Tag: internet marketing

The FTC’s influencer endorsement guidelines may soon become binding

The Federal Trade Commission may be increasing the severity and scope of its responses to misinformation and paid influencer ads that present themselves as organic content.

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/1566445/p204500_-_endorsement_guides_reg_review_-_chopra_stmt.pdf

Facebook’s latest app tries to beat Pinterest at its own game

This may be why Google recently announced an update to its Collections tool Hobbi, which looks quite similar to the Pinterest app.

TechCrunch notes that “Hobbi takes obvious cues from Pinterest” and that it “is more like an editor and organizer than any sort of new social network.”

https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/13/facebooks-latest-experiment-is-hobbi-an-app-to-document-your-personal-projects/

How does word count affect your SEO?

Word count itself likely isn’t a ranking factor, but it may directly impact other ranking factors.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/word-count-for-seo/348164/#close

Google makes it easier to hide content and check third-party reporting

Google just launched three new removal tools that should help website owners quickly remove outdated and irrelevant content from their sites and gain some visibility on how third parties are reporting their content.

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/01/new-removals-report-in-search-console.html

Why the Jumpshot shutdown is such big news for digital marketing

The website ‘Jumpshot’ may have been supplying their marketing analytics data to numerous premium SEO tools, so the ripple effects of the shutdown may be felt across the entire marketing industry in the weeks ahead.

https://sparktoro.com/blog/avasts-shutdown-of-jumpshot-will-harm-the-web-and-the-world/

TikTok competitor Byte launches and gains steam

TikTok has a new competitor in town. Byte, a micro-video app and successor to Vine, recently launched in both Apple and Android app stores. Byte hasn’t made any formal announcement surrounding advertising yet, but founder Dom Hofmann has mentioned that the app plans to put an early focus on helping content creators make money.

https://byte.co/

Verizon enters the search engine market with privacy-focused OneSearch

With such strong competition in the search engine market, it comes as somewhat of a surprise that Verizon Media has launched OneSearch.

So, what makes OneSearch different?

Privacy

OneSearch promises not to track, store, or share personal or search data with advertisers, which puts it in direct competition with DuckDuckGo. It’s available now on desktop and mobile at OneSearch.com.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/a-new-search-engine-enters-the-market-onesearch-from-verizon-media/

Dwell Time is the SEO Metric You Need to Track

Dwell time is the amount of time a user takes analyzing a web page before clicking back to search results. If a web page has a low dwell time, it likely means the page didn’t match the user’s search intent.

It’s important to note, dwell time and bounce rate are two different things. Here’s what you need to know.

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/dwell-time

Does This Product Launch Infographic Scare You?

I debated sharing this infographic with you because it looks kind of SCARY! When you first pull it up, it’s one looooong skinny thing in the middle of your screen because it’s incredibly detailed (and yes, intimidating, too.)

And when you zoom in and start reading it, you think, “Holy cow, I have to do ALL OF THAT to launch a product?? No way!”

But when you look closer (if you haven’t run away in terror yet) you realize this really is step by step, with many of the steps being pretty darn easy. Things like, ‘create a product name,’ ‘get a domain name,’ ‘order a product logo,’ and so forth. Simple stuff. And it’s great to have everything in one place to keep you from forgetting things, too.

Check it out here:

https://v3.jvnotifypro.com/assets/Tim-Godfrey-Infographic-001.png

Google Ads: Now see how campaign changes impact ad performance

An update to Google Ads now makes it easier for advertisers to view how changes in advertising campaigns affect ad performance. Moving forward, advertisers can now view any changes with annotations in their performance charts.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9733082

Two Simple Words that Increase Product Sales by 20%

Do you sell a tangible product?

If so, pay attention: Trailcam Pro – an eCommerce site that sells trail cameras – increased their sales by 20% by adding two words to the top of their home page.

The words were, “Free Shipping,” and here’s why it worked so well, along with the other changes they made to increase sales even more:

https://www.goinflow.com/ecommerce-free-shipping/

Free Design Resources

365 Psd: Download a free psd, vector or graphic file every day. https://365psd.com/

Dbf: Dribbble & Behance best design freebies. http://dbfreebies.co/

Dribbble: Dribbble search results for “freebie”. An absolute freebie treasure. https://dribbble.com/search/freebie

Free Section of Creative Market: Download 6 free goodies every week. https://creativemarket.com/free-goods

Free Section of Pixeden: Free design templates and resources. http://www.pixeden.com/free-design-web-resources

Freebiesbug: Latest free PSDs and hand-picked resources for web designers and developer. https://freebiesbug.com/

Freepik: Free graphic resources for everyone. https://www.freepik.com/

Graphic Burger: Tasty design resources made with care for each pixel, free for both personal and commercial use. https://graphicburger.com/

Marvel: A library of educational gems and free resources from designers we love. https://marvelapp.com/resources/

Pixel Buddha: Free and premium resources for professional community. https://pixelbuddha.net/

Premium Pixels: Lots of free stuff for creative folks. http://www.premiumpixels.com/

Tech&All;: PSD, Tech News, and other resources for free. https://techandall.com/

Teehan+Lax: DiOS 8 GUI PSD (iPhone 6). A Photoshop template of GUI elements found in the public release of iOS 8. https://teehanlax.com/tools/iphone/

Teehan+Lax: iPad GUI PSD. This Photoshop template contains all the major iOS elements to help you design your app. https://teehanlax.com/tools/ipad/

Tethr: The most beautiful IOS design KIT ever. https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/design-resources/tethr/

UI Space: Thousands of high quality hand-crafted Freebies for awesome people. https://uispace.net/

Free Color Choosing Tools

0 to 255: A simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color. https://www.0to255.com/

Adaptive Backgrounds: Extract dominant colors from images. http://briangonzalez.github.io/jquery.adaptive-backgrounds.js/

Adobe Color CC: Color combinations from the Kuler community. https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/

Brand Colors: Colors used by famous brands. http://brandcolors.net/

Colorful Gradients: Gradients automatically created by a computer. https://colorfulgradients.tumblr.com/

Color Lovers: Create & share colors, palettes, and patterns. https://www.colourlovers.com/

Coolors: Super fast color schemes generator for cool designers. https://coolors.co/

Couleurs: Simple app for grabbing & tweaking colors you see on screen. https://couleursapp.com/

Flat UI Colors: Beautiful flat colors. https://flatuicolors.com/

Material Palette: Generate & export your Material Design color palette. https://www.materialpalette.com/

Material UI Colors: Material ui color palette for Android, Web & iOS. https://www.materialui.co/colors

New Flat UI Color Picker: Best flat colors for UI design. http://www.flatuicolorpicker.com/

Paletton: The color scheme designer. http://paletton.com/

Best Flow Chart Makers

Do you want to diagram out how your business is going to grow in the next year, and what you need to do to get it there?

Or would you like to have a flowchart of each activity in your business, so that you can outsource these jobs without worrying about whether each detail is taken care of?

Flowcharts are diagrammatic representations illustrating a solution model to a problem or process. You can use them to document, analyze, design or manage your work.

And once you start using them, you’ll notice that everything becomes much more clear – including the gaps in your processes that need to be filled.

Here are some of the best flowchart makers:

https://www.draw.io/

https://www.lucidchart.com/

https://cacoo.com/home

https://www.gliffy.com/

http://wireflow.co/

https://textografo.com/

https://docs.google.com/drawings/

Irving

Protect Your Business

In medieval times, valiant knights went forth into battle in great suits of Iron and precious metals. These suits were primarily for protection from spears, swords and arrows of course, but also, they told the battlefield that here was a warrior, the more richly detailed the armor, often the greater the warrior. In many ways it was very pretentious. And from a tactical standpoint often foolhardy, these knights were normally the better trained and more experienced in the ranks and highlighting themselves in such a way, made them a much readier target for their enemy. But that structure was used for hundreds of years.

In our lives and businesses, we wrap many things in suits of armor, in our lives it might be our hearts or our fears, in our businesses it could be our products or our strategy, our personnel or partners, the things we are afraid to lose or that we fear could damage our livelihoods if effected negatively.

But as much as a suit of armor can provide a form of protection, it can also weigh us down, you certainly wouldn’t go swimming in one for example. The nature of Internet based businesses is that they are highly fluid, you have the ability to react to changing markets and trends very quickly, but if you weigh yourself down in a corporate suit of armor, you sacrifice that agility.

Too often, I have seen small businesses struggling, because the people starting them have stayed true to the mentality that they got by working for large corporations. We all started our businesses to get away from that structure, from those limitations, so why are we injecting the same principals back into our own businesses?

Everyone likes to have a feeling of stability, it is in our nature to yearn for that, safety and security are the basic tenants that we are first taught as children. But agility can also be a form of security, being able to react quickly, to realign your goals and tasks to changing markets and requirements they can provide greater protection for your business than the more stoic and clung to processes.

Don’t look to pick just one or the other though, in effect build yourself a hybrid hat encompasses the tenants of both, partly strong and heavy, and partly lighter and more maneuverable. Much like a wise seasoned warrior would tailor his armor to fit the battle and conditions he will be fighting in, tailor your business for your chosen battlegrounds.

Irving

Ways to Profit From Cancellations

In the spirit of making lemon aide from lemons, let’s take a look at how to make money from your membership cancellations.

The first way is to stop those cancellations before they ever happen, if at all possible.

The second is to make people an offer they cannot refuse when they do cancel. In fact, we’ve got 4 different methods to achieve this.

And finally, we’ll cover how to reactive subscribers after they’ve left the fold.

Simple Trick for Stopping Paid Subscription Cancellations

Do you have an automated system that allows paid subscribers to cancel their subscription?

You might be able to retain some of those paying members by letting them know what they’re going to miss.

For example, when they click on the link to suspend or end their subscription, the next screen might say something like…

This will cause you to lose access to [insert your membership name or programs]

Suspension effective as of [DATE]

Coming soon from [Business Name]

[List what is coming soon. Make it sound super enticing]

By giving them a sneak peek of what’s coming next, you will hopefully retain some of those members who attempt to cancel.

Even better, be sure that your paid members are always kept up to date on what’s coming. When you have a paid membership, one of your most important jobs is always tempting your members with whatever is just around the corner, so that they never want to leave.

How to Make Money when People Ask to Cancel

Method 1: If you have a paid monthly membership or software as a service, then sooner or later you will have customers who want to cancel their membership.

When they do, make them a special offer for one year of membership at a major discount.

You’re not losing any money since they were going to cancel anyway.

And you retain the opportunity to sell them more products from inside the membership, too.

Method 2: Your paid member has canceled. Now what?

Don’t give up. On the page that lets them know the cancellation has gone through, offer them a membership in another program of yours. This other program might be a better fit for their needs.

Don’t have a second paid membership program to offer them? Team up with another membership site owner in a related or identical niche. You offer their membership on your cancellation page, and they do the same for you.

Of course, you can also become an affiliate for another membership site and use that as your offer.

This works best if you can make the offer a one-time special. Either they get a discount that won’t be repeated, or they get access to a very special bonus.

Method 3: If your paid membership is all about the content (versus, say, software as a service) you might offer them all the content published thus far, immediately downloadable and theirs for life.

They must have liked your membership if they signed up for it in the first place. Getting access to what’s inside the membership up to the month when they canceled might be something they would love to have, for the right price.

Method 4: Offer them the same membership they just canceled, only better and more expensive. This one might sound crazy – why would they sign up for the membership they just canceled, and pay more for it, too? That depends…

If your site is teaching them how to do something, it could be that they need more help than just being told what to do. Maybe they need coaching, or they need someone to perform a service for them such as setting up a website needed to put a profit stream in place.

Take a good look at your site and figure out what’s missing. What would make it even easier for your members to reach their goals?

Then build this better version, whatever it might be, and offer it to subscribers past and present.

Simple Trick for Reactivating Paid Subscribers

If you’ve had a paid membership site or software as a service for any length of time, you’ve also got a list of people who canceled their membership.

(Don’t take it personally – this happens to every single membership site, regardless of how amazing the content is or how low the price.)

This list is worth gold, because it’s always easier and cheaper to reactivate someone who’s already tried your membership or software as a service, than it is to get the attention of a new subscriber.

Send your previous members a series of messages to entice them back. Let them know all the stuff they’re missing and the improvements you’ve made.

Solicit their feedback, and offer them a special deal, such as 30 days for free. Remind them of how easy it is to cancel, and how they have absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Irving

This site is being built with the help of fantastic information from:

Top Profitable Membership Ideas

There are all kinds of memberships you can run:

You can put out a simple monthly PDF newsletter or video.

You can drip feed content on a continual basis.

You can have your membership on your own website.

Or you can have it in a social media account, such as a paid Facebook Group.

But regardless of how you set up your membership, what sort of content you give and how often you update, you first need to choose your niche.

And all things being equal, it just makes sense to choose a niche that you know for a fact will be profitable.

In the last few months I’ve been keeping an eye open to see what niches are the most profitable when it comes to paid memberships.

Your goal is to find a niche you like that is profitable, which just makes sense. If you choose a niche you don’t like but it’s profitable, you’re probably still not going to do that well. It’s like having a job you hate – you never put in 100% effort.

And if you choose a niche you love but it’s not profitable, well, that’s pretty self-explanatory. You’ll probably have great time, but you won’t see much money coming in.

Here are the niches that appear to be the most profitable for paid membership sites, in alphabetical order:

1: Business – This can be how to start and run a small business, or any aspect of business ownership. Now more than ever, the dream isn’t to own a house or have a career, but rather to have a business.

People long for the freedom of being their own boss, and you can show them how it’s done, or point them in the right direction to get all the tools and coaching they need.

2: Collector’s Items – If there are people actively collecting something, then it might make a great paid membership site. For example, there are lots of people who collect rocks. In fact, there are rock shows around the U.S., one of which lasts for a week and a half and people come from all over the world to buy rocks and talk to other rock aficionados.

I’ve heard of someone who started a $10 a month 12-page newsletter on fossils. Each month he interviews an expert, has the interview transcribed, adds a few tidbits about where fossils are being found, a few photos and so forth. Believe it or not, he has over 1500 members each paying him $10 a month.

3: Diet – This can be diet as in what you eat or dieting as in losing weight. It can also cover recipes, too. For example, if you choose Keto, then your membership would be all about the benefits, the weight loss, the tips to overcome things like the keto flu, as well as recipes.

These sites can be huge with tons of members. Generally, you’ll charge a low admission, such as $10 a month, and look for a large quantity of members. Be sure to promote appropriate affiliate products, too.

4: Dog Everything – Dog memberships are surprisingly lucrative. You might focus your site on training or agility, two profitable dog sub-niches. Post articles, videos and lots of links to the various dog products – both information products and tangible products – and you’ve got your content.

People are eager to pay to find out how to train their dog and to teach their dog how to compete in agility contests, and well as solving health issues, behavioral issues and so forth.

Plus, they love to see dog pictures and videos, and read heart-warming dog stories, too. There are $25,000-$100,000 a month paid membership groups in this niche.

5: Electronic Deals – This can be a super profitable niche. You’ll want to sign up as an affiliate with the major sellers of electronics (Amazon, Walmart, etc.) and then every day when they post hot new deals, you put the information in your membership.

Facebook Groups works really well for this because of the immediacy. The only content you need to create is announcing the daily deals, and your members are there to buy.

This type of membership is simple to outsource to a virtual assistant, too.

And take notice: There are million-dollar paid membership sites in this niche.

6: Fashion – This could be clothing, handbags, shoes, make-up and more. This is an extremely lucrative niche with a lot of money to be made.

And if you grow your membership to a good size, then brands may reach out to you and cut deals with you to review their shoes, handbags and so forth.

7: Health – This isn’t weight loss, but rather how to get healthy and be healthy. Generally, the emphasis is on diet, herbs, exercise and so forth.

You can make a fortune promoting herbal products, just be sure not to run afoul of any laws that say you can’t be practicing medicine.

You can also promote exercise programs designed to increase health, wellness and longevity, as well as venturing into related niches such as meditation and sleep.

8: Hobbies – Golf is the classic example here because golfers spend a lot of money. But fishing, tennis, yoga, gardening, painting and so forth can all be great.

Just make sure there are plenty of products in your niche that you can promote. And remember, they don’t have to be info products because you can also promote actual products, too.

9: Investing – This is another one that can be HIGHLY lucrative. You can take one of two approaches here – either you’re a financial expert, or if you’re not, then you’re in touch with financial experts and what they recommend.

This is a niche where you can easily sell expensive courses because you’re targeting people who already have money and want to find out how to make even MORE money.

10: Make Money Online – No doubt you’re familiar with this niche. Target people who are new to online marketing and teach the basics, since this is the biggest target group in this niche and also the one most likely to spend money.

11: Meditation – This is a fast-growing niche with a ton of sub niches, such as spiritual meditations, meditations for health, meditation to be more focused and productive, etc.

You can go broad or deep with this one. An example of going broad would be covering all kinds of meditations and practices for all kinds of benefits and reasons.

Examples of going deep might be using meditation for better focus and greater productivity; or meditations to help you sleep better, longer and deeper; or even meditating for prosperity.

12: Parenting – This is a massive niche and includes pregnancy, childbirth, infant care, toddler care and all the way up to what to do when your 25-year old kid won’t leave the house.

This is a huge and highly lucrative niche. Behavioral problems, parents’ fears, advice to new moms and so forth – this is a passionate niche with a lot of pain.

Just think about the problems that parents face at each stage of a child’s life, and how much they want to solve those problems as quickly as possible, and you’ll see the potential.

13: Personal Development
– this has always been and always will be a highly profitable niche. People are dissatisfied with where they are in life and who they are.

If you can help them to achieve their goals or become who they want to be, then this niche can be highly lucrative for you.

Be sure to niche it down, at least at first, and target a specific group of people or tackle a specific problem. Once you become better known in your niche, then you can go on to become the next Bob Proctor or Tony Robbins.

14: Relationships – This could be dating, marriage and so forth. For example, target men and show them how to pick up women, or perhaps target women and show them how to find the love of their life.

Or target married people and show them how to fix their marriage and make it a source of strength and love rather than acrimony and pain.

You might even try a new trend, such as targeting women who prefer to be single and how they can improve their relationships with themselves and their friends. New studies show that the happiest women are single and have lots of girlfriends and self-confidence, so that could be a timely winner for you.

And paradoxically, another great sub-niche that is currently hot is how to find your soulmate.

15: Retirement – There are two sides to this coin – either preparing for retirement, or products and services for retirees (think AARP).

If your niche is preparing for retirement, know that certain financial firms will pay you excellent money to talk to your members through your membership site. In fact, you will never lack for experts who want to speak to your members, and you can charge them for the privilege of basically creating your content for you.

Of course, you first have to build up your membership base, but in the mean time you can still promote investment courses related to having a big nest egg for retirement.

15.5: Travel Deals – A travel membership can be super lucrative. Post articles about travel, and especially give alerts to travel deals using your affiliate links.

You might hire someone to write the articles, or write them yourself, and then get your virtual assistant to update it daily with new travel deals.

Any one of these niches could be the basis for your next membership site, earning you an ever growing passive income.

Irving

This site is being built with the help of fantastic information from:

The $100K Email Marketing Success Formula

There are hundreds of ways to drive traffic to your squeeze page and build your list. Throw a stone in the internet marketing community, and it will land on a course that will teach you exactly how to drive that traffic and get the conversions.

But once you’ve got subscribers joining your list, now what do you do?

Time and again I see marketers who are totally focused on how to build the list, but once they have those first subscribers, they’re clueless on what to do next.

Usually, they’ll send out a few emails that say, “BUY THIS PRODUCT!”

9 times out of 10 those emails end up in the spam folder. If they don’t, the prospect either doesn’t open the emails, or if they do, they don’t buy the product.

This is where the new marketer says, “Email marketing is dead.”

Or, the new marketer works hard to create amazing content for their list, sending all kinds of wonderful, helpful things for days and weeks.

When that marketer finally sends an email with an offer, they hear crickets. Why is that? That marketer probably says that email marketing is dead, too.

Yet, there are thousands, or more likely hundreds of thousands of marketers making a full time living with their email lists.

So, what is it that they’re doing right, and how can we copy that?

I’ve studied the losers and the winners in email marketing, and here’s what I’ve discovered:

1: Emails Have to Do at Least One of Three Things

Just like blog posts, articles, social media posts, reports and so forth, emails are content. And to get your emails open and read, every single one of them has to do one or more of the following:

Tell Stories – people will watch an entertaining 2-hour movie, but they won’t spend 30 seconds on a boring email. You don’t have to make it a major production, but you do need to tell a story that captures your audience’s interest. The love of stories is hardwired into us, and done right, no one can resist a great story.

Teach – your subscribers have goals, interests and curiosity. If you can help them to reach their goal, to educate them on their interests or to peak and satisfy their curiosity, then you’ve got a winning email.

Motivate – everyone loves to feel inspired, and everyone needs a daily dose of inspiration to help them keep moving forward. Think of motivation and inspiration as the sparks that start the fire. Sometimes it can be as simple as letting them know that yes, they can achieve their goals and dreams.

If every email you send out does at least one of these three things, then your readers will continue to open and read your emails.

2: Nearly Every Single Email You Send Should Have a BUY Link

Every email you send should have a link. Every. Single. One. You’re training your readers to click, and if there’s no link, then they can’t click.

And for 98% of your emails, that link should be a BUY link.

You built your list to make money. Yes, you might have other reasons, too, but let’s be honest: Your list is your business, and you need to treat it as a business.

As long as you are ONLY promoting GREAT products, you should be 100% confident in sending out a buy link in your emails.

In the handful of emails where you put a link to something free, there should be a buy link very close by. It might be inside the freebie or on the same page as the freebie, but it’s there.

Train your subscribers from DAY ONE to click your links.

3: Send Out an Email Every Single Day

Okay, if you absolutely, positively must take one day off each week, that’s okay. But ideally, you’ll be sending an email every single day.

Are you worried that people will unsubscribe because you email daily? Don’t.

First, worry is useless.

Second, some will unsubscribe. Some ALWAYS unsubscribe, no matter what you do or don’t do. It’s inevitable, and it means that you are not the right fit for them and they are not the right fit for you.

When you stop caring about unsubscribes, you stop being scared to do your job and email every day.

And the more emails you send, the more money you make.

Salespeople are taught to love hearing “No,” because it takes a certain number of “No’s” to get to a “Yes.”

In email marketing, it takes a certain number of unsubscribes to know that you are doing your job, which is to define your tribe and please your tribe. Not the whole world. Not your whole list. Just those people who best relate to you and your messages.

Learn to love the unsubscribes, because each one tells you that you are doing something RIGHT.

Remember this: One third of people will LOVE you. One third of people will DISLIKE you. And one third of people won’t give a darn either way.

It’s life. It’s business. It’s the way the world works. So don’t worry about – embrace it, because you can earn a literal FORTUNE from that one third of people who love you.

4: Resend to The Un-opens

Send out your daily email in the morning. Later in the day (afternoon or evening, your choice) go into your autoresponder and send out the same email to everyone who did not open the email from that morning. Change the subject line to something like, “Did you miss this notice about…” or whatever is appropriate.

By re sending to those who did not open the first email, you will get more opens, which means more clicks and more sales.

If your autoresponder allows it, do this automatically so that you don’t have to manually do it each day. If your autoresponder does not allow you to resend to the un-opens, then get a new autoresponder.

This is a rough estimate, but approximately 20-25% of your sales will come from that second mailing each day. That is a LOT of money to lose by not taking this simple step.

There you have it. Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?

Following these 4 steps while continuing to build your list can earn you a fortune. And never again will you let anyone tell you that email marketing is dead, because you will know better.

Irving

This site is being built with the help of fantastic information from:

This is a simple case study that could work in a variety of niches.

This guy – we’ll call him Gary – was new to online marketing and had zero credibility because he hadn’t built anything or made a dime.

The one thing he did have was a ton of knowledge from researching and reading. He knew how to do a ton of stuff, he just hadn’t done it yet.

So, here’s what he did:

One by one, he tried different things and he recorded his experience with each. Whether it was putting up his first site, building a list, putting together a funnel, driving traffic, using social media – he documented everything as he went along. And he did this in a niche unrelated to online marketing.

From these he made reports, blogposts, articles, videos and so forth.

He had a ton of content, all of it self-generated. And he did this is a surprisingly short time.

Once he had some of this content (he’s still creating content today, because it’s a never-ending process) he started giving it away.

He spent money to continuously build his list of new online marketers, and he showers this list with so many freebies and goodies, they simply adore him.

This might seem contradictory – if he’s giving everything away, how does he make money?

He doesn’t promote anybody else’s products, only his own, which consist of courses, coaching programs and done-for-you services. All of these are high ticket products and services ranging in price from $300 to $3,000.

Once a month he opens up one or more of his products and promotes it to his list.

And since his list LOVES him and opens all of his emails and TRUSTS him, he makes plenty of sales.

In fact, he averages $12,000 a month in sales, and growing. He invests about $1800 a month in building his IM list, leaving him with about $10,000 profit per month, on average.

And to think he just started doing this 12 months ago. Not bad!

Weird Way to Get More Subscribers

This is a slight variation of a common trick you’ve seen if you have an ad blocker.

You go to a site that makes its revenue from ads, and the site asks you to disable your ad blocker so they can continue to bring you great content. This is commonly done on newspaper websites. You get to see the content for free because they make a few cents on ad revenue from your visit.

If you take this idea and twist it a bit, here’s what happens:

Assuming you have ads of some sort on your site, offer to let your visitors have an ad free experience in exchange for joining your list. You can still offer a lead magnet, too, if you want. But the enticement of not being bothered by ads might just the ticket to get them on your list.

This will depend on numerous factors, so be sure to test. Also, take note if those who subscribe to not see ads turn into paying customers.

The 80/20 Rule is Costing You Money

Have you heard of Pareto’s Law? He said that you get 80% of your results from 20% of what you do.

And I’m here to tell you that if you buy into this “Law,” then you’re losing money.

No, I’m not saying Pareto wasn’t one smart dude. Nor am I saying he’s wrong. What I am saying is that as internet marketers, we’ve been looking at this rule all wrong.

I had one of my coaching clients make a list last year of all her different income streams and how much they earn her each month.

Her income streams included email marketing, software products of her own, info products of her own, coaching services, her continuity program and affiliate continuity products, apps and several other sources.

Yes, altogether she was making a lot of money. And yes, 3 of her income streams were much larger than the others. It didn’t come out to 80% (more like 68%) but you could see how some income streams were definitely more valuable than others.

She asked me if she should dump the other income streams and just focus on the big 3.

After all, that’s pretty common advice, right? Focus on what’s already making you bank and don’t worry about the small stuff.

But things can change online in a heartbeat. Google changes it’s algorithm, or a government agency makes new rules that change everything.

You’re an Amazon affiliate making good money and one day you wake up and you’re banned. Amazon says you broke one of their rules and they won’t even tell you which one. It happens.

Or your ecommerce business is getting tons of sales but then Facebook shuts down your ad account. It happens.

Or you have your own website and your products are earning you 4 figures a month or even 4 figures a day. Then without warning Paypal shuts down your account and your sales are at zero. It happens.

A big income stream today can be gone literally tomorrow. We’ve seen this happen too many times to think we’re immune, which is precisely why you want not just one or two highly profitable income streams, but SEVERAL.

It’s not about being greedy, it’s about being smart.

So, here’s the advice I gave her: Take these smaller income streams, the ones that are turning a small profit now, and ramp them up. Choose one and concentrate your efforts to increase that income stream and put it on autopilot.

Then choose a second income stream and do the same. Don’t neglect your other income streams in the process. But focus each month on one income stream and figure out how to make it bigger and more automated.

She took my advice, and after six months she had not 3 big income streams, but 7. And she’s got security, too. Because now if half of her income streams go down, she’s still got 3 or 4 that are continuing to pay off.

If you have more than one income stream, you might want to do the same. See how you can increase the smaller streams, and then put it on automatic so you don’t have to spend a lot of time on it while you move on to the next one.

If you only have one income stream, then maybe it’s time to add a second, and a third.

You’ll make more money and have more security.

It just makes sense.

Irving

This site is being built with the help of fantastic information from:

I just opted into the email list of a well-known marketer to get his 3 productivity secrets, and I noticed a couple of important points:

First, he never, ever mentions that you are getting a report. He simply refers to what you’re getting… 3 productivity secrets.

Some people, especially in the online marketing world, don’t attribute a very high value to reports, so this makes good sense.

Second, this report is a lead-in to his real product which is a productivity course. He tells you about this course on the, ‘We’ve sent you the link, check your email’ page, in the email itself, and again on the download page.

Each time he mentions the course, he also tells you to, ‘Use PromoCode: SMPL1234 for a very special surprise at checkout.’

By the time I’d seen this promo code 3 times (thank you page, email, download page) I had to find out just how much of a ‘very special surprise’ this might be. Frankly, I thought maybe he was giving away the product for almost nothing.

But clicking on the page, I realized it was a course, not a PDF as I’d imagined. No sign of a price on the sales page, so I clicked over to the checkout page and fell off my chair.

I was expecting something under $50, or maybe even free.

But it was $997.

Getting back into my chair, I inserted the promo code, thinking it might take the price down drastically.

It cut the price in half.

Now, normally this might be terrific. But the value of the course had not been built up enough, at least for me.

From the title of the product and the short description, I was expecting a PDF of less than 100 pages. This is not a difficult subject, and there are tons of books on the subject of productivity on Amazon for less than $20.

Instead of being a book, it was a series of 20 videos. And while I’m sure there are people who prefer videos, I just don’t have the time or inclination to download and watch 20 of them. It’s not going to happen.

And here’s where it went really wrong for me personally: Because there was no price on the sales page, I barely skimmed the page before clicking the “add to cart” to cart button to find out how much the product was.

Hence, the falling out of the chair reaction. I think I even clutched my chest, and I know I audibly gasped.

The value simply had not been built for a $997 product.

This marketer must be crazy, right?

Nope. While the offer was most definitely not for me, I happen to know that this particular marketer knows his stuff.

He’s been doing this for 20 years. He tests everything. He’s made millions. And if this didn’t work for him, he wouldn’t be doing it.

Consider how many sales he would need if the price were $20, versus $500.

He’d need 25 sales to equal $500. In his testing, he must have found that it’s easier to get one $500 sale than 25 sales at $20.

What’s the lesson here?

Test everything. I would have guessed that $20 or so would be the right price point. I also would have guessed that putting the price on the main sales page would be a good thing.

He found out otherwise, by testing.

Placing the offer in 3 places in quick succession with the promo code worked. It got me to the sales page, didn’t it? And I wasn’t even all that interested in the topic – just curious, really.

He could have broken that price down to the ridiculous and put it in the headline, such as $1.37 per day. That might have kept me satisfied long enough to actually read the entire sales page. I wonder if he tested this.

One last thing… when you are joining lists of fellow marketers, carefully watch the process being used to get you on board and purchasing.

You’ll get ideas, tips and tricks you won’t find in any course. Take into consideration the experience of the marketer – the more experienced they are, the more you can trust that what they are doing is working. Make notes and incorporate the pertinent ideas into your own business, testing everything along the way.

Irving

Killer Copy for Thank You Pages

It’s hard to sometimes know just what you’re supposed to put on each page of your funnel, including your, ‘thank you for subscribing’ page.

You need to reassure new subscribers that they did the right thing. You’ve got to let them know how to get the lead magnet. And you want to convince them to click on that email and follow the instructions.

And you need to do it all in as few words as possible.

Here’s a template you can use for the page new subscribers see when they opt into your list to get your free lead magnet:

Success! Your request has been received!

Here’s What to Do Next

We have received your request for [insert name of lead magnet]…

These secrets will help you [benefit] and [benefit] without [pain point] …

And much, much more!

My system is in the process of sending you the access link via the email address you provided: [their email address]

“Oh No!!

I typed my email in wrong! What do I do?”

Mistakes happen!

If your email address above has an error, or you would like to receive access to a different email address, please Click Here
to correct your email address.

Otherwise, check your email now for a message from:

[Exact ‘from’ field of the email message they will receive]

The subject line will be:

[Exact subject line of the email]

I’ll see you in your email inbox!

[Your Salutation]

[Your Name]

“What to do if you DON’T get the access email?”

1) Don’t panic — we’re on your side.

2) Check your SPAM, Junk, or Promotions folder/tabs

3) Click here to join our Help Desk. We’ll get you taken care of!

Irving

Do just one of these and your sales will increase.

Do all 4 and it’s entirely possible your sales will at least double.

1: Pre-qualify your leads.

Also known as list-segmentation, this technique finds the right prospects for the right products.

For example, let’s say you have a content page covering a broad topic, such as social media marketing.

Give your readers multiple options to follow in the sidebar and at the bottom of the page, like this:

Which one of these do you want to know more about…

Marketing via Facebook?

Marketing via Snapchat?

Marketing via Instagram?

Each button sends them to an appropriate squeeze page where they get a free lead magnet on that topic.

Now you know for a fact that this list is interested in Facebook, that list is interested in Snapchat and so forth.

This allows you to zero in on your prospects and offer them exactly what they want.

2: Tell the Truth

If you’re in the online marketing niche, let them know that building a business online takes time and money.

If you’re in the weight loss niche, let them know that losing weight and keeping it off takes time and effort.

Whatever niche you’re in, you want to deter people who are looking for magic answers because they will drain you of your time and energy, as well as refund like crazy.

Plus, you are also sending the message to everyone else that you are the real deal and don’t make ridiculous promises you can’t keep.

3: Increase Your Emails

Add more follow up emails to every sequence and you will make more sales.

Don’t get trapped into thinking everyone sees every email you send out, and thus you only need to send one or two for each promotion.

And do remember that the more exposure someone has to an offer, the more likely they are to buy it.

It could be the fourth, fifth or even tenth email of a series that finally makes the sale.

4: Romance New Subscribers

For the first week after someone joins your list, send them plenty of high-quality free content along with all the reasons why they should buy your upsell.

Do this right and you’ll be amazed at how many more people buy your initial upsell. Your lead magnet is still fresh on their mind. They’ve seen your upsell on your thank you page and your download page, so that’s on their mind as well.

Now just follow up with lots of great info and remind them of why they want and need your upsell.

Add in a deadline to get special pricing, and sales should go through the roof.

Irving

Trying to recruit affiliates is a lot easier if you can offer 100% commission on the front-end product and 50% commission on each upsell.

If you only have a front-end product, the profit potential tends to go down and it’s a little harder to attract those affiliates.

But what if you don’t have any upsells to your product, and you don’t want to create any, either?

Here are a few ideas:

If you’re selling software, you might offer a multi-site license or a developer’s license as your upsell. For that matter, you can offer all three on the main sales page, and price it in such a way that nearly all the buyers take the most expensive choice.

For example, the plug-in alone might be $29, the multi-site license might be $33, and the developer’s license might be $37. Who isn’t going to take the third option? I’ve seen sales go through the roof with this kind of offer, to the point where you don’t need upsells because your conversion rate is so high, there’s plenty of profit for you and your affiliates.

Or let’s say you’re selling content, like a report, book or some videos. You might sell it outright on the main sales page, and then offer resell rights and PLR rights as your upsells.

How about offering coaching as the upsell? Your main product tells them how to achieve the result they’re looking for, and your first upsell is a series of calls to answer questions, and your second upsell is email coaching, and your third upsell is one-on-one coaching or even a “we do it for you” type of service.

Even offering different formats can act as an upsell. Maybe your main product is a PDF report for $9. Your first upsell is the audio version for $12, and your second upsell is a video version for $29, discounted by $12 if they took the audio option and the full $29 price if they didn’t.

You don’t always need to add more products for your upsells. Usually there is something you can offer that takes almost no extra effort – such as the Word files for PLR or the rights to use software on multiple sites. Or instead of additional products you can offer more services, such as coaching calls, email coaching and one-on-one coaching.

Irving