Archive | February, 2019

If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there, right? That’s why your very first step in getting to where you want to be is deciding right here and right now what it is that you want.

What is your next big goal? Maybe it’s $10,000 a month income. Maybe it’s more. Maybe it’s something else entirely. Whatever it is, I challenge you to write it down right now.

Good. Now then, it’s truth time: Where are you right now? That is, what are your work habits? What are you pleased with? What are you disappointed about? How are you feeling about your life right now? You are you in this moment?

Go ahead and write that all down. Just write down whatever comes to mind, because it’s going to help you in your quest to get what you want.

You’ve just made a list of where you are right now, so you might guess what comes next – is this what you want? Or are there things you want to change? Where is it that you want to be in life? What things, joys, desires, etc.? Make a list.

Now compare your two lists – the one of you now, and the one of what you want in your life. This is a visual representation of the gap that lies between where you are now and where you want to be. Congratulations, you now have clarity on what you need to do to get to the life you want. Anytime you want to make a profound shift of any kind, write down where you are now and where you want to be so you can visually experience what needs to change.

Your next step is to write down what you need to do to get to where you want to go. What habits do you need? What changes do you need to make in your life to be the person you want to be? Write those down and then decide if you’re ready to commit to them. This is the bridge from where you are to where you want to be.

Remember that big goal we talked about in the beginning? Getting clear on where you are now, where you want to be and what you need to do to get there lays the foundation that allows you to reach for your goal.

Whatever plans you have, they are useless unless you can execute them. Taking real stock of where you are versus where you want to be allows you to see exactly the new habits and skills you need to become the kind of person who can reach your lofty goal.

The problem with typical goal setting is you set a goal and then you try to reach it. But that doesn’t take into account that you might not be ready to reach that goal. You might not have the habits, the skills, the confidence, the knowledge, etc.

Once you start doing what you need to be doing, it becomes far easier to reach that goal. For example, if you want to work a 4 hour work day but right now you spend 4 hours just surfing the Internet, you know what change you need to make.

In order to reach your goal you’ve got to first become the kind of person who can reach your goal. Most people get it backwards – they think they will become the person they need to be to reach the goal once they have the goal. That’s like thinking you won’t put fuel into the stove until after the stove heats the room. It just doesn’t work like that. You become the kind of person who can reach your goal – whatever your goal might be – and then you can reach it.

So if, for example, right now you try to go it alone in your business, then you know that you need to learn how to reach out and make connections as well as learning how to outsource some of your work to reach that next level of success.

If you lack skills, tools or confidence needed to reach your goal, then you need to get the skills – either by learning them or hiring someone else. You need to get the tools. And you need to develop the confidence. None of this needs to take long. You can find the right person with the right skills in just days, maybe even hours. An afternoon of Google searching will provide the right tools. A quick course on confidence will get you moving in the right direction, making progress each day. You might only need a tiny boost in confidence to get to the next step, which will then fuel your confidence even further.

That was of course just an example. I don’t know what you need to become the person who can achieve your big goal. Only you know that – and you do know it, you just have to be willing to look within to find the answers.

Until I started looking at where I am in life versus where I want to be, goals were a difficult, tiring thing to reach. But now that I focus my efforts on always becoming and then being the person who achieves these goals easily, the goals are naturally much easier to attain.

Continuity programs that provide ongoing revenue are the ultimate product – when they work. In fact they sound amazing in theory – create a membership site, throw up some new content every week or so and get paid month after month. But let’s face it, memberships do not work in every case.

Unless you’re selling access to web hosting or a vital piece of software, people are going to consider your membership to be something of a luxury item. This means when they want to save a few dollars, your membership is going to be the first thing they cancel if you’re not delivering amazing value month after month.

Conversely, creating a one-time sale product such as a book or recording means you have to make new sales to get new payments. They pay you once, they get the product, and until you create your next product and offer it to them, there’s no more income from that customer (selling affiliate products aside.)

However, it is far, far easier to sell products that are one time payments than it is to sell memberships that go on forever.

That’s why I’d like to suggest a hybrid of the two, sort of the best of both worlds.

Choose a problem that your niche is trying to solve. This should be something significant that takes time and education, like increasing traffic to their website. If your topic is too simple – removing a wart, for example – it won’t work for this hybrid model.

In addition, you want a topic that is highly VALUABLE to the customer. Again, getting traffic to their website is a good example because significantly increasing traffic can mean a substantial increase to their bottom line.

Now then, create your product in installments. For example, you might be teaching 12 different traffic methods, so you can create 12 videos, one on each method. Or you might do 12 modules with several videos in each, depending on how in-depth you are going.

You are going to release your installments one at a time – for example, one every certain number of days. Weekly is good, but you may find that 5 days or even 10 days works better in your case.

Write your killer sales letter, and offer two payment options: One is to pay in full and the other is to make payments. So if you’re charging $199 for the course, you might offer an option of 3 payments at $75. This way they get a discount if they pay in full, but you’ll get more orders because you also take payments.

And as long as you deliver on your promises, you’ll likely find that the vast majority of those who opt to make payments do indeed make all of them, whether you are taking payments over 2 months, 3 months or even longer, so long as it’s a fixed term.

Should anyone cancel before they make all of their payments, they will lose access. It’s up to you if they lose access to the entire course, or only to the portions they did not pay for. Personally I would opt for the second choice.

Another option is to hold back bonuses until the final payment is made. For example, if you’re selling a product with an option of 4 monthly payments, then the customers get the bonuses once they’ve made that fourth payment and no sooner.

I think you’ll find that by taking payments on higher priced programs, you will make more money than if you sold inexpensive programs or if you sold memberships. And just like any product, you can create it once and continue to sell it for years to come.

This means you can set up a new profit stream as often as you choose – you could release a new product every month if you like, or even more often if you outsource.

Have you recently created a new page on Facebook, or just about to get started? If so, here’s 22 proven ways to get noticed, get Liked and create engagement on Facebook.

1. Use videos that are only revealed when they like your page. Make sure the videos are very good to excellent – you don’t want to disappoint. Short and great is much better than long and boring.

2. Offer a free ebook, but only when they like your page. This is just like offering an ebook for an email address, only with viral possibilities.

3. Run a competition. Run LOTS of competitions. People love contests – they’re fun, they get to win stuff, and you don’t look like you’re promoting but you do build your list – it’s a win-win for everyone.

4. Ask questions on Facebook. Nothing promotes engagement more than asking and responding to people’s ideas and especially opinions on a hot topic. In fact, questions get double the rate of comments that statements get.

5. Do you know what’s even more powerful than questions? Fill in the blank posts generate 9 times as many comments as regular posts. For example, “The thing I love about Sunday is ____”

6. Add a Facebook Social Plugin to your website and blog. Yes, some marketers still haven’t done this, yet doing so can result in more exposure, more fans, more business… etc.

7. Did you write a new blog post? Then share that content on your Facebook page.

8. Use photos and videos whenever possible. They get shared 2-3 times more than written content.

9. Find places to add a link to your Facebook page. Email signatures are a great one, so are articles, blog posts, other social media, forum signatures, etc.

10. Go for quality over quantity. Post once or twice a day with really great posts. The exception? If you’re posting news – then you’ll want to post slightly more often.

11. Post news. Anything that is relevant and current for your particular niche. If you look like you are on the breaking edge of what’s happening, people will naturally pay attention to all of your Facebook postings.

12. What’s the fastest way to grow your fan base? Advertise. Remember, your list of Facebook fans is akin to having a mailing list – so it can pay to build that fan base quickly.

13. Rotate your ads often. Daily is best. You’ve got to keep it interesting, and anything they saw yesterday is-not-interesting. Conversion rates can drop a whopping 50% by the second day of running the same ad.

14. Give people a reason to like your page. Incentives work great. But even using the word “because” can increase your likes. “Please like our page because we want to help as many people as possible.”

15. Offer something special just to your Facebook fans. For example, a product discount or a special bonus when they purchase your product or service.

16. If you’re offering a sale, use either the keyword “$ off” or “coupon,” since these two keywords tend to produce the highest response. Offering a certain dollar amount off will tend to produce twice the results of offering a certain percentage off of the regular price. Why? Probably because most people don’t like math.

17. The shorter the post, the higher the level of engagement. Memorize that rule.

18. Post when people aren’t working or aren’t as busy. User engagement tends to be 20% higher when you post from 8pm to 8am. Of course, you’ll need to know where the majority of your audience is to make this work. If your fans are all over the planet, then you can likely post anytime for good results.

19. Share other people’s stuff. Did you know that when you share someone’s content on Facebook, you can create a notification to tell them you shared it? Write their name in the status and Facebook will alert them with the mention function. This is a great icebreaker for networking with other people in your niche.

20. Have an awesome header image. Pay to have this created if you don’t have the skills because it makes an excellent first impression.

21. Engage. Engage engage engage. Like other people’s content when it fits well with your audience. Respond to comments. Always stay positive. And have fun.