Archive | December, 2019

You’ve probably heard that commenting on other people’s blogs is a good thing to do. But do you know why it’s so important?

Yes, it can get you traffic. People see your blog comment, like it, and click on your name to go to your website. But that’s not the biggest reason to comment on blogs.

Leaving blog comments might also give you backlinks, which could potentially increase your standing in the natural search results. But again, this isn’t the biggest reason to leave comments on other people’s blog posts.

Leaving blog comments also gets you seen by others in your niche. Leave enough great comments and people might start to remember you and your brand.

But again, that’s not the biggest benefit to leaving well-thought-out, interesting blog comments.

The biggest benefit? Whether you realize it or not, consistent blog commenting builds relationships with other bloggers.

Think about it – you go to Joe’s blog once a week and leave a well-thought out comment on Joe’s latest post. Joe keeps noticing you, and pretty soon the two of you are building a relationship that can eventually lead to:

• Guest posts
• Product endorsements
• Joint ventures
• Introductions to other movers in your niche
• And so forth…

Here’s how to be effective at blog commenting:

• Post on blogs in your particular nicheRead the entire post thoroughly before commenting
• Share your specific thoughts and opinions
• Don’t be general or vague. “Nice post” doesn’t cut it
• Use a great avatar – a photo of your smiling face is usually best
• Use your real name, not “Mary6504”
• Never be rude and never be mean
• Be genuine and thought-provoking – Add value to the conversation
• Use Google Alerts to be alerted to new posts so you can be one of the first to comment – more readers will see your comment this way
• Subscribe to RSS feeds and to email lists of your favorite bloggers – again, this helps to alert you when someone makes a new post
• If you’re not the first to leave a blog comment, then scan the other comments to make sure you’re not repeating a thought or comment
• Use personal stories where applicable
• Quote the post itself in your comment – for example, “When you said ____ it gave me a great idea”
• It’s okay to disagree if you do it in a way that totally respects the blogger’s opinions and thoughts
• Ask questions of the blog owner. This will get you more engagement and shows you’re interested in their opinion – very effective for relationship building.
• Always double proofread your comment for spelling and punctuation before submitting

And remember to be patient – you don’t develop a relationship with a blogger over one blog comment. Continue to come back and comment on new posts and you will gradually build real relationships with these bloggers.

Once an online marketer gets to a certain income level, that marketer almost invariably gets stuck. They can’t seem to make any more money, even when they pour more and more of their time into their business. Why? Because they are working IN their business rather than ON their business.

That’s why it’s so important to begin outsourcing as soon as you can afford to, which is actually a whole lot sooner than you probably think. If you believe you need to be bringing in a hefty six figure sum before you can get yourself some help, think again.

The fact is, the sooner you begin outsourcing some of the more mundane and time consuming facets of your business, the sooner you can begin growing your business in a truly substantial way.

You’ve only got a fixed number of hours in the week. Do you spend them doing:

A: The tasks you don’t like to do
B: The tasks you don’t mind doing, but they could easily be done by someone else
C: The tasks that you’re brilliant at doing and that you enjoy performing
D: Planning and strategizing to take your business to the next level

Obviously you want to delegate A and B as fast as possible so you can focus on C and D.

Are you doing your own support? Are you answering your own emails and phone? Is it taking your entire morning just to do support, answer emails and so forth?

Next question: Exactly how much do you earn each time you work your own support desk or answer your own emails and phone? What’s that? Nothing? Maybe it’s time you hired someone to do it for you.

In fact, if you do it correctly, hiring someone to perform your support tasks for you can pay off from day one.

That’s because it frees you up to do the things that MAKE YOU MONEY.

Ah-hah! Imagine that – devoting nearly ALL of your working time to those tasks that make money, rather than doing support.

In the military there are two distinct areas of operation: Front line and support. The front line wins the battles while the support does just that – support those who are out there winning the battles.

In sports, you’ve got offense and defense. The defense is crucial for stopping the other team from scoring, but they generally DON’T SCORE any points themselves. The offense does that. If you’re spending all of your time on defense (answering emails) then you’re not devoting any time to offense (making sales.)

Here’s how to hand the bulk of your email tasks off to your new assistant: If you don’t already have a private email address, create one. This is the address you give to JV partners, fellow marketers and your mother. The people who matter most to your business and your personal life.

Once a day you check this address and answer these emails personally.

Everything else – EVERYTHING else – goes to your support address or support desk where your support person checks it daily or even several times a day.

This includes payments, autoresponder emails, hosting emails, questions from customers, complaints, testimonials, affiliate requests, etc.

Your support person has access to your accounts, too. Your hosting account, autoresponder account, PayPal account, etc. I know – it seems like a big leap of faith to give access to your PayPal account to someone else, but no worries. You can limit the PayPal functions your support person has access to. For example, they can issue refunds but not withdraw funds.

Your support person or team is basically going to run the day to day operation of your business for you.

When training your support staff, you can write out step by step procedures on how to do things, record videos or audios, or simply have them contact you when something comes up they haven’t handled before. In other words, there is a learning curve. But after the first week you shouldn’t have to spend much more time on training, especially if you’ve got the right person for the job.

You can also have your support person or team do all those other things you don’t like to do such as analyze stats, clean email lists, install websites, social media, etc. Whatever it is that you prefer to hand off, go ahead and do it.

If you hire someone for 2 hours a day, that frees up 2 hours of your own time. If you pay them $12 an hour, that’s $480 a month – quite possibly more than you currently pay for programs and how to info.

And it’s 40 hours per month that you’ve just gained. Imagine if you use that 40 hours each month to create and market a new product – that’s 12 new products in a year. If each product were to make you just $3,000 initially, and then just another $500 a month – well, you do the math.

If you’re still hesitating, then think about this: If you strike a deal with your support person to pay them monthly, then you’ve got 30 days to use your new found time to make more than enough money to cover them for the first month.

30 days and 40 new found hours. But that’s not even the biggest benefit of bringing someone in to help you with your business.

The biggest benefit of all is what it will do for your mindset, because suddenly you ARE a business person. There’s no more wondering if you’re just dabbling in a hobby. This stuff is REAL and you are now responsible for someone else’s income. This is the motivator that will kick you out of bed each morning and ensure you have a productive, successful day.

Use one of the freelance sites to find someone. Yes, it’s going to feel like a big step, because it is. A big step in the right direction, that is. Because the rewards are going to prove that it was totally worth it to take this next, logical step in your business evolution.

Two things are surprising about the technique I’m about to teach you for selling affiliate products…

First, it’s surprisingly easy. In fact, it’s so simple you might be tempted to dismiss it. Don’t. This method has been proven effective and it’s one you definitely want to put in your marketing arsenal.

Second, while it doesn’t take much time, it can be a real money maker. In fact, if you choose an affiliate product that pays instantly and if you have a traffic source (such as your own list, social media, etc.) then you can potentially put money in your pocket in less than 3 hours.

Here’s how it works: Choose an affiliate product you like. It needs to be one that you have, one that you can get from the seller for free, or one you buy. Regardless, you must have a copy of it yourself. Also, it’s better if it’s a product you personally like and use, although that’s not required.

Read the sales letter carefully and choose the biggest benefit. This might be in the headline or it could be in the bullet points.

Write a short report – 5 pages is fine, 10 pages is super and you don’t want to go any longer than that. In the report, detail how to do this one technique that you’ve pulled out of the product that provides this benefit. For example, how to get 10,000 visitors a month to your blog would be a good benefit.

If you don’t want to write the report, outsource it.

Create a squeeze page and use this big benefit as your title. “How To Get 10,000 Visitors a Month To Your Blog.”

Once they enter their email address and press the opt-in button, they are redirected to your affiliate page for the product. Not many will buy at this point, but it’s important that they see the page.

At the end of the report, send them back to that affiliate sales page. You might write something like this: “I hope you put this into action, but if you’d like to take a massive shortcut and reduce the time it takes to get 10,000 visitors a month to your website, then click here to get the complete fast-track system.”

Use your own wording. Your message is that what you just taught them works, but to do it quickly without the trial and error and mistakes, they can simply get the fast track system because it’s so much easier and faster. Plus they get tons of other benefits, too.

So what you’re doing here is building a list, giving them real value and then immediately marketing to that list the exact benefit they’re looking for. Plus of course you can follow up with those that don’t initially buy, plus you can also market other products to them in the future.

Once you get good at this, it shouldn’t take you more than 3 hours to set up and you can use your system for as long as you like. Send website visitors to it, tell your lists, offer your free report on social media, buy ads, etc.

Does it sound too easy? Often times it’s the simple techniques that create the biggest results. Making a couple of thousand dollars on each one of these systems that you set up is not unheard of. And depending on how much traffic you send and the product you choose, it could be even more.

And if you like, you can outsource the entire thing for a reasonable fee. Imagine if you just set one of these up a week. It might not be glamorous, but the path to wealth and riches is frequently a simple process applied consistently. The method described above can be your path to financial freedom.