Archive | November, 2020

(So give them what they want)!!

Your readers probably enjoy hearing about your latest exploits and victories. They like to hear how you made $10K in a day, especially if you give them all the details so they can try and duplicate your success.

But do you know what they love hearing even more?

Your failures.

Your muck-ups…

The time you fell down the stairs stone cold sober while holding your best friend’s wedding cake.

The time you thought you were so smart, you had found a brand new way to sell widgets, and lost $1,200 in the process while gaining a closet full of maxi-widgets 2.0.

And the time you got conned, too, also makes for a great story.

So why do people love to hear about your failures?

Because they can relate. Because it shows you’re human. Because it’s just plain fun to know they’re not the only ones who sometimes screw things up.

We all know the guy who brags non-stop about how everything he touches turns to gold. In fact there’s a word for him – BORING.

Then there’s the bloke next store who has some success, but enjoys a few failures, too. Now THAT’S the guy we want to hang out with.

That’s the guy we can relate to.

And guess what? That’s also the guy we’ll listen to and buy products from…

So go ahead and regale your readers with tales of your failures. They’ll love you for it, and in the end, so will your bottom line.

Some of you are going to dismiss this idea. You’ll think it’s strange. You’ll think I’m full of beans. But others will recognize this as one of the holy grails of online marketing. And those are the folks who will do really, really well online if they aren’t already. Because making money as an Internet marketer isn’t about selling products or services or clicks…

Nope.

It’s about selling YOU.

Think about what you buy. Don’t you find that certain marketers just resonate with you? When you get their emails, you read them. When they tell you to click somewhere, you click. And when they put out a product, you buy it.

Why? Because you like the way they make you feel. You like their style, their humor, their motivation… whatever it is, you just LIKE them.

Why did you like a certain teacher in school? Why do you like your friends? Your spouse? Maybe you don’t know why, you just know that you do. It’s the same way for your customers.

If they like you, they will read what you write. They’ll subscribe to your emails and read them. They’ll follow you on social media. They might even promote you. And yes, they will BUY most ALL of your stuff.

Not because they want more stuff, but because they like YOU and the way your stuff makes them feel. When you brand yourself in such a way that you connect with your readers, you no longer have to worry if your products will sell or if your affiliate recommendations will work.

Your coaching program will sell out. Your webinars will be packed. Your products will be winners.

And you don’t have to worry about sales any longer. Just focus on being the best YOU that you can be for your customers, and everything else will take care of itself.

So how do you brand yourself?

You might take a course on branding. You might look at branding leaders, too. Most of all, take a look at your strengths. What are you good at? How do you best communicate? What are your interests?

If your niche is IM and you’re into extreme sports, how can you combine the two to resonate with people just like you?

If your niche is health and you’re very much into spirituality, can you combine the two to create your persona?

I’m not suggesting you reinvent yourself. I am suggesting you combine what it is that makes you, YOU, with your niche.

Here’s some examples…

The Hippy Gardener
The Globe Trotting Marketer
The Spiritual Carpenter

Now, you might be thinking this is a bad idea because it will turn some people off. I have news for you – no matter what you do, there will be people who don’t like you. And that’s a GOOD thing. Because those who do like you will be all the more loyal.

Sell yourself first. Find your followers and build your tribe. And everything else in your business will naturally fall into place.

There is a young lady in the Internet marketing niche who has 3 separate IM type blogs. And without revealing too much (we don’t want to create direct competition for her) here are the methods she’s tried and the ones that worked in monetizing those three blogs…

To begin with, she tried AdSense. But that only made a few bucks and she quickly abandoned it. Then she tried renting out banners, but since her 3 blogs combined receive about 10,000 visitors a month, she didn’t get a lot of interest.

She does put up ClickBank ads, and those bring in about $1,000 a month from all 3 blogs combined. Not bad, but obviously not that great, either. Especially when you consider that she posts 6 days a week on each blog.

Next she decided to devote one blog post out of 6 to promoting an affiliate product. This wasn’t an easy decision for her, because she was afraid her readers would be alienated and they would stop visiting her blog.

But on the contrary, her promotional blog posts were well received and they’re making her money. In fact, it doubled her income and then some.

So now she was making over $2,000 a month on her three blogs but she felt she could do better. So what she did next was a little unorthodox.

She had a pop-up to get people to subscribe to her mailing list, which she decided to rent out. That’s right – she’s renting out her pop-up. She devoted the top right sidebar and the bottom of each page to capturing email addresses for herself.

Then she made a page showing her traffic stats, her own conversions on her own pop-ups, some demographic info and so forth. She was really selling her pop-ups on each of her three blogs.

And it worked. She rents them by the month, taking the code the customer gives her and pasting it into the pop-up. The customer has to be offering something for free, and of course it needs to fit her niche.

Believe it or not, between the three pop-ups on the 3 sites, she’s earning close to $2,000 a month just doing this.

Combining that income with the income from her ads and her promotional blog posts, and she’s earning about $4,000 a month from her blogs. Of course, this doesn’t include income from her own list which she is building.

So the question is, why was it so much easier to sell the pop-ups than it was banner ads? Maybe because it’s something different. Or perhaps because people want to build lists, and see this as the way to go.

Now you might be wondering if she isn’t shooting herself in the foot and losing out on long term income by building her own list faster using her own pop-ups.

It’s hard to say. But one thing for sure is that $2,000 a month from the pop-ups is coming in like clockwork, and all it takes is collecting the money and pasting in the code once a month. Really, you can’t beat that.

I hope this gets you thinking about new possibilities for your own website(s)!…