Author Archive | Lawrence

A hundred years ago a shop might have tried to be many things to most people. In fact, big box stores still do that today, with good success. Walmart is everything and all things to those looking for the cheapest price. But even they repel customers – namely those people who value service and quality over price.

These days it pays to specialize. Rather than trying to be most things to most people, you want to do one thing and do it really, really well. If you teach gardening techniques, rather than teaching everything to every gardener, pick a focus such as organic vegetable gardening. If you teach marketing, teach it to a very specific audiences, such as chiropractors or coffee shops or contractors.

Yes, you’ll be repelling the vast majority of customers, but you’ll also be attracting the exact prospects you can help the most. And in so doing, you can also charge accordingly.

After all, who commands the highest price – the person who teaches generic marketing techniques to anyone and everyone? Or the specialist who teaches plumbers to build their businesses to seven figures? Every time, it will be the specialist. If you don’t believe it, look at the health care industry, one of the biggest businesses of all. Who makes more – a general practitioner or a heart surgeon? Specializing pays, and it pays big.

One more benefit of specializing and perhaps the most important of all is this: You become the ONLY choice. When a dentist wants advice on building his practice and he’s faced with 10 choices – 9 of whom do marketing for any kind of business and 1 who works exclusively with dentists, there simply is no competition. Even if your prices are double or triple of your so called competitors, because you are the specialist you will win the business nearly every time.

Bottom line: Know exactly who your target audience is, become their ONLY choice, and repel everyone else who is not a good fit. You’ll attract better customers who appreciate you more and are happy to pay for your specialized service and products.

As you already know, a popular business model for breaking into any niche is to conduct interviews with the movers and shakers of your niche. In this manner you are creating great content, making potentially profitable connections and making yourself an expert by association. But do you know what’s even better than conducting an interview by phone or Skype? Doing it in PERSON. Here’s why:

First, the vast majority of communication isn’t what a person says, but rather the person’s facial expressions, gestures, body language and so forth. For this reason your interviews are going to be better when you can do them in person. By watching your subject, you’ll be able to draw out more information and revelations than you possibly could over the phone.

Second, you can develop a much stronger connection with your subject in person. No matter how much time you spend on the phone or even on Skype, you’re still miles apart and have never actually met the person. You’re much easier to forget this way. But in person, you can make a much stronger impression and create a deeper connection with your subject that allows you to become much closer.

Third, you can prolong the initial connection by inviting them out to coffee or lunch before or after the interview. This makes for a great bonding experience and again increases the odds of your relationship building beyond simply the interviewer and interviewee.

Fourth, you’ve got a great photo opportunity in person. Get your photo taken with this expert – who is probably something of a minor celebrity in your niche – and then use that photo for marketing purposes.

For example, you can add the photo to your website. Use ALT tags to describe the image with something like, “Joe Smith of the podcast Super Abundance with renowned financial expert Warren Buffet.” When people search for Warren Buffet, they could find your photo.

Use the photo on social media. Again, it makes you an authority by association in your niche.

Use the photo in promotions you might be doing, both online and offline. This increases your credibility and elevates you in the eyes of your readers and potential customers.

Naturally there will be many times when an in person interview simply isn’t possible. But when you’re going to another city, check to see who you might set up interviews with while you are there. Watch to see who comes to your city. And when you go to events, set up interviews in advance whenever possible. Also, be ready to do interviews on the fly at conferences – you never know who you might get your next interview and photo with.

If you’re currently working at something other than publishing – affiliate or CPA marketing, perhaps – then you might wonder why you would want to bother publishing your own content. Publishing isn’t for everyone, but there are several very good reasons why you might want to consider it.

You can be the good guy. People are looking for answers, for help and for solutions to their problems. You and your content can make a real difference in their lives. And by making that difference, you become….

The expert. The go-to person. The Big Kahuna that people respect. You’re the trusted authority and now opportunities are coming to you in the form of free advertising on social media, affiliates, joint venture proposals and so forth. Which brings us to…

A greater income and additional income sources. You’re now monetizing your expertise by selling products and courses.

So what kinds of content can you create and publish?

Blog Posts
Websites
Short Reports
eCourses
eBooks
eMails
Kindle Books
Actual Books
Workbooks
Resources Lists
Infographics
eNewsletters
Print Newsletters
Magazines
Interviews
Frequently Asked Questions
Webinars
Podcasts
Slide Shows
Video Courses
Audio Courses
Home Study Courses
Step-by-step Tutorials
Templates
Presentations
Screencasts
Cheat Sheets
Buyers Guides
Membership Sites
Member Forums
Top Lists
Stories
Mindmaps
Live Events
Apps
Software

More ideas…

You can publish content everywhere – your site, your blog, your member’s area, your newsletter, etc.

You can give away content – such as an ebook or ecourse – to build your email list.

You can record audio and/or video versions of your book and sell it.

You can hold live webinars or in person workshops, then sell the recordings.

You can build traffic by sharing great content such as infographics and top lists on social media.

You can create video courses to sell and promote your video courses by giving away snippets of the course, or a ‘lighter’ version.

You can interview experts and use the interviews and the transcripts as products or giveaways or as content on a paid membership site.

You can combine your articles and blog posts into eBooks and print books!

If you’re not yet creating and publishing content, you might be missing out on a world of opportunities. And if you are, you might want to consider adding new types of content to further expand your reach, your business and your bottom line.

Site Seals are those graphics you see on places like shopping carts that try to convey your information is safe. For example, the yellow circle with a black check mark that says, “Norton SECURED, powered by VeriSign.” The purpose of the seals is naturally to increase conversions, but not all seals are alike. And some placements can actually hurt your conversions rather than help.

Baymard conducted a study to see which seals people trusted the most, and you can see the results here:

http://baymard.com/blog/site-seal-trust

The Norton Secured and McAfee Secure were the clear winners.

You might think that using as many seals as possible would make the prospect feel the most secure, and thus increase conversions. But it’s also possible that populating your page with trust seals will only add to their anxiety and in the end, hurt your conversions.

Be careful to avoid using trust seals on your squeeze pages, as this telegraphs you’re going to be looking for a monetary transaction. When all you want is their email address, it’s generally best to avoid trust seals and save them for the payment page.

Two out-of-the-ordinary places to test placing trust seals is in your header and your footer. When Petco added McAfee’s security seal to their footer, conversions increased 1.76%. And when they placed the same seal in the top left area of the header, conversions increased a surprising 8.83%.

Bottom line, test everything. You never know for sure until you run an AB test.

Staying focused is quickly becoming one of the greatest challenges online marketers face today. For example, you sit down to write an article and end up surfing the net for the rest of the morning… Or you’ve got an information product that you need to finish, but you check your email which leads to a news site, a sports site, a few entertainment sites, some social media sites and before you know it, it’s already 3 hours later and you’ve accomplished nothing except making yourself feel guilty. Does this sound familiar?

According to Dr. B. J. Fogg, Director of Stanford Persuasive Lab, “There’s just one way to radically change your behavior, and that’s to radically change your environment.”

Students who transfer to a new university are much more likely to change their habits than students who remain at the same university. This is true for workers as well. People who change jobs or change job locations are much more likely to also change their habits.

It makes sense. Let’s say that at your previous job you were in the habit of going to a fast food restaurant with your coworkers for lunch. At your new job, your coworkers eat lunch at a healthy restaurant and invite you along. Soon you are eating healthy lunches every day, even on those days when you don’t go to that restaurant, because you’re now in the habit of eating healthful lunches. Enough time goes by, and fast food can even become repulsive to you.

So what happened? Your environment changed and so did the triggers. This made it easy to effect a change.

People who have trouble falling asleep are told to only use their bed for sleeping and for nothing else. If they lay down but they can’t fall asleep, they’re supposed to get up and go to another room. After treating their bed as only a sleep location (and not a reading location, a daydreaming location, etc.) for several weeks, they are generally able to fall asleep within minutes of their head hitting the pillow.

The bed is now a trigger for just one thing – sleeping.

This is why having one location to just work and another location to play is important. If you are mixing your ‘play’ time with your work time in the same home office, you’re asking to get constantly distracted.

If you use a laptop or a tablet for work, this is easily remedied. Simply designate one place in your home where you will do nothing but work – no exceptions.

If you work on a desktop computer, you might consider getting a laptop or tablet for your Internet ‘play’ time.

Another technique is to designate certain times of the day when you are working, no exceptions. This will get you in the habit of always doing work during those times, and it will make it much more difficult to get distracted. Your work times then become routine, eliminating the need to decide each time if you’re going to work. And when you automatically go to work instead of ‘deciding’ to go to work, you eliminate the possibility that you will decide NOT to work.

A third technique is to use triggers. For example, if you always start work right after finishing breakfast, it will become a habit to eat and go to work. You don’t have to think about it, you just do it.

In one study, knowing exactly when and where participants were going to exercise caused them to follow through a whopping 91% of the time. Those who simply exercised when they felt motivated to do so exercised 35% of the time.

Bottom line: If you’re having trouble staying focused, designate an area where you will do nothing but work, combine it with a strict schedule, and you should experience a dramatic increase in your productivity.

When you get more done with less distractions, you’ll not only accomplish your goals faster – researchers tell us you’ll also enjoy increased self-esteem, greater happiness and larger over-all satisfaction with your life.

What’s the easiest way to make money online, without having to create a product or a sales page? Affiliate marketing, of course. 🙂

So, why is it that most affiliate marketers never make nearly what they could make? Anyone has the potential to make HUGE money in affiliate marketing, yet 90% or more of affiliates make a pittance (I’ll wager the number is closer to 98%, in fact.)

Think about this: If you earn an average of $50 on each sale in a sales funnel you promote, and you make 6 sales, you’ve made $300. Sounds good, right?

But guaranteed, there is someone else who made 600 sales and walked away with $30,000.

Why did they make 600 sales when you made just 6?

There are reasons why a handful of affiliate marketers do amazingly well, and everyone else barely makes a profit.

And marketers who understand this will always have a tremendous advantage over marketers who don’t.

1: Build a Relationship

I know you’ve heard it before, but are you doing it? People buy people, not products.

If you want them to open your email and click your link, or visit your Facebook Group and click a link, you’ve got to have a RELATIONSHIP with your people.

This is so simple to do, yet few marketers take the time.

Start with a blog post that is all about you, and then send new opt-ins to the post so they can get to know you. Make the post silly, funny and most of all REAL. Talk about the stupid stuff you’ve done, the mistakes you’ve made, where you live and so forth.

Do you have a strange hobby or unusual taste in food? Include that. Do you have 17 pets? Talk about them. Do you work until 3 in the morning and sleep until noon? Mention that.

Reveal the real you. Not the details people don’t want, but the ones that amuse and interest. You’re looking to make a real connection, not give a resume.

And above all else, don’t make your life seem like a series of magnificent accomplishments. No one is going to relate to someone who turns everything they touch into gold.

But they are going to relate to the time you bought Bitcoin when it was worthless and sold it just before it took off, or the time you thought you could fly and jumped off your uncle’s barn into the manure pile.

And don’t stop with your ‘about me’ page, either. Use this relationship building in your lead magnet, your emails, your other blog posts and so forth.

Always inject a little bit about yourself. Not so much that you bore people, of course, or make everything seem about you. But just enough to keep it real.

Think about relating an event to a friend. Aren’t you going to give your own perceptions of what happened, as well as tell about how you got out of your car and stepped in the mud puddle just before your big presentation?

Use this same method of personal, one-on-one friend communication with your readers as well.

Post on your blog as often as possible, and we’re talking every day or two. Encourage your list to subscribe to Feedburner or the equivalent so they know when you add a new post.

Your readers will realize you’re a real person who isn’t out to pitch them a new product every 5 minutes. And they’ll gladly read your sales emails much more readily when they know there is a real live human being who is sending them these messages.

2: Use Your Own Voice

How many emails do you receive that say something along the lines of, “Buy this product – this product is the greatest product ever – you will be sorry if you miss this – so rush right over and buy it now.”

Yeah. Same old stuff, over and over again.

There is a marketer (or maybe several, but I’m thinking of one in particular) who sells MASSIVE quantities of this exact type of emails as a swipe file to new marketers.

Like a brand-new marketer couldn’t write their own 25 word email that basically says, “GO BUY THIS NOW!”

People are TIRED of getting these emails. You’re tired of getting these emails. I’m tired of getting these emails.

Same phrases, same message, same B.S.

If you’re not going to stand apart from the crowd, then you’re going to have to share the same crumbs they’re getting.

Instead, take 30 minutes and write your own promotional email in your own voice.

Forget hype. Be sincere. Be honest. “Hey, this product isn’t for everyone. I don’t even know if it’s for you. But if you have this problem, then maybe this is your solution. Check it out and decide if it’s right for you, because I know it’s worked like crazy for some people. And it’s on sale right now, too.”

I’ve written emails where I basically tell people not to buy something unless they really really want it or need it. “Don’t buy this if you already know how to do xyz.” “Don’t buy this if you’re not going to be doing this type of marketing.” This is only for people who want (fill in the blank.) It’s like I’m trying to talk them out of it, which paradoxically often results in more sales, not fewer.

But the point isn’t tricking them into buying; it’s to be honest. Because you know what? That latest, greatest product you’re promoting ISN’T what everyone on your list needs. Some of them, sure. The rest of them, no.

Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to open an email that says, “Here’s a new product, thought you might want to know, but please don’t buy it if you’re not going to use it.”

The first time I got an email like that, I bought the product without even reading the sales letter. True story. I was just so happy that someone wasn’t ramming a sale down my throat, that I jumped at the chance to buy it.

Weird but true.

My point is, be you. Be honest. Talk to your readers as though they are your best friends and you don’t want to lose your best friends by acting like a carnival barker who is here today and pulled up stakes (vanished) tomorrow with their money.

3: Email a LOT

This is the one where people like to argue with me, and I understand that.

You’ve heard over and over again that you shouldn’t email too often, or you’ll upset your subscribers, right?

After all, every time you email, there is the potential that a subscriber will hit the unsubscribe button.

Do you know what the potential is when you DON’T email? Nothing. No opens, no clicks, no sales… not even any relationship building.

Do you want people to open and read your emails? Then send out those emails EVERY DAY.

Here’s why:

First, almost no one will see every email you send out. Let’s say you’ve got a sale on one of your products. Don’t you think your readers might like to know about it? But if they miss the one and only email you send that lets them know, then they’ve missed out on the discount and you LOST a sale.

Second, send emails at different times. I opened someone’s email just yesterday, decided I was VERY interested in the new membership he was selling, clicked the link and discovered it was no longer available.

What happened? This particular marketer only sends out emails at 1:00 a.m. my time, so I don’t even see most of his emails in the avalanche of mail I get before I wake up.

Third, if you’re sending email once a week or once a month, your readers are forgetting who the heck you are. And when you finally do send an email, they think it’s spam.

Fourth, if you mail more often, you will make more money. Don’t take my word on this, just do it for one month. Send out one email per day, every day, for 30 days. Put a promotion in each one. See if you haven’t made more – a LOT more – money during that time period than during the previous month.

And by the way, I’m not saying JUST send out a promotion in each email. Make sure you have some content in there as well, even if it’s just an amusing anecdote.

4: Think of affiliate marketing as a BUSINESS

This isn’t a hobby, nor is it an add-on for an additional income stream.

Even if you go on vacation, be prepared to send out an email every day. Schedule them in advance or write them on vacation. Either way, affiliate marketing to your list is a business that you can’t just jump into when you need cash and forget about the rest of the time.

You don’t have many support issues, since the product owners handle this. You don’t have to worry about creating products, sales pages and so forth. You don’t have to drive traffic, unless it’s to build your list bigger.

With so much you don’t have to do, there’s no reason not to focus your time and energy into building relationships with your list and promoting to them every single day.

Affiliate marketing can be some of the easiest money you’ve ever made, if you put in the time and effort to make it a real business.

Hi, it’s Lawrence and this is my new website. Stay tuned… I’ll have great things to share!

For starters, here’s an article I think you’ll enjoy…

It’s called: “Make the Leap to Home Business Success”

If you are going to build a successful home business, you need 3 “intangibles.” These are things that must come from WITHIN you.

===> Intangible 1 <===

First, you must have a strong WHY.

Why must you make a home business work? What’s driving you? What is it that you CAN’T have in your life anymore and/or what is it that you absolutely MUST HAVE now?

For me, I couldn’t stand working 12+ hours a day anymore and missing the experience of my children growing up. I also absolutely HAD TO HAVE the freedom of being able to control my life and finances through a little box that I could carry with me anywhere in the world and not be tied to anyone’s time pressures or demands but my own. That was my carrot and my stick. I felt a great pain deep in my gut of missing out on my children’s lives and the incredible freedom that succeeding in this business would provide for me. I found my why. You MUST find yours.

===> Intangible 2 <===

You must BELIEVE that it is possible.

If you don’t believe that it’s POSSIBLE for you to succeed in a home business or make your living on the Internet, you won’t. It’s that simple.

For me, figuring out that it was possible was just a matter of realizing that many other people were ALREADY making great money with a home business online. If they could do it, I could too. It would just be a matter of figuring out what those people were doing and then adapting it to my situation.

There is no shortage of undeniable PROOF that people (millions of them) are making money online in many different ways. Just get online and do some research and you’ll find countless testimonials and stories of REAL PEOPLE making real money on the Internet. Or head to your local bookstore and you’ll find the same documented evidence of this fact. Truth is, it’s getting easier and easier to start and succeed in a home based business. This is primarily because of the Internet and affiliate marketing.

I’ve always said that “affiliate marketing” is the job of the future. In the “old” days, you had to go to a potential employer, apply for the position and hope for the best. Now you can simply go to any company you want, fill out their affiliate application and start work immediately. Affiliates are the new working class. Believe me, making money with affiliate programs or making your living on the Internet is WAY MORE than possible. It is pretty much (or will be soon enough) unavoidable now. Affiliate marketing is the “job” of the future that’s here TODAY.

===> Intangible 3 <===

You must be willing to MAKE THE LEAP.

Ready, FIRE, then aim… This is the operating philosophy you MUST adopt to succeed with an Internet home business.

That’s backwards for most people who like to aim before they fire. The fact is the Internet is a moving target… The only thing constant about it is change. You need to stop analyzing the game and simply jump into it. You can’t learn from the outside… You have to be IN THE RING to truly understand it.

The lesson here is that you will never really be READY to start a home based business. You simply have to start one. This is what I call “Making the Leap.”

The good news is that the cost of failure on the Internet is very small. In the “brick and mortar” world you need to evaluate things very carefully before you decide to open up a business. It’s almost always necessary to invest thousands of dollars to get an offline business off the ground. However, on the Internet you can often start a successful business for less than $100. In fact, Plug-In Profit Site is a really good example of this.

You simply need get IN THE GAME… Each moment that you stay “out there,” you’re wasting valuable time that you could be learning and skills necessary to become a successful affiliate marketer. In fact, if you’re not in the game yet, you’re ALREADY behind the times. Come on… You can do it! Make the leap to becoming a successful home based business owner today!

About the author: Stone Evans was a washed up restaurant worker desperately searching for a way to save his family when he discovered the internet and affiliate marketing… 24 months later he finally cracked the code and started earning over $10,000 per month. Now the same system that saved him is available to you here >>