If you already sell your own products, you can double your income in no time at all by adding new price points to your marketing funnel. You don’t even need to create any new products – just new services that take very little of your time. Here’s how it works…
Let’s say you’ve got one or more products in the $20-$50 dollar range that teach something you’re good at. And for this example, let’s say that your product is a book on how to make a website super user friendly so that people stay and buy, rather than getting lost and confused and leaving. (This is a major market, by the way. Hint hint.)
In addition to your book, you can add a personal 1 hour consultation for $97 to $197 to look at and give feedback on one of their websites.
You could also offer to be on retainer for a certain fee per month to check each of their websites monthly and point out the changes they need to make. This fee would depend on the number of sites they have and are adding each month.
You could further offer a coaching service in which you train people to be usability experts and charge others for their services. In this case, you might charge $1,000 or even $2,000 a month for 3-6 months to make them experts.
Whatever your niche is, odds are you can add additional service-type programs that will easily double the amount of money you’re already making.
If you sell just 5 $97 one-time consultations a month, that’s another $5,820 a year.
If you sell an ongoing service at $297 a month and you’ve got 12 clients, that’s $42,768 a year.
If you take 4 new coaching clients for 6 months at a time, twice a year at $1,000 a month, that’s another $48,000 a year.
And none of these services have to take a lot of time. In the case of the 1 hour consult, obviously it’s an hour. And your real money here will be derived from upselling one of your more expensive consulting or coaching packages.
If you’re a consultant, you might be spending a couple of hours a week on each client. If you’re a coach, you might spend an hour a week on the phone, and answer their email questions 3 to 5 days a week.
And notice that you didn’t have to create any new products to do this. You’ve already got the knowledge and expertise – you’re simply offering more of it in a highly personalized manner. Your clients get tremendous benefit this way, much more so than they could by simply buying your book.
You’re happy, your clients are happy, and here’s a bonus: Anyone that you personally work with – even if it’s only for an hour – is far more likely to buy your products in the future, regardless of price.
Do you plan to release a $997 product in six months? Offer your customers personalized attention that greatly benefits them, and you will hit the ground running with sales when you launch your expensive product, guaranteed.
Take a few minutes now and think about what you can offer your existing and future customers that A) Provides them with a tremendous amount of value and B) You can perform in a minimal amount of time. Then quickly write up a page explaining your new service, send it to your existing customers and add it to your sales funnel. You could be making new sales in less than 24 hours.
If you know how to build websites – or you’re willing to learn – you can make some extra money doing this. The sites are small – only one page – and they don’t take long to build. Yet you can sell them for $100 – $300 on sites like Flippa.
Sometimes you might even get more money, but let’s be conservative.
Your first step is to locate some kind of service online that’s basically automated. It might be article writing, clicks, video creation, etc. The possibilities are endless. The criteria you’re looking for is; someone goes to that site, chooses what they want and checks out without having contact with the site owner.
Let’s say you find a site that will write one blog post for $5, 10 blog posts for $40 and 25 blogposts for $95.
Now you buy a url like, BlogPostsWrittenForYou.com or something along those lines.
You then build a one page website that describes the service, what they get, the turn around time, etc. You’re selling the service. Make it look professional but don’t spend years creating it – it shouldn’t take longer than one morning or afternoon.
Put your buttons in place for each of the options, but don’t hook them up to anything. And raise the price of each option. You might make it $10 for 1 post, $75 for 10 posts and $150 for 20 posts.
Then you use Flippa or one of the website selling services online to post your site for sale. Of course you’ve done no SEO or anything else hard. You haven’t driven any traffic. You haven’t made any sales. So you’re going to be talking about the potential of what the site might do once it’s unleashed.
The buyer of the site just needs to hook up the buttons to their PayPal, take payments and customer details and then pass the info along to the real service to do the fulfillment.
The site buyer keeps the difference between what they collect and what they pay for the services, much like a store keeps the mark up on products that they sell.
You could do one or two of these a day for a nice side income.
Just be sure to be honest – it’s a new site with tons of potential, not a track record. That’s why you’re only going to get $100 to $300 or so per sale, not thousands of dollars. But you didn’t put much time into it, so it’s still a good return on your own investment.
And once you get good at this, you could outsource the website creation, too.
Regardless of what people might think of the Walmart we know today, there is a lot to be learned from Walmart’s founder Sam Walton. In fact, if Sam were starting in business in 2020, he would almost undoubtedly be starting that business online.
So what can we glean from the guy in the old pickup truck who loved retailing?
Don’t worry about what others say about you. At JC Penney’s, his first full time job out of college, the personnel director told Sam, “Walton, I’d fire you if you weren’t such a good salesman. Maybe you’re just not cut out for retail.” No one remembers that man’s name, but Sam built an empire no one is likely to ever forget.
If people are telling you that you’re not cut out for online marketing, just remember Sam and smile.
Go with your strengths. Sam wasn’t good at accounting, he had poor organizational skills and he was hopelessly disorganized. But one thing he could do really well was build a team of people who could handle these things for him.
Focus on your strengths and outsource the rest.
Build relationships. In college, Same wanted to be student body president, so he discovered a trick that he would use for the rest of his life:
“I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I did that in college. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them, I would call them by name, but even if I didn’t I would still speak to them. Before long, I probably knew more students than anybody in the university, and they recognized me and considered me their friend.”
Sam made friends every where he went, and you can do the same thing online. Talk to everyone in your niche because you never know who is going to be your next customer, your ally, your promoter, your affiliate or your next joint venture partner.
Be a learning machine. Sam never stopped reading books and taking courses because he understood that the next great idea could come from anywhere.
Choose 5 or 10 proven online marketers to follow, and then read everything they write. Read a marketing book each week, and develop a curiosity for everything related to your field. Keep an open mind and know that your next great idea is hidden right in front of you – you just have to uncover it and act on it.
Learn from your competition. When Sam bought his first store, he realized the store across the street was doing twice as well. So Sam spent time everyday checking out his competitor to see what he was doing, right and wrong. Later he checked out Kmarts, who were ahead of him at the time. Then he visited the headquarters of other retailers who didn’t consider him to be serious competition. Little did they know…
Carefully watch and analyze what other online marketers are doing right and wrong and learn from them. Make friends with them. Ask questions. Bribe them, buy their courses and do whatever it takes to find out what’s already working.
Continually experiment with your business. Sam was continually applying what he learned elsewhere to his stores. Said Sam:
“I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Walmart.”
Learn something and apply it. Make it your mantra: Learn something – innovate. And test, test and test some more to see what is working best. In no other business model in history has it been easier to innovate, test and discover exactly what is working and what needs improving than in online marketing.
Don’t reinvent the wheel – adapt it to your own use. According to Sam, “…most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from somebody else…”
There are plenty of proven online marketing business models you can choose from, so don’t think you have to invent the next revolutionary thing. Instead, take what’s already working and make it even better.
Make mistakes and then move on. Sam didn’t understand the terms of his first lease or how to buy a business. He borrowed money and went into debt to overpay for a failed Ben Franklin store in Newport, Arkansas. After 5 long years of grueling work and long hours, he had quadrupled sales and he had the most successful Ben Franklin store in the region. That’s when the landlord booted him out to give the store to his son to run. There was no where else in town to locate Sam’s store, so he drove across four states looking for a new location. He found one in Bentonville, Arkansas and started over.
It’s okay to get it wrong the first time. In fact, you’re probably going to make mistakes and that’s terrific, because it means you’ve started. You’re moving, you’ve got momentum and you’re making progress. Mistakes aren’t roadblocks, they’re bumps in the road to success.
Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Says Sam about being thrown out of his own store, “I’ve never been one to dwell on reverses, and I didn’t do so then…. I know I read my leases a lot more carefully after that, and maybe I became a little more wary of just how tough the world can be …. But I didn’t dwell on my disappointment.”
Every moment is a fresh beginning and an opportunity to take what you’ve learned – good and bad – and use it to your advantage.
Enjoy the process and your victories. In his autobiography, which was written on his deathbed, Sam wrote, “Walmart No. 18 … opened in 1969, and it marked our return to Newport … nineteen years after we had basically been run out of town. By then, I was long over what had happened to us down there, and I didn’t have revenge in mind…. As it happened, we did extraordinarily well with our Newport Walmart, and it wasn’t too long before the old Ben Franklin store I had run on Front Street had to close its doors. You can’t say we ran that guy—the landlord’s son—out of business. His customers were the ones who shut him down. They voted with their feet.”
Sometimes success can be a long time in coming, so remember to enjoy the process and the victories along the way. There were 17 successful stores prior to No. 18 and no doubt Sam enjoyed them all. At first, even your smallest successes should be celebrated, whether it’s your first website, your first sale, or your first $10,000 day.
When it comes to success, Sam Walton may have said it best:
“Celebrate your successes. Find humor in your failures. And remember that high expectations are the key to everything.”
Expect to succeed, act as though you are already successful, do the things you need to do to succeed, and the rest will take care of itself.
Using paid solo ads might be one of the easiest and fastest ways to test out your marketing funnel, to build your list and even to make a quick profit. Yet most new Internet marketers are deathly afraid to try paid solo ads. It’s likely because…
A) They have to set up their funnel first and B) They have to PAY for the solo ads
It’s scary. What if they don’t get a response? What if they blow it? What if they choose the wrong solo ad provider, or write the wrong email, or create a squeeze page that doesn’t convert, or…
If you try hard enough, you can find a hundred reasons not to use paid solo ads. But if you get over your fear, you might find that there is no better or faster way to build an Internet marketing business.
Since having the knowledge to be successful tends to trump fear, I’m going to give you some tips to help you make your solo ads successful and even profitable as quickly as possible.
Write a solo ad that targets exactly who you want. You’re paying by the click, which means the solo ad seller will continue to mail until you get the number of clicks you pay for. So don’t write just any ad – write one that directly targets the exact people you want to reach. This builds a higher quality list that is more responsive, compared to a less responsive generic list.
Monetize your funnel immediately. Don’t just settle for building a list with your squeeze page – put in a sales page for a related product immediately after the squeeze page. Your goal is to make enough sales to pay for your mailing.
Further monetize your funnel with an upsell and a downsell. They didn’t buy the product on the sales page? Make a smaller offer. They bought the product? Offer them something else to buy, too.
Maximize your conversions by being 100% consistent. If your solo mailing says they get a free video series on the 3 best traffic driving methods, then that’s what your squeeze page should say, too. Don’t change the topic from your solo ad to your squeeze page or you’ll confuse your prospects into leaving without signing up.
Try twice to sign them onto your list. If they don’t sign up on your squeeze page, then use an exit pop to try one more time to capture their email address.
Alternate method: Use your exit splash for your main offer. This way if they don’t join your list, they still see the offer. Consider your priority – is it making money now, or building your list? If it’s making money now, show them the sales page. If it’s building your list, try one last time to capture their email.
Use an effective follow up series. To further monetize your new list, put an autoresponder series in place that contains several offers in addition to all the good info and credibility building stuff you want to add.
Recruit affiliates within your solo ad funnel. Don’t just settle for building your prospect and customer lists – build your affiliate list as well. Send out a request for affiliates within your autoresponder sequence. This can be on the first email you send, or the second. “Welcome to ___. In the coming weeks you’re going to discover (insert benefits.) Affiliates: If you’d like to earn commissions, please visit ___ for all the details and to sign up.” Easy.
Mail new subscribers daily. Yes, daily. You want them to get to know you and become accustomed to receiving, opening and reading your emails.
Track everything. You want to know what people are doing, what they’re buying and when they’re buying it within the funnel and in the autoresponder series. Tweak accordingly to make your funnel as profitable as possible. The more you’re making, the more you can afford to spend on solo ads to build your lists even bigger.
Think about it – if you spend $100 to get 250 clicks, and you have your funnel optimized to convert at 50%, you’re adding 125 people to your list each time. If your funnel is further optimized to clear $150 on offers, upsells and downsells, that’s excellent.
Each time you spend $100, you’re earning $50 profit and building your list. How many times could you do this per day? As many as you want, because you’re in profit.
Best case scenario: You have your own products and thus when sales are made, 100% of the money goes straight into your account. And since you get paid immediately, you can immediately reinvest those funds in additional mailings.
Second best case scenario: You don’t have your own products, but you’re using an affiliate program that pays you immediately. Since you’re not making 100% of the profit, you’ll have to work harder on optimizing your funnel to make it profitable, but it’s still quite doable. And since you get paid immediately, you can immediately reinvest those funds in additional mailings.
Worst case scenario: You’re using an affiliate product from some place like ClickBank, where it takes awhile to get paid. You can still make money this way and still build your list, but the challenge is obvious: You won’t be able to immediately reinvest your profits in additional mailings.
Still, even the worst case scenario is far, far better than doing nothing. And once you are building your list, you can also look into doing ad swaps with reputable marketers – you mail your list for them, they mail their list for you, and it costs you nothing.
Just be sure their products and their reputations make you look good. You don’t want to send your list anything that will bite you in the end.
These are without a doubt the biggest mistakes new marketers tend to make when it comes to copywriting… Lie #1: Good copywriting uses lots of exclamation points and over-the-top jargon a 5 year old wouldn’t believe.
“This Brand New Revolutionary Never Before Seen Blah Blah Will Explode Your (Bank Account! Abs!! Sex Life!!! Etc.)” Seriously, who really wants their abs to explode???
“This Revolutionary Once In A Lifetime Opportunity Is Only Available To You Because You’re So Damn Handsome, But It Will Disappear In 10 Minutes And Then You’ll Be Ugly Forever!!!” Okayyyy…….
“This Incredibly Awesome Majestic Indescribable Super Secret Opportunity That Only The Super Duper Uber Wealthy Rich Know About Can Be Yours Because This One Rich Nerd Guy Decided To Spill The Beans Because He’s Really Angry At All The Other Rich Jerk Guys!!!” Yeah, who doesn’t believe that?
If you think you need exclamation points, it means you really need a thesaurus. Writer Henneke Duistermaat gives some great examples of this. Instead of “It’s big!” Try “It’s enormous.” Instead of writing, “That was brave!” Use, “That was heroic.” Finding the right words instead of lazily using exclamation points makes your writing more persuasive and tantalizing.
And forget wild promises and over the top worn out phrases. Instead, try being honest and genuine, like you’re talking to a friend over tea. Your sales copy will get noticed and read because it sounds like it’s coming from a real person and not the worst possible version of a used car salesman. Lie #2 – You can simply ‘swipe’ your way to copywriting success.
Just rip off other writers, substitute your product for theirs, change a little bit here and there and call it good, right? Yes, it will save you time and yes, you might make some sales.
But to be truly successful and to BE a success (two different things, btw) you need fresh thinking and honest copy.
Because unless you are selling the exact same product to the exact same customers, ripping off someone else’s copy won’t provide the sensational conversions you’re looking for.
Telling your own story in your own way will.
Think about every blog that you read on a regular basis. Could someone else write those blogs and have them be the same? No. If someone tried to rip them off, would they be as successful as the original authors? No.
Once you master copywriting you’ll have a tremendous amount of power to write your own paychecks because you will be the source of new ideas and perspectives that resonate with your customers and create buying frenzies. Lie #3 – Copywriting is super simple, once you know the ‘secrets.’
That’s right – just spend $997 for my latest course and in no time at all you’ll know all the secrets of the pros and you’ll be a copywriting savant.
Actually, no. No there are no secrets and you won’t become a copywriting wiz overnight.
The fact is, there are a multitude of books and courses that will teach you about copywriting. But there are no real secrets except this – there is no substitution for practice. And more practice. And more practice after that.
Hopefully this won’t sound too sentimental, but great copywriting is about one thing: Caring.
Caring for your customer, caring that he gets the best possible solution to his problem, caring enough to see to it that you make every effort to get that solution in his hands.
It’s about empathy and stepping into your customers’ shoes. Seeing life from his or her perspective. Living with the problem they have, knowing what it’s like to desperately want the solution.
You can’t outsmart your prospects. What you can do is be one of them so you can talk to them and counsel them as they would want to be talked to and counseled.
When you learn how to do that, you’ll be a great copywriter indeed.
The more you discover about why people buy your products, the easier it is to influence them to buy more – or to persuade prospects to become new customers.
Plus, the more of these reasons you can fulfill with your copy (without going overboard) the better your odds of making the sale.
Here then are a dozen of the most powerful reasons why someone might buy your information product.
To make money. This one is easy; sometimes you’ve got to spend money to make money, like buying a course on how to invest in the stock market, or how to start a business. In fact one of the easiest ways to make a sale is to show that your prospect’s small investment can be turned into a much bigger return.
To save money. Buying a water filtration system can save a person hundreds of dollars over buying bottled water. If your solution saves money, show them how much. If you teach how to make money, show them not only that they can make money with your product – they can also save money by not making stupid mistakes. If you sell dating products, show them how finding the right person quickly will save a fortune in dinners, movies and bad dates.
To save time. Instant coffee, fast food and done for you solutions all fall into this category. So does anything that shortens the learning curve. If you sell courses, this one can be big. Do they want to build a business in six years? Or buy your course and build it in 6 months?
To feel important. No one needs a Rolex or a Ferrari, but they feel better about themselves when they own one. Status is hugely important to some people – why else would they spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on a purse or a pair of shoes when something from the discount store would work just as well?
To make it easier. Let’s say you sell a big course on how to get a certain result through a series of steps. Yes, they could do everything you teach in the course – or you could offer to do the work for them for a price. They won’t have the hassle of doing it themselves, and they can be certain it will be done right.
To feel good. This one is broad and encompasses a lot of things. We feel good when we pamper ourselves. We feel good when we do something for someone else. We feel good when we’re furthering our education or providing for our future. Really, no one buys something to feel bad. The question to ask yourself is how does your product make your customer feel good?
To move us closer to our goals. Whether those goals are basic like food and shelter, or more grand like taking over the world, we will buy almost anything that will help us get whatever it is that we want most.
To move us away from pain. Whatever that pain might be – physical, mental, emotional – people will buy if they think it will help to ease or erase the pain.
To be superior. Granted, few people openly admit they want to feel superior, yet almost everyone does. This is why people buy products they think are ‘cool’ or will make them look good, like tattoos or fast cars. They’ll buy things simply because they’re new or upgraded, or because they’re better versions than what their friends have.
To keep up. People will buy something because everyone else has it and they don’t want to be left behind. Look at smart phones. The more people had smart phones, the more pressure there was on everyone else to get one, too. If your product can reach a tipping point of popularity, people will buy it simply because others have bought it.
To be a good fan. Football fans buy giant foam fingers to show they’re fans. Collectors of Coke products will buy anything that has a Coke name on it. People who love Apple will stand in line to buy the latest gadget. Followers of a particular blogger will buy that blogger’s new book without hesitating. If you can build trust with your community, you can get them to buy products simply because you recommend those products, whether they’re your products or someone else’s.
It’s on sale. Or scarce. Or both. Customers will sometimes buy things simply because they’re a good deal. If you don’t believe it, check out any black Friday sale – people line up to buy stuff they didn’t even know they wanted until they saw it was going to sell at a cheap price. People are also much more likely to buy if they think they’re going to lose the chance to buy because of scarcity, or the chance to buy at this low price because the price is about to go back up.
Bonus Reason: Because you orchestrated a marketing campaign that took away all of the risk and provided so many benefits, they couldn’t help but buy your product. And when they bought it, they did a little jig in front of their computer or holding their phone, because they were so happy they got it!
A product launches and sells hundreds or even thousands of copies. As an affiliate, you can make about 50% commission. But wouldn’t you like to keep ALL of the commission on the sales you make?
There is a way to do it. And while it’s not well known, the fact is it’s done far more often than you would think. Here’s how it works:
Savvy marketers approach product sellers and offer to buy the rights to their product. This might be a product that didn’t sell well through no fault of its own; for example, a great product with poor marketing. Or the product might have been a robust seller, but it’s no longer a hot commodity (which only takes about 3-4 weeks in many markets.)
If a deal is struck, the purchaser of the rights sells the product just as he would if he were an affiliate. However, he’s actually (and secretly) making ALL of the money. The product owner sold the rights and now receives nothing on each sale. That can be a good deal for a product owner, since they get a lump sum up front. But if you’re good at marketing, it can be a bonanza for you. It’s like having your own product, except with a guru’s name attached and ALL of the work done for you.
If the cost is a worry for you, then start small. Choose a product that’s been on the market for a while so you can get it for less money. Don’t purchase exclusive rights, just rights for yourself. Doing this, it’s possible to buy rights for a very reasonable rate.
Don’t add your name to the sales page – keep it just as it was so the product creator appears to be the seller. Simply replace the payment button and support desk link with your own.
If it’s in the budget, hire someone to optimize the site for keywords based on the product creator’s name. This can potentially get you sales when someone searches for the guru or the product.
Use a domain name that sounds a LOT like the original product name. And then get busy marketing, because all of the profit you make is yours.
You’ve probably heard that commenting on other people’s blogs is a good thing to do. But do you know why it’s so important?
Yes, it can get you traffic. People see your blog comment, like it, and click on your name to go to your website. But that’s not the biggest reason to comment on blogs.
Leaving blog comments might also give you backlinks, which could potentially increase your standing in the natural search results. But again, this isn’t the biggest reason to leave comments on other people’s blog posts.
Leaving blog comments also gets you seen by others in your niche. Leave enough great comments and people might start to remember you and your brand.
But again, that’s not the biggest benefit to leaving well-thought-out, interesting blog comments.
The biggest benefit? Whether you realize it or not, consistent blog commenting builds relationships with other bloggers.
Think about it – you go to Joe’s blog once a week and leave a well-thought out comment on Joe’s latest post. Joe keeps noticing you, and pretty soon the two of you are building a relationship that can eventually lead to:
Guest posts
Product endorsements
Joint ventures
Introductions to other movers in your niche
And so forth…
Here’s how to be effective at blog commenting:
Post on blogs in your particular nicheRead the entire post thoroughly before commenting
Share your specific thoughts and opinions
Don’t be general or vague. “Nice post” doesn’t cut it
Use a great avatar – a photo of your smiling face is usually best
Use your real name, not “Mary6504”
Never be rude and never be mean
Be genuine and thought-provoking – Add value to the conversation
Use Google Alerts to be alerted to new posts so you can be one of the first to comment – more readers will see your comment this way
Subscribe to RSS feeds and to email lists of your favorite bloggers – again, this helps to alert you when someone makes a new post
If you’re not the first to leave a blog comment, then scan the other comments to make sure you’re not repeating a thought or comment
Use personal stories where applicable
Quote the post itself in your comment – for example, “When you said ____ it gave me a great idea”
It’s okay to disagree if you do it in a way that totally respects the blogger’s opinions and thoughts
Ask questions of the blog owner. This will get you more engagement and shows you’re interested in their opinion – very effective for relationship building.
Always double proofread your comment for spelling and punctuation before submitting
And remember to be patient – you don’t develop a relationship with a blogger over one blog comment. Continue to come back and comment on new posts and you will gradually build real relationships with these bloggers.
Once an online marketer gets to a certain income level, that marketer almost invariably gets stuck. They can’t seem to make any more money, even when they pour more and more of their time into their business. Why? Because they are working IN their business rather than ON their business.
That’s why it’s so important to begin outsourcing as soon as you can afford to, which is actually a whole lot sooner than you probably think. If you believe you need to be bringing in a hefty six figure sum before you can get yourself some help, think again.
The fact is, the sooner you begin outsourcing some of the more mundane and time consuming facets of your business, the sooner you can begin growing your business in a truly substantial way.
You’ve only got a fixed number of hours in the week. Do you spend them doing:
A: The tasks you don’t like to do B: The tasks you don’t mind doing, but they could easily be done by someone else C: The tasks that you’re brilliant at doing and that you enjoy performing D: Planning and strategizing to take your business to the next level
Obviously you want to delegate A and B as fast as possible so you can focus on C and D.
Are you doing your own support? Are you answering your own emails and phone? Is it taking your entire morning just to do support, answer emails and so forth?
Next question: Exactly how much do you earn each time you work your own support desk or answer your own emails and phone? What’s that? Nothing? Maybe it’s time you hired someone to do it for you.
In fact, if you do it correctly, hiring someone to perform your support tasks for you can pay off from day one.
That’s because it frees you up to do the things that MAKE YOU MONEY.
Ah-hah! Imagine that – devoting nearly ALL of your working time to those tasks that make money, rather than doing support.
In the military there are two distinct areas of operation: Front line and support. The front line wins the battles while the support does just that – support those who are out there winning the battles.
In sports, you’ve got offense and defense. The defense is crucial for stopping the other team from scoring, but they generally DON’T SCORE any points themselves. The offense does that. If you’re spending all of your time on defense (answering emails) then you’re not devoting any time to offense (making sales.)
Here’s how to hand the bulk of your email tasks off to your new assistant: If you don’t already have a private email address, create one. This is the address you give to JV partners, fellow marketers and your mother. The people who matter most to your business and your personal life.
Once a day you check this address and answer these emails personally.
Everything else – EVERYTHING else – goes to your support address or support desk where your support person checks it daily or even several times a day.
This includes payments, autoresponder emails, hosting emails, questions from customers, complaints, testimonials, affiliate requests, etc.
Your support person has access to your accounts, too. Your hosting account, autoresponder account, PayPal account, etc. I know – it seems like a big leap of faith to give access to your PayPal account to someone else, but no worries. You can limit the PayPal functions your support person has access to. For example, they can issue refunds but not withdraw funds.
Your support person or team is basically going to run the day to day operation of your business for you.
When training your support staff, you can write out step by step procedures on how to do things, record videos or audios, or simply have them contact you when something comes up they haven’t handled before. In other words, there is a learning curve. But after the first week you shouldn’t have to spend much more time on training, especially if you’ve got the right person for the job.
You can also have your support person or team do all those other things you don’t like to do such as analyze stats, clean email lists, install websites, social media, etc. Whatever it is that you prefer to hand off, go ahead and do it.
If you hire someone for 2 hours a day, that frees up 2 hours of your own time. If you pay them $12 an hour, that’s $480 a month – quite possibly more than you currently pay for programs and how to info.
And it’s 40 hours per month that you’ve just gained. Imagine if you use that 40 hours each month to create and market a new product – that’s 12 new products in a year. If each product were to make you just $3,000 initially, and then just another $500 a month – well, you do the math.
If you’re still hesitating, then think about this: If you strike a deal with your support person to pay them monthly, then you’ve got 30 days to use your new found time to make more than enough money to cover them for the first month.
30 days and 40 new found hours. But that’s not even the biggest benefit of bringing someone in to help you with your business.
The biggest benefit of all is what it will do for your mindset, because suddenly you ARE a business person. There’s no more wondering if you’re just dabbling in a hobby. This stuff is REAL and you are now responsible for someone else’s income. This is the motivator that will kick you out of bed each morning and ensure you have a productive, successful day.
Use one of the freelance sites to find someone. Yes, it’s going to feel like a big step, because it is. A big step in the right direction, that is. Because the rewards are going to prove that it was totally worth it to take this next, logical step in your business evolution.
Two things are surprising about the technique I’m about to teach you for selling affiliate products…
First, it’s surprisingly easy. In fact, it’s so simple you might be tempted to dismiss it. Don’t. This method has been proven effective and it’s one you definitely want to put in your marketing arsenal.
Second, while it doesn’t take much time, it can be a real money maker. In fact, if you choose an affiliate product that pays instantly and if you have a traffic source (such as your own list, social media, etc.) then you can potentially put money in your pocket in less than 3 hours.
Here’s how it works: Choose an affiliate product you like. It needs to be one that you have, one that you can get from the seller for free, or one you buy. Regardless, you must have a copy of it yourself. Also, it’s better if it’s a product you personally like and use, although that’s not required.
Read the sales letter carefully and choose the biggest benefit. This might be in the headline or it could be in the bullet points.
Write a short report – 5 pages is fine, 10 pages is super and you don’t want to go any longer than that. In the report, detail how to do this one technique that you’ve pulled out of the product that provides this benefit. For example, how to get 10,000 visitors a month to your blog would be a good benefit.
If you don’t want to write the report, outsource it.
Create a squeeze page and use this big benefit as your title. “How To Get 10,000 Visitors a Month To Your Blog.”
Once they enter their email address and press the opt-in button, they are redirected to your affiliate page for the product. Not many will buy at this point, but it’s important that they see the page.
At the end of the report, send them back to that affiliate sales page. You might write something like this: “I hope you put this into action, but if you’d like to take a massive shortcut and reduce the time it takes to get 10,000 visitors a month to your website, then click here to get the complete fast-track system.”
Use your own wording. Your message is that what you just taught them works, but to do it quickly without the trial and error and mistakes, they can simply get the fast track system because it’s so much easier and faster. Plus they get tons of other benefits, too.
So what you’re doing here is building a list, giving them real value and then immediately marketing to that list the exact benefit they’re looking for. Plus of course you can follow up with those that don’t initially buy, plus you can also market other products to them in the future.
Once you get good at this, it shouldn’t take you more than 3 hours to set up and you can use your system for as long as you like. Send website visitors to it, tell your lists, offer your free report on social media, buy ads, etc.
Does it sound too easy? Often times it’s the simple techniques that create the biggest results. Making a couple of thousand dollars on each one of these systems that you set up is not unheard of. And depending on how much traffic you send and the product you choose, it could be even more.
And if you like, you can outsource the entire thing for a reasonable fee. Imagine if you just set one of these up a week. It might not be glamorous, but the path to wealth and riches is frequently a simple process applied consistently. The method described above can be your path to financial freedom.
