Internet Marketing Shorties | Keeping Up To date On the Latest News
3 Step Profits: Watch News – Deploy Report – Make Money
Here is a simple little case study that you can employ in almost any niche.
This gal I know writes simple little reports that are evergreen. Example topics might be:
- How to build a sales funnel using other people’s products
- How to build a Facebook Group of 3,000 in 60 days and earn $10,000 a month
- How to build a simple membership site and get 25 new members every month, regardless of price
You get the picture, but again, this could work in almost any niche. The reports are purposely generic when she writes them and the content is evergreen, meaning it does not need a lot of updating in months and years to come.
Then she watches to see what is happening in the news. Maybe Google has an SEO update, or there is a huge launch for a list building product, or it’s reported that Facebook fan pages aren’t working as well as they used to… it doesn’t really matter.
When she sees a news item she wants to capitalize on, she pulls out the appropriate report and customizes it to the situation. For example, it’s reported that Facebook advertising is becoming more difficult or expensive, so she updates her report on Bing advertising. Some big name is launching a $1000 product on building funnels, so she gets out her funnel report and so forth.
She changes the title to suit the situation. Google is acting up and marketers are afraid their incomes are in jeopardy? She will re title her traffic report to something like, “How to Dump Google and Build a Steady Stream of Buyers from Instagram.” Then she will tailor the report to sell a $500 Instagram marketing course. She will sell the report or give it away, depending on her goal.
Often the reports are relaunched to go with a major product launch, and other times it’s to help people with a change in marketing.
In some cases, she is deployed essentially the same reports a half dozen times with different headlines and different end goals.
Sometimes she is just list building, sometimes promoting a specific product (and list building) and sometimes she is simply selling the report (and list building.)
I could try to make this sound more complicated, but that’s really all there is to it. The key is to watch the news and figure out how you want to monetize whatever change or ‘crisis’ is in the air. Speed is paramount, and since 95% of the writing is already done, she can see the first report of some new development on Monday evening and have the new report out Tuesday morning.
All you need is a stack of generic reports that can be tweaked and adapted to generate income on the back of the latest hot topic or industry change.
An Underhanded but Highly Profitable Method
I’m not endorsing what I’m about to reveal.
But I’m also not going to judge (much). Instead, I’ll simply report on this method and let you decide for yourself.
For all I know there are hundreds of marketers doing this, but I only know of one person and frankly I got this info second hand from someone who used to help him do this, so take that into consideration.
This is clever. Maybe a bit diabolical. And not necessarily an entirely bad thing for all involved.
There’s this bloke who buys extensive PLR material. We’re talking entire courses with a dozen PDF s and another dozen videos and so forth for several hours of material. If there are videos, then he gets those transcribed so he has written copy.
You can think of plenty of topics in online marketing that have PLR courses as well as other niches, too.
Then he records himself ‘teaching’ these products over many sessions. As I understand it, he is basically reading the material with his own adlibbing thrown in for good measure.
So far that’s not too dodgy. You can usually re purpose PLR as you see fit without breaking any rules.
But here’s where it gets sketchy: He pretends he is doing a LIVE group coaching call for each of these sessions. He starts out with, “Welcome to the call” and other stuff to make it sound like this was a live call with real coaching clients listening in for high paid group sessions.
Once he’s got all these ‘calls’ recorded, he sells the entire product as a course with a high price tag that is justified because the people who were originally on the call paid hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars to be there.
Then he releases the recordings at a ‘bargain price’ which is still much higher than the price of a regular course.
The teaching itself might be great – I don’t know. But you have to admit, claiming these were live group coaching calls people paid top dollar for is… highly questionable.
If he were to justify what he’s doing, I’m sure he would say that the more people pay, the more likely they are to use the info. Hopefully he’s a good teacher and his students are profiting from this. Personally, I think its fine to record PLR and I suppose it’s okay to call it your own if you bought the right to it. But I’m not at all crazy about claiming people paid big bucks to be on these live calls when it’s pure malarky.
Anyway, I just thought you should know.
How One Little Notebook Can Double Your Income
Anytime and every time you do anything in your business, write it down.
Found a new resource? A new shortcut? A new market? Had a brilliant idea? Or even a crazy idea? Write it all down.
If you try something and it works, write it down. If it didn’t work, write that down, too.
It doesn’t matter what your niche is. The point is to keep track of everything you do in your business.
Then when something pays off big, you have three options:
1: Follow the steps in your notebook to duplicate your success over and over again.
2: Hire an outsourcer to follow the steps to duplicate your success for you while you focus on building even more income streams.
3: Use your notes to create teachings (books, courses, membership sites, etc.) to duplicate your success. This is an entirely new income stream to go with the other income you’re making.
If you’re teaching others how to duplicate your success, be sure to also tell them what didn’t work so they can learn from your mistakes instead of making their own.
Do you already have a solid method that’s working for you, but you didn’t take notes? You can still go back and do some investigation to recreate what you did that’s working so well.
Your payment processor records your income. Cross check that with emails you’ve sent out and campaigns you’ve run to see what worked best.
Check the Wayback Machine to find out what copy you were using on which site on any particular date. Check your Clickbank, JVZoo and other accounts to see when things were working well and investigate to find out what you were doing.
It’s like being your own Big Brother, only this way you get to profit yet again by duplicating your successes and teaching others to do the same.
9 Stats to Remind You Why Content Marketing WORKS
Paid advertising is great because once you’ve got ads and a funnel that works, you can turn on the switch anytime you’re willing to spend money to make money.
But content marketing is still important, and some would argue that in the long run it’s far more valuable than paid advertising.
1. When you compare content marketing with paid search, content marketing gets three times the leads per dollar spent. This is huge, but remember to factor in your time when creating content.
2. Effective content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and yet it costs 62% less. Of course, a proven outbound campaign is generally easier and less work intensive to run, so you’ve got to weigh your options.
3. In 1984, a person saw an average 2,000 ads/day. By 2014, they saw around 5,000. Which means they pay attention to very few ads, thanks to ad overload. Content marketing is the ultimate work-around, coming in under their radar and building trust in a way that no advertising can.
4. Almost half of 18- to 49-year-old people get their news and information online – and those numbers are growing. People 50 and older are no slouches when it comes to the internet, either. Think of how many people you know who aren’t online. Personally, I know of one. Just ONE. And her husband is online, so even she is reachable if you can get his attention.
5. Small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than small businesses without. You can teach businesses how to blog, or even set up a blogging service for them.
6. After reading recommendations on a blog, 61% of U.S. online consumers made a purchase. Have you got a blog yet?
7. Content marketing rakes in conversion rates six times higher than other methods. SIX times. That’s hard to even fathom.
8. The most effective SEO technique? Content creation. This is real content that helps people. “Have you got a leaky roof? Here are 10 reasons your roof might be leaking and 5 ways to repair a leaky roof yourself. Would you like help to find the leak? Call us for a free inspection because we’re here to help.” It’s no wonder why content like that will be more effective than an ad screaming, “BUY YOUR NEXT ROOF FROM US!”
9. Businesses publishing 16-plus posts a month get almost 3.5 times more traffic than businesses publishing zero to four articles. Publish or perish, they say, and it’s true.
Paid advertising has its place. But if you also have a continuous stream of quality content to share with your audience, you’ll build trust and gain business that simply cannot be achieved in any other manner.
How a Simple “Thank You” Payed $30,000 in one Afternoon
I have a coaching client who has done fairly well building his online business. He’s got a funnel set up that is totally automated and makes a decent income, and it works like this:
He runs ads to send traffic to a squeeze page where visitors opt in to get a freebie. Then the autoresponder sequence kicks in and sends people to various sales pages where he makes money.
The whole thing is automated so that he never has to personally contact a customer.
And because of that, he was losing a ton of money. In fact, I just about had to wrestle him to the floor to convince him to take the next step…
…personal contact. I instructed him to personally contact each person who purchased any product over $95 and thank them.
He was to also casually mention his coaching program, too. Actually, he didn’t yet have a coaching program, so I first had to convince him to add a coaching program and then convince him to contact customers to say thank you.
I instructed him to be super nice and not at all salesy on the phone. He was to thank them profusely for their purchase, let them know how important they are and gently inquire about their goals. And he was to tell them about his coaching course just so they were aware of it for a later date when they were ready to move to the next level.
I told him to be warm and kind, to be genuine and to not sell.
The entire idea was to make his customers feel valued and to offer personal help should they need it.
The first time he finally did this and much to his total and complete shock, he signed up 5 coaching clients the same day at $1,000 apiece.
That was almost a year ago. Today he called and said he was doing his weekly ‘thank you’s’ to his best customers and he signed up 6 clients to his coaching program.
By the way, did I mention that he now charges $5,000 for the program? Yup, that’s right – $30,000 in one afternoon just for saying “thank you.”
So You DON’T Want Me to Read Your Page??
Today when I visited a website for the first time, a pop-up offered me a cool freebie. Once I entered my email address, the page rolled over to an offer for a $7 product.
Pretty normal funnel so far, right?
But here’s the thing – the sales page for the $7 offer consisted of white text on a hideous, eye-injuring yellow background.
They did an EXCELLENT job of ensuring I would click away from the page as fast as possible.
And I bet they wonder why their conversions are so lousy.
Have you taken a look at your pages from your visitor’s point of view? If they’re not pleasing to the eye and super easy to read, then it’s time to make some changes.
I see artsy-fartsy looking sites all the time. Medium gray font on a light gray background because someone said it’s in style. Light gray font on a white background. Tiny font that makes me squint. Blaring colors and little videos that follow me around the page and won’t let me focus on the content. Pop-ups with no clear way to get rid of them. Social media buttons that cover the first inch of text on the left margin. Headers that take up half the page.
I could understand if these mistakes were being made in 1995, but we’ve now had over two decades to get these things right.
Any time you have to decide between being artsy and making your site easy for your visitor to navigate and engage, I suggest you error on the side of the visitor.
How to Lose a Customer Forever
I bought something this week from an Ebay style of website called Mercari. I expected to get what I saw in the photos of the listing – pretty reasonable expectation, right?
It was supposed to be 3 identical items, which was exactly what I wanted and needed. Yet when I received them, there was one of the items I ordered and two that were similar but different. I was not pleased.
I left a review gently pointing out this discrepancy and stating that maybe the seller simply made a mistake. Certainly, it wasn’t intentional, right? I errored on the side of being nice and understanding.
That was a mistake.
The seller promptly sent me a scathing message letting me know that it was MY FAULT that I did not ASK them ahead of time if they were going to do something devious like switch out 2 of the 3 products.
Yup. You read that right. According to them it was my job to interrogate them on their intentions prior to buying, rather than assume they were upstanding business people who would do the right thing.
I found a couple of lessons here that I can use, and maybe you’ll find them helpful, too.
First, is there something I should be telling my prospects before they buy? Since I never want my customers to have a bad experience, what else do I need to tell them so that they’re not blindsided?
Second, how I respond to a customer’s complaint is everything. Had this person simply acknowledged they screwed up and apologized, I would still have felt fine about it. Stuff happens.
But to turn around and say it’s the customer’s fault for not catching them in a lie prior to the transaction, well…
Needless to say I have blacklisted them forever.
Irving