Today I want to make the case for de-cluttering and simplifying your business and your life.
Clutter, complexity and material possessions can become a huge burden in our lives.
When we moved house 5 years ago, the size of house we needed was largely dictated by the amount of possessions we had. We literally needed a storage facility that was big enough to house all our possessions.
Not long before moving house, my parents in law had passed on so we we added a lot of their possessions to our collection! This was stuff that was too good to throw away or had sentimental value.
Prior to that, I had some of my fathers tools and possessions when he passed away.
As a result of all this, my wife and I live in a 4-bedroomed house with two garages stacked high with boxes storing possessions that we cannot fit into our house. I also have a shed and greenhouse with yet more stuff in them.
We have talked frequently about selling stuff on Ebay or going to car-boot sales. But the whole prospect of listing stuff, dealing with buyers and hanging around at car boot sales is not appealing to me. Frankly, I would rather be doing other things.
The same kind of scenario has taken place on my computer. 80% of the software installed on my computer is never used and probably 95% of the content will never be accessed again.
I collect these items on the basis that I might need them at some unspecified time in the future or it is just too much hassle and effort to get rid of them and just dumping them would be wasteful.
An example of this is that, early on in my business life, I bought a lot of stationary and two stationary cupboards and two filing units.
Nowadays, I hardly ever use any stationary and my cupboards are hardly ever used other than for storing stuff I don’t use.
The stupid thing is, whether these possessions are physical or digital, I have to pay for storage, insurance and also the time taken to file or move stuff around.
In short, most of my possessions are a costly burden and I am determined to ‘minimalise’ them because it would not be fair to burden anyone else in my family with them.
De-cluttering and simplifying my life will lift a large burden from my life so that I can continue my journey with a lighter load. The video below will perhaps cllarify my thoughts for you…
I today carried out a website review for Swan Architects of Stratford-upon-Avon.
I met the owner of the business whilst I was out walking our dog yesterday (both of our dogs are called ‘Poppy’.) We often see each other but I have never stopped to chat with him before.
I asked him what he did for a living and he told me that he was an architect. I then told him what I did and he immediately said that he needed to sort out his website. His current website was created by him from a site-builder system.
Many businesses do this to save money but it is a false economy because it will directly impact sales revenue if you don’t get your online marketing right.
(I learnt this lesson in a previous business, when we hired a professional photographer for a few hundred pounds to take pictures of our product, and subsequently sold over £1m of product from a brochure with those pictures in it. I know how difficult it is to risk money upfront on marketing with no guarantee of a return!)
I volunteered to carry out a free review and here is the result below – sit back and enjoy the insights.
I am posting this because I think many other small businesses are making similar mistakes with their online marketing and it should be instructional for those businesses too.
Here is a summary of the points covered in video:
– Font size
– Lack of text
– No headlines
– No calls to action
– Lack of branding
– No explanation of who you are or what you do
– Who is your target market and where are they located?
– What is the step-by-step process to take a project from start to finish?
– What is your involvement in that process?
– Where is the proof that you can do it?
– Why should I choose you rather than a competitor?
– Your projects page does not give enough explanation of what you did and what we are looking at.
– No links to Social Media sites
– No site map
– The site is not mobile friendly – you will be penalised for this by Google (- the good thing is that most of your competitors have got this wrong too!)
– There are non-working areas of the site and some technical issues
– You are not getting traffic from the search engines
– Your content is not targeting keywords that people will use in the search engine to find your service
– Your business is not registered with Google Plus
– The professionalism and design of your website will subliminally reflect on the perceived quality of your work
If you would like me to carry out a free website review for your business, then please feel free to contact me.
In one of the sections of his book entitled ‘The Brutal Truth’, John Reese has a sub-heading or chapter with the headline:
Mediocre Graphics No Longer Cut It, You Must Use Beautiful Top-Notch Design (No Exceptions).
When John Reese says something like this about website design, I listen.
Here is a brief description of his career so far:
[boxibt style=”gray”]In 2004, Reese astonished the online marketing world by selling $1,080,496 worth of his “Traffic Secrets” product over the course of eighteen hours. He launched a new product and made over a million dollars in less than a day without spending a single cent on advertising.
Reese realized early in his career that the best way to make money is to learn from others. The successes and failures of other experts in the online marketing field helped him learn to avoid gambling on new strategies with his hard-earned money.
For instance, Reese once sold a domain name for 900 dollars, and the buyer turned around and resold the same domain name for one million dollars in cash. Talk about a hard lesson learned!
In 1994, Reese created one of the first auto-responder services on the world wide web.
Since then, he has developed and launched over 100 projects on the Internet, including a free photography site for eBay users, which launched in 1998. Within the first 10 months after going live with his eBay photo hosting site, it was already ranked among the top 500 websites in the world for web traffic.
What did that mean as far as Reese’s bottom line was concerned?
He was making over 100 thousand dollars a month for a website that cost under 500 dollars to create and develop.
Reese is an eBay pro. He’s even made over 38 thousand dollars on a single eBay auction.
Reese has been sharing his expertise with other Internet marketers since 2004.
He is a pro when it comes to research and development, testing projects, tracking results, generating online traffic and conversion. http://john-reese.net[/boxibt]
So when John says, “The days of ‘ugly websites’ that make a lot of money are over.” I listen to him.
He goes on to say:
[boxibt style=”gray”]Oh, I know, I know, but but but… you read about some split-tests where the ‘ugly’ design or ad converted higher than the ‘pretty’ version!
There will always be a place for simple, compelling copy-driven direct response mechanisms (i.e. ads, landing pages etc) in digital marketing. It’s the copy that sells people and always has.
But there’s a ‘bigger picture’ happening. And ‘YES, there may still be a few ugly sites online that are having success today, and some may even be making a fortune right now, but
A) those are the rare exception and
B) I believe their conversions will only continue to get worse.
It’s only a matter of time, because a major shift is occurring and I’ve seen it as clear as day in DATA THAT DOESN’T LIE.
With the worldwide increase in device usage (smartphones to tablets) we find ourselves using these screens more and more. Because of this behavioural shift it created an important focus on UI (user interface) design and user experiences.
If you haven’t noticed, graphical interfaces got cleaner. And easier to use.
There’s an entire design ‘evolution’ occurring across the Web, mobile devices and more. And it’s all about CONVERSION. More professional, easier-to-navigate design makes more money.
Design now matters. A lot.
As competition grew, companies competed by having better design and better user experiences. ‘Design’ is what people see and experience in the digital world. It’s now incredibly important.
If your business doesn’t have awesome design you’re at a huge disadvantage. PERIOD.
TRUST is a major factor with online conversions. Great design is one element of establishing ‘instant credibility’ with prospects that don’t know of you and your business. If you take two competitors with everything else the same, but one has better design than the other, the one with the better design wins – better logos, product packaging, use interface and more.
This wasn’t always the case online as just a few short years ago ugly marketing converted quite well (even for sales) and in some markets it still does. But things are changing fast. It’s still a ‘balancing act’ that the copy has to do its job, but more and more people feel better about doing business with a company that has more professional design and a better user experience.[/boxibt]
It was reading ‘The Brutal Truth’ by John Reese that made me continue down the track of developing my Photoshop skills.
Joh Reese and ‘The Brutal Truth’ have eventually led to the creation of my product ‘Easy Actions‘ (launching 3rd July 2015) which is an easy way in for anyone to start creating beautiful graphics for their website, product packaging and much more
I have been working on a new product – it’s called Easy Actions – which is all about using Photoshop Actions to make stunningly beautiful graphics.
In this article I want to cover:
why this product is important
what it does
how you can do it
where and when you can get it
Why Easy Actions is Important
In his book, The Brutal Truth, John Reese says “Mediocre graphics no longer cut it, you must use beautiful top-notch design (no exceptions). The days of ugly websites that make a lot of money are over.”
If you don’t know who John Reese is, he is reputed to be the first internet marketer to make a million dollar product launch. He has gone on to incredible success as a consultant for other businesses. When he says something, I listen.
The internet, and websites in particular, are a very visual medium – we make an instant assessment about a website from how it looks, even before we start reading the content. Whilst the quality of content is critically important, so too is the packaging of your content.
When I first got into internet marketing in April 2009, graphics were a problem for me. I was very afraid of infringing copyright and inadvertently did so.
I wrote an article on avatars and used an image from the film Avatar to illustrate my article. It was stupid, I know but I little thought anyone would take any notice of my little website at the time. I was offering free advice and therefore I was not really making any money from the article.
Suffice it to say that I soon received a threatening take-down email – for a while I thought I might be involved in legal action. It was a harsh lesson that I won’t forget in a hurry.
So for a number of years, the graphics on my site were pretty uninspiring because I could not source good graphics without spending money.
In the meantime, I gradually learnt to use Macromedia Fireworks (which was bundled in with a copy of Dreamweaver that I had been given many years before) to edit images and to this day I still use this software for simple edits.
I’d heard about Photoshop but the cost of around $700 seemed too expensive and I didn’t fully understand what advantage would accrue to me by investing in it.
So for a long time I stuck with Fireworks.
What Easy Actions Does
Over the years I have bought a number of graphics packages – some of these included Photoshop Actions. These Actions were for marketing graphics – things like e-covers and mock-ups. I was intrigued by these and managed to get hold of an old copy of Photoshop CS5.
Eventually I managed to run one of these Actions – the very first time I used it I was instantly hooked, even though I was frustrated by how complex all the tools seemed. A simple task like importing an image seemed less than intuitive in Photoshop.
For a while my usage of Photoshop was confined to running Photoshop Actions for marketing graphics until one day I stumbled upon Actions that can create works of art out of Photographs. These Actions have transformed my ability to create stunning graphics from quite ordinary photographs.
The power of Actions gradually led me into using Photoshop more and more for creating and editing images. Now I am a full convert.
There are loads of free and low-cost graphical editors available today but, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had tackled Photoshop a lot earlier – in my opinion it is the one and only choice of graphics editor principally because of Actions.
These are ‘scripts’ that run automated processes on top of a photograph that can instantly transform it into a sketch, watercolour, oil painting, poster and many other stylised forms at the push of a button.
When you add in the power of Photoshop brushes and styles and some of the other powerful tools within Photoshop, nothing else comes even close to Photoshop in my experience.
I see Photoshop Actions as a great way to start using Photoshop as Actions do 95% or more of the heavy-lifting and you can get an instant result at the push of a button which encourages you to go on and learn more about manipulating and tweaking that result.
Photoshop can now be acquired for around £10 per month which makes it affordable for everyone.
My product Easy Actions is a great introduction to Photoshop Actions – once you get started, I anticipate that users will soon be ‘hooked’ by the power and scope of what they can achieve i.e. creating beautiful stylised images from ordinary photos.
How You Can Do It With Easy Actions
In Easy Actions I go into my sources of copyright free images – there are 2 or 3 principal sources.
I then show how to open an image in Photoshop, load an Action script and then run the Action.
I then demonstrate some simple edits using several different types of Action as case studies. You can literally watch over my shoulder as I create my images.
I believe anyone will be able to do this in less than 60 minutes from start to finish.
However, you will want to then get into more advanced editing on Photoshop so I have given an optional extra of 41 videos that go through all the tools of Photoshop and how to use them. This is a one-time-offer for those that want to go a step further.
As an additional offer, I am also offering very low-cost coaching so I can cover new Actions as they come onto the market and advanced Photoshop techniques. I also hope to get guest contributions from cutting edge designers over time as the membership increases.
How To Get Easy Actions
I am planning to launch Easy Actions as a Warrior Special Offer via JVZoo at 3 p.m. GMT on Friday 3rd July 2015 for 7 days only on a dime-sale.
My hope is that I can work this product into my flagship offering so I can spend more time on Photoshop which is something of a passion for me.
I also want to sell my images as printables on Etsy and also to offer a ‘done-for-you’ service. So there are plenty of options for monetising my skills and to fund ongoing investment into buying more Photoshop Actions.
So look out for the Easy Actions Launch on or around 10th July – hopefully it will take-off like a rocket.
Thought control is at the heart of every business and every public institution. It’s a also a major constituent of marketing – understanding the psychology of marketing and selling is critical to power and success.
Thought control is central to the following institutions:
politics and government
religion
education
our legal system
the media
business
family life – the parent/child relationship
The majority of people are happy to be led by the nose because they are usually lazy in thought and deed.
Everyone has an opinion but most opinion is not based on fact-based research or careful investigation. It is based on prejudice and the daily dose of mis-information and marketing that they are fed by the various institutions that touch their life with their controlling messages.
In King Henry VIII’s time the clergy had a strangle-hold on the interpretation of the Bible which was always written in Latin.
When Latimer translated the Bible into English he was forced to emigrate to Europe as a heretic because the clergy were determined to retain their stranglehold on the thoughts and aspirations of their flock through their monopoly of the Bible and it’s translation, which promised it’s followers access to heaven (or hell for disbelievers and heretics) based on a set of values which included giving money and land to the church to buy your way to a better after-life!
The same level of thought control is in operation today if you care to look for it.
This is particularly the case in marketing.
The internet both facilitates and disarms thought control.
It facilitates thought control by making it possible to share your message – the ISIS rebels in Syria and Iraq are using social media very effectively to recruit support for their dream of an Islamic state.
The internet also disarms thought control because it gives you the capacity to research what is actually happening in more depth and to listen to other peoples opinion.
In the case of ISIS, we can also hear about what an Islamic state means in practice – repression, barbarity and regression to a medieval set of values loosely based on religious fanaticism.
In China, the internet is policed by the state – a form of thought control.
This is why it pays to understand marketing practices and the psychology of marketing – to know when someone is deploying a marketing strategy such as scarcity or risk-reversal – gives you the ability to stand back from the situation and make a more careful assessment of the facts.
Understanding that thought control is at the heart of every public and private institution gives you the ability to start thinking more critically – to unbundle the controlling elite.
To me, religion is all about thought control – it has resulted in the accumulation of enormous power and wealth for the religious institutions and their clergy.
But very few people think like this – they are content to concede personal freedom and power to the clergy.
It’s the same with marketing – businesses can accumulate enormous power and wealth through marketing.
The power of thought control through clever marketing is at the heart of every good business – persuading you to pay more for perceived benefits is what marketing is all about.
Whilst Apple have good products, they are only able to charge more for their products because of smart marketing – a form of thought control. Their equipment is essentially a fashion statement that panders to the ego of the owner who justifies the enormous price he pays by recalling the marketing messages that led to the sale.
Whilst on occasions a mobile phone can be useful, I used to manage very well without one and still do! I don’t have a mobile phone at the moment and I don’t feel the need for one.
Recently my car broke down and I didn’t have access to a mobile phone to call the garage.
What did I do?
I borrowed one from a passer by and offered to pay them for the call. They refused payment because they were happy to help me.
It’s easy to justify your phone purchase as insurance for emergencies but for 99.999% of the time it just doesn’t hold water.
Others will say that they need their phone to access their email (another form of thought control!) or bank account – both of these reasons just aren’t true – I control both without a mobile phone just by organising my time effectively and limiting my access to both services to certain times of the day.
In any event you can get a perfectly serviceable mobile phone for about £5 if you really think you can’t live without one. But people are still paying hundreds of pounds for mobile phones – why?
Thought control achieved through marketing and peer pressure.
In fact, this very blog post is a form of thought control.
In business the real power lies in thought control i.e. marketing – get good at this and you can accumulate power and wealth just like all the other institutions listed above. Understanding this transfers personal power and freedom to you and away from these institutions because you now understand the game that they are playing.
This is how I feel when it comes to writing sales copy!
In this article I want to briefly cover the chunk copy copywriting strategy – a strategy that I learned by listening to ‘The Kaizen Copywriting System’ videos.
This is a summary of the notes that I made.
This system appeals to me for the following reasons – it relies on a policy of:
no hype
no long-form copy
no testimonials
The system advocates ‘chunk’ copy – in other words ‘pithify’ your offer into the most essential elements.
You need to ask yourself ‘how can I explain this in as few words as possible and still convey the benefits?’ i.e. what’s in it for my customer.
Never assume that either you are known to your customer or that they ‘get’ your product or service – think in terms of explaining it to a beginner.
Your business is to solve someone’s problem. Never forget that.
This means that you employ an ‘issue & tissue’ strategy where you introduce a problem (issue) and then offer a solution (tissue). You need to explain the problem better than they could and then offer lots of ’tissues’.
In your sales copy, you need to hit them with your best stuff ‘above the fold’ of the page i.e. in the top 600 pixels of the page because you lose 50% of your visitors when they have to go below the fold.
After you have written out your copy, you need to read it out aloud to make sure that it flows easily. Copywriting is about editing – print it off, read it out loud, mark your edits and repeat this process until you are satisfied. If you get stuck, take a break and come back to it.
Writing Sales Copy
When writing your sales copy, write down a list of 15 things that your product or service does and then write a few sentences about ‘what’s in it for me’…
This is what it does. For you that means…
This is what it does. You don’t need to…
This is what it does. Imagine…
This is what it does. Because of that…
Arrange your 15 items in a logical sequence and then format your sales letter in one of two ways:
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Sales Letter Format #1:
Headline
Video
Subheading
Copy (& Image)
Subheading
(Image &) Copy
Subheading
Copy (& Image)
…and so on down the page
Offer Summary
Copy
Order Button (Click Here To Place Your Order)
[/boxibt]
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Sales Letter Format #2:
Headline
Video
Subheading
Copy Box Copy Box Copy Box
Subheading
Copy Box Copy Box Copy Box
Subheading
Copy Box Copy Box Copy Box
…and so on down the page
Offer Summary
Copy
Order Button (Click Here To Place Your Order)
[/boxibt]
Writing Video Copy
Always write a script for your video first. 160 words = one minute of video.
Videos are great for demonstrating ‘before and after’ scenarios and for demonstrations of your product.
Here are 4 potential video script formats:
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Video Script Format #1:
Just the facts
i.e. to the point – what it does with no hype or sales pitch – the text underthe video explains ‘what’s in it for me’
This is the fastest script to create and deliver.
[/boxibt]
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Video Script #2:
The Classic Video
State a problem (better than they can themselves)
Introduce the promise of a solution.
Introduce your ‘chunks’ of copy that say what it does and what this does for me.
Call to action at end telling them what to do next. (To find out how, see below this video.)
[/boxibt]
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Video Script #3
What about Bob?
If you cannot come up with a compelling script, introduce a fictional character showing his life before and after using your product or service.
Introduce the character.
Show problems that cause suffering in his life.
How the solution (your product) has made him happy and successful
Call to Action.
[/boxibt]
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Video Script #4
The Curiosity Script
Use a Powerpoint presentation to create curiosity to cause people to take action to learn more.
[/boxibt]
Writing Email Copy
Use plain text emails.
Never sell blatantly in your emails.
The only purpose of your email is to get your reader from Point A to Point B i.e. to click on the link in your email to find out more.
So don’t give everything away – this is teaser copy that evokes curiosity.
Your subject line, to get them to open and read your email copy, is very important. Ask yourself whether you would open your email based on the subject line.
Example subject lines:
Horror story
How to…
A question – Are these bugs or fruit?
I don’t (blank) and why you shouldn’t either.
It all ends today…
You’re wearing invisible underwear.
I can’t believe they are doing this to you.
Here are four formats for your emails:
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Email copy type #1:
The Kaizen Classic
This is short copy that evokes curiosity, explains what’s in it for them and offers tissues for issues.
It is short and to the point.
[/boxibt]
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Email copy type #2:
Edumail
State a general problem that the market faces and it’s cause.
Educate on common solutions and their pro’s and cons.
At the end, offer an easier or better solution (- your product)
Call to Action
[/boxibt]
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Email copy type #3
The Acid Test
Pick a product that’s attracting attention in the market and subject it to an ‘acid test’.
Compare it to alternatives.
Subject line: ‘If you only knew the truth about this!’
[/boxibt]
[boxibt style=”gray”]
Email copy type #4:
The Story Email
Your whole life is a story – use it to create compelling story copy.
Most conversations are stories – use dialogue in these types of emails.
There’s what happened and your story of what happened.
Stories are powerful in your copy – use them.
[/boxibt]
Conclusion
This is just an outline of what I learned in the Kaizen Copywriting System training. This training comes in the form of a lot of short (chunk!) videos that clearly sets out the system which makes it easy to understand and consume.
This copywriting strategy of chunking your copy to fit with readers attention span on the internet makes a lot of sense to me unless you are a top copywriter.
As most of us do not fall into the category of ‘expert copy-writer’, use this ‘chunk copy strategy outlined by this system to at least get your offer across quickly and succinctly rather than boring the pants off your readers with a long-form sales letter that is full of hype.
I recently came across this easy bonus page strategy for affiliate marketing.
You may be wondering how some affiliates crush product launch promotions and this strategy is one of the reasons why they earn big commissions from affiliate marketing.
This strategy is very simple and has the following 3 steps:
Step #1 – Find a good product launch
This can easily be accomplished by heading over to sites like Muncheye or JV Notify Pro. These sites list all of the upcoming product launches.
Step #2 – Create your bonus page
Create a a bonus page with bonuses that complement the product launch offer. These bonuses are available to people that click on your affiliate link and buy the product. Be sure to place a value on your bonuses and also to include a countdown timer to add urgency to your offer.
You can either offer your own products as bonuses or purchase PLR and resell-rights products to create an enticing bonus page offer. If you can find a gap in the product your are promoting, you can seek to fill that gap with your bonus.
Of course, anyone who claims your bonus will be added to your list and you will have them on your custom audience (- see below -) so you can market to them again.
Step #3 – Drive traffic to your bonus page
This is accomplished in two ways:
– using targeted FB ads – these ads are targeted towards people who like gurus like Frank Kern, Mike Filsaime, John Thornhill, Omar Martin, Ryan Deiss etc
– using Facebook re-targeting pixels to serve up ads to people who visit your bonus page but do not immediately buy the product – these ads drive them back to your bonus page. This is particularly useful for serving ads up that give notice of the product launch and your bonus offer ending to inject urgency.
[hr]
This bonus page strategy for affiliate marketing is extremely effective so do not be fooled by its simplicity – it works. Join my list in the sidebar if you wish to learn more strategies and please feel free to comment below.
Here’s a list of 62 video training products that I am in the course of setting up. I have set up 40 products so far so I have 22 still to go!
Each product includes between 7 and 11 training videos and some of them include audio, Powerpoint slides, transcriptions and more.
What I Will Do With These Video Training Products
Sell each product individually
Bundle related products together into unique packages
Put them into the back-end of my sales funnels
Offer a monthly recurring membership with one training drip-fed each week
Offer as a bonus on affiliate promotions
Add these trainings into my coaching programme
Pick and mix training bundles
As you can see these video training products are all related to the internet marketing niche, including some covering services to offline businesses (- click on the image to enlarge it):
You can purchase access to these 62 video training products either individually or collectively at http://marksalmon.info
I was walking my dog this morning and pinned to a gate in the gardens of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre was the poster above with this headline:
And My Soul Spread Wide It’s Wings
It really resonated with me because it explains exactly why I left banking in 2001.
My job had become soul-destroying.
It no longer aligned with my values and it is impossible to do a job well if you are fighting the system because it does not align with your values. Any action that compromises the values that you live by literally destroys your soul.
And it destroys value – the banks share price has gone from £8 a share to £2.80 a share over a period of the last 14 years.
It has been a lot lower during the financial crisis in 2008 and today it continues to be battered by scandals and penalties imposed by the financial regulators. This is what happens when the lunatics are allowed to take over the asylum and the business departs from it’s core values of serving the customer.
I can’t really describe what my soul is exactly. I just know that I didn’t like myself when I tried to act against my values. The feeling was strong enough for me to resign voluntarily from a highly paid job with no other income to cushion the fall.
[boxibt style=”gray”]One of the most freeing things we learn in life is that we don’t have to agree with everyone, everyone doesn’t have to agree with us, and it’s perfectly OK.[/boxibt]
The 14 year anniversary of resigning from the corporate world is up at the end of this month.
At the time it was a very stressful decision – I really felt that I was stepping off a cliff into the unknown.
I have never recovered the income that I lost by giving up that job. On the other hand I think the stress of the job would have given me a serious health problem had I continued.
I don’t know what price you would put on having peace of mind and having the freedom to always act in alignment with your values.
To me it is everything – priceless!
Work has always been a significant part of my life – I enjoy working as long as I can feel that I am contributing to my own development and also helping others. So work is an important part of my life and it is unthinkable to me to waste my time doing work that is unsatisfying or lacking in integrity.
Of course money isn’t everything but, as Zig Ziglar says, ‘it ranks right up there with oxygen!’
If you are currently doing a job to pay the bills, but it is in the soul-destroying category, then why not work on something else that satisfies you on a part-time basis?
You can greatly reduce the risk of making the transition from paid employment to self-employment by working on something that gives you passion part-time with a medium or long-term goal of transitioning to your passion full-time.
Jim Rohn says that ‘profit is better than wages.’ Wages can earn you a living whilst profits can make you a fortune.
I don’t really want to make a fortune. I just want the freedom to do what I am passionate about without worrying about lack of money.
Sure I want a nice house, a good car and holidays, but these aren’t as important as doing work that is satisfying.
If I can do that, I don’t really need a holiday because I am already doing what gives me joy and satisfaction.
Also, I only need a car for short trips to visit family and friends and to get in the weekly groceries. Working from home means that I have no need of transport to commute to work. So a good car would lose more in depreciation than the benefit that would accrue by owning it.
I am in the fortunate position whereby I had paid off my mortgage by the age of 37, almost 20 years ago now.
Robert Kiyosaki classifies a home as a liability on his personal balance sheet because it consumes cash rather than earns cash. However, having a comfortable house and somewhere nice to work is important to us all and the cash outflow is a price worth paying to me.
Because I no longer go to work, having nice clothes is far down on my list of priorities – in fact I spend very little on clothes because shopping of any form is very boring and uninteresting to me.
I would prefer to spend my time creating something with the tools I have available whether physical or digital.
So money is only important to me in giving me the wherewithal to cover my day-to-day necessities (- only about £1,000 per month -) and also to allow me to invest into my work and hobbies. Also to enjoy the lifestyle that I currently live.
My business of internet marketing is not capital intensive and my lifestyle does not rely on consumerism – if we can give up the constant hunger for my ‘things’ and simplify and de-clutter our lives, I generally believe that it is possible to live a richer life.
Accumulation of physical things becomes a burden – you need somewhere to store them, to insure them against loss and it is difficult to dispose of them for anything near to what you originally paid for them – most possessions depreciate significantly in value as soon as you buy them.
After leaving the corporate world I genuinely believe that I have a new perspective on what is truly important in life.
Deepening our relationship with family, friends and pets – love in particular adds significantly to life’s enjoyment.
I have spent the last 3 or 4 days looking after our grandchildren during half-term – what price can you put on that?
Having time to slow down and to work and live ‘in the moment’ is also critically important. I always lose so much productivity when I am too busy or trying to multi-task.
Having peace of mind i.e. no worries or external conflicts. Realising that there are many things that you hear about in life that you cannot do much about and have the maturity to let them go rather than fighting them in your mind and becoming angry are also important.
Doing work in alignment with my passion and values is also very important to me.
Having time to enjoy the arts (music, literature, art ) and nature are all free pursuits that feed the soul… ‘and my soul spread wide its wings’.
I would be very interested to hear your perspective on living a good life dear reader – please comment below!
‘Service to many leads to greatness’ is a phrase that I first heard on a Jim Rohn audio. This short phrase perhaps epitomises why I have pursued internet marketing as my full-time career for the last 6 years.
From 2001 to 2009 I ran a business consultancy for local businesses. This was reasonably successful based on the relationships that I had established with some local businesses whilst I was in corporate banking.
However, I always had the dream of impacting even more businesses. And, of course, generating more wealth for myself as a result.
The problem with my local consultancy was that it was very intensive of my time and I could only handle a relative handful of businesses.
I ran local events and even ran a business consulting group for a while. I do remember that getting a room for my local events was always more time and trouble than I wanted to expend and also expensive.
So I guess that I was looking for a way to reach more businesses with less hassle.
Which is why internet marketing attracted me.
Initially I got into internet marketing as a way to generate online leads but quickly saw the potential to take my whole business online with blogging and product creation etc
This started in April 2009, when I signed up to a membership training site run by Ann Sieg and Mike Klingler who specifically trained network marketers to generate leads.
Looking back, my biggest mistake was to try to tackle too big a niche – I was not focused enough on specifically what is was that I could do better than anyone else. I was trying to be ‘all things to all men’.
This is difficult to overcome because, when you start out, it is hard to identify what it is that you can do better and who would most benefit from what you have to offer! You need to be very clear about this.
If I had to start again, I would get very good at just one thing, by studying a focused problem or skill in depth, putting it into action and then teaching others how to do it. In other words, I would move more quickly from consuming information to then taking action on what I had learnt and creating training products to teach others what I had learnt.
That is easy to say now but creating products seemed difficult at the time and I lacked the confidence to get started, even though I had been doing it in the real world!
I think the technical part was intimidating to someone who had had difficulty setting up an email account in 2001 when I left banking and started my own consultancy business.
I really have come a long way since then. It’s easy to dismiss or forget just what I know.
My daughter has recently started her own business in the health and nutrition niche – she is an agent for Forever Living Products, whose UK headquarters is about 8 miles from where I live.
My daughter has started her own website – I set it up for her and I support her as she tries to get to grips with creating her own content. It has been an enormous help to her for me to put the right tools in place for her and to be a sounding board for her. It is easy to under-estimate how much time and cost I have cut from her learning experience.
I’m sure my daughter does not really know what I have saved her in terms of her learning curve.
Her biggest mistake at the moment is wanting to be independent and therefore not asking me enough questions.
I guess we are all guilty of that because my experience is that, IF you ask, most people are will to help.
It’s just finding someone that you can trust!
I do know that getting a good coach can be enormously helpful if you can find the right person – it can also be an enormous waste of money if you choose unwisely.
This is why I share so much information on my blog – to demonstrate the range and depth of my business knowledge.
In truth, when I started out, I could have created a business in the management information niche because several of my best consulting projects involved setting up complex management information systems using my accounting skills.
Nowadays, I don’t create content in this area at all although I do have a product called ‘Measure N Manage’ which covers management information in internet marketing.
What I do know is that service to many starts off with helping just one person and steadily growing the scope and reach of your business.
If you can just help one person to get a result, you have someone who can provide a testimonial or a case study to enable you to recruit more customers.
It’s also easier if initially you can narrow the scope of your business to offer one product or service that provides just one solution to one problem that the people in your niche are having.
Become great at this one product or service and expand from there. That’s my best advice.
If you think about it, specialists in any area of life earn more than general practitioners.
You’ll be surprised at how quickly your business will take off if you can discipline yourself to follow this advice.
Word will get around that you are the ‘go-to’ expert in your particular chosen area and people will seek you out.
Soon you will find that your ‘service to many will lead to greatness’ but ‘service to many’ all starts with serving that first customer and providing a solution to their one biggest problem.
I do have a coaching programme that you can join which can help you to identify your area of expertise – it may seem ‘expensive’ but in retrospect I know that in due course you will acknowledge that it saved you a lot of time and money – I can coach you either by email or via some focused coaching sessions. Alternatively, you can invest in my products if you want to know more.
Book, Blog, Podcast is a strategy for leveraging the power of Amazon, Google and iTunes and getting your message out into the mainstream.
Amazon, Google and iTunes are the traffic monsters that are always looking for high quality content.
If you are looking to get your message out into the world then you need to consider leveraging all three platforms in order to get maximum coverage.
(This is not unlike Christine Clayfield’s publishing strategy of publishing her books in every possible online book outlet in order to get an average income of $26k in sales per book across over 70 books.)
If you combine this strategy with good SEO execution then this can be a very powerful strategy. It’s a strategy that I picked up from a webinar held by Connie Raegan Green in the 6-in-6 Coaching Programme.
These are the notes that I made as I listened to the webinar – hopefully you can follow what was said in this abbreviated format.
Let’s take a look at each piece of this trifecta…
Your Book
Think about what can you expect if you write a book?
How can you expand on that?
What’s next after you’ve written the book?
There are many people who have created a career based on their book – Robert Kiyosaki, Tim Ferris, Eckhart Tolle, Tony Robbins, Susie Orman, to name but a few. These people had a game plan when writing their book.
What are you going to write about?
You can share your personal experiences. Why will people want to learn this from you? Is there something new to share?
What are the challenges and struggles of people in your market?
When you start writing your book, you need to organise your thoughts and prepare an outline so that you can approach the execution of your book one chapter at a time.
You will need to schedule a time to write. Schedule this time when you are sharpest and give it top priority. Say one or two hours a day.
Find out who has already written on your topic and who are the real movers and shakers in your niche. Who is in your niche? Read their books and content. On Amazon, you can take a look inside and view the table of contents to get ideas for your book.
Search for their websites, read their blogs and join their list to see want they are sending out to their list. Do they have anything for sale?
Consider teaching a course based on the content in your book, even before the book is written, and then mail a copy of your book to your course members.
Be willing to challenge the accepted philosophy in your niche. Your perspective is unique.
Your Blog
You want to use WordPress.org and have a self-hosted website with a hosting firm like Hostgator. Buy your domain name from Namecheap.
Build a list by giving something away for free. What do people in your niche optin for? Create your own version but make it simple and easy to consume.
Write your first 10 auto responder messages to send people as soon as they join your list – keep them short but valuable with something clickable in every message.
Always remember why someone joined your list in the first place and what action you ultimately want them to take with you. If you know that you can reverse engineer the process that you want them to follow to reach that ultimate destination.
Share your lifestyle on social media and have fun with it – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram – try to connect these together like a spiders web of content. Let people know who you are and what you stand for.
Get online publicity using Webwire for $30 per submission.
Also, consider getting coverage with local media.
Your Podcast
Base this on your book and blog content.
What is the format? Is it interviews, Q & A’s or ‘edutainment’?
I use a free tool called Audacity and also a premium tool called Audello to create a share my podcasts.
4 Questions To Give You Direction
Why is your topic important?
What is your topic by definition?
What if someone uses your strategies, what would their life be like?
How does your topic work in a step-by-step process.
Storytelling
Storytelling is critical to sharing your message and storytelling needs to be used in your book, blog and podcast in order to connect with other people. These are little stories about your life that enable you to really connect with your audience and illustrate the message that you are conveying.
Creating Your Outline
What is your big idea?
What is your working title?
Who should write your foreword for you?
What is your preface – your story from pain to pleasure.
Introduction – your thesis statement for your book.
Your sections based on the 4 questions above. Create the titles of your chapters and the premise or bog idea for each chapter.
The Order Of Things In Your Book
Dedication
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapters
Conclusion
The most important people in the publishing process are the writer and reader – all others are superfluous in the publishing world. This is a complete change in 2015 and beyond. You can choose to use a publisher or not – Amazon has changed the game with CreateSpace.com – this is their Print-on-Demand publishing division. It’s free to use.
You will need to create a book cover or outsource this.
You will also want to use Kindle – kdp.amazon.com. This is free as well.
Create your own author page at authorcentral.amazon.com to get a link back to your blog.
The Order Of Priority
Your book is the first piece of your marketing platform.
The hosted WordPress site is next – post at least once a week on a topic that is relevant to your book.
Podcast on iTunes. Use the free Podpress plugin to add your audio to your blog – talk about your topic, your blog and your book.
Blogging Success Tips
Post consistently – 300 to 500 words.
Use your keywords in your Permalink.
Do original content, guest posts and curated content.
Promote every post on social media
Reply to all comments.
Podcast Success Tips
Podcast consistently.
Have a clear message.
Share valuable information
Turn every podcast into a blog post
Have something for sale
Other Platforms
YouTube.com
Facebook pages and groups
LinkedIn Groups
Twitter Lists
Instagram
How To Get This Done
Start from where you are right now.
You now have a blueprint.
Do this one step at a time, one day at a time.
The next step? Subscribe to my blog in the side-bar 🙂
The ‘Puppy Dog Close’ goes like this. The pet store lets you take home the cute puppy for a few days to see if you like it on the basis that, if you have any problems, they will give you a free refund.
The psychology behind this is to remove the risk of purchase i.e. that you’ve made a big mistake without recourse to a refund.
The pet-store owner is banking on the fact that you will grow attached to the puppy and will not be able to bring it back because you have formed an emotional bond with it.
The first time I heard about this close was in relation to a store that sold expensive televisions in a rural part of the country. They were a top seller of televisions by simply using the puppy dog close – they were banking on the fact that when the owner of the TV got it home and showed it off to his family, friends and neighbours, his ego would not allow him to return the television to the shop.
The reason I’ve written this post is that I was reminded of this close when I read this article which is a variation on the original Puppy Dog Close…
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The Great Puppy Dog Ambush and its Devious Lessons for your Web Conversions
It was an ambush.
There I was in Brisbane at a seminar and… it happened.
Like all good ambushes it was deviously planned, cunningly created and implemented with military-like precision.
The first inkling I got was when my iphone vibrated (naturally on silent because of the seminar!) indicating a text message.I looked at it under the table. The text contained 6 words which are enough to send a shiver down the spine of any man with a wife and children.
All it said was…“we r @ the pet store”.
OMG.
The training was really good, high quality but my day had taken a turn for the worst.
My response: “we’ll talk when i get home”.
It happened again. Text vibration went off.
This time a picture.Youngest child holding a cute little puppy.I ignored it.
2 minutes later another text. Second oldest child with same cute puppy. Not good.
All up I received 4 such pics… one for each kid holding this little white ball of fluff.
Ok Poindexter, I’ve heard enough about your family issues, tell me what’s in it for me.
Stick with me here… because the process used in this ambush could be worth a motza for you.
Back to the story…
We had no contact again until I arrived home at about 7 that night to be greeted at the door by a sea of excited expectant faces.You see they knew I didn’t want a puppy.
With a (by today’s standards) big family, last thing I wanted was another mouth to feed, medical bill to pay, “kid” to buy toys for.Luckily for me I arrived home prepared.
The hour drive had given me time to get my objections sorted in my mind and as I walked in the front door I was loading my “gun” with these well-thought out bullets.
Then THE question came…“Dad she’s so cute, can we PLEEEEEAAAASSSSE get her?”
No way. I was prepared. And quite happy to wear “the world’s biggest bastard” tag for a week or 2… they’d come round.
We’re not getting a dog.
“Why not?”Ok, time to click the safety switch off, work the bolt and get ready to fire…
Because when you have a dog you can’t go on holidays, you can’t get away even for a weekend.
No!“The shop where the puppy is has a puppy motel… only $95 a week and they feed it and love it and look after it very well!”Bugger.
Dogs are expensive. No!“Dad, it’s such a good deal. The dog comes wormed, vaccinated, vet checked. You get a free microchip, free puppy school AND… free doggy hydro bath for LIFE. You won’t even have to wash her!”Damn.
This pet store knows a thing or two about marketing. They’d taken my love-struck kids’ eyes off the price.
I wasn’t giving up without a fight…I’m not getting up in the middle of the night to a puppy. I’ve done that with you kids. Not doing it again. And I’m not picking up dog poo.
No!“It’s ok, you won’t have to we will do it all.”Yeah right. For the first week until the novelty wears off.Then second oldest daughter grabs me by the hand and takes me to the lounge. She points to a piece of paper blu-tacked to the wall under the light switch.A quick tour of the house revealed all bedrooms with this same darn piece of paper on the wall.They’d thought of EVERYTHING.
The paper was a roster. Day by day. Job by job. Each kid’s responsibilities for looking after it laid out for all to see.My name wasn’t there.“See dad, we’ve got it sorted, you won’t have to do a thing!”
This was not going well.I was in deep trouble.
Ok time to bring out the heavy artillery. You see I love my lawn. My neighbours are jealous. Passersby comment. It’s darn sexy.So I let them have it.What about my lawn! There’s no way any dog is going to dig it up.“
She won’t dad, she’s only little and she’s soooo cute!”
World’s biggest bastard was deeper in trouble.
Last chance…If we get a dog, you kids will just fight over who’s playing with it. Heck we won’t even get it home without an argument over whose lap it’s sitting on in the car!
Second eldest says nothing but disappears and returns with my old fishing hat. It contained 4 pieces of paper.“We’ve even thought of that. Our names are in here and whichever one gets chosen gets to nurse the dog on the way home. We all agree. There’ll be no fights.”Then she says…“And you even get to pick the name out of the hat!”Lucky me.
I was defeated.
Her name is Tilly and yes, she’s very cute.Ok, because you’ve read this far… here are the BIG marketing lessons…
Marketing lesson #1: What you offer visitors to your website IS vital. Seems like stating the obvious but you really need to put thought into it. It’s a concept I drum into the copywriters I coach… “GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT”.Just like the pet store does when it sells a dog.What do prospective dog owners want? Healthy puppy which is low maintenance… so that’s what they give you. Vet checked, vaccinated, micro-chipped, wormed, puppy school, free doggy wash for life… the offer covers ALL bases.So should your offers. There is massive perceived value built in here. Your mind is on all these “extras” and the cute ball of fluff. It makes it easy to buy and easy to ignore or justify in your mind the asking price.
Can you say the same about your offers? If you answer “NO”… maybe it’s time to give the market what they want with a “puppy dog” type offer.
Marketing Lesson #2: People buy on emotion and justify with logic. Does your copy make it easy for them to do this? That little “war” between me and my kids (me throwing up objections, the kids answering them) is the same “war” which goes on in everyone’s mind BEFORE they buy.
Your copy must point out the value and the result they will get so the “war” in their minds is easy for them to win. When there is emotional connection there… when they can logically justify why they should buy… then BINGO… you’ve made the sale.
Remember, think of all the reasons they won’t buy and then overcome them in your copy.
Just like my kids did to me.
OK, I’m off to play with little Tilly and take care of my sexy lawn…
In addition to the marketing lessons above, I also learnt:
Marketing Lesson #3: Deal with all objections, preferably in advance, as part of your sales letter. His kids had anticipated his objections and were ready with their solutions.
Marketing Lesson #4: Whilst the kids were not in a position to buy the puppy themselves, they heavily influenced the buying decision. This demonstrates that the person who is able to pay may not be the person you need to market your service too. Have you identified the real decision-makers in your marketing?
Marketing Lesson #5: The real profit in this transaction, probably was not the sale of the puppy. A puppy needs eating bowls, dog food, lead and or harness, grooming equipment, dog bed, dog toys, flea treatment and so on. The back-end profits from this transaction are far greater than the initial sale for the pet store – if the pet store is smart this would be part of their back-end marketing system to maximise the lifetime value of the customer.
This is the same in internet marketing – give away something valuable or offer it at a low price, to get a buyer on your list, and then make profits on the back-end with email marketing is the standard internet marketing model.
Another variation on this puppy dog strategy is to give a $1 trial for a few days, with the rest payable automatically unless cancelled – if you have a high quality product. then cancellations will be low and many people will forget to cancel anyway.
The Puppy Dog Close is a very effective strategy – is this something you could use in your marketing strategy?
Once your product is in the customers’ hands and the customer experiences the joy of ownership, the sale is all but certain, particularly when there is a strong emotional attachment to the purchase. Sit down and start thinking about how you could entice your prospects and customers with a puppy-dog close that will make your closing ratios higher than they’ve ever been before.
Please subscribe to my blog if you want to receive more tips like this and feel free to comment below if you wish to add to the conversation.
How to have your best year ever is a 4 hour 22 minute video of a presentation by the late Jim Rohn in Fort Worth, Dallas.
It is incredible from a number of angles.
Firstly, Jim Rohn is a great speaker but it wasn’t always that way. He tells the story of when he first stood up to give a talk and ‘his mind sat down’. So you can learn a lot by just watching his method of delivery.
In particular, notice how he weaves stories about his life into the presentation – that’s a fabulous lesson for the content we create. This is the key to the success of most good copy and most excellent presentations.
The content of Jim’s presentation is also excellent – I found the first session to be the best where he covers the 5 keys to success:
Philosophy – he called this ‘setting the sail’.
Attitude – how we feel about ourselves and other people and our situation.
Activity – take your philosophy and attitude and invest it into ACTION.
Results – be willing to face the numbers – success is a numbers name.
Lifestyle – with your results, fashion for yourself a good life.
On money – we get paid for binging value to the marketplace.
In the second session of how to have your best year ever, he covers areas of personal development and towards the end of the session throws out ‘the 3 treasures to leave behind’:
your pictures – the help tell the story. A picture is worth a thousand words.
your library – your stepping stones out of the darkness into the light
your journals – make notes so you can revisit the wisdom that you learn (- I actually do make notes in notebooks so I’m ahead of him on this one!)
In the third session of how to have your best year ever, Jim covers the 5 abilities that we need to nurture:
the ability to absorb – soak it all up – be like a sponge. Wherever you are, be there.
learn to respond – let life touch you. Give in to emotions – our emotions need to be educated as well as our intellect.
learn to reflect – go over your notes, your day, your week, your month, your year. Lock in the experiences. Get some solitude to reflect. Make the past more valuable so you can invest it in the future.
develop the ability to act – act when the idea is hot and the emotion is strong to counter the law of diminishing intent. Everything affects everything else – nothing stands alone. Every let-down or neglect affects the rest of our performance.
develop the ability to share – when you ‘turn on other peoples lights’ both you and they win.
Setting goals – goals are your vision of the future. Decide what you want and write it down. The price is easy if the promise is clear. The price is a few simple disciplines practised each day.
Set goals that will make something of you to achieve them. If you don’t need much, you don’t need to become much.
In the fourth session, Jim says never spend more than 70 cents in the dollar. With the other 30%, put 10 cents aside for charity. The next 10 cents is active capital – try to make a profit yourself – buy and sell. Profits are better than wages. Wages make you a living – profits make you a fortune. The next 10 cents is passive capital – savings and investments. Let someone else try to make a profit and pay you interest and dividends.
Touch something and leave a profit. It’s not the money, it’s the plan that counts.
He finally talks about the importance of good communication – there are 4 parts:
Have something good to tell
Say it well sincerity, repetition, brevity and vocabulary are all important.
Read your audience by what you see, hear and their emotional signals.
Intensity – words mixed with emotion are powerful
This is just a short summary of over 4 hours of powerful content – imagine that – being able to hold the attention of an audience for over 4 hours!
His final words were, learn to help people with their lives, not just their jobs. Help them with their dreams, not just to hang in there. Also, if you work on your gifts, they will make room for you.
Hopefully, this video will inspire you to have your best year ever – if you have not yet signed up to my free product, The Sky Inside, then you really ought to if you want more great content like this.
I thought that I could offer Easy Web Page Graphics as an upsell and a lesson on Photoshop Actions as a downsell to demonstrate how I created these dramatic images.
I hope you like my demo squeeze pages – please feel free to comment below.
