Author Archive | Richard

Okay, I love working with my own list, nurturing it, emailing it everyday… but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. So when I run across a business that makes good money without having to nurture a list, and it only takes a few hours per week or month, I figure it might be worth sharing.

Mind you, the $5,000 a month figure is somewhat arbitrary.

You could make less or more, depending on how good you are at this and how many deals you do a month.

And perhaps the best part of all is you’re providing a very valuable service to new marketers looking to start their own online business without having to worry about the details.

Here’s how it works as told to me by someone who has been doing this for months now…

You’re going to be creating unique, ready-to-go sales funnels that are proven to convert.

No worries, you’re not doing this from scratch. Far from it. Instead, you’re using PLR – the kind that provides everything ready made to build a sales funnel.

The key is to make everything in the funnel unique, even though you’re using PLR.

So you find some good PLR that fills a real desire in the marketplace.

Rename everything and create new graphics, too.

You can even go in and change the coding on the plugin, if that’s what you’re using. Just hire someone to tweak it, maybe adding a new feature.

If you’re using written PLR, hire someone to flesh it out a bit more and change it up a little.

Then you create a squeeze page to offer something for free in return for the visitor’s email address. It could be a report, book, plugin, etc. Remember to use PLR that includes giveaway rights.

Focus your effort on making this offer as irresistible as possible. You might need to rewrite the sales page to do this, or hire someone to write it for you.

Next you create an upsell offer. This can be a high quality PLR course. Again, rename it, and create a new sales page that converts. Charge a fairly low price for the upsell – between $19 and $39.

Yes, you might need to invest some money in copywriting and even setting this up if you don’t want to do it yourself. But if you shop around, you can probably get it done for $200 to $500, depending on how much you do yourself.

Now that you have your funnel set up, buy 1,000 clicks from solo ads or Facebook. Send them to your squeeze page and through the funnel.

You’re doing this to prove the funnel works, as well as to start building the list.

After 1,000 clicks, if you get a 40% opt-in rate, you’ll have 400 subscribers.

If 5% of the subscribers buy the upsell, and the upsell is $30, then you’ve brought in $600.

This can cover your costs or come close to it, depending on how much you spent.

You can then buy more traffic if you like, building the list and testing and tweaking the funnel.

But you don’t have to. If you want to stop at this point, you can.

Or continue on and build the list bigger, either one.

In either case, when you get to the point that you’ve had enough testing, tweaking and list building, it’s time to flip the funnel and make the real money.

You’re selling a funnel that comes complete with a list of several hundred subscribers that’s already generating profits on the upsell, which means it’s proven.

And just as important, your funnel is unique, too. It has its own proven squeeze page, its own proven sales page, its own lead magnet and product…

…it’s a complete one-of-a-kind proven sales funnel.

You can sell this for $3,000 or more – sometimes a lot more – on Flippa.

The fellow who told me about this averages about $5,000 a sale. Some sites have sold for more, some less.

And he does two of these a month by outsourcing the work.

Frankly, I don’t think he personally invests more than 5 hours into each website.

So it’s a very lucrative side income, so say the least.

The key here is to pick niches with ready-made markets – niches where people are already spending lots of money.

You’ll want to find the best PLR you can get your hands on.

Make everything unique.

And practice.

The first time my friend tried this, he only cleared a few hundred dollars.

The second time, he cleared over $2,000.

Now he averages about $5,000. So practice and experience do count.

Perhaps best of all, there is no customer support. Once he sells a site, it’s totally out of his hands and he’s on to the next one.

So it’s great for somebody who doesn’t like to email a list day after day, build a relationship with readers and so forth.

If this is something that interests you, spend some time researching which sites are selling well, and also where to find the best quality PLR.

Once you know those two things, everything else will fall into place.

Marketing methods might change, but people don’t.

Not really.

I know a guy who consistently makes seven figures in his business without studying the newest, latest and greatest online marketing techniques.

Instead, he studies traditional “offline” methods that have worked for decades, not just weeks or years.

His customers love him and his products sell like crazy.

For example, he knows that people need to see an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine as many as 7 times before they buy.

So he uses retargeting – those ads that seem to follow you from website to website – to make sure he gets seen enough times to make the sale.

He knows from old school marketing that people do business with those they know, like and trust.

And when they want to make another purchase, they again go back to the person they know, like and trust.

So he does everything he can to treat his customers like family and earn their trust.

Of course he uses technology to automate everything, but that doesn’t change the fact that he loves his customers and lets that love show in every communication.

He also keeps a list of VIP clients and treats them accordingly. He’ll create a personal video for a single client, or send them a gift or snail mail letter. In fact, he does one of these every single day for his VIP’s, which might account for how well he sells BIG ticket items in the $2,000 to $5,000 range.

He looks out for customers much like a best friend might. When he sees something that he believes is a scam, he warns them away from it. When he thinks of something that will help his customers, he shares it the same day.

He visits client’s websites and leaves comments. He answers emails, and I mean he actually answers them himself if it’s a VIP client.

Online really is the same as offline, in that we are dealing with PEOPLE. Funny how we tend to forget that sometimes.

If you had a store with people walking in the door, you would hopefully see them as people. But online they can turn into faceless email addresses, which I think is why so many online marketers struggle.

They forget that online marketing is actually a PEOPLE business.

So grab an old marketing book and start reading. Ask yourself how it applies to the internet.

You might be surprised at your results.

You get a negative comment, or worse yet, a nasty comment on your blogpost… What do you do?

You could take the time to answer it, or you could just delete it. It’s up to you, but I look at it this way – I don’t have time for Negative Nellies. They’re upset because they don’t agree with my point of view, or I misspelled some words? Frankly, I think there are more important things to get upset about. Disease. Hunger. War. That sort of thing.

My life is too short to get bogged down by people who have nothing better to do than gripe. Yes, I know that sounds harsh to some people and you might not agree.

But think about this: You get an email from a jerk. I mean a real wanker. You read it and what happens?

Most marketers will dwell on it. They’ll think about it, let it darken their mood and even ruin their whole day. That night they’ll lose sleep thinking about that Negative Nellie. Maybe they’ll take 20 minutes to craft a well-worded reply. Maybe they’ll even try to change their business to suit this stranger with the potty mouth.

I remember my first negative comment. I felt terrible until I realized what I was doing to myself. How could I let a total stranger dictate how I felt? How could I allow myself to waste a day feeling miserable because of a lousy email?

So here’s what I did – I deleted that person from my list and blocked him from subscribing again. And you know what? I felt terrific.

I fired my subscriber. Think about that. It’s YOUR business. YOU decide who you do business with. If I hadn’t deleted that subscriber, odds are he would have written again. And again. And again.

I don’t need that. I have a family, and a business and a life. Complainers and whiners are fortunately few and far between. But they are out there and they would love nothing better than to troll your blog and email account and ruin your day.

It’s up to you what you do. But I can tell you this – firing the tiny number of Negative Nellies that cross my path has been one of the best business and personal decisions I’ve made. It frees me up to feel positive, stay positive and be productive.

It’s your business. Dump the wankers, focus on the other 99.9% of your wonderful readers and customers, and I guarantee you’ll love yourself for it.

There was a time when it didn’t matter how long your videos were because people were happy to watch almost anything online, if they had a fast connection.

Then came the video deluge, with millions and billions of videos all competing for eyeballs. “Make it short! Make it snappy!” was the cry of the day.

These days people watch all lengths of videos, as long as they are interesting. Think about Netflix and the other movie and television services – viewers stay glued to those videos for hours at a time, which is great training to watch your videos, too.

But that doesn’t mean you can bumble and stumble and ramble on. Here are seven tips for getting your videos watched and acted upon:

1. Continue to favor short videos. If you can make your video shorter while still delivering the same content, do it.

2. Don’t get crazy with the intros. Have you ever clicked on a video only to get a 30 second intro before the actual video started? Did you stay for the whole 30 seconds? Most people don’t. Start your videos off with a bang, delivering immediate content to get the viewer hooked.

3. Don’t bury your lead. Burying the lead is an old newspaper term for hiding your biggest point somewhere in the story, instead of leading with it. If your video is going to show them how to double their profits, start with that – not with how you grew up on a Kansas wheat farm.

4. Use energy and enthusiasm throughout your video. Steven Wright the comic can get away with speaking in a dry, monotone voice because he makes it funny. The rest of us need to inject plenty of energy to keep viewers watching.

5. Don’t hide your call to action at the end. No matter how great your video is, not everyone will watch it all the way through. If you want them to click on something, try inserting a clickable annotation within the first few seconds or at least within the first minute. People in a hurry will appreciate this.

6. Do you have a long training to present? Break it up into a series of shorter videos.

7. Have you got a great speech or show to share? Don’t break it up. Instead, allow your audience to sit back and enjoy the full experience of it.

The best rule of all – never, ever, ever be boring – not even for a second. If you can follow just this one rule, your videos will be viewed and shared like gangbusters.

If you’re like me, you’ve got so many things to do that you forget half of them. But I’ve got a solution that works great…

I set up daily, weekly and monthly alerts on my phone to remind me to do these things.

For example, once a week I receive a reminder to spend two hours finding new JV partners and affiliates.

This alone has added major revenue to my bottom line.

I set alerts to remind me to do my “to-do” stuff, take my vitamins, get my exercise, check certain websites and so forth.

So here’s how you can most benefit from this technique:

Make a list of all the little things that tend to fall through the cracks.

Pick out the ones that have the most value for you – such as finding new affiliates, new products to promote, new people to interview – your list will vary. These are your priorities and not to be ignored.

Set an alert for each one. Depending on what it is, the alert might be daily, weekly, etc.

Very important: Attach a note to each alert so you know what it is you’re supposed to do. If you’re like me and you don’t attach a note, you won’t have a clue when the chime goes off as to what it means.

Add alerts as you think of new things you should be doing.

After a few weeks of this, I think you’ll be pleasantly shocked at how much more you get done, and how much faster you’re growing your business.

This takes a bit of work but it’s pretty simple and straightforward. And if you position it correctly, it works year round, too.

Become an Amazon affiliate. Now search Amazon for the best toys for kids. It could be for a certain age of kids, or a certain type of toy (like educational) or whatever you choose. If Halloween is coming, you can do the best kids costumes. For Christmas it will be the best presents for kids, and year round it can be the most popular, or educational, or most fun, or whatever criteria you choose.

Build a page with each toy listed. Give each toy a fun description and a good picture.

Under each toy and description, put a “click here for more information” link. This is of course your affiliate link.

Now haunt the mommy forums and sign up with a woman’s name (yes, even if you are a man.) Find the busiest threads, leave comments, and mention where you got some great present ideas for your kids. Give out your link.

I know for a fact his works. You won’t get rich, but you will make some extra money. And you can always outsource the forum comments to someone else to perform for you.

I know a fellow who hates selling, can’t write copy, doesn’t have a list, despises doing customer service and just wants to make money.

And make money he does! He’s created a half dozen courses and made a minimum of $8,000 from each one, without ever selling a single copy of any of his courses.

So how does he do it?

First, he looks around for someone who will make a great case study. It could be someone selling through Amazon FBA, or a prolific Kindle author, or an online marketer, etc.

He chooses to stay in the broad “make money online” field, but this would work in a lot of niches.

When he finds someone who makes a good case study (IE: They make a lot of money and are willing to tell him how they do it) he sets up an interview. If possible, he does it in person. Otherwise he’ll conduct a series of phone interviews or Skype interviews until he gets all the information he needs.

I’m not sure what his financial relationship is with these experts. In some cases I suspect they’re happy just to tell their story. In other cases I believe he’s offering them a license to the product he’s going to create, for free. Which costs him nothing.

This fellow then puts together a course centered around the case study showing how anyone can duplicate the results.

Then he hires a writer to write the sales letter, squeeze page, ads, emails and so forth, and he hires someone else to handle graphics.

Of course, he could have also hired someone to create the actual course, but he prefers to do that himself.

Once he’s got the course ready to go, he does his research online to find marketers who are selling courses in the same niche. He contacts each one personally, one by one. The personal touch is important here for getting a response.

Next, he gets these marketers on Skype and describes the course to them. He lets them see the entire course so they know what kind of quality it really is, and offers them a license to sell it.

Now mind you, he’s not talking to random would-be marketers off the Warrior Forum. He’s talking to people who have large, responsive lists and are experienced at selling high ticket courses.

He limits the number of licenses he will sell to retain the value.

And his selling price? Depending on the course, it’s somewhere between $497 and $1497 for a one year licensing deal with PLR rights.

If you think this is a lot, you’ve got to realize that an experienced marketer can sell $10,000 – $25,000 worth of a course without too much trouble. They target their list first, let their affiliates take a crack at it and then buy advertising. It’s about as close to a money machine as you can get, so of course these experienced marketers jump at the chance.

And if they don’t, it doesn’t matter because he just calls the next one on his list.

He also lets them know they can renew their license in 12 months, which creates even more profit for him.

Doing some math here… if he charges $997 and sells the license to 25 marketers, that’s nearly $25,000. He’s got expenses for copywriting and graphics, of course, but those are about $3,000, leaving him with $22,000 profit.

Even if he is paying his subject for the rights to use the content, he’s still banking a significant portion of the money, all without selling a single course himself.

And if you’re wondering how long it takes him to sell 25 licenses, after he makes his list of prospects he sets Skype appointments and then gets busy. Usually 3 days is all he needs to sell all 25.

Of course, many of those marketers who purchase a license to one of his products want first dibs on his next product. Thus every time he creates a new product, he’s got more and more marketers who jump at the chance to get a license.

This is truly a win-win. He doesn’t have to deal with selling courses, customer service and all the other things he doesn’t like. His clients – the marketers – enjoy a great profit with almost no work. And he profits mightily.

Oh yeah, he does this once a month. Admittedly, he could do it 2 or 3 times a month, but he’s kind of lazy and says one a month is plenty.

If someone were to ask you what the #1 ‘secret’ to making money online was, what would you say?

Any guesses?

Maybe you’d say it’s to find a starving crowd. Or to build and nurture a list. Or to get in on the beginning of a hot new trend.

All of these are good answers.

And all of these are wrong.

THE big secret to making money online is one that crosses all niches, applies to all markets and marketers, and works just about every single time to make REAL money.

It’s how six and seven figure incomes are almost always earned.

And it’s also how YOU can begin earning 6 figures in the next 12 months.

Now then – before I reveal this ‘secret,’ let me warn you that you might have heard it before.

In fact, some online marketers have to hear this a dozen times or more before it really starts to sink in.

That’s because the most powerful techniques often masquerade as something a bit boring. Or tedious. Or uninteresting.

After all, taking a wheelbarrow full of cash to the bank is exciting.

Earning it is often something altogether different.

Ready?

Here’s the ‘secret…’

“Find a profitable formula – and then SCALE it up.”

Yup. That’s it. Pretty simple, I know.

Yet 98% of marketers will never do it. And 97% of marketers will stay broke because of it.

Let’s say you spend time making the perfect product for a super hungry niche. You tweak the offer to get it converting sky high. You bring on affiliates to help you promote. Everything is in place. You launch, you have an extremely profitable week…

…and then what?

For most marketers, they will turn their attention to creating the next product and doing the entire process again.

And because of that, they will leave a tremendous amount of money on the table.

If your offer sells for $19 and you’re converting at 5%, then you’re making $95 for every 100 people you send to your site.

This doesn’t even include the list you’re building and will market to over and over again.

Now then, if you can buy those 100 visitors for $40, you’ve just made a profit of $55.

Buy 1,000 visitors and you’ve made $550.

Buy 10,000 visitors and you’ve made $5,500.

But wait, there’s more!

What if you add a backend product? Just one sale per 100 visitors of a $100 product increases your profit from $55 to $155.

10,000 visitors? $15,500 profit.

You can also add coaching, continuity (membership) programs, etc. for even more profit.

Are you following me here?

Let’s use an analogy: Someone invests 3 months to open a hair salon. They have a big grand opening with lots of customers. And when that dies down, they close shop, move across town and do it all over again.

Yeah, that would be pretty crazy.

Yet that’s what 98% of online marketers do.

They create a product, launch it, have a great week and then start all over again.

And they wonder why they are still struggling.

So what’s the takeaway?

• Invest time in building a profitable, high-converting funnel.
• Test it out and do the math – how much can you spend on advertising and still make money?
• Start by investing small and ramp your way up.
• Don’t forget to build your list – your funnel is your upfront money, and your list is your “go to” money. That is, whenever you need funds or simply want to boost your income, you can go to your list and make them an offer.

What will derail you in this process:

• Getting lured away by the glamour of creating another new product funnel when you should be scaling up the one you already have.
• Fear of spending money to make money. Yes, spending $1,000 or more to make sales is scary. That’s why you want to start small, make sure your entire funnel is working, and then scale up. And up. And Up.
• Your biggest mistake – would be brushing this advice off.

Fortunes have been made simply by creating a profitable funnel and then scaling it up.

FORTUNES.

As in nearly 7 figures made from one ClickBank product…

Per MONTH.

That’s right – 6 Pack Abs at the pinnacle of its success was earning over $11 million per year.

Your results will vary.

Are you doing offline marketing, or would you like a second income in the offline world?

Here’s how to make it drop dead simple and super profitable:

First, build a simple website with a menu card on it. Not the kind of menu you find in a restaurant, of course, but it can look like that if you choose.

Your menu is going to offer all kinds of services to brick and mortar businesses.

For example:

• Local SEO
• Creating lead capture pages and setting up their autoresponder
• Website creation
• Writing blog posts and articles for them
• Repairing their online reputation
• Creating a professional looking video
• Creating detailed reports on their competitors
• Doing social media (this can be a wide variety of offerings)
• And so forth

Give them different prices – some low and some higher, to give business owners plenty of choices.

Now here’s the 21 day trick – through testing, we’ve found that you will actually sell MORE services when you extend the date by which you’ll have the services completed.

Naturally you can do many of these things in 2-5 days.

But if the client believes you’re working on it for 3 weeks, or even a whole month, the perceived value is much higher and you will sell more.

Yes, human nature is a funny thing, isn’t it?

Now then, before you panic and think you can’t provide all these services, realize that all you need is to visit Fiverr.com.

There you’ll find people who can do all of these things for you, for cheap. You will need to pay more than $5 for most of these, but that’s okay because your profit margins will still remain sky high.

Typically, you’ll pay $5 to test the gig out, and then somewhere between $50 and perhaps as high as $200 to get your job done.

Meanwhile, you’re selling services for $300 to $1,000, depending how much work it involves.

You are the ‘middle man or woman’ getting the orders and then having them fulfilled.

So how do you get the clients?

All of the usual methods can apply, of course. Also, LinkedIn and Craigslist can be great places to get clients with a little practice.

Also look at potential client’s social profiles and websites to get an idea of what they might need, and then contact them directly via email or even phone.

And if you’re ready to take it to the next level, you can also put together a mailer that incorporates your menu and send it to likely prospects.

This is perhaps one of the easiest businesses you can start and almost immediately begin making money. Because you are outsourcing all of the work, you can focus solely on getting clients, making them happy and gaining repeat sales.

And by the way – once you choose a method for client acquisition, you can outsource that as well.

Then your only job will be to send orders to your outsourcers and send the completed work to your clients.

Not a lot of work for a $5,000 or more a month income.

Good. Actually, great! Here’s what you do…

Start a blog. From day 1, explain that you know nothing about (your new topic, such as cooking) but you’re on a quest to learn (a specific outcome or goal, like how to make the world’s best pancakes) and invite the reader to make the journey with you.

Now start reading about your topic. A lot. Buy and use the products in your niche. Write about what you learn, and tell about your experience with the products. Recommend the good ones.

Once you’ve got a dozen or more blog posts, start asking experts in the niche for interviews. If you’re too shy or nervous at first, you can start with email interviews and work your way up to audio interviews.

You become the researcher / reporter, and you let the experts handle the heaving lifting.

In 1-5 years? Now YOU’RE the expert. And you never had to lie about knowing stuff you didn’t know when you got started.

In fact, you got to be honest, truthful and yourself the entire time. And you’ve built a tremendous rapport with your audience who very much feel you’re just like them.

When you use this formula, your readers will trust you and they’ll act on your advice, whether that’s to buy an affiliate product you recommend, buy your own products or eventually let you coach them.