If you already sell your own products, you can double your income in no time at all by adding new price points to your marketing funnel. You don’t even need to create any new products – just new services that take very little of your time. Here’s how it works…
Let’s say you’ve got one or more products in the $20-$50 dollar range that teach something you’re good at. And for this example, let’s say that your product is a book on how to make a website super user friendly so that people stay and buy, rather than getting lost and confused and leaving. (This is a major market, by the way. Hint hint.)
In addition to your book, you can add a personal 1 hour consultation for $97 to $197 to look at and give feedback on one of their websites.
You could also offer to be on retainer for a certain fee per month to check each of their websites monthly and point out the changes they need to make. This fee would depend on the number of sites they have and are adding each month.
You could further offer a coaching service in which you train people to be usability experts and charge others for their services. In this case, you might charge $1,000 or even $2,000 a month for 3-6 months to make them experts.
Whatever your niche is, odds are you can add additional service-type programs that will easily double the amount of money you’re already making.
If you sell just 5 $97 one-time consultations a month, that’s another $5,820 a year.
If you sell an ongoing service at $297 a month and you’ve got 12 clients, that’s $42,768 a year.
If you take 4 new coaching clients for 6 months at a time, twice a year at $1,000 a month, that’s another $48,000 a year.
And none of these services have to take a lot of time. In the case of the 1 hour consult, obviously it’s an hour. And your real money here will be derived from upselling one of your more expensive consulting or coaching packages.
If you’re a consultant, you might be spending a couple of hours a week on each client. If you’re a coach, you might spend an hour a week on the phone, and answer their email questions 3 to 5 days a week.
And notice that you didn’t have to create any new products to do this. You’ve already got the knowledge and expertise – you’re simply offering more of it in a highly personalized manner. Your clients get tremendous benefit this way, much more so than they could by simply buying your book.
You’re happy, your clients are happy, and here’s a bonus: Anyone that you personally work with – even if it’s only for an hour – is far more likely to buy your products in the future, regardless of price.
Do you plan to release a $997 product in six months? Offer your customers personalized attention that greatly benefits them, and you will hit the ground running with sales when you launch your expensive product, guaranteed.
Take a few minutes now and think about what you can offer your existing and future customers that A) Provides them with a tremendous amount of value and B) You can perform in a minimal amount of time. Then quickly write up a page explaining your new service, send it to your existing customers and add it to your sales funnel. You could be making new sales in less than 24 hours.
Alright, some of you are going to say I’m over simplifying and others will simply disagree, but after years of being super serious about my business, here’s what I’ve discovered:
Everything in life – EVERYTHING – is actually a GAME.
You know how you sit down with a few friends to play cards or a board game, and there’s always that one person who takes the whole game WAY too seriously? They’re getting mad and frustrated when things don’t go their way, they’re celebrating like it’s New Years when things go right, and half the time they can’t even follow the conversation because they’re too busy concentrating on the game.
Yeah, that person.
Well guess what? I’ll bet you that when it comes to Internet Marketing, you are that person.
If you’re taking every decision so seriously, then it might as well be life or death. Exactly how should you word this email? What color should your header be? Should you promote this product at 6a.m. on Tues, or at 9a.m. on Wednesday? And so forth.
These are choices that should take seconds.
Yet I was agonizing over each one like it was a declaration to declare war.
I thought I had to nail every decision and make it all perfect. Nothing could be left to chance. If it took me a week to decide something, it’s because that’s how long it should take.
Wrong.
Now I flip a coin. Seriously. If I need to make a decision – but based on all the facts I have I can’t decide – I flip a coin. Sort of like rolling the dice in a game. Because you know what? It’s better to take the wrong action than no action at all.
Sure, fast decisions can turn out to be bad ones. But guess what? So can slow decisions. But no decision at all? That will get you nowhere, fast. Every kid who rides a bicycle can tell you that it’s far easier to change direction once you’re moving. But if you’re sitting still on that bike, you’re not going anywhere.
And the long term difference between good and bad decisions isn’t even in the decision itself, or the results it produces. Instead, the difference is in how you react. If you make a bad decision and then confine yourself to bed for a week, that’s not going to help.
But when you play marketing like a game, a bad decision is simply telling you to move in another direction. You shrug off the bad choice, glad that now you have more information to head in a better direction this time.
Laughing at your bad choices is a good idea, too, because it’s a game. It’s all a game. LIFE is a game.
If you’re down two goals in football, do you over think what to do next? No. You get the ball and start moving it down the field. If you encounter something new and surprising in a video game, do you shut it down? No, you try different things and see what works. At most you pause the game, go online and find out what to do. It takes you 5 minutes at most before you’re back in the game, fully armed with the knowledge you need to win.
Any difficult obstacle you face can be thought of as a game. And just shifting your mindset to game mode can make all the difference.
I had a friend years ago who went to military boot camp. He looked at the whole thing as a game, and afterward he reported that boot camp was one of the easiest things he ever did. Other people in his camp took the training so seriously, they were literally getting sick from fright. Same boot camp, two different mindsets.
I had another friend in the U.S. who was facing an IRS audit. Scary stuff, and let me tell you, he was deeply frightened and ready to do anything – including signing over a big check – to make it go away. Then he changed his outlook. Now instead of quaking in fear, he declared, “It’s a game, me against them. Let’s see how we can win this.” His fear vanished, he took action, and at the end of the audit the IRS paid HIM.
Do you want to start an online business? Launch a new product? Approach 25 gurus in the next 25 days? Make it into a game and 4 things will happen:
First, you’ll relax – and people do their best thinking when they’re relaxed.
Second, you’ll have fun – and people do their best work when they’re having fun.
Third, you won’t feel stressed – at least not the negative kind of stress – and you’ll literally live longer and be happier.
Fourth, when it’s all done and regardless of the outcome, you’ll be eager to do something else because you’ll want to have even more fun in your game.
“Yeah, but this is serious business and I’m a serious person!”
Really? Or is that simply how you choose to look at things and who you choose to be?
Life is a series of choices, and one of the biggest choices we make is deciding how to frame what we’re doing.
Me, I choose to make it a game – one I can’t wait to get up and play each morning. A game that just happens to also make me money. Lots of money.
Regardless of what people might think of the Walmart we know today, there is a lot to be learned from Walmart’s founder Sam Walton. In fact, if Sam were starting in business in 2020, he would almost undoubtedly be starting that business online.
So what can we glean from the guy in the old pickup truck who loved retailing?
Don’t worry about what others say about you. At JC Penney’s, his first full time job out of college, the personnel director told Sam, “Walton, I’d fire you if you weren’t such a good salesman. Maybe you’re just not cut out for retail.” No one remembers that man’s name, but Sam built an empire no one is likely to ever forget.
If people are telling you that you’re not cut out for online marketing, just remember Sam and smile.
Go with your strengths. Sam wasn’t good at accounting, he had poor organizational skills and he was hopelessly disorganized. But one thing he could do really well was build a team of people who could handle these things for him.
Focus on your strengths and outsource the rest.
Build relationships. In college, Same wanted to be student body president, so he discovered a trick that he would use for the rest of his life:
“I learned early on that one of the secrets to campus leadership was the simplest thing of all: speak to people coming down the sidewalk before they speak to you. I did that in college. I would always look ahead and speak to the person coming toward me. If I knew them, I would call them by name, but even if I didn’t I would still speak to them. Before long, I probably knew more students than anybody in the university, and they recognized me and considered me their friend.”
Sam made friends everywhere he went, and you can do the same thing online. Talk to everyone in your niche because you never know who is going to be your next customer, your ally, your promoter, your affiliate or your next joint venture partner.
Be a learning machine. Sam never stopped reading books and taking courses because he understood that the next great idea could come from anywhere.
Choose 5 or 10 proven online marketers to follow, and then read everything they write. Read a marketing book each week, and develop a curiosity for everything related to your field. Keep an open mind and know that your next great idea is hidden right in front of you – you just have to uncover it and act on it.
Learn from your competition. When Sam bought his first store, he realized the store across the street was doing twice as well. So Sam spent time everyday checking out his competitor to see what he was doing, right and wrong. Later he checked out Kmarts, who were ahead of him at the time. Then he visited the headquarters of other retailers who didn’t consider him to be serious competition. Little did they know…
Carefully watch and analyze what other online marketers are doing right and wrong and learn from them. Make friends with them. Ask questions. Bribe them, buy their courses and do whatever it takes to find out what’s already working.
Continually experiment with your business. Sam was continually applying what he learned elsewhere to his stores. Said Sam:
“I think my constant fiddling and meddling with the status quo may have been one of my biggest contributions to the later success of Walmart.”
Learn something and apply it. Make it your mantra: Learn something – innovate. And test, test and test some more to see what is working best. In no other business model in history has it been easier to innovate, test and discover exactly what is working and what needs improving than in online marketing.
Don’t reinvent the wheel – adapt it to your own use. According to Sam, “…most everything I’ve done I’ve copied from somebody else…”
There are plenty of proven online marketing business models you can choose from, so don’t think you have to invent the next revolutionary thing. Instead, take what’s already working and make it even better.
Make mistakes and then move on. Sam didn’t understand the terms of his first lease or how to buy a business. He borrowed money and went into debt to overpay for a failed Ben Franklin store in Newport, Arkansas. After 5 long years of grueling work and long hours, he had quadrupled sales and he had the most successful Ben Franklin store in the region. That’s when the landlord booted him out to give the store to his son to run. There was nowhere else in town to locate Sam’s store, so he drove across four states looking for a new location. He found one in Bentonville, Arkansas and started over.
It’s okay to get it wrong the first time. In fact, you’re probably going to make mistakes and that’s terrific, because it means you’ve started. You’re moving, you’ve got momentum and you’re making progress. Mistakes aren’t roadblocks, they’re bumps in the road to success.
Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Says Sam about being thrown out of his own store, “I’ve never been one to dwell on reverses, and I didn’t do so then…. I know I read my leases a lot more carefully after that, and maybe I became a little more wary of just how tough the world can be …. But I didn’t dwell on my disappointment.”
Every moment is a fresh beginning and an opportunity to take what you’ve learned – good and bad – and use it to your advantage.
Enjoy the process and your victories. In his autobiography, which was written on his deathbed, Sam wrote, “Walmart No. 18 … opened in 1969, and it marked our return to Newport … nineteen years after we had basically been run out of town. By then, I was long over what had happened to us down there, and I didn’t have revenge in mind…. As it happened, we did extraordinarily well with our Newport Walmart, and it wasn’t too long before the old Ben Franklin store I had run on Front Street had to close its doors. You can’t say we ran that guy—the landlord’s son—out of business. His customers were the ones who shut him down. They voted with their feet.”
Sometimes success can be a long time in coming, so remember to enjoy the process and the victories along the way. There were 17 successful stores prior to No. 18 and no doubt Sam enjoyed them all. At first, even your smallest successes should be celebrated, whether it’s your first website, your first sale, or your first $10,000 day.
When it comes to success, Sam Walton may have said it best:
“Celebrate your successes. Find humor in your failures. And remember that high expectations are the key to everything.”
Expect to succeed, act as though you are already successful, do the things you need to do to succeed, and the rest will take care of itself.
A product launches and sells hundreds or even thousands of copies. As an affiliate, you can make about 50% commission. But wouldn’t you like to keep ALL of the commission on the sales you make?
There is a way to do it. And while it’s not well known, the fact is it’s done far more often than you would think. Here’s how it works:
Savvy marketers approach product sellers and offer to buy the rights to their product. This might be a product that didn’t sell well through no fault of its own; for example, a great product with poor marketing. Or the product might have been a robust seller, but it’s no longer a hot commodity (which only takes about 3-4 weeks in many markets.)
If a deal is struck, the purchaser of the rights sells the product just as he would if he were an affiliate. However, he’s actually (and secretly) making ALL of the money. The product owner sold the rights and now receives nothing on each sale. That can be a good deal for a product owner, since they get a lump sum up front. But if you’re good at marketing, it can be a bonanza for you. It’s like having your own product, except with a guru’s name attached and ALL of the work done for you.
If the cost is a worry for you, then start small. Choose a product that’s been on the market for a while so you can get it for less money. Don’t purchase exclusive rights, just rights for yourself. Doing this, it’s possible to buy rights for a very reasonable rate.
Don’t add your name to the sales page – keep it just as it was so the product creator appears to be the seller. Simply replace the payment button and support desk link with your own.
If it’s in the budget, hire someone to optimize the site for keywords based on the product creator’s name. This can potentially get you sales when someone searches for the guru or the product.
Use a domain name that sounds a LOT like the original product name. And then get busy marketing, because all of the profit you make is yours.
These are without a doubt the biggest mistakes new marketers tend to make when it comes to copywriting…
Lie #1: Good copywriting uses lots of exclamation points and over-the-top jargon a 5 year old wouldn’t believe.
“This Brand New Revolutionary Never Before Seen Blah Blah Will Explode Your (Bank Account! Abs!! Sex Life!!! Etc.)” Seriously, who really wants their abs to explode???
“This Revolutionary Once In A Lifetime Opportunity Is Only Available To You Because You’re So Damn Handsome, But It Will Disappear In 10 Minutes And Then You’ll Be Ugly Forever!!!” Okayyyy…….
“This Incredibly Awesome Majestic Indescribable Super Secret Opportunity That Only The Super Duper Uber Wealthy Rich Know About Can Be Yours Because This One Rich Nerd Guy Decided To Spill The Beans Because He’s Really Angry At All The Other Rich Jerk Guys!!!” Yeah, who doesn’t believe that?
If you think you need exclamation points, it means you really need a thesaurus. Writer Henneke Duistermaat gives some great examples of this. Instead of “It’s big!” Try “It’s enormous.” Instead of writing, “That was brave!” Use, “That was heroic.” Finding the right words instead of lazily using exclamation points makes your writing more persuasive and tantalizing.
And forget wild promises and over the top worn out phrases. Instead, try being honest and genuine, like you’re talking to a friend over tea. Your sales copy will get noticed and read because it sounds like it’s coming from a real person and not the worst possible version of a used car salesman.
Lie #2 – You can simply ‘swipe’ your way to copywriting success.
Just rip off other writers, substitute your product for theirs, change a little bit here and there and call it good, right? Yes, it will save you time and yes, you might make some sales.
But to be truly successful and to BE a success (two different things, btw) you need fresh thinking and honest copy.
Because unless you are selling the exact same product to the exact same customers, ripping off someone else’s copy won’t provide the sensational conversions you’re looking for.
Telling your own story in your own way will.
Think about every blog that you read on a regular basis. Could someone else write those blogs and have them be the same? No. If someone tried to rip them off, would they be as successful as the original authors? No.
Once you master copywriting you’ll have a tremendous amount of power to write your own paychecks because you will be the source of new ideas and perspectives that resonate with your customers and create buying frenzies.
Lie #3 – Copywriting is super simple, once you know the ‘secrets.’
That’s right – just spend $997 for my latest course and in no time at all you’ll know all the secrets of the pros and you’ll be a copywriting savant.
Actually, no. No there are no secrets and you won’t become a copywriting wiz overnight.
The fact is, there are a multitude of books and courses that will teach you about copywriting. But there are no real secrets except this – there is no substitution for practice. And more practice. And more practice after that.
Hopefully this won’t sound too sentimental, but great copywriting is about one thing: Caring.
Caring for your customer, caring that he gets the best possible solution to his problem, caring enough to see to it that you make every effort to get that solution in his hands.
It’s about empathy and stepping into your customers’ shoes. Seeing life from his or her perspective. Living with the problem they have, knowing what it’s like to desperately want the solution.
You can’t outsmart your prospects. What you can do is be one of them so you can talk to them and counsel them as they would want to be talked to and counseled.
When you learn how to do that, you’ll be a great copywriter indeed.
Two things are surprising about the technique I’m about to teach you for selling affiliate products…
First, it’s surprisingly easy. In fact, it’s so simple you might be tempted to dismiss it. Don’t. This method has been proven effective and it’s one you definitely want to put in your marketing arsenal.
Second, while it doesn’t take much time, it can be a real money maker. In fact, if you choose an affiliate product that pays instantly and if you have a traffic source (such as your own list, social media, etc.) then you can potentially put money in your pocket in less than 3 hours.
Here’s how it works: Choose an affiliate product you like. It needs to be one that you have, one that you can get from the seller for free, or one you buy. Regardless, you must have a copy of it yourself. Also, it’s better if it’s a product you personally like and use, although that’s not required.
Read the sales letter carefully and choose the biggest benefit. This might be in the headline or it could be in the bullet points.
Write a short report – 5 pages is fine, 10 pages is super and you don’t want to go any longer than that. In the report, detail how to do this one technique that you’ve pulled out of the product that provides this benefit. For example, how to get 10,000 visitors a month to your blog would be a good benefit.
If you don’t want to write the report, outsource it.
Create a squeeze page and use this big benefit as your title. “How To Get 10,000 Visitors a Month To Your Blog.”
Once they enter their email address and press the opt-in button, they are redirected to your affiliate page for the product. Not many will buy at this point, but it’s important that they see the page.
At the end of the report, send them back to that affiliate sales page. You might write something like this: “I hope you put this into action, but if you’d like to take a massive shortcut and reduce the time it takes to get 10,000 visitors a month to your website, then click here to get the complete fast-track system.”
Use your own wording. Your message is that what you just taught them works, but to do it quickly without the trial and error and mistakes, they can simply get the fast track system because it’s so much easier and faster. Plus they get tons of other benefits, too.
So what you’re doing here is building a list, giving them real value and then immediately marketing to that list the exact benefit they’re looking for. Plus of course you can follow up with those that don’t initially buy, plus you can also market other products to them in the future.
Once you get good at this, it shouldn’t take you more than 3 hours to set up and you can use your system for as long as you like. Send website visitors to it, tell your lists, offer your free report on social media, buy ads, etc.
Does it sound too easy? Oftentimes it’s the simple techniques that create the biggest results. Making a couple of thousand dollars on each one of these systems that you set up is not unheard of. And depending on how much traffic you send and the product you choose, it could be even more.
And if you like, you can outsource the entire thing for a reasonable fee. Imagine if you just set one of these up a week. It might not be glamorous, but the path to wealth and riches is frequently a simple process applied consistently. The method described above can be your path to financial freedom.
Once an online marketer gets to a certain income level, that marketer almost invariably gets stuck. They can’t seem to make any more money, even when they pour more and more of their time into their business. Why? Because they are working IN their business rather than ON their business.
That’s why it’s so important to begin outsourcing as soon as you can afford to, which is actually a whole lot sooner than you probably think. If you believe you need to be bringing in a hefty six figure sum before you can get yourself some help, think again.
The fact is, the sooner you begin outsourcing some of the more mundane and time consuming facets of your business, the sooner you can begin growing your business in a truly substantial way.
You’ve only got a fixed number of hours in the week. Do you spend them doing:
A: The tasks you don’t like to do
B: The tasks you don’t mind doing, but they could easily be done by someone else
C: The tasks that you’re brilliant at doing and that you enjoy performing
D: Planning and strategizing to take your business to the next level
Obviously you want to delegate A and B as fast as possible so you can focus on C and D.
Are you doing your own support? Are you answering your own emails and phone? Is it taking your entire morning just to do support, answer emails and so forth?
Next question: Exactly how much do you earn each time you work your own support desk or answer your own emails and phone? What’s that? Nothing? Maybe it’s time you hired someone to do it for you.
In fact, if you do it correctly, hiring someone to perform your support tasks for you can pay off from day one.
That’s because it frees you up to do the things that MAKE YOU MONEY.
Ah-hah! Imagine that – devoting nearly ALL of your working time to those tasks that make money, rather than doing support.
In the military there are two distinct areas of operation: Front line and support. The front line wins the battles while the support does just that – support those who are out there winning the battles.
In sports, you’ve got offense and defense. The defense is crucial for stopping the other team from scoring, but they generally DON’T SCORE any points themselves. The offense does that. If you’re spending all of your time on defense (answering emails) then you’re not devoting any time to offense (making sales.)
Here’s how to hand the bulk of your email tasks off to your new assistant: If you don’t already have a private email address, create one. This is the address you give to JV partners, fellow marketers and your mother. The people who matter most to your business and your personal life.
Once a day you check this address and answer these emails personally.
Everything else – EVERYTHING else – goes to your support address or support desk where your support person checks it daily or even several times a day.
This includes payments, autoresponder emails, hosting emails, questions from customers, complaints, testimonials, affiliate requests, etc.
Your support person has access to your accounts, too. Your hosting account, autoresponder account, PayPal account, etc. I know – it seems like a big leap of faith to give access to your PayPal account to someone else, but no worries. You can limit the PayPal functions your support person has access to. For example, they can issue refunds but not withdraw funds.
Your support person or team is basically going to run the day to day operation of your business for you.
When training your support staff, you can write out step by step procedures on how to do things, record videos or audios, or simply have them contact you when something comes up they haven’t handled before. In other words, there is a learning curve. But after the first week you shouldn’t have to spend much more time on training, especially if you’ve got the right person for the job.
You can also have your support person or team do all those other things you don’t like to do such as analyze stats, clean email lists, install websites, social media, etc. Whatever it is that you prefer to hand off, go ahead and do it.
If you hire someone for 2 hours a day, that frees up 2 hours of your own time. If you pay them $12 an hour, that’s $480 a month – quite possibly more than you currently pay for programs and how to info.
And it’s 40 hours per month that you’ve just gained. Imagine if you use that 40 hours each month to create and market a new product – that’s 12 new products in a year. If each product were to make you just $3,000 initially, and then just another $500 a month – well, you do the math.
If you’re still hesitating, then think about this: If you strike a deal with your support person to pay them monthly, then you’ve got 30 days to use your new found time to make more than enough money to cover them for the first month.
30 days and 40 new found hours. But that’s not even the biggest benefit of bringing someone in to help you with your business.
The biggest benefit of all is what it will do for your mindset, because suddenly you ARE a business person. There’s no more wondering if you’re just dabbling in a hobby. This stuff is REAL and you are now responsible for someone else’s income. This is the motivator that will kick you out of bed each morning and ensure you have a productive, successful day.
Use one of the freelance sites to find someone. Yes, it’s going to feel like a big step, because it is. A big step in the right direction, that is. Because the rewards are going to prove that it was totally worth it to take this next, logical step in your business evolution.
The easiest way to go full time is to BE full time. That is, quit your daytime go-to-work type job and begin working full time online. When you’re full time online you’ll discover opportunities that otherwise would have passed you by. And you’ll be able to create a lot more opportunities as well, by having the time to forge relationships with other marketers, time to work on your own social media, blog posts and products and so forth.
But the problem for many is their online business isn’t making enough money yet to enable them to leave their job. And until they leave their job they won’t have the time to grow their business into a full time income. It’s a catch-22 situation that holds a lot of marketers hostage for years.
So how can you get some extra money coming in immediately? By offering services online. When you offer a service, it’s fairly easy to get clients and get paid. You typically won’t make a fortune, but you can make enough to replace your income from your job. And then you can use your extra time to create your own products, build your own sites and so forth.
Here’s a list of services you could offer:
Being a personal assistant to another marketer. This job is doubly great, because you’ll also learn as you earn. You’ll need a good variety of skills to land a VA position, but never underestimate the power of Google, either. Anything you’re required to do but don’t know how can be found on Google and YouTube.
Freelance customer service. Many marketers don’t want to hassle with support tickets, but they can’t afford to hire someone full time, either, because their own business isn’t big enough yet. Offer to do support 1 hour per day, 5 or 6 days per week for $10-$20 per hour. Get 3 clients and you have a nice little side income. And best of all, you can do these support tasks as you have time throughout the day from the comfort of your computer or even your mobile device.
Writing. This could be anything from simple articles and emails to full blown product creation. Content is hugely important and every marketer needs more great content. If you can write in a conversational manner and do good research, you can make money freelance writing. You might even ghost write books, too.
Copywriting. This is a little trickier than simple writing, in that your job is to sell with the written or spoken word. However, it can pay quite well if you’re good, and copywriting is a skill you’ll need to hone for your own business anyway.
Proofreading and editing. If you have an eye for details, you can be a proofreader. If you’re good at taking rough copy and turning it into something coherent that flows well and makes sense, then editing is for you.
Ebook formatting. Getting a book ready for Kindle or even to make into a sharp looking PDF takes skill. Can you do it? Then there are tons of marketers who need you.
Graphic design. Are you good at Photoshop? Can you make headers, product covers, logos and so forth? Then this is a great way to make some extra money.
Website design, maintenance, security, SEO and so forth. In other words, anything and everything technical. If you’re good at the technical side of online marketing, you’ll always have work because the majority of marketers really don’t want to bother with it – they’d rather hand the work over to an expert such as yourself.
And anything else an online marketer needs…
In the course of building your own business, make a note of the many things you’re having to do. Ask yourself, “is there a market for this service? Do I enjoy performing this service?” If so, then you’ve got a skill you can sell to others to make ends meet until your own business is running full steam ahead.
What a great daydream this is: You make a ton of money online and then go tell your boss to ‘have a nice day.’ This is the scenario you see in sales letters all the time. “Buy this product, put it to work and next week you can kiss your job goodbye, forever.”
Real life doesn’t always work like a sales letter. In fact, life continually gets in the way. You make some extra money but then it dries up. Or you have an emergency and the extra money bails you out of that crisis but you’re no further ahead.
Or – and this is the most common of all – you have the best of intentions but you never quite get around to making that fortune online. And so you are still at your job. Even though a year ago/two years ago/five years ago/ you swore you would be retired by now.
Whoops.
How do you eat an apple? Unless you’re a horse, you eat it one bite at a time. In my early years I found that building your online income and telling your boss to shove it works the same way – you go through the process of replacing your income one step at a time.
It’s a funny thing: You can make $5,000 a month online fairly easily, but only when you KNOW you can do it. Until you KNOW it, it seems just out of reach. And as long as the goal seems out of reach, your subconscious will sabotage you every step of the way to see to it that it never happens. If you can’t conceive it, there is no way you’re going to achieve it, no matter how hard you try.
It’s like getting a job. You can’t get the job without experience, but you can’t get experience without a job. Same way with making money online.
But right now, this instant, I’ll bet you know that you can make enough to cover just one of your bills, right?
So pick a monthly bill of yours, any bill. Now get enough income coming in each month to completely cover that bill. Maybe it’s your $100 water bill. Great. All you need to make is a consistent $100 a month, and it’s taken care of.
Don’t spend this new income on anything but paying that bill. Any money you make above what it takes to pay the bill is either reinvested into your business, or…
… you pick another bill and start covering that each month, too. And you just keep adding another bill and another bill into the mix until they are ALL covered, including your mortgage or rent, including your food, including everything.
But notice how you did it – not all at once, but simply one bill at a time. Your mind can wrap itself around this concept of taking it one step at a time. Your subconscious will stop fighting you and you’ll be surprised how easy the process becomes. It’s all about small steps that prove you can do it, that prove you can move on to the next level, and the next.
Once you’ve got all of your bills covered and then some, you can quit your day job with confidence, because now you KNOW you can make money online. There is no question. You’ve already proven you’ve got the confidence and the skills.
The magic is this: Instead of sitting down at your computer and thinking, “Okay, I’ve got to make enough money to cover all my expenses this month,” you simply tell yourself you’re going to make enough to cover one little bill.
You’re no longer trying to create an entire business, you’re simply taking the first steps. You’re enjoying numerous successes along the way that fuel you to keep going.
Get that first bill paid and you’ll be on your way to achieving total financial freedom, one step at a time.
Weird but true… In the early part of the 20th century there was a massive campaign in the U.S. to abolish alcohol. Weirder still, this campaign actually won the day, and Prohibition became the 18th amendment. This made the U.S. a dry country in 1920 until the amendment was rightfully abolished in 1933.
So how does a movement influence people to take away one of their own rights?
With smart marketing.
First, in their campaign rhetoric the Anti-Saloon League made the issue an either/or choice.
Either you’re for children or you’re for alcohol.
Either you’re for our brave boys fighting the war, or you’re for alcohol.
As one advertisement featuring a picture of Whistler’s Mother read: “Which Gets Your Vote: Mother or The Saloon? Vote Dry.”
That’s right – either you’re for mothers or you’re for alcohol.
No middle ground. You don’t want to abolish alcohol? Then you hate your children, your boys overseas and your own mother.
A campaign like that wouldn’t fly today, would it?
😉
Today you either use the advertiser’s product or you’re not sexy, not worthy, not relevant, not important, etc.
If you don’t believe me, watch a few TV commercials and see for yourself.
Of course, you’ll want to be much more subtle when using this tactic in your own campaigns, but the tactic itself works as well as ever.
Second thing they did in their campaign was to eradicate the competition.
You’re a member of a state congress and you don’t want to abolish alcohol? Then we’ll run a smear campaign on you and get someone else elected who will vote our way.
No competition means easy victory.
Translate that to today’s marketing, and we don’t mean you should photoshop pictures of your competition doing evil deeds and post them on the front page.
Instead, you eliminate all competition by inventing your own class.
For example, instead of being one of a 100,000 weight loss coaches, you become the only sexy shape expert.
Third, they enlisted their competition in their crusade, working side-by-side with politicians who drank booze as long as those same politicians would vote against drinking.
In the world of online marketing, this translates into working with your nearest competitors as long as it increases sales.
This might be in the form of joint ventures, interviews, affiliate sales and so forth. No marketer is an island, and even those who appear to be in direct competition to your interests can often help you in your quest.
Fourth, they didn’t try to convince the masses, because they didn’t need to. All they had to do was switch just enough voters to their side to gain their 51% and win the day.
In online marketing, you don’t need to win every customer, nor should you try. Some customers will buy from you no matter what, and you should reward them but you don’t need to convince them. Some will never buy from you, and there’s no need to waste any time on those folks.
It’s the ones in the middle that you want to focus your efforts on to get them converted over to customers.
Fifth, they employed a new device that showed, not told, of the ‘horrors’ of alcohol. For a nickel viewers could see something new in the world – a motion picture version of the play, “Ten Nights in a Bar Room.” In this movie a drunken husband squanders his pay on drink, his daughter is injured while trying to bring him home, the man dies of drinking and the wife despairs of her lost family.
What a great piece of propaganda for the anti-booze movement, which helped to reinforce the belief that even one drop of alcohol could destroy not just individuals, but entire families.
Pretty crazy, right? But again there’s a lesson to be learned here: Show, don’t tell. In just a few minutes of showing how ‘evil’ alcohol was, the movement gained tremendous ground in convincing and converting voters to their side.
YouTube, anyone? 🙂
Bottom Line: The techniques that influence people don’t change, they just get more sophisticated with time. What influenced people a hundred years ago can still be translated into today’s terms to increase your own conversions.
