, a year or longer.
Not only does this kill your monthly income, it trains your subscribers not to pay you on a monthly basis, plus it is going to overwhelm them getting all the information at once.
And the final rule of setting up highly effective membership sites is..
Rule #12: Set An End Date
Unless you have tons of content, you won't necessarily be excited about your membership site in 6 months or a year from now. For that reason, why would you want to keep your membership site going forever and ever? Unless you are 100% sure you are still going to be excited about maintaining this membership site in 1, 2, or even 3 years, set at end-date for your membership sites.
I prefer 6 months (sometimes 8) because that gives me long enough time to say everything I want to say even at the advanced level but it doesn't give me too much to handle.
And I know that if I have even more to say, I can see how this first six-month membership site works out and then create a second membership site.
And those were the 12 can't miss rules of highly effective membership sites.
Which one did you like the best and how soon are you going to apply it to your existing or current membership site? Leave a comment below explaining yourself.
How To Get More Comments On Your Next Blog Post… And Every Single One After That
When you add new content to your blog, you need to have more social proof. You can't have one of those sad little blogs where most of the posts have zero comments. You need comments on your posts - and lots of them!
Why is it that I get way more comments than your blog does?
It is because I have experimented with different things that DON'T work, and things that DO work. But lucky for you, I am only going to share with you strategies that get you more comments on your blog with very little effort.
Comments On Other People's Blogs
What if once per day, before you did anything else that day, you spent just three minutes going to one person who has previously left a comment on your blog, clicking into their blog, and leaving a fast response under their most recent entry?
That means that just a few minutes of work every day equals seven people per week who feel obligated to leave comments on YOUR blog.
Just remember, you get what you give! If you leave a "Me too" comment on their blog, expect a "Me too" comment back. However, if you add a short and simple response that contributes and adds to the conversation, you can expect those people to do the same.
What's great about this strategy is you can keep returning the favor over and over, when other people leave you a blog comment, and phase out the people who don't.
The result is a very strong inner circle of people who you can count on to comment on your blog.
Email Your List Telling Them To Comment
Here is a much easier way to get traffic to your blog and get them to comment. Send an email message to your list, telling them to go right now and leave a comment.
This does not have to be a long email, and you don't have to copy and paste the blog post into that email. In fact it is better if you simply send a short message saying, "I left a blog post. Go here and comment right now." And link directly to your individual blog post.
Comment Record With The "Get Recent Comments" Plugin
With WordPress you can add different modules, or widgets, to your sidebar, including one that lists the recent comments. However, the built-in "Recent Comments" plugin for WordPress doesn't say much, it only makes a list of the recent names of people who have commented on your blog.
However, the "Get Recent Comments" plugin, which is an additional plugin for WordPress, will list everyone on your sidebar who has commented recently. It will show their name and the first part of their comment. That means if someone is returning to your blog, they can see what new comments have appeared since their last visit, and click directly on one and reply to it.
This makes it easy for people to remain in the conversation, especially people are leaving comments across multiple posts.
Comment Scarcity With The "Call To Action" Plugin
I have a special Call to Action plugin that will not only add a simple arrow underneath your blog post pointing to the comment forum, it will display a message telling people to comment.
And you can optionally close comments after a certain number of comments or quota has been met. You could say that you are only allowing ten comments per post. After that post has ten comments, it is now closed up and no longer accepting new blog comments.
Comment Follow-Up With "Subscribe To Comments"
One of my Top 5 all-time favorite WordPress plugins is the "Subscribe to Comments" plugin. What this plugin does is it adds a checkbox to the comment form. If someone leaves a comment and this box is checked, WordPress will send them an email every time a new comment has been placed on this post.
This means that if somebody leaves a comment on your blog on Monday and then someone comes back and comments on Wednesday, that original person can come back and respond because they received an email telling them there was a new comment.
Comment Bribe With "Action Comments"
I have a plugin called "Action Comments" which adds an additional checkbox to your comment form which allows people to get onto your auto responder list.
Think about it: when somebody leaves a comment on your blog, they are already typing their name and email address in order to identify themselves in that comment. However, by checking this additional checkbox, you can also subscribe them to your list.
Why would anyone want to get subscribed to your list, you ask? You can notify them of future blog posts AND you can create an opt-in bribe, such as an audio or a report containing your Top 5 blog posts, in one convenient location.
People are leaving a comment and they see a checkbox that asks if they would like to have a free bonus. They comment, they get their free bonus, and now they are on your list and can unsubscribe at any time.
But the beauty of this is that next time you have a blog post, when you email your list, that person who subscribed to your blog from leaving a comment, will be directed to leave their next comment.
And those are 6 incredible ways to get more comments on your blog posts: Comment on other blogs, mailing your list, using the "Get Recent Comments" plugin, using the "Call to Action" plugin, the "Subscribe to Comments" plugin and the "Action Comments" plugin.
Are you using any of these methods on your own blog? Are you missing any of them? (Which ones?)
Please post a comment below with your response.
