In the online marketing world, programs typically are promoted hard for a few days or weeks once they launch. After that, marketers and affiliates alike tend to move on to the next hot thing. This opens up a huge opportunity for anyone willing to do a little leg work. And this can work in multiple niches – not just online marketing.
One gal I know (I’ll call her Betsy for our purposes) watches her favorite marketers to see what products they create. She knows the products are high quality because she knows these particular product creators and is familiar with their work.
Once a product seller is no longer actively promoting a product – which can generally take 1 to 6 months – Betsy contacts them and asks if they can do a deal. Sometimes she buys the rights to the product and thus gets to sell it for any price she chooses and keep 100% of her sales.
Other times she negotiates a deal for her customers – a steep discount they can only get by purchasing through her.
And third, Betsy will sometimes put together a package deal of 2 or more products, either from the same or different product creators, and these package deals tend to do really well.
She builds her list by advertising that she offers steep discounts on popular programs as well as many freebies, too.
And that’s a good point… she is highly generous with ‘one problem – one solution reports’, generating about one per week and giving them away to her list. Of course, each report also promotes a discounted program, so there is a method to her generosity. I don’t know how much she’s earning doing this, but I suspect it is far, far in excess of the $5,000 a month I mentioned above.
This model could also work with anything that can be discounted, including services, tangible products and so forth. It’s a nice little business and I’d estimate she only spends about 2 hours a day on it. I think anyone can use this income strategy. How about you?
Let me ask you a question… “As an online marketer, how much should you earn?” It’s like asking how long a piece of string is. But here’s the rub: When I asked that question, I’ll bet you had an answer. And I’ll also bet that answer isn’t all that far away from what you’re used to making.
We get a job, go to work and earn $40,000. That means on some level we perceive that we are worth $40,000 a year. Your colleagues also make about $40,000 which is further ‘evidence’ that this amount is what you ‘should’ be getting paid.
How then, are you going to shift your mindset to earning $40,000 a MONTH?
Imagine going to work tomorrow and your coworker says they just got a raise from $40,000 a year to $40,000 a month. Your mind would be blown, right?
But in online marketing there are no rules for what you can and cannot earn. The only limits to how successful you can become are the ones you impose on yourself, and a surprisingly big factor is how much you think you are worth.
If you’ve earned a small sum of money all your life and now you intend to earn a big sum, you’re going to have to change your thinking and decide that you are indeed WORTH that larger sum of money.
You hold your own income potential in your hands, and it doesn’t matter what ANY other marketer is earning.
A friend of mine who does quite well (high six figures) in online marketing took a newcomer to lunch one day to give him a few tips. Three years later that newcomer was out-earning my friend by 10:1.
Somehow you’ve got to get your mind around the fact that there is no one in the same position as you in online marketing. There is no pay scale or ladder to climb. You don’t need to get seniority or even master the intricacies (you can use outsourcers for that).
Anything is possible. You can write your own paycheck by using smarter thinking and doing the work necessary.
Find that little voice in your head that says you’re not worth $X amount of dollars and tell that little guy or gal to shut up.
You decide what you’re worth and what you are capable of. Because in online marketing, anything is possible.
If someone were to ask you what the #1 ‘secret’ to making money online was, what would you say? Any guesses?
Maybe you’d say it’s to find a starving crowd. Or to build and nurture a list. Or to get in on the beginning of a hot new trend. All of these are good answers. And all of these are wrong.
THE big secret to making money online is one that crosses all niches, applies to all markets and marketers, and works just about every single time to make REAL money. It’s how six and seven figure incomes are almost always earned. And it’s also how YOU can begin earning 6 figures in the next 12 months.
Now then – before I reveal this ‘secret,’ let me warn you that you might have heard it before. In fact, some online marketers have to hear this a dozen times or more before it really starts to sink in. That’s because the most powerful techniques often masquerade as something a bit boring. Or tedious. Or uninteresting.
After all, taking a wheelbarrow full of cash to the bank is exciting. Earning it is often something altogether different. Ready?
Here’s the ‘secret…’
“Find a profitable formula – and then SCALE it up.”
Yup. That’s it. Pretty simple, I know. Yet 98% of marketers will never do it. And 97% of marketers will stay broke because of it.
Let’s say you spend time making the perfect product for a super hungry niche. You tweak the offer to get it converting sky high. You bring on affiliates to help you promote. Everything is in place. You launch, you have an extremely profitable week…
…and then what?
For most marketers, they will turn their attention to creating the next product and doing the entire process again. And because of that, they will leave a tremendous amount of money on the table.
If your offer sells for $19 and you’re converting at 5%, then you’re making $95 for every 100 people you send to your site. This doesn’t even include the list you’re building and will market to over and over again.
Now then, if you can buy those 100 visitors for $40, you’ve just made a profit of $55. Buy 1,000 visitors and you’ve made $550. Buy 10,000 visitors and you’ve made $5,500. But wait, there’s more!
What if you add a backend product? Just one sale per 100 visitors of a $100 product increases your profit from $55 to $155. 10,000 visitors? $15,500 profit.
You can also add coaching, continuity (membership) programs, etc. for even more profit.
Are you following me here?
Let’s use an analogy: Someone invests 3 months to open a hair salon. They have a big grand opening with lots of customers. And when that dies down, they close shop, move across town and do it all over again. Yeah, that would be pretty crazy. Yet that’s what 98% of online marketers do.
They create a product, launch it, have a great week and then start all over again. And they wonder why they are still struggling. So what’s the takeaway?
→ Invest time in building a profitable, high-converting funnel.
→ Test it out and do the math – how much can you spend on advertising and still make money?
→ Start by investing small and ramp your way up.
→ Don’t forget to build your list – your funnel is your upfront money, and your list is your “go to” money. That is, whenever you need funds or simply want to boost your income, you can go to your list and make them an offer.
What will derail you in this process:
→ Getting lured away by the glamour of creating another new product funnel when you should be scaling up the one you already have.
→ Fear of spending money to make money. Yes, spending $1,000 or more to make sales is scary. That’s why you want to start small, make sure your entire funnel is working, and then scale up. And up. And Up.
Your biggest mistake – would be brushing this advice off. Fortunes have been made simply by creating a profitable funnel and then scaling it up.
FORTUNES.
As in nearly 7 figures made from one ClickBank product…
Per MONTH.
That’s right – 6 Pack Abs at the pinnacle of its success was earning over $11 million per year.
A good ‘About Me’ Page doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated. In fact, it just needs to communicate a few key things. And yet people keep making these same 7 mistakes over and over again on their About Pages.br> br> 1: Surprise! Your ‘About Me’ Page isn’t about you.br>
Nope. It’s about the person who visits the page. This is where you tell that person why they should bother with you, or products or your site.br >
Talk about their problems which you solve. Talk about how you can help them to achieve their goals. Let them know what’s in it for them. And only talk about yourself in the context of how you help your readers.br> 2: You’re talking too much.br>
Your About Me Page should be interesting, not mundane; just long enough, but no longer. Write your rough draft for your About Page. Set it aside for a day or two. Come back and remove everything that doesn’t move your prospect closer to knowing you, liking you and trusting you. Then have a friend read it and tell them to point out all the parts where they were losing interest, and either fix or remove those.br> 3: Your writing is boring.br>
Borrrrrringgggg. Snooze… Write in your own voice, lose the hype and the jargon, be a little funny and most of all, be your real self and not some drone.br> 4: You’re using only video.br>
Sure, video is great for establishing rapport… with those people who like video. But you’ll have visitors who don’t want to have audio blasting for everyone around them to hear, and you’ll have other visitors who don’t want to sit through a 5-minute video.br>
If you do use video, keep it short and be sure to include text, too.br> 5: Your picture is AWOL.br>
Okay, having your photo on your About Page is optional. I know some people like to keep their face on the down-low because, well… trolls. But if you don’t mind having your photo online, then by all means put it on your About Page to give people a better sense of who you are. It will also help them to remember you, too.br> 6: Your name is missing.br>
Have you ever been on a website with awesome writing and you wanted to know who is writing this stuff, but the About Page just has some corporate mumbo-jumbo and nobody’s NAME? I have. You need a first name and a last name, so don’t just say, “Bob” because I want to know, Bob WHO?br>
If your name is too generic, such as John Smith, you might add a middle name to everything you do online to make it easier to find you in the search engines, such as John Vincent Smith. If you don’t want to use your REAL name, that’s okay, too. Many people work under professional pseudonyms. Also, remember to add any professional, relevant credentials you might have.br> 7: You don’t have an About Page.br>
If you’ve read this far, then I’m guessing you understand the importance of an About Page, even if you don’t have one yet. If you’re hoping no one has noticed that you don’t have one, well… we have.br>
And if you’ve given it some totally clever name like, “Guess What?” “The Deets” or “Check This Out” then it would be a great idea to rename it to “About” or “About Me.” Why? Because if I’m looking for the “About Me” page then I’m going to pass right over all those ‘clever’ names and assume you didn’t bother to create an About page.
If you’re new to marketing or don’t yet have a large following, starting your own podcast can be an uphill slog that takes months of work before you start to build real traction.
But being a guest speaker on established podcasts – what I call reverse podcasting – can immediately establish your credibility and send hot prospects to your website.
It doesn’t matter if you have a track record online because your offline experience can work just as well for getting interviewed. Remember that podcasters are always looking for interesting people to interview who bring value to their listeners.
To find out which podcasts might be a good fit for you, choose someone well-known in your niche and then discover what podcasts have had them as a guest. These are the podcasts you want to approach.
Typically, podcasters will want to know what you can offer their listeners in terms of great info. They will also link to your website in their podcast description (great for not just traffic, but also SEO) and place your name in the podcast’s title.
Once you’ve been a guest on numerous podcasts, then it might be time to consider starting your own podcast. And your first guests can be the podcasters who interviewed you since you’ve already established a relationship with them.
As far back as 1996, Bill Gates stated that the Internet would evolve into a “marketplace of content”. This prediction has indeed come to pass, as content is now considered to be “king” in the world of CRM and marketing in general.
You are already aware that presentation is the key to success. Whether referring to blogs, white papers or the average product update, client engagement is key. Fully developed strategies to implement, collate and present this content are now critical to the success of any business. WordPress has become one of the cornerstones of this industry. What aspects of this turnkey software allows it to be the choice of countless companies?
The Intuitive Edge
Were you aware that no less than 55 percent of the top million most-visited portals in the world employ WordPress as their CMS provider of choice? This largely arises from the fact that WordPress is highly intuitive. In other words, you need to know very little in regards to coding to create a great online presence. From user-friendly dashboards to preview pages to make certain that your page presents correctly, the user-friendly nature of this system cannot be denied. If you are able to edit text within a standard Word document, you will have little trouble adapting to WordPress.
The Power of the Open-Source Force
Another massive advantage of WordPress is that it is an open source. You will not have to pay one cent in order to utilize all of its tools and benefits. This is in direct contrast to other systems which require monthly installments in order to access benefits. Free products and services are attractive; particularly those which are as effective and easy to work with as WordPress.
Multifaceted Multimedia
In the past, embedding videos, GIFs and other widgets into a website were difficult without having a great deal of experience with coding. This frustration has been done away with thanks to the streamlined presentation that WordPress offers. Importing videos, images and graphics has never been easier. As we all know, embedded visual aids can make all the difference between an interested visitor and a high website bounce rate. The built-in tools provided by self-hosted WordPress have made it very simple to design a high functionality, and visually compelling website without very little technical knowledge or experience.
The Mobile-Responsive Edge
It is no secret that modern websites need to be mobile responsive in order to reach the most users possible. This can be difficult to address with in-house systems and if the mobile demographic is not reached, a great deal of business will naturally be lost. WordPress offers a number of turn-key themes which can be quickly integrated into your existing website architecture. This alone can dramatically boost a website’s natural ranking in the search engines, and thus a site’s daily visitor numbers.
Community Help
The open-source nature of WordPress enables you to find help when you need it the most. While most features are easy to use, there will inevitably be times when questions need to be asked. Thanks to a robust online community, help is never far off. This is in direct contrast to other CMS systems which usually provide a much more limited range of community support and creative solutions. With WordPress, there is a solution for nearly anything that you want to accomplish with your website, and if it doesn’t exist yet, you could easily have a coder create it for you on third-party sites such as Fivver or Upwork.
WordPress is here to stay. As a continuously growing number of websites are building their online presence with WordPress, it only stands to reason that its marketing value for online businesses will continue to grow. It will be very interesting to see how WordPress evolves as the needs of the modern business likewise advance, but rest assured they will meet tomorrow’s challenges and opportunities just as they have been doing since 2003.
Once there was a king who wanted to bathe in a giant swimming pool of milk rather than water… He had heard it was great for your skin, but it was too large a task to do alone.
He first told some of his workers to dig a pond. Once the pond was dug, the king made an announcement to his people saying that one person from each household had to bring a glass of milk during the night and pour it into the pond. So, in his estimations, the pond should be full of milk by the morning.
After receiving the order, everyone went home. One man prepared to take the milk during the night but milk was very rare in this town and he wanted to keep it. He thought that since everyone would bring milk, he could just use a glass of water and pour it inside the pond instead. Surely, because it would be dark at night, no one would even notice. So he quickly went and poured the water in the pond and came back happy.
In the morning, the king came to visit the pond and to his anger, the pond was only filled with pure water! What happened was that everyone was thinking the same thoughts as the other man that “I don’t have to put the milk, someone else will do it.”
When it comes to business help, do not think that others will take care of it all for you. I’m not saying not to accept help where you can get it. Help is important, but remember that it starts with you. If you don’t do things for yourself or at least oversee them, no one else will do it and if they do, you can’t complain that they did it wrong because you used something or someone outside of yourself to make it work.
There are only so many experts, workers, software, systems etc. that you can use to get ahead, all that will come later when you are rolling in your fortune. Meanwhile, if you want quality, get your hands dirty, do the learning, do the work and feel genuinely rewarded from it. This will avoid mistakes caused by others, it will encourage you to take responsibility and it will give you a sense of achievement.
If you have many automatic processes working for you and they are performing well, that’s great. But if there is anywhere in your life that you can step in and say – “Can I do more here? What can I do today that I didn’t bother with yesterday? What extra mile of work can I put in just for now?” Then every day will have purpose and every moment will feel in your control.
Life and business is all about what YOU put into it, so be sure you are doing everything you can every single day to actualize your full potential. Yes, leverage the help of others along the way when needed to improve efficiency, but never fully rely on others. Your life is what you make it, so make it ALL that it can be!
It might seem strange to think of icons as helping with your email marketing efforts. After all, it’s the message that’s important, right? But anything that can help you to better convey your message is something worth looking into.
Icons can highlight your company’s benefits and show the positive effects of your offer. They can demonstrate particular features or characteristics of your product or service. And they can be used to split email blocks, making the message easier to read.
What else can icons do for your emails?
1. Icons help organize the content.
No doubt you’ve seen this on webpages but perhaps not as often in emails. Imagine if your email has three options:
→ Ask a Question → Share Feedback → Get More Information
Each of these can have an appropriate icon that helps to organize and clarify the options. “Ask a Question” can be a question mark; “Share Feedback” might be a talk balloon and “Get More Information” could be a video icon, a book icon, a person icon or whatever, depending on the format of the information.
2. Icons help express ideas.
There are times when an icon can be used either in place of – or in conjunction with – a keyword to clarify the meaning in a more straightforward manner. For example, a play button icon is so universally understood, it makes more sense to use that than to use the word, “Play.”
3. Icons can replace heavy images.
Images in emails are great… until they aren’t. Images need to be downloaded, they can be blocked by email clients and unfortunately their appearance changes in different apps. While icons are less expressive, there are times when they are a better choice than stock photography.
4. Icons support your brand identity.
If you are using a particular set of icons on your website and advertising, it pays to use them in your emails as well to maintain your overall design and brand strategy.
I’ll bet there are certain businesses that you recognize by icons (for example, social media sites). If you received an email from them that did not contain those icons, it wouldn’t look authentic. In fact you might even suspect it was a phishing email to steal your info.
5. Icons reinforce interactive elements.
When it comes to things like call-to-action buttons, icons can reinforce the action you want taken by the reader. And they can also be animated to draw attention to something important, like the “Check it out” or “Grab your copy” button.
If you’re just getting started in email marketing, give icons a pass until you master the basics. But if you’re looking for a way to increase your email readability and conversion rates then I highly suggest you spend the next week observing how others are using icons in their emails while you devise your own strategy.
It’s surprising what a few little icons can do for your business!
You send out an email and someone writes back that you’re a liar. You post on your blog and someone says you’re an idiot. You create a new product and someone says it stinks and it doesn’t work. Congratulations, because you are doing something RIGHT.
If you’re trying to please everyone, you’re pleasing no one. People who are having a real and positive impact on the world are inevitably met with trolls and haters.
If no one experiences discomfort when they see your work, then your work isn’t having an impact.
Think of every successful person and company you know. Every single one of them has trolls and haters. And likely every single one of them knows that those trolls and haters are clear indications that they are on the right track.
Maybe you don’t have ‘haters’ after all. Maybe you have ‘fans in denial.’ It’s all a state of mind. Remember, when people hate on you, it’s often because you have something they want.
And here’s how to have fun with your haters: Realize that the less they like you, the more religiously they will be checking your page. So smile. And maybe write them this note:
“Dear haters, I have so much more for you to be mad at. Just be patient.”
A tiger doesn’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.
Is someone trying to bring you down? They’re already beneath you, and they probably secretly wish to BE you.
You might not be telling your prospects and customers everything they want to know – and it’s hurting your sign-ups and sales. Yet these are 3 easy fixes you can do in a day…
Tell them what they get when they join your list.
Sure, you’re telling them they get an incentive like a report or a video… but are you telling them you’re going to be emailing them? Are you telling them how often, and what to expect in those emails? Most marketers don’t, and it’s resulting in unsubscribes.
If you’re not telling your visitors that grabbing your freebie means they get emails from you, then you need to do it in the very first email you send to them.
Make a bullet list of all the great things they’ll discover in your first 10 or so emails. And let them know how often you’ll be sending email.
Done right, this small step not only prevents unsubscribes – it even makes subscribers anticipate your emails and open and read them.
Tell them how you are different.
You’ve got competitors – probably LOTS of them. Your customers are having trouble understanding what makes you different from all the other guys. And when they can’t tell the difference – they don’t buy.
So clearly communicate your biggest difference. Communicate it well and communicate it often. Be specific. Don’t just say, “Our traffic generation product is terrific.”
Instead write, “Our traffic generation product stands apart from all others because it details 42 specific traffic generation techniques in step-by-step format. No question goes unanswered. And we even give you an assessment of which 3 techniques will be the most profitable for your exact business.
Wow – I’m sold! Seriously, somebody make this product and I’ll buy it.
Solicit feedback.
At the end of any purchase, service or project, let your customer know that you want their feedback on their experience. Tell them you’re going to be sending a survey so you don’t take them by surprise, and so they know you really do want feedback. This puts them in the frame of mind to give you that feedback when they do receive the survey.
There are three kinds of feedback – good feedback, bad feedback and B.S. feedback. The hard part is telling the bad apart from the B.S.
Bad feedback is legitimate complaining about your product or service and shows you where you need to improve. Bad feedback is priceless and can earn you a fortune if you listen and if you make the appropriate changes.
B.S. feedback is a troll who is having a bad day or a bad life and wants to take it out on you. You should ignore this totally because it’s only going to make you feel lousy if you let it.
How do you tell the difference? Sometimes it can be difficult. Ask yourself if acting on the feedback will improve the product or the customer experience. Have others given this feedback? Does it seem like a legit complaint? If not, file it in the round folder, as they used to say (that’s the trash can.)
Good feedback is of course wonderful to receive, but don’t let it go to your head. Instead, find ways to do MORE of what they are praising for an even better customer experience.
And there you have it – 3 things you should be telling your customers: What they’re going to receive in emails and how often they’ll receive it, what makes you head and shoulders better and different from the competition, and that you sincerely want their feedback.
These 3 small changes can add up to a much larger bottom line for you.
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