Welcome!
The Lesson This Week:
This Lesson
is about making profits from your online business. Making the
most money possible from your online efforts is not impossible
but does require the right infomation. You've heard the saying,
"Knowledge is power"? That was never more true than
now.
We're going to pull everything
together, everthing that we've learned so far, to create a WEALTH
GENERATING MACHINE so you can become truly RICH, if that's your
desire.
Lastly we'll tear apart
a 'common myth' about information marketing that is keeping many
people from being successful - including you - and we will systematically
destroy the one biggest obstacle to your success online or offline
so you'll have no barriers to success.
With that said, are you
ready? Ok! Let's get going - Lesson 5 begins NOW!
Lesson 5
Introduction
In past lessons
I showed you how to create a dynamic, benefit filled capture page
to generate your email leads, create subject lines and email openings
so your emails get read.
You
are way beyond 'newbie' material now... you're
going into advanced territory
where the online landscape changes dramatically - in ways you
may never have thought of.
This Lesson and the next
are most important for your success online because it shows you
how to squeeze every ounce of profit from your online activities
and how to remove every barrier to your success - especially those
annoying self-imposed barriers we create for ourselves.
And what's the engine
that pulls this profit train? In the online world it's our ezine,
newsletter or whatever you want to call it. It's the "thing"
we send our subscribers. When we market to prospects offline (Lesson
7) it's the same thing: A simple device to communicate with anyone
on our list.
These are our vehicles
for constant communication with customers and prospects. And if
your message hits your prospect (whether they are online or offline)
at the right TIME (remember "timing" from the last Lesson?)
and in the right frame of mind (remmber "moods"?) you
will have success.
But, as we already know,
you cannot hit ALL of your customers and prospects with perfect
timing and when they are in a perfect mood... right?
That is the reason you
have to CONSTANTLY communicate with them... to finally be able
to catch them when the circumstances (mood), your message and
the timing are right for them to take action by ordering your
product.
I cannot emphasize this
enough... there is not a single marketer on this planet that mails
to their prospects too much - online or offline. Ok, well if you
send 5 email messages a day to your prospects, that might be too
much... but you should be sending them at least 4-5 messages per
week. And if you're mailing a letter or postcard to your prospects
once every week that would not be too much.
And what's our most important
job as marketers?
Our business,
our job as marketers is to build our list!
If
you really want to narrow down the job we have to do, it's that:
Build our lists and market new products and services to our list
constantly using the technics I described in Lesson 4 and will
discuss in this Lesson. If you do nothing else, just "communicate"
with them. That's where the money is.
After all, if
you can't capture an email lead, and you can't follow-up with
your prospects what good is your web site, graphics, $295 '3D'
book covers, 'killer web site, cgi and php scripts, hosting account,
computer, ISP or the Internet for that matter?
If you can't make money
online, what good is the Internet?
It's just a big dictionary,
encyclopedia or newspaper.
I'm serious. That's how
I feel about it.
I'm a hard-core entrepreneur.
I want to make money, and guess what? If the Internet isn't going
to make money for me I'll gladly go elsewhere and let the Internet
alone. I will drop it like a hot rock and use other ways to make
money.... using the EXACT same methods I used online and offline
to make money... build a list, source products and constantly
send them offers, etc...
That is the GOLDEN KEY
TO PROFITS.
Building, Maintaining,
Growing, Trusting
You build trust my making
OFFERS that are trustworthy and communicating that you're for
REAL.
In the last lesson we
talked about the subject line and opening sentences of your emails.
That gets them open and read... but what do you put in the body
of the email?
Your OFFER. Your
OFFER goes into the body of the email, and if your selling your
own product, the OFFER and the CLOSE.
What's an "Offer"?
The offer is simply your value proposition... in other words,
what are you prepared to give your customers in return for their
money?
Yes... this is a major
flaw in the free enterprise system. If you ask people for money,
you actually have to give them something in return. Gheesh, what
a downer huh?
Well, buck up... it's
not that bad. The
key to making this work is by delivering something that has a
high perceived value that actually costs you less than the real
cash outlay to obtain or deliver the product.
That's how you make a
profit, that's how all
businesses make
a profit.
The difference between
your TOTAL COST of creating and delivering the product and the
PRICE someone is willing to pay for your product is PROFIT. It's
that simple
Don't get me started on
'gross' and 'net profit'... this is not an accounting course.
When I say profit I usually mean 'profit before taxes'... you
still have to pay taxes on any net profits you make to your federal
or state governing authority to arrive at your net-net profit
- the amount of money you get to actually keep at the end of the
year.
From this point forward
I'm only talking about net-net profit, unless I state otherwise.
And there is not another
product on the face of this earth with more profit potential than
"information products".
You might be selling something
else but I would encourage you to consider adding an info-product
to your line becuase of the healthy margins they carry.
In many cases, especially
online, your gross profit on an information product is 99.9%...
you can't get much higher than that. Your only real expenses in
delivering info-products over the Internet are your hosting and
ISP accounts and maybe any subscription services you use to deliver
your products electronically.
But there is a problem
selling information products that is not a problem with other
types of products.
The first problem is that
you cannot take a picture of them. You can always draw an
imaginary 'cover' for your book or report or software product
... but it's just a representation of your imagination, that's
all. The only real way to describe them is through your words...
your sales copy. And
unlike their physical counterparts, ebooks and digital products
do not even exist in the 'real world' they are pure binary code,
little 1's and 0's - translated on your computer screen so you
can read them.
If you tried selling some
1's and 0's how far do you think you would get? Not very.
That may seem pretty obvious,
but let's take this to the extreme because the point is often
lost to the neophyte information marketer.
But you're not a neophyte
anymore... you're going into the inner circle of advanced information
marketing here... a rare breed who understands the reality of
marketing pure "information".
You understand how hard
it would be to sell 1's and 0's, right? Pretty tough. No one will
buy them.
But that's exactly what
you're selling, in the most basic form.
The next thing you are
selling as we move up the chain of information, is 'ideas'...
right?
These 1's and 0's are
not just binary code... they are now "ideas".
If you're selling an information
product of any kind, digital or paper based, you're selling 'ideas',
right? Those 'ideas' are just the beginning though.
"Ideas"
are the BUILDING BLOCKS of the information we will eventually
package and sell.
You cannot sell JUST 'ideas'
can you?
Let's say you announce
to your list that you have this great IDEA... but you didn't TELL
them what the idea was... and you're willing to sell this "idea"
to the first buyer for $49... do you think it would sell?
Probably not... but you
never know. Some people will buy just about anything ;-)
If you said, I have an
idea and then you actually describe, in short, what the idea was
about... for example "how
to make $1 million dollars starting with no money"
and you tried selling it for $49, you would probably get many
more buyers. Right?
Ok...now...
So you would sell your
idea for $49. Now you have to figure out HOW you're going to deliver
this idea to your buyers.
What are your options?
You can simply call them
on the phone and tell them what your idea is.
That's one way to deliver
the info.
You can also write your
idea down and send it to them through the mail or over the Internet.
You can record it on audio
and send it to them through the mail or over the Internet.
In other words, there
are a lot of ways to DELIVER this idea to them... but you have
to translate the "idea" in your head into a tangible
(even if electronic) piece of "information" that can
be spoken, written or recorded... right?
Let's say you decided
to write the "idea" down and deliver it over the Internet.
That would be easy...
Let's say you simply decided
to give it to them straight away... so that they didn't have to
work too hard to really figure this out and decided not to create
and entire book or report about your idea. You're trying to save
yourself some work, of course, but you're also thinking of your
customer.
You don't want them to
work to hard either. You're just going to give them the idea in
it's 'raw' form with no extraneous information or 'details' whatsoever.
They would probably appreciate that, right?
But if you gave them the
'idea' and all you gave them was this, on a single piece of paper,
(electronic paper):
"Buy
20 rental properties, one each year for 20 years, worth $50,000
each (with no money down through owner financing) in your
home town... let your renters pay off your loans and pay for
upkeep through rent increases... then sell the buildings after
your loans are all paid off and you'll pocket $1,000,000 or
more at the end of 40 years."
Do you think your buyers
would be happy with that?
Why not? You gave them
exactly what you had promised, "how to make $1 million
dollars starting with no money".
I would guess that half
of your buyers would probably request a refund.
Sure you gave them the
idea and you even wrote it down for them... but their expectations
were much higher than that...
...your customers
are looking for details
NOT just an idea,
even though that's what you told them they would get
But you may have missed
something in what I just said... I said, "half of your buyers would
probably request a refund"...
why only 50%?
The other half probably
want one too, but just never got around to asking for one.
The problem, of course,
is that the next time you offer them anything no one will buy
it. They got 'burnt' once from you and will probably never buy
anything from you again-- even if you told them ahead of time
that they were only going to get this one 'idea', they will have expectations above
and beyond what you told them they would get that you never addressed
in your product.
People want more.. they
want details, and more importantly they want to be satisfied
with their purchase on an emotional level. Satisfaction is a rather
subjective term, but you need to think as your customer does and
ask yourself the queston: "Is this product going to satisfy
my customer? Would it satisfy me emotionally, if I were the customer?"
By providing MORE THAN
what people expect, you can not only reduce your refund rates
but also BUILD trust in your products and your name over time.
How do you give them MORE?
By...
...including
DETAILS in your product they never expected to find... you gave
them more than just an "idea" you gave them MORE details,
MORE information, MORE advice than they thought they were going
to get... in other words:
you
delivered more value than they thought they would get
and satisfied them emotionally...
Give MORE than your customers
expect so they can feel satisfied that they didn't get ripped
off and they made the right decision to buy from you in the first
place. You've heard of 'buyers remorse'? It's very real.
As soon as someone
buys something they feel a loss... the better and more
satisfying your product the less 'remorse' they will feel. That's
why it's so important to give people more than they expected...
to reduce the remorse they will feel after buying your product.
I would even give them
a 'free gift' , something they did not expect to receive.
People buy for emotional
reasons and then justify their actions later using logic.
If you give them more than they expected (such as a free valuable
gift), that's all the justificationt hey need to keep their purchase
and not request a refund.
People hate to feel
quily about anything and will use any justification
handy to make themselves feel better. If you give them more than
they expected when delivering your product they would feel quilty
for returning it because you gave them so much! They will say,
"Gheesh, this guy gave me all this free extra stuff I didn't
even know I was going to get. It's like a gift."
If someone gave you
a gift woudn't you feel bad about handing it back to them and
saying, "This stinks I don't want it"? 99% of people
would never do that because they'd feel quilty for not accepting
a free gift.
Same thing with your
products - give them a free gift they didn't expect to receive
and since they don't want to feel quilty they won't return the
whole package.
It will drastically reduce
your refund rate, improve customer satisfaction and create a bond
with your customer that makes them trust your future offers.
Solid business advice.
Don't take it lightly.
The
real profits in your business will be made by selling multiple
products to the same buyer over time.
In order to do that you need to give them and awesome experience
when they do buy something from you. I talked about how to create
your information products in Lesson 3. You really have to dig
down into your own experiences and create they very best product
you possibly can.
If you sold them a book
on "how to make money online" you better give them something
they haven't read about before from 100 other people selling books
on "how to make money online"!
When you do give your
customers more than they expect you'll dramatcially increase their
lifetime value as a customer and that's where the real money is.
For example, someone on
your list will buy one of your lower priced products for $29,
then, if they like that and you truly delivered more value than
they thought they would get, they may consider your $400 product,
and then if they like that they will attend your seminar for $2,500.
They may also buy other
low-priced products from you over their lifetime which increases
their value to you.
There is one WARNING
to this section:
Yes, you need to create the very best product you can, deliver
more than they expect and create an awesome experience for your
buyers... but don't wait to roll out your product and start testing
it if it's still not 'perfect'...
Having an excellent product
and delivering more value than expected does not have anything
to do with how 'perfect' the product is... is has to do with your
mindset.
Let me give you a real
example of just what I'm talking about:
This course...
Since releasing this course
online in December, 2003 I have received 100's of emails thanking
me for writting it and putting it out. But before it was released
to a larger audience I test marketed the course to a few customers
who provided me feedback on it... everyone loved it. But there
were a few emails from people who told me, yes they loved the
course, but there were so many 'typos' in it that I should have
been more careful or hired somebody to go through it and fix all
the typos first before releasing it.
I did actually go back
and try to correct as many typos as possible... but I could have
spent another several weeks going through it or hired someone
who would have spent another few weeks going through it just to
make sure those typos were corrected.
What did I do?
Neither.
I realesed the course
and hired someone later on to help me correct the typos. There
are, I'm sure, typos in this course even now but if I had waited
until it was 'perfect' you would not be reading this Lesson even
to this day.
You don't have to make
it perfect... you have to deliver excellent information and get
it out the door.
The money is made from
selling, not
making it 'perfect' -- as long as you deliver what was promised
and more than expected you can be happy with your product. While
you're tetsing it, you can go back and make corrections, clean
it up, etc. but get it out the door as soon as feasibly possible.
If you tried to make it
'perfect' you will always see something wrong with it, because
that is where your focus is and you will never start marketing
it and you will never make money.
Who Are You? Are You Going
To Leave Me?
Let's talk about what
I mentioned earlier, "communicating that you're for REAL".
In most cases the person
who signs up for your list will be unsure of who you are and what
you can do for them.
Each communication
from you is another opportunity for you to build trust.
One of the fears most people have about buying anything online
is getting taken. Trust means having some assurance that you not
just going to take their money and not deliver anything in return.
That why you should always
set up an autoresponder to confirm a purchase and let your customer
know you got the order and the order is, at the very least, being
'processed'.
They need to hear from
you within seconds or they get concerned the order didn't go through
but their card was charged or the order went through but you never
got it or the charge went through and you decided to take their
money and run.
So confirm orders and
if possible deliver the product they ordered instantly, especially
if it's a digital product.
"Communicating with
your customer"... this is common sense and I shouldn't have
to tell you this, but I don't want to leave this out because it's
important for your success.
You'd think this was common
sense. But I purchased a product recenlty online and received
no confirmation of my order, no receipt and no communication whatsoever
from this company.
I called their customer
service number and they told me they only send receipts if "I
requested it". You're kidding right? I don't even get a receipt?
Now this is a well respected
company, a company that came highly recommend by one of the most
respected online marketers around.
I requested a receipt
and received an email from a "Kathleen" with the following
message:
Hi David,
This is to state that you purchased the Monthly Copywriting
Genius from XXXXX Institute on March 4, 2005 and paid $99.00
by your Visa Card. If I can be of further help please let me
know.
Kathleen/Customer Service
That was it!
The return email address
wasn't even using the company name and the subject line simply
said "Receipt". I would have deleted because it looked
like spam but luckily opened it first to see what it was.
Listen, communication is KEY to your survival online.
After a cutomer orders
one of my products I set it up so an autoresponder message goes
out with the download URL immediately, but when I get notice of
the payment, I also send out a message from my office computer
that says,
"This is just
a personal note saying 'thank you' for your order! And just in
case you missed the download URL, here it is again..."
...and then I give them
the download link again.
The personal touch and
constant communication BEFORE and AFTER the sale never hurts...
Where Did I Go Wrong?
Using Common Sense
If you have tried to make money on the Internet before, this is
where you may have gone wrong.
Believe it or not your
subscribers and buyers need re-assurances that you're not a 'scam
artist'. I know that's hard to understand, because we know we are not scam artists.
We are trustworthy people who would never think of scamming anyone.
Unfortunately your subscribers don't know you that well.
So it only makes sense
to communicate
with them often,
and using
language that builds trust...
...and it's also
one of the reasons I email my subscribers almost every day.
What do I mean by "using
language that builds trust"?
Well, for the most part
it means using simple language. Language that is easily understood
by an 12 year old.
Yes, that simple.
It also means
avoiding exaggerations of any kind, wild claims or illogical arguments
and statements.
Your words are very important.
What you say, and the way you say it will help establish trust
or destroy it.
When in doubt, read your
email copy out load and see if it sounds like BS... if it does
then you've got to change it before sending it out.
Understanding Your Customers
and Prospects
They want a 'real' person
to communicate with them.
And that means being honest
with them.
Here's a secret to selling
that very, very few people use online: Tell people what you
don't like about a product or service you're promoting! -even if it's your own!
Not every product or service
is 100% perfect... but admitting that fact gives you so much credibility.
You don't have to go overboard about what you don't like, but
honest about it.
If the product you are
recommending doesn't talk about "X" and you wish the
author had put more information about it in the book, say so.
There are certain things
you can always say about a product, especially an information
product that will give your recommendation some credibility. Things
such as:
- "You will have
some work to do, but the instructions are clear and easy to
read..."
- "It doesn't go
into enough detail about setting up the program, but you can
get that information from the programmers website anyway..."
- "Even though
- "I didn't agree
with the author on this point, but he nailed it when he said..."
So, the truth is, you
can be totally honest in your opinion of a particular product
and STILL make sales and probably a lot more of them because you
are being truthful in your assessment of the product and in your
recommendation.
Never be afraid of telling
the truth, at least the truth as you see it.
That's all it takes to build trust.
You should notice one
thing though that is very important in the examples above:
The first part of each
sentence above starts
with a negative and ends with a positive feature.
For example:
"You
will have some work to do
(negative),
but
the instructions are clear and easy to read (positive)..."
That's true for each example
above... go back and re-read them.
The reason you want to
do this is people tend to remember what they've read last. So always end your
sentence on a positive note and they will remember what's positive
about the product while still respecting you for being critical
of the product, even if they can't seem to remember what exactly
those negative points were ;-)
This Is Not Right!
So the liberating thing
about 'telling the truth' is that you can get really enthusiastic
about a product that is great... and worth a high recommendation!
This is where the neophyte
information marketer and the advanced market part company.
The neophyte
will HYPE and be enthusiastic about any product... just to make
the sale.
The advanced marketer will never hype anything and ONLY be enthusiastic
about a product that is truly superior.
Whenever a customer gets
an email from a marketer who does not understand this point, who
has been overly enthusiastic about EVERY product he recommends
will say to themselves, "This isn't right". They will
know you could care less about being honest and are just trying
to make the sale.
On other hand, the advanced
marketer has already 'conditioned' his list so that if he is really
enthusiastic about a new product or one he just found they know
he must really be telling the truth because if there was anything
really wrong with it, he
would tell them
just like he always does!
When a recommendation
is made, one that the marketer is truly enthusiastic about, the
sales will come fast.
He may not make many sales
when he suggests a product in which he has some 'reservations',
but when he does find a near perfect product, it will more than
make up for the lost sales on the other products he's mentioned
in his newsletter.
Aside from your own
products, this is where big money is to be made on the Internet.
Let's say you send out
up to 6 emails a week as I suggest you do. 2 of those emails will
suggest products that do not receive your 100% endorsement, 2
are 'high' recommendations and one promotes your own product,
the other is your 'pure-info' newsletter day.
If you have a list of
1,000 people--- as an example. You can expect that any product
you suggest
will get anywhere from 0-2 sales (per thousand subscribers)...
but when you give your HIGHEST recommendation to a product and
fully endorse it, you can expect 2-4 sales (per thousand)!
If the product you recommend
is $49, for example, and you receive a 50% commission on it that's
a profit of $0-$50 (per thousand) on a 'suggested' product and
$50 to $100 (per thousand) on a HIGHLY recommended product!
You can see that MAILING
daily, with several 'suggested products' and ONE HIGHLY recommended
product per week can add up to a lot of money fast with very few
subscribers.
PLUS you will include
your own product in one of those emails each week as I recommended
in Lesson 4 and your profit on your own products are always much
higher and your list is much more responsive to your own products.
Let's take a look at
our marketing calendar again and do the math for a typical week,
based on only 1,000 subscribers:
SALES
MATRIX |
Profit
on 'Suggested' Product
|
Profit
On 'HIGHLY Recommended Product
|
Profit
On Your Own Product
|
Day
1 |
'pure
info' mailing
|
-
|
-
|
Day
2 |
-
|
$75
|
-
|
Day
3 |
$50
|
-
|
-
|
Day
4 |
-
|
$50
|
-
|
Day
5 |
-
|
-
|
$210
|
Day
6 |
$25
|
-
|
-
|
Day
7 |
day
off - no mailing
|
-
|
-
|
PROFIT
|
$75.00
|
$125.00
|
$210.00
|
|
|
Grand
Total ALL Columns
|
$410
per week
|
|
This example shows $410
in income per week per 1,000 subscribers. If you have 2,000 subscribers
you can expect (if you follow my entire systems (from Lesson 1
onward) $810 in profits per week -- 5,000 subscribers? $2,000
per week or more... you see how profitable this can be?
You can see that 'mixing'
up your offers makes economic and common sense. A good mix of
'suggested products, HIGHLY recommended products and your own
products will appeal to your list.
Your ability to make
your living online is the result of generating multiple sources
of income. You are creating multiple sources: Your OWN products;
'suggested' products and; HIGHLY recommended products.
Think what would happen
if you ONLY offered your own products or ONLY offered HIGHLY recommended
products or ONLY offered 'suggested' products... your list would
grow tired of the SAME offers all the time and once they purchased
that offer, they won't keep reading your newsletter because they
know that's all you're ever going to offer them!
You wonder why you
started a list, started recommending products and didn't make
more than $50 a week? This is another reason why.
Mixing it up like this
will keep their interest high and, as long as you continue to
find new and exciting products or develop them yourself, you will
continue to make sales.
This is a pretty typical
week for me, except that I have close to 9,000 subscribers, but
I mean the results in percentage terms are typical... and the
grid above is based on my own experiences.
Yours may be different
depending on a number of factors. But, as I mentioned, at a minimum,
you can make $1-$3 per subscriber PER MONTH using this system.
That's an average
of $410 per week X 4 weeks a month is $1,640 in profits with only
1,000 subscribers (or $1.64 per month, per subscriber)!
You may not think this
is very much money... $410 a week. Let me assure you that most
people work a 40 hour week to make $410 a week... or $21,320 a
year!
Following my system
you only have to spend 2-3 hours a day (at the most) 'finding
an appropriate product, writing a quick email about it and mailing
it to your list.
Yeah.. it's that easy.
Imagine your earnings
if you had a list of 10,000 high quality subscribers... it's very
possible to do. Using the methods I already told you about I've
built my list from 1,800 to 9,000 in less than a year. Your potential
earnings are now $410 X 10 or $4,100 per week or $213,200 a year!
...and this extra money was made with the SAME amount of time
invested as when you had only 1,000 subscribers -- 2-3 hours each
day!
Here's a tip that could dramtacially
increase your income using this system:
Instead of sending one
email for each product you promote, send a series of them for
2, 3 even 5 times in a row.
Tests I've done over the
past year have indicated that for those products that
sold well on the first time out to
my list performed even better when I revised the email slightly,
referenced the first one and sent it out 2, 3 or even 5 times
over the period of a week to 10 days.
For example, if I send
out a recommendation for a really excellent book, let's say Allen
Say's and Bryan Kumars' Money and Power
on Tuesday I will get a certain number of sales... if I send it
out again, with a different message but referencing the first
email I sent I get many more sales than if I sent it out only
once. If I continue to recommend the book over a series of 2-5
emails I get a huge response... sometimes 4 to 6 times what would
normally get on a single email shot.
Listen:
I didn't 'discover' this by accident... I want you to learn a
very important point here. I learned this by testing and I learned
it by not doing
what other people were saying, but what they were doing.
I make this a point in
my sales letter for my InfoProductLab Private Site: You don't
make money by listening to other people, event the 'big' Internet
marketers... no... you make money by watching
what they are
DOING and then
DO the same thing.
When I saw that a lot
of the larger marketers were sending out emails one after another
all promoting a single product I thought, "Hmmm...
why are they doing that?". Then
I saw that they would also send out one message and then NEVER
follow-up with that message ... again, I thought to myself, "Hmmm... why did
they do that?"
Here's the Lessons I learned
by WATCHING this action taken by larger marketers (the one's who
were obviously making money :) and then TESTING it for myself
(very important, always test
what you observe):
- LESSON
#1: I discovered through my
own TESTING what was really going on: When they promoted the
same product 2-3 times in a row day-after-day, and each mail
referencing the previous email they were MAKING MONEY.
- LESSON
#2: If they sent out an email
one day and then NEVER followed up on it, it meant that the
product did not sell as well as expected and they DROPPED it
like a HOT POTATO!
This one 'secret' should put you ahead of 99.9% of every marketer
online. Watch what people are doing, especially the one's you
know are making big money... then test what you've observed for
yourself.
Over a period of time
you can find products to promote each month that will do extremely
well for you. The one's that you 'test' and don't work out, drop
them... the one's that do well, keep in your Sales Matrix (above)
and continue to promote them each month or every other month.
It's kind of like a 'control'
piece in direct mail marketing: When you find one that outperforms
all the others, drop the less profitable and promote the product
that sells better. This way you can continually
update and upgrade the products you're promoting to the best selling
and most profitable selling products at all times.
Staying Focused
By the way, the work we
did in Lesson 1, Lesson 2 and Lesson 3 is critical for this system
to work correctly.
You need a "focus"...
for your letter ...and your recommendations need to be relevant
to your FOCUS or else they will fail to generate a response at
all.
Let's say your focus is
on 'pc repairs' and you suggest a product to your list having
to do with a 'dating site'... it will probably not make any sales
at all or very few. So your recommendations need to be tightly
focused on your list's interests.
The key here is the way
in which you BUILD TRUST, by telling the truth about the products
you find and suggest to your list. And when you find the 'perfect'
or near perfect product, get really enthusiastic about it! But
never over-do it or make exaggerated claims about it.
Your List Is Dysfunctional
- Get Over It!
You know you could have
the most perfect 'system' in the whole world, but if the product
you recommend in your newsletter is a dog, the 'system' isn't
going to help you make a penny.
You have to find a way
to 'source' great products that will appeal to your subscribers.
I've already given you
two of the best ways I use to source products. Do you remember
what they are?
One was revealed in the
interview I did with Scott Foster from Lesson 3, "Picking
The Low Hanging Fruit from the Internet Tree"... the other way
I revealed in Lesson 4: Creating a "Challenge"... and
getting your subscribers to recommend new products you can promote.
The last way I'm going
to reveal to you is simple but not as good as the previous 2 methods...
All you have to do is
get on the mailing lists of eveyone in your 'niche', read their
newsletters and see what they are promoting. Then contact the
owner of the product or sing up for the product's affiliate program
and promote it to your list.
The only problem with
this type of sourcing is that your subscribers are probably already
on these other lists and got the same promotion for it that you
got... and some of them may have already purchased it. So you
will make far fewer sales than if you found the product first
and promoted it to your list before the other ezine owners did.
However, as I mentioned
above, you can tell which products are performing well for other
marketers becuase thye are promoting them day-after-day :-)...
so watch carefully what other people are promoting.
So, I highly recommend
that you take an hour out of the 2-3 hours you'll be online each
day and souce your own affiliate products or work on creating
your own products.
Info, GADGETS, Plans, Software
- What Sells Better?
That's what you need to
find out ;-)
Sorry, but I cannot answer
that one for you... but the question is a guide for you to keep
in mind as you source your products to sell to your list.
In my case, my list prefers
'business opportunity plans' that look relatively easy to do and
they sell better than software, gadgets of all kinds, and even
'information' and reports that are not specific to a business
opportunity.
I'll give you an example.
Below is an email I sent to my list and it generated more response
than anything else I have ever sent.
I think I know why, but
that's probably irrelevant since the response could have been
due to a number of factors that I do not even know about.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi
[name],
I have been on an amazing quest... and I want to tell you
what I've been up to and what I found!
First I apologize for not writing my weekly letter last week
or the week before...
I took both weeks pretty easy (except for the 'quest' I
began below) and just relaxed with family and friends. It
felt
really good to 'recharge' my batteries after putting in 80
+
hour weeks on my business for the past several months...
And you thought being in business for yourself was going to
give you more f*r*e*e time?? SOOOO did I....
Hence my quest: To seek out and find the EASIEST BUSINESS
IN
THE WORLD to start, operate and make a profit- enough of a
profit
to make a full-time living in as *few hours per day* as possible.
I searched high and low, on the Internet and off the Internet.
Here are a few of my findings:
Business #1:
This business sounded great, the timing was perfect and the
profits potentially in the six-figures: Installing 'stair
lifts'
for seniors and handicapped persons in their homes.
Basically all you need is a manufacturer who will sell to
you
direct or have them refer you to a reseller who gives you
a good
discount. Do a search on Google for "stair lift manufacturer"
and you'll get some great contacts.
Next, if you're handy in anyway you can install these yourself
(with a helper) and make some serious money. These 'lifts'
sell
for $6,000 and up and you can easily install 5-7 per week.
I thought this was a pretty good business considering the
baby-
boomers are just starting their 'senior' years. I may pursue
this
in my area...
BUT... I kept looking because my passion is 'paper and ink'
type
businesses even if the 'paper and ink' is all digital.
The one thing that concerned me with the business above are
the
legal requirements, paperwork for insurance claims and 'hiring'
help that was trustworthy (after all you're going into people's
homes)...
What I was really looking for, was literally the "easiest
business
in the world" that I could run from home, with very little
start-up
costs and was highly profitable.
Business #2:
This one is really 'unique': part of the 'business' is mail
order
and part of it takes place on ebaY (the selling part).
In fact, I will state -for the record- that you will probably
not find another business that has as much raw market demand
and
is as easy to sell than this one. And, although I think the
profits
are fantastic, you will not make a million dollars in this
business.
The profit potential is more like $50,000 to $100,000 per
year but
there is so little actual 'work' or hours involved it could
easily
be run on a part-time basis and still make that amount of
profits.
Let's take a quick look at why I think this is the "easiest
business in the world":
First: Your costs are minimal. Postage, some paper and ink
are all you need to get started. You'll also need an ebaY
account
to start selling your 'product' when they start coming in.
Second: The "product" is highly desirable and ALWAYS
in demand.
This is not a FAD business- it has been around at least 100
years
that I know of maybe longer...
Third: This is the easiest 'product' you could ever 'produce'
and sell. Demand is always high and there are no signs it
will
ever change. In fact, demand has ALWAYS outstripped supply
for
this product.
Another fact: 97% or better of auctions for this product I've
watched
on ebaY will sell and those that don't were not listed correctly
or omitted certain important information in their auction
listings. That's the highest closing ratio for just about
any product
I have ever seen on ebaY.
Fourth: There is a common perception among the 'public' that
these 'items' are hard to come by, scarce and therefore in
limited
supply. As a result, the 'value' placed on these items is
far beyond
the actual value.
Fifth: You have an almost 'unlimited' supply of the 'product'
that
you can obtain. The average selling price from my experience
is $34
each and can be obtained for the cost of a few postage stamps
and some
paper. This can be run as a 'hobby' or as a 'full-time' business.
Truly
dedicated individuals on ebaY are generating $3,000 to $10,000
per
month in gross sales. Once you are organized, and have the
knowledge
in this report, you can make this a full-time income from
a part-time
effort.
Sixth: Even though there is a huge demand, you will have limited
competition. The few 'full-timers' in the business cannot
even begin
to meet current demand.
That's what I call "The Easiest Business In The World:
Secrets of a
Unique Mail Order Business on ebaY".
This 44 page report is densely packed with information you
cannot
find anywhere else on how to run this business form your home.
It will
show you in a step-by-step manner how to start, how to obtain
the
'product' for pennies each and how to sell them on ebaY for
huge
profits.
I wish I could share with you the specific details of this
unique
business but if I even mentioned what the 'product' is you
either
would not believe you could obtain it so cheaply or you would
not
believe it would be such and easy and profitable business
to run.
You'll have to trust me on this. Here are the exact steps
you need to
take to start making money with this program:
All you do is write a few letters each day, wait for them
to 'come back'
with something 'special' inside the return envelope. So far
your total
'cost' of obtaining the product is less than $1.00. When it
comes back
you list it on ebaY and, like I said, the average selling
price of the
practically 'f-r-e-e' products is $34 each, but I have seen
prices of
$250 to $500 each. That's all there is to this 'unique and
easy' business!
Dave, I know you're not going to 'rip me off' by buying this
and
then just asking for a refund... I KNOW you won't do that.
But if
try it and it doesn't work for you and you don't think that
this isn't
the easiest business in he world...then no problem. I'll grant
you a
quick refund.
I have no plans for putting this into the InfoProductLab Private
Area ...I am NOT the author of this report, BUT I am the ONLY
distributor
of it on the Internet - so you can only get it as a member
of this list.
To get it right now for just $27, click here:
http://www.3tto.com/unique/
PS- Don't believe for one second that the "value"
of this info is
only $27… I could setup a full web site, create a super-charged
sales letter, add a couple of bonuses and charge $79 for it…and
get it. I'm not adding a lot of 'fluff' to this offer and
passing
the savings to you! Get the report now (direct order link):
http://www.3tto.com/unique/
Make sure you monitor your primary PayPal address after payment
because the report download URL will be mailed to your Primary
PayPal email address. The report itself is in PDF format so
you need
Adobe Acrobat Reader to read it (and yes it can be printed!)
That's all the news for now,
- Dave
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The huge response I got
was to "Business #2"... the easy ebaY business. It shocked
me how strong the response was ...
You'll notice two things
quickly about this newsletter issue, first I used the "What
I found" opening and second it is a 'pure-info'
letter that turns into a sales pitch, a 'slippery slope'.
The third thing is that
the plan being sold is what's called a "BLIND" biz-opp.
See there are two ways you can sell a business opportunity type
info-product... "blind" or "open".
Selling it "blind"
means that you don't tell your prospect WHAT the business opportunity
is, you tell them what it isn't... but never what it really involves.
The second way to sell
a business opportunity program is 'open'... that means that you
actually tell you prospects what the business is.
For example if you were
selling an opportunity for a 'candy wrapper' business and you
were using the "blind' method you would tell your prospects
that you can make so much money on special events, like anniversaries
and birthday's, etc... very mysterious ... but you never tell
them it has to do with buying candy bars and putting a wrapper
over it with your customers picture and name, and "congratulations",
etc...
The blind method works
good in mail order and direct mail... but I don't think it works
well on the Internet.
People want to know what
they are getting before they buy.
In the email above I sold
217 of these ebay programs that I sold 'blind', but once my customers
found out what it involved I received 29 refund requests... which
is way too high for me, so I stopped selling it (which when I
think back was probbaly a mistake- I should have continued to
sell it, but found another way to reduce refunds by adding a bonus
or a 'stick' product a few days after the orginal purchase liek
a free memebrship to my Private Site, etc. A 'stick' product is
usually a bonus type product that you send to your buyers a few
days, a few weeks or even a few months after they purchased the
orginal product so that the orginal product 'sticks' and they
don't ask for a refund :).
Even so, that was the
highest percentage of requests for a refund I have ever received
on any one product. My average refund request rate is less than
1%. If I ever offered it again, I would probably disclose ahead
of time what the opportunity involved.
But my point is: This
is the kind of information you have to gather from your own list.
You're never
going to know everything about your list, what your subscribers
want or what they will buy... you have to experiment a little
and use some common sense the rest of the time.
They BUY When...
Your customers will buy
from you when they are...
- Ready
to buy now
- Willing to
buy now, and
- Able
to afford it
And they will not buy
from you when they are NOT ready, NOT willing and NOT able. Make's
sense huh?
That's why your sales
are totally un-predictable sometimes. You just never know what
some people will decide to buy from you or when!
So you should NEVER judge
some products yourself... sometimes it's better to let your subscribers
decide.
Offer products that you
may not think they would like, or that are on the 'fringe' of
your focus. Just make sure they are good quality products, never
offer junk... but take chances once in a while and offer something
that is good, but doesn't appeal to you personally.
The MASS PSYCHOLOGY of
Your List
The the section above
I stated, "That's
why your sales are totally un-predictable sometimes. You just
never know what some people will decide to buy from you or when!
"
What this really means
is that you also DO NOT KNOW which of your lists will be successful
or not. You cannot fully understand the motivations and buying
behavior or your list at all times.
It's un-predictable.
I am
going to be suggesting something extremely important, vital to
your WEALTH, so please pay close attention.
Remember in Lesson 1,
we stated that people are "CONFUSED and seek to FILL
the VOID"?
Then in Lesson 2 we stated,
"As long
as you have a focus for your ezine and can post a response to
a question on a discussion board with your URL and signature,
YOU CAN BUILD A HIGHLY RESPONSIVE LIST..."
Then in this lesson and
in Lesson 4 I detailed the 'system' : the Marketing Calendar and
the Sales Matrix and how to mix product suggestions and "high"
recommendation offers... ok?
Now we are going to put
this all together into a system that runs on auto-pilot and that
will generate PASSIVE income using the psychology of your list.
Let's see what else we
know...
People seek to 'fill the
void' was a big discovery for me... it gave me the courage to
start emailing my customers every day. I figured since they want
to 'fill the void' with distractions, why can't my emails help
fill that void too?
I guess they do, that's
why I have so few un-subscribes. Yes, they get my email, but I
make the messages light, fun and forceful at times.
I practice 'leadership
marketing' - sometimes I even go so far as tell them what they
should do ... I lead them by the hand to buy whatever it is I'm
offering.
That's the attitude you
have to have when writing your email messages... LIGHT, FUN and
even FORCEFUL - at times.
I remember hearing Ted
Nicholas speak several years ago about how he 'gets in the mood'
for writing sales copy. He tries to get in a 'good mood'... he
does that by changing his facial expression and the way he walks.
If he's melancholy the
day he has to write, he starts by simply smiling... and he make's
sure he changes the 'attitude' of his body to imitate someone
who is 'happy and go-lucky' because that's the attitude you need
to sit down and write compelling sales copy in your letters and
email messages.
It makes a BIG difference.
I don't know why but when my mood is less than bright and cheery
it shows up in my writing...
- To quicken the pace
and attitude of the messages I try to use shorter sentences.
- I CAPITALIZE words
sometimes to get my point across stronger.
It's hard to fake being
cheerful, but if you start to smile, and move your body in a way
that indicates you are HAPPY, suddenly you ARE!
Try it... it is NOT IMPOSSIBLE
to change your facial expression BY FORCE. If you want to be happy,
ACT happy, think like a happy peson would think and BE happy.
Your list will sense your
mood in your messages... sense your attitude. You have to carefully
monitor your attitude before writing your messages to make sure
you are not distrustful, suspicious or harboring a grudge, etc...
you really need to clear your mind, think clear, happy and cheerful
thoughts, then get writing... write fast and quickly because after
a while you'll find it hard to maintain this upbeat attitude.
This is how to write copy
that sells:
- write the way you talk
- use simple, common
everyday language
- be upbeat, friendly
and cheerful
- use short sentences
- use the word "YOU"
and "YOUR" in the copy as frequently as possible
- tell reader how to
order, and
- ask them to order now
Master this and you can
write your own email and sales copy better than a pro.
Creating A WEALTH GENERATING
MACHINE
The "system"
(including the marketing calendar) I've gone into extensive DETAIL
about in the last few Lessons will work on ANY LIST in ANY BUSINESS.
We have been talking about
"a" list... your primary
list. The one you are focusing on BUILDING right now.
But the BIG, really BIG
money is in creating MORE THAN ONE LIST and then using this "system"
to generate a ton of cash for you in the form of passive income.
We've talked
about spending time on creating your focus,
building your list,
creating products and sourcing affiliate programs to offer your
list... but that is for your "Primary" list, or your
"bread and butter" list.
Your Primary List should
be setup, working and generating a profit before you go into this
MODIFICATION of the system to generate passive income.
Once your Primary List
is working and your making a profit, it's time to expand your
empire using the tools we helped to create our Primary List.
Sounds like work...huh??
It will be at first, but
stick with me here because you can MODIFY the system to run entirely
on auto-pilot and once it's up and running, you just sit back
and collect the profits without doing ANY work at all!
Modifying
the System
Why do this at all? Why
modify the system to create additional lists? Sounds like 'work'
to me. Why not just continue to build and create more profit streams
from your Primary list?
Well first, if there are
really easy profits
to be made...
tell me where to line up, I'll be there.
Second, your Primary List
will continue to pump out good and healthy profits for you for
years to come following this system
but there is a limit to the amount of cash you'll be able to pull
out of it each and every year. Hey, that may be enough for you,
I don't know.
I guess it depends on
the size of your market. If you're in a market that could generate
100,000 or more subscribers then you may want to just spend your
time mining that kind of list.
But keep your EYES OPEN
for rich veins in other niches.
Let me give you an example:
Right now tele-seminars
are becoming very popular with marketers on the Internet.
You always start with
a FOCUS.
So if you knew tele-seminars
are popular, there's your focus:
a tele-seminar ANNOUNCEMENT list. Here's your headline for your
capture page:
"Would
you like to be the first to be invited to exclusive, free, limited
seating tele-seminars?"
How hard would it be to
setup a CAPTURE page for a list like this? Pretty simple.
Do you think you would
get subscribers? You sure will.
The nice thing about this
idea is that the majority of the free tele-seminars are used to
sell a seat at an exclusive fee-based seminar or other fee-based
tele-seminar that you could make you some back-end income as an
affiliate of these programs.
Your response rate on
getting sign-ups for the free tele-seminar could be very high
and the affiliate income could be substantial.
This would take a little
work, but it's possible to make some very nice extra income for
very little time invested.
What if you didn't want
to do any work at all?
Find an 'evergreen' subject,
create a FOCUS, capture page and send all your subscribers directly
to your autoresponder.
Setting
and Forgetting - Your System on Auto-Pilot
Now, I haven't talked
about autoresponders in your marketing yet. So let me say now
that once you know how to write email messages that sell products
and services, the kinds of emails with good subject lines, solid
openings and sizzling copy, then you can effectively utilize autoresponders.
The danger in using autoresponders
is that the information can get dated... so you need to review
and 'freshen' them up once in a while. In addition, unless you
have a constant stream of new subscribers your list will die.
Your list will die because
people change email addresses all the time and your list will
eventually become worthless due to attrition.
But, if you're using a
co-registration service you could continue to receive fresh subscribers
and keep your list active and profitable. That would be the only
real value is using co-regs on a regular basis.
Let's say for example
that you create a series of autoresponder messages just like the
messages we send to our list 5-6 times per week.
If you have an aweber.com
account, you have the ability to setup unlimited autoresponders
and unlimited follow-up messages for one monthly cost.
At the time of this writing
aweber.com charges $19.95 a month. Your other expense would be
a co-reg service that, at the time of this writing may charge
up to .50 per subscriber depending on the service you chose.
If you're only promoting
affiliate programs (we don't want to create our own product now-
too much work) and you write killer emails as I've shown you how
to do, and you maintain a 'marketing calendar', like I've shown
you, then you can expect a weekly income of approx. $200 per 1,000
subscribers or $800 per month.
Why would it earn so little?
What happened to earning $1-$3 per subscriber a month?
Well there are two disadvantages
to this system... well maybe I should say there are fewer
advantages to this system because you are not getting the high
quality and responsive 'discussion board' subscribers (unless
you decide to take time and promote your new list to discussion
boards) and you are not selling your own products to these 'secondary
profit center' lists (unless you decide to create a few products
of your own to slip into the autoresponder messages).
So your first month you
would net, after your co-reg service and Aweber expenses approx.
$531 per 1,000 subscribers. That's NET. I know that's only .50
cents per subscriber per month, but you're not selling your own
products to the list - this is affiliate programs only so you
have no customer service issues and no time spent on creating
your own products.
IF you add 250 new subscribers
to your list each month and you lost 25-50 from attrition and
un-subscribe requests that still adds 200 new subscribers or a
net gain of approx. 2,400 each year. If you started with 1,000
by the end of year one you would have 3,400 subscriber's or approx.
$1,700 a month in net income...
That is PASSIVE income,
once you have the emails written and the autoresponder working
correctly and populated with your messages.
The easy way to do this
is create 24 (approx. 6 per week) unique messages (see, I told
you it would be work in the beginning) and then simply 'repeat'
these messages each month.
If you had 48 messages
written and ready to populate your autoresponder with then you
could repeat your messages every 2 months, which would be better.
It would be better because your subscribers will be less likely
to get bored with your messages if they only see the same one
every 2 months (and they probably wouldn't notice right away you
were repeating them)... if fact they probably will forget they
had even seen it in the first place.
I will frequently send
messages to my list that I sent out 2-3 months ago... very few
have ever commented that the message was a 'repeat' in fact I
usually get compliments on it.
The key to getting one
or several of these going is to create a dynamic FOCUS and write
some super messages with superior products to "suggest"
and "highly recommend".
If you had the money you
could start off with many more subscribers, say 2,000 in the first
month for a cost of $500, and generate $1,000 a month in income
each month right off the bat. But I would suggest building the
list slowly to minimize your cash investment.
If you do start slowly
you won't have good numbers, a benchmark, for your campaign until
you reach 1,000 subscribers.
Again, once the system
is setup this is PASSIVE income.
All you have to do is
maintain it... make sure the affiliate programs are still operating
and if they're not, change the recommendation to a new program
and put the new link in the autoresponder message. That's it.
The key to making this
work, of course, is the FOCUS, high BENEFIT orientated copy for
the opt-in ad and the well written messages.
One of the ways you can
maintain the 'freshness' to the messages is to use language like
"I just found this" or "Guess what happened to
me yesterday" or "I was speaking with Joe S. the other
day and he...", etc.
Also, you can include
the current 'date' at the top of each one of your messages. Aweber
allows you to personalize your messages and one of them is the
date (month and year) the day message was sent.
Like I said, it won't
be easy writing the message to get started, but once you do it's
all on auto-pilot!
Now, we are not done yet...
so don't get up and walk away ;-)
This is only the BEGINNING.
CREATING
WEALTH
Here's where we kick this
into high gear.
You set up one of these
'passive income' or 'secondary profit center' lists and it creates
less then the desired income for you.
You did everything I said
to do above and it only generates $200 net, instead of $500. What
to do? What to do?
Well you have a decision
to make.
You can cut and run now...
before the list attrition starts to eat up your profits or you
hang in there and hope it gets better (it won't) or you can throw
money at it and 1,000 new subscribers and try that or be satisfied
with a $200 profit.
The only really attractive
option here is to 'cut and run'... as far as I'm concerned. If
the system isn't kicking out $500 per 1,000 subscribers there
is something wrong with the focus of the list or you just hit
a niche that is un-responsive and doesn't spend money on anything.
I would not waste my time
'tweaking' it or trying to make it better ... but that's just
me.
What I would do is save
all my autoresponder messages and use them in a similar niche
or focus by simply re-working them to match my new market.
Ok? Take it or leave it
that's my advice.
On the other hand...
What do you do with
a list you start that produces income in excess of the projections??
You expect $500 a month
from your 1,000 subscribers (our benchmark) and instead
it produces a whopping $900 or $1,100!
You jump on this thing,
roll it out with another 1,000 subscribers and see if the income
per subscriber is constant or thereabouts and, if it is... you
dig this vein for all the gold in those Internet hills!!
You build the list FAST...
1,000 to 2,000 to 4,000 and more as fast as you can, checking
all the way that your income per subscriber stays steady at 50
cents per subscriber or better per month...
If it stays steady or
drops off a bit, don't worry... yet. Keep a close eye on it and
hopefully you'll be able to generate an income that's totally
passive for years!
The other approach you
could take is get really involved in this market and start creating
your own product for it... this will substantially increase your
income in this market.
You should do this anyway,
even if you're only looking at keeping this list as a 'secondary
profit center' because it is hard to find a truly 'rabid' market...
and when you do find one, MILK IT FOR ALL IT'S WORTH.
A 'Common Myth' EXPOSED
About Business and Marketing
"Love what you do
and the money will follow"... heard that one huh?
Nothing could be further
from the truth.
Wait! Hey, you can still
love what you do... BUT the money may NOT follow. There is NO
guarantee that the money will follow by simply doing what you
love to do.
Right?
That's why, if you really
want to make money in your own business you have to try different
things... try marketing different products and see which one's
really take off or not.. the rest, dump them!
The truth is you just
never know what will catch on fire and sell really well. Things
you believe will be sure sellers, never took off and soldwell
-- and the one's you think are dogs will sell all day long for
some strange reason.
What's the point?
Don't fall in love
with your products.
Create only products that people want.
It's YOU that has to change NOT the market... you can't change
the market.
Let me give you an example
from the Stock Market:
You buy a 100 shares of
a stock and it starts going down minutes after you've purchased
it. Ok.. "it's only temporary", you say.
Days later it's still
going down. You wonder if your choice was right or not.
A couple of weeks later
you've lost a lot of money and you finally give in and sell the
darn shares at a large loss. If you got out in the first few days
or hours or minutes, your loss would have been minimal, but you
didn't.
You waited and lost money
-- more than that you lost opportunity and time.
You buy 100 shares of
another stock. It doesn't do anything for a few days then starts
to creep up slightly. A few weeks later you are seeing some healthy
profits, but afraid the stock will start to slide downward, you
sell it thereby 'locking in' your profits.
"I can always buy
back in on the next dip", you tell yourself.
The next day the stock
really takes off, it dipped in the morning and took off in the
afternoon and you completely missed the opportunity. If you hadn't
sold, you would have tripled your original investment.
Both of these scenarios
could have been much more profitable for our investor if:
- He cut losses quickly,
and
- Let his winners run
until they were exhausted
In order for you to do
that as a marketer, you need to be emotionally DETACHED from your
products... if a product is NOT selling you STOP wasting your
time and money trying to sell it.
If a product sells better
than you anticipated, you roll-it-out and promote it heavily to
capture the early (and bulk of the) profits for that product.
This is DIFFERENT than
what most, inexperienced business people try to do. They HANG
ON to their products, especially one's they created themselves
in the hope that one day they will
"come back".
They think of their own
products as their 'babies'.. they are so closely identified with
them that it's hard for them to admit to themselves that it's
just not what the market wants ... or, at least it's not a good
one for the market right now.
This is the hardest thing
to get over... your attachment to your product. But you have to,
if you're going to be successful online or offline.
There is no such
thing as 'hope' in marketing. You either have a winner or your
don't.
I'm going to include here
a quote from Andy Brockelhurt's product, "The Serious Edge"...
the product isn't valid anymore due to the change in ClickBank's
rules, but could be useful in promoting other types of affiliate
programs.
But what he says here
is also applicable to making money online in general and about
being an entrepreneur specifically.
This is really IMPORTANT
stuff he's sharing here... so please read it carefully. It's also
the perfect lead in for next week's lesson: Think
and Succeed.
Enjoy!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy
Brockelhurst: The Serious Edge
First
of all let's consider the 'normal' way that people approach
affiliate programs.
They sign up for a program and then do one or more things:
- They
run ads in their own newsletter.
- They
add links to their web site.
- They
buy classified ads in e-zines.
- They
use banners on their site.
- They
create a doorway page and register on search engines
- The
arrange solo mailings
- Is
there anything wrong with these techniques?
Yes
and No. Let me explain...
The biggest problem, and the biggest factor in why these people
don't see good sized affiliate checks is that they do these
things but they use the standard/suggested ads that the product
author has provided. They use the supplied banners to put
on their page and they use the provided solo ad copy.
What's wrong with that?
Nothing if you are one of the first to promote it and you
only use the pre-written material to get things started. But
when everyone is using the same copy, and people see the same
ad over and over - it becomes ineffective.
Perhaps you recall classic ads like the one that was used
for a product called 'The Cookie Cutter'?
'A crazy little ad that pulls like...' - yeah you remember
the one. I didn't personally promote the cookie cutter, but
I know of people who did. What was interesting was that some
people kept selling that product when other people considered
it long dead, and the reason they did well was that they didn't
use the two or three standard ads the product owner provided.
When I launched 'Internet Profits the Quickway' I provided
some sample ads, but after a few weeks I pulled them out of
the members area. Why? Because I wanted people to be successful
at promoting the product, and as unpopular as I was for taking
the ads down - it drove people to think for themselves.
Since the product included an entire section on constructing
ad copy, I told those who emailed me complaining that they'd
do better to actually READ THE REPORT and try out some ads
of their own.
Many people probably didn't bother, but some that did contacted
me later and thanked me because they were having far greater
success promoting it than they'd had with other products.
They
had that success because for the first time
someone FORCED them to think for themselves.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What To Do Now!
Here's what you need to know:
You should create an "Operations"
plan. Don't get nervous. You don't have to go crazy and it doesn't
have to be perfect or fit any kind of format- it's for your use
only, a 'working' operating plan. Even if it's only one page or
less and just a bunch of bullet points, you need to state HOW
you are going to make money with your site and your list.
Use my 'system' above
or a modified version as a model. Use another site as a model.
Come up with a totally unique way to make money as your model!
Just start writing,
get your thoughts about how
you're going to make money on your computer or
on paper.
The idea is to create
a PLAN of ACTION... THINK. Ask yourself: "How am I going to make
money?"
and "How
can I make money?"
and "How
WILL I make money?" and write down whatever answers
come into your head!
Be as specific as possible.
It doesn't have to be pretty. You don' even have to write full
sentences... just ramble on. No one ever has to see this... ONLY
YOU. It's a tool for YOU to use.
When you start to write
things down they become 'real'... trust me. What you see with
your mind, and what you write about doing, even if you haven't
done it yet, will become your reality. So write HOW you're going
to make money with your site. Fill-in as many details as possible.
If you already have a site that makes money, write down how you
are making money now... and then add a section: future projects
to make money.
Yes, I have my own plan...and
after writting it several years ago I realized how important the
document became to help guide me and how useful it was as a strategic
thinking tool and focus tool.
Many times I will look
back on it and without realizing it, many of the things I wrote
in the plan have come true and were responsible for my success.
Next Lesson:
In the next lesson we're
going to talk about how to think,
but not in the same way we were taught in school. We are going
to learn how to use our minds as a TOOL to create change, overcome
obstacles and barriers and be succcessful even if we think we
are hopeless. In other words, we will learn to succeed in spite
of ourselves.
We're also going to destroy
the obstacles that are keeping you poor, and why focusing on your
Daily Marketing Priorities will help create your wealth for you.
WARNING: In the next lesson
we get into more of the mindset necessary for success that we
started to talk about in Lesson 2. Some of what I say may shock
you - in a good way I hope ;-)
Lastly I'll give you some
advice about setting up an office, paying yourself and buying
computer equipment: Nitty, gritty advice from the trenches ...
and...
A final KICK IN THE BUTT
to get you MOVING!!

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES FOR THIS LESSON
HIGHLY
Recommend Reading Books:
Net Words, Creating
High Impact Online Copy by Nick Usborne. McGraw-Hill,
2002. I don't
agree with everything Nick says, but I do agree with a lot of
it ;-)
Business To Business
Direct Marketing by Robert Bly.
NTC, 1998. The
best book Bob ever wrote, in my opinion.
Breakthrough Advertising
By Eugene Schwartz. Boardroom Books, 1984. Extremely
rare and hard to find used. Copies on ebaY were selling for $400
and up (I sold my copy in 2003 for $450 :). When I originally
wrote this in December 2003 there was one available on Half.com
for $988. Boardroom, the publisher, has recently announced that
it has re-published this marketing classic at a price of just
$95 - a bargain!... details
here!
Mail Order! How
To Get Your Share of The Hidden Profits That Exist In Your Business
by Eugene Schwartz. Boardroom Books, 1982. Not as rare as the title
above, but still difficult to find and as valuable.
Reality In Advertising
by Rosser Reeves. Knopf, 1961. Also
'rare'... used copies can be found on abebooks.com occasionally
for $75 to $175.
Secrets of A Mail
Order Guru: Chase Revel by Ron Tepper. John WIley &
Sons, 1988. Revel
started Entrepreneur Magazine and knows the 'business opportunity'
market inside out. A revealing and important book for info-product
developers attacking the biz-opp market.
Writer's Utopia
Formula Report
by Jerry Buchanan. Self published, 1987. Jerry
is no longer with us, but his work is insipirational. Dan Kennedy
mentioned in his newsletter that he purchased the rights to all
of Jerry's works and has plans to republish this report along
with issues of Jerry's newsletter, The TOWER. You might be able
to find a used copy on ebaY.
A Lifetime of Homework
by George Haylings.
Self-published, 1987. Haylings could have and probably did inspire
Chase Revel as he built Entrepreneur Magazine. Mr Haylings clipped
little business success stories from the news, edited them in
his own words and "packaged" the 'opportunities' into
books and reports. His book has had a strong influence on my own
writing and thinking. Finding a copy may prove to be hard but
try abe.com, bookfinder.com and ebay.com.
How You Too Can
Make At Least $1 MILLION (but probably much more) In The Mail
Order Business
by Gerardo Joffe.
Advance Books, 1978. A very valuable book for anyone interested
in mail order and direct marketing. Finding a copy of this book
may also prove to be hard but try abe.com, bookfinder.com and
ebay.com.
Recommend
Internet Services/Websites:
http://www.Aweber.com/
:: Unlimited
autoresponders and unlimited follow-ups. A great service for the
price.
ListMailPro :: If
you don't mind running your own autoresponders on your server,
you can use this excellent program from Dean Wiebe which, in terms
of features, is almost identical to Aweber without the monthly
fees! Dean also does the installation free on your server with
your purchase. The advantages is that you don't have to pay the
monthly fee, the disadvantage is, if anything goes wrong with
your shared server or the script, your service is interrupted
unitl you can request technical assitance from Dean. However,
purchase includes free upgrades, installation assistance, and
1-on-1 email support. He'll even troubleshoot your server, if
necessary. This is what I now use :) (highly
recommended)
BONUS LEARNING MATERIALS FOR LESSON 5
"Lost" Masters
Of Copywriting (Course)
As many of you know I
was a rare book dealer before becoming an Internet marketer. Several
years ago I found a "lost" course written by the masters
of copwriting from the 1920's with parts of the course written
by the greatest copywriter of all time, Claude C. Hopkins! Other
contributors were H. Harry Thompson, Joseph Appel, Bruce Barton,
J.K. Fraser, Ben Nash, Kenneth Goode and many other notables in
the field of copywriting at the time.
This 'rare' course has
not been available in digital form until now. I am not done with
the process of 'digitizing' the hard copy of the 25 lesson course,
but students will receive several Chapters each week for the next
6 weeks until you have in your possession the entire course.
Being able to create
copy that persuades people to do what you want them to do YOU
HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO WRITE COMPELLING WORDS THAT SELL.
That's a MUST. No "if's",
"ands" or "buts".
By the way... this course
is NOT available anywhere online... and very, very, few Internet
marketers have ever heard of it or even know that it exists. So
please let's keep this quiet... and our 'little secret' ok?
Click here to download
lessons 1-25 (you got 1-20 last time) of this "lost"
copywriting course. This is the FINAL download for this course.
You now have received all lessons contained in the original course.
Special BONUS Learning
Material!
- Reason
Why Advertising by
John E Kennedy. One of the most
important books on copywriting ever written. Kennedy coined
the term "Salesmanship-in-print" to refer to direct
mail sales letters. Kennedy went on to become one of the most
well known and highly regarded copywriters of his time, eclipsing
Lasker and even copywriting great Claude Hopkins. Lasker said
of him, "The history of advertising could never be written
without first place being given to John E. Kennedy, for every
copywriter throughout the length and breadth of this land is
today being guided by the principles he laid down."
Next Week:
A very SPECIAL BONUS
...stay tuned!
------------------------
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2003-2006. All rights reserved.
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