Archive | April, 2021

I’ve seen three different marketers doing a variation of this business, all with the same result – they earn a bare minimum of $5,000/month and usually 2 to 3 times that much.

Two of them are completely unknown marketers who are quietly doing this in their spare time. The third marketer is a fairly big name, and odds are you’ve heard of him. He doesn’t do any of this work himself. He simply outsources the whole thing and brings in over $10,000 a month in profit doing it.

All three of them do this business in the online marketing niche. Essentially, they are helping new marketers to quickly have a money generating business of their own by building it for them. No doubt you’ve seen these ‘business in a box’ packages you can purchase that contain a product, a sales page and so forth, right? You put your own name on them, upload them to your site and start promoting.

There’s nothing wrong with these, and if you have your own list, you can often make good money with them. But these marketers have taken things a step further by creating a unique business in a box for each customer. These are genuinely one of a kind and even include a list.

Here’s how it works:

They start by creating a unique funnel complete with a squeeze page, high-value free gift and unique upsell product. The free gift is usually a plugin, because they have a higher perceived value than a report. You can find plugins with giveaway rights available all over the internet. Buying the rights is usually about $37-47 and then you are free to give it away to your heart’s content.

You can get a coder to rebrand, tweak and/or rename the plugin, usually for $100 or less. This is optional but again, it makes your package unique from anything else out there.

The upsell product is made from good PLR that’s then reworked and rebranded, complete with a new name, new graphics and so forth. It’s important here to use truly quality PLR – don’t skimp on this.

The cost of the content will be perhaps $150 if you rework it yourself, and twice that if you hire someone to do it for you. Since you’re going to price the upsell at around $47, you want the product to look and feel like it is worth at least that much if not more. In other words, make sure it doesn’t look like PLR.

Once the squeeze page and upsell are set up on a domain, it’s time to spend about $250 to purchase 1,000 solo ad clicks. Send them to your squeeze page.

Your goal here is three-fold:

→ Start building a list
→ Establish that the squeeze page and upsell convert
→ Make some money on the upsell

From 1,000 solo ad clicks you should hopefully get about 300 new subscribers. Maybe 10 of those will buy the upsell, bringing you about $470. That’s covered some of your costs right there.

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to cash in. You’re going to flip the entire funnel to one buyer. You can use Flippa, Warrior Forum or any of the site flipping websites out there.

You’re offering a proven funnel with a list, a proven squeeze page and a proven upsell page complete with the lead magnet and the product. This is VALUABLE because it’s proven and because it’s unique. Bonus points if you’ve chosen a great name for the URL, lead magnet and upsell.

Once you master how to do these things (and they’re not difficult) you can probably build 3 of these a month all by yourself and still have plenty of time to do other things, too.

And you can flip these packages for $2,500 to $7,500 each. Not bad for a part time business!

I want to be clear right up front – there is NO stealing required to do this. In fact, professionals have been doing this exact same thing forever, or at least since people have been creating stories, content and so forth.

I’ll give you some movie examples:
Bridget Jones Diary (2001) is really a modern version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Clueless (1995) is based on Jane Austen’s Emma.
Cruel Intentions (1999) is a modern version of Pierre Choderlos de Lacios’ Les Liasons Dangereuses (1792).
Pretty Woman (1990) is based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion, as is She’s All That (1999).
10 Things I Hate About You (1999) is really Shakespeare’s play, Taming of the Shrew, in disguise.
Star Wars is Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai classic, The Hidden Fortress, only in space.
In fact, I would wager that at least 9 out of 10 Hollywood movies are based on stories from other movies or books. And yet these movies earn millions of dollars. So, the question is, is it ethical or legal to ‘borrow’ other people’s ideas?
Yes!
It’s a fact that you can’t copyright an idea. All the best artists (who are honest) will even admit they steal like crazy, which is what makes their art so awesome.
There is no need to continuously reinvent the wheel. The wheel was invented once, and ever since then people have copied that idea onto their own products, whether it was for wheelbarrows, carts, carriages or cars. Using other people’s ideas (not their work) is 100% legal, ethical and even required if we are to move forward as a society.
Now let’s say you’ve run across a 50-page ebook on how to do something. You cannot copy the actual writing, the author’s name or the cover of the book. But you can use the idea of the ebook to create your own.
West Side Story and Disney’s High School Musical used a famous playwright’s plot in their stories. Can you think what that might have been?
A little play called Romeo and Juliet.
So that book on driving traffic that inspired you to use the method yourself… you can’t copy that book and sell it. But you can write your own. Or record your own videos. Or offer a coaching program that teaches the method. As long as you do not use the author’s copyrighted stuff such as their writing, their screenshots, their images and so forth, you can write up the method as your own and sell it as much as you want to.
And if you’ve used the technique taught in the material yourself, which hopefully you have, then you can speak with authority on the subject.
If this makes you uncomfortable, then the solution is simple: Don’t do it. Instead, take something from an entirely different niche and adapt it to your own niche.
For example, you read a great book on dog training and you realize that many of the techniques in that book could work equally as well on your three-year old. So you try it out and sure enough, you’ve gotten your three year old to stop screaming when she wants attention, to eat her food when you give it to her, to follow your simple instructions without throwing a tantrum and so forth.
Yes, I’m probably going to get emails from people who are upset I equated training a puppy with training a child… 😉 The point is that what you learn in one area of life can often be used in other areas as well.
Take a look at the millions of how to books out there and find something you can adapt to an entirely different niche, and you’ll have all the inspiration you need to create unique products without having to be brilliant yourself.
Although incidentally, people will think you are brilliant.

Setting aside every self-help book out there, I’d like to propose the theory that there is ONE thing you need to be successful, and that you are already in possession of this thing. You just don’t know it yet.

Ten years ago two marketers started their online journey. They both endured similar pitfalls and setbacks. One went on to make millions. The other one failed miserably and works a 9 to 5 job. What made the difference?

The mind-flip.

Imagine you have a switch in your brain, and every time you have any kind of setback whatsoever, you flip that switch into finding the positive in it. No, I’m not talking about pie-in-the-sky rainbows and magic pink unicorn thinking. I’m talking about flipping your own switch because no one else is going to do it for you.

Instead of getting discouraged, angry or sad, find the good or the lesson in everything that normally gets you down. This is called resilience. We’re told to be resilient, to bounce back from defeat and just keep moving, but no one tells us how to do that. So, let me try, and see if this resonates with you.

You get an angry email from a customer. Yeah! This is your chance to make it right while also finding out if there is perhaps a flaw in your product. What an awesome thing to have happen! Your formerly angry customer now understands what happened, they’re thrilled with the attention you paid to them and how you resolved the issue, and you have feedback on how to improve the way customers use your product.

You have trouble with your website. Yeah! Now you get to call your host or your website builder or whoever and let them show you what awesome service they provide. You’re not happy with the result? Yeah! Now you have the perfect reason to go find a new host or webmaster who will make you happy!

You dropped that dish of spaghetti on the floor? Yeah! You’ve been meaning to clean the floor for weeks and this is the perfect motivation to get it done. Now look at it shine!

You missed the light and now you have to wait 3 minutes to get through the intersection? Yeah! If you had made the light, perhaps you would have been involved in a fatal accident that you’ve now missed!

Does all of this sound a bit crazy? Maybe. But your experience is exactly what you make it. I once went camping with a friend. As we arrived, it started to rain and it didn’t stop raining for two days and two nights. Yeah! I took it as a challenge and it was one of my best vacations ever. I sang in the rain, danced in the rain, hiked in the rain and listened to the rain on my tent as I fell soundly asleep each night.

My friend, however, decided to be miserable the entire time. He grumbled, complained, got angry, picked fights and spent the entire time wishing he was someplace else. He also wasn’t too happy that I didn’t share his attitude, but oh well! 😉 We shared the same experience, and yet it was positive for me and horrible for him. The only difference was how we chose to view what was happening.

I might be oversimplifying here, but when you boil it all down, I think the only difference between the successful person and the failure is resilience. Look for the bright side of everything. Sure it’s a cliché, but it is a fact that your experience is what you choose it to be.

Have you ever felt sad or depressed about something, and then you drank some coffee or you took a walk, and then felt 10 times better about it? The situation didn’t change – you did. And once you have the positive mindset, you can move forward and do whatever it is that needs to be done.

Here are 9 tips for flipping your mindset to the positive side of life:

Play Opposites – When you think a negative thought such as, “I hate getting on these Zoom meetings,” ask yourself, “What if the opposite were true?”

Friends – Support groups are wonderful for helping you to build this resilience. Talk it out and help each other to see the positives. If they insist on being negative – and let’s face it, some people revel in negativity – then get a new support group.

Greatest Hits – When you’re feeling down about yourself or your abilities, think about times when you did awesome things that totally worked for you.

Self-care – Get enough sleep and eat well. Exercise. All of these things will help you to stay positive and keep moving forward in your business and in your life.

Is it True? – When you notice your negative thoughts are spiraling out of control, ask yourself if those thoughts are true. 9 times out of 10 you’ll realize the negative thoughts are a distortion and out of touch with reality.

Acceptance – Instead of negatively judging yourself for being pessimistic, accept your current mindset and stop fighting it. Then set it aside and move on.

Humor – Can’t find the positive in the situation? Then pretend 5 years have gone by and you’re telling someone the story of what just happened. Find the funny in it and make your friend laugh.

Use Your Power – You always – ALWAYS – have the power to choose how you will view circumstances. Maybe right now you choose to feel bad, but realize that is indeed your choice. Try choosing to feel just 1% better and see what happens.

Body Language – Emotions follow the body and not the other way around. When you force yourself to smile, stand tall and raise your arms overhead in a victory gesture, you feel better. Even holding a pencil sideways in your mouth will activate your smile muscles and improve your mood.

Now I know that some people reading this will have a strong rebuttal for me that goes like this: “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, my life is upside down and people are getting sick and even dying. How am I supposed to mind shift into positivity?”

All of that is 100% true. But can you think of a better or more important time in your life to practice resilience and find the good in everything you possibly can?

The next time something is getting you down, go take a walk. Or play your favorite music. Or pet your dog or talk to someone. Taking a break is a good thing because it gives you the perspective you sometimes need to keep moving forward.

Practice flipping the switch in your brain each time things don’t go the way you planned. This life-skill will see you through the tough times and ensure massive success in the good times.

Flip the switch. Know that resilience is your strongest defense. Find the positive. I promise you that it’s there somewhere. And smile, because no matter what it is, this too shall pass.