Something I come back to time and again is the importance of generating ideas, having ideas and then putting the best of those ideas to work. Every business you see and every invention you marvel at was at first someone’s idea. Every great blog post, piece of new content, information product, etc., all started as a tiny little seed inside someone’s brain…
Without the idea, nothing else flows. With the idea, anything is possible.
So how do you get great ideas? By training your brain to find them for you. Every day write down 10 new ideas. If you can’t think of 10, then write 20.
“But if I can’t come up with 10, how am I going to think of 20?”
By relaxing and having fun.
The reason 10 ideas a day is hard is because you think every idea has to be good. No. Even most of the ideas you first think are good won’t actually be… That’s okay. Just train your brain that you want 10 (or 20) new ideas every single day, and your brain will deliver. It’ll be slow at first, but it’s like a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.
Write down your ideas. ALWAYS write down your ideas. Even the hair-brained ones. This teaches your mind to keep finding new ones.
How Do I Know It’s a Good Idea?
Short answer – you don’t. It might sound, look, feel, taste and smell like a good idea, but until you test it out, you just don’t know.
So if you think it might be a winner, take fast action and see what happens. If it fails, you haven’t wasted much time or many resources.
New Projects are Like a Road Trip
You know that ancient saying, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.” Imagine this:
You’re starting out on a road trip. Maybe it’s your first road trip, so you’re going to make it easy – 150 miles – or kilometers – it doesn’t matter.
You’re in your car pulling onto the road, headed in the right direction.
Now quick: Tell me every curve of the road ahead, every car or truck you’re going to meet, every stop you’re going to make along the way.
What? You don’t know? You can’t see 50 miles ahead? 100 miles ahead?
Of course not.
Then why is it that when most people start a new project, they think they have to know every step they’ll take before they ever start?
You don’t. You only have to know two things: Your destination, and the first step in the right direction. That’s all you need to get started. And just as the road keeps appearing as you continue to move forward, the next step will become obvious as you complete the present step.
So start exercising your idea generating muscle, implement new ideas quickly and leverage the ones that gain traction to create your next business and life success. Then wash, rinse and repeat…
Did you know there are actually 4 types of residual commissions? Let’s explore them…
Automatic recurring commissions – these are likely the ones you’re most familiar with. You promote a membership program and you get paid monthly for as long as that customer retains the membership you sold.
Cookie commissions – when you sell a product, a cookie is placed on that customer’s computer. Then anything else that customer purchases from the seller is linked to you, and you get a commission. But if the cookie is deleted, or if the customer changes computers, then you will no longer receive commissions on their purchases.
Lifetime commissions – this works like a cookie commission, only instead of a cookie the product seller uses the customers email address to track sales. Thus, as long as the email address remains the same, you can receive commissions on all sales from this customer for years.
Second tier commissions – this is when you refer other affiliates to the merchant. Sort of like a multi-level program, you get a small commission for the sales your referral affiliate makes.
Now then: If you make a traditional affiliate sale, you get paid and that’s it.
If you make a monthly membership type of sale, you get paid until the customer cancels which means you usually get paid for several months. Not bad.
But if you promote products with either cookie or lifetime commissions, you can get paid for years on anything else they buy from that vendor in addition to the original sale.
Imagine a product seller with a fleet of 30 or 40 products. You promote just one of their products, and 20 of your customers buy that product. Now over the course of the next few months and years, this product seller promotes other products to these 20 customers, resulting in a further 80 sales over time. Normally you wouldn’t make a dime on these sales, but in this case, you make the full commission on each and every one.
So next month you get unexpected commissions, and the month after that, and five years from now, too.
Nice.
And it’s all because you promoted products with lifetime referrals or cookies.
So where can you find these products?
One method is simply to keep your eyes peeled. Not all selling platforms allow for lifetime referrals, so by looking at those that do, you can find the product sellers who will pay you for every product they sell to your customers, not just the ones you promote.
Next, use a search directory, such as www.affiliatescout.com. When doing your search, choose “lifetime commissions” under “features” without any other search parameters and you’ll find hundreds of results. Go back and narrow your parameters to find the exact programs your audience might be interested in.
Most of all, anytime someone asks you to be their affiliate, ASK if they pay lifetime commissions. Sometimes they’ll have two programs, one in which they only pay commissions on the first product sold, and a second, secret program they reserve for their heavy hitter affiliates in which they do pay lifetime commissions. It never hurts to ask.
Bottom line: If you can make recurring or even lifetime commissions from your promotional efforts, why not go for it? You do the work once, and you get paid over and over again. You can’t beat that.
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.
Since you’re making videos anyway, why not shoot for the zenith of online video marketing and go for viral? While you can never totally predict what will go viral and what won’t, there are some tricks to make it much more likely your video is the one your viewers will forward to others. Here’s 15 proven tips to make your next video go viral:
Don’t use a sad ending, even if it’s true. This reminds me of a time a video was shot of a firefighter resuscitating an unconscious kitten that had been trapped in a smoky home. Viral magic, right? Absolutely. This video went viral for every outlet that left out a key piece of information – despite being resuscitated, the kitten later died of smoke inhalation. Neetzan Zimmerman, editor at Gawker, was told by his editor to include the epilogue. Result – “That video did tremendously well for practically everyone who posted it, except Gawker.”
In fact, don’t evoke any sadness if sadness is the only emotion. Videos that inspire sadness are far less likely to get shared than videos that evoke almost any other emotion. However, a video can be sad and still be uplifting: For example, a heroic person who fought a disease, lost, but left a great legacy. It’s sad that they died, but it’s uplifting that they tried so hard and left a positive mark on the world.
Do use other emotions in your video. The emotions most likely to elicit that coveted share? Surprise, anticipation, joy, anger, awe, anxiety, happiness and humor. The stronger the emotion evoked, the better. Just think of what you like to share with others – odds are it’s videos that surprise and delight, or videos that inspire anger against a common enemy. What we don’t share are videos that might make others sad, unhappy or depressed.
Make the sharer look smart. Surprisingly, data compiled by Chartbeat – a company that measures online traffic – demonstrates that people forward things they haven’t even read or watched. This is ego-driven sharing; trying to look smart by sharing smart material. So for example, if your video teaches some cutting edge techniques, it’s likely to be shared by many who simply want to look smart to their friends. Of course, whether or not anyone will actually watch it could be another matter.
Make it practical. Useful content is highly viral because people love to share “news you can use” for two reasons: It helps others AND it makes them look good.
Tell a story. Even when you think stories aren’t applicable to your topic, they probably are. Stories are universal in that they can teach anything and people are hard wired to listen to them. Tell the story well enough, and it will be passed along.
Be outrageous. Do you remember WePay’s stunt of leaving a 600 pound block of ice at the front entrance to a PayPal conference? PayPal had been freezing people out of their own accounts, and so WePay froze the words, “PayPal Freezes Your Accounts” along with cash inside the giant ice block. Great stunt that got a lot of press, but WePay really blew it – they didn’t film the delivery of the ice block or people’s reaction to it. If they had, there’s no doubt their video would have gone viral.
Be controversial. Is everyone in your field saying one thing? Then perhaps you might want to say the opposite, especially if you believe it’s true. For example, in Internet Marketing everyone says “the money is in the list,” yet an excellent case can be made for other forms of IM that don’t involve list building. The key here is to debate issues that don’t hurt feelings. For example, a ‘chunky vs smooth peanut butter’ debate, or a ‘cats vs dogs’ debate won’t ruffle anyone’s feathers, yet they can inspire a lot of interest and interaction.
Be surprising. We alluded to this earlier – surprises get passed along and talked about more than almost anything else. Remember that video of a serene, tranquil scene that suddenly turned into a screaming demon? That wasn’t just surprising, it was shocking. You don’t have to go that far – hiding ‘easter eggs’ in your videos can make them viral. For example, a hidden URL that takes the viewer to something special, or what appears to be a naked person walking past in the background, or anything that is unexpected and fun.
Another kind of surprise is the “Cracker Jack Box surprise,” a toy hidden inside every box. It’s no surprise there’s a toy in there – they tell you that on every box. What is surprising is what the toy is. If you make a lot of videos, you might plant a ‘surprise’ in every one – it could be a bit of eye candy or a link to download something useful.
Make it an “experience.” This one takes some planning, but the potential upside is nothing short of huge. Remember the Blair Witch project? The movie promos made the movie ‘real’ to the viewers, and the viewers then become a part of the movie, getting pulled in as though it were a real life event. In fact, some people actually thought it was.
Make it interactive. Remember the Subservient Chicken from Burger King? Millions of people made that chicken dance. Or how about Office Max’s viral phenomenon, Elf Yourself? Upload photos of you and your family, and suddenly you’re in your own dancing elf holiday video.
Be funny. Or cute. Or both. If you can work footage of your kitten doing something hilarious into your video, go for it. People never get enough funny or enough cute. Then there’s just plain silly – like the Old Spice commercials. Short, fun and full of surprises, these go viral every time.
Capture the attention of a taste maker. Remember the video of Yosemite Bear Mountain saying “oh my god, oh my god” about the double rainbow? That video was online for 6 months before it took off and eventually got tens of millions of views. So what happened that finally started the flood of traffic? Jimmy Kimmel tweeted about the video, and after that it was a viral phenomena.
How do you get a taste maker to share your video? First, go after small taste makers within your own niche. Second, actually make the video with them in mind. What do they love? What do they share? Incorporate that element into your video and your odds go up dramatically that they’ll share it. Third, ask them to share it. It never hurts to ask.
Add a trigger. In the video “Friday,” the trigger is of course “Friday,” and while the video was popular it was shared and watched far more on Fridays than any other day. Remember Alice Cooper’s song, School’s Out? That song was released decades ago, yet it’s still played every late May and early June on thousands of radio stations.
Capture the attention of a particular community. This can be as simple as opening your video with something like, “This video is for avid gardeners only.” Or, “This video is for avid Red Sox fans only.” Then at the end of the video, ask them to share the video with fellow avid gardeners or die hard Red Sox fans. If you’ve incorporated other viral elements, this simple step can give your video the added push it needs to begin its viral journey.
Next time someone forwards you a video, ask yourself why they did that. What was it about that video that made them want to share it? You can learn a lot simply by watching viral videos and asking yourself, “how can I apply this to my videos?”
These days everyone’s inbox is flooded with emails and it’s harder and harder to get noticed, much less get opened. I’ve been doing my own testing of what works and what doesn’t, and thought you might like to see the results.
Optimize your “sender” or “from” field. Using a business name does not seem to work as well as using a personal name, probably because people want to read messages from people, not from businesses. However, combining the business name with the personal name seems to work well, especially if the business name is either well recognized or implies a benefit. For example, ‘Joe Smith, ProBlogger’ would likely work well, as would ‘Jane Smith, Traffic Tips.’
Further optimize your “sender” field. I’ve experimented with using symbols before and after my name in the ‘from’ field to make my emails stand out, and it does seem to make a small difference. For example, ~Joe Smith~ tends to be opened more often than Joe Smith.
Use a great subject line. Entire products have been written on this topic alone, but here are some tips:
Use a number: “3 Ways to Get Bigger Muscles in 7 Days”
Use curiosity: “The Fried Banana method to Younger Skin”
Write as if you’re addressing a friend: “Hey” “What do you think?”, “Okay?”, “I told you he’s crackers”, “Last Sunday”, “See You Tues” “Got it?”, etc.
State a big benefit: “Look 10 Years Younger and Feel 20 Years Smarter”
Personalize the subject line. Everything else being the same, personalizing the subject line can increase your click through rate. Just don’t over do it.
Avoid spam words. You know the ones: Cash, payment, money, credit, quote, etc. These words will land you in the spam folder, and you’re not likely to get many opens there.
Optimize the preview text. Remember, the sender can often see the first line or two of text, so make it interesting, relevant, and preferably curiosity provoking.
Make it a habit to be entertaining. The more entertaining and interesting your emails are, the more likely your recipients will continue to open them.
Send twice. 8-12 hours after you send an email, send the email again to those who didn’t open your first email.
Last tip: Email often. Once a day is great. If you only send an email once in a while, recipients will forget who you are. By being in the inbox daily, I’ve found they are more likely to recognize you and open your emails.
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.
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.
If you want true financial security, it’s not enough anymore to be a millionaire – you’ve got to be a multimillionaire. So how do you join the ranks of the 1%?
Make a firm decision to be a multimillionaire. Your first step is making that firm decision and then reaffirming that decision several times a day. See yourself rich, feel yourself rich, be rich in your heart and mind. This is where it starts and this is the first step to realizing your dream.
You must lose the poverty thinking. No matter what you were taught about money being evil or scarce, you’ve got to let go of those beliefs once and for all. Abundance is all around you when you open yourself to it. Like attracts like, so if you’re thinking poverty, you’ll just get more poverty.
Continuously think of your multimillionaire status as real. Since you can’t hold two opposing thoughts at the same time, if you’re thinking about how little money you have then you’re not thinking about getting rich. You’ve got to feel abundance throughout your entire body, and meditation combined with visualization is a great way to achieve this state.
Stepping stones are okay. In fact, they’re great. One of the biggest obstacles new marketers face is that $10,000 a month wall. They think they should be making this amount of money from day one, but the fact is you have to start somewhere. If that means getting your first $10 day and working up, so be it. Most self-made millionaires began with one small step on their journey and then simply never stopped growing and moving ahead.
It’s not just money, it’s also something else. This might be making a difference, proving yourself, living up to your potential, making the world a better place or leaving a legacy. If your sole focus is the money, you’ll find that all the money in the world won’t make you happy. But if you have other goals beyond the money, being rich can make you happy indeed.
Get yourself some millionaires. They say you are the average of the people you hang out with, and that includes your income. So find wealthy people, whether you know them personally or read their blogs and books.
Buy time. Rich people buy time while poor people sell time. Nothing is more valuable than time, and this includes money. So anything you can outsource to someone else, whether it’s work related or home related, should be outsourced the moment you can afford it.
Forget spending – invest instead. You know that new car you want to buy? What would happen if you took that $30,000 and instead of buying a car, you invested it for 20 years at 7% interest compounded monthly? You’d have $121,162. If you bought the car, in 20 years you would have nothing of that money.
Millionaires-in-the-making invests when they can, whether it’s in their business, their education, or in their portfolio. Instead of buying a house, they purchase an apartment building that produces cash flow and tax write-offs. Instead of buying a car outright, they buy cars for their company and then deduct them because they’re used during work, and so forth.
Create multiple sources of income. The more revenue streams you have, the more money you can potentially make and the more secure you are should one of your streams dry up. This is why marketers go into more than one niche, create more than one product and look to earn money in multiple ways. Remember when Google made junk Adsense sites obsolete? Those with many different streams of income were the least affected, while those who depended solely on Adsense were devastated.
Take advantage of trends. Right now one of the hot trends is finding inexpensive products and selling them at huge mark-ups on Amazon. Eventually the competition will be severe and something else will be hot. That’s okay. If you stay flexible and keep a close eye on the marketplace, you’re ready to take advantage of trends as they happen while also building a solid, reliable business you can count on.
One last note: Self-made multimillionaires are confused by people who aren’t rich. They don’t understand why you can’t do the very same things they do – and they’re right – you can.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to creating great wealth is the mindset. If you believe that money is limited, or evil, or that rich people are bad, then you’ll never get rich yourself.
But if you can focus on abundance, if you can create a clear picture of where you’re going, and if you can feel satisfied with what you have right here and right now, then you can achieve wealth.
Lack leads to lack. Worrying and stressing about your lack is only going to produce more lack. By all means get fired up and excited about what’s coming, but while you’re making it happen, let abundance flood your very being.
People are nothing if not predictable. Let me give you an example: If you say to someone, “You’ve got a great job.” They will invariably tell you why it’s NOT great. But if you say to them, “You’ve got a lousy job.” They’ll tell you why it’s actually a very good job.
Knowing the triggers you can use to activate certain behaviors in prospects can help tremendously to increase your conversions and your bottom line.
That’s why I’ve compiled 10 slightly sneaky methods to get your audience to do your bidding – or stated another way, here are 10 methods to get the public to buy your product and share your message with the world.
People crave entertainment like they crave air, and they always need more of it. A good analogy is caffeine – in the beginning, the smallest amount of caffeine can give you a nice little buzz. But the more caffeine you use, the more you need to achieve that same buzz level.
Entertainment is no different. The movies of the 40’s weren’t fast paced enough for people of the 60’s. The music of the seventies can’t compete with the music of the 80’s. The comedy of the 90’s seems tame compared to the comedy of now. Why is that? Because entertainment is constantly having to turn up the intensity to get the same reactions from the audience. People want more and more exciting stuff, and if you can build excitement and entertainment right into your product, you’ve got a hit.
Speaking of entertainment, people LOVE controversy. Build a controversial website, blog, forum, product line, podcast, YouTube channel, etc. and watch people flock to it. You’ll get free publicity everywhere as people either promote you or flog you in social media, forums and other blogs across the net.
And as a marketer, you could capitalize on both sides at the same time if you wanted to be sneaky about it. For example, you might build two websites – one on each far, far end of the political spectrum – and let them slug it out online. Anything that has what is perceived to be a polar opposite could work, such as God-fearing vs Atheist, protecting wildlife from loggers and miners, etc.
Or build controversy into your product from the start. “How To Use Tax Loopholes So You Don’t Pay Your Fair Share Of Taxes.” Is it legal? Yes. Is it fair? No. Or how about toy guns for children? Some parents love them, many hate them, and all will have something to say about it which drives more traffic to you.
This one’s really sneaky – carry on a conversation between two people about how great a product is. This could be in a forum, posts on a blog, or even if it were to “come up” during an interview about something else. The point of course is to not appear as though it’s a promotion. Yeah, I know; pretty sneaky.
People like to follow, as in “follow the leader.” What happens when one cow walks away from the herd? If the other cows suspect this cow knows something they don’t, they’ll follow. It doesn’t matter WHAT this cow might know, only that they have information that might be of use. Is the grass greener over there? Is there a secret stash of alfalfa or a salt lick over there? Let’s follow her and see!
It might seem callous to compare people to cows, but the herd mentality applies to many species including people. If someone is seen as a leader and that leader uses ABC product, then it’s going to be easy to get the followers to use ABC product as well.
As a marketer, you can use this in one of two ways – either become a leader yourself, or get your product into the hands of leaders and make sure people find out about it.
Speaking of following, people follow the confident person. They’re attracted to confidence like bees to honey. If you don’t have confidence, get it. Depending on your niche, arrogance might work as well.
Take it away. Whatever your product is, find a way to take it away from the potential buyer. Maybe they have to qualify and not everyone can. Or there’s a limited number. Or the offer is ending soon. Or maybe they’re just plain NOT supposed to have it, so you tell them NOT to buy the book but you drop hints of just how powerful it is.
People do not like to be left out. This works well in the Internet Marketing niche and it works even better in any non-marketing savvy niche.
People work harder to get something for nothing. Weird but true. What else explains someone who masters a gambling system or studies race horses just to bet? If your product promises huge returns for small effort, it will sell. Unfortunately, most products like this can’t deliver. But you can use the something-for-nothing technique in a way that is totally ethical – referrals. That is, get people to promote you through social media in exchange for something free.
Another way to ethically use something-for-nothing is to make it appear as though the very act of purchasing your product is a giant leap towards attaining their goal. You’re being honest that there is work involved, but you make the first step seem so enticing they feel they’ve practically achieved their dream simply by buying the product.
People get seduced by stories. BIG TIME. Think of the man sitting cross-legged, playing a flute while a cobra sways hypnotically to the music. This can be you hypnotizing your audience through storytelling, both written and verbal.
Entire courses have been written about using storytelling in marketing. A good story creates thoughts and images in your prospect’s head that seem to originate from the prospect, not from you. And a really great story causes the audience to feel emotions and desires that come from these thoughts and images. Bottom line, get good at storytelling and then use your skill to weave mesmerizing stories throughout your marketing.
People buy dreams, not just once, but over and over again. Why is it a camper will buy every camping gadget out there? Why will a golfer purchase every golfing book written in the past 20 years? Why do Internet marketers buy online marketing products sometimes at the rate of 3 and 4 a day?
This is why a list of actual buyers is so hot – if these people bought once, they will very likely buy again and again. You can continue to create products and promote products to this list and as long as their dream remains alive, they will continue to buy. Perhaps it’s the act of purchasing that makes them feel they are one step closer to realizing their dream. Thus 5 purchases puts them 5 steps closer, and 10 purchases put them…
You can get sneaky with this one as well. Create several somewhat similar products and then let them compete with each other. It can be surprising how many customers purchase two or more.
People actually WANT to believe. So make it real. Make it believable. Help them along. Show some negative with the positive. Did you know that testimonials are far more effective if they mention something NEGATIVE? For example: “I wasn’t crazy about the title of this course and thought it was going to be just a rehash, but it turns out it was exactly what I needed. Using this information I’ve been able to ___ and ___ and achieve ___.” Make it believable.
And remember, please use these methods only for good and never for evil.
