Author Archive | Wade

Marketers have used this technique for years to make a nice little side income.

And you can do this as often as you like, too.

All you do is register promising sounding domain names.

Or snap up existing domains when they’re dropped, using one of the expired domain tools.

The trick is to offer them to your own list. Don’t try to sell them on Sedo or GoDaddy because you probably won’t do all that well.

But if you offer them to your list, or even run a WSO for them, you’ll probably sell more easily.

Let your readers know these are domains you’d planned to develop yourself, but now you’ve decided to sell them instead.

And YOU set the prices.

You can use a domain valuation tool, or just decide on values yourself.

Set them at different prices, based on how valuable you think they might be. Your readers will seldom try to negotiate, but if they do, that’s fine.

A domain is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. And the beauty is, scarcity is built right in. After all, there is only one of each, period. So selling them is pretty easy.

You can buy aged domains for $10 when they’re dropped, and sell them for hundreds of dollars.

The trick is to sell them to your list or in a place like Flippa.
Choose domain in all kinds of niches, not just Internet marketing.

Just about everyone will read a list of domain names to see if there’s something in there they want. Buying domains is often an impulse purchase, and marketers just can’t help themselves.

Here are three domain valuation tools that are free:

http://domainindex.com/

https://www.estibot.com/

https://www.domaining.com/valuate/

Just keep in mind that these tools are only guessing. Frankly, your guess might be better than theirs, since you know your list and what they value.

When you email your list, let them know the email is going out to thousands of readers (if that’s true) so they know they better be quick. First come, first served.

You might also make suggestions for the types of websites that could be built on each domain. Not everyone has the imagination or business acumen to figure out how to use a domain.

You can either send out one big list of domains a few times a year, or send out smaller lists more often.

If you’re only offering, say, 5 domains at one time, you can write a good paragraph or two on how each might be used, what similar domains have sold for and whatever you think will help sell them.

Or take the easy route and just make a list and get it out there.

And don’t be afraid to ask for premium prices, either. You might be surprised at how much people are willing to pay for a domain they just have to have.

True value is always in the eye of the beholder.

Believe it or not, a single sentence can literally double the conversions you get on your higher ticket items.

Yes, this sounds too good to be true, but once I reveal what the sentence is, you’ll understand.

Now mind you, do not try this with low ticket items. You’ll hate yourself in the morning if you do.

Then again, if you have a lot of time on your hands, it’s your decision as to whether you try this on a $50 item or not.

In my experience, not many marketers are doing this – probably because they’re either too lazy or they simply have no clue how powerful this can be.

Okay, are you ready for the sentence?

Here it is…

“Please get in touch with us personally if you have any questions.”

That’s it.

Simple, right?

Then you give them options. It could be a dedicated email address, a phone number or a chat box.

The key is to make it a soft invitation, no strings attached. You want to be clear you’re not going to strong arm them once you get them on the phone.

Here’s why it works so well:

You’re asking for a lot of money for your high ticket item. Maybe that’s $300 or $3,000, I don’t know. But whatever it is, it represents a sizable investment for your customer. It’s not like they’re buying a $10 ebook.

So naturally they’re hesitant. They need just a bit more of a push to take the plunge.

And for some of them, simply knowing they can get in touch with you is enough. This tells them you are indeed a real person with a real business and this is a real product.

They relax. They have more confidence in you. And they order.

For others, they have a legitimate question that you either forgot to answer in your sales material, or you did answer it but they didn’t see it.

In either case, they really want that answer before they buy. With these folks, you will often be off of chat or email or the phone in less than 5 minutes. Sometimes in less than 2 minutes.

Then there’s the third type of person. Their only real question is, “Are you for real?” because they want to know what happens if they have trouble with your product. Are they going to be able to get in touch with you? How quickly will you answer? And so forth.

They need reassurance that you’ll still be there in a month if they decide to use your guarantee. They might even get in touch with you more than once just to make sure.

There is a fourth type of person in this scenario I need to warn you about. This is a tire-kicker, and they will likely waste your time. The problem is, you don’t know at first if they simply need reassurance, have real questions or they’re just bored and looking to chat.

If you suspect they’re just wasting your time, you can politely tell them you have another caller and you have to go. But generally this isn’t a problem, especially when you check your numbers and realize your sales have about doubled since you offered customers the opportunity to get in touch with you.

One last thing – which communication method should you offer them to get in touch with you? That’s totally up to you. Ideally you want to offer all three – phone, chat and email. And if you have a virtual assistant helping you out, you can do that.

We’ve found that offering all 3 choices has the biggest impact on sales.

But if it’s just you, then you might want to limit the choices to just the one or two you’re most comfortable with for now. You can always add another method later.

The main thing is to let your big-ticket prospects know that you are in fact reachable. Even adding just a dedicated email address with the invitation to get in touch can make a definite impact on improving your sales.

And if you make just one more $1,000 sale per month, it’s worth it.

Did you know you can outsource pretty much everything you need to start an online business? Everything except for your idea – that’s got to be yours.

And overcoming fear. Only you can do that.

So let’s say you come to me, wanting to start an online business.

You’re a blank slate, in that you don’t have a clue where to start or what to do.

No worries, because someone who is a blank slate actually holds a tremendous advantage over someone who already thinks they know it all, when in fact they don’t really have a clue.

So you come to me and ask what you should do.

And I stuff a pad of paper and a pen in your hand, and I tell you to go somewhere quiet and think.

Because you’re going to brainstorm like you’ve never brainstormed before.

You’re going to write down every idea you get. Good ones, bad ones, stupid ones – even the ones you KNOW for a FACT you cannot possibly pull off.

You’re going to write them all down.

“I want to teach a cooking course to people who currently can’t boil water.”

“I want to build an app that tells people where the vacant parking spots are in New York City.”

“I want to build a community gardening site for people who live in southern Florida.”

And so forth.

Be vague.

Or get specific.

Just brainstorm your heart out.

Speaking of which, watch for those items that feel especially near and dear to you, and put a little star by those.

And then keep writing.

You’re going to start your business on YOUR idea – not on what’s necessarily gone before or what other people are doing.

Lose all preconception of what will and what won’t work for now. That comes later.

By generating your own business model without worrying about what anyone else is doing, you’re freeing yourself up from comparisons, crappy advice and self-doubts.

Your business model can be anything you can imagine.

Naturally once you’ve narrowed your choices down to a handful, you’re going to do some research to make sure there is indeed a market for what you’re proposing.

But I’m going to discourage you from spending a lot of time looking at any potential competitors. Ignore what they’re marketing, how they’re marketing it, how they’re advertising and so forth.

Because that is where people learn to fear their own idea.

“This is already being done, so I’m too late!”

“This company is already doing a good job of covering this market, there’s no room for me.”

“Their idea is different from mine, so their idea must be the right one and mine must be wrong.”

And so forth.

Thus, you’re eliminating one type of fear that plagues all new marketers.

But there is a second fear you’ll need to overcome – the one that creeps up on you when your friends say, “What, YOU’RE going to start a business? HAHAHA!”

Or maybe your friends are supportive, but you lack confidence. “What if people hate my product?”

Yup. There’s a real heart stopper. And you cannot outsource overcoming those fears.

So how do you deal with them?

For me, I just acknowledge them rather than fight them. Yes, I’m afraid. No, I’m not going to let it stop me. So Mr. Fear, you go sit in that chair over there while I work. And if you get bored, feel free to fly out the window.

Believe it or not, this attitude works. When you stop letting fear take hold of you, when you stop feeling like you’re trapped in its icy grip, when you just acknowledge it and do the work anyway, then fear tends to get real quiet. It takes a seat and watches for an opening. And if you don’t give it one, eventually it just leaves the way it came.

Ignore what’s going on around you. Put blinders on, manage your fear and above all else, stick to your idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rename everything and create new graphics, too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make everything unique.

And practice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marketing methods might change, but people don’t.

Not really.

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

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

His customers love him and his products sell like crazy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They forget that online marketing is actually a PEOPLE business.

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

You might be surprised at your results.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This alone has added major revenue to my bottom line.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how does he do it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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