The Fisherman Analogy: I am currently going through The IM System by Kenster – this is a comprehensive training on the art and science of internet marketing with a heavy emphasis on the importance of mindset.
One of the interesting articles in THE IM System makes the analogy between internet entrepreneurs and the fisherman who had bought a rod and reel and decided to go fishing. He went to the lake and spent a frustrating day trying to catch fish with his new tackle.
At the end of a long, hot day when he had caught nothing, after trying various spots around the lake, he walked dispiritedly away from the lake. On the way back to his car he met an old fisherman who greeted him with the words – “I’ve rarely had a better fishing day in my life. They were really biting today.”
Our newbie fisherman just grunted and passed on – he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had the right tackle and he’d fished hard all day, surely the old fisherman couldn’t be right.
Our newbie fisherman is very like many internet entrepreneurs. They have all the tools of the trade and they jump from ‘fishing’ spot to fishing spot on the internet but rarely catch anything.
They know there are fish in the lake but they have a poor habits and a poor mindset.
After a little effort, they soon give up and move on to something else little realising that most methods will work if the right techniques are employed. Many internet fisherman get caught in a perpetual cycle, moving from opportunity to opportunity little realising that they need to change their habits.
They don’t understand that ‘buying a rod and reel doesn’t make them a fisherman.’ They are ‘wannabees’!
Doing the exact same things that an experienced fisherman does makes you a fisherman. If you don’t have the right habits and are not doing what experienced and successful internet entrepreneurs are doing, you are not an internet entrepreneur. You are a ‘wannabee’.
If you sit down right now and think about what you should be doing to be a successful internet entrepreneur, I’m willing to bet that you could come up with a list of things that you should be doing but you are not doing to grow your business.
If you are serious about growing your business, start doing those things on your list right now.
You may be saying at this point that you don’t know what successful entrepreneurs are doing to make money on the internet. Notwithstanding this, if you just fix those bad habits it’s likely you are going to see a substantial lift in your income just through following your own advice.
When you have the right habits, things just start to fall into place which is why many successful businessman can move from industry to industry and still be successful – they just keep on applying the right habits.
What are some of these habits? Things like:
increasing your productivity within your allocated working hours
running your business by the numbers
systemising your business so you can outsource aspects of your activities
focusing on your sales and marketing activities
working on your business, rather than in it – planning and strategising your way forward e.g. knowing how much you need to sell this month and then working out how you are going to do it!
not jumping from shiny object to shiny object.
And so on.
I bet you can come up with your own list of things that you know you should be doing.
In my own case, I realised that once I had products to sell, perhaps 90% of my time should be spent in marketing and selling those products rather than starting to create a new product. I love creating products so I find it difficult to allocate marketing time because I constantly have new product ideas. As I sit here writing this post I have at least 4 or 5 products I would like to be creating!
Often if you can’t get some internet marketing method or strategy to work properly, the problem lies with YOU rather than the method or strategy. If you spend any time online at all, you hear people saying that this or that method no longer works.
People were saying that about the ‘interview method’ of making products when one of my IM colleagues launched his copywriting interview products and made 600 front-end sales on only his second ever product launch. Luckily he didn’t know that this method of product creation didn’t work any longer, according to some people!
So if you have tried multiple methods and opportunities without success, perhaps it is time to take a close look at your habits – look for the problem on the ‘inside’ rather than ‘outside’ of yourself?
If you are really uncertain about the right habits to adopt, find a good coach to help you – an experienced fisherman who is already getting the results that you are seeking.
If you adopt the mindset that YOU are fully responsible for the results you are currently getting, then that is the first step to realising that YOUR habits need to change in order to reach your desired goals. It’s not this or that method that is at fault – it’s really down to you and your habits.
By taking 100% responsibility for your results you are well on the way to achieving the success you desire.
Of course, it can help greatly if you can find someone who is creating the results that you desire i.e. catching lots of fish. This is where getting a good coach and mentor can short-cut your route to success. So if you can find and afford such a person, then this is well worth doing (but select that person with care after doing your due diligence.)
In the case of our fishing analogy, you would simply seek the advice of the old experienced fisherman. No doubt he will instantly spot what you are doing wrong and put you back on the right path to success.
If you are getting dispirited by the stories of other peoples success, then you are not adopting the correct mindset. You should be using those stories to motivate you because they are additional evidence that the same success is also open to you.
Just realise that if you want to get different results than those that you are currently getting, then you need to change your habits (and you probably already know what many of those changes need to be!)
So rather than jumping around from fishing spot to fishing spot, or lake to lake, start by looking at your habits first and you’ll be amazed by how things start to work themselves out and by how many fish you start catching.
These changes in your habits are well within your power to start doing.
I hope your found the fisherman analogy helpful and inspiring and I look forward to inspecting your prodigious catch!
The Way of the Warriors eBook that I started last week is almost finished – I have basically written 1 chapter a day to get this book written. We are up to 63 pages now and almost 16,000 words. I hope to complete the final chapter of the book today. This will be a front end product and I will then try to upsell my other products from this eBook.
I basically chunked the book down into chapters to get it done because I found that I was getting fatigued if I tried to keep writing beyond one chapter per day. I didn’t want to find that I couldn’t finish the book because I got fed-up with it. To motivate me to write the chapter each day I added a more pleasurable task into my timetable to do when I had finished the chapter – it was something to work towards.
I am using Google Calendar and a piece of software called Action Enforcer to time-box my work in to 60 minute chunks to increase productivity.
I have taken the same approach to recruiting affiliates. I have joined a load of JV Facebook groups this week – this is where my potential JV partners will be lurking. Thank you to Manie Amari, a fellow Marc Milburn student, for this list:
*Make Money Online – JV – WSO – Solo – Adswaps – Giveaways – IM – Warriors
*Warrior JV WSO Group (VERY ACTIVE HERE)
*JV Launch Calendar
*WSO Launch & JV Network
*JV ELITE LAUNCH GROUP
*Forum Offers
*Official JVZoo.com Facebook Group
*JV Zoo Product Launch
* Launch Superstars
*Affiliate Products PROVEN To Sell
*Daniel Lews Kickass JV Group
*WSO Elite Inner Circle
*Elite JV Group
*IM Secret Elite JV Launch
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I have been steadily adding affiliates to my affiliate spreadsheet but found I was getting distracted when I looked up some personal information on them. I therefore decided that I would set a goal of adding 5 affiliates a day to my spreadsheet before moving on to another task.
There was an incredibly good thread in the WSO JV Central Facebook Group – it was started by Kenster which then sparked a reaction from Andrew Fletcher of DigiResults and I am copying these comments below because they are highly instructive about how to recruit affiliates to sell your products. They also re-enforce Marc Milburn’s teaching:
Don’t you HATE when somebody messages you for the first time asking you to promote something. Don’t you hate when somebody you never know just pushes their offers on you…like they just want to use you. Don’t these people know how to market? Don’t they understand that they are being rude? Shouldn’t they respect you and your time!
Well…
I’ve griped about these people before and I’m sure you’ve seen my comments in this group at one point or another.
But to be honest, perhaps I’m getting soft at my old age of 28, but I’ve learned to give these new marketers a break. Let’s be honest, I think most of us successful marketers have done something along the those lines when we first started out…right? I know I certainly did.
I didn’t intend to be rude or approach the affiliate-getting process wrong – I was just doing what I thought was supposed to be done. People said, “create a product and get affiliates”. I created a product and now I was emailing random people to “get affiliates”. Was is a bad way to approach affiliates…absolutely. But I was a new little IM sprout with no experience or knowledge…I was just trying to hustle.
So I’ve learned to respect these marketers that approach me to promote their stuff and ask for advice. They are trying to hustle and over time, they’ll learn the right way to approach affiliates and the right way to build relationships. I think we should give these newbie marketers a bit more slack!
Now the experienced marketers who know how this industry works and know how they should be approaching affiliates and networking partners and who still bombard me asking for advice, referrals, traffic, promos, etc…no slack given to you 😉
Remember struggling when you first started? I do and I have a new-found respect for hustler newbie marketers…even if they are doing stupid and annoying stuff!!! [/features_box_light_blue]
Andrew Fletcher then posted 3 times:
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Andrew Fletcher – 1st Post
Kenster just made an awesome post all about his approach to handling newbie’s sucky cold approaches.
I replied how one of my top JV recruitment strategies has been helping new starters out. The best example being one guy who went from not knowing what an upsell was to topping my leader board less than a year later!
Needless to say I immediately got a deluge of friend adds and messages looking to take me up on that … predictable if nothing else!
OK, so I don’t have time right now to make good on that and I feel bad. So instead I’m writing this post to show you how to make less sucky cold approaches. They are, after all, one of the hardest parts of the JV game.
First of all, let’s deal with the elephant in the room. I own DigiResults and 90%+ of the big affiliates in the space know who I am. So my cold approaches carry rather more weight than most.
So please believe me when I say, this is the stuff I used to get here from nothing and it still works really effectively now.
First up, making cold approaches not so cold.
This is where your branding and exposure come into play. It doesn’t have to be some Madison Avenue branding exercise, just a few basics that will massively improve your results –
1. Pick a brand word and stick it on your products. For 3 years I was the Digi guy. Everything I put out was Digi Something Something. Doing that makes you seem a bigger deal than you really are, which ironically starts to make it true!
2. Get yourself out there in an appropriate way. If you’re a newbie, aim to ask smart questions and seek advice. If you’re experienced aim to give smart answers and provide it. Parroting marketing theory that you have no experience of isn’t going to help. This isn’t Warrior Forum 101. The JVs you want to work with KNOW THEIR STUFF and will see through you without a second thought.
3. Pay attention to who engages with your content. If you ask a smart question and someone answers or provide a smart answer and something ‘likes’ it. That lead stopped being a cold approach. Engage!
Next up. Make an approach but do it the right way.
This post has already got quite long so I’ll cover some approach strategies next time. If you want to speed that up make sure you like this post and say nice things about me 😀
Andrew Fletcher’s 2nd Post (- read his ‘why me’ page on the link below – it’s really impressive!)
Yesterday Ken Ster inspired me to start posting about JV recruitment.
It’s several months and quite a bit of money out of date but it illustrates the point 🙂
Now, as promised yesterday, a simple approach that’s about 1000 times more likely to get someone to engage with you than a copy/pasted “Will you promote my shitty product” email.
Make your approach specific to the person you’re approaching and don’t make them feel like they’re going to be trapped in a conversation with you. (Pro tip: This applies just as well to picking someone up in a bar 😉 )
How to make it specific –
Either do a group of approaches at the same time, or find a few other people you could approach if you’re just doing a single one.
Now ask yourself, “Is my question/flattery/whatever applicable to other people in this group?” Contrary to every approach email anyone has ever sent, if the answer is “Yes” DO NOT SEND IT.
If it’s specific to them, then by definition it doesn’t apply to many other people.
You also can’t cheat.
I’m emailing you because I really liked PRODUCT_NAME and I’m on your list.
PRODUCT_NAME makes it feel specific but it’s not. It’s a mail merge in Word. It’s lazy.
So also ask yourself, “Could I substitute another name into this and have it apply?” If you could, DO NOT SEND IT.
Instead, pay attention to what they are currently talking about in their emails, on FB, on their blog, wherever and match your approach to something going on in their lives. This will massively increase your chances of engagement.
How to keep it short –
Realise they don’t care who you are to start with. If they are worth engaging with they already have a bazillion FB friends, Twitter followers and Skype contacts. Your goal is to stand out. You do so by fighting the urge to talk endlessly about yourself.
Make your own life harder by engaging about something that doesn’t imply you will follow up a million times. You’re much more likely to get a response if the person doesn’t feel that doing so will open them up to a million more questions or hearing all about you.
Some of my best approach emails have simply been flattery about a product (again, in specific terms) and a note saying “Please feel free to publicly quote me on that. If you need anything like a headshot photo or whatever to go with it, just say the word.”
You think that gets a response? Of course it does!
I started writing up some real world examples and bonus points on how to get a response but this post is long enough already.
Andrew Fletcher’s 3rd Post
Following on the topic of making your JV approaches suck less I’ve compiled a list of the most basic mistakes people making.
Just fixing these things won’t guarantee you a reply but getting them wrong will pretty much guarantee you don’t.
1 – Generic subject line: “JV”, “Hello”, “Promotion” for a marketer with 100+ emails a day, is this going to get opened?
2 – Being overly deferential and apologetic: “Sorry for the interruption, I know you are a great man and probably don’t have time but could you spend 60 seconds looking at my JV proposal, I’d really appreciate it.”
3 – Being needy: “I have a great product, I just need your sales and marketing skills, advice and access to your list to make it happen.” Big affiliates promote people who have their shit together.
4 – Not getting to the point: Copy can never be too long, only too boring but I guarantee 99% of the drivel people write by way of an introduction is TOO BORING.
5 – Guarding your idea: “I have a fantastic product and I’d love you to promote, I just need you to sign an NDA so I can give you details.” Ahahahahaha, No.
6 – Having someone run the process on your behalf: I actually did this one for ages and it can definitely work once you’re established but when you’re starting out trying to abdicate responsibility for this just plain won’t work.
7 – Being too casual: We’re IMers but that doesn’t mean you can type like,,, ths and xpct me 2 rspnd. If you message me sounding like a retard, I’ll presume your copy will sound like a retard and bin it.
8 – Being vague: I have a software, would you like to promote it? I have a trash can, would you like to be in it?
9 – Sharing nothing in the email: It’s fine to have the details on a JV page that you link off to but you’ve got to give me enough to make it worth clicking the link. This isn’t some “You have to check this out: LINK: solo ad we’re writing.
With top JVs getting 1000s of these kind of pitches the success ratio is probably about 1000 to 1. Do yourself a favour and skew the odds, stop making these mistakes.
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I wanted to record the above comments because these are the opinions of someone with experience in the field and represent a great template for recruiting affiliates.
As a result of the ‘branding’ comments by Andy Fletcher, I added my business name (The Business Renegade) to my header on this blog to keep my business brand alive. I also added the ‘salmon’ graphic to the background of my site to spice it up a little – it looked a little dull and boring before.
As a result of Marc’s training, I also sent out a couple of promotional emails this week about Webinar Express – the new Google Hangouts plugin. I’ve got it and really like it so I felt comfortable about promoting it. Here’s a sample landing page I knocked up in a few minutes – http://mark-salmon.com/sample-webinar/. I’ll send out another email today about this post. I couldn’t reach my target of 5 emails this week – must try harder next week.
I also did a video testimonial for Marc Milburn and ‘exposed’ myself on webcam – good training for what I know must come in future. I don’t mind speaking in front of an audience but its not an activity that I rush towards doing. However, I must get out of my comfort zone a lot more in order to become a leader, so more videos and webinars are on my agenda. Here’s the testimonial vid:
I also recommended another potential student for Marc’s coaching programme.
I think I have another idea for a front end product that I can start next week when I have completed The Way of the Warriors – I would like to create a simple graphics site, mainly because I love making graphics. (That reminds me, I also completed a header image for Tsahai de Silva this week for her blog and I helped Terry Weatherill to start improving his website (but nothing has changed yet! i would like to do a ‘before’ and ‘after’ makeover of Terry’s site if he will let me! ) as suggested by Marc.)
Finally, Marc Milburn recommended that we set up a help desk using a piece of free software called Hesk – this video tutorial shows me setting up the Hesk Help Desk – it is a live recording including the mistakes I made but it should give you a good idea about how to set-up a Hesk Help Desk: http://renegade.evsuite.com/hesk-setup/
If you are interested in joining Marc Milburn’s coaching and want to talk to me about his coaching programme, then feel free to contact me for the inside story.
As you can see The Way of the Warriors is not about lying on the beach with a laptop but it involves hard work and application i.e. the willingness to pay the price in advance. I am… are you?
Please post a comment below and let me know what’s on your mind.
The Fisherman Analogy: I am currently going through The IM System by Kenster – this is a comprehensive training on the art and science of internet marketing with a heavy emphasis on the importance of mindset.