Work expands to fill the time allotted – and even more time beyond that – if you don’t have a hard deadline. Thus, if you make it a goal to finish your new ebook in 3 months, at the 3 month mark you’ll either just be finishing, or worse yet you’ll realize you’re only halfway done. If, however, you had a hard launch date, then you’ll have the book ready. Deadlines are a magnificent thing – they give you permission to ignore the email, ignore Facebook, turn the phone off, tear yourself away from the video games and television and actually get your work done.
So how can you create a product in a short amount of time? By doing two things:
First, set a deadline that is almost impossibly close, such as 10 days from right now.
Second, hold yourself accountable on a massive scale. That is, call up your best marketing buddy and schedule a live webinar with him or her to sell your new product. Now promote the webinar heavily.
Guess what? For the next 10 days you’re going to move heaven and earth to get your product finished for that webinar, and on Day 11 you are going to party!
First, you’re going to be celebrating the sales you made on the webinar.
Second, you’re going to be looking forward to all the sales you will make in the future with your new product. In fact, you’re going to take the momentum that webinar created and use it to contact other marketers and set up more live webinars for their lists.
Third, you are going to feel fantastic. That new product that you thought would take 3 months of your life only took 10 days!
Fourth, you’ve now got a system for not only getting products done fast, but also getting your first sales the moment the product is completed for an immediate payoff.
YouTube is a great tool for marketing your business – if you can avoid the pitfalls…
Mistake #1 – Thinking all you need to do is upload a video and traffic will flood your website. No less than 300 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute, so the competition to get your video seen by viewers is insane. There are tons of high-quality videos that never get more than a few thousand views, and no doubt many more that get even fewer eyeballs.
What to do? First, tailor your video content to what your viewers want and not necessarily to what you want to show them. Always keep the viewer in mind every step of the video making process and put their needs and desires ahead of yours. Next, you’ve got to vigorously promote your video. Social sites are often the best way to get the word out. And third, realize that it takes time, resources and a good idea to make a video people want to watch and pass on to others. It also takes time and resources to properly promote your video. Don’t expect to slap up any old video and watch the sales role in.
Mistake #2 – Thinking you’re too small or new to make video work for you and your business. Just because you need to keep your expectations realistic doesn’t mean placing and promoting videos on YouTube can’t have an impact on your business. Any business, large or small, can use video to its advantage.
Think about what you like to share with friends and tailor your video accordingly. Even a few thousand views can increase your business, and if you get lucky, you might even create the next viral video sensation.
Mistake #3 – Creating a commercial. Online video is about engagement with others, not slapping out another “buy my product” commercial.
Think of your video as doing much more than simply selling a product or service. People on YouTube want to consume and share engaging and fun content, so don’t give them a 30 minute speech on why your product rocks, because odds are they won’t watch it.
Instead, inject fun, personality and pizzazz into your videos. Make them emotional, or thought provoking, or funny, or all three. Ask yourself: If I saw this video, would I send it to my friends? If the answer is no, then keep working on your concept.
Another test to see if you’re on the right track: If you are with friends, would you show them the video? If not, then you might want to start over. A video should grab attention and keep the viewer entranced. It should be short – usually less than 10 minutes and preferably less than 5 minutes. And it should leave the viewer feeling GLAD they saw it, not glad it’s over.
Mistake #4 – Trying too hard. You might think you need to spend thousands of dollars to get a professional video created, when the fact is an amateur type of video might do just as well, if not better.
People generally don’t like “slick” unless it’s of a “Hollywood” caliber – and that’s expensive. People prefer to watch videos of real people doing real things. To illustrate slick versus real, think of an overly smooth sales person trying to sell you a car – isn’t he or she an instant turn off? Now think of an average nice person with a car for sale. She tells you it’s a good car, but the heater takes 10 minutes to warm up and the ride’s not super smooth. Who do you trust?
Or think about the person trying desperately to impress you with how professional he is and how he knows everything about everything, compared again with the average sincere person who readily admits she makes bone-headed mistakes and sometimes says or does the wrong thing. Who do you like better?
Bottom line: Do create videos to market your business on YouTube, but don’t expect your videos to get a gazillion views overnight without promotion. Be yourself when making videos, and always keep the viewer in mind through each step of the process.
…regardless of whether they’re written blog posts or video blog posts. And this can even work on pre-launch videos for your new product launch.
You’ve got traffic, you create great blog posts – and yet only a handful of people bother to comment. Frustrating, isn’t it? You work hard to make a great blog post with lots of information your readers can use, but it feels like nobody cares. Worse yet, your blog has the appearance of a ghost town. After all, the more comments your posts receive, the more popular your blog appears. And let’s face it, everyone wants to be part of something BIG, something that others are involved with.
So how do you get more replies to your blog posts? And for that matter, how do you get people to reply to your pre-product-launch posts and videos? Here are 5 methods I’ve found that work…
1. Ask them. That’s right – sometimes it can be as simple as asking them to take the action. Ask them to respond to your post or to a specific question you place at the end of the post. Don’t make it a difficult question; Asking whether they prefer chunky peanut butter or smooth peanut butter will pull far more responses than asking how to achieve world peace. (I’m exaggerating the point here, but you get my meaning.)
2. Bribe them. Offer them one of your paid products for free when they leave a comment. You can either give the product to everyone who comments, or to the best comment, or 5 comments chosen at random, etc. Choose a product that your readers are likely to want, and if you’re awarding the bribe to everyone, be sure to send it within 24 hours of their posted comment. If you’re awarding it to the best comment(s) or to several comments at random, post the winners on your site so that a) your readers know you really gave away the prize and b) it becomes an incentive for them to post a reply to your next blog entry. After all, if someone else won last time, they’ll be thinking they’ve got a shot at winning this time.
3. Make it a contest. Again, you’re offering a bribe, only this time it’s monetary. For example, offer $100 to the poster who provides the most innovative answer to your question, or to the one who gives the funniest response, etc. Either you can choose the winner, or you can let your readers vote and choose the winner for you. (HINT: This method is also a great way to find out what your reader’s biggest challenges are – thus giving you great ideas for new products your readers WANT to purchase.)
4. Give away the launch. If you’re launching a new product, give away copies of your new product to the best replies to your post and videos, as well as to random posters. This way you get both the posts that take an effort, and the quickie posts from those who don’t want to take a lot of time posting a well thought out answer. This will increase the excitement, increase the exposure of your launch, and can result in some pre-launch testimonials from those who won the product.
5. Be controversial. Taking on topics that hold any kind of controversy will almost always get people talking. People love to take sides, express their opinions, and even get into a discussion. Watch for topics in your niche that spark definite opinions and blog about those – and the replies will naturally come.
6. BONUS Method: While you’re giving rewards out, don’t limit yourself to replies to your posts and videos. Also reward your readers for re-tweeting your content, telling others, referring others, etc. People will jump through hoops for you if you…
a) Are offering great content
b) Make it easy to jump through hoops for you and
c) You reward them for jumping!
Bottom Line: It’s a matter of training your readers to reply to your posts. The more you work to encourage their participation, the more it will become a habit for them to reply. Also take note of which threads tend to get the most response – these are topics that hit hot buttons, and you might want to blog about them more often.
You already know how important content is for communicating your message, getting traffic and making sales. But you might be overlooking a few things that make your content truly great…
Write for your readers, NOT for the search engines. Sometimes we get so caught up in optimizing our content for SEO that we forget we’re really writing for our readers and not Google. Create content that is useful for people, that helps them, educates them and entertains them. Make SEO your second priority in writing your content, not your first. Otherwise your traffic isn’t going to get past your second paragraph before they’re closing your site and moving on to someone else’s.
Write for your readers, NOT for a certain platform. Today all we hear about is social media and everyone wants to know what to put on Facebook, or what to Tweet and so forth to make money. Again, this is the wrong approach and if taken it will cost you. Instead, identify what your users want, and THEN consider which platforms are best for delivering your content. It’s not about Facebook, YouTube, your blog and etc., it’s about giving people what they want.
Don’t be a control freak. It’s easy to fall into the mindset that all of your content must be published on your website so you can stay in control of it, but that thinking will only limit the number of people you reach. Instead, build your content to travel so that it can be downloaded, embedded or shared – thus capturing many more eyeballs and driving those eyeballs back to your site. Think of your content as ambassadors traveling the world to tell others about you, and sending those people to your site. The more your content travels, the more people it will reach, and the more traffic it can then send back to you.
Be fruitful. Are you writing one article or one blogpost a week? Try stepping it up to one a day, or even more. Release as much great content as you can, and don’t get stuck in one rigid rut, either. Develop a range of different content and see what garners both the most eyeballs and the most response. Pay attention to user feedback – they’ll tell you what’s working, what they love, and what they want more of.
Be open. So you planned a series of videos on topic A, and during the second video you mentioned topic B, and people went nuts asking for more information. What to do? Simple – give them what they want. You can finish your series later if you like, but right now you’ve struck gold and you need to mine it for all it’s worth. Give them great content on Topic B, interview an expert or two on that topic, offer them affiliate products on that topic, and so forth. Sometimes we hit pay dirt when we least expect it, and the most foolish thing you can do is NOT jump on it immediately. Money loves speed, and customers love to have their desires satisfied NOW.
Don’t create your content and run. When you make a blog post, go back and ANSWER the replies you get. When you Tweet, stay on Twitter to respond to the responses you get, and so forth. Your follow-up interaction says as much about you as your content, and if you do it right, it says that you’re not just looking to make a fast buck and you DO care about your readers. Which is not only the classy thing to do – it’s also the most profitable in the end.
While it’s true we can learn from our own mistakes, it’s much easier, faster and sweeter to learn from the mistakes of others.
With that in mind, here’s 7 doozies that belong in the Business Mistakes Hall of Shame:
Schlitz Beer – At one time, Schlitz was the best selling beer in America. Then they decided to change their formula, replacing quality ingredients with inferior ones, adding chemicals to try to mask the changes, and even changing the brewing process. All of this was to increase their profit margins so they could continue to compete on price against Budweiser.
Basically, the Schlitz people worked very hard to ruin a best selling product. By the 1970’s, they’d changed the product so much that the bottom of each beer contained a repulsive mucus-like substance.
Of course sales plummeted, and the brand lost over 90% of its value. Schlitz beer was now relegated to the bottom bargain beer shelf for only the most desperate and poor of beer drinkers.
Lesson for online marketers? It’s clear isn’t it – quality DOES count. Whether you’re creating products or acting as an affiliate marketer, if you don’t offer your customers a quality product, they won’t be back for more. And you’ll get a lousy reputation in the process.
Star Wars – A long time ago in a studio far, far away, 20th Century Fox made one of the lousiest business decisions – ever.
In 1973, George Lucas negotiated a deal with Fox Studios on a film he wanted to direct – sort of a space western. Fox had offered him $500,000 to direct, but George offered to do it for just $150,000 if they would grant him all merchandising rights as well as rights to all sequels.
As of today, combined revenue from merchandising and sequels of Star Wars is an estimated $42 billion.
Yes, that’s right – Fox lost BILLIONS to save $350,000.
When you create a product, don’t stop there or you’ll be leaving most of your profit on the table. Create an upsell, a down sell, a continuity program, a coaching program and yes, sequels and updates.
You work hard to get your initial program sold, so why not bank on the goodwill you’ve earned to sell even more?
Take a lesson from George Lucas; the big money isn’t in the main product, it’s in everything else that comes after.
Kodak – Did you know Kodak invented the first digital camera? But they panicked and made a terrible decision – sitting on the invention so they could continue to sell film.
Naturally, it was just a matter of time before other companies invented their own digital cameras. Since Kodak owned the patent, they made millions – until the patent ran out in 2007. 5 years later Kodak filed for bankruptcy.
Lesson learned? Don’t try to fight progress. Instead, be an early adopter and use it to your advantage. Those who were first on board with online video did really well, as did those who jumped on board social media and so forth.
Things will inevitably change, which is why it’s better to roll with the flow, look for new opportunities and never stick your head in the sand like Kodak did.
Blockbuster – In 2000 when Netflix was still a niche DVD postal rental company, they offered Blockbuster the chance to buy them for $50 million.
Blockbuster laughed at Netflix’s CEO and what they thought of as his ridiculous offer. After all, they were making good money with their stores and late fees – why change?
It wasn’t long before Blockbuster was chasing Netflix, copying their DVD rental by mail plan and failing miserably.
Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010. And Netflix is now worth $30 billion.
Lesson learned? Always keep an open mind when presented with new opportunities. You never know when that crazy idea someone just pitched you could be the next Netflix.
Ayds – In the 1970’s and early 80’s, Ayds candies enjoyed brisk sales as a diet aid that helped suppress appetite.
But along came the Aids epidemic in the mid 80’s, and it’s no surprise that all of a sudden people didn’t want to buy Ayds. As of 1988, sales had dropped off by half and were continuing to plummet.
Now, most manufacturers would rebrand at this point, but not Ayds. They added the word ‘diet’ in front of Ayds, but it was too little, too late and the product was withdrawn from the market.
Lesson for online marketers? Unexpected things can and will happen. It wasn’t the manufacturer’s fault that an epidemic carried practically the same name as their candy, but it did. Had they bit the bullet and rebranded, they could have saved their product.
If you find for whatever reason that you need to make a change in your business, it’s best to do it quickly before it’s too late.
Telegraph to Telephone – There was a time when the telegraph was the most advanced communication system on the planet. Then in 1876 a fellow named Alexander Graham Bell invented a little gadget he called the telephone, and was ready to bring that invention to market.
But first he contacted Western Union, the most important communications company at the time, and offered to sell his patent for just $100,000. William Orton, the president of Western Union, turned him down and instead set up his own phone company in secret in an attempt to compete with Bell.
Bell successfully sued Western Union for infringing on his patent. In 1879, Orton was legally forced to pull out of the telephone business altogether, and of course Bell went on to build a business empire.
Lesson learned? Whenever possible, work with your competitors rather than against them. That $100,000 Orton ‘saved’ literally cost him a fortune and spelled the eventual demise of the communications portion of his company.
MySpace – In 2005 when MySpace had more users than Facebook, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp decided to buy the super popular social media site for $580 million.
MySpace had 300 million registered users and was valued at an estimated $12 billion. So he got a good deal, right?
No matter how good the deal, if you try hard enough you can really muck things up.
Facebook was threatening their number #1 status, so to immediately make MySpace profitable, they filled the site with tons of garish ads.
Next, they instituted the same corporate policies as News Corp, thereby preventing MySpace from adapting quickly to its competition.
After 6 years, News Corp sold the site for just 6% of what they had paid for it.
Lessons learned? First, if it isn’t broken, don’t ‘fix’ it. By plastering MySpace with ads and banners, they drove away their users.
Second, have patience. If they’d spent a little time thinking about their strategy to monetize the site, they could have come up with much better solutions than tons of ads.
Third, be flexible. Shackling your company with corporate policies that make progress slower than a snail’s pace is not going to win the day on the Internet.
One last note: It’s really easy to play ‘Monday morning quarterback’ and talk about what these companies ‘should’ have done. It’s a lot more difficult when you’re in the day-to-day grind trying to find your way.
Something all of these companies and business people had in common is this: They did what they thought was best at the time. And sometimes that’s all you can do.
If you ever find you’ve made a colossal blunder, or even just a stupid mistake, here’s how to make it right again: Get back up, forgive yourself and then let it go. Don’t dwell on the past except to learn. If you can live in the present with an eye to the future, you’ll be fine.
We all make mistakes. Some of us just have the opportunity to make bigger mistakes than others.
This one is so simple, yet diabolically effective…
When you first introduce a new product to your list or your blog readers, do you simply pop a link on there with a line of text and hope they click?
Of course not. You introduce the product. You tell them what’s good about it, how you use it, why it can change their business or help them achieve their goal, etc.
In other words, you’re introducing the product and warming up your readers BEFORE you send them to the sales page.
Now here’s the mistake I see marketers making all the time…
…when they first introduce the product, they take the time to do everything we just said.
And they make sales.
Later they decide to promote the product again, only this time they forget a crucial step.
They slap that affiliate link or product link up on social media and figure people will click it and buy the product.
But they don’t click.
Why not? Because there’s no introduction to entice them to click and learn more.
So here’s what you do…
Take the copy you wrote in that email or post that introduces the product, and give it a page of its own on your site. Add your affiliate link or sales link to the bottom.
Now when you advertise the product on social media and other venues, send visitors to your intro page first. I’ve seen this little technique increase conversions 4 fold.
You’re familiar with how lead magnets usually work – you offer visitors a report or some other incentive for joining your list. Depending on your traffic source and the strength of your offer, your opt-in rate could be anything from almost non-existent to 30% or more.
Here’s the problem – EVERYONE and their uncle is offering some type of incentive to get people to join their lists. And because of this, visitors have become more and more cautious about giving away their email address.
So what can you do to increase and possibly even DOUBLE your opt-in rate?
Change things up a bit, like this:
Step 1: Create a dynamite lead magnet with great information on how to do something. For example, maybe it’s a case study: “How Janis Smythe made $4,294 in 12 days using XXX technique.”
If you’re just starting out and you need a case study to use, start Googling. Don’t forget to let the person know you’re doing a case study on them, because in this case you really should get permission first.
Or omit the names and fictionalize the personal details. That works, too.
Step 2: Write an excellent sales page. Yes, you’re giving the report away, but you still need to entice people into wanting it.
Step 3: At the bottom of the page, and perhaps to the right as well, put a download button. That’s right – no opt-in form at this point, just a ‘download it now’ button.
Step 4: Split your report into two sections. The first section is the introduction and overview. What they’ll need to do this, how much money they can make and the success they can have, and so forth. Don’t make direct promises, of course. Follow the law.
The second half of the report is the payoff, the actual technique and how to do it step by step. On the bottom of the first section, tell the readers that the step by step blueprint is in Part 2.
Sneaky, right? It gets better:
Place TWO links on the last page of the first section – one where they pay $17 to buy the second half of the report…
And a second link where they get the report for FREE in exchange for their email address.
Both links go to the same webpage.
Step 5: Create the webpage for the second half of the report. Give them the option to pay $17 and the option to get it in exchange for their email address.
You should get extremely high opt-ins using this method. Having the payment button there makes it look like they are getting an extremely good deal by giving you their email address.
And oddly enough, once in a while someone will actually pay for the second half of the report. Don’t ask me why, but they do. And that’s okay too.
You might think the best way to make sales in the online marketing field is to promise lots of money for very little effort.
After all, we see these products that promise you’ll rake in the dough simply by tapping your toes three times and whispering you want to get rich.
Which makes for great fairy tales, but frankly your average Joe isn’t buying it.
You know what people say (and believe)…
“If it sounds too good to be true, it generally is.”
The fact is, there are folks who make hundreds of thousands of dollars online each year.
Some do it each month.
A few do it each DAY.
So just because it sounds too good to be true doesn’t make it so.
But it will scare away a lot of buyers, because they don’t believe THEY can make a ton of money from home.
And those programs that promise the moon for a few clicks? Their refund rates tend to be in the 50% range. Ouch. Plus you’ve got to wonder how well they sleep at night.
So what’s the counterintuitive approach to increasing your conversions in the make money online / internet marketing field?
It’s simple, really.
Tell them they’re going to have to WORK.
Tell them they’re going to have to put in an EFFORT.
And the results they get will depend on what they actually DO.
Obviously any business is going to take work. But if you don’t TELL them it will take work, they will likely mistake you for a scam.
So be honest and open about how much effort it will take.
And you’ll find your products not only sell well, they also continue to sell for a long time.
This won’t make you rich, but it can pay the bills.
Basically, you’re going to hire two outsourcers and then sell the websites they build for you. This has been done by at least one marketer that I know personally, and I’m sure many others have found similar success with this business model.
Here are the details:
Hire two outsourcers, possibly from the Philippines or anywhere you can get excellent full time help for about $500 each per month.
One outsourcer should be versed in all phases of website building and PhotoShop. Things they will need to do: Install WordPress sites, install plugins, install autoresponder forms, use Photoshop to create website graphics as needed, etc.
The second outsourcer is a good writer, preferably a VERY good writer, able to research and write about most any topic.
This is your team.
One thing to know – work expands to fill the time allotted. So if you give your team two weeks to build a site, that’s how long it will take. Instead, see if they can do it in 2 days. For what you want done, it should only take 2 days. In fact, for the website builder it should only take one day, and two days for the writing.
Now then, the first site your team is going to build will be for you. It should be an authority blog, containing several posts and an embedded YouTube video or two.
You choose the domain name, let them know what you’re looking for, then let them sort out everything else.
This is going to be your example website. Of course, you can continue to build this site out over time, making it a true authority site. And you can use the outsourcers to do this for you. But first and foremost, you want to treat it as your example website.
Now you launch an offer to build authority websites for other people in the niches of their choosing. You can start by notifying your list of your new service, place an ad on Warrior and branch out to Facebook after that.
Charge whatever you like – $300 is a good price but it’s up to you.
The website will be a unique authority blog in whatever niche they choose, with perhaps 5 posts already written, all the plugins in place, basic SEO, a domain of its own… you get the idea.
You’re paying your team $1000 a month, so you need to make 4 sales to be in profit.
But realistically your team can build 10 sites a month, spending 2 days on each site and working 5 days a week.
10 sales at $300 is $3,000, minus the $1,000 you pay your team leaves you with a $2,000 profit.
Of course, you can charge more, offer different packages and so forth.
For example, your deluxe package might contain 15 posts and cost $700, depending on how good your team is and how well you do at selling the sites.
If you find your team has downtime between orders, you can have them create a product for you, or build sites which you then sell premade.
There is some work in getting the sales and communicating the desires of the client to your workers. But it shouldn’t take you more than an hour a day to accomplish this.
And once your other ventures are making enough money that you don’t want to be bothered with this endeavor anymore, you can always sell it as a turnkey business.
Short and sweet: Are you going wide instead of deep?
For example, if you’re in online marketing, are you trying to reach every new marketer out there?
If your niche is gardening, are you trying to reach every vegetable gardener on the planet?
And if your niche is dating, are you targeting every single male – period?
Then you’re going too wide.
By appealing to everyone, you appeal to no one.
I once coached a woman who wanted to start a newsletter for parents.
All parents.
Of every age of child, 0-18.
Who lived anywhere on the planet.
I spent half the coaching session trying to talk her out of this strategy, or rather, lack of strategy.
She could not be dissuaded.
And I never heard from her or her newsletter again. My guess is she’s still stuck working the 9-5 job she was trying so hard to leave.
What should she have done?
Targeted brand new first time parents, or parents of 0-2 year old children, or middle class working parents of annoying teenagers, or adoptive parents, or frustrated foster parents, or…
