Recent Updates
Aftermath from the Action Seminar
Hey guys, I'm finally back from the Action Seminar which I co-hosted with Mary Wilhite and Jason Fladlien. It's been a long week. After hosting that event in Dallas for two days I hopped on a plane directly to Chicago for three days at the AM2 Platinum retreat.
The first day of the Action Seminar was pretty fun... Jason and I both spoke twice, Mary Wilhite spoke, Marc Harty and Jeanette Cates spoke.
The second day was an all-day mastermind session. It was pretty cool when Jason dictated copy to David Burch (one of our old students). At one point we created a free report, squeeze page, and thank you page for Roderick Martin -- including a Flip video of him thanking people for opting in and asking to call his phone number for a free consultation.
Yes, we even uploaded that Flip video to YouTube right in front of everyone and watermarked it. It was pretty cool.
But the rest of the crowd didn't have anything specific to ask. They'd spend 5 to 10 minutes explaining every little detail of their business, and then ask, "What now?" Which was annoying, especially when Jason and I are internet marketers.
We spoke about product creation, time management, passion marketing, video creation, and e-mail marketing so why ask something completely unrelated to those things? I'd rather people asked questions in areas where we were experts so we didn't have to guess. I'm good (probably one of the best) at fast infoproduct creation, fast PHP programming, fast copywriting.
But offline marketing? I won't touch it. Nothing wrong with that... it's just not my area of expertise.
Anyway, that's me catching up. Do you ask ten cent questions or thousand dollar questions? Comment below and hit the submit button within the next 5 minutes.
Three Ways To Double Your Internet Income
Guest blog post by Jason Parker
Hello readers of Robert Plank. A little bit about me... I'm a pro internet marketer with my own LLC and I also work behind the scenes for a multi-million dollar IM information empire.
Since I'm well-connected with some of the richest internet marketers online, I hear about new tactics almost every week, and about future tactics before they're even revealed. For example, I knew the ins-and-outs of micro continuity last year, and now Russell Brunson is exposing it to the world. I knew about CPV advertising through Zango before it was even semi-exposed (now Zango is shutting down, and the honey hole is about to be gone).
My point is, in my environment I get to test the effects of marketing tactics all day. Through this process I've come up a set of bread-and-butter tactics that can blow your income through the roof. If you want to double your income, implementing just 1 of these 3 ways can make that happen for you.
Double Your Income Way #1:
Swap JV Contact Info
Perhaps the most powerful tactic I've ever used to explode my income is dead simple and makes you think, “Why didn't I think of that?†The secret I'm talking about is swapping JV contact info.
Step #1: You go to your Top 5 joint venture partners and say, “I'll give you the names and e-mail addresses of my Top 4 JV partners if you give me the names and e-mail addresses of your Top 4 JV partners. Also, I'll e-mail each of my JV partners and give an endorsement for you by saying you and I have successfully made money together in the past, while you do the same for me.â€
Step #2: You set up JV deals with your 20 new JV partners. Some ideas are to... Do ad swaps, which means you send an e-mail with a naked link to your list for them, and they do the same for you. Or you can cross promo your products using affiliate links. Or you can even set up a webinar or call, split the cash from the pitch at the end, and make some serious loot. The beauty of JV deals is that you're getting free, endorsed traffic to your website, and that's one of the most profitable types of traffic you can get.
Step #3: After the successful JV deal, you go back to Step #1, except this time you trade JV contact information with your 20 new JV partners. Let's say you trade your Top 5 JV partner contact info for their Top 5s. Now you have 100 new JV partners.
Keep in mind you may not have exactly 20 or 100 new JV partners, because you'll find you'll start penetrating different internet marketing circles and you'll be reaching the same people. For example, you might break into ClickBank Circle A, then CPA Marketers Circle A, then ClickBank Circle B, then PPC Affiliate Circle A. Instead of staying in the same circle of JV partners, this tactic allows you to join multiple circles, and potentially you'll start reaching the “Guru†circles. What you'll mainly find, however, are circles of mid-level marketers who are making $3,000-$15,000 per month who have lists between 5,000-20,000 or another big resource to leverage like a high traffic authority site.
Double Your Income Way #2:
Hands-Off Multiple Streams Of Traffic
I work for a company that makes 1 sale every 3 minutes online, and this is how they do it. We get traffic from a lot of quality sources... SEs (Organic), Articles, Press Releases, Joint Venture Traffic, PPC, CPA, CPV, Video Traffic, Podcast Traffic, Twitter Traffic, Facebook Traffic, Forum Traffic, Social Bookmarking Traffic, MySpace Traffic, Ezine Solo Ad Traffic, Offline Ad Space Traffic. That's what I call multiple streams of traffic!
Can you imagine what it would be like trying to get traffic from all these sources everyday? Exausting and time consuming. To tell you the truth, we are getting this traffic in an almost completely hands-off way. And the secret is this... You open up a new source of traffic and you get it going until it's profitable, then you hand it off through outsourcing. The same person who handles your PPC, may also handle your CPV and CPA since they're all 3 very mathematical. The person or company that handles your SEO, might also do your articles, videos, and podcast because they're similar and work together. The person who builds your Twitter following, also does your other social media marketing.
Double Your Income Way #3:
Consistent Traffic To High Quality And High Converting Continuity Program
Once you have a continuity program that's both quality and converts high for your clients or the type of prospects you attract, then it's a good idea to funnel 100 or more hits to that program every day. This can also be your own continuity program or a recurring commission affiliate program. If you have a content website that gets a lot of traffic already from quality sources, then you might be OK putting a banner for the continuity program on your site. (Are you promoting a one-time sale product right now? Why would you promote a product on your website to get only one-time sales when you can get 2-4 low-end sales out of the same customer and still funnel them into the high end stuff?) If you're primarily an e-mail marketer like me who doesn't have an authority site and relies on 100-1000 hits of quality traffic per day, then you can promote the continuity program in a lot of different places in order to drive consistent traffic to it.
Place #1: A Banner Ad On Your Opt-In Thank You Page. This is where I drive a lot of daily traffic to a continuity program. Not only does this build paid subscriptions, but I find that the banner alone makes me profit on the frontend for whatever advertising I'm doing. If you're constantly building your list, then you should be able to send 50-250 hits per day to the continuity program.
Place #2: Global Fields P.S. In your Global Fields for any autoresponder, you can place a signature that's automatically shown when you blast an e-mail. I have 2 P.S.s The 1st P.S. invites my subscribers to reply to my e-mails so we can build a relationship. The 2nd P.S. is where I drive 25-100 hits per day to the continuity program.
Place #3: Forum Ads. You can buy ad space above the fold on a related forum, rent out the signature file of a member on a forum who has a lot of posts, or if you sell to internet marketers, then you can buy Warrior Forum Classified ads. Using these tactics you can expect to drive another 50-250 hits per day to the continuity program.
Let's say you use all of these tactics and the continuity program pays $48.50 per subscriber per month. For you it's converting at 2% since the continuity program has a 30 day trail period. If you can send 125-600 hits per day into that continuity program from these quality sources above, then you can expect to add 2-12 subscribers per day. If you add 2 subscribers per day for 30 days, then you just potentially created a recurring $1,455 per month income stream. If you add 6-12 subscribers per day, then you'll potentially create a $4,365-$8,730 income stream every 30 days.
Reality... Add in average retention rate. About half of those who pay the 1st month are likely to pay for 4 months in a row. Subtract pending commission due to bounced charges. Subtract those who cancel during trial period (very few do if the continuity program is high quality). Add in your new subscribers with the ones you've retained. And that's how much money you're making from the continuity program each month.
Have you used any of these techniques? If not, what's the ONE technique Jason got you to add to your bottom line? Leave a comment with your name below right now.
The Proper Way to Send Autoresponder Followups
As an autoresponder email marketer, you need to realize that your readers' inboxes are pounded with offers and content every day, so you need to do something different to stand out from the crowd.
Send short follow-ups instead of long e-mails. If you rely on one single e-mail to pitch a product, you have to understand that many people will lose your e-mail in the clutter, or won't be bothered to actually read the e-mail.
For this reason, you need to break your messages into tiny pieces. I prefer 100 to 400 words for e-mails... anything more than a few pages is too much. Instead of one long e-mail explaining your entire offer, schedule one e-mail that warms up your list.
Schedule another to send out the next day explaining the offer in one page or less. The next message can hit on benefits you missed the first time. In the next message, hit on the technical details... and in the mailing after that, ask: Why have you still not bought? You can get really creative.
Finally, take a second to think about your email subject lines. These are your headlines. Try to come up with something creative and relevant, rather than something overly boring or hype-filled. What e-mail subject lines have grabbed your attention recently? What about headlines on a sales letter or text on a newspaper ad? Model your subject lines after those headlines.
Those are my main tips to properly market to people using an autoresponder: Sublist with each product, and send short, to the point e-mails with clever headlines. With just a little bit of creativity, you can have an awesome autoresponder that converts like crazy and performs better than 98% of the other marketers out there.
Time Management on Crack 2.0
I wrote a little bit this past weekend. I got so excited about the talk I'm going to give at the Action Seminar on MAY 29th about balancing your day job with internet marketing and manufacturing your next video product line... that I updated my Time Management on Crack report.
It would be bragging to tell you Jeanette Cates, Marlon Sanders, Mike Paetzold, David Deutsch, David Risley... plus 494 other smart people paid me money to get access to the information in that package. (My high school graduating class was smaller than that!) Did they invest to get access to my four levels of productivity, or to get access to my 13 unique systems for writing articles, making videos, writing sales letters, creating products and getting traffic?
Maybe they joined for the bonuses like the video that showed me writing a sales letter in one hour with no edits, or the bonus video that explained 17 additional "Motivationality" milestones, or even the bonus BONUS 90-minute "Take Massive Action" webinar recording... who knows?
Whatever the reason, I've edited the book to add 10 additional procedures on everything from screen capture video recording, article videos, talking head flip camera videos, webinar production, getting a virtual assistant, building your "brand" including a USP and a blog... the stuff that you not only need to know, but repeat enough so that it's INTUITIVE so that in the future all you really need to do is flip to that page and follow the step-by-step procedure to accomplish that task.
The book was 10,000 words long. I went in and removed about 3,000 words, then wrote 13,000 more words to cover all 23 procedures. Now it's exactly 20,000 words... not 19,997 or 20,003... twenty thousand words, I guess I'm weird like that.
Big Problem: I haven't released it yet. I need 10 honest reviews I can use before I release it to you guys (people who already bought get the update for free since I provide 750 days of updates). And then version 2.0 is yours.
If you haven't bought Time Management on Crack yet, get it. If you have it, please leave a comment below telling me:
- What one thing is taught you about time management that you didn't already know.
- What is reminded you about time management that you knew but forgot.
- What you're going to do in the next 7 days now that you have this information.
- Your name, your URL, and your picture.
Comment below with those 4 items, list it in that numbered format so I know you hit on all four elements, and answer questions 1-3 in complete sentences (you only need one or two sentences). Once I get that from ten of you, everyone who bought will get the updated report.
On your mark, get set, GO!!!
Internet Marketing Time Management
When I was working at a day job, I probably only had 1 to 3 hours to put into my business each day, so I crammed in whatever I could every day.
Now that I have a lot more time to put into this, I categorize each day of the week to PRIMARILY complete a certain task... I picked up this tip years ago from a report written by Willie Crawford.
Here is what I do during the week. I'm always improving my systems so you won't always see this formula but here is what I plan for...
Monday: Writing Day. Write all e-mails to be sent out the rest of the week. I tend to launch (or relaunch) one new product a week, so all I need to do is think about four things to mention about what I'm launching (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) and write those as four quick e-mails.
E-mail marketing is always quantity over quality anyway, so why not send short and to-the-point e-mails that blend content and sales (which makes it okay to end each daily tip with a pitch). If I'm feeling nice, I might hit them four days of the week with regular e-mails and then a blog post on the fifth day.
But the point is, I get all my e-mails queued up one day so I don't have to worry about sending e-mails the rest of the week.
Tuesday: Customer Service Day. Here is where I knock out all the refund requests, lost download links, and so on. I answer customer service a little bit each day but I get so much, if I answered customer service first thing every day, I wouldn't get anything done.
Right now, the majority of my support requests come from Action PopUp, which is silly because if people read the instructions and tried things like disabling other plugins temporarily, making sure all files were uploaded, and testing the plugin on the default theme, it would eliminate 90% of all problems.
But people still need my help and I'm happy to help them. Tuesday is where I clear out customer support so that I'm about 24 hours behind instead of my usual average of 3 days.
Wednesday: Webinar with Jason. Without webinars, Jason and I could not have had several back to back $30K months. I'll be honest, our latest webinar didn't sell out as well as I thought as it would and I fell to $21,000 in April. But I've still made roughly $110K in the first four months of 2009.
We run the rolling four week webinar model. We have a big launch and create a four week e-class on a topic... anything from video selling to product creation... have a 90-minute webinar once a week and fill in stuff in a private blog in between. At the end of week number four, we sell them on the NEXT four week webinar.
It's a great model and I can actually get customers to do things they wouldn't do if they bought a stupid e-book from me. During the day I add content to that blog for the week, then at night I co-host the webinar. Right now we're smack dab in the middle of Webinar Crusher.
Thursday: Webinar with Lance. Since the April dip I decided to get a second e-class going to target a whole other crowd of buyers... Lance's new-school low ticket buyers who appreciate a good funnel. Same rolling four-week model. Right now we're hosting the Blog Invasion System.
Friday: Product Creation Day. I keep pushing so that if I want to create a product, I do it in a day... or at least a weekend. On Friday I'll either write a report, or knock out a bunch of PHP scripts or WordPress plugins. If I'm on a roll this will usually carry over into the weekend.
The weekend is usually a mix, but I definitely ignore most e-mails until the weekend is over. I definitely spend a lot of time away from the compuer on the weekends but I make sure to put at least 5-10 minutes in.
There you have it, my day-to-day system...
- Monday: Writing Day
- Tuesday: Customer Service Day
- Wednesday: Jason Webinar
- Thursday: Lance Webinar
- Friday: Product Creation Day
What's your daily system? Do you even have one? If not, post a comment below and make one up. I need 11 comments and 11 tweets to this post if you want me to keep adding to this blog...
Robert Plank Retires!
I mentioned this in passing in a couple of blog posts recently, but after meeting Joe Lavery in Orlando, he had no idea I'm now doing internet marketing full time, so here it is:
I Quit My Day Job on March 25, 2009!
I should have quit a year ago, or even sooner. The only things holding me back were: health insurance (my self-employed plan is now $125/month), money reserve (I have enough to last me a couple years), and pissing off the people who trained me (which was a stupid reason anyway).
March 26, 2009: Immediately after quitting my day job, I stepped on a plane to Dallas, Texas for AM 2.0 to meet Armand Morin, Ryan Deiss, Ray Edwards, Ryan Healy, and Mary Wilhite for the first time ever.
I was totally ready to tell Armand that I quit my day job so I could attend as Jeanette Cates's guest, but the only interaction we got to have was him yelling at me for pricing my stuff too low. At least I got to tell Ryan Deiss that fact, even though I'm not sure he knows who I am.
The next two weeks after returning included knocking out as many points as possible for Armand's AM 2.0 Platinum 100-point checklist, launching our most profitable webinar ever ($17,000 on the launch), and updating Action PopUp, WordPress Crusher, 47 Hour Report, creating Split Genie, and running a couple webinars with Ryan Healy and Derek Franklin.
April 17, 2009: Back on the road... flew out to Austin, Texas for Eric Louviere's MemberSnap seminar after super-programmer Henry Fuentes invited me. I brought my business partner Jason Fladlien along, especially because Marlon Sanders had been e-mailing us but liked him way better, so I figured the three of us could hang out.
We sat in the seminar a grand total of 25 minutes all weekend, and talked with Marlon most of the time. He taught me most of what I know now about "branding" (yuck) and positioning and basically made me paranoid about everything going on with internet marketing.
April 23, 2009: Mass Control 2.0! I only had a couple of days to stay at home before waking up early Thursday morning and heading south on California Highway 99 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles, and finally to San Diego, California... six hour drive from Turlock.
I wasn't registered for the conference so I made sure to stay far, far away from that conference room. I chilled with Lance Tamashiro most of the weekend, and got to meet David Risley (who confused Frank Kern for Kid Rock), met Jason Moffatt for about ten seconds (who was busy macking on some chick), met Alex Jeffries (who I'd never heard of but he was a big hero of Lance's), Ryan Wade (ViralTweets), Joe Lavery (long time customer) and who could forget Dale Maxwell the colon cleanser.
April 29, 2009: Time to co-host my own workshop at the Impact 100 event in Orlando, Florida. Through a strange twist of fate I stayed at the same hotel I stayed at ten years ago when I was in high school for the Future Business Leaders of America. Jason Fladlien, Mary Wilhite and I hosted the "Niche Riches for Beginners" workshop.
Jason talked about the niche selection system, Mary presented on webinars, I dissected list building and traffic, Jason explained copywriting, I talked about product creation and basically got in everyone's face and made sure all 16 participants gave me their name, phone number, webinar topic, and time and date they were going to present that webinar. We presented from 9AM to 5PM (with breaks).
Joe Lavery was there again, so was Charlie Fry from the Video Sales Tactics class... he flew out from Philadelphia just to see us which I thought was cool. All theparticipants in that class were AWESOME... and the three of us had so much fun that we are hosting another workshop, the "Action Seminar" in Dallas, at the end of May:
Dallas Embassy Suites
4650 W Airport Fwy
Irving, TX 75062Friday, May 29, 2009 from 9AM-5PM (Workshop)
Saturday, May 30, 2009 (Networking Breakfast)
I'll have more info about that later including where you can register. It will only cost $97 to attend and we'll have Jeanette Cates (the Tech Tamer) and Marc Harty (PR Traffic) onboard as guest speakers.
That's what I've been up to for the past month and a half since I retired from my day job: four seminars in a month.
I heard once that if you quit your job, the LAST thing you should do is immediately sit in front of your television set... either get a new job or go on vacation, so I went on vacation.
But now for the more important question: how do I manage my time now that I don't have the day job to hold me down? How do I make sure I get enough accomplished, still have enough free time, and don't goof off with my newfound free time? I've already got that covered, and I'm ready to explain my day to day system to you for free, but I need something from you first:
- Ten comments under this blog post.
- Ten tweets about this post (Twitter icon is on the bottom of the post)
Once I those those two things from you guys, I'll spill the beans about exactly how I manage my time and how I maintain my business day to day. Thanks guys! Leave your comment below...
Banned From YouTube
As some of you noticed, I was banned from YouTube. No reason given!
That account had 160 videos, 50 subscribers, has been around for 2 years and responsible for a couple of extra accidental sales per week. Some of the videos on that account had over 2,000 views.
Long story short: the Thursday morning of April 23, 2009 I drove from Turlock, south down Highway 99 and then Interstate 5 through Fresno, Bakersfield, Los Angeles then finally San Diego to meet a few people who were in town for Mass Control 2.0.... Jason Fladlien, Lance Tamashiro, Dale Maxwell, David Risley, and Bryan Blyss (Faceman).
Tragedy Strikes!
We check into Jason's room at the Hard Rock Hotel, break out the laptop like usual internet marketing nerds and check out our Video Sales Tactics blog. Try to play the latest YouTube video I have posted there... and it's been "removed for terms of use violation."
That's weird, I say... and try to play another YouTube, same message. I load my YouTube profile... it says, "This account is suspended." Try to login to that account, same deal.
YouTube never sent me any e-mail about any videos being a problem or about the account being taken down. YouTube has no phone number of e-mail address, but after filling out a 10-part form I was able to get this canned response:
Hi robertplank,
Thanks for your email. Your "robertplank" account has been found to have violated our Community Guidelines. Your account has now been terminated. Please be aware that you are prohibited from accessing, possessing or creating any other YouTube accounts.
YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When a video or account is brought to our attention we investigate and take action if necessary.
We are unable to provide specific detail regarding your account suspension or your video's removal. For more information on our what we consider inappropriate content or conduct while using YouTube, please visit our
Community Guidelines and Tips at http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines and our Help Center article http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=92486.Regards,
Roberto
The YouTube Team
So YouTube tells me my account violates their community guidelines, but won't tell me which ones, and it's obviously none because their community guidelines refer to copyright infringement, anything illegal, hate speech, etc. of which my account had none. It was ALL talking head and PowerPoint how-to videos.
The icing on the cake is that being "suspended" from YouTube not only means your account is gone, but you aren't allowed to create any new accounts. (The guys from Traffic Geyser told me to create a new account at a friend's house, but there's no way I'm doing that.)
That Sucks!
The lesson to all this is: post videos in Camtasia format on your blog so you aren't stuck with a bunch of "this video has been removed" links all over your blog. I have the originals of all those videos and YouTube only accounted for 5% of my traffic, but it still sucks.
Build your own site, not someone else's. You shoud be posting your YouTube videos on your OWN blog, including hosting the video itself. It's just like how you should be posting your own articles to your blogs, and not just EzineArticles.
Matt Levenhagen responded to my tweet on Facebook and mentioned sxephil (Philip DeFranco) who is one of my favorite YouTubers, who does this too. Use your videos to get people offsite and on your list so you can continue posting videos on your blog.
As far as why I was banned? The only thing that makes sense is Traffic Geyser. It looks like I was wrong, other internet marketers not using Traffic Geyser have been banned for the same reason...
What Does All This Mean?
The moral of the story is YouTube throws great parties, but is not trustworthy enough to watch your kids. Use YouTube as a traffic source, not a place to store all your content.
That's the true story of the last YouTube ever posted by Robert Plank... what are your thoughts on this? Make sure to comment below!
Write Sales Copy Without a Teacher
Copywriting is one of the best-paying writing skills you could possibly have. When you know how to write good ads (instead of just good content), you can hit peoples' persuasion triggers and get them to buy or get them to take any sort of action (like putting your info to use or opting into your e-mail list). That's a skill worth $500 per page instead of $5 per page.
You don't even need to know how to write copy from scratch, you can just make a few tweaks to bad copy to make it into good copy. Think about it. What if you found a great product with an affiliate program that had a crappy sales page? You could rewrite that copy to gut out the unimportant parts, add a few of your own points and shape the offer in such a way that gets people to buy.
What shape is that? AIDA... Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Get their attention with a headline, capture interest with a problem and a solution, build desire with benefits and testimonials... then tell them to take action. Click an order button, subscribe to a newsletter, whatever. Today you need to find AIDA in every day ads.
Look at 4 pieces of junk mail on your mail table or look at direct mail ads online at a site called "Hard To Find Ads" ... you can find it in Google. For each of those 4 ads, write down what the Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action for each one is.
(Come on, hurry up and do it, it will only take you a couple of minutes. Make a commitment to yourself.)
You have only done four today, but I want you to keep AIDA in mind every time you read a web site, watch a TV commercial, see a poster at the mall... ALL successful ads use it. We have all seen commercials that are clever or funny... but you have no idea what they are selling.
Obviously attention and action are the most obvious parts of AIDA, but attention is only the beginning... and without desire, you don't want the product and you won't order. Keep in mind that the elements of AIDA go in order and keep building... building... and building pressure until your prospect is ready to explode, and have nowhere to go BUT to buy.
What's your best QUICK tip to write sales copy on your own, if you have no one to help teach you?
Are You Doing Something Every Day?
It can be tough to stay motivated and on-task day in and day out, especially if you're self employed. In addition to that, if you're self employed and you work from home, you have to battle the urge to stay away from the TV, play with the kids, and so on. Luckily, there is hope. There are three tactics I use every day to stay motivated, even though I work a day job and have very little free time.
First of all, make sure you do something every day. This sounds like a "no brainer", but it's so easy to work for 5 hours on a project one day, then forget about it for a few days. If you let something go for more than 24 hours, you will have difficulty getting that inertia built back up. Personally, I work every evening when I get home from work and I work weekends -- including Sunday -- even if it's only for 5 to 10 minutes. Chances are, if you force yourself to build your business, even for five minutes, you might have fun and end up working for 30 to 60 hours.
You also need to hate your present situation. Let me explain. You should not be miserable and hate your life, but you need to have some reason to do what you're doing. Do you want a bigger house in 5 years? Do you want to go to Spain for vacation this year instead of Disney Land?
A really good and weird tactic is to set slightly unrealistic goals. If you always make $3,000 a month, tell yourself you want to make $5,000 this month. You'll work harder and might hit $4,000 or $4,500... which you will view as a failure, so you'll try harder next month. You started working for yourself because you wanted more of something... more money, more freedom, whatever. If somebody paid all your bills and did all your work for you, what would be the point of living?
Finally, you need to keep your work shippable. This is a practice I began using with software development and carried it with me to article production and info product creation. If you create your products and write your reports with the assumption that it HAS to go out tomorrow, then you'll be able to launch it if you suddenly get bored. Instead of having your project in a million pieces, have the bare minimum ready to go NOW, and add to it as needed.
Those are my three best motivational tools: doing something every day, hating your present situation, and keeping products shippable.
Explode Your Productivity in 3 Simple Steps
It does not matter what profession you have, if you are self employed or employed by someone else, you need some way to stay motivated. On the other hand, if you really are self employed you probably have a difficult time every now and then to keep performing tasks that make you money, day in and day out.
If you want to stay productive for as long as possible, keep in mind the 24-48 Hour Rule. Also make that extra effort to improve your typing speed, and do everything you can to put yourself in the right mindset.
The 24-48 Hour Rule came about when I realized that whenever I work on an article writing campaign, create a video product, or write a report or e-book, 80% of the work is completed within a 24 to 48 hour period. If I take any longer, my productivity declines considerably. Even if it takes me 3 to 7 days to write a book, I tend to drag my feet or focus on other tasks during that time.
You need to work inside a 24 to 48 hour box where you are not distracted by anything else. Stay up all night, wake up early, decline an invitation to hang out with friends, do whatever it takes during that time to finish. I say 24 to 48 hour box because I tell myself I am going to finish in exactly 24 hours, and end up going to 48. You need to set that 24 hour goal, and end up finishing within 48 hours.
Another bottleneck you are going to run across is your typing speed. You need to learn how to touch type using programs such as "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing." You might type a little slower the first few weeks, but if you can bring your typing speed up to 50 to 120 words per minute... any programming, copywriting, e-mail marketing, forum posting, or article writing you do will take a lot less time.
Finally there is the mindset factor. You need to be in the right mindset and train your brain to hate being poor or not having products completed. You also need to reward yourself after you have finished a job, so your brain associates your success with happiness.
Those are the three easy steps to exploding your productivity and getting a lot more accomplished.
Double Your Prices!
Hey guys, I'm back from AM 2.0 in Dallas and I'm still getting caught up on customer support issues.
I talked to Ryan Deiss the first day (I saw him speak in Dallas last year but I never got a chance to say hi). He said, "How business?" I said great, that I just had my first $30K month in February and that I quit my day job of three years (first and only job out of college) to attend the event.
Later that night, Armand Morin was talking to a group of people so on my way out to dinner, I fist-bumped him (my standard greeting) and he said: "Robert, double your prices. You'll double your income instantly." Basically, if you wanted to buy all of Armand's products it would cost you $15K. To buy all my stuff (not including webinars), probably about $1K. He gave the same advice to the rest of the group the following morning.
You got it, Armand. The first product I'm doing that with is Action PopUp. The price was $27 for the last several months, it's now $37 and it will be $47 before the end of this month once I wrap-up my new popup training course that'll go along with it.
1. This weekend was one of the best events I've ever attended. Armand mentioned Action PopUp onstage and Ray Edwards mentioned WordPress Letter to a bunch of people. I didn't get to meet Michel Fortin... maybe next time!
2. My goal was to have 10 webinars scheduled by the end, I left with 5. I'm still happy.
3. March 2009 was my SECOND consecutive $30K month (actually it was slightly over $32,000). February's goal was $30K, March goal was $31K, so now my goal for April is $32K.
4. I launched Enhanced Sales Letters and WordPress Letter just before leaving. The night I left for the airport, I cleaned out my PayPal account and came back to an $11,000 balance. Not bad for my first week of full-time self-employment.
5. I joined AM 2.0 Gold, the $500/month program that gets you into these seminars. My goal is to upgrade to AM 2.0 Platinum within 10 days. All you need to do is prove you made $100K last year (done -- in fact I've made about $80K just in 2009), and complete a 100-point checklist that all "professional" web sites satisfy. I knocked out 58 of those 100 points in about 20 minutes this morning.
6. Armand showed a super-secret AdWords technique that my business partner is already implementing. At the bar, DJ Dave Bernstein shared six networking strategies that made the whole trip worthwhile. The following night I used just ONE of those techniques to pay $46 for $120 of alcohol. Good stuff.
Bottom line: Go to seminars, know what you want out of a seminar before you go, actually make mistakes and use the stuff you learn, and most importantly... hang out at the bar every night even if you don't drink. You'll make some connections and have a heck of a lot more fun sitting at the computer in your hotel room.
What networking events are you attending this year?
Improve Your Speaking Skills on Video?
Do you want to speak on stage someday or host your own seminars? You can use the power of screen capture software (like Jing or Camtasia) to create your products faster and improve your public speaking skills.
My formula: record a video for a paid product, if I don't have time for that, keep the video rolling while I do something to improve my business... and don't stop the camera until I'm done. (This REALLY keeps me on task.) If that fails, open up Notepad and go over what I did that day. I plan for 5 minutes and that usually ends up taking 20 minutes.
Then, watch that video you just recorded from start to finish.
This is what professional actors and public speakers do to train themselves to actually look presentable.
You would be surprised at how many people DON'T do this. Just look at how many chipmunk-infested Camtasia videos are floating around out there.
There are so-called "experts" at video who are hard to watch.
When you talk with your hands, it's distracting and you look like an idiot! There is absolutely NO REASON for you to use 2-3 different nervous hand gestures with every sentence.
When you talk for 2 minutes before you start to say anything new, you have lost my interest. Do you have a lame video with flashy graphics than says nothing but, "Welcome to my web site?" Get rid of it! If someone missed the first 2 minutes of your video, would it still make sense? Then start at that 2 minute point next time.
The point of video is so you can communicate more information in less time, and hold someone's attention better than plain text can. That should be your goal as a public speaker as well. If you can master the art of keeping yourself entertained, you can become a great public speaker, or at least produce amazing videos.
Bring Numbers to the Seminar
Hey guys, I'm still at AM 2.0 in Dallas. It turns out Michel Fortin and Stu McLaren didn't make it. But I did get to meet Armand Morin, Ray Edwards, Ryan Deiss, and a chunk-load of other people.
Last night we did a networking event, everyone in the room rotates and you get to spend a few minutes explaining yourself, what your biggest problem is, and what you get out of the seminar.
Hardly anyone shared their numbers which sucks. I want to know how much your last product launch was even if it only make $100 or how much you made last month online even if it was only $50.
It's all 80/20 rule... 80% of the stuff in your business usually is a waste. But if we're listening to you explain your business we don't know what 20% is making you the most money... if you don't share numbers!
I shared a couple of income numbers during the session but since no one else was doing it, it felt like bragging, so I stopped.
If you're at these seminars and you haven't make any money online, freaking tell us that too so the people you talk to can get you on track. Share income numbers if you're trying to get advice, because that's the most important thing.
Work: My Most Hated Word!
You guys had a ton of good guesses about my most hated word... but the word I'm trying to get rid of is: WORK!
No one wants to do work. My girlfriend always says, "I have to go back to work after lunch" or "I got to work at 10 o'clock." I keep correcting her... you aren't going to work, you're going back to the rehab center to help old people and make a difference.
- When Jason and I hold e-classes, he always gives out "homework" and I get him to rename it to that week's "challenge."
- Jason never says he is "sick" ... instead, he has the flu or has a virus he needs to get rid of.
- When I get off the phone with business partners, I've stopped saying, "Get back to work." Instead, I say things like, "Get back to having fun building your business."
Finally, when I get an angry customer, his e-mail usually says a PHP script didn't "work" ... what a waste of time, because I always have to reply and say, "How did it not 'work?' Was there an error message, did you try anything?"
Even when something "works" in a positive way, it's still not specific enough... it needs to be benefit-oriented. (The script didn't just "work" ... it showed up on the page and gathered opt-ins!)
Look at how many of you took time of your day to answer the previous post... you were escaping your "work!" (Ironically enough, the very FIRST answer within 10 seconds was the correct guess.) You need to find a way to make your so-called "work" enjoyable... turn it into a game:
- Friendly competition: Get an accountability partner and try to earn more money than him.
- More output: If you wrote 10 articles last week, write 12 articles this week.
- Less time: If you spent 20 hours building your business last week, do those same tasks this week in 15 hours and take Friday off.
Many people ask me and Jason how we get more done in a week than most people do in a year, how we can work for long stretches of time without burnout and always stay motivated... it's because we don't WORK! We have fun writing copy and creating video products.
For the rest of the day today, count the number of times you say the word "work." If you said it 10 times today, then make it a goal to say it 9 times or less tomorrow. After that, only say it 8 times in a day... until you stop using the word "work" altogether.
80% of getting things accomplished and making money is just having the right mindstate, not necessarily the best skills... that's why so many people went ga-ga- over Time Management on Crack.
At the very least, catch yourself whenever you say this bad word. That's a step in the right direction.
Guess the Word I Hate the Most?
There's one word that most people use that KILLS you every day. The sooner you realize HOW often you use this word, the sooner you can stop saying it. You'll also notice how often you hear it from other people, so you can tune this word out.
Once you've done both those things, you'll have a better mindstate about everything you do, and you'll be more productive... and therefore make more money.
So what is the word? Comment below with your guess and in a few days, I'll total up your guesses. Here are a few hints.
- It's a FOUR letter word.
- It can be used as a verb (an action word, like "run" or "jump")
- I heard it 10 times in 10 minutes today (5 times in 2 minutes)
- It's not a curse word -- although it might as well be in my book.
- My angriest and most frustrated customers who flip out at the smallest inconveniences (they are a minority) use this word in most e-mails.
- Copywriters will tell you to remove this word from your sales copy.
- It is not the word "wait" or "stop" or "can't."
What do you think this word is? Comment below with your best guess!
How to Build a Mailing List with WordPress
There are three ways I use a WordPress blog to build my e-mail opt-in mailing list: comments, a sidebar widget, and an opt-in popup. You can get all three of these plugins in one convenient bundle, for just 27 dollars now 47 dollars.
Question of the day: Do you have any really cool ways to build a list, that I haven't thought of?
How to Get a Lot Accomplished Even If You Don’t Have Time
For years I told myself that if I only had enough free time, I would get a lot more accomplished. If I quit my job and finished school, I would have all the time in the world to work on my internet business, launch one new product every day and write 10 articles per day. Unfortunately, that kind of assumption could not be further from the truth.
If you are working on a hobby or trying to sustain a business while you still have a day job or go to school, you can do it if you budget your time. The best thing you can do is take your lack of time and turn it into a positive thing: tell yourself, I only have an hour to work on my business before I have to do this assignment. I only have an hour for my lunch break.
You can also turn this around and say: I need to finish my homework in the next 30 minutes so I can start working on my business.
As soon as you learn how to work smarter instead of longer or harder, you will experience a big productivity boost. Can you go to sleep a couple hours early, so that you can wake up a couple hours early and work free from distraction? Are you willing to give up television, at least during the week? Can you limit your social life to one night a week?
I began working on my internet business when I was 15, began doing a lot of freelance work at 16 and made my first product at 17. I finished high school and college while working full time, so it is possible.
During school I finished assignments the same day they were assigned, if possible, even if they were due weeks later. I worked on homework on the bus, during lunch, and after school, because I knew it meant more time to work for myself. I noticed a big boost when I left my work at school... meaning I would finish all my work in the school library and not even think about school after I got home.
Today, I still work at a day job full-time and find time to create products, write articles and blog posts, even market to my list... during my lunch break, 15 minute breaks, before and after work, and on weekends.
You might want "more time" to get your work done, but if you had more free time and your entire life was dedicated to your business, you would be unhappy and unmotivated. Instead, use that time crunch to stay super-focused on finishing your tasks so you can make room for new ones. My time management report can help you with that.
$30K Month: Success!
Some of you guys have been asking how I did on the $30K month for February... the answer is: I passed with flying colors!
I made it past $30K on Thursday the 26th, with two days to spare. Here's a breakdown of it:
- Day job: $2,500.00
- Launches and trickle sales: $22,207.03
- Affiliates: $4,846.44
- Membership site: $869.06
- Webinar future payments: $2,000
- Total: $32,422.53
Affiliate sales are way up, just about quadrupled. I planned to a product launch, resale rights offer, price increase, and e-class per week... but the two product launches went very well and I took a little bit of Eric Holmlund's advice and focused devoting 80% of my time to marketing.
I hit $30K with just two product launches that went VERY well, two resale rights offers that went VERY well, and one e-class. Here's a list of my accomplishments for the month:
- Made 986 sales.
- Wrote 5 sales letters.
- Wrote 6 blog posts.
- Sent 33 e-mails to my list.
- Paid nearly $1000 in PayPal fees!
- Recorded 50 videos on one Sunday.
- Wrote 2 guest posts, a 9-part guest video series, hosted a 90-minute webinar with a stranger and appeared on 2 interviews.
Tell me why I work a day job again? When I just made more in one MONTH from internet marketing than I make a whole year the day job? Oh right, "health insurance." (rolls eyes)
Instead of going on and on about myself, I'll leave you with a few lessons I learned from the $30K month that you can apply in your business right now:
Lesson #1: Focus on what makes money first. If freelance makes you the most money, freelance first to hit your daily goals and then work on long-term stuff like product creation or joint ventures when you're ahead. Personally, I got a product launch out of the way and then I was free to go about promoting it.
Lesson #2: Have a weekly goal. $30K broken down into 4 weeks is $7500 per week. So each week, all I had to do was think, what did I need to do to get that $7500? Usually a couple of product launches and affiliate sales. $7500 in a week is much less intimidating to me than $30K in a month. If you're not on that level yet, try for even $750 in a week.
Lesson #3: Have an accountability partner. I couldn't have made it this far without Jason kicking my butt every step of the way, and Jason couldn't have made it to $20K without me asking him why he hadn't launched anything that day.
Lesson #4: Never complain. Another big timewaster and a great way to waste the entire week feeling bad about yourself. If you have time to complain, you're not busy enough. This doesn't mean giving up your personal life or anything like that. But if you sit at the computer 3 hours a day, you had better be working on internet marketing all 3 hours instead of complaining!
Lesson #5: Do as much with the time you have as you possibly can. Get an early start to the day if possible, and NEVER EVER do any internet marketing work at your day job unless it's before, after, during lunch or on breaks. My girlfriend wakes up at 5 AM most mornings to babysit, so I got her to wake me up before she left so I could work without any distractions.
What did you think? Do you have close-ended monetary goals for each month and each week? An accountability partner? If not, maybe you need my Time Management on Crack productivity report and videos to get you where you NEED to go.
What's my goal for March 2009? $31K. What's your goal for this month? Please comment below with your goal and how you plan on getting there.
Sell Based on Value, Not Price
Let's say you went to the store and saw two parachutes, side by side... one looks okay and costs 50 bucks. The parachute next to it looks HALF as good and costs 25 dollars. Which one do you choose?
The "regular" $50 one, right?
Then you notice there's also a 100 dollar parachute on the shelf. It comes with an extra emergency backup chute, a checklist for what you should check for before jumping out of an airplane, and a DVD with skydiving tutorials. You also get one free skydiving lesson included... and one free issue of "Skydiving Magazine." (Ok I'll admit, I've taken this analogy way too far.)
NOW which parachute would you go for... the regular one or the fancy one?
You might be able to get by with the regular parachute, but you'd feel a lot better if you had that checklist, the DVD, the magazine, and the lesson.
People will pay more for handholding. Don't try to sell the smallest amount for the lowest price, try to sell the most USEFUL stuff for the highest price.
But not at first. Put out a small product for a low price with a few features... if people buy that tells you it's worth your time to work on it... add value and increase the price.
That's exactly what I did with this week's launch of Time Management on Crack. 17 dollars JUST for the report.
After 150 people bought, I bumped the price to 27 dollars... and added videos with the same content as the book... so you get the same info with less work and in less time.
Another 150 people and the price is now 37 dollars... I added an additional three hours of video showing me writing a sales letter in one sitting, and gave a TON more details on productivity and articles.
When the price gets to 47 dollars, I'll throw in the recording of the 90 minute webinar where Jeanette Cates grilled me on everything time management.
Start with low ticket stuff... see if they buy... add more stuff and increase the price. But aim for that high price. A couple people missed the $17 offer and asked if they could still get that low price. My response: tell me what one bonus I can add to this package to make it worth $27 for you.
It's so easy to compete based on price, but you're killing your profits. Most people would have paid $100 for that $50 parachute you're selling... if you only included hand holding.
If you're worried about pricing too high, offer a barebones downsell.
p.s. You can still get Time Management on Crack for under $47... for now.
What do you guys think about selling based on value instead of price?
How to Write One Article Every Day for The Rest of Your Life
You need to write one article every single day. This might be an article you post on your blog, submit to article sites, post on a forum, mail to your list, or add to a book. If you write just one article per day, you will be able to express yourself with crystal clarity and never run out of ideas or content.
If you have any piece of information that you can share, even if it's something off the wall like a new way to build a birdhouse or a type of bread you discovered at the grocery store, you should write an article about it. This trains your brain to shape your thoughts as articles, and if you adopt this practice, you can easily share information on these subjects in the future. Even if you forget and need to re-acquaint yourself with information or a specific procedure, you only need to read one of your own articles on the subject.
Many courses about creating products will give you their "systems" and their "secrets" for writing articles but the only thing you need to do is: sit down and start writing. If you stick to this daily writing schedule every single day, you'll have to STOP yourself from writing.
Just open up a web browser and type your article in the submission box. If you're submitting an article to Ezine Articles, type the article directly in the article submission form. If you're adding to a blog, type the article in the blog post box... the same for forums and so on.
I am very much against writing articles in a form that allows you to save and put up later, such as Notepad or Microsoft Word. When you put yourself on the spot, and force yourself to finish that article before you close the web browser, click on other links or even get up from the computer, you'll finish ALL the articles you start and clear those ideas out of your head... so you'll have room for new articles!
Challenges
A big part of why I can get so much accomplished is from challenges. I consider a challenge to be something somebody dares you to do that is totally ridiculous.
Remember the Daily Video Challenge? I dared you guys to record one video a day for 30 days to get the hang of it. Most people didn't get through all 30 days but they still recorded a handful of videos they otherwise wouldn't have made.
I attempted a challenge this last weekend. The challenge was to record 100 videos in one work day. I "failed" and only made it to 50. Now I have a handful of videos I can market on YouTube as video responses, I can insert a few in my sales letter and I have a ton of very easy to implement pre-sale and post-sale follow-ups for a couple of my products.
Most of the stuff I did this month was the result of a challenge... the 30K Month challenge... and I'm close to $20,000 for the month so far... I might even break over it today when our PHP Copywriting class fills up -- there are still a couple of slots for people eager to learn how to write sales copy the easy way, and add a few conversion-boosting PHP scripts without any real work.
Heck, on the phone last night, I challenged my business partner Jason to speak at an internet marketing event within 30 days. He kept talking all kinds of NLP tricks he could use onstage, so I finally said, "Just DO it!" I don't care if he presents at a super crazy big Armand Morin style seminar if a speaker backs out or if it's at a tiny little Terry Crim event where no one attends. If he has to give 100% of the commission to the seminar host, or donate whatever percentage of his backend sales to a charity, even PAY to speak there... it's got to be possible.
Even if he doesn't do it, even if it takes 60 days to speak at an event, that's still an accomplishment!
You have to have unrealistic goals to get a lot of stuff accomplished... you just have to.
Okay, your turn. Can you try something for me... choose one of the 7 choices below, and DO that thing by this time tomorrow. Knock TRY to knock out just one of the tasks below... it doesn't matter if you can't go all the way. If you choose to write 10 articles, and only write 3, that's probably 3 more than you would have made... if you didn't have that pressure.
- Write 10 articles and have them published by this time tomorrow.
- Write a quick report (and launch it) by this time tomorrow.
- Write and schedule the next 5 e-mails you're going to send to your list.
- Record 10 quick videos by this time tomorrow and upload them all to YouTube.
- Host a webinar or teleseminar by this time tomorrow, even if it's a freebie call-in gift to your list.
- Interview someone (or be interviewed) for 20 minutes before this time tomorrow.
- Take a product that's been lying around on your hard drive collecting dust... and freaking launch it!
Are you going to try out my challenge? Which item did you pick?
750 Days of Free Updates
Today's tweak to your sales letter:
Do you have any overused words like "unlimited" ... "lifetime" ... or "fast" in your sales copy? Those don't get attention because everyone uses words like that.
- If something is unlimited, tell visitors instead they can get "50, 100, even 10,000" of something.
- If something gets unlimited updates, make it 365 days or 1000 days or 10 years of updates.
- If something is fast, tell people your technique works within 5 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever applies.
- If something is easy, share the success rate (percentage), a testimonial, or a case study...
I guess it comes down to the show-not-tell approach!
As Jason Fladlien would say, if you're telling a story about how mean and tough a guy is... don't TELL people about how he's mean and tough.
SHOW them how he weighed 280 pounds, wore a big leather jacket, had a huge beard, and you could hear his Harley Davidson motorcycle coming a mile away... he screeched to a halt in front of your house leaving a thick rubber skid mark... and even today, 7 years later, you can step outside and see the rubber mark still in the street... cracked over the years but still there.
In my last few sales letters, at the very end, I've been saying one or both of these things:
- You can check out my product and get a refund at any time within the first 30 days. If you're still undecided, try it out for an ADDITIONAL 30 days before deciding if you want to keep it or return and get your money back. (This language is a lot more specific than the usual "60 day refund" explanation.)
- You get 750 days worth of updates. I used to tell people they get lifetime updates, but everyone says that, so I tried saying 365 days of updates... but that seemed too ordinary, so I made it 750 days of updates.
"Lifetime" is too ambiguous. Is it your lifetime, my lifetime, the lifetime of the product? (Is it Lifetime: Television For Women... with weekly made-for-TV movies starring Meredith Baxter?)
Does the "lifetime" only count for versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, etc... and when I switch the book over to version 2.0, that counts as a different lifetime? (I'm having Scott Bakula Quantum Leap time travel flashbacks here... "oh boy.")
You have to be different. Using your own numbers makes you unique. In your headlines, bullet points, offer, guarantee, even your update policy. Remember the movie "There's Something About Mary?" Harlan Williams says there is a how-to video called 7 Minute Abs ... so his big idea is to create a how-to video called 6 Minute Abs. "If you aren't satisfied with the first six minutes, we'll throw in an additional minute for free!"
When I told my subscribers that moving my upsell to AFTER the original sale boosted conversions from 2.6% to 5.5% it had a lot more impact than just saying, "It improved conversion rates."
As I close this up, the ultimate irony of today's story is that I didn't split test the "lifetime" versus "750 day" update offer. There just isn't enough time in the day to split test every little thing.
I'm a sloppy copywriter. My Fast Food Copywriting method says write it quickly and sloppily... get it out there... then go back later and fix it up. A really quick and easy patch-job is to remove ambiguity and add imagery... add numbers!
What's your best technique to add specificity to your sales letters? Comment below to tell me!
