Author Archive | Lawrence

Two words: Recurring Payments

If you’re like many online marketers, you might think the key to success is having a huge list of subscribers and tons of customers. And of course, both of these things are good…

But if each customer only buys from you one time, then much of your time, energy and resources will be spent on forever finding and selling new customers.

If, however, you can increase how often each customer buys from you, then you can make more sales while doing far less prospecting.

For example, imagine if each customer buys from you 6 or 8 times instead of once. And imagine if you only have to sell them once for this to happen…

… you can begin to see the power of subscription payments.

And it gets even better…

– Because your average customer value is higher, you can actually afford to ‘buy’ new customers through targeted and tested ad campaigns. This literally takes the ceiling off of your income.

– People who buy from you on a subscription basis are much more likely to buy other products from you as well.

– You can spend far less time hunting for new customers, and more time cultivating the customers you already have.

– You continue to get paid until the customer does something to stop these payments. It takes effort on their part to overcome their own inertia and figure out how to unsubscribe. Often it’s easier for them to put it off, sometimes for months and even years.

– If the service or product you’re selling brings a tremendous amount of value, they’re not going to want to cancel. Ever.

– You have an excellent idea from month to month of what your income will be. You’ve got financial stability. You can plan ahead.

Continuity products can be clubs, memberships, subscriptions, software and so forth. It’s a product or service that the customer subscribes to, usually on a monthly basis.

As an affiliate, you receive a percentage of the sale each month as the customer renews. As a continuity product owner, you receive payments as long as the customer stays subscribed. You receive full payments if you made the initial sale and partial payments if your affiliate made the initial sale.

Some of the best continuity programs for affiliates involve a service or subscription that is a valuable part of the customer’s business. For example, if someone is making money with their list, they’re not going to give up their autoresponder. Some marketers make ongoing 4 and 5 figure payments each month from just one of these continuity programs, such as Aweber.

Other marketers start their own continuity program and find financial security within months and sometimes even just weeks.

A huge weight is taken off your shoulders when you KNOW that next month “X” number of dollars will be coming in, even if you don’t sell anything new. And you can use that money not only to live on, but also to reinvest into your business such as advertising to drive more customers onto your lists, where you guide them into more continuity in your quest to help them and accelerate your early retirement.

What I’m about to say goes against almost every self-help book out there. It goes against what you’ve been told time and time again. It might even go against your moral code…

Then again, if you want to be rich, you might want to consider where your ‘moral code’ came from. The advice everyone loves to trot out and display to anyone who will listen is, “Do what you love, the money will follow.”

Hmmm…

What if you love writing poetry? Or gardening? Or making baskets? What if you love crochet? Or cats? Or hiking? Yes, you can make money in all of these niches.

But… how much?

Making money and getting rich are two entirely different things.

Making money is getting the bills paid and maybe being able to scrimp enough together to take an annual vacation.

Getting rich is, well, getting RICH. Whatever that means to you – a 6 figure income, 7 figures in the bank, 8 figures in investments and real estate – you decide.

But guaranteed, you’re not going to attain any of those levels of wealth if you’re focused on the crochet niche.

(Do you even know what crochet is? It’s taking a hook and some yarn and making a sweater, scarf, etc. Enjoyable and relaxing, yes. Profitable, NO.)

Okay, so if the key to getting rich is to follow the money and not the passion, what exactly does that mean? It means you go where the money is. You find something that is highly profitable and focus on making those profits.

You don’t strive to be the best blogger or the best website builder or the best social media maven. You focus solely on where the money is and you do whatever it takes to make that money. (Staying 100% legal.)

We’re talking about a mind shift here – a different way of viewing your business.

If your focus is to be the best life coach, then you are a coach. But if your focus is to have the most profitable coaching business possible, then you are an entrepreneur. And as an entrepreneur, you’re going to quickly realize you need to hire others to be the coaches while you find the clients. Then you’ll put systems in place to get the clients while you focus on scaling, and so forth.

Notice that you are not a coach, you’re an entrepreneur. You’re not working IN your business, you’re working ON your business. I know this difference might seem slight to the uninitiated. But if you look at anyone who has built a business to 7 figures or more, you will see that they set aside passions and followed the money.

They’re not experts at the products and services their business delivers. They hire or outsource experts for that. They are experts at making their businesses big and profitable. That’s entrepreneurship.

And what about those who go even further, building one successful business after another? They’re focused on something even beyond money.

Walter White, from the television show Breaking Bad, sums it up like this when talking to his partner Jessie…

“You asked me if I was in the meth business or the money business. Neither. I’m in the empire business.”

But that’s a step beyond.

For right now, if you want to become rich, focus on where the money is and how best to deliver the stellar products or services that will bring that money to you by the truckloads.

And by the way, if you’re really, really passionate about crochet, or poetry, or gardening… you can do as much of it as you want once you build your wealth building business (or empire) and then sell it for megabucks.

This is super easy and can be done by most anyone trying to get into the Internet marketing arena. In fact, I know people who make $5,000 and more (sometimes a lot more) just about every time they do this.

Your results, of course, may vary.

Here’s what you do…

Find a good WordPress plugin with PLR rights. It needs to come with a license that allows you to make any changes you want to it, along with the source code. You’ll find lots of these in PLR membership sites.

Google the plugin and find out what bugs it has (if any.) People will tend to complain on forums about plugin problems, so this should be easy to research. Make note of any bugs.

Now get creative. Look at your plugin and ask yourself what change or addition you could make that would improve the plugin. It just needs to be one thing that truly makes it your own unique plugin.

And it needs to be something buyers will appreciate having.

Once you have this, go to Upwork and get a quote for what it will cost to make the change to the plugin, as well as fix any issue it has. $300 or so is fairly typical unless there is a major issue.

If it’s not super expensive, get the work done. If it is super expensive, go get another plugin and start over.

Tell your coder to also rename the plugin to the name of your choosing.

Pay for a professional looking e-cover and register a domain name.

Write your sales copy and put your new plugin on Warrior Special Offers or JVZoo.

Plugins tend to sell really well. Gather the names of all of your buyers and let them know you’ll alert them when your next plugin comes out.

Rinse and repeat.

Yes, it really is this easy. Your first time you might have a few questions and challenges to work through. Like anything else, there is a learning curve. But this is one of the fastest ways you can start making serious money online very quickly, and if you take action now you could be pulling in your very first WordPress plugin profits within the next few weeks!

Google says that a healthy, active online community is one of the signals they look for to determine your blog’s quality. Comments are considered part of your content, so the better they are, the better your blog does in search results.

The problem is, of course, that a lot of comments are either spam or they don’t add anything to the conversation. For example, “Great post!” and “Love it!” might feed your ego, but that’s about it.

So how do you encourage people to leave thoughtful, well-written comments that add to the conversation?

By using a seed question.

Once you upload your post, be the first one to comment on your own post. For example, let’s say you wrote a blog post titled 7 Ways to Get Free Traffic.

Your comment might be, “Thanks for checking out my post. I thought I’d kick off discussion with a few questions about how you get free traffic. What’s your favorite technique? How much time and resources does it take? And how effective has it been so far? I would love to hear from you on this.”

When you do this, you’ll likely find that more of the comments you receive actually ADD to the conversation.

One more thing, and this is a little sneaky – up-vote your own comment to keep it at the top. Odds are others will begin up-voting it as well, but it doesn’t hurt to add your own up-votes. You want your comment to be the first one people read.

Try this technique out on the next blog post you write, and I bet you’ll significantly increase the quality and quantity of comments you receive.

Not only can this help you with the development of your own community and search engine rankings, you’ll also likely find the seeds of inspiration for future blog posts as you interact with your blog readers in this way.

No matter how much it makes you cringe, here’s something you must do on a regular basis. It’s vital that you know exactly what you are putting your customers through. What looks like a perfect sales funnel on your end could indeed be a house of horrors from the customers’ point of view.

That’s why you want to pretend to be your own customer. Go to your sales page, click the buy link and proceed all the way through.

Sure, you were quick to add lots of upsells, down-sells, cross-sells, recommended products and so forth. But what is it like from the customer’s point of view?

Does it take an eternity to get through to the download link?

Does every link go where it should?

Do your customers arrive at your download page only to find the recommended product is totally unrelated, no longer available or even the product they just bought?

Does the opt-in form obliterate the download links?

Do links to other marketer’s products on the recommended section lead where they should go? Or are they going to dead pages? Or worse yet, has that marketer changed the page to a squeeze page so he can steal your buyers?

Do the download links work properly?

And what about the wording on each page – are you noticing mistakes that are costing you money?

Going through this process can be painful but also highly profitable. You’ll find your mistakes and be able to correct them before another customer has to go through this maze.

This process is worth your time because your customers deserve the very best experience possible.

A lot of people think that to be a coach or consultant, you must have built a few million dollar businesses and have a ton of experience under your belt. Not true.

To sell coaching services, you have to be really good at ONE thing. Just one.

It’s up to you what that one thing is.

Maybe you have a unique traffic system. Or you’re really good at guest blog posting. Or you can make videos that set people’s hair on fire.

Whatever your one thing is, if you’re good at it, there are people out there that want you to show them what you know. And they don’t just want a 20 page pdf or even a set of videos.

They want one-on-one HELP.

And that’s where you come in.

True, in the beginning you might charge lower prices for your coaching.

But as soon as you can show you get results not just for yourself, but also for others, it’s time to raise your fees.

And don’t even let anyone tell you that you can’t coach. Don’t even let you tell you that.

People need your help. It’s selfish not to offer it.

It is a win/win for both you and your new clients to get them off to a fast start. Leverage your knowledge to help others, grow your business and create a new income stream through coaching.

One of the things we hear all the time is that we need to ‘avoid shiny object syndrome’ and focus on what we’re doing. And they’re absolutely right. Nothing beats focus and work for getting something done. That said, I’m going to make a case for the fad bandwagon – but not the case you might expect.

First, what do I mean by a fad or trend?

Simple – every time a new social media platform becomes popular, or a new marketing technique is the latest rage, it becomes a marketing fad. Everybody is talking about it. Some people are doing it. And a few people are profiting from it like crazy. These are the marketers who are creating and selling the products to feed the ‘fad frenzy.’ And they are making a killing.

The fact is, you can do the same if you choose to, without sacrificing your focus on your main objectives. Here’s how:

Keep an eye out for the next up and coming trend. When you see it, decide if you want to try it. Not in a super-serious, set-everything-else-aside way, but simply as something you do for fun to see if it works. If it interests you, then play around with it. See if you can make it work, and if so, how well.

Frankly just about every one of the latest greatest marketing techniques does indeed work. It’s just a question of do they offer a high enough return for the time and effort involved. If you’re short on time, outsource the experiment and have someone do it for you. Keep close tabs on the steps involved and the results achieved.

If you have success, record it on video or write it up in a pdf with screenshots. And sell it as a product.

That’s right – I’m going to tell you what a lot of big marketers already know but frankly don’t talk about – give the people what they want.

These products on the latest greatest marketing techniques sell like hotcakes. For example, a while ago there was hardly a TikTok marketing course to be seen. Now they’re everywhere. And the people who produced these courses are making bank.

Now to be clear: Do not offer something that you haven’t proven works. This is not a method to scam people – this is a method to give them what they want. If the technique doesn’t do what it says it will do, don’t make the product. Be 100% honest. And have fun.

Experimenting with new marketing techniques can be a blast. And now and then you’ll run across a new system or technique that you want to add to your own marketing arsenal on a permanent basis. Think of this testing of marketing techniques as a hobby that can pay off handsomely.

It’s a win-win-win because:

– You make a new product with proven results that sells like hotcakes.

– Customers get to buy exactly what they want, and you can feel good about selling it to them because you KNOW for a fact it works (you tried it!).

– And sometimes you learn a very valuable new skill for your own business.

So yes, if you’re interested and if it won’t interfere with your main business, by all means jump on the next new shiny object and see where it takes you!

I can’t stress the importance of what I’m about to tell you enough. If you look at entrepreneurs who have made fortunes – I mean SERIOUS wealth – in almost every case the money came not from inside the business, but from SELLING the business.

You’ve heard numerous news stories of internet companies selling just 1-3 years after their initial start-up. And the businesses you hear about sell for 7, 8 and even 9 figures.

If this sounds out of reach right now, picture this scenario: You start a business today, and in 6 months to 2 years you sell it for 6 figures. Would that make a great payday for you?

Now you might be thinking that selling your business is something you don’t need to worry about until long after you start it. Not so.

If you are starting a business right now, you should also be considering your exit strategy. After all, you could get bored with what you’re doing and want out. Or maybe you need quick cash. Or you decide to go in an entirely different direction. So you decide to sell your business.

If you’ve laid the groundwork, you should be able to sell quite quickly and for a very good price.

Here’s what you need to know:

– Don’t think of it as flipping a website. Think of it as selling a BUSINESS. That’s because buyers don’t want a website. They can build their own website cheap enough.

What they do want is a ready to go, money-generating cash-cow business, so make your plans accordingly.

– Make your business transferable from Day 1. Every product should be its own entity – after all, a single product can actually be an entire business.

Give it a website of its own, its own list, its own customer base, its own affiliate program and affiliate list, etc.

– Don’t brand it exclusively with your name. It’s fine to attach your name to your XYZ product, but don’t call it “yournameproduct.”

In other words, “Bob Smith’s Traffic Gorilla Mania Course” is fine. “Bob Smith’s traffic course” is not. In the first case, the product is Traffic Gorilla Mania, a name that anyone can sell. In the second case, the product is Bob Smith’s Traffic, a product forever branded as belonging to Bob Smith.

Imagine you’re Bob Smith, and you sell your traffic course business to someone else. That person then sells the course. Who do people ask for help? You. After all, your name is on the course.

Then let’s say the buyer alters the course and now it stinks. Who will people blame? You. Now you see why your name needs to be completely separate from the product name.

Yes, it’s a bit strange to think about your exit strategy when you’re just starting a business. But when it comes time to sell, you’ll be glad you did.

One more thing – what if you have a partner?

Write into your agreement what will happen if you sell. Just look at the possibilities and agree on how it will play out if one of you wants to sell to the other, or if you both want to sell to a third party.

You can make a good amount of money by making each of your businesses as stand-alone as possible, and then selling them when the time is right. In fact, selling your business can potentially earn you more than you made running the business.

So plan ahead, and make sure you are building your business-selling exit strategy directly into your business itself!

When I got started in online marketing, I was lucky. Someone told me exactly what to do, and I didn’t know any better than to follow his instructions to the letter. I looked at it this way – the guy was a self-made millionaire. I was broke. So what was I going to do – take what he told me and ‘fix’ it?

Somehow make it better? Improve upon it? There’s an old expression: If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. I took his instructions as gospel and did what he said. Soon I was making so much money, I was frankly astounded.

The biggest mistake I see new marketers making is they try to innovate. They have a better idea. A better system. A better method. And they almost always fail.

Look, there is a place for innovation once you know what you’re doing…

… But not when you’re first getting started.

Imagine you’re teaching someone to drive, and they get a great idea: ‘Why not just beep the horn when they’re about to hit someone? This way that person can get out of the way, and they never need to step on the brakes.’

See how crazy that is?

But it’s exactly how new marketers tend to think: “Forget the old ways, I’ve thought of a better way no one has ever thought of before.”

Uh-huh.

Instead, if you want to meet success quickly in this business, take a system that is already working and copy it.

Yes, that’s right – I’m advocating that you flat out copy what’s already working.

Are you in the diet niche? Then do this: Purchase the top 5 or 10 diet information products. Pay close attention to every step of the funnel. Take screenshots and notes. Pour through the products and see what’s good about them and what’s missing.

Then create your own product based on what you’ve learned, and set up a sales funnel based on the funnels you went through. Do this and I almost guarantee you’ll have a good selling product.

Online marketing isn’t hard if you’ll simply do what’s already working. But being human, we tend to think we can do better. Or we think we should do better and that it’s not right to copy systems that others are using.

But all industries are built upon the knowledge of those who went before – even those that innovate like crazy.

I’ll give you an example: It’s July 2003 and you’ve just co-founded Tesla Motors with the intention of building cars.

Are you going to start from scratch, with zero knowledge of cars and engines and how they run?…

… or are you going to take all of the knowledge accumulated over the last century and a half of car making, and then BUILD UPON this knowledge to create your own cars?

See?

Even companies like Tesla don’t reinvent the wheel – they make it better AFTER they’ve learned everything they can about what’s working now.

When you’re just starting out, find a system you like that you know is working, and then copy it. Once you’ve got it working, then and only then do you start innovating.

There are lots of great ideas here so please pay close attention… Let’s say you write an email to promote a product. Your email is basically a review of the product, and with it you make lots of sales. Now you’re done, right? Not even close.

Take that very same email and repurpose it into a review. Post the review on your blog under “reviews” and optimize it for SEO. Don’t panic – you’re basically optimizing for just a couple of key phrases like “XYZ Product Review.” Done right, you’ll get steady free traffic to your reviews, and sales, too.

Capture the email addresses of these additional visitors when possible and of course capture your buyer’s emails addresses so you can sell them more stuff.

Now think about what you just did – you wrote one email, made some sales, put the email on your site, made more sales and got more people on your list. Not bad.

But we’re just getting started.

Let’s say you write a 35 page report on traffic strategies. You sell the report for $10, and you make lots of sales. It’s a good start. But you are leaving SO MUCH money on the table.

Here’s what you can do…

At the end of your report (which is a really great report, btw) offer the reader personal one-on-one coaching tailored to them, based on the report, and charge a whole lot more than $10. A LOT more.

And don’t panic. You already have the information you need – it’s in the report you wrote. All you’ll be doing is working with this client on-on-one to tailor a solution for their business. “Let’s do A, then B, then C.” You’re simply acting as a coach or consultant. They’re getting the result they want and you’re getting a nice 3 or 4 figure fee.

But we’re not done yet.

Take the content from your report and make a video course. Put the course on ClickBank and pull in more sales. Setup an affiliate program while you’re at it (super easy to do with ClickBank), and the sales will continue to flow without any additional effort on your part.

Now take the content from your report and create a webinar with it. At the end, offer your personal coaching service. Or an upsell. Or whatever you want that fits.

Are you getting the point?

These are just a few examples of how you can repurpose your best content to earn yourself 10 times more money. You don’t necessarily need more content. You just need to use the content you do create wisely, and repurpose whenever possible to reach more people and create more customers for your business.