Tag: internet marketing

1. How to [Get a Benefit] on a Shoestring Budget

Example: How to Build a House on a Shoestring Budget

2. How Absolutely Anyone Can [Get a Benefit]

Example: How Absolutely Anyone Can Look Like an Athlete

3. [Number] Weird Ways to [Get a Benefit]

Example: 3 Weird Ways to Get Rid of Belly Fat

4. [Something Bad Happened] – Now What?

Example: Your Wife Left You – Now What?

5. [Option 1 or Option 2] – Which Is Better?

Example: Red Heads or Blondes – Which Is Better?

6. Last Chance: [Get Some Benefit/Discount/Etc.]!

Example: Last Chance to Get 75% Off!

7. [This Thing] Disappears in 24 Hours

Example: This $200-Off Coupon Disappears in 24 Hours

8. [Buy Something Now], and Save [$X Amount]

Example: Buy the Manly Man Dating Course Now, and Save $25

9. How to [Get a Benefit], Fast

Example: How to Get Rid of Tax Problems, Fast

10. The #1 Way to [Get a Benefit]

Example: The #1 Way to Look 10 Years Younger

11. How Safe [Is Your Object]?

Example: How Safe are Your Retirement Funds?

12. [Some Process] Made Easy

Example: Getting Rid of Cellulite Made Easy

13. Are You Making These [Type of] Mistakes?

Example: Are You Making These Facebook Advertising Mistakes?

14. How [Some Specific Thing] [Resulted in Some Bad Thing]

Example: How My Stupidity Destroyed My Business

15. Are You Afraid of [Some Task]?

Example: Are You Afraid of Website Building?

16. Get the Insider Secrets to [Some Topic]

Example: Get the Insider Secrets for Million Dollar Product Launches

17. You’ll Never Believe What This [Type of Person] Did

Example: You’ll Never Believe What This Waitress Did to Start a Business

18. Start [Getting Some Benefit] for Just [Low Dollar Amount]

Example: Start Getting Targeted Traffic for Just $1

19. How I [Did Some Astonishing Thing]

Example: How I Got Endorsed by Oprah

20. FLASH SALE: [Description]

Example: FLASH SALE: Four Hours, $40 Off!

21. The Quick and Easy Way to [Get a Benefit]

Example: The Quick and Easy Way to Lose 10 Pounds

22. The Ultimate Guide to [Getting Some Benefit]

Example: The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Best-Selling Author

23. A Surprising Way to [Get a Benefit]

Example: A Surprising Way to Get a Big Promotion

24. Want [Some Benefit]? Read this

Example: Want More Traffic? Read This

25. Don’t [Take Some Action] Until [You Do Some Other Thing]

Example: Don’t Buy a New Car Until You Read This

Irving

Here are 5 tricks membership site owners use to quickly get members for their new membership sites:

1: Offer Charter Pricing

You might offer the first 100 or so members who join your membership a special low price for life. Even when you raise the price in the future, charter members will always pay the same low rate.

This generates sales quickly and allows you to say that you already have 100+ members and growing. Social proof is a great influencer, because when people see how popular your site is, they’ll want to join.

Plus, the charter members are made to feel special when they carry the title, “charter member.” This makes them more loyal and less likely to cancel their membership.

2: Create a Low or No Cost Trial Price

You might offer a 7-day trial for $1, for example, or even a free 30 days to try out the membership. In either case new members sign up with their credit card. If they cancel before the trial period is over, they’re not charged the regular price when it comes due.

This should bring a flood of customers. And when they’re happy with what they see inside the membership, they’ll stay. It’s a great way to overcome objections and make people feel safe when joining.

3: Splinter and Tripwire

Take one month of content and sell it for a low price.

Then offer the full membership on the backend of the offer. This gives prospects a taste of what you offer without making the monthly commitment up front.

4: Time-Sensitive Offers

Offer special bonuses or discounts if they join within the next “X” number of days. These bonuses could be extra content, support and mentoring groups, group coaching or whatever works.

5: Make it Hurt not to Join

Let’s say you put out a monthly newsletter as your membership. Each newsletter is hopefully chock-full of killer info that any subscriber would count themselves lucky to have.

A few days prior to releasing the next issue, let non-subscribers know what’s in the upcoming issue and what they’re about to miss if they don’t join in time to receive that issue.

If you maintain a list of prospects not yet in your membership, this is super simple to do. You can also create a blog post and use social media to drive people to the post, letting them know what they’re about to miss.

Irving

Do Reviews Affect Sales?

According to the e-commerce consulting firm Pattern: When a product rating goes up by one star on Amazon, the sales increase by 26%, proving how incredibly powerful reviews are.

Forget Free, Try $0

Without giving away any names, I just saw a squeeze page (landing page) offering, “The 3 Secrets to ___” for just $0.

I don’t know why we don’t see $0 more often because it’s an interesting way to present the free concept. But does it work?

You might want to test it on your squeeze page and see if $0 converts better than ‘free’ – I know I’m going to try it.

$8,500 a Month Answering Emails

Have you got two hours a day to answer emails?

One gal I know is making approximately $8,500 a month working two hours a day.

But there is one catch: To do this, you’ve got to have your own course. It can be a course on anything, from dating to finance to fitness to make money online.

It might take you a month to create this course, or it might take you a weekend. Essentially you want to teach all the ins and outs of your topic, and step by step show them how to get the results your buyers seek.

Video is great for this, since you can record a video course with 15 to 20 modules in just a couple of days if you know your topic. Start with a detailed outline and then start recording.

Once you have your course, you’re going to sell it with email coaching. Yes, there are tons of courses out there on just about every topic, but most of them do NOT offer any coaching.

The other courses might offer a help desk where someone may or may not answer a question or two. Or they might offer a Facebook page, where fellow students might take a stab at answering questions.

But you’re going to offer real coaching via email, with a 24 hour or less turnaround on weekdays.

Every day you go online and answer the questions, which you’ll find isn’t very difficult or taxing.

Some questions will be repeated over and over again, and for those you can simply copy and paste the answer. You can also record a video that answers the most common questions, to reduce the number of email questions you get in the future.

Sell your product as a coaching course to differentiate it from anything else out there. Position yourself as an expert who will answer their questions and even hold their hands as they go through the process your course teaches.

For a product like this, you can charge several hundred dollars or perhaps more, depending on the course and the niche. You can also let affiliates promote your course, although you might want to make the commission about 20 to 40%, since you are providing a service.

And you can also offer payments to make your course accessible to more buyers.

Sell this course as your final upsell in your funnel, as well as a stand-alone product that you promote through your autoresponder. Be sure to choose an evergreen topic, so you can continue to sell the course for years (updating as needed.)

The email work will be less than you think, too. You’ll find there are three types of buyers for your course:

• Those who never email you
• Those who only send you an occasional email
• Those who want you to hold their hand every step of the way.

The vast majority of buyers will be in the first two categories. And those who want hand holding will likely become your friends and buy everything else you offer for a long time to come.

If you choose, you can also offer an upgrade to this course that involves periodic Skype coaching, too. You might limit this upgrade to a certain number of people to keep the price high and your time commitment manageable.

Imagine earning $5,000 to $10,000 a month just for answering emails a couple of hours a day – not bad. You might even consider doing this with multiple courses, if time allows.

Irving

Beginner’s Guide to A/B Split Testing

“Help! I’ve been doing online marketing for some time now, but I still don’t fully understand this whole ‘split testing’ thing I keep hearing about. What is it, why is it so important and how do I do it?”

Split testing, also known as A/B testing, is an experiment in marketing where you ‘split’ your audience into two or more groups to test variations of a campaign or website page. Your goal is to find out which variation works better and thus will earn you more money.

You can also split test things unrelated to selling online, such as which blog post headline pulls in the most views, which subject line gets the most opens and so forth.

Essentially, split testing helps you to solve problems and improve conversions.

Here are just a few reasons why you might split test:

To Remove Guesswork

Anyone can follow a gut feeling on what will work best. But if you use hard data, then you know for certain which variables are working better than others.

To Improve Visitor Experience

When people come to your website, it’s to do something: Maybe it’s to find information, solve a problem or simply to browse. But if they encounter confusing copy, hard to find buttons and so forth, it’s hard for them to achieve their goals and they have a bad user experience.

This negatively impacts your conversion rates – always a bad thing for you and your visitors.

But by using data gathered through visitor behavior analysis tools such as Google Analytics, heat maps and surveys, you can solve these problems.

For example, if people are having a hard time finding the “buy now” button, you can test placing the button in different places, making it bigger and even changing the color and the copy before the button and on the button itself.

To Reduce Bounce Rates

Bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who enter your site and then leave, rather than continuing to visit more pages on your site.

“Sticky” websites that hold visitors for a longer time period are better for SEO and traffic conversion. A high bounce rate may indicate that your landing page (the site’s entrance page) isn’t relevant to your visitors.

For example, if people come to your site expecting to find a cure for acne, and instead they find an article describing why acne occurs, they’re likely to go to another site to find the answer they’re looking for.

With split testing, you can test multiple variations of elements on your site until you find the optimal version that improves user experience and reduces bounce rates.

To Get Better ROI from Existing Traffic

The cost of acquiring quality traffic can be your greatest expense. Split testing allows you to make the most of the traffic you receive, increasing your conversions without buying more traffic.

For example, if right now you are making 1 sale from 100 visitors, and with A/B testing you can increase that to 2 sales or even 3 sales per 100 visitors, then you have just doubled or tripled your profits without having to increase your traffic.

And sometimes even a minor change can create a major shift in your conversion rates. The problem is, you’ll never know this unless you test.

To Make Minor Modifications to Proven Pages

Let’s say you want to make some incremental changes to a web page that is already performing well. If you don’t test the changes, you are jeopardizing your current conversion rate.

For example, if you change your product description, it could improve sales or it could have the opposite effect. By testing the new copy against the old, or by testing two versions of the new copy, you can learn which version your prospects prefer.

To Lower Cart Abandonment

Half or more of customers who place items in their shopping cart leave the website without checking out.

By testing things like urgency, scarcity, product photos and descriptions, the copy on your checkout page and so forth, you can lower your abandonment rate.

How Can You Split Test?

Running an A/B test is simply creating two different versions of one piece of content, with changes made to a single variable. You’ll show these two pieces of content to very similar audiences and analyze which one performed better.

In A/B testing, always test one thing at a time. If you change your headline, your call to action and your button color all in the same test, you won’t know which of these performed better. It could be that headline A, call to action B and button color A are the winners, but you’ll have no way of knowing those are the three items you should use.

Let’s say you want to test your “Buy Now” button. I know this sounds like a trivial test, but even something as simple as button size, color, location and copy can sometimes make a significant difference in your conversion rate.

Here’s how to do it:

• Create another web page identical to the first page, except for this one change.
• Test these two versions by showing each of them to half of your visitors, with the visitors originating from the same place.
• The one that converts higher is your winner.

A/B testing can be a continuous process.

Let’s say you’re testing the location of testimonials on your sales letter. Currently you have the testimonials in the middle of the sales copy. You test placing the testimonials at the bottom of the page, just before the buy now button. This new location tests higher.

Now you test placing the testimonials at the top of the page against having them at the bottom. Having them at the top tests higher, so this is where you place them.

But you’re not done yet.

Next, you test splitting the testimonials, with half at the top of the page and the other half before the buy button. This option works even better than having them all at the top.

And so it goes. You could test placing the testimonials in a sidebar on the right side of the page or the left side of the page.

You can test what kind of testimonials to use: Long ones, short ones, video or written, photos or no photos, blue background or gray background and so forth.

It sounds like a lot of work, but thankfully it’s not that difficult.

There are A/B testing tools you can use, such as Google Analytics’ Experiments which will let you A/B test up to 10 different versions of a single web page and compare their performance, using a random sample of users.

In our testimonial example above, if you don’t mind making several versions of your sales page and if you have enough traffic, you can simultaneously test all the locations for the testimonials at once.

Once you have the winner, you can then simultaneously test all the different versions of the testimonials, and so forth.

What Can You A/B Test?

Short answer – just about anything on your pages.

Long answer – I’ve compiled a list of possibilities below to get you started.

Calls to Action

You want your visitors to take some sort of action, right? It might be purchasing, signing up, downloading, sharing or simply reading. Here’s a few things you can test on your calls to action:

• The call-to-action (CTA) text on your buttons
• The locations of your CTA buttons
• The color, size and shape of your CTA buttons
• Testing multiple CTAs per page against one CTA per page
• Hyperlinks versus buttons or in addition to buttons
• CTA hover states to show the click-ability of buttons

Content

As they say, content is king. Content writing entertains, informs and entices online audiences to stay longer on your website. It fuels your online business and testing your content may lead to better engagement and larger conversions. Here are some content tests that might surprise you:

• Test the tone of your content. Professional or laid back? Speaking to the group or the individual? Comic versus more serious? Reporter versus guru?
• Test non-gated (free to read) content against gated content. The gate could be as simple as sharing their email address or more exclusive such as joining a monthly membership.
• Your “About” info can be crucial to building trust. Test placing your “about” content on the home page.
• Content font type and font size
• Scroll down or click to next page for more content
• Short or long content

Copy

Copy pushes people to a desired action, such a reading an article or buying a product. It can set the tone and helps users understand what you’re all about and the options they have on your site. These tests can help you find the copy that resonates with your audience.

• Test headlines – both the content of the headline and the headline length
• Test taglines
• Test product descriptions
• Test using paragraphs versus bulleted lists
• Test using many sub-headlines throughout your text, versus just one headline at the top followed by all content
• Test using positive versus negative headlines and framing
• Test usage and placement of endorsements and testimonials

Visual Media

This is one of the most important areas to test, yet most marketers never do it. If you have just the right photo, video or illustration, it can improve engagement and conversions in a dramatic way, often on a subconscious level. Conversely, you can also lose a visitor or even a sale with one bad visual choice. Here’s what to test:

• Test the image(s) on your landing page extensively. Begin by testing product versus people.
• If users prefer people in the landing page image, test age, gender, close-up versus full body and so forth.
• If user prefer a product image, test several images and even a product video or 360 degree product images.
• On your site, test stock images versus your own images.
• Test people images versus animal versus object or scenery and so forth.
• For videos, test auto-play versus click-to-play.
• If click-to-play wins, test the static image that appears prior to play.
• Test different voice-overs for videos.
• Test humorous images versus serious images.
• Test adding different image captions.
• Test using one image in each blog post versus several images.
• Test using images on your sales copy.
• Test using larger fonts, different colors for your website, different headers and different menu bars.
• Test rotating pictures versus a static image on your homepage.

Funnels

If your goal is to get more people from one page to the next – like in a checkout funnel, sign up flow, or lead nurture – then A/B testing is your best bet. Funnels are rife with low-hanging fruit to test:

• Test removing extraneous distractions – like other product offers, promotions, or shipping information – from each page in the purchase flow. Often a simplified experience can drive more conversions.
• Test the number of pages in your funnel. How does a single page sales letter compare to spreading information across multiple pages?
• Test removing navigation to any pages outside the checkout funnel.
• Or try replacing certain steps within your funnel with modal boxes. For example, try making shipping options a modal box instead of a page.
• Test letting your customers know up front about an upsell versus not letting them know. For example, if you offer a done-for-you service for one of the steps in your program, this can overcome an objection that they can’t do this and save the sale.
• Test different price points for the main product, the upsells and the down sells.
• Test packaging two upsells together versus selling them separately.
• Test the copy you place at the top of each upsell page, letting them know their product will be in their inbox soon and in the meantime you’ve got another great offer for them. The wording on this can make or break your upsell sales.
• A great funnel creator.

Site Navigation

Imagine suddenly finding yourself in a strange land, not knowing exactly where you are or where you should go. That’s what happens every time someone lands on your website for the first time. The navigation menu can help people find what they want or annoy them into leaving posthaste. Here are some ideas for how to make it better:

• Test the order of menu items in your site navigation.
• Test the titles on each button, as well as drop down menus. A simple change, like Why Use Us to How it Works may have a significant impact.
• Test the display of your navigation bar. Do site visitors prefer a horizontal or vertical orientation?
• Test a fixed navigation bar that travels down the page as your site visitors scroll.
• Test button colors and sizes, as well as the color and size of the navigation bar.
• Test having a detailed navigation bar versus a simplified version.

A word of caution: Returning visitors may be accustomed to seeing your site in a certain way. If they can’t immediately find what they are looking for, they may or may not do the work to locate it. If possible, run your A/B tests on new traffic only, and once you have a winning design, then roll it out to everyone.

Forms

Forms can make or break a user’s experience, and you could be losing new subscribers or customers for the silliest of reasons. For example, if the data field boxes are the same color or nearly the same color as the background (something I see all the time) it can be difficult to figure out where to type information.

Try these tests on the forms on your site:

• Test the length and even the formatting of sign-up forms. Try removing non-essential sign-up boxes or relocating them to a page further down the funnel.
• Everybody loves free stuff, and they like MORE free stuff even more. Try a special offer, discount, or promotion to increase sign-ups, or even combining a special discount along with several free reports for an entire package of goodies.
• Test reassuring visitors that under no circumstances will you share their information for any purposes, including spam.
• Test adding humorous elements to the sign up process.
• Try making individual form fields larger as well as a different color from the background. Larger fields feel much more friendly and they’re more accessible to those with low vision.
• Try asking for different information in your form fields. For example, business email versus email, or work phone versus cellphone.
• Test asking a surprising question, like what their favorite color is. You never know – this could increase response. (Yes, I’ve seen it happen.)

Email Marketing

How do you get your marketing emails opened and clicked? Here are some testable elements that can increase open rates and click throughs:

• Test subject lines extensively. Ideally (if you have a large list) test headlines with a small portion of your list and then send the winner out to the rest of the list.
• Test the length of your email subject lines, as well as testing punctuation and other symbols versus no symbols.
• Test personalized versus un-personalized emails.
• Test different days and times to send emails to find the optimal window.
• Test sending an email daily versus two or three times per week. I can almost guarantee sales will be better with more emails.
• Test your “from” field.
• Test changing the look and design of your emails.
• Test adding images versus no images.
• Test using teasers at the end of each email that lets them know what’s coming in the next email.
• Test hiding Easter eggs inside your emails, such as secret codes or words that unlock some special freebie.
• Test sending out the same emails twice in one day. The first time is to your entire list, and the second time is those who didn’t open the first email.

Pricing and Shipping

Finding just the right price point can increase revenue, sometimes with fewer sales. Use these tests to maximize revenue from your site:

• Test offering a free trial versus the full pay up front.
• For large ticket items, test a free trial versus several payments versus paying up front.
• Test raising your price to include shipping, thus being able to say the shipping is free. Place a ‘free shipping!’ notice at the top of each page for your test.
• Test having check boxes auto-selected as default. For example, a customer’s billing address could be defaulted to the same as their shipping address.
• For a membership or subscription site, test whether annual billing or monthly billing generates more revenue. Be sure to factor in attrition on the monthly rate to know for a fact which is more profitable.
• Try anchoring customers with a high price before revealing a lower price. This can take the form of, “Normally $200, now just $47!” or, “Competitors charge $200, but you can own it just $47!”

Remember, these are just starting points and not meant to be a comprehensive guide. You’ll find things to test on your site that aren’t on this list.

A Few A/B Testing Tips

Know Your Goal –
Your first step in A/B testing is to think about which metrics are important to you and what your goals are. This will help you to set up your tests in the most effective way.

Create a ‘Control” and a ‘Challenger’

Your control is the page as it is now, completely unaltered. Your challenger is an identical page except for the one element you are testing.

Determine Your Sample Size – Decide ahead of time how may visitors you need to complete your test. In the case of testing an email, if your list is big enough, you might send the two variations to smaller samples of your list. Determine the winner and then send the winning email to the rest of the list.

Multiple Versions of One Variable – While you only want to test one variable at a time, it’s fine to test multiple version of that one variable simultaneously, as long as you don’t mind making all the different versions at once.

Simultaneous Testing – Always test both variations at the same time. If you test one variation at the beginning of the week and the second variation at the end of the week, how do you know that being closer to or further away from Friday payday isn’t making a difference?

The Exception –
Conversely, the exception to the previous rule is if you are testing for optimal timing. For example, you want to see if sending emails at 6am or 6pm is better.

Use Adequate Sample Size – Let your test run long enough to produce useful data. If your sample size isn’t large enough, then you don’t know for a fact that there is a statistically significant difference.

For example, if your conversion rate is currently 1% and you only test 100 visitors, the fact that one variable produced 1 sale and the other variable produced no sales is statistically irrelevant.

However, if you test 10,000 visitors and one variable produces 130 sales and the other one produces 100 sales, now you’ve got statistically significant results to make a decision.

Take Action Based on Your Results – If one variation is statistically superior to the other, you have a winner. Disable the losing version in your A/B testing tool.

If there is no significant statistical difference between the two, then the variable you tested didn’t impact results. Stick with your original version for now and run your next test.

What is Radical A/B Testing?

You’ll recall that we just said to test only one variable at a time, so that you know for a fact which one improves your conversions. This is known as Gradual Testing and it’s hugely effective at optimizing your site.

That said, there is a method called Radical A/B Testing that you should be aware of

Radical Testing is when you test many elements, all at the same time.

You might be wondering how the person running a radical A/B test knows which elements of the old site to keep and which to change.

They don’t.

This is an all or nothing technique, but it can be useful in certain situations, such as these:

You’re Launching a New Page

It could be a sales page or something else. The point is, you haven’t tested anything yet and you’re looking to find something that starts out converting well. You create two entirely different designs or approaches, and you test to see which one does better.

Once you have your winner, you continue using that page as you begin A/B testing each element on the page to make it even better.

Your Testing Program Has Flatlined

You’ve exhausted your A/B testing variables. You’ve tested your headlines, your colors, your calls to action, your images and everything else. Your results have reached a plateau.

You could stop testing at this point, or you could take an entirely different approach and shake things up by trying a total redesign.

You Want to See Major Results Fast

Maybe demand is low or you need a sudden influx of money. If you choose, you can take a gamble on a radical A/B test and see if it pays off.

You’ve Run Out of Ideas

The page you’ve been testing hasn’t been performing as well as you like, despite plenty of A/B testing. Maybe it’s time to develop an entirely new approach and test it against your current page.

You and Your Partner Disagree

If you’re working with someone on your page, you might have vastly different ideas of what should be done. Rather than argue, go to your respective corners and produce your best work. Then do a radical test to see who has the best page and work together to improve that page with A/B testing.

Your Visitors are Baffled

You’re getting traffic but it’s not converting. Data analytics confirms that visitors can’t find what they’re looking for. In a case like this, fixing little things might not be enough. Design an entirely new page and test it against the current page.

Your Website Doesn’t Get Much Traffic (Yet)

To do A/B tests, you need a high volume of traffic to get accurate test results. If your traffic is still low, testing will take a lot longer while you wait for appropriate sample sizes. Consider doing a radical test, making several changes at once to begin the optimization process.

Beware of Radical A/B Testing Hazards

Radical testing is a bit like tossing dice in Vegas. Yes, you might win big, but you can also lose big, too. Just as there is a chance your conversions can improve dramatically in a short period, there is also a chance your re-design won’t work at all and conversion rates will fall like a rock.

Next Steps

If your test results proved that your new design works better than the old one, it’s time to implement the new version. But you’re not done yet.

Go back to your A/B testing to adjust and fine-tune your new page for optimal conversions.

Remember, Radical testing is not a substitute for testing one element at a time. Incremental A/B testing is always going to be your clearest, cleanest approach to maximizing your website’s conversions.

Now you know more about A/B testing than probably 95% of online marketers. The next time you hear of someone launching a website or funnel only to be sadly disappointed by the results, let them know about split testing.

And if you’re not already performing split tests yourself, I highly recommend it. As you find ways to optimize your websites and sales funnels, you’ll discover it’s a lot like giving yourself raises. You’re doing the same work to bring in customers, but you’ll be earning more with each successful test.

Irving

Fixing Follow Up Failure

Mary sells Juan a $20 ebook on how to deal with his son’s ADHD.

Juan loves the book because it’s shown him several techniques to help his son without resorting to pharmaceuticals. Now Juan wants more – he wants personal coaching from someone he trusts so that he can do everything possible for his son. He loves his son dearly and money is no object.

But Mary doesn’t offer coaching. Juan finds another ADHD expert and purchases a $1,000 coaching program for 6 months.

Mary may have made $20, but she just lost $6,000.

But that couldn’t happen to you, right?

Hopefully you have at least one premium product to offer your customers and raving fans. After all, it takes a great deal of time and even money to win over a new customer these days. Once you have them, of course you’re not going to be silly enough to sell them a $20 or $50 product and then forget them.

Right?

RIGHT?

Here’s what I see time and time again. A new marketer puts all of his or her time and energy into making a great product. The product sells for less than a hundred bucks.

They make sales. They now have paying customers. And what do they do next?

They promote similarly priced affiliate products to their buyers. Sure, low-priced affiliate products are great and you should definitely promote them if you want to, but you’re leaving some serious money on the table if you do only that. Your customers have learned to trust YOUR work. They want more of your stuff, and some of them are willing to pay big $$$ for it. So why not give them that chance?

Let’s go back to Mary and Juan. Juan purchases Mary’s low-ticket offer and he’s happy. Mary then systematically follows up with Juan, sending him tips and offering her help. Juan sees that Mary not only knows her stuff; she’s also offering to be of further assistance. Maybe Mary offers a free 15-minute coaching session. Juan eagerly makes an appointment. Now they are on the phone or Skype together, and Juan quickly realizes Mary can help him. She offers her coaching program, and Juan signs up on the spot.

Okay, maybe this is too much for you at this point in time. Maybe the thought of doing one-on-one calls freaks you out just a little bit. You were hoping you could stay semi-anonymous on the internet and still make good money.

I’ll let you in on a secret; the more personal you get with your customers, the more money they will spend with you.

This means you’ve got to let them in. Show them your personality, let them hear your voice and even see your face (unless you’re in witness protection, in which case, forget this advice.)

Get personal and you will make more money. But I digress; let’s get back to fixing follow up failure.

For now, let’s say you don’t have a higher priced program to offer. You don’t have a course or personal coaching or any of that. That’s still no excuse for not systematically nudging your customers towards higher priced products.

Do a little searching and you’ll find plenty of high ticket items in almost any niche that you can promote. Find something that you really, truly believe in and sign up to become an affiliate.

Now ask yourself what you would have to know to purchase this high-priced product yourself. How would a marketer guide you from buying a low-ticket item all the way up to purchasing this $1,000 or $5,000 program?

Here’s what I might suggest:

Create a lead magnet that perfectly compliments the high-ticket item. Maybe it’s a $2,000 program on how to become a social media marketing expert and hire yourself out to other businesses. Your lead magnet might be, “How to earn $100,00 a year being a social media manager.”

On the back of this free offer, have a paid offer that teaches them more about social media marketing. It might be a general overview of several social media channels and how they work, or a more in-depth course on just one social media channel.

You see how this is working…

You’re targeting the exact people who want to spend that $2,000 on the program. You’re setting yourself up as an expert on social media marketing (even if you’re not an expert) by giving great content.

Now start following up. Show them how great it is to be a social media marketing manager or consultant. Give them stories of other people who have succeeded doing this. Give them tips on what to do (but not on how to do it.)

Always be offering that big-ticket item, but not overtly. More of a, “when you’re ready” kind of thing. Then once every so often, make a big push complete with bonuses.

If you’re up for it, offer free 15-minute consultations. Your main goal during these consultations is to find out what they want. If the $2,000 program will meet their needs, tell them. Explain that if you were to teach them one-on-one everything in that program, you would have to charge 5 times as much.

And while you’re doing all of this, you can still be promoting the $20 items and the $97 items, too.

But most of all, be their trusted source and let them know that if they are serious about their future, then they need that course.

This is so simple… I don’t know why every marketer doesn’t do it.

Let’s look at how to make $100,000, assuming you’re an affiliate earning 50% commission:

• Sell 20,000 products $10
• Sell 2,000 products at $100
• Sell 200 products at $1,000
• Sell 100 products at $2,000
• Sell 20 products at $10,000

And if you’re selling your own products, the numbers look like this:

• Sell 10,000 products $10
• Sell 1,000 products at $100
• Sell 100 products at $1,000
• Sell 50 products at $2,000
• Sell 10 products at $10,000

Another way to look at it:

Over the course of a year you sell 1,000 products at $20.

If you do nothing else, you’ve earned $20,000.

But let’s say you also follow up and sell 100 products at $200.

You’ve just doubled your income, without getting a single extra customer.

And you follow up some more, and you sell 10 products at $2,000.

Now instead of a $20,000 year, you’ve had a $60,000 year.

Your results will vary. In my experience, these numbers are super conservative, but it all depends on a lot of different things.

But I can tell you this: You won’t sell a single high-ticket item if you don’t follow up with your customers and make the offer.

One more thing – in the examples above I used the traditional funnel method of starting with a low-priced product and working up to a high-priced product.

But I’ve also seen marketers give away a LOT of stuff and only sell the high-ticket items. They don’t bother with the $20 offers, and yet they sell plenty of the $1,000 + products.

This can work in a variety of ways. The key is to realize that you CAN sell high ticket items. It’s just a matter of getting comfortable with the idea.

I’ve heard from plenty of marketers over the years who say, “Yeah, but my list won’t buy high ticket items.” That’s rubbish. Every list has a variety of people who will spend anywhere from $0 to $100,000 or more.

But what every list doesn’t have is a list owner who is willing to make the big offers.

Follow up with your subscribers and customers. Find out what they want. Find the solution that will give them what they need; it’s often a high-ticket item because the low-ticket items are really just band-aids.

And then offer it to them and reap the results.

You got this. Now go do it.

Irving

Partnering with Product Creators

This case study has an interesting twist – rather than hunting down just any affiliates to promote his membership site, ‘Bob’ targets only people who are launching their own product.

Here’s how it works:

Bob has a membership site in the online marketing niche. It’s a great site, and the monthly membership is less than $50 a month. (He’s asked me to keep some details vague to not directly identify his site.)

Naturally, with a membership site the idea is to get new members and of course retain the members he already has.

Typically, a membership site owner will act just like any other product seller and try to recruit affiliates, as well as promoting his site through social media, paid advertising and so forth.

But Bob does none of these things.

Instead, he watches to see who is launching a new product. He targets marketers who have done launches before, so they already have a following and relationships with affiliates. In other words, he’s looking for people who can bring in plenty of buyers.

Now, you might think his next step is to suggest to the product seller that he or she adds his membership site to their sales funnel. But you can see the problem that would cause; instead of the monthly membership fee being split two ways, it would be split three ways:

Bob would get a third, the marketer doing the product launch would get a third and the affiliate would get a third. It gets complicated, and the pie gets cut into too many pieces.

Instead, Bob proposes that the marketer send out an email sequence right after their launch, promoting his membership site.

Bob provides the emails, and they’re written in such a way that the marketer is offering this opportunity ONLY for those who just purchased the product, and it’s only available now, at this special price.

Bob has a main sales page for his membership that extols all the benefits of joining, with the ‘regular’ price of perhaps $97 or $197 per month. The emails refer to this page, with instructions NOT to order on that page without the coupon code that gives them a discount.

He provides a different coupon code for each marketer, one that incorporates their name so that buyers know this discount is just for them and not for everyone.

An alternative to this is to create a separate web page for each marketer where they can send their buyers. They can refer to the full price page first, and then to the discounted page. Place their name prominently near the top.

The email sequence will emphasize how the membership is KEY to a successful online marketing business, and works well with the product just purchased.

Here’s why this works so well…

• Bob’s membership site isn’t advertised in the traditional ways. It’s under the radar, and only known to buyers of IM products. This way buyers can’t say, “I can always buy this later.” The coupon code has an expiration, and they can’t find another coupon through a Google search.

• These are BUYERS, not lookers. Buyers always buy more than freebie seekers.

• They’re not only buyers, but they just made a purchase the very same week. They are in BUYING mode and this is the PERFECT time to offer them something else.

• These buyers are opening most everything from your marketer because they just bought a product from him or her. Thus, the email sequence will be opened and read (This timing is incredibly VALUABLE to you and your sales!)

Success Tips:

• Watch sites like Munch Eye, JVZoo, JV News Watch, JV Notify, CB Trends and Warrior for launches.

• For best results, contact sellers who have already done at least a couple of successful launches.

• When the email sequence ends, ask your product launcher if s/he wants to remove the email sequence from their autoresponder. Because it’s profitable for them, they will almost always say no, they want to leave it in place for future launches.

• Consider making your offer even more special than a discounted price on the membership. If you make the entry level just $1 for 10 days, or $5 for the first month, you will get even more people signing up.

• Once people join, make them a special offer good only for a very short time that allows them to subscribe to the membership for an entire year for a discount. Make this offer via email twice per day until the expiration. This gives new subscribers a chance to check out the membership and see the value. Once you know your attrition rate for your membership, it will be easy to calculate a winning price for both you and your subscribers. Give your marketer the same commission on this annual plan as you do on the monthly plan (usually 50%.)

• Fill your sales sequence with marketing content, humor and stories as well as the special discount. Have the marketer launch this sequence right after the launch ends.

• Make the entire thing as simple for the marketer as possible. You propose they send out the email sequence, you provide the sequence in a copy and paste ready-to-go fashion. All they have to do is paste the emails into their autoresponder, schedule it for the day after the launch ends and forget about it.

Special Sauce

This is optional but I HIGHLY recommend this: Consider making each marketer your ‘partner’ in the membership for the sake of appearance.

In the emails you can say that marketer ‘Joe’ worked together with you to make this membership for Joe’s best customers.

Create a separate web page for each marketer and write it as though it’s coming from both of you.

Have a little intro at the top that comes from THEM (you can write it).

Have their photo – the same photo they used during their launch – at the top of the page, too, as well as at the bottom. Sign the sales letter as coming from BOTH of you, with the marketer’s name first and yours second.

This will often increase sales significantly, since the marketer’s name is trusted by their customers.

This system is the only thing my friend ‘Bob’ does to promote his membership site, and he makes anywhere from $10K to $25K per month.

Not bad.

Irving

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m all about practical advice that you can implement in your business to increase profits.

Stuff like, “Do Steps A, B and C, and you should see sales increase.”

But I want to be candid with you for a moment and talk about something that might seem a little “woo-woo” at first.

While building and growing a business, following steps that someone else has lined out for you doesn’t always work out. And it’s not necessarily because those steps don’t work, either.

100 people could have been handed Jeff Bezos plan for starting a company like Amazon. Do you think all 100 would have succeeded? Probably not. Obviously, it’s not because the plan was bad – we know it was a great plan that made him the richest man in the world.

But there are an almost infinite number of roadblocks along the way that may or may not cause difficulties along the way.

And it’s how we deal with those roadblocks – both in the real world and in our minds – that determines if we get to move ahead or we get run off the road.

You can have the best plan EVER, and if YOU are not psychology in the right place to implement that plan, then odds are you will fail.

I’m not a psychologist. I can’t give you the technical talk on why this is true. But I’ve seen from experience that almost without exception, your mindset is going exert far more influence on whether you’re successful than any business plan can.

So, let’s say you’re stuck. Maybe you can’t get started. Maybe you got started, but now you’ve hit a roadblock. Profits are not increasing, and maybe they’re even decreasing. Stress is settling in. You don’t know what to do. And it’s balling you up in knots to the point where you can’t see your way clear to getting where you want to go.

Your first step is to get clear. Empty your mind. Set all of your stresses aside so that you can quiet all the chatter that’s distracting you from what might be some very simple solutions.

The best tactic I’ve found for doing this is to get exercise every single day. Take walks in nature whenever possible. Work up a sweat when you can. Get your body in motion to end the feeling of paralysis.

And journal. Journal when you wake up and just before bed. Write down everything you’re thinking and everything that is bothering you.

Both the exercise and the journalism are scientifically proven to quiet your mind, reduce stress and anxiety and put you in a happier place where you can see the solutions that are right in front of you.

When you need ideas, go somewhere quiet with a pad and pen. Maybe relax in your favorite chair or lay down on your bed. Pose your question and then empty your mind. Meditate. Breathe deeply and count your breaths.

Let the answers flow into your mind. Don’t judge them, just write them down. Look at them later and be pleasantly shocked to find you’ve found the next step to take, or even the entire new business plan or solution that had been eluding you for weeks.

One more thing, and this is where it truly gets “woo-woo.” Do affirmations 3 times per day. Write your own affirmations or get them from the internet. Just choose the affirmations that truly resonate with you.

And when you’re doing your own affirmations, I want to encourage you to also say aloud the affirmations that follow, regardless of your religious beliefs (or lack of religious beliefs – it makes no difference).

These come from a brilliant woman named Catherine Ponder. Catherine was a minister in the U.S. in the 1970’s when the recession hit. Her flock was having all kinds of financial problems – layoffs, declines in business sales, not enough money to get by and so forth.

Catherine started doing research and long story short, she began asking her congregation to do affirmations. She provided hundreds of these affirmations over the years along with prosperity teachings.

And the truly remarkable part of this story is not just the frequency of success stories that came out of this endeavor, but the speed with which many of them happened. People who a few weeks before were in financial free fall were suddenly getting new jobs, promotions, more sales, increases in business and so forth that hadn’t happened in the all the months and even years prior to doing the affirmations.

So, here’s my suggestion: Try it for yourself and see. Give it a real test, saying these affirmations aloud three times per day, with emotion. Do it for 30 days, and just see what happens. Think of it as an experiment.

Below you will find just a few of her affirmations. You might need to change them a bit, substituting “Universe” for “God,” or whatever is right for you.

The key is keep your mind open and be consistent.

And yes, I’ve tried this myself. And yes, the results took me by surprise. The first change I noticed was internal. I felt happier, more hopeful, more optimistic and physically lighter. I slept better. I was better able to recognize opportunities when they presented themselves and better able to take advantage of them.

I also received unexpected money in the form of a repayment of a personal loan I’d made years ago. My old friend got in touch with me and said he was sorry for taking so long, and he just felt suddenly compelled to make payment in full, with interest. We are now friends again.

And I received a business refund I didn’t expert, too.

Most of all, my business started taking off like never before.

But none of that matters. What is important is that YOU give this a try to see what it does for you.

If you want more Catherine Ponder affirmations or you would even like to hear her speak, just do an internet search. You can find her books on Amazon, her recordings on YouTube, and her affirmations throughout the web published on numerous sites by her fans.

Catherine is in her 90’s now and retired. And she is still considered to be one of America’s foremost inspirational authors of all time.

To this day Catherine’s work has a very solid, loyal following of people who are indebted to her for her affirmations and teachings, along with the positive changes she’s made in their lives.

Here are the prosperity affirmations. Remember, feel free to change these to best suit you and your beliefs.

I. I OPEN MY MIND TO PROSPERITY

1. I do not depend upon persons or conditions for my prosperity. I bless persons and conditions as channels of my prosperity, but God is the Source of my supply. God provides His own amazing channels of supply to me now.

2. I am the rich child of a loving Father so I prosper now.

II. I CLEANSE MY MIND FOR PROSPERITY

1. I dissolve in my own mind, and in the minds of all others, any idea that my own prosperity can be withheld from me. No person, thing or event can keep that from me which the universe has for me now.

2. My financial income cannot be limited now. The rich substance of the universe now frees me from all financial limitation.

3. I know that release is magnetic. Through the act of release, I draw to myself my own. I now fully and freely release. I let loose and let go. I let go and grow. I let go and trust.

4. I now let go; worn out things, worn out conditions, worn out relationships. Divine order is now established and maintained in me and in my world.

5. All that has offended me, I forgive. Within and without, I forgive. Things past, things present, things future, I forgive. I forgive everything and everybody who can need forgiveness of the past or present. I forgive positively everyone. I am free and they are free too. All things are cleared up between us now and forever.

III. I GET DEFINITE ABOUT PROSPERITY SO THAT PROSPERITY CAN GET DEFINITE ABOUT ME.

1. Vast improvement comes quickly in every phase of my life now. Every day in every way, things are getting better and better for me now.

2. I invite the wealth of the universe to manifest richly in my financial affairs now. I am rich in mind and manifestation now.

3. I am beautifully and appropriately supplied, clothed, housed and transported with the rich substance of the universe now.

4. I have a large, steady, dependable permanent financial income now. Every day in every way I am growing more and more financially prosperous now.

5. Large sums of money, big happy financial surprises, and rich appropriate gifts now come to me under grace in perfect ways for my personal use, and I use them wisely.

6. I give thanks for a quick and substantial increase in my financial income now.

7. I use the positive power of wisdom, love and good judgment in handling all my financial affairs now.

8. I am rich, well and happy and every phase of my life is in divine order now.

9. I praise my world now. I praise my financial affairs now. All the wealth that has not come to me in the past is manifesting richly for me now.

10. The enormous sums of money that are mine by divine right – now manifest for me quickly and in peace.

11. Divine love, working through substance, prospers my financial affairs making me free, rich and financially independent now. I am financially independent now.

12. I give thanks for the immediate complete payment of all financial obligations now, quickly and in peace.

13. I am receiving. I am receiving now. I am receiving all the wealth that the universe has for me now.

14. All that the rich substance of the universe has for me now comes to me speedily, richly, and freely. My rich good now comes to me quickly and in peace.

Irving

I love to look at markets outside of the online marketing niche to see what others are doing.

For example, Tesla.

In 2008, the electric car manufacturer was worth about $15 million.

According to the New York Times, today Tesla is valued at $100 billion. Yes, A BILLION with a “B”.

Do you think we, as online marketers, could learn something from their success?

In 2016, the company rolled out a compact sedan named the Model 3 and priced it at $39,000.

Before the car was even available, Tesla opened preorders for the car with a smart sales funnel strategy.

Here’s what they did:

Tesla and its founder Elon Musk received a ton of free press for its vision of moving everyone away from gas-powered vehicles. This wasn’t an original idea, but they grabbed it and made it their own.

Next, they set up a webinar page for prospective customers to opt-in and learn more about the launch event. (Sound familiar?)

When the webinar went live, prospects watched a live video webinar about the new car.

At the end of the webinar, prospects were redirected to a call to action button that would take them to a checkout form, where they could make a $1,000 deposit to reserve their own Model 3.

Was it successful?

Customers placed over $14 billion in preorders. So yes, it was successful

In fact this could be the most successful product launch we’ve ever witnessed in all history.

Here’s my takeaway: By having a vision, they got free press. And by taking preorders with relatively small deposits, they got commitment.

Once customers had committed to making the purchase, they were much more likely to go through with it. It’s a psychological principle in which once you ‘own’ something or you’ve made a commitment to something, you are much more engaged and positive about the entire thing because in your mind it’s ‘yours’. The decision is made, now all you need do is justify your decision, and as humans we are really, really
good at that.

Are you launching a big product this year? What’s your vision for the product? How will it disrupt its current market? How will it change things or shake things up?

And can you generate enough interest to get people on a webinar and reserving their copy / seat / product / service or whatever it is that you’re offering, in advance?

Irving

You never have to create a product if you use this method.

And you don’t even need to be an expert in your niche.

This method is simply you ask for what you want, and then using that to turn a profit in 48 hours.

You can do this with most any product, including continuity programs for recurring commissions.

Here’s what you do:

Find something that is a perfect fit for your list or your readership or your social media peeps.

Or if you can buy traffic, you might use that method. As long as you can pair the right audience with the right product, you’ll make money with this.

Once you’ve found the right product, contact the product owner and tell him or her that your audience is a good fit for what they’re offering.

Then ask them this question:

“What is your best discount for this product?”

Nearly every single marketer has discounted his or her products at some time or another, so what you’re asking is not in the least bit inappropriate.

Most of the time, you’ll be able to negotiate a good deal for your customers.

If you can, offer to duplicate the sales page yourself to make it that much easier for the product owner to say yes. All they need to do is create a new buy button for you with the new price.

Now contact your audience and let them know about the special deal you’ve arranged for them, good for the next 48 hours only.

Follow up with emails at the 36 hour, 24 hour, 12 hour and 4 hour time periods. It’s this time limit coupled with the special deal that really sells the offer.

To build your list, you can use an opt-in form with an offer like this: “Enter your email and I’ll let you know every time I can get you a special discount on top [niche] products.”

Most marketers are more than happy to offer you a discount on their product because these are digital downloads and it’s all profit, anyway.

Irving

I’m on a lot of mailing lists simply because if something is working in another niche, there’s a good chance it’s going to work in my niches as well.

One of the lists I’m on is for dating advice – specifically, dating advice for people who want to date men. (I’m also on lists for people who want to date women, married couples having problems and recently separated couples. Like I said, I join a lot of lists because I’m always in learning mode.)

Today I received an email about, “A text you can send once a day that makes his desire for you soar through the roof.” That’s the first link to the video sales letter.

And here’s where it gets interesting: The email starts out talking about this magical text message which you will discover when you click the link to watch a video from the “Relationship Quick Tip sponsor.” The email says you can, “Read on or skip straight to the video.” This is where we find the second link to the video.

Next, the author lets you know that your Relationship Quick Tip is at the bottom of the email.

Then he goes on to sell you on watching that video, along with a third link and a fourth link to the video. And I mean he really sells it, using lots of imagery of how wonderful life will be when you can send a text and have the man of your choice working 24/7 to win your love.

Finally, finally, FINALLY we get to the, “Quick Tip of the Day,” followed, of course, by one final link to the video for the paid product.

Okay, here are my two takeaways:

First, this guy has FIVE links to the video sales letter. Five. He words each one a little differently, too.

Irving

Second, he is offering free content in the email, but it’s sandwiched between his copy for the paid product, with the bulk of his selling done prior to giving away the content.

Third, he positions the affiliate product as the sponsor for the free content.

This is a HIGHLY effective technique that can work in ANY niche. I know, because I’ve used it myself in the past. But I really appreciate seeing it at work in another niche, because it’s reminded me to get back to using this method myself.