Archive | December, 2018

One of the biggest objections to product creation is finding a great idea for a product…

Believe it or not, YOU are often your greatest source for profitable product ideas, and you’re about to discover how to generate more profitable business ideas than you will ever be able to use. Below you’ll discover 7 different ways to generate your own ideas, how to know if your ideas are likely to work, and how to test your idea to see if it really is going to make you money.

First, let’s talk about a (not so) surprising revelation – you already HAVE ideas. In the last month you’ve probably had product ideas for ebooks, videos series, memberships sites, etc. The fact is, finding ideas isn’t the hard part of product creation. Sometimes all you need to do is PAY ATTENTION to what’s happening online and all around you, and then write those ideas down when you get them.

So what’s the hard part of product creation? No, it’s not creating the product. It’s the step just after having an idea and just before creating the product, and it’s called: Choosing one idea and sticking to it, despite all of the other distractions.

This is of course followed up by continuing to stick with the idea all the way through until completion. I’ll bet you that you already know from your first hand experience that perseverance until completion is truly the difficult part of the product creation process, or any business undertaking really. Compared to that, getting an idea can be a piece of cake.

Here’s a thought that will take some of the stress out of choosing an idea and then seeing it all the way through to completion: Even a less than stellar idea – seen through to the end – will become an asset and a character builder. Let’s say you choose your idea and you run with it. You stick to it all the way from inception to final product creation and product launch. But it doesn’t perform the way you hoped and you don’t get the sales you anticipated.

You still have an asset you can use for multiple purposes. You can repackage your product with a new cover and new sales letter, and see if it sells better that way. You can use the product as a give away to build your list. You can enter your product in giveaways and joint ventures to also build your list, and good reputation in the marketplace. You can use it as a bonus when you sell other products you’ve created, or affiliate products. You can sell resell rights, master resell rights or private label rights to it. You can publish it on Kindle, and so forth.

Incidentally, there are numerous cases where a book did not sell well and the publisher simply changed the title and cover, and it then sold like hotcakes. So it might not be your product at all – it could simply be your product’s name or the marketing you’re using to sell your product.

Your product is also a character builder for you regardless of how well it sells because you’ve now proven to yourself that you can choose an idea and stick with it to completion. This skill alone can make you a very wealthy person, and is the real missing ingredient for most wannabe entrepreneurs.

Don’t believe me? Imagine two people: One person skips from idea to idea and rarely ever sees them through to completion. The other person completes one idea after another. Unfortunately, the second person creates 4 products that don’t sell very well for every product that sells like gangbusters. After a few years, the first person has 2 or 3 products completed (if that), while the second person has close to a hundred products created, 10% of which sold like crazy. Who would you say was more successful?

So how do you generate killer ideas? Here are those seven ways I promised:

1. Solve problems. If people need money, show them how to get it. If people need to lose weight, show them how to be thinner. If people have back pain, show them how to get rid of it, etc.

2. Answer questions. Again, you’re showing them how to do something. For example, if people are asking how to build a website, run an affiliate program or use a shopping cart, answering their questions can be the basis for a product topic. Sometimes the question might be answered with software. For example, if people want to know how to drive traffic and you’ve created a plug-in that drives traffic, you have an answer to their question (#2) that solves their problem (#1.)

3. Make a process easier. For example, every marketer needs sales letters. If you can develop a software, service or system that makes it easier to get sales letters, you might have a product winner.

4. Improve something. If you’ve got a method for growing organic vegetables that makes the vegetables bigger, tastier or more plentiful, you’ve got a product.

5. Do something faster. Maybe you know how make tomatoes grow twice as fast, or you know how to build a good list faster than anyone, or you have software that cuts the time it takes to perform a task – those are all viable product ideas.

6. Make something cheaper. Can you teach the contents of a $997 course for only $27? Or can you show people how to do something cheaper? Maybe you can demonstrate how to grow herbs for a fraction of the store cost – this could make a great product.

7. Find the hidden desire or need. For example, there are tons of products on how to do each aspect of online marketing yourself. But there might very well be a hidden market of upscale buyers who would rather pay someone to develop an online business for them.

Great product ideas are all around you, and within you. As has been said, great ideas are a dime a dozen, but people who act on them are one in a million. Be the one, and go make your million!

The P.S. in marketing originally came from direct mail promotions. Prospects would often go straight to the bottom of the sales copy to find the price before reading the letter. By inserting a powerful P.S., the marketers were often able to pull people back into the copy and read the entire message.

Today we use P.S.’s in online sales letters and emails, but the purpose has changed slightly. After all, we usually don’t put a price in an email, and the price in an online sales letter is often hidden in the copy. If your sales letter does prominently display the price at the end of the letter just prior to the P.S., then I highly encourage you to use what we call the Recap P.S., where you recap the greatest benefits to your offer. Again, this should draw them back into reading your sales message.

When the price does not appear at the end of your sales message, such as in an email, you have much more flexibility in what you place inside your P.S. Make no mistake – the P.S. is still very powerful and people will sometimes scroll straight to the end of the letter and thus read the P.S. first. But now you can use it to different purposes besides recapping the greatest benefits. Here then are 10 different P.S.’s to consider using. And no matter which kind you choose, always follow it with the link you’re promoting.

1. Use a testimonial. A testimonial is a great way to overcome your readers’ doubts and get them to click the link. And it can also be a sneaky way to restate a benefit at the same time.

For example: “P.S. Since using the abc product my life has changed dramatically. I now have total confidence that I can accomplish anything I set my mind to. In the last month I’ve received a promotion and a big fat raise, and I negotiated a very favorable deal on a brand new house that saved me $80,000 off the market value.”

2. “Oops I forgot.” This can be almost anything you want, so long as it’s important.

Examples: “P.S. Oops, I forgot to tell you, this is a dimesale and the price is rising rapidly.”

“P.S. Oh, forget to tell you that everyone who orders by midnight gets to have lunch with The Guru.”

“P.S. Hey, I forgot to mention that this is the exact same information I used to get the phone numbers of 17 beautiful women in one evening.”

3. The extra discount. You’ve given them the benefits in the email, now get them to take action with a discount offer.

“P.S. The next 5 people get a 25% discount just for opening this email. How cool is that?”

“P.S. When you order by midnight tonight and you use discount code BBB, you get $20 off the sale price. But you must order by midnight and you must use the discount code, no exceptions.”

4. The treasure hunt. Tell them exactly where to find a golden nugget of information or the biggest benefit of all.

“P.S. As soon as you’re on the page, read the headline and then scroll to the big yellow box with the cherries. Third cherry down – that’s the exact method I used last week to earn $4,390 in 22 minutes.”

5. Give them a visual to look for. If you have something really enticing on the page, tell them to go find it – in a round about way. Yeah, I know this one is hokey – but it flat out works.

“P.S. Did you see the treasure chest above on this page? Well, that was just to alert you about the 10 money saving tips you’d be crazy not to review right now and make sure you’re taking advantage of.”

6. Bait the hook. Use your P.S. as bait, emphasizing the greatest benefit or main selling point from a different angle. Let’s say your product teaches people how to make money online.

“P.S. While this product will make you an absolute money magnet on the Internet, it will also instill a new confidence in you that carries over into every facet of your life, making you more successful in everything you do.”

7. Urgency. We touched on this in earlier examples. If the price is increasing or the product is about to be pulled, you’ve got a reason for them to hurry over to the url or order page.

“P.S. The price is rising with every sale.”

“P.S. Only 99 of these will be made available, and 82 of those have already sold.”

“P.S. Donate by midnight tonight and every dollar you send will receive a matching donation, doubling your contribution and enabling us to help twice as many kittens.”

8. Don’t Decide Guarantee. The most difficult part of making a sale can be getting them to DECIDE to buy, right? So remove that step altogether with your guarantee and emphasize it in the P.S. Your goal is to remove all risk from their decision making, so that it appears they really aren’t deciding anything today. Highly effective.

“P.S. Remember, there is no need to decide today. Try our miracle wax product free for 30 days and if you’re not thrilled with your car’s shine, you’ll pay nothing.”

9. The Bonus. Use your email to cover the product, and then in the P.S. you introduce the bonus you’re offering when they purchase from you.

“P.S. Take action today and I’ll personally send you The Giant Offline Marketing Course for free. This is the exact same course I sell for $197 (show proof of where you sell it) and I will not be offering it for free ever again.”

10. More Proof. Are you making a claim that’s difficult to believe? Offer some kind of evidence or proof.

“P.S. Don’t take my word for it – Harvard’s 5 year excitability study shows abc product outperforms its closest competitor by 71%.”

“P.S. Millie Walker of Hope Springs Eternal, N.J., tried abc product and her sunflowers were 3 times the size they were the previous year.”

The P.S. is one place you can get creative, have fun, and even be silly. Some marketers tell a quick joke in the P.S. Some use more than one P.S., using a P.P.S and even a P.P.P.S.

The one thing to keep in mind:
The P.S. is valuable real estate
– use it wisely.

P.S. This P.S. left intentionally blank. 🙂

If you write a quality email newsletter then you know that it takes a lot of works to produce. So isn’t it extremely frustrating when you look at your stats and see that only a small percentage of your subscribers even cared to open your newsletter and read it?

Here are 3 reasons why newsletters don’t get read, and the corresponding tips for making your email newsletter eye candy that your readers can’t wait to devour…

1. Too many product pitches. If your newsletter only pitches products, your readers will get tired of always being promoted to. Instead, give them some great content that is helpful; information that they can USE and benefit from without having to purchase anything.

This way they’ll become accustomed to opening your newsletters for the great content, and when you do pitch a product, they are more likely to read it and respond.

2. Your content is boring. Whoa, that one hurt, didn’t it? No one likes to think they’re boring – yet we might be and not even realize it.

The solution? Tell stories. Nothing captures attention like stories do. I once had a teacher in school who tried for weeks to pound dates and names into our heads. It was his first year teaching, and he just couldn’t figure out why we were doing so poorly on the tests. Finally he started telling history in story form, many of the students grades shot up overnight.

See what I mean? 😉

3. Your newsletter is hit and miss. This week you send it out on Monday and next week you send it on Wednesday. Then you miss two weeks, and finally you send it out on Friday.

Let’s face it – people get used to routines. Their favorite show is on Thursday night at 8:00 pm and they know it. Their newspaper arrives every morning at 6:00 am and that’s when they expect it. Their paycheck arrives every other Friday at 3:00 pm, and that’s when they look for it. And your newsletter should be no different. Pick a schedule and then stick to it, no matter what.