Archive | October, 2019

If you take a look at any of the top internet marketing and online business building forums online, you’ll find these questions asked repeatedly:

“How much time does this take?” “How fast can I make money?”
“Do I need any skills to do this?”
“Do I have to learn anything?”
“Does this require any investment?”

And so forth. We’ve seen these questions so many times, they seem legitimate – as though a business should take no time, require no skill, need no investment and so forth.

Just press a button and WHAMO! Hundred dollar bills start spewing out of your computer. Anything short of this is something we’re just not interested in, thank you very much.

And there lies the clue of why so many people fail in business, and in life.

They’re not willing to put in the time. They’re not willing to invest even the smallest amount of money, other than to purchase the initial ‘how-to’ product. They’re not willing to just DO IT.

Most people will say it’s because we’ve gotten lazy. We want success NOW, not in a week or in a year. Everything is NOW NOW NOW or never.

But I have another theory. I don’t think people are lazy. Nor do I think they lack the time or the motivation. Heck, just look at how much time some people spend looking at and buying new how-to-make-money products. They literally invest hundreds of hours reading sales pages and buying products.

And they might even read some of them. Maybe. But do they put them into action? 99 times out of 100, they don’t.

And it’s not because they’re lazy. It’s because they’re AFRAID.

Somewhere in the recent past, we forgot that it’s okay to not be a smashing success the first time we do something. We forgot that it’s okay to fall down and get back up when we’re learning to walk. We forgot that it’s okay to look like a complete jackass the first few times we try to dive off the diving board. We forgot that the first time we made love, we were as awkward and clumsy as could be.

But we kept trying to walk. We kept diving off that board. And we kept making love until we got GOOD at it.

So why is it that we are so afraid to fail in business? Why is it that we are only interested in making the smallest, briefest of efforts before we throw our hands up and declare that, “This doesn’t work?”

When did we get so damn AFRAID?

More importantly, how do we get unafraid?

By putting blinders on. You choose the path you want to take, and then you research the heck out of it for seven days or less. You read and watch everything you can get your hands on, and you take notes.

Distractions are NOT an option. Nor is mulling it over and thinking of all the reasons why it won’t work. You don’t have TIME for that.

After your 7 days (or less) of research, you take action. Because you know what? Taking action is actually EASIER than learning. And it’s more fun, too. But because we let those little fear monsters whisper in our ear, we think it’s gonna be hard. We think it’s somehow going to hurt.

But once you break that first barrier and start moving, you realize that brick wall was only made of tissue paper, and you had the ability all along to walk right through it to the other side.

Now here’s where it gets really interesting: “D” and “F” students often do better in business than “A” students. Which is another way of saying that quite frequently the not so bright people build empires while the geniuses don’t have two nickels to rub together.

Do you know why? Because the really smart people are too smart for their own good. They’re thinking of all the reasons why their new business venture will fail. And because they’re so smart, they’re able to come up with all kinds of perfectly legitimate reasons why it won’t work and why it won’t last if it does work.

And they’re right, too – it will fail because they’ve already put their business on that course of failure simply by thinking about it. Not because of some voodoo mind magic, but because they will either not start the business at all because they fear the failure they see headed their way, or because they will start it but then quit at the first problem. “There! I knew it, I just knew this wouldn’t work!”

But the “D” and “F” students aren’t quite so bright, so they don’t ponder all the reasons why their new business will fail. Nor do they try to “fix” the business before they start it, with their new fangled ideas (another “A” student problem.)

Instead, they take the book or course they bought, and start at page 1, and follow the steps. When they get stuck, they ask for help. “I can’t figure this out, so I’ll ask these people on the forum, or hire someone on Fiverr to do it for me, or whatever.” And they muddle through because they essentially don’t see all the obstacles the “A” students see. They’re just following the recipe.

And guess what? They succeed!

But what about fear of failure, doesn’t that come into play even for the “D” and “F” students? Yes, it does, but to a much lesser degree. Think back to school and you’ll realize that the “D” and “F” students have a lot of experience at failing because they got those grades. Contrast that with the “A” student who had a nervous breakdown if he/she got a “B” on a test. You remember that person, right? They were practically hysterical, because they had no experience at failing, and to them a “B” was a total and complete failure because it fell short of that magical “A” grade.

Which, I think, is why so many are afraid to fail. We go through school thinking that we will always get that “A” or “B” grade, and we do get the grades until we leave school. Then we realize the REAL WORLD works differently, and we might actually =GASP= not be a stellar success from day 1 at something new.

So we decide to only do those things we KNOW we will be good at. And then the ultimate universal revenge happens – because we don’t try anything new, we succeed in not failing, but we fail in LIFE. And that truly sucks.

So all of this is perhaps a very long winded way of saying, go out there and fall in love with failing, because only by embracing the concept of failure can you truly succeed. I don’t care what online business you choose, in the beginning you will not be good at it, and that’s okay because you will learn more and become more skilled every day if you put in the effort.

Do you think the information sellers making six figures a month started out making that kind of money? No way. They started out small, threw themselves into learning the business and grew their income as they grew their knowledge and confidence. This is the way it works. This is ALWAYS the way it works. And to think that there is some magical button somewhere that, if only you could find it you could be an instant success from day 1 with no investment of time, learning and failure, is perhaps the stupidest notion of all.

So choose your path, put on your blinders, learn everything you can for 7 days, and then just DO IT.

You’re new found successes may astound you.

Is there a trick to writing marketing emails that get the click? Actually, there are 20 tricks, and here they are…

Use a great subject line:

Be specific and useful. Rather than saying, “You’re going to love this,” use “How to get a 27% increase in stamina.”

Identify yourself consistently. Don’t call yourself Bob Jones in one email, Robert Jones in a second email and Jones Consulting in a third. Pick a name and stick with it so recipients recognize you.

Use words such as ‘sale,’ ‘new,’ ‘alert,’ ‘news bulletin,’ ‘daily,’ ‘weekly’ and ‘free.’

Ask a question. “Are you ready for this Tuesday?” or “Do you know how to increase subscribers by 42% with one tweak?”

Test your subject lines, then reuse what works and discard what doesn’t.

Don’t use the same or similar subject line twice in a row. Ever.

Use timely topics when possible.

Use [but don’t over use] urgency.

Use all caps to emphasize one or two important words.

Use brackets to create a second attention getter, like this: 12 killer traffic methods [And the 5 WORST]

Optimize the body content:

Use SHORT paragraphs, just one or two sentences each. Make it super easy to read.

Use photos that sell your message.

Be clear about what your offer is and how it impacts and benefits the reader.

Use a strong call to action.

Give the name and location of your company – look REAL, not fly by night.

Focus on only ONE action you want your reader to take.

Make your email as long as it needs to be and no longer.

Use urgency but don’t over do it. Use action words and action phrases. Don’t use passive language. Make it personal. “Grab your copy”, not “Get a copy.”

Make your button big enough. Remember, the majority of subscribers will be reading your email on a phone or tablet, so make your button big enough for a human finger to easily tap.

Make your call to action and button visually distinctive and inviting.

Lastly, remember to make your emails mobile friendly. Picture size needs to be reduced for fast loading times. You can use a service such as Photo Resizer to reduce the file size without losing the image quality.

And define image size by proportion if your email editor doesn’t do this automatically, so the images look good on any sized screen. To do this, set the max-width to the proportion of the screen you want it to take up, and set the height to “auto” to automatically adjust based upon the width.

One final thing: Put some personality into it. No one responds positively to being bored, and blending with the crowd won’t get you sales. Instead of being a business robot, be yourself and have fun with your subscribers.

Seriously, have you ever received an affiliate commission before the product was even created? Of course not. A frequent objection I hear from affiliate marketers is they don’t want to create their own products because they will have to wait until after the product is created to get paid. BUT, what if you could get paid before you create the product?

Here’s how you do it: Offer to let your customers watch over your shoulder as you do what you’re going to teach. In other words, do a live case study so they can see step by step what happens.

Let’s say you were going to make a product on how to sell t-shirts. You would let them see the process from start to finish, watching everything you do. You then take these recordings and sell them as your finished product, too. So you get paid in advance by people who want to see you do this as you do it, and then you have an asset you can sell over and over again.

Pick something you want to learn that others want to learn, too. Spend a week or two learning the basics, and then do it. Whatever it is, just do it. Then report on your results as you go. That is, document each day what you do and the results you get.

How to Promote Your Product to Buyers

There’s likely no need to make a humongous promise, like earning a million bucks in 22 days. Who’s going to believe it anyway? Instead, promise that you’re going to show them how to do the thing that you’re teaching. You’ll use video, screenshots, writing, etc., to show them what to do in each step and how to do it, and what to do if this happens or that happens. And when you make a mistake, add that in as well, since it shows them what not to do.

You’ll begin with the very first step, whether it’s research, finding an outsourcer or whatever, and do it in chronological order. It’s easy for you to do this way, and it’s easy for your customers to follow, too.

In your marketing, you’ll tell them why they should care about what you’re teaching – for example, that it’s an easy market to break into, extremely hot and so forth. You’ll also tell them what expertise you already have that you’ll be applying to this training, if any.

Then you’ll tell them exactly what they’ll learn, step by step, and what they’ll get out of it. It might be as simple as they’ll have their first product sold.

This is how you market the product before you’ve even made it. After you make it, then you’ll know your exact results. Maybe you sold 82 units in 21 days. That can become part of your promise, that you’ll show them how you did it, and maybe by copying you, they can do it, too.

But What if My Product Doesn’t Sell?

Hey, it happens. You spend hours, days or weeks creating a product and only sell a few copies. Guess what? That’s okay, for two reasons. First, you now have more experience creating products. Second, and this is the big reason – you can re-purpose the content. Maybe it didn’t sell as a $27 product, but can you turn it into a Kindle book and sell a few copies a day? “But I’ll only make $5-$10 bucks a day on Kindle.” Yeah, multiply that by 365 days and tell me if it’s worth it.

You can re-purpose it into list building material, email autoresponder series and so forth. You can rename it and re-market it, because odds are you didn’t do a very good job the first time because you’re still learning. You can use it as a free bonus to sell more of your next product. You can repackage it – if it’s audio, add video. If it’s video, add a pdf. You can sell rights to it. You can sell an entire website and sales funnel based around it, and so forth.

You now have an asset. And even if it didn’t sell very well in its first incarnation, there are plenty of things you can do to still make money from it.

The Big Why of Creating Your Own Products

Do you know why you should create your own products, above and beyond what we already talked about? Because when you create products, you are exchanging a few hours of your time for an asset that can pay you for months and years to come. Creating and selling your own products will allow you to travel the world if you choose, enjoy more financial security than 95% of the population of the U.S., and live the life you want. And if that isn’t reason enough to create your own products, I don’t know what is.