Archive | December, 2022

Hopefully, you are the exception to these mistakes. If you’re not, take heart: 9 out of 10 online marketers make these same mistakes. Here’s how to rise above your competition and increase your bottom line simply by NOT making these five mistakes…

You are spamming on social media. You opened your Twitter account with the best intentions to Tweet valuable content and answer questions, but now nearly every tweet you send out is a link promoting a product. If this is you, then it’s time for a change. Promotion is OK if it makes up only 20-30% of your tweets at MOST. The rest should be content rich and helpful to your followers. And this goes for every social media network, not just Twitter.

Not testing. You create a new squeeze page, but don’t test one headline against another. Result? Every day that goes by, you are losing money. Test everything. Eventually, the same effort will yield 1.5, 2, or even three times the results.

You are not asking for the sale. Whether you’re looking for an opt-in, a share, or a deal, tell them precisely what you want them to do. If you don’t clarify your call-to-action, you will get less than stellar results every time.

You are ignoring your current customers. Are you so busy looking for a new business that you forget to pay attention to your most important asset – your existing customers? These people already trust you enough to purchase at least one product. That’s why your current customers are your best prospects in the world – treat them like gold.

You are talking about you, you, and YOU. Do you know who your customers care about? Themselves. They don’t care about you, only what you can do for them. This sounds harsh, but it’s true. Yes, you can tell them an anecdote about what happened to you last weekend, but it better has something in it for them. Your customers don’t want you or your products. They want solutions to their problems. Remember this, and you can’t go wrong.

“Find out what people want and sell it to them” is advice you’ll hear repeatedly. Why? Because it generally works. After all, if someone wants breakfast cereal made out of toads and frogs and you’re the only one selling it, you can command your price.

But what if massive competition exists in the toad and frog cereal niche? Then you’ve got to differentiate yourself. Finding a way to stand apart from the others selling a similar product would be best.

Or you can go a different route, the way companies like Apple roll, to find out what people WILL want. You see, all of the most excellent products were at one time non-existent. No one knew you could ride in cars, so they used horses and maybe buggies. Then along comes the car – something no one had seen before, and people quickly realized they wanted it. Decades later, consumers didn’t know they wanted computers and the Internet. Nor did they know they wanted cell phones and then super sophisticated ones, but people desperately wanted them once they were introduced.

So if you can find a want before it even exists, you have no competition – at least for the first few weeks and months.

And you can take this even one step further. It’s not just a matter of finding out what people will want; it’s also a matter of finding a way to offer it to them that takes the work out of it. Imagine if Apple sold its products as kits that had to be put together – would they sell as many phones and tablets as they do now? Doubtful.

There was a time when computers were sold as kits. You get the plans; you buy the parts; you put together your computer. So who had computers during this time? A relative handful of people liked to tinker with electronics. It wasn’t until several years later when computers were sold ready-made, that the market took off.

If we were looking at this as a tiered system, with each subsequent tier being preferable to the previous, then the first tier is the old standby of offering customers what they already want. The second tier provides what they want before they know they want it. And the third and final tier is to provide what they want before they know they want it and take all of the work out of it for them.

Sell them the ready-made solution where the only action they need to take is to decide to buy. Make them feel suitable for taking that act like they made a real contribution to getting the solution you’re offering. In essence, you’re giving them the satisfaction that they accomplished something important when they hit that order button. But YOU are doing the actual, honest work, whatever that might be.

If you’re offering a revolutionary new WP theme, install it for them. If you provide a complete business solution, set it up for them. If you’re offering an irrigation system, an automobile makeover, or even an exercise program, make them feel that all they have to do is make the decision. That’s it. Then you will do the rest.

Of course, you and I know that they will have to do work in many cases. But that’s not something they want to consider during the sales process. In the example of the exercise program, all they have to do is show up, and then you will guide them step-by-step. They don’t have to think about a thing; they follow along. You’re making it appear as though you do the work when they are the ones working.

Is this deceptive? Not in the slightest. If you say you will build them a website and then send them instructions on how to do it themselves, that would be deceptive. But if you make the site for them and then they have to update it themselves, or if you show them exactly how to exercise, but they have actually to move their bodies, you truly are taking the lion’s share of the work of thinking out of it for them.

When you are romancing the customer in the sales process, it’s okay to make them feel 10 feet tall for simply “taking action.” And it’s also a brilliant move to continue congratulating them for their wise decision since this will make for happy customers who don’t cancel.

Find out what people want, or better still, what they WILL wish to, and then remove the work as much as you can, and you will have a winning business model.

Have you tried offline marketing yet? If not, why not?

Oddly, you’re hesitant to offer offline services because you’re afraid of sounding less than super intelligent when talking to business owners. Maybe approaching them makes you nervous. Perhaps you don’t feel like enough of an expert.

Whatever the reason, take heart. Business owners are just people who need help, and you are there to do exactly that – help them. Treat them like they are your new friend, and you can not only eventually turn them into clients, but you can also keep them as clients for years and years to come.

Perform a service for them, no matter how small. Even if you only charge $100, that token amount is your foot in the door and a slam in the face to all other offline marketers. When someone approaches that business person about marketing, they will say, “No, I already have a guy/gal for that.” And once you earn their trust with that first small job, you can get bigger and bigger jobs from them in the future.

So how do you get your confidence up for that first phone call or in-person meeting? How do you get in the zone before picking up the phone or walking through the door? By talking to yourself or a friend. Literally.

This trick comes from entertainer Kyle Cease who accidentally discovered it on the way to an audition. Generally, before an audition, he would constantly worry about it. But this time, he started talking to his friend about the upcoming audition as though it had already happened, like this: “Do you remember when I went into that audition, and I just nailed it? I don’t know what happened, but I got into a zone and started feeling so good.”

By talking about it in the past tense, he started feeling good about it. The stress disappeared, and he acted as though it was a done deal, as though the only possibility was nailing the audition, which he did.

Interestingly, I’ve been doing this for years without even realizing what I was doing or why I felt so confident in new situations. It took Kyle to point out that this technique isn’t well-known and needs to be shared.

Try this yourself. The next time you are stressed about something you’re about to do, talk out loud about how great it went, how you were positively on fire and nailed it, etc. It’s a simple trick that costs nothing but a few minutes of your time, but it can have a life-changing impact.

This technique will allow you to break through old comfort zones like a superhero breaking the sound barrier. You’ll find you can do things and accomplish things you’d only dreamed about before.

Tony Robbins is fond of saying that “Success leaves clues,” and he’s right. Let’s look at how to use this to your advantage so that you can reverse engineer your way to success.

Say your goal is to make $10,000 a month with your online business since that’s a viral goal among Internet marketers.

How do you want to make that income? Perhaps you want to create and sell products in a particular niche; list builds, do CPA, or build a membership site. Your first step is to decide what you want to do and where you want to do it.

I suggest running some numbers as well. For example, if you create products, you must sell 100+ $97 products monthly to reach $10,000. Or sell twice that many if you use affiliates and payout recommissions.

If you’ve selected your niche but don’t know what to do next, your first option is to find every big niche marketer and get on their lists. See what they’re doing, what they’re saying, and especially what they’re selling. This should give you some ideas in less than a week. Write down all your thoughts; even those think are silly or beyond your reach.

Now then, narrow your choices. Maybe you’ve decided to create a blog, build a list, and sell you’veliate products and your membership site. Now you have a plan. You can get basic info from the Internet on starting your blog and list building to get you started.

Next, you will analyze what your competitors are doing that’s you’re in terms of blogging, list building, selling that’s products, and running a membership site in your niche. This is information you won’t get out of any course. It’s been said that if you want won’t the real secrets of It’sbest marketers; you should watch what they do rather than listen to what they say. That’s why you joined your competitors’ lists, to see how they’re doing wThat’sey’re doing.

Questioncompetitors’h:

How are they get the traffic?
Wherethey’rey get their links?
Who are their affiliates?
What is their content strategy?
What is their unique selling point?
How do they structure their websites?
Who is their audience?
What is their website or product missing?
And so forth.

There are multiple tools online to help you do this, which you can research on Google. This isn’t a tutorial I’m offering you here so much as a mindset:

Success isn’t because of no-hitter what you want to accomplish; someone has often done it or something very close to it. You don’t need to reinvent anything; you need to find out what they did and do it yourself.

Mdon’tou; I’m not suggesting you infringe upon any copyrights. Instead, I’m suggesting that there are no who’s that need reinventing. Furthermore, if someone else can I’mit, you undoubtedly can. You can outsource anything you cannot do and fill in the rest yourself.

And you don’t want to “copy” when it comes to content. Let’s say your entire strategy for earning $10,000 a month I don’t build a $”7 me”membership site and keep it fiLet’swith 100+ members. Let’s also say someone else in your niche is already doing that. Should you copy them? Not exactly. Let’s, use their traffic and lead generation methods since those work. But create your brand, unique selling proposition, and unique content.

Furthermore, whatever they’re doing, you want to do it better. This means delivering more results or delivering those results more efficiently or something that sets they’re and above the other membership site. This will make it easier to get and retain members.

Focus your efforts on taking care of your customers, and you’ll find the money tends to take care of itself. As Zig Ziglar used to say, “When you help enough people get what they want, you’ll get what you want.”

No, you’ll don’t restrict your reverse engineering to your niche. You can often ga”n valuable insights from other places that trans you’ll to yours. For”example, you won’t be in the fashion niche and see a financial membership that sends out a monthly CD, has a hotline, or somehow personalizes content for each member. Is this something you could do in your fashion membership? Perhaps you send out a CD of the latest styles and patterns. Or you have a fashion ‘hotline’ on your site that offers the latest fashion industry insider’s news. Or you have a feature that shows members how each new clothing line would look on their particular body build.

I know nothing about fashion, in case you couldn’t, an insider’s fashion style is simple: I wear it if it’s comfortable and doesn’t make me look silly. Perhaps there’s a need for a fashion website for people like me.

My whole point icouldn’tStop thinking you must start from scratch or every answer doesn’t den inside the latest marketing info prothese’s the truth is you can already discover precisely what is working – because success leaves, you’ve You must play detective, follow the clues, and get busy reverse-engineering your success story.

Every niche has its share of movers and shakers, including yours. So how do you get those prominent personalities to share your great content with their readers?

homebusinessideas.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/influencer.jpg” alt=” Getting Influencers to Share Your Content”>

First, you should have built a foundation of quality content. Please have at least a half dozen posts on your blog, and make sure that each one is either chock full of well-written targeted content, entertaining, or both. No one with a reputation will send traffic to your site if they can’t vouch that it’s worth their audience’s time.

Now then – list the exciting personalities, experts, and big movers in your niche for a blog post you will write. Include background information on their accomplishments and why they’re essential. If you like, rank them according to any criteria you choose – influence, charm, good looks – it’s your post, so you can do it as you choose.

For example, depending on your niche, your post might be titled: The Top 50 Flower Bloggers or The Top 25 Movers and Shakers in Finance.

These lists of top people in a niche or industry make for extremely share-worthy content, but you’ll take it one step further to ensure it gets passed around. Contact each person on the list and congratulate them for making it. Some of them will tell their readers about your article through social media, blogs, and websites.

About ranking these experts – what if some of them are upset with you for not organizing them at the top? First, not everyone can be number 1 – it is impossible. Second, even if they are a bit miffed, you can use that to your advantage by gleaming other blog posts and publicity. Third, you can write this post annually.

That way, those sam,e people may have gone up in the ranking next year, so they will likely brag about this to their audience. Those lower on the list may try to curry your favor, and those higher may add you to their inner circle. It’s a win-win no matter what happens, and your content gets shared multiple times in the process.

BONUS TIP: Now that you have the attention of the experts, choose a hot topic and ask them to weigh in. Even if you get 2 or 3 to share their opinions, you’ll have another piece of great content that will likely get shared throughout your industry.

BONUS TIP #2: Post a blog on “What 22 Top ___ Say About ___.” This is easy and practically writes itself. Email the experts from your list and ask them for a quote about your niche’s current topic or trend. Then compile their responses into an article or blog post. Be sure to let your contributors know when you make your post so that they can share the link with their audiences.

If you’re in the IM niche, you probably get my duplicate emails, asking: “I needed to make money YESTERDAY; what do you recommend?”

Or maybe you need some extra money for a project you’re working on, or you’ve got an unexpected bill.

Here’s a method I sometimes suggest for earning a quick $500 or $1,000, and what people seem to like about it is how simple it is.

Ask yourself what skills and knowledge you possess right now. Maybe you can write well, or you’re good at building WordPress sites. Perhaps you’re a graphic artist, a photographer, or a videographer. Maybe you have excellent people skills and can act as an affiliate manager or set up joint ventures. Perhaps you can coach people on how to do something specific or how to find the perfect virtual assistant. I guarantee you have at least one skill or piece of knowledge that others are willing to pay for.

“But I don’t have a skill!” Really? Then it would be best to find dynamite outsourcers with skills you can market. It would be best to find something others are willing to pay for, which is usually a skill and sometimes simply a piece of precious knowledge.

Once you’ve identified your skill, set up a web page offering that skill for hire. A simple blog site will do, preferably on your domain. Check out other similar websites to get ideas on how to set yours up.

Find blogs that are relevant to your skill and allow guest bloggers. For example, if you’re good at writing engaging blog posts, find blogs about blogging. If you can troubleshoot antique engines over the phone, find blogs about old cars. These blogs should have a bare minimum of 5,000 readers a month, and be sure they already allow guest posting.

Now write articles that provide great content for these blogs. Study each blog and write an essay just for them that solves a problem or tells how to do something relevant to your skill. For example, if your skill is article writing, you will tell them how to write the perfect article. If your skill is photographing products, then that’s what you’ll teach. Don’t worry about giving away all your secrets – some people would much instead hire a professional than do the work themselves. Link back to your website in the author’s box.

I don’t know if you spotted it, but there is a flaw in the steps above, and here it is…

It can sometimes take WEEKS to get your guest blog post published. How do you speed up the process? One way is to link whatever you write about with something in the news, preferably in the last 12 to 48 hours. You might need to get creative here, but blog owners will be racing to publish your post if you can pull it off. For example, you’re golden if you’re a sales letter copywriter and the FTC just handed down new rules for what you can and cannot say in your sales copy.

Another trick for getting published quickly is providing dynamite graphics, pictures, or infographics to accompany your article. Your infographic could even BE your article. And don’t forget to politely make a good case to the blog owners on why they should consider publishing your report as quickly as possible.

Continue writing articles and getting them published until the orders start coming in or your phone starts ringing.

The entire process could take as little as 48 hours or as long as ten days, depending on how fast you get those first blog posts published.

Added benefit – you’ll make more business connections that can continue to benefit you.