Author Archive | Richard

I’m gonna wring this guy’s neck and I don’t even know who the heck he is. Gimme a second to decompress…

Deep breaths…

Okay, here’s what happened.

I get an email with a topic that sounded good. Real good. “Go check out the product,” it says. So, I click it. I’m trying to read the sales page. I mean I’m REALLY TRYING TO READ THE SALES PAGE but he, whoever this guy is…

… WON’T LET ME READ THE SALES PAGE!

I am his prime prospect.

I want the benefit he so eloquently offered in the email.

He’s worked hard to get me on his list, get me to open that email, get me to click the link…

… but the result is I wanna strangle him.

Why?

Because every two seconds there is another pop-up that says:

JOE BLOW JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT!
SUSIE Q JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT!
JEDI MASTER JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT!
FREDDIE KRUGER JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT!

Sigh.

I closed the page and came here to write you this note.

While it’s terrific to show your prospects that your product is flying off the shelf, I’m not so sure that continuously interrupting them while they read your sales page is the way to do it.

Plus, between you and me, I’m not sure I even believe he’s making all those sales.

It comes out to about 1 sale every 2 or 3 seconds, and that just doesn’t seem likely, does it?

But here’s where I advise you to not take my advice…

(Wait… let me think about that a moment…)

Those super annoying pop-ups that tell you everyone and their brother are buying the product… (I hate to even admit this)

… actually increase sales.

Yup.

I am the exception here and NOT the rule.

People are naturally influenced by what other people do. It’s the herd instinct, and it’s hardwired into us for reasons of survival.

People see that others are buying the product and so they buy the product, too. I’ve seen data on sales launches where there is a big surge at the opening bell of people buying. This is typical behavior in a successful launch. Most people buy the first day or the last day, and in between sales sharply taper off.

But when these annoying sales notifications are added on the second day, suddenly sales go up again. More people who visit the page are buying right then and there rather than putting the decision off.

You can get the software to do this at fomo.com or other software providers. Just sign up for an account, implement the code, set your parameters for how you want the software to appear and act, and if all goes as planned, sales will increase.

But please, please make the notifications unobtrusive. The idea is to gently let prospects know that other people are buying the product.

If the pop-up is continually stopping the person from reading the letter, you will lose sales to people who don’t have the patience to put up with the distraction. Like me.

They almost didn’t add the upsell because it was too expensive and most of their buyers wouldn’t be interested… Or so they thought.

The main product was a super cool software plugin, priced at $47 for use on one site and $67 for unlimited sites.

Most people bought the $67 version.

The upsell was developers’ rights to the plugin.

Most people won’t buy that, right?

The two partners argued about it for three days before finally adding the developer’s rights as the only upsell to the funnel.

The promotion ran for a week, had plenty of affiliates promoting and guess what?

You know it – they brought in an extra $13,396 just from the upsell.

Maybe it wasn’t a fortune, but it’s extra money they otherwise would not have made.

Plus, it didn’t cost them a dime to offer that upsell, either.

What are you not selling right now that you could be in your sales funnel?

Time and again I’ve seen new marketers complain that they’re not earning 5 figures a month. So, I ask them what they’re selling…

$7 reports…

$17 ebooks…

$27 video sets…

“Okay,” I say, “let’s do some math. Five figures a month is $10,000 or more. How many $7 products do you need to sell to make $10,000?”

“I don’t know,” they say.

The answer is 1,428.

What about $17 ebooks?

If you sell 588 of those a month, you’ll make five figures.

Yeah, but what about $27 video sets?

You only need 370 of those a month. That’s 12 or 13 sales every day.

If you convert a whopping 5% of your visitors, you’ll need 360 interested visitors a day to achieve that.

That’s going to cost money to drive that kind of traffic, which means you’ll need to sell a whole lot more products.

You see where this is going.

If the basic structure of your business prevents you from earning the income you want, then you’ve got to change your business.

It’s like buying a car that only goes 50, and then feeling disappointed and mad when it won’t go 100. It’s just not built for that kind of speed, and your business might not be built to earn 5 figures a month, either.

Low priced products are great for building a list of buyers and essential for self-liquidating paid advertising. You pay $100, you make $100 but you’ve got a list you’re building, or rather two lists because one is subscribers (which can be good) and the other one is buyers (which is where the real profit is made.)

But if you want to make five figures a month, you’ll need to either sell something more expensive like a $197 course or a $500 coaching program, or else promote affiliate products.

Let’s talk about that $197 price tag – to earn $10,000 a month, you need to sell just 50 of those a month. Or you can sell 20 of the $500 coaching.

The point is, if all you’re doing is selling nickel and dime stuff, then you can’t complain if you’re not making any REAL money.

It’s time to step up your game. Whatever is holding you back from selling more profitable products, knock it off.

Don’t tell me your list won’t buy expensive products because I know they will. They’re already buying more expensive products from other marketers, so why not from you, too? Build trust and rapport with them and some of them will buy anything you offer.

But the first step is getting your own mindset in shape and believing that you can sell big ticket items.

And if this is too much of a stretch for you right now (you’re not alone) then you can at least get on the right track by adding multiple products to your line. Add a continuity membership site, paid newsletter and/or paid podcast. Add products that sell for $47, $67, $97 and more. Find affiliate products you love and believe in that earn good money per sale. This way you can work your way up to the big-ticket items.

Heck, I know one marketer who won’t sell anything that costs less than $1,997. He doesn’t have a list of 500,000 because he doesn’t need one. He’s got a couple of lists of about 5,000 each and he is absolutely CRUSHING it because every single sale brings big money to his own pocket.

His mindset is that $17 products are a total waste of his time, and he’s right. To earn $1,997 he can make one sale or he can make 117 sales. He chooses to make one sale and even as I write this I realize that I, too, need to focus more on the higher priced products. I guess there is a lesson in here for all of us. 😉

I’m about to blow your #1 podcasting excuse out of the water.

If you think you can’t start a podcast because you:

A: Don’t know what equipment to buy, how to set it up and how to use it

B: You can’t afford all that fancy, expensive equipment

Then I’ve got ONE word for you:

Anchor.

Anchor is a free, beginner-friendly platform for podcast creation. It’s got the tools you need to record and edit audio and arrange it into podcast episodes like a professional.

You can record episodes in the Anchor app on your smartphone… Yes, on your SMARTPHONE! 😊

Just hit record, speak and when you’re done it will automatically add it your Anchor account for publishing.

Anchor is free to use but unlike most of their competitors they also help you monetize your podcast by placing ads alongside (or even inside) your content.

My experience is they will usually allow you to generate $50 to $100 in ad revenue in the early days and if your podcast proves popular, they will help find additional sponsors in your niche who are willing to continue investing in your content.

You can learn more and try it now at: anchor.fm

From what I can see, right now there is no faster way to build an audience online than through podcasting. The demand for podcasts is growing at an unprecedented rate.

More than half of people are listening to podcasts on a regular basis. And podcasting creates loyalty and trust with your audience like almost nothing else out there.

Podcast audiences are more engaged and loyal than radio listeners or blog readers. Something like 88-90% of podcast listeners listen to the entire show, including advertisements. Podcasts are done in episodes, sort of like a television series. When you end one show, you can tease your audience with what’s coming on the next episode (think cliffhanger or bullet points) to ensure they’ll be back.

And get this… 79% of podcast listeners tune in to a new episode as soon as its released!

Think about that last article you slaved over to get every word just right. Now imagine speaking that article, not worrying about getting every word right, letting your personality shine and oh yes, promoting a product, too. Yes, you really can do this.

But if you’re new to podcasting, how do you grow your audience? In ways similar to how you drive traffic to a website, you can also grow your audience through podcasting SEO.

WAIT!

Does the term SEO create a bit of panic for you? If you’ve never done any SEO before, then it’s perfectly understandable to think SEO might be something other marketers do but not you. Guess again, because Podcasting SEO is easy enough that almost anyone can use it to bring in listeners, grow your list and maybe even make your podcast go viral. After all, stranger things have happened. 😉

How can you use podcasting SEO to build your audience?

Step 1: Know and Use Your Keywords

You might think that Google has a hard time finding and indexing podcasts, but your text content will go a long way towards helping Google find you and possibly even place one of your podcast episodes on the first page of Google.

Since 2019, Google has been placing links to podcasts in the search results, much like you see Google place YouTube videos there.

Your top two keywords are going to be:

•    Your brand/podcast name
•    “[your niche] Podcast” Examples: Online Marketing Podcast or Parenting Podcast

Here’s the trick: Host every episode of your podcast on a dedicated page on your website along with the keywords that fit that episode. And always, always include the word “podcast” in your keyword phrases. “How to make money from home” is never going to rank on Google when someone is searching for a podcast, but “How to make money from home podcast” can possibly get you ranked.

Step 2: Optimize Those Episode Pages

You already know you’ll be placing one podcast on a page and using your appropriate keywords on each of those pages. Those keywords are:

•    Your podcast brand name
•    Your general podcast topic combined with the word ‘podcast’
•    The topic specific to this particular episode

For example, you might have “Minnesota Tycoon” as your brand name, your general topic is business and marketing so it’s the “Minnesota Tycoon Business and Marketing Podcast” and this particular episode is on “Americans Doing Businesses in Canada.”

All of that makes it possible to get your podcast episode featured near the topic of the search page. But let’s go one step further and see if we can also target a keyword to get it ranked in the classic blue links.

In this case, we’re targeting “Americans Doing Business in Canada”. You have options here:

•    You can write 300 words or more of unique content about your topic on that page
•    You can add a text summary of the podcast itself
•    You can create a blog post summary that covers all of the key points in the podcast

You can do any combination of these three items.

Personally, I like to have a short text summary followed by a longer post that covers the key points. This way if people don’t want to listen to the podcast, they can still get the information. However, there is a healthy percentage of people who will read the text summary and then go ahead and listen to the podcast anyway because you’ve hooked them with the summary.

Step 3: Consistent Titles and Catchy Meta Descriptions

The title of your podcast episode is going to be the same title found on the page hosting the episode. In fact, you want to be consistent across every platform that has your episode, whether it’s Spotify, YouTube, Google Podcasts and so forth.

For your meta description, your target keyword is the first phrase in your title, and you might want to include the episode number, too. For example, “Americans Doing Business in Canada with The Minnesota Tycoon (Ep 21)”

Next you tell what your podcast is about. Make it honest, accurate, exciting and enticing. That’s a tall order, but you’re trying to get people to click on your link and you only get one shot to make this happen.

Step 4: Keep Google Happy

Google has been transcribing podcast episodes for two years now to improve its search results. This means Google has a very good idea of whether or not you are providing quality content. You can help Google to decide your podcast is worth sharing with the world by having a clear structure to your podcasts. Rather than rambling or hitting whatever topics come to mind, make an outline of what you’ll talk about or what you’ll be asking your guest so that you can stay on track. And use relevant keywords throughout the podcast, but use them naturally without keyword stuffing.

Step 5: Sign Up with Google Podcasts Manager

Google Search pulls data from Google Podcasts when showing podcast listings in the search engine results. Google Podcasts is a podcasting directory, meaning that podcast listening apps use Google Podcasts to find podcasts and enable playback. Google Podcasts does not store your RSS feed or audio files, but instead points to the RSS feed and audio files that you have posted elsewhere.

Google Podcasts has over 50 million regular users. Even a teeny tiny percentage of those users coming to your podcast could mean a tremendous boost in your audience size. To get your content listed in the app, go to podcastsmanager.google.com/, click ‘start now’, type in your podcast RSS feed URL and follow the verification steps. Once you’ve done this, Google will index your feed, enabling users to find you on Google Home, Android Auto, Google Search, Google Assistant and Google Podcasts.

Step 6: Expand Your Reach

Sign up with Podfollow podfollow.com/ to enable listeners to hear your podcasts on any platform they choose. Podfollow will also give you insights on where your traffic is coming from, so you’ll know what’s working.

Apple Podcasts and Spotify are two huge players where millions of people can find your podcasts. And there are plenty of other platforms to consider, too.

If you’re creating video podcasts – essentially recording yourself and your guest with video – then you’ll want to place your video podcasts on YouTube. You can even use a service like Patreon to paywall certain episodes. They also offer tiered plans, enabling you to have content for free members, paid members and perhaps an inner circle of movers and shakers who pay for the privilege.

Step 7: Create an Ever-Growing Network of Internal Links

Every time you place a new podcast/page on your website, find the pages already on your site that are related to the new page. Then link from the new page to these other pages, as well as linking from these other pages to your new page.

In addition, link each podcast page to the previous and the next episodes. This not only builds internal links, it also adds some navigational value for users.

Step 8: Transcribe Your Podcast Episodes

Google’s transcription can have trouble with accents, people talking over each other and so forth. And some of your users will want a text copy they can read, save, browse and so forth.

So go ahead and have every one of your episodes transcribed. You’ll be giving the search engines a crawlable copy without errors, increasing the chances of getting a good search engine ranking. Plus, you may find you want to repurpose some of your content into articles, social media posts, books and so forth. With transcriptions, this will be easy to do.

Step 9: Earn Your Backlinks

Podcasts work well for link building, especially if you have guests on your show. And once you’ve built something of a reputation, it will be easy to get more guests and better known guests to join you for an episode. Backlinks are just as important for podcast SEO as any other strategy, and fortunately it’s not that difficult to get backlinks, either.

Start with a podcast homepage, which might be a subdomain or subdirectory. This will be the domain of your podcast strategy, with each podcast having its only page on this domain. You’ll get some backlinks to your podcast homepage and others to each individual podcast.

To earn backlinks, do any and all of the following:

•    Be Newsworthy – cover the latest developments or new in your niche
•    Be Controversial – trying to appeal to everyone won’t win you backlinks, but taking a stand will
•    Be Unique – offer thoughts, insights and ideas found nowhere else
•    Bring on Guests – guests will increase your authority and win you backlinks from the guests themselves as well as their fans
•    Appear as a Guest – go on other podcasts as a guest and you’ll usually get a backlink to your own podcast domain
•    Promote Your Podcast – ask others to review your podcast or ask for their opinion on a subject you covered. Essentially, find ways to tell others in your niche about your podcast episodes without being obnoxious or pushy about it.
•    Create a Rivalry – team up with another podcast to create back-and-forth perspectives. A friendly rivalry can bring an explosion of new listeners via social media.
•    Reference Content Producers – anytime you get the chance, reference other authorities in your niche within your podcasts. Quote them, refer to their research, talk about something they did… the more you reach out to others, the more others will reach out to you and give you backlinks.

And when you reference other content producers in your podcast, be sure to include this in any repurposed content and social media posts for maximum effect. This way they’ll see you’ve referenced them and more often than not they’ll want to see what you said and link back to you.

Step 10: Repurpose Your Content

You can create more internal links when you repurpose your content, you can grab people who prefer to read, your content goes further, you can optimize text content for SEO… frankly there are a ton of reasons to repurpose and reuse your content. You can even create list building lead magnets and books for your content if you like!

You might want to consider recording video for your podcasts so that you can post on YouTube and social media. Video can be cut into clips, highlights and short, engaging posts for social media.

You can also repurpose your episodes into blog posts, guides, content series and so forth. Think short and long – you’ll be pulling the best bits out of your podcasts to entice people to listen or watch your podcasts. And you’ll be compiling podcast content into longer forms, such as comprehensive posts, books and even reports.

Do you remember when the internet started becoming popular? Some people said it was just a fad. Do you remember back when video was just catching on? Some people said that was just a fad, too. Now we’ve got folks saying that podcasting is a fad. But 5 years from now, there will be two groups of marketers – those who started their own podcast, and those who wish they had.

Which camp will you be in?

If you already have a successful, popular podcast, then you already know the power of podcasting to create an audience, to build credibility, to make connections with the movers and shakers in your niche and to sell a lot of product.

Think about this: When you have a podcast, you are in your target market’s ears for 20 to 60 minutes. This is intimate, one-on-one time with no interruptions or competition for their attention. You can create personal (PERSONAL!) relationships with your audience in a way that the written word can never do.

If you want to…

•    reach an audience
•    sell products or services
•    make crucial networking connections
•    build a business

… and you don’t already have a podcast, I’d like to suggest that right now is the ideal time to start one.

It’s like that saying, ‘The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, and the second best time is right now.’ Maybe the best time to start a podcast was a year ago, but today is nearly as good because unlike almost any other medium, there is still tons of room for you in podcasting.

Five years from now? You’ll either have hundreds of episodes in your pocket and an audience of several hundred thousand (millions maybe?) or you’ll be kicking yourself HARD because you didn’t start a podcast this year.

Have you noticed how popular podcasting is becoming? If you had doubts before, surely by now you realize that podcasting is here to stay.

•    At the time of this writing, there are over 2 million podcasts and over 48 million episodes.
•    37% of the US population listens to podcasts every month.
•    Podcast listeners listen to an average of 7 different shows per week
•    93% listen to all or most of each episode

Maybe you’re waiting to podcast until you ‘feel ready’ – whatever that means. But here’s the secret every podcaster knows: Almost no one who ever started a podcast was truly “ready”. In fact, you have the same level of experience as almost every other new podcaster out there. That’s because you know how to TALK, and if you can talk, you can do a podcast.

A few short years from now everyone and their dog will have their own podcast. But if you start podcasting NOW, your competition will be about 2-5% of what it will be in a few years. That means it will be 20 to 50 times EASIER to build an audience now than it will be later.

How do you get started?

Maybe you should do a bunch of research, buy some podcasting how-to courses, and take the next year to ‘figure it all out’. Yeah. Because that always works, doesn’t it?

If you take that route then a year from now you will be exactly where you are today – no podcast.

I’d like to suggest a different method, one in which you simply jump in and get started. No muss, no fuss. You just do it.

It doesn’t matter if NO ONE hears your first few broadcasts. Those are for practice anyway. But the point is to get started NOW, to figure out what you’re doing, and a month from now you can have a legitimate podcast with a real audience.

Your first few podcasts can be for practice while you learn. And learn you will. A month from now you can have podcasting experience under your belt as well as a growing audience. Stop thinking about podcasting and just start doing it.

Need more motivation?

Check out this list of podcasting facts from PodcastHosting.org:

•    75% of the US population is familiar with the term “podcasting”
•    50% of all US homes are podcast fans
•    55% (155 million) of the US population has listened to a podcast
•    37% (104 million) listen to podcasts at least every month
•    24% (68 million) listen to podcasts weekly
•    16 million people in the US are “avid podcast fans”
•    51% of podcast listeners are male, 49% female

Age of listeners:
•    12-34: 48%
•    35-54: 32%
•    55+: 20%

•    41% of monthly podcast listeners have household income over $75K (vs 29% for US population)
•    25% of US podcast listeners have a 4-year college degree (vs 19% of US population)
•    51% employed full-time (vs 44% of US population)

Do you sell anything in your business?

Yeah, stupid question 😊

Check out these advertising stats:

•    81% of podcast listeners pay attention to podcast ads
•    63% say they sometimes or always ignore TV commercials
•    66% sometimes or always ignore digital ads
•    61% sometimes or always ignore billboards
•    59% sometimes or always ignore radio commercials
•    60% of podcast listeners have bought something from a podcast ad
•    72% of people who have listened to a podcast for four or more years have made a purchase
•    54% are more likely to consider the brand advertised (only 7% are less likely)

You might think you need expensive equipment to create a podcast, but you can start with just your smartphone and upgrade later. Here’s everything you need to know about podcasting from your smartphone: www.rode.com/blog/all/How-To-Record-a-Podcast-on-Your-Phone

You can even use a service to handle all of the podcast details for you, so that all you have to do is the actual podcast. Just search for “done for you podcasting” and you’ll find a variety of options. As long as you can speak, there simply is no excuse anymore for not podcasting, while there are plenty of reasons to start your own podcast today:

•    Podcasts capture your audience’s attention. The same person who won’t read a 10-minute blog post will often listen to a 60 minute podcast.
•    Podcasts create a personal experience. Listeners hear your voice and get to know you on a deeper level than with text.
•    Podcasts help you build and maintain connections. You can feature guest speakers on your podcast who are industry experts. They create your content for you, and you build a networking connection with them.
•    Podcasts build your credibility and positioning in your niche. If you want to be known as a leader in your industry, start a podcast and bring on experts. The key is providing valuable content, fresh ideas and making it fun and interesting for listeners.
•    Podcasts make money. Real estate agent turned entrepreneur John Lee Dumas earns $46,000 a month from his podcast, Entrepreneur on Fire. He does it charging sponsors to be featured on his podcast as well as promoting products and services.

Are you convinced yet? I know podcasting sounds scary. What if you say stupid stuff? What if you can’t think what to say? What if, what if, what if… remember, there’s something called EDITING which allows you to remove anything you don’t like.

See? No more excuses.

One last thing: Here’s a quick list of even MORE reasons for you to start podcasting this year and yes, this MONTH:

•    You will build relationships and customer loyalty.
•    You’ll enjoy the fun of using running jokes and themes with your audience.
•    It’s easy – far easier even than you think.v •    Listeners can listen whenever they like, even at 3 in the morning.
•    Subscribers get episodes downloaded automatically on their devices.
•    All you need to get started is a smartphone, internet connection and software. A laptop is good, too, but not required.
•    No one can SEE you, so bad hair days, messy offices and pink polka-dotted pajamas don’t mean a thing.
•    You can build your audience.
•    Improve conversions through trust. I’ve seen podcast regulars buy products based solely on the recommendation of the podcaster, no sales copy needed. A survey of 300,000 podcast listeners found that 63% of them bought something a host recommended on their show.
•    Talking is easier than writing. Far easier. SO MUCH easier.
•    Your audience can hear your emotions. It’s not easy to make emotional connections in writing, but it is through speech. Listeners know when you’re happy, when you’re upset about something, when you’re laughing, when you’re serious and so forth, and it helps to build connection. Why did people fall in love with Oprah? Some say it’s because she allowed herself to become deeply emotional on air, creating a bond with the audience that lasts to this day.
•    Authority. If you want authority in your niche, you need to either create videos that feature yourself, write best-selling books or do podcasting. If you can do two of those, that’s optional but even better.
•    Money. Sell advertising. Take on sponsors. Promote your own products. Do JV’s with your guests. There are tons of opportunities to make money with a podcast.

Can you really afford not to have your own podcast? I don’t think so…

Goal setting is great in theory. Write down your goals, maybe write them down every day, carry them with you… And in a year nothing has changed. Let’s be honest… Most of the time goal setting simply is not enough to get things done.

Even when you break BIG goals down into little steps and then gradually work towards those goals, it still doesn’t work for many people.

If you are one of those people who can routinely achieve the goals you set, then congrats – you can stop reading right here. But if you’ve set goals – and set more goals – and set even MORE goals – and you STILL don’t have what you want…

…or maybe you don’t even like setting goals…

…then I’m going to propose you do something a little different.

Stop sweating the goals and instead focus on systems.

Yes, SYSTEMS.

You thought I was going to say habits, right? Habits are good but they’re not always flexible enough to get you to where you want to go.

Here’s an example of the difference between a habit and a system. Let’s say you want to bench press 250 pounds. You can make it a habit to do weight lifting at 6am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But if you don’t have a system for increasing your reps and weights over time, you’ll never reach your goal.

Habits are repeatable actions you do without thinking, like going to the gym at a certain time on certain days. A system is a series of actions you take, like systematically increasing reps and weight to reach your goal. If you’re just lifting weight without a system to increase reps and weights, you’ll never improve.

Goals alone without systems can be detrimental and limiting. Princeton’s theology school did an experiment: Theology students were told to go to another building on campus and teach a class on The Good Samaritan. You’ll recall that the Samaritan story is about a man who was beaten and left by the side of the road. Others walked past him, but the Good Samaritan stopped and helped him.

Students were told to go teach the story of the Good Samaritan to another class. But they were also told they were late and must hurry. An actor was planted on their path, lying on the ground, hurt, moaning in pain and even screaming twice.

Every single theology student ran past the injured person to go teach the class on the Good Samaritan. One person even stepped over the person in pain to get to the class.

The goal was to get to the class and make the presentation on time and the students were blind to any other possibility. They were so focused on that goal that they missed the bigger picture and personal perspective to help the injured person. But if these students had a system by which they lived, that system would likely have prioritized living the story of the Good Samaritan rather than just teaching it.

If you have a goal to earn a million dollars a year, you might bend rules, break laws or even hurt people to achieve that goal. But if you have a system that says you make money by providing real value to others, then you’re going to stay on the right path.

I think of the difference between habits and systems like this:

A habit is, “I write every day from 8am to 10am.

A system is, “I work on writing a book every day from 8am to 10am for two months, at which time I’ve completed a book. For the next 3 weeks I market and promote the book during this time, and for the fourth week I do research and outline my next book during this time. And then I repeat the system.

This might be an oversimplification, but the point is the system has more flexibility than a habit, allowing you to adapt as you go. Figure out what you want to achieve and then create systems to get you there. Build flexibility into your system so that when something unexpected happens, you know how to get back on track.

Lastly, focus on your system (the process or journey) and not on the goal (your destination). When you give your attention to where you are now (the system) you’ll find you’re much happier in the moment than if you are continually wishing for the goal itself. You’ll be able to celebrate little victories every single day by using your systems, rather than putting happiness off until you finally reach your destination.

Plus when you do reach your destination, because you have systems in place, you also won’t experience the paradoxical and yet all too common experience of feeling empty or sad because you no longer have that big goal to look forward to.

Okay, this case study is a little strange because I’m basically going to combine two case studies into one. That is, I’m going to take the best of each of the two case studies, throw out what didn’t work well and show you how you can maximize your own earnings with your own PLR site.

I don’t mean a site that you build using PLR materials – this is a site that sells a monthly membership to online marketers that allows them to access and use the PLR materials you supply.

In our first case study, Mark hired someone to create internet marketing type PLR packages each month. Then he sold exactly 100 memberships to get this PLR. The beauty of his plan was that only 100 members would have the PLR materials and they wouldn’t have to worry about saturation. Because of this, those initial 100 memberships at $29 each sold out within a couple of hours.

But here was the problem… it was capped at 100 members. The very thing that made it easy to sell was also the thing that limited how much Mark would earn each month. When someone dropped out of the membership, he alerted his wait list to see if someone else wanted to join. But again, he could never have more than 100 members at any one time.

That’s when Mark got creative: He started building small websites that consisted of a landing page, a lead magnet and a main website that promoted ClickBank affiliate links. Each month he would build five of these, all different but all using the same PLR materials from that month. Some of the materials were used for the lead magnet, some for the main website, and the ClickBank promotions were for related products.

Then he sold each of these five websites, each on its own unique URL. This little step more than doubled his income, earning him about $5,000 a month after the expense of getting his PLR materials written.

Enter Susan. She, too, built a PLR membership site, but her niche was self-improvement. And rather than limit the number of memberships she sold, she instead made her members “qualify”. She did this by having them do one of two things: They could provide the URL of their self-improvement or coaching website or social media page.

If they didn’t yet have a site, they could provide their plan for building their self-improvement or coaching business (20-50 words) and certify they would be using the materials to help others. The idea was that you had to be a self-improvement or coaching professional to qualify, but the fact was almost anyone could pass the test.

Now Susan could sell as many memberships as she liked. And in fact she provided a private Facebook Page for members-only where they could meet, strategize and work together on their own projects. A lot of joint ventures came out of that FB Page. And the best part was, the more people who joined, the more potential JV partners there were.

Susan charges $47 a month for her membership. And because people must qualify, they stay for longer and seem to appreciate the membership more.

Both Mark and Susan promote other products inside their membership area. These are products that are extremely helpful as well as being timeless. No junk is promoted inside the memberships because neither marketer wants to ruin their reputation with their members.

Susan has a unique twist on this: Every six months she has an extra PLR package created. This package is given for free to everyone who has made a purchase from inside the membership site, or they can buy it for $47. This encourages members to buy something in addition to the membership every six months. Susan also sells this package on its own as a stand-alone PLR package. Her upsell? Of course, it’s the self-improvement PLR membership.

Mark and Susan also sell past packages to new members. When someone new joins the membership, they are offered the chance to purchase previous months’ PLR packages. Susan offers every package ever created for the membership, either sold separately or as one big discounted package.

Mark, on the other hand, only sells packages that are at least six months old because of his rule of limiting the number of members he can have. It wouldn’t seem right to him to sell last month’s package to the 100 active members last month AND to 10 new members this month.

By now you’re coming to the same conclusion I reached… limiting the number of members is a BAD idea. A possible exception might be if you charge a LOT of money. But at $27 a month, you really don’t want to have membership limits, even if it does make it easier to sell out.

One more thing… Susan does not allow members to leave and then come back again at a later date. She makes it perfectly clear that if someone resigns a membership, they are gone forever. If you think about it, this makes good sense. Very few people in a membership will leave and then later want to come back. By telling them they don’t have this option, it makes members want to stay rather than permanently losing out.

If someone is having financial difficulty, rather than make them leave she will give them a free month or two to tide them over. This might sound counterintuitive but it makes for incredibly strong goodwill. She’s had members who asked to be comped for a month or two who subsequently stayed with her for another year or two after that period. And she’s even had a few pay her for the months she comped because they were grateful for her generosity. You could say she treats her members like family and it really pays off.

Now here’s what Mark did one day when he was desperate for money: He was in the middle of buying a house and realized things would go a lot smoother if he had another $10,000 for his down payment. The problem was, he needed this money right away. So he mailed out to every single past member of his membership site and offered them a full year of membership for just $99. A surprisingly large percentage of those past members said yes to the offer. Then he mailed to his list and gave them the same offer, resulting in even more sales and close to $15,000 in his pocket.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking… what about his limit of 100 members? He worked so hard not to violate that rule, and then he went and more than doubled his members by offering the annual option. I’m not going to judge – I just report. Again, maybe it’s not the best thing long term to say you’re going to limit the number of members you have for your membership.

If you’re wondering what sort of PLR you would need to create or have someone else create for your site, here’s my advice on that point:

Watch what is selling right now in your niche. What’s hot? What is it that everyone is talking about? Then have a complete package built around that topic including product, promotional emails and ads, sales letter and so forth. Make the quality such that you would have no trouble selling it to the end user. In fact, a great secret to selling any PLR is to first sell it to the end user to PROVE that its good enough to sell.

Imagine if you can promote your PLR membership site by stating that you sold the very products in the site and here’s your conversion rate and here’s your profit and here’s when you sold it. You could update your sales letter each month with the new PLR product and stats for that month. And yes, selling your PLR to end users is just one more stream of income from your PLR membership site.

Here’s one more trick that Mark used to add another income stream and better retain his members: He offered STEEP discounts on products to his members. He simply contacted product owners of relevant, high priced products and asked if he could negotiate a deal for 20 of his members. These are products that originally sold for $200 to $3,000. He offered a discount of 50% to 90% off, but only for the first 20 buyers. Believe it or not, this scarcity technique was highly effective and he usually sold all 20 copies to his membership of 100.

Here’s an example of something he sold recently: It was a $1,000 product that he offered to his members at an 80% discount, bringing it down to $200. 50% commission meant he earned $100 per sale, times 20 sales and that’s an extra $2,000.

PLR is alive and well and selling like gangbusters. And with a little planning you too can have your own PLR membership site with potentially several streams of income.

Ouch! You’ve got a great product. In fact, there’s never been another product like yours in the history of the world. Your product is going to sell like GANGBUSTERS because, well, because you just know it will. Because it has to. Because you just sunk the last 6 months and several thousand dollars into building the product, but, it’s going to all be worth it as soon as these stupid, snobby, too-good-to-talk-to-you big shot marketers come down off of their high horses and promote it for you.

Whew.

Okay, maybe that’s not exactly how you see it.

But you do believe you’ve got a great product that will sell well, and you know you’re doing these other marketers a FAVOR by offering them the chance to promote it for you. Because after all, they have nothing to do and nothing to promote. They’re just waiting for you to come along and give them a chance to double the millions they’ve already earned…

Yeah. Right.

I remember all too well how hard it was to get anyone to take a look at my offer, much less promote it for me when I was new. And do you know why? It’s because like almost every new marketer out there, I had it backwards.

Imagine a man knocks on the door of a woman he’s never met before. She opens the door a crack to see who it is and realizes she doesn’t know him from an axe murderer. Through the crack in the door he says to her, “Hi Baby, I have a fantastic deal for you! I’m going to do you a huge favor by letting you drive me in your car to an expensive restaurant where you’ve made reservations for us. I’m going to let you buy me dinner with cocktails and a bottle of wine, and afterwards I’ll let you take me to an expensive Broadway show that’s booked six months in advance. And after that, I’ll do you an even bigger favor and let you sleep with me. What do you say?”

Seriously, what do you think she’ll say to this stranger at her door? I suspect she slammed the door shut when he got to the part about the expensive restaurant and reservations.

And yet new marketers take this exact same approach all the time when asking established marketers to act as their affiliates or JV partners.

“Hi Joe Marketer, I have a fantastic deal for you! I’m going to do you a huge favor by letting you devote several days of your precious promotional schedule to selling my product to your list and followers. Sure, you don’t know me, you don’t know my product and you have zero reason to trust me or my product. But I still expect you to drop everything and instead of promoting something you KNOW will sell and you know your customers will love, I want you to take a huge chance on promoting a product that might not sell at all, that might be awful, that might alienate your customers and ruin your reputation. Because hey, that’s what you should do for a total stranger, right?”

Now imagine receiving one or even several of these requests every day. Is it any wonder that seasoned marketers stop answering their email, and new marketers have trouble getting anyone to promote for them?

Let’s go back to the guy and gal analogy. What if that guy were to come up to the woman – not at her front door, but at work – and simply introduce himself and maybe thank her for something she did at her job? Maybe he comes back in a couple of days and comments on something she wrote or asks a relevant question. He starts following her on social media and engaging her there.

A little bit of interaction here, a little bit there…

Then maybe he does something nice for her – shares one of her links, tells his Facebook Fans about her business – or he simply buys one of her products. She’s starting to take notice of him. He’s not scary and in fact he seems like a nice guy. What’s this? He’s got a website. She checks it out. Hmmm… this might be someone worth getting to know better.

The following month or maybe the following year, what happens? She’s promoting his product. Or maybe she’s not, but maybe she introduced him to a friend of hers that’s an even better fit for a joint venture.

You already know the point I’m getting to here – don’t pounce on strangers and expect them to do you a huge favor when they don’t even know you. And yes, promoting your product is indeed a huge favor.

The 3 Secrets to Landing Big JV Partners:

1. Build the relationship before asking for the favor, whatever that favor might be. (You already knew that, right?)

2. Build your own audience through social media, list building and so forth. Then when your product is ready to launch, launch it to your list first. Take note of the clickthrough rates, conversion rates and refund rates. Now you’ve got something to tell potential affiliates and JV partners other than, “I think this will sell well.”

3. Realize that not everyone is going to promote your product, no matter how good you are at building relationships first. Maybe they only promote their own products. Maybe they just don’t think your product is a good fit for their list. Maybe they’re having a bad day/week/life. Don’t worry about it. If you build enough relationships with others, you’ll find that some promote, some don’t and it’s all good.

The headline might read like a joke but I’m actually serious. You already know there are internet marketers who have literally made enough money in online marketing to purchase an actual mansion or two or ten. The question is, how do they do it?

And the answer is, in my opinion, diabolically simple.

Maybe the best kept secret in online marketing is that everything new is simply a variation of something old. There really is nothing that is breakthrough new. But we make it seem that way to our buyers by using the following method:

Step 1: You purchase a product or two or three on how to make money online using a certain technique.

Step 2: You implement much of the information and steps you learned in the product(s).

Step 3: Along the way, you kept careful track of what worked and what didn’t work, along with your own ideas and innovations.

Step 4: You create your own ‘breakthrough’ product that demonstrates how YOU managed to get these results in your own business and you sell the heck out of it.

Step 5: You repeat the process.

Whoa. Sounds too simple, right? You were hoping for the magic formula hidden under a golden rock guarded by warrior elves and ankle biting gnomes.

Nope.

Choose a method. Research it to find out what’s working for others. Get busy. Make notes. Improve the system, find a new twist or apply your knowledge to a new niche. Make a product or course that teaches others what you’re doing. Sell it. Repeat.

You’ll be making money from what you’re doing AND from teaching others how to do it.

•    Learn it
•    Do it
•    Improve it
•    Teach it
•    Repeat

Millions have been made with this formula.

Now I wonder what YOU will do with it… ?