Author Archive | Wade

I’ve seen three different marketers doing a variation of this business, all with the same result – they earn a bare minimum of $5,000/month and usually 2 to 3 times that much.

Two of them are completely unknown marketers who are quietly doing this in their spare time. The third marketer is a fairly big name, and odds are you’ve heard of him. He doesn’t do any of this work himself. He simply outsources the whole thing and brings in over $10,000 a month in profit doing it.

All three of them do this business in the online marketing niche. Essentially, they are helping new marketers to quickly have a money generating business of their own by building it for them. No doubt you’ve seen these ‘business in a box’ packages you can purchase that contain a product, a sales page and so forth, right? You put your own name on them, upload them to your site and start promoting.

There’s nothing wrong with these, and if you have your own list, you can often make good money with them. But these marketers have taken things a step further by creating a unique business in a box for each customer. These are genuinely one of a kind and even include a list.

Here’s how it works:

They start by creating a unique funnel complete with a squeeze page, high-value free gift and unique upsell product. The free gift is usually a plugin, because they have a higher perceived value than a report. You can find plugins with giveaway rights available all over the internet. Buying the rights is usually about $37-47 and then you are free to give it away to your heart’s content.

You can get a coder to rebrand, tweak and/or rename the plugin, usually for $100 or less. This is optional but again, it makes your package unique from anything else out there.

The upsell product is made from good PLR that’s then reworked and rebranded, complete with a new name, new graphics and so forth. It’s important here to use truly quality PLR – don’t skimp on this.

The cost of the content will be perhaps $150 if you rework it yourself, and twice that if you hire someone to do it for you. Since you’re going to price the upsell at around $47, you want the product to look and feel like it is worth at least that much if not more. In other words, make sure it doesn’t look like PLR.

Once the squeeze page and upsell are set up on a domain, it’s time to spend about $250 to purchase 1,000 solo ad clicks. Send them to your squeeze page.

Your goal here is three-fold:

→ Start building a list
→ Establish that the squeeze page and upsell convert
→ Make some money on the upsell

From 1,000 solo ad clicks you should hopefully get about 300 new subscribers. Maybe 10 of those will buy the upsell, bringing you about $470. That’s covered some of your costs right there.

Once you’ve done this, it’s time to cash in. You’re going to flip the entire funnel to one buyer. You can use Flippa, Warrior Forum or any of the site flipping websites out there.

You’re offering a proven funnel with a list, a proven squeeze page and a proven upsell page complete with the lead magnet and the product. This is VALUABLE because it’s proven and because it’s unique. Bonus points if you’ve chosen a great name for the URL, lead magnet and upsell.

Once you master how to do these things (and they’re not difficult) you can probably build 3 of these a month all by yourself and still have plenty of time to do other things, too.

And you can flip these packages for $2,500 to $7,500 each. Not bad for a part time business!

I want to be clear right up front – there is NO stealing required to do this. In fact, professionals have been doing this exact same thing forever, or at least since people have been creating stories, content and so forth.

I’ll give you some movie examples:
Bridget Jones Diary (2001) is really a modern version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Clueless (1995) is based on Jane Austen’s Emma.
Cruel Intentions (1999) is a modern version of Pierre Choderlos de Lacios’ Les Liasons Dangereuses (1792).
Pretty Woman (1990) is based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion, as is She’s All That (1999).
10 Things I Hate About You (1999) is really Shakespeare’s play, Taming of the Shrew, in disguise.
Star Wars is Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai classic, The Hidden Fortress, only in space.
In fact, I would wager that at least 9 out of 10 Hollywood movies are based on stories from other movies or books. And yet these movies earn millions of dollars. So, the question is, is it ethical or legal to ‘borrow’ other people’s ideas?
Yes!
It’s a fact that you can’t copyright an idea. All the best artists (who are honest) will even admit they steal like crazy, which is what makes their art so awesome.
There is no need to continuously reinvent the wheel. The wheel was invented once, and ever since then people have copied that idea onto their own products, whether it was for wheelbarrows, carts, carriages or cars. Using other people’s ideas (not their work) is 100% legal, ethical and even required if we are to move forward as a society.
Now let’s say you’ve run across a 50-page ebook on how to do something. You cannot copy the actual writing, the author’s name or the cover of the book. But you can use the idea of the ebook to create your own.
West Side Story and Disney’s High School Musical used a famous playwright’s plot in their stories. Can you think what that might have been?
A little play called Romeo and Juliet.
So that book on driving traffic that inspired you to use the method yourself… you can’t copy that book and sell it. But you can write your own. Or record your own videos. Or offer a coaching program that teaches the method. As long as you do not use the author’s copyrighted stuff such as their writing, their screenshots, their images and so forth, you can write up the method as your own and sell it as much as you want to.
And if you’ve used the technique taught in the material yourself, which hopefully you have, then you can speak with authority on the subject.
If this makes you uncomfortable, then the solution is simple: Don’t do it. Instead, take something from an entirely different niche and adapt it to your own niche.
For example, you read a great book on dog training and you realize that many of the techniques in that book could work equally as well on your three-year old. So you try it out and sure enough, you’ve gotten your three year old to stop screaming when she wants attention, to eat her food when you give it to her, to follow your simple instructions without throwing a tantrum and so forth.
Yes, I’m probably going to get emails from people who are upset I equated training a puppy with training a child… 😉 The point is that what you learn in one area of life can often be used in other areas as well.
Take a look at the millions of how to books out there and find something you can adapt to an entirely different niche, and you’ll have all the inspiration you need to create unique products without having to be brilliant yourself.
Although incidentally, people will think you are brilliant.

Setting aside every self-help book out there, I’d like to propose the theory that there is ONE thing you need to be successful, and that you are already in possession of this thing. You just don’t know it yet.

Ten years ago two marketers started their online journey. They both endured similar pitfalls and setbacks. One went on to make millions. The other one failed miserably and works a 9 to 5 job. What made the difference?

The mind-flip.

Imagine you have a switch in your brain, and every time you have any kind of setback whatsoever, you flip that switch into finding the positive in it. No, I’m not talking about pie-in-the-sky rainbows and magic pink unicorn thinking. I’m talking about flipping your own switch because no one else is going to do it for you.

Instead of getting discouraged, angry or sad, find the good or the lesson in everything that normally gets you down. This is called resilience. We’re told to be resilient, to bounce back from defeat and just keep moving, but no one tells us how to do that. So, let me try, and see if this resonates with you.

You get an angry email from a customer. Yeah! This is your chance to make it right while also finding out if there is perhaps a flaw in your product. What an awesome thing to have happen! Your formerly angry customer now understands what happened, they’re thrilled with the attention you paid to them and how you resolved the issue, and you have feedback on how to improve the way customers use your product.

You have trouble with your website. Yeah! Now you get to call your host or your website builder or whoever and let them show you what awesome service they provide. You’re not happy with the result? Yeah! Now you have the perfect reason to go find a new host or webmaster who will make you happy!

You dropped that dish of spaghetti on the floor? Yeah! You’ve been meaning to clean the floor for weeks and this is the perfect motivation to get it done. Now look at it shine!

You missed the light and now you have to wait 3 minutes to get through the intersection? Yeah! If you had made the light, perhaps you would have been involved in a fatal accident that you’ve now missed!

Does all of this sound a bit crazy? Maybe. But your experience is exactly what you make it. I once went camping with a friend. As we arrived, it started to rain and it didn’t stop raining for two days and two nights. Yeah! I took it as a challenge and it was one of my best vacations ever. I sang in the rain, danced in the rain, hiked in the rain and listened to the rain on my tent as I fell soundly asleep each night.

My friend, however, decided to be miserable the entire time. He grumbled, complained, got angry, picked fights and spent the entire time wishing he was someplace else. He also wasn’t too happy that I didn’t share his attitude, but oh well! 😉 We shared the same experience, and yet it was positive for me and horrible for him. The only difference was how we chose to view what was happening.

I might be oversimplifying here, but when you boil it all down, I think the only difference between the successful person and the failure is resilience. Look for the bright side of everything. Sure it’s a cliché, but it is a fact that your experience is what you choose it to be.

Have you ever felt sad or depressed about something, and then you drank some coffee or you took a walk, and then felt 10 times better about it? The situation didn’t change – you did. And once you have the positive mindset, you can move forward and do whatever it is that needs to be done.

Here are 9 tips for flipping your mindset to the positive side of life:

Play Opposites – When you think a negative thought such as, “I hate getting on these Zoom meetings,” ask yourself, “What if the opposite were true?”

Friends – Support groups are wonderful for helping you to build this resilience. Talk it out and help each other to see the positives. If they insist on being negative – and let’s face it, some people revel in negativity – then get a new support group.

Greatest Hits – When you’re feeling down about yourself or your abilities, think about times when you did awesome things that totally worked for you.

Self-care – Get enough sleep and eat well. Exercise. All of these things will help you to stay positive and keep moving forward in your business and in your life.

Is it True? – When you notice your negative thoughts are spiraling out of control, ask yourself if those thoughts are true. 9 times out of 10 you’ll realize the negative thoughts are a distortion and out of touch with reality.

Acceptance – Instead of negatively judging yourself for being pessimistic, accept your current mindset and stop fighting it. Then set it aside and move on.

Humor – Can’t find the positive in the situation? Then pretend 5 years have gone by and you’re telling someone the story of what just happened. Find the funny in it and make your friend laugh.

Use Your Power – You always – ALWAYS – have the power to choose how you will view circumstances. Maybe right now you choose to feel bad, but realize that is indeed your choice. Try choosing to feel just 1% better and see what happens.

Body Language – Emotions follow the body and not the other way around. When you force yourself to smile, stand tall and raise your arms overhead in a victory gesture, you feel better. Even holding a pencil sideways in your mouth will activate your smile muscles and improve your mood.

Now I know that some people reading this will have a strong rebuttal for me that goes like this: “We’re in the middle of a pandemic, my life is upside down and people are getting sick and even dying. How am I supposed to mind shift into positivity?”

All of that is 100% true. But can you think of a better or more important time in your life to practice resilience and find the good in everything you possibly can?

The next time something is getting you down, go take a walk. Or play your favorite music. Or pet your dog or talk to someone. Taking a break is a good thing because it gives you the perspective you sometimes need to keep moving forward.

Practice flipping the switch in your brain each time things don’t go the way you planned. This life-skill will see you through the tough times and ensure massive success in the good times.

Flip the switch. Know that resilience is your strongest defense. Find the positive. I promise you that it’s there somewhere. And smile, because no matter what it is, this too shall pass.

This is a part time business that quite literally requires no specialized knowledge, and you don’t even need a product. One thing you do need is just enough people skills to build rapport over the phone, Skype, Zoom or whatever mode of communication you choose.

I know a guy who is doing this part time and based on my own math he seems to be making about $4,200 a month doing this 2 hours a day. He charges his clients $35 a week for a 20 minute phone call, and he books about 6 clients per day during his lunch break and after work. And he takes his weekends off, too.

Have you guessed what he does? If you said coaching, you’re right. But this is a rather narrow, specialized coaching niche. He calls himself an accountability coach. He lets his clients tell him what they’re going to accomplish over the next seven days. He asks what their plan is to get it done. He points out potential problems and asks the client how s/he will deal with them if they arise. Basically, he asks a lot of questions and once in a while he gives a little advice.

Then when he calls them the following week, they have to be 100% honest and tell him exactly how much they did or did not get done. Personality-wise he comes across as a father-figure, and his clients don’t want to disappoint him so they get busy and do what they need to do.

He bills weekly automatically with Paypal because he says that when they see that money come out of their account every week, it’s a reminder that they need to get in gear. He tried billing monthly but his clients would just relax for three weeks and then get busy in the fourth week. He says he doesn’t exactly understand the psychology of why weekly billing works better than monthly but that it doesn’t matter to him as long as his clients are getting results and he’s getting paid.

He has a full-time job but he does have some flexibility. He does some calls during the day and the rest in the evening when he gets home. He’s firm about only having 30 clients a week because he says more than that is too much. And he’s got a waiting list of people who want him to be their accountability coach.

He’s strict with his clients about being ready to receive his call. As much as possible, he lets the client choose the day and time for the weekly standing phone appointment. He explains to them that they MUST be available at that time to talk to him, no exceptions allowed. He doesn’t care if their house is on fire, they better answer the phone when he calls.

When I asked him how he arrived at $35 a week, he said it seemed to hit a sweet spot for clients. At first he was charging too little ($20) and the clients weren’t taking the call all that seriously. Then he went overboard in the other direction and charged too much ($100) and the clients usually canceled after a couple of weeks, if they signed up at all.

He was once referred to a potential client who desperately wanted his help but $35 was out of reach. Obviously this person’s first goal was to make more money. Since he doesn’t charge for the initial consultation anyway, here’s what he told the new client:

“Our next call is in 7 days. Right now you’re going to tell me 5 ways you could add an extra $100 a week to your income starting this week. Then you and I are going to choose one of those 5, and you’re going to tell me your plan for making it happen.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Within a week that man had a new income stream, and within a month he was making an extra $1,000 a month. 9 months later he quit his job and opened his own small business, all thanks to having an accountability coach.

You probably need a certain personality to make this work. If people naturally look up to you or naturally want to please you, then this might be an idea for some part time income. Goodness knows there are plenty of people who just need a weekly fire lit underneath them along with some encouraging words to help them reach their goals.

Have I told you lately how much I LOVE recurring income? Here’s a case study about a guy who has not one, but FOUR different newsletters that he puts out twice per month.

These are super simple newsletters that contain all the latest stuff he’s found on the internet about the topics. How in the world does he find all the latest news, articles, blog posts, stories, video clips, photos and so forth?

Google alerts.

Yup, it’s that easy.

He creates a dozen or so Google alerts for keywords and phrases for each niche and Google spoon feeds him all of his content for free. In some cases he asks for permission to reprint a post or article. For other things he simply rewrites it into his own words. And even more often he’ll provide an intro and then a link to the video, article or whatever.

Seriously, this does not take a lot of time or brain power. His strong point is he chooses topics that he’s interested in so that it never becomes boring to him.

I asked him if I could share his newsletter topics with you, but he was pretty firm in saying no. But what I can tell you is all 4 of them are not things you might think of off the top of your head. And that makes sense.

The BIG topics are already covered on millions of websites, videos, articles, magazines and so forth. It’s the little sub-niche specialized topics where people are craving more info and not wanting or even knowing how to hunt it down themselves.

I’ll give you an example: Cats and dogs are EVERYWHERE. No one really needs to subscribe to a newsletter to read articles on cats and dogs. But sloths… now there’s a much smaller niche that isn’t covered nearly as much as more popular pets. Or how about iguanas? Sugar babies? Or tarantulas?

If you insist on choosing a big niche, then sub-niche it down. Instead of cats, focus on the care of cats with a certain illness (diabetes, kidney disease, etc.) or a certain breed of cat.

What should you charge for a curated newsletter? In most niches, $10 or less works well. This makes it super easy for people to sign up and there’s almost no incentive to stop the subscription.

Let your readers send you articles and photos of their own for your newsletter. Put in a classified ad section, too. People think it’s hard to create a newsletter, but the fact is you don’t even need to have an original thought to do it. Between curated content from the internet and submissions from your readers, all you have to do is assemble the newsletter, save it to PDF and send it out to your subscribers. You don’t even need a membership site to do this.

Don’t want to do a newsletter? Create a podcast or video subscription instead.

You can get new subscribers by striking deals with blogs and list owners in the niche. Because these are smaller niches, it’s far easier to get people to mail for you for a small fee or sometimes even for free if they really love your newsletter.

This is a model that will never die, takes a minimum of work and even builds you a list. You can promote products to your list above and beyond the newsletter. In many niches the money you make from promoting products will double your income from subscriptions, so why not?

And by the way, that $3,500 a month figure is from just ONE of his newsletters. Remember, he’s got 4 of them.

Make a list of topics that interest you, no matter how weird or even obscure. Choose one that has an active audience you can reach. Create a sample newsletter, contact people in the niche and get your first subscribers. This almost sounds too easy, doesn’t it? Then again, many of the best ideas are the simple ones.

Imagine a squeeze page that takes you 20 minutes to put together, including the lead magnet. Imagine this page converts at something close to 71%. And now imagine you can buy unlimited traffic to your squeeze page because the paid traffic pays for itself.

How many new subscribers would you like today? This week? This year?

The key to a high converting squeeze page is to offer something so ridiculously good, people are more than eager to enter their email address to get that prized item. You could offer an outstanding resource of some kind, or a huge bundle of books, or maybe a hot plugin or piece of software.

Or… what if you take a product you have lying around, such as a course you’ve been selling for $197, and offer a coupon for a 90% discount on that course? Of course you need their email address to send them the coupon, so it just makes sense they would fill out your form to get it.

Then you send them to the actual sales page with their coupon. They get to see that everyone else is paying $197 while they’re only paying $19. That should make them pretty happy AND immediately set you up as an authority in their eyes, since it is your course they’re buying.

Don’t have a big product of your own? Use quality PLR and a weekend to create one. The point is to have a REAL product that sells for a high price and then offer a crazy discount coupon like 90% or 95% off.

People enter their email address to get the coupon. Some of them use that coupon to immediately buy the course. Others purchase the course sometime during the following week, as you remind them that their coupon is expiring soon and they’re going to miss the deal of a lifetime.

Now you’ve got new subscribers and enough income to continue buying traffic for as long as you choose because the purchases of your course – even at 90% off – are paying for the advertising.

Just remember the deal you’re offering has to be irresistible to new subscribers. Your goal here isn’t to make money, it’s to pay for the advertising that’s building your list. Once they’re on your list, then you can start making profit when you offer them other products.

An email subject line in my inbox caught my attention because it included the phrase, “Breathtaking-Templates”. Only it was written like this…

“These B R E A T H T A K I N G – T E M P L A T E S blah blah blah”.

I can’t tell you the rest of the subject line because they had me at breathtaking-templates and that’s all I needed to know.

Because they chose the term ‘breathtaking’ and wrote it in all-caps with spaces, I knew these had to be the most wonderful website templates ever devised by modern man.

Finally, I was going to see something so revolutionary and awe-inspiring, my eyeballs would pop out and I would fall to my knees in rapture.

Sorry to say, my eyeballs and knees are fine.

When I opened the email, scrolled down and squinted at the small images, all I saw were…

… the same run-of-the-mill templates I see everywhere.

Thinking it was a mistake, I clicked the link. But no. These templates looked no different than a thousand other templates I’d already seen.

I closed the sales page and deleted the email immediately, without hesitation.

When you build up expectations to that level, you better deliver on your promise. If you don’t, you’ll lose people so fast you’ll never even know they were in the room.

If you have an interest in selling high ticket coaching, I urge you to spy on other marketers to see how they do it. Oftentimes it starts with a web page or an email message asking you to respond for more details.

You fill out your name and maybe answer some questions that make it seem like you have to qualify. In some cases you do have to qualify because the person wants to only work with a couple dozen serious people. And that makes sense.

But in many other cases, it’s totally unclear WHO is doing the coaching. You might think it’s the big name marketer who is going to walk you through whatever it is that you’re doing, but it turns out to be a minion of theirs instead. Which is okay too, as long as they tell you that up front.

But here’s what I think is the most interesting part of all this…

In many cases the pricing is flexible.

Maybe the coaching is $5,000 a month, but you can only afford $2,000. Or the coaching is $10,000, but you only have $1,000 left on your credit card. Normally it doesn’t matter because they will gladly sign you up anyway.

Does the person who paid $1,000 get the same level of coaching as the person who paid $10,000? I have no idea. But what is clear is that the folks selling coaching are extremely effective at getting the maximum amount of revenue from clients.

I highly recommend if you want to offer coaching to your clients, that you first get on the phone with others who are selling coaching and record their pitches. Make a note of what you like and what you don’t like and then adjust your own story accordingly.
In most cases you’ll be talking to professional salespeople who are often working from a proven script. And while you might not want to employ your own salespeople or use a script, you can still learn a great deal about how to turn a 20-minute phone conversation into $10,000.

With an online business, you can give yourself a raise regularly. In fact, you could add an easy micro-recurring membership to your income in about 30 minutes, start to finish.

This assumes you already have some sort of product you’re selling as well as the ability to do a ‘bump’ upsell on the order form or create an upsell page. A bump upsell is where you add a product to your order page with a tick box. The customer clicks the box to add the item to their order and that’s it – it’s added with one click.

If your payment processor doesn’t allow that, then you can add an upsell page that appears after your customer purchases your product.

Your micro-membership typically won’t have a product, although it certainly could be a newsletter or something you send out every so often. But the easiest, fastest way to add this micro-membership to your sales funnel is to offer something that takes almost no preparation such as support.

Let’s say you’re selling a product on how to do something. Of course you already answer questions from your customers, but if they want more in-depth help, they can sign up for your support membership. You can charge this membership by the month or by the year.

Typically, it’s going to be a very low price and in this case billing annually will likely make you more money. Then again, maybe you’re selling a course that lasts for 12 weeks. Then you might offer a monthly membership that runs for 4 to 6 months for any questions they might have.

If you sell software, you might provide support to your customers and resellers in case they encounter any problems. By offering a priority, more in-depth email support service for your product or course, you’ll likely make a lot of sales without doing any hard selling. A good price might be $10 a month or $97 annually, adjusted for whatever it is that you’re offering.

If you’re selling a hundred copies a month of your product and one third of those sales opt into your micro-continuity at $10, you’re looking at an extra $330 a month. Sell a thousand copies and you see this becomes real money.

You might think you’ll have to spend a lot of time servicing your customers, but most people will rarely use the service. When they do, usually they just want reassurance they’re doing the right thing. And you can always outsource your customer service to a knowledgeable, trusted assistant.

This won’t make you rich but it does add a nice bit of income with almost no set up whatsoever – maybe 30 minutes of your time – and there’s one more benefit…

… you can backdoor sales of your big products. The customers who do email you with questions will sooner or later need more help than you can give them via support. That’s when you suggest they purchase your high-end program. Even if you only sell one extra copy of your $1,000 program every month because of the rapport you build through your micro-continuity program, that’s still an extra $12,000 a year.

It always amazes me how opening one door in online marketing nearly always results in more doors opening by themselves.

There’s a gal I know who never, ever promotes affiliate products to her list. She simply won’t do it. Instead, she only promotes her own products.

Every day she writes and sends out a new email to her list.

And for 3 to 5 days she’ll promote just one product. Then when she’s done promoting that one, she’ll move on to the next one for 3 to 5 days. She’s continually creating new products and she also promotes the same products multiple times.

Let’s say she’s got 20 products. If she promotes each one for 4 days, then she doesn’t repeat a product promotion for 80 days.

She has no complicated autoresponder sequences because she doesn’t need them. And her emails are conversational and fun to read. She shares stories, anecdotes, case studies, humor, news and things that are controversial or edgy. Her readers never know what to expect in the next email but they always know it will be entertaining.

Her conversion rates are high, her returns are next to zero and her list loves her because she doesn’t bombard them with affiliate products.

If creating 10 or 20 or more products is scary to you, it might work best to just focus on one at a time and set a goal to create a new one each week. You could presell them to your list, too, so that you know which ones will be hot sellers and which ones you shouldn’t waste your time on.

She also offers coaching and she does quite well with that, too. It’s simply another product in her rotation. She also sells a monthly newsletter.

And once she’s promoted one of her products to the point where it’s not selling as well, she turns around and sells the PLR rights to that product.

People who are new to her list are exposed to all of her products in the first 2 to 3 months. If they don’t buy something the first time, they often buy it the second or third time it’s promoted to them. And she never promotes the same product in the same way. Every email is new and fresh and oftentimes tied to the events of the day.

One thing she doesn’t do that I might suggest is to offer her best-selling products to affiliates to sell. But then again, I think she really enjoys the simplicity of her system and doesn’t want to deal with affiliates, so more power to her. Plus, her list knows that the ONLY way they can access her products is directly through her.

I’m running out of things to tell you about her system because it really is that simple. If you enjoy writing emails and creating products and you don’t want the hassle and competition of selling affiliate products, this simple system might be exactly what you’ve been looking for.