Archive | March, 2018

Here’s an interesting case study from a guy in the US. It seems he’s something of a big name in his day job, so he wanted a way to make extra money online without ever revealing his real name.

He’s found a twist on the marketing method we all know and love – list building – that gives him multiple streams of income in several different markets without ever creating a product of his own, blogging, dealing with affiliates or creating a big name in any of his niches.

Here’s how it works: ‘Mark’ targets all of the usual niches – make money online, dating and romance, embarrassing problems, losing weight, golfing, stop smoking and so forth.

If there is a niche with good money, he goes after it.

His goal is to build lists in each of these niches, but he doesn’t do it in the usual manner.

He finds his prospects in both the offline and online world, with the goal of collecting as much data on each one as possible.

As you know, when you offer a free download in exchange for an email address, that’s about all you’re going to get – the email address.

But instead of ebooks or reports as his lead magnets, he offers printed ‘books’ in exchange for the prospect’s information. He mails these books to his new subscribers, so of course he has to collect their mailing address and full name.

And being the clever guy he is, he often collects a lot more info than just that.

He also collects things like the phone number, income bracket, gender, interests and so forth by using quizzes and surveys. It’s amazing what people will answer in a quiz, survey or test if they want to find out something about themselves, such as what they should be doing for a living, what kind of personality they have and so forth.

Of course, he makes each survey or quiz up himself, so it’s much more for fun than being scientific. The goal is always to collect the info.

And because he physically mails out the books, he only targets people in the US so that it remains financially viable for him to run this.

Once someone answers the survey or quiz or fills out the form to get the free book, he then tries to upsell them on related affiliate products, so that’s one income stream.

Then he continues to email these prospects offers in their niches. He has an autoresponder series set up for each niche, and in each series he promotes a lot of different products.

All of his emails and books are basically PLR info, or info he’s gleaned from the sales pages of the products he’s promoting. He doesn’t write much of anything himself. As mentioned, he also has a full time job he enjoys and he doesn’t want to quit; so time is at a premium for him.

Now then, when he mails out the books, he also encloses offers. Some of these offers are his, and he makes a commission on them if they buy. Other offers are from partners who pay him to send these out, so there’s another income stream.

Then, and this is perhaps where he makes about 50% of his money – he rents out the information he’s collected to other businesses. Every business is in search of new customers, and many like to find those customers through the mail.

For example, someone who is trying to lose weight will try a lot of different ways to do it.

One of the ways will be the free book he sends, and perhaps the upsell after the book, and perhaps an affiliate product or two through email.

Then other companies send the same person weight loss offers through the mail – often diet type supplements or an entire diet program – and the customer might try that as well.

This is how one customer can wind up making a dozen or more purchases in one niche within a fairly short amount of time.

And as you can see, Mark likes to get a piece of as many of these sales as possible.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it isn’t really. Initially he comes up with a book that’s really a report made from quality PLR materials.

Then he creates an email series promoting evergreen products in that niche – products that will be around for awhile, usually from ClickBank but also from JVZoo and other places.

And then he’s got his contacts as to who wants to buy what type of lead.

He was a little cagey when I asked him about this part, but he did say that he simply contacts a few likely businesses and let’s them know what he’s doing – sort of a copy and paste email he sends out.

Some don’t reply and some do, and once he’s got a new client he’ll even ask specifically what they’re looking for in a lead. Then he’ll tailor a survey or quiz to find those answers.

He buys traffic, uses some basic SEO, places ads on blogs and uses other techniques to get people to his pages. Basically, he drives traffic any way he can, as long as it’s not time intensive.

His favorite method is buying traffic from Facebook, since he can do some heavy duty targeting there.

He also sells solo ads and even sells individual leads to lawyers. These might be people about to get divorced or who had an accident, and he rents these leads out for several dollars apiece to multiple lawyers at the same time. He gets these leads online and also buys advertising in small local papers – yes, it’s a very old school method, but it still works.

He also employs a virtual assistant to do much of the work for him, so basically he spends maybe 5 hours a week actually working the business now.

Initially, of course, he invested a lot more time, but now that he has his assistant trained, she does most of it for him.

Remember, he doesn’t blog, create actual products of his own or try to build up a reputation in any one niche.

When he does need to use a name, it’s always a pen name – he has a different one for each niche.

And his coworkers have no idea he does this on the side, nor will they ever know unless he tells them.

This shows you just how important data is, and why companies like Facebook and Google are all about tracking what we do.

The more info and intel you can gather on prospects, the more they are worth.

This is a good business model for someone who wants to make a mint with their mailing lists, while entering any niche you choose and remaining completely anonymous.

When you first get started online, you might be worried. Frankly, you probably should be worried. Yes, you made sales this month. But will you make sales NEXT month? And how will you pay the bills if you don’t make sales?

It can be scary going from a job where you know exactly how much you’ll get paid and when you’ll get paid to working your own business online.

In your business you might have a banner month and then two months of starving followed by a mediocre month followed by (hopefully) another banner month.

Thus, the question becomes, “How do you get stability in your business – and your income -as quickly as possible?”

Or… how do you KNOW for a FACT that next month you can make the mortgage and eat, too?

Simple – continuity programs. Call it what you want – memberships, recurring payments, monthlies, etc.

It all boils down to getting people signed up into a continuity program so you can continue to get paid month after month.

Now you have a choice here: You can either promote other people’s continuity programs, or create and promote your own.

If you’re acting as an affiliate, then you don’t have to worry about sales funnels, membership content, customer service and all of that. You just need to focus on making the sales.

Drive the traffic, offer your own bonuses and do what you’ve got to do to get people signed up.

The problem, of course, is that in exchange for less responsibility, you also have less control and more competition.

The membership site owner has control over content. If s/he takes a “churn and burn” mentality and doesn’t care about keeping members happy, then people won’t stay long. You’ll have to continually make new sales, which isn’t what you’re looking for.

You want stability. That’s why you only want to promote truly great memberships and continuity programs that deliver a ton of value.

As to competition, you are competing with every other affiliate who is promoting the same program.

If you have your own list, then this isn’t that big of a problem. After all, people on your list know and love you, right? And so they’ll follow your recommendation.

Unless they’re on someone else’s list (they are) who has already promoted the program. In which case, you’re not going to make many sales.

Promoting affiliate memberships is a give and take. Less responsibility, no control and lots of competition.
And this is why you might want to start your own membership. Look around and see what people in your niche desperately want and need, and then fill that want with your site.

Outsource the content creation if you can, so you can focus on the important part – filling it with people.

Once you’ve got your membership site up and running, it’s time to get busy promoting it. Use every technique you can think of and track everything.

Find out what your best sources of traffic are, and then put all of your effort into just those methods.

For example, maybe you buy traffic from Facebook, Adwords and solo ads. You also get free traffic from guest posting, forums and social media.

9 out of 10 new members are coming from Facebook, so what are you going to do?

Drop all of your other methods and focus exclusively on the Facebook advertising.

Get your conversions up and your costs down and now you have a viable way of getting a continuous influx of new members into your site.

Want even more members? Show affiliates how well your offer is converting, and you can get them to promote your membership site, too.

There are plenty of affiliates out there who want that continuous, month to month income that a good membership site provides. All you have to do is show them that your funnel is converting and members are sticking.

Naturally, there are a lot more details than this to starting a membership site. But hopefully this gets you thinking in that direction.

Because if you want true financial freedom as quickly as possible and with as little stress as possible, then almost nothing can beat having your own successful membership site.

One more thing – the first site is the hardest. Once you have a membership site that’s clearing at least a couple of thousand dollars each month like clockwork, continue to build on that one while building your second membership site, and so forth.

Create a membership empire to secure your finances, and then you can experiment with anything you like.

Security first, right?

So many products are simply a rehash of other products, and the same goes for books.

Someone wants to write a book on persuasion, so they buy five books on persuasion, read them and then take all the best ideas from the books and write a new course or book or whatever.

But what if you want truly unique, stand-alone info that no one else has?

Then you’ve got to go to the sources.

Let’s say your niche is cat care, and you’re in a forum where people are discussing how they helped their cat get over a certain illness. In that forum you meet Jessie, who found a way to cure her cat in half the normal time at one-tenth the normal expense.

You contact Jessie and ask for an interview, which you then turn into a product. No one else has this information because it’s something Jessie came up with in her veterinary practice, or wherever.

You now have a product no one else has. Split the profits with Jessie, and do it again and again with people who know stuff that no one else knows.

For example, you can dig through various niches and find people doing new, unique, unusual things, or people who have just achieved some sort of milestone, or anything special that solves a problem or gives a benefit that people want.

Do an interview over email, Skype or any method you choose. Let your subject know you’re thinking of using this in a product, and that you’ll share the profits. Almost no one will turn you down on this, especially if you’re working outside of the make money niche.

And now you have an endless source of truly new, helpful info that you can turn into posts, products and books.

This is a great way to make a big name yourself in any niche. Pretty soon people will be approaching you, asking if they can share their discoveries in exchange for a slice of the profits.

Simply write up the info they give you, pad it out as needed, write some sales copy and get busy selling it.

This is a perfect business model for almost any niche outside of IM where money is being spent.

And it works especially well if you’re solving people’s urgent problems – like getting kitty over her illness twice as fast at one-tenth the expense.