Author Archive | Lawrence

Have you ever met someone who was an idea machine?

You give them a problem to solve, and in just a few minutes they’ve come up with half a dozen creative ideas.

In fact, you can ask them anything, and they’ll give you enough ideas to keep yourself busy for weeks.

But… wouldn’t you like to be that idea machine?

Just one idea – the right idea – can be worth millions. The problem is, in order to have that million dollar idea, you first need to have hundreds or thousands of ideas that aren’t as good.

Case in point: Imagine you never work out, and then one day you’ve got to lift a heavy object off of your own chest or you’ll die.

If you’re weak as water and can’t lift that thing, then you’re a goner.

But if you’ve been exercising your muscles, then you can throw that object across the room and go about your life.

Your brain works much the same way as a muscle.

If you use it daily, it’s sharp and ready to tackle whatever comes its way.

But if you just park your brain in front of the television all day long, it’s going to be weak as water, too.

And when you need it most, it’s going to fail you.

James Altucher says that when the gun is to your head, you either figure it out or you die.

Think of the times in your life when you hit bottom and you were forced to come up with ideas.

The worse the situation you’re in, the more motivation you have to come up with some great ideas.

But if you haven’t been using your brain much, then it’s going to be difficult.

That’s why it’s important to exercise your brain right now, because ideas are the currency of life.

When you become an idea generating machine, you’ll be able to solve any problem (almost).

No matter what situation you’re in, you’ll have a ton of ideas. If you need to make money, you’ll come up with 50 different ideas, and so on.

Here’s a process the aforementioned Altucher recommends for turning yourself into an idea machine:

Get a waiter’s pad, or any pad that fits in your pocket.

Sit quietly – maybe in a café somewhere – and read an inspirational book for ten to twenty minutes.

Then start writing down ideas. Any ideas. All ideas.

You’ve got to write 10 ideas.

Yes, ten.

Pick a subject and come up with ten ideas. Maybe it’s 10 ideas for a book you want to write.

10 ideas on how to get a better job or get a raise.

10 business ideas.

10 ideas on how to meet women (or men.)

The first 5 will be easy. 6 is a little harder. 7 through 10 might feel like they’re going to break your brain.

But… what if you can’t come up with 10 ideas?

Then come up with 20.

If you can’t find 10 ideas, then you’re putting too much pressure on yourself to come up with PERFECT ideas.

Forget perfect.

Forget trying to top the ideas you already wrote down.

Focus on coming up with BAD ideas, and your brain will relax.

You’ll have fun.

Creativity will flow, and you’ll be surprised at what you think of.

Do this exercise every day.

EVERY day.v
At the end of one year, you’ll have 3,650 ideas.

Hopefully you’ve acted on a few of them.

The point is to exercise your brain so that no matter what happens in life, you can find the solution.

But how do you act on an idea?

By taking the first step.

Here’s Altucher’s favorite example of acting on an idea:

“Richard Branson didn’t like the service on some airline he was flying. So he had an idea: I’m going to start a new airline. How the heck can a magazine publisher start an airline from scratch with no money?

“No idea is so big you can’t take the first step. If the first step seems to hard, make it simpler. And don’t worry again if the idea is bad. This is all practice.”

The ten ideas exercise is my favorite brain exercise, but I encourage you to do other brain exercises as well.

Choose exercises that help with memory, increase creativity, or somehow enhance your cognitive skills.

Pick what works best for you, because it helps if you like what you’re doing.

If you dread something it will never be a daily habit, and the whole idea is to be consistent in striving to reach your goals.

This might be the most important word in the copywriter’s arsenal, ranking higher than even “free,” “new” and “savings.” Do you have any guesses as to what this word is?…

We’re talking about the word “you.”

Using the word “you” gets your prospect’s attention and keeps them reading. It’s vital that your reader regards herself as the target of your message, and there is perhaps no better way to begin that process than to use the word “you.”

Your goal is to build a relationship with your prospect, as in, “We.” But paradoxically, the best way to build the relationship is to talk about “You” a whole lot more than you refer to “we.”

Think of a conversation with someone new. If you allow them to do the talking while you listen attentively, they’re going to think you’re the greatest conversationalist in the world.

But if you talk about yourself, they’re not going to think nearly as well of you.

And this goes for anyone. Imagine meeting a world leader you respect, and they show interest in YOU. How great would that be?

But if they ramble on about themselves (as you would expect they might) you’ll be happy to have met them because it makes for a great story, but you won’t be walking away with the warm fuzzies. And that’s somebody well known and regarded.

When we come to our prospects, they often don’t know us from Adam, or they only know us from some emails and blog posts. Certainly, we’ve never sat down over a cup of tea and gotten to know each other.

That’s why, if your goal is to put prospects first, it’s best to have the “you’s” far exceed the “we’s.”

It’s the “you’s” that matter to prospects. They’re your workhorse for communicating your message and include all derivatives such as “your,” “yours,” “yourself,” “you’re,” and “you’ll.”

I wonder if I can use all 6 of these in a sentence or two…

“You will love seeing how happy your family is when you get this product for yourself. You’re simply going to be overjoyed at knowing from now on, the world is yours and you’ll be able to do anything you want.”

Okay, maybe it is possible to overdo the “you’s” and all the derivatives, but not by much. When you’ve written your copy, go back and see how many you’s there are.

Then add some more, changing “we” and “I” to “you” whenever possible.

Then read the copy out loud, and unless the amount of “you’s” seems crazy, you’ve probably got it about right.

People care more about themselves than anything. This isn’t to put people down – not at all. It’s simply the way we’re wired for survival, and you can use that knowledge to get your prospect to pay attention to your message.

What else makes “you” so powerful? For one thing, it addresses your readers directly. In effect, it says “Hey you,” which is much harder to ignore than “Hey somebody.”

Say “Hey you” in a crowded room and a lot of heads will turn. Say “Hey somebody” and a few heads might turn.

Think about conversations you’ve had. When you say the word, “you,” doesn’t the other person pay closer attention? “What do YOU think?” “Are YOU going to that event?” “I hope you’ll enjoy this restaurant – what do you think of the decor?”

When people say these things to you, they get your attention and involvement. After all, they’re interested in your opinion. They’re interested in the things you do. They have something to tell you that will make you happy.

That’s the goal of you-oriented copy. Address your audience directly, personally and in terms of their interests. Be conversational and “you” will pop up in the copy naturally.

Newsweek used the exact same subscription solicitation letter for nearly two decades. This is the letter they sent out to cold prospects, asking them to subscribe.

If they used the same letter for nearly 20 years, then clearly it was effective – so effective that no control could beat it. Why did it work so well? Perhaps it’s because the word “you” was used nearly 30 times on the first page alone.

More than 100 million copies of the letter were mailed, a testament to its effectiveness.

When you write your sales copy, don’t forget things like benefits and having a great offer. All the “you’s” in the world won’t overcome a lack of a great offer and awesome benefits.

But if you have something to offer your reader that is truly beneficial, focusing your message on your prospect and using the word “you” can mean the difference between mediocre sales and a control sales letter that continues to make sales for a very long time to come.

If you don’t have time to write 6 or 7 emails each week to send to your email list, try this method instead: Pick out several evergreen products that you know and trust and can promote to your list for months and even years to come… For example, choose your favorite hosting service or autoresponder if you’re building in the online marketing niche.

Write 4 emails for each of these evergreen products. They can be stand alone emails or a sequence with each email building on the previous one, whichever you prefer. Put a link in each email to the product or service you are promoting.

Place these sequences into your autoresponder and schedule them to begin going out as soon as someone joins your list.

However, cue these emails so they only go out on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Monday and Wednesday are reserved for new emails you write, promoting new products.

No matter when a new lead signs up, they start on the email sequences you’ve programmed, but they never receive them on Monday or Wednesday because this is when you send out your new, live emails.

Now you’re only having to write two emails per week.

Once you get used to sourcing products to promote and writing the emails for them, you have a choice: You can either send more live emails and fewer autoresponder emails, or you can use some of your new emails as automated sequences (assuming the products stay relevant and available.)

This method is a great way to ease into emailing 6 days a week, and it’s perfect for the person who is currently working a full time job but looking to quit as soon as the online income is high enough.

It’s also perfect for the new marketer who takes a long time to write an email. No worries, you’ll get faster with time.

Try this method and see if it doesn’t take some of the email writing pressure off of you.

Okay, I’m not going to pass judgement – good or bad, on what I’m about to reveal.

Some would say this is 100% ethical, and I won’t argue. Others will say something that involves cuss words, and I won’t argue with that, either.

I would just like to point something out, and whether you use this information for your own protection or to increase your own sales is up to you.

Fair enough?

I was sent an email claiming that this person wanted to make my sales for me. In fact, the exact words were, “You will make sales for doing nothing, guaranteed!”

Yeah. Uh-huh.

So, I read the email (mostly for laughs, but… you know) and clicked the link.

Mind you, the person who sent this is no slouch. He’s been around. He’s probably made a boatload of money. And I’m sure this promotion alone is making him another boatload of money. But I digress.

I was sent to a page with a recording from a webinar (which I did not watch.) Beneath the webinar replay, after the usual, “We’ve already sold 15 and there are only 5 left” comments, it said:

“We’ll promote Bob’s top selling product for 7 days to our 200,000 subscribers using your affiliate link.”

“We will send at least 3 broadcast emails per day for 7 days using YOUR affiliate link promoting Bob’s best selling product. You will receive 100% of all sales made through your link.”

Ugghhh. Whenever I read something like this, I always think that if there’s sales to be made, then they sure as heck won’t be using someone else’s affiliate link to make the sales.

This emailing they want to do is a bonus for buying the product in the webinar. And I’m sure it’s an expensive product.

Let’s see… if they send out my affiliate link 3 times a day for 7 days to 200,000 subscribers, that’s a possible 4,200,000 exposures of my affiliate link to their readers. Right?

Nope.

Here’s where you need to read the fine print. Or in this case, the print that’s found way… Way… WAY… down at the bottom of the page.

Oh-oh, what’s this??

“Your affiliate link will be put in a rotation system with a maximum of 20 links for the entire 21 email campaign over the full week to our 200,000 subscribers, promoting your link.”

Forget the 4,200,000 exposures of your affiliate link. We’re now back to 210,000 exposures.

Big difference, wouldn’t you say?

I’ve no doubt they will make sales (of whatever is being promoted on the webinar) to people who think they’re going to have their link promoted 3 times a day for 7 days to 200,000 subscribers.

And yes, they did come clean later on the page. Is it deceptive? Like I said, I’m not judging, just providing information.

One last thing… do you think they’ll be sending out 3 emails per DAY promoting the same product for SEVEN days to their best, most active subscribers?

Or let me put it this way… would you?

Or would you send the emails out to the ‘dead wood’ on your list – those subscribers who haven’t opened an email in six months or a year?

I don’t know who they’re sending the emails to – yes, it could very well be their hottest, best subscribers.

And yes, they could have inadvertently ‘forgotten’ to let customers know up front that they would only be receiving 210,000 mailouts, not the 4,200,000 it’s made to look like. But it sure does make you wonder.

In my view, it’s best to be honest and up front. Tell your visitors what you’re going to give them, and what they can expect, and then deliver. In fact, over-deliver. Do this, and you’ll do just fine building a business online and anywhere else you setup shop.

This is a great approach for someone who is new in their niche and wants to build a reputation and list while still making really good money.

I met this guy who is fairly new to the internet marketing realm. He’s no expert or guru and yet he’s making about $12,000 a month from the start.

He realized that it’s a lot easier to sell a $1,000 product one time than to sell a $10 product 100 times. For one thing, the customer service for one person versus 100 people is like night and day. For another thing, it’s so easy to give stuff away rather than sell it. He’s sort of sneaking under people’s radar with this method.

He runs promotions, free WSO’s, advertises on Facebook, has a Facebook Group and so forth. And on all of these platforms, he’s giving away his stuff.

People opt in to his list just like you would expect, and then they’re presented with an upsell, again just like you would expect.

Except… here’s where it’s different – he even gives away his upsell.

I know, how crazy is that?

Then he gives his list tons of stuff for free, too. His subscribers open his emails (his open rate is INSANE) because they know he’s always giving them awesome content FOR FREE.

This builds trust like you would not believe. His list isn’t all that big yet, but it doesn’t matter because his subscribers LOVE him.

Then once a month he opens a limited number of slots to work directly with him on a one-to-one basis at different levels.

He offers email coaching, personal coaching over Skype once a week, and even a higher level of coaching. His prices run from about $250 to $3,000, depending on the package.

Like I said, this guy is new to the internet marketing realm – he just started about a year ago… Yet he’s bringing in about $12,000 a month with this model.

He never promotes affiliate products, only his own stuff. And he gives away everything but the expensive products.

What a great business model!

Dan Kennedy tells the story of one of his clients who ran an introduction agency for divorced American men to meet foreign brides. (This was during the pre-internet days.)

Dan persuaded his client to raise his price from $395 to $3,995. (Not a typo – he multiplied his price by 10.)
Would you like to guess what happened to sales?
Believe it or not, they stayed THE SAME. But of course the owner made a LOT more money – ten times as much, to be exact.
Most marketers look at what their competition is charging, and they charge about the same. But what they don’t realize is their competitors probably did the same thing.
There’s a pizza place in a major city that has probably 100 competitors. Yet this pizza place outsells all of them, and does it without offering coupons or special deals, either.
How do they do it? Positioning. They claim to be a ‘gourmet’ establishment, and they charge more than any of their competitors.
Sometimes you just need to establish yourself as the premium option to set yourself apart. Other times you might need to add something to your product or service, such as personal involvement, to make it exclusive.
If you’re competing on price alone, you’re never going to do well. But if you can reposition your offer so that you can charge more – maybe even twice as much or five times as much – then you become the gold standard that people want.

The FTC rigorously enforces email compliance laws. Make sure that your strategy is aligned with the CAN-SPAM Act so that you’re not exposed to potential lawsuits.

Here are the rules that businesses must follow:
Don’t use false or misleading header information. Your “From,” “To,” “Reply-To,” and routing information — including the originating domain name and email address — must be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

Don’t use deceptive subject lines. The subject line must accurately reflect the content of the message.

Identify the message as an ad. The law gives you a lot of leeway in how to do this, but you must disclose clearly and conspicuously that your message is an advertisement.

Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address.

This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.

Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity.

Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.

Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days.

You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request.

Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

Monitor what others are doing on your behalf. The law makes clear that even if you hire another company to handle your email marketing, you can’t contract away your legal responsibility to comply with the law.

Both the company whose product is promoted in the message and the company that actually sends the message may be held legally responsible.

When building an email list we tend to think the bigger the list, the better. “How can we increase the conversions on this squeeze page?” is an ultra-common question, and surprising, the WRONG question to be asking. What’s the right question? How about, “How do I build the most RESPONSIVE mailing list?”

Please note: I invite you to test what I’m about to tell you for yourself. In fact, I always invite you to test EVERYTHING I share with you, because that way you’ll know for a fact that it applies in your own unique situation.

And if what I’m about to share stretches the bounds of credibility, it’s all the more reason why you should test, test, test.

To get higher converting opt-ins, let’s first talk about what gets people to sign up for your mailing list in the first place. After that, I’ll reveal the biggest secret I know to getting a HIGH CONVERTING mailing list that will make you more money than many lists twice and three times the size.

What gets people to sign up for your mailing list?

1. Credibility and trust. Have you proven your credibility? Have you won their trust? More to the point, do they trust you, your information, your website, and your offer? If not then they’re probably going to leave without joining your list.

2. Continuity. Whatever brought them to the site – an email, an ad, an endorsement, etc. – must be what they find on the site. If they get an email saying there’s a free video on “Why men lie,” and they get to the website and they’re being offered an ebook on how to get more dates, then you’ve lost continuity, which causes confusion and casts doubt.

3. A great offer, or what we call a no-brainer. This needs to be something of high perceived value to them, something that feeds their need to know and offers them answers they’re looking for.

4. Simplicity. The easier it is to sign up for the freebie and join your list, the more likely they are to do so. Asking for only an email will get you a higher response than asking for email and first name. Every time you add another box to be filled out, you reduce the number of people who will sign-up.

Now here comes the surprising part. Again, test this on your own websites.

I’ve used squeeze pages for years to build mailing lists. I’ve also placed opt-in boxes on content rich websites.

Then I started paying attention to the results and noticed something funny, so I did some split testing.

Not believing the results, I did more split testing. And this is what I discovered:

Using a squeeze page will result in more people joining your list EVERY TIME, compared with skipping the squeeze page and sending your traffic straight to the content rich site with the opt-in box.

BUT – I make MORE money from the lists built from the content rich pages than from the squeeze pages.

That’s right – fewer sign-ups and more money. At first I didn’t understand this, because I just assumed that the squeeze page was capturing the same people the content rich pages captured, plus more.

But obviously it’s NOT the same people, as the split testing bears out. The people who make good customers are the ones who read some of your content, like what they’re reading and want more.

These are the people who will REMEMBER you when you email them. They’re also the ones you’ve already established some credibility with, and because of this they trust you and are more likely to buy from you.

Surprised? I know I was. If you want to test this yourself, be sure to use the same free offer in both cases. Then email both lists for at least two months, and see which one earns you more money.

There is so much misinformation out there on article marketing, I want to try to set the record straight. Granted, some of this misinformation has been repeated so many times that you may be incredulous by what I’m about to tell you. Then again, you might be one of the savvy ones who see through the nonsense of article spinners and the like.

First myth: If you post an article on your website and again on Ezine Articles (or any other article directory) then you’ve got to significantly rewrite it so that’s it’s not duplicate content, right?

Wrong.

So long as it is ORIGINAL content, as in it’s your own content (whether you wrote it or hired someone to write it) you can post the exact same article on your own website and again on the article directories. That’s because Ezine Articles doesn’t care if the article has already been published — as long as it is credited to the original author.

And as far as I know, this holds true for every article directory. If there’s a directory out there demanding unique content, then they don’t know what they’re doing. It would be like asking the Beatles for a unique version of Yellow Submarine before a radio station would play it. It’s just plain crazy.

Second myth: You should publish your article to the ezine directory first, and once it’s accepted then you should publish it to your own website.

Rubbish.

Why would you give your own original content to an article directory before your own website?

If you’re thinking it somehow helps with SEO, it doesn’t. If you’re thinking they won’t take it if it’s already on your website, see above.

You publish it to your own site first to make your site the authority site and to give your site the link juice.

Your main goal in publishing articles to article directories isn’t SEO and it isn’t getting traffic from the directory. It’s to get relevant authority sites to pick up and publish your content, thus giving you valuable backlinks and yes, targeted traffic.

Third myth: “But if other websites are picking up my article, isn’t that duplicate content?”

No. Before the Internet, when the Associated Press would write an article, that article could be picked up by hundreds of different newspapers, with each paper printing the exact same article and byline.

Enter the Internet. Just like the AP, news sites generate content that is then picked up by hundreds of different websites. Each website posts the same identical article with the same byline. It’s called syndication, and it’s perfectly fine. You will NOT be penalized in any way for it, and it can provide valuable backlinks and targeted traffic to your website.

How does Google perceive syndicated content? When a particular article appears on multiple websites, Google perceives it as being POPULAR and adds SEO weight to it, depending on how many instances it discovers. And if it finds your content on high PR and authority sites, it gives it even more weight.

So with those 3 myths officially debunked, stop being held hostage by fake news and get to work on getting your own article content published, circulated and syndicated online!

To double your revenue, we’re going to presuppose that you first of all have revenue from something you’re selling, be it your own products, resale rights products, affiliates, etc.

Let’s say right now you’re selling a $17 ebook and video course. You might be paying for your traffic or getting it in other ways, it doesn’t matter at this point.

Now watch carefully – this is a two step process. Mind you, you could simply do step 1 and ignore step 2 and it will increase your revenue. But we want to DOUBLE your revenue or better, so I highly recommend doing both.

Step 1: Build up your backend. That is, offer upsells and one time offers on all of your deals. This step alone can greatly increase your revenue, and this doesn’t have to be your own products. Go buy resell rights to products related to your $17 deal and offer those.

Now tweak your sales funnel to maximize that backend.

You want it producing as many sales as possible, and simple tweaks can sometimes result in startling increases in your conversion rates.

Step 2: Use some of your increased revenue to purchase more traffic. These days you probably want to avoid Google Ads because they’re heavily into slapping and banning, but there are plenty of other places you can advertise, such as Facebook, Bing, etc.

What’s that? You’ve never paid for advertising and don’t know where to start? Like anything new, there is a learning curve. Spend an hour a day on it and within a year you will be a bonafide expert.
Start out slowly, spending maybe $10 at a time, and work your way up. Remember, because you’ve added an entire backend to your sales system, you are already bringing in a lot more revenue than you were. By leveraging this money into yet MORE traffic, you can make more money still.

Frankly, if you’re already selling anything online consistently, focusing on these 2 simple things (improving your back-end upsell to provide more value for your customers, and expanding your advertising to reach more customers for your product that is already selling) is the only thing you need to focus on to double your income, or possibly more…