Archive | March, 2024

You’re just starting out and your list only has 500 or 1,000 people.

While it’s true you would gladly trade your small list for one that’s 100 times bigger, it’s also true that if you treat your little list right, you can still make really good money.

How does that work?

By getting personal.

First, answer emails that you get from your list. When someone reads your latest email and takes the time to write to you – answer them. You’ve only got 1,000 people on your list, so odds are only 5 to 10 will ever write to you at a time. Yes, you can do this. Keep it personal.

Second, let your list members know that they are part of a very small, intimate, private community by telling them. Otherwise they’ll assume you’ve got a gazillion people on your list and don’t give a flying flip about any of them.

Third, email them daily. Yes, DAILY. Keep in constant contact with them. Update them on the latest news and give a tidbit here and there about yourself.

Fourth, care about their success. If you really, truly care, then it will show in your emails to them. Communicate how important they are and that you want to help them succeed in a big way.

Fifth, hold open Q and A sessions over webinars, Skype or your favorite platform. Don’t charge anything, and let your subscribers know it is only for your list. You’re creating the feeling that they belong to a small, exclusive, private group.

Sixth, send out emails that start with something personal, such as, “Hi (name) – I wanted to contact you personally because I think you might be a good fit for my coaching program.”

Seventh, ask for their help or opinion on something and then answer every response.

Doing these little things will keep your list engaged and interacting with you.

And when you send out an offer for just 10 people to get personalized coaching at $500 a month, what do you think will happen?

Odds are you’ll fill those slots in less than a day with no additional effort at all. You might even have a waiting list of people who didn’t make the first ten slots.

What happens when someone emails their list of 100,000 with the exact same offer? Surprisingly, there’s a good chance they’ll have trouble selling those ten slots, even though their list is 100 times bigger.

You can make great money with a small list when you take the time to get personal with your subscribers.

Here’s a ridiculously easy business you can run from Facebook using Facebook groups. It won’t take you much time, and it can net you a tidy little profit each month.

Better still, you can create as many of these as you like. Grow them big enough, and you might make far more than $1,000 a month, too.

Plus, you can either do it yourself, or outsource the work – it’s up to you.

Here’s how it works:

First, create a private Facebook group. This is going to be a free group, and you can do it for any niche where money is spent.

For example, if you’re in the IM niche, you might title your group something like:

• Shortcut copywriting techniques for non-copywriters
• Easy and fast SEO for non-SEO people
• Latest and hottest ways to get tons of traffic to your offer
• Techniques for doubling and tripling your conversions
• Simple methods for building massive emails lists fast
• Etc.

You can populate your groups with free WSO’s, from Facebook itself, as bonuses to other people’s products and so forth. You’re offering a tremendous benefit for free, so it’s not going to be difficult to get members to your groups.

You might even limit the number of members you take, since that will make it seem much more exclusive and valuable.

For content you’re going to do one or more of the following:

• Write your own content
• Hire outsourcers to write the content for you
• Get guests to write your content for free
• Use high quality PLR. Not junk, just the good stuff

Whatever content you use, be sure to break it down into brief daily posts.

All you need is short snippets of content, because the members will do the rest of the work for you. They’ll ask questions, respond to questions, give opinions and so forth.

Your group will take on a life of its own, which is terrific. You want to encourage as much interaction as possible to keep people coming back time and time again.

So now the big question is… How do you monetize this?

There are three ways:

First, promote your own products. You’ve got to do this in a very soft, non-pushy way. Done right, you’ll make plenty of sales without turning anyone off.

For example, you might answer someone’s question, then refer them to your product for even more info.

Second, promote other people’s products (affiliate products) using the same method.

Third, if you don’t want to sell products or you want to make even more money, you can sell advertising on the timeline.

If you think about it, you’ve got a highly targeted group of people who are super focused on this one area of interest.

Basically, you have a terrific prospect list of active, interested people.

Whether you are selling your own products, affiliate products or advertising, you’re going to make money.

Let’s talk more about getting advertisers. These advertisers would LOVE to convert your members to their deal.

Limit your ads to just one per day, and call them the “Sponsor of the Day.”

Of course, advertisers can book as many days as they like.

Post the ad in the morning and keep it as the pinned post for the rest of the day.

Charge maybe $50 to display the ad for a day, which compares favorably to solo ads.

If you sell all 30 days of the month, you’ve made $1,500.

Only allow that one ad per day, and don’t let your members post affiliate links.

How do you find advertisers? Many times your best source will be from within the group itself. You can also let your email list know about the opportunity, and you can offer your ad slots to anyone who is in your niche and has a product to sell.

I recommend starting one group and learning the in’s and out’s of running this type of business. You’ll need to invest perhaps 15 minutes each morning for adding content and answering questions, and then check back 3 or 4 times during the day.

Once you get a good feel for what you’re doing, expand to related niches and even branch out to completely unrelated niches, too.

And of course you can outsource the entire process.

While you’re not going to make a fortune from just one group, several groups can yield you a full-time income.

I feel almost silly writing an article on this topic, because I can sum it up in one sentence:

Write about your own personal experiences in story form.

That’s it! People love stories – especially true ones – that show you overcame an obstacle, solved a problem, created something positive and so forth.

So if you’re writing a blog post about how to increase traffic, use your own examples of what you did, how you did it, and the results. If you can flavor it with storytelling skills that keep your reader riveted, so much the better.

And who better to show you how to tell a story than professional stand up comics? These guys and gals live and die by the story – they either get it right or they’re booed off the stage, and being booed is not funny or fun.

The steps to great storytelling according to comedians?

1. Be Brief (don’t ramble – get to the point)
2. Give Details (the useful ones – don’t bog the story down with useless stuff)
3. Use Story Twists (surprise is a wonderful thing)
4. Work the Crowd (or in this case, your readers)
5. Act Out The Characters (difficult to do in a blog, but I’ve always thought lending your own personality or character to your writing is extremely important)
6. Practice (write often – the more you write, the better you’ll get)
7. End on the Biggest Laugh (or point if you’re a blogger)

Get the details on how comedians tell great stories here:

http://www.askmen.com/money/how_to_400/443_how_to.html

Implement these storytelling tips into your blog posts, and you’ll engage your audience on a deeper level, and keep them hooked on your content.

If you decide you’re going to do something, do it.

They’ve done dozens of studies over the years and they’ve found there is one major difference between successful people and unsuccessful people:

Successful people launch.

They get started.

They get on with it.

They just do it.

Unsuccessful people get the same ideas and the same information, but they’ve always got an excuse for not starting.

Let’s be candid – You can discover these outsourcing secrets the easy way or the hard way, but you’re going to find this out sooner or later.

The hard way is the way most marketers do it. They make mistakes when outsourcing, lose time and/or money, and then learn from their mistakes.

I propose we cut out all that nonsense and I’ll just tell you what you need to know here and now. Ready?

1: Outsource customer service as soon as humanly possible.

Reason why: If you don’t, you’ll waste half of each day doing things like answering support tickets, changing email addresses for members who changed their email address (yes, that is a thing) issuing refunds, answering questions and so forth.

That is time you could spend doing something else like… let’s see… wait, I know – MAKING MONEY.

Your focus should be on building your business, not answering support tickets (“When I log in, I see a funny thing at the top that says I’m logged in… is that what it’s supposed to say?”) I’m not kidding, that is a real support ticket I once received.

Another reason why: Your virtual assistant who is handling your support can shield you from the negative ninnies. What’s a “negative ninny,” you ask? It’s that person who buys your product and then rants on for 6 pages on how awful your product is, how awful you are and so forth. You don’t need to hear that stuff. Just tell your V.A. to handle it for you without ever telling you about it. (In this case, refunding the person and removing them from every list is all that’s required.)

And by the way, if you’re thinking that your products will be so great, everyone will love them, well then I know you haven’t created any products yet.

I don’t care if you invent the method for turning pixels into gold, someone will hate it. And that’s okay, as long as you don’t have to hear about it.

2: Outsource the things that bring you profit FIRST.

So let’s say you want to outsource website building, content creation, product creation, sales writing, software creation and so forth.

Ask yourself this question: What’s going to bring me the fastest return on my money?

That’s the project to outsource first.

Maybe you pay someone to create a product for you, and then you turn around and sell that product to hundreds of buyers. BOOM! You’ve just made your money back and much more.

But what if you don’t have any customers yet? And no list? Then maybe you need to outsource the building of your squeeze page so you can start list building so you can start selling stuff to your list.

Whatever will put you in profit first is the thing you need to outsource first. This way you are not coming out of pocket by thousands and thousands of dollars without a return.

3: Pay outsources based on the JOB, not by an hourly rate.

You want to know going in what it’s going to cost you to get a specific job done. And a true professional will be able to tell you exactly what it will cost.

A lot of marketers make the mistake of paying by the hour to get a job done. So not only don’t they know exactly what the job will cost – they also don’t know if the outsourcer is dragging the job out longer to make it pay more. Yes, it’s been known to happen.

The exception to the non-hourly rule?

Your virtual assistant or customer service person. Because of the nature of their work, in most cases paying them by the hour is the way to go.

4: Outsource work you’re putting off.

Did you create a new product, but you haven’t edited yet? Or maybe you haven’t built the website or made the sales letter.

All the time you invested in creating that product is going to waste. Outsource someone to do what you haven’t done, so you can get it online and start making sales ASAP.

5: Outsource what you’re not good at, and what you don’t like doing.

Sure, you love building websites, but let’s face it: You haven’t updated your website skills since 2007. Or you know how to write sales copy, but you HATE doing it.

Those are things you should be outsourcing. By focusing on your strengths as well as strategically planning your business, and letting other experts handle the rest of the work, you’ll make more money faster than if you try to do everything yourself.

6: Outsource the instrument playing while you conduct the orchestra.

There may come a time very soon when you have a system in place for making money. It could be as simple as creating a product in your niche, write several pieces of content preparing people for the product, record several videos leading up to the launch, and then launching.

Yet all of that is a lot of work. You’ve got sales copy to write, JV’s to contact, swipe emails to write, etc.

If you can afford it, outsource everything you can so that you can focus on working ON your business instead of IN your business.

People who focus on working on their business while outsourcing a lion’s share of the work tend to make 5 to 10 times as much money as those who work in their business.

Sort of a no-brainer, don’t you think?

7: If you haven’t yet outsourced something – what are you waiting for?

If you already have an online business, or you’re in the process of building one and you haven’t yet outsourced something, odds are it’s simply because fear is holding you back.

Go to Fiverr, Upwork, Craigslist or Warrior and outsource a small job, just to see how it works. I promise, you’ll be hooked and your business will grow twice as fast.

There is not a seven-figure internet marketer out there who doesn’t outsource. So isn’t it about time you did, too?

You read a book and a week later you hardly remember a thing.

You watch a video and a day later it’s lost from your memory…

The fix? Always write down your three biggest takeaways from anything nonfiction that you read or watch.

Keep a notebook or file just for this purpose. Review it often. And put those three things to work in your life as soon as you possibly can.

The world’s wisdom and secrets is at your fingertips inside books old and new. Many of the world’s greatest teachers and successful people share their secrets and strategies inside the pages of a book.

When you read for learning, you are only moments away from discovering some new information that can change the course of your life in new and better directions.

But you must take action.

And you must REMEMBER the insights that really matter.

Read to learn and grow, and remember to write down your three biggest takeaways from each session, and then take action on what you are learning so that it becomes internalized wisdom.

Start doing this, and every day can be a better day as you absorb the knowledge of the happiest, healthiest and wealthiest people in the world, and incorporate it into your life so that you can be one of them too! Then write your own book for other people to remember! 🙂

Work expands to fill the time allotted – and even more time beyond that – if you don’t have a hard deadline. Thus, if you make it a goal to finish your new ebook in 3 months, at the 3 month mark you’ll either just be finishing, or worse yet you’ll realize you’re only halfway done. If, however, you had a hard launch date, then you’ll have the book ready. Deadlines are a magnificent thing – they give you permission to ignore the email, ignore Facebook, turn the phone off, tear yourself away from the video games and television and actually get your work done.

So how can you create a product in a short amount of time? By doing two things:

First, set a deadline that is almost impossibly close, such as 10 days from right now.

Second, hold yourself accountable on a massive scale. That is, call up your best marketing buddy and schedule a live webinar with him or her to sell your new product. Now promote the webinar heavily.

Guess what? For the next 10 days you’re going to move heaven and earth to get your product finished for that webinar, and on Day 11 you are going to party!

First, you’re going to be celebrating the sales you made on the webinar.

Second, you’re going to be looking forward to all the sales you will make in the future with your new product. In fact, you’re going to take the momentum that webinar created and use it to contact other marketers and set up more live webinars for their lists.

Third, you are going to feel fantastic. That new product that you thought would take 3 months of your life only took 10 days!

Fourth, you’ve now got a system for not only getting products done fast, but also getting your first sales the moment the product is completed for an immediate payoff.

How great is that?!

Short and sweet: If you’re making good money coaching others to do or accomplish something, then you can probably double the money you make without much effort.

It’s sort of a recycle and reuse kind of thing, where nothing in your business goes to waste.

Let’s say you spend time coaching people on how to start their own businesses. You show them the sequence, how to get things done, how to outsource, the shortcuts, the little things they need to know and so forth.

But consider this: There are other marketers who want to get paid for coaching, too. Except they don’t know where to start or what to do.

So you also coach other marketers on how to do coaching.

You let them in on all your secrets of how to get clients, how to work with clients, how the whole process works and so forth.

I suppose you could even let them listen in on your coaching calls. If you do, you need to let your students know someone else is on the line.

And whatever you’re charging your regular coaching clients, you can probably about double for your new students who are learning how to become coaches. Again, it’s up to you.

You’ve got a skill – coaching – that others want to have. So why not become a coach’s coach?

You can give your future coaches templates for their sales pages, techniques for getting their first clients and ongoing support. And for this you can easily charge $5,000.

Even if you just take on two new students a month who are learning to be coaches, that’s an extra $120,000 a year.

I mentioned this to a friend, and he’s a bit snarky. He wanted to know, “If you’re coaching students, and you’re coaching coaches on how to coach students, couldn’t you also coach people on how to train new coaches that teach coaching?”

Actually, yes. But that might be taking things a bit far. 😉

You already know all about scarcity. The scarcer something is, the more people want it.

That’s why we use deadlines to entice customers to buy. Without the deadlines, people would put it off and then forget about it.

For decades savvy store owners have used this trick. By limiting the number of items a person can purchase, they increase the number of items sold.

But I wonder – are we using this to maximum advantage online? Yes, we sometimes limit the number of copies sold. Yes, we use deadlines and then promise not to sell any more after that deadline.

But what if we used it in a slightly different way…

Imagine you have different levels of participation in a product launch.

For example: You will sell only 10 copies at $2,500 each that includes actual coaching and one-on-one time with you for 12 weeks.

You’ll sell only 100 copies at $1,000 that includes group coaching for 12 weeks.

You’ll sell 200 copies at $500 that includes the “done for you option,” which is also included in the higher levels, too. But there is no coaching at this level.

And you’ll sell 1,000 copies that don’t include coaching or the done for you option.

Then you place counters on your site that tell how many copies of each have sold.

Yes, this will take some guts. After all, what if something doesn’t sell? But that’s also the fascination factor, too.

People will continue to revisit the page just to see what’s selling.

And what happens when there are only 6 or 5 or 4 copies left of the highest option? Suddenly they’ll start selling FASTER.

The last copy or two will likely FLY off the shelf.

You’re adding a new brand of scarcity, a higher level of fascination and interest and accommodating people’s needs.

You might think of this as a new way of upselling, or a more transparent method than using one time offers. It’s up front, honest, and lets people decide ahead of time what they want.

And if they don’t act fast enough, they will miss out, too.

You’ve just finished writing the sales copy for your new product. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to test your copy BEFORE you actually send prospects to it?

Because think about this – if you send 1,000 people to your sales letter and NOBODY buys, you’ve just wasted all that traffic. And if you spent money to get that traffic, you’re out that investment.

Even if it was free traffic, you’ve still burned your chance to sell them on your product. Odds are, even if you do rewrite the copy, they’re not going to go back a second time and read it again. (Unless you offer some kind of incentive, in which case you might be able to bribe them into taking a second look.)

If only there were a way to know ahead of time whether your copy is good or not… Wait, there is!

Here’s what to do – turn off the phone, sever your Internet connection and refuse to be distracted for the next hour.

Now then, imagine you are the prospect. You are thinking like the prospect, feeling like the prospect, experiencing the same issues, same problems, same questions as you prospect, etc.

Put yourself in their shoes and reread your letter from start to finish. Do not spend time making corrections or anything else – simply read the letter as though you are a prospect considering buying this product.

Finished?

Now rate how well your copy accomplishes the following, assigning a number 1 – 5 to each element.

1 means “Practically non-existent”
2 is “Room for serious improvement”
3 means “Not horrible, but could be better”
4 is “Strong”
And a 5 indicates “You positively NAILED it.”

Ready? Here we go…

Does the headline instantly grab your attention? _____

Does the lead-in compel you to read further? _____

Are the headline and lead-in completely believable? _____

Is the headline and lead-in combo likely to resonate powerfully with a significant number of your prospects? _____

Does the headline and lead-in combo offer powerful benefits? _____

Does the spokesperson establish his/her qualifications beyond doubt? _____

Do the emotions you experience while reading the first few paragraphs compel you to want to read further? _____

Is the prospect given a reason why he or she must read this, and must read this now? _____

Does the copy read like a conversation between two friends? _____

Is it clear that the spokesperson truly has the best interests of the prospect at heart? _____

Are the product’s benefits fully explored? _____

Are the emotional reasons for purchasing fully developed? _____

Does the letter entertain and inform as well as sell? _____

Is the price fully justified? _____

Is the guarantee prominent and does it restate the benefits? _____

Is there a compelling reason why the prospect should immediately make the purchase? _____

Is there a sense of urgency? _____

Do you feel yourself getting more and more excited as you move through the letter? _____

Is the call to action compelling enough that you would feel silly for not ordering immediately? _____

Is the prospect told exactly what to do next, how to order and how s/he will receive their product? _____

If you were a prospect, would you make the purchase? _____

Scoring

21- 50: Stop right there. Do NOT use this copy until you make significant changes.

51 – 65: Not good, but at least you’ve made a start. Now go back and make the adjustments your letter needs.

66 – 80: Not bad for a draft, but not good enough to use unless you just don’t have the time to fix it, OR your offer is so compelling ($100 cars, for example) that it doesn’t need a strong letter.

81 – 95: Looking good. A little tweaking here and there can still improve your conversions.

96 – 105: Congratulations! Maybe you should be writing copy for a living!